City Council - Special Meeting

It is 5 o'clock on Thursday, August 6th, and I will call this special meeting of the Port Orchard City Council to order. Thank you all. We are here for night two of our council interviews. The majority of this evening is going to look much the same as it did Tuesday night with the interview, with the exact same time schedule as well. After our final interview, we will go into an executive session. Our city attorney, Ms. Archer, has joined us and is just going to give us a quick brief and reminder of the things we can and cannot talk about during that session. So, Ms. Archer.

Thank you. For the record, Charlotte Archer, city attorney. Uh, so the executive session on the agenda this evening is going to be entered into pursuant to 40 to 31, 10, sub, part 1, sub, part H, and that executive session is limited to a discussion, evaluating the qualifications of a candidate for appointment to elective office. The discussion must stay focused on the candidate's qualifications, experience, background, credentials and suitability for the vacant elective office. There can be no voting. There can be no appointment. Nothing of that ilk can occur in the executive session. It's merely a discussion of the qualifications. The authority does not allow the Council to take any final deliberation actions that go beyond evaluating those qualifications. So, for example, a comment such as, I like candidate X for the following reasons would be permissible. A comment like, I urge you to vote for candidate X would not, nor would I will vote for candidate X. Because those are indications of a final decision or encouraging others to reach a specific final decision. So statements like that are not permitted under subpart 1 subpart H of the executive session statute. This can be highly nuanced. So many of my agencies have me sit in on these deliberations. You're not required to have a lawyer present for these deliberations, but I do sit in for the purpose of assisting you in navigating those issues, because your ability to discuss things is strictly curtailed under this executive session statute. Then moving on in your meeting agenda, just to flag for you what happens post executive session, we would then return from the executive session and the chair will then open the floor for a motion. A motion to appoint a particular candidate is then welcome. If it receives a second, it would then be followed by discussion and a vote. If that vote on that motion to appoint that candidate fails or dies for lack of a second, the floor is then once again open for another motion and we follow that same process until an appointment is made through a majority vote. So the discussion occurs after a motion is made for a particular candidate once we are back in the open session. None of that would we ever do or could we do in the executive session, but I wanted to flag what it looks like after the executive session as well. So I'm happy to stand for any questions about either the executive session or the process after the executive session or Brandy as well as I are both verbose on the process post executive session.

I think the only question I have is coming out of that. If we are going to make that motion, I assume it needs to be in some form of authorizing a resolution to a point.

I know it can just be, I moved to a point to fill the vacancy.

Yep. All right. Yes.

A quick question, Charlie. On that where you're talking about voting on a motion for. One candidate at a time. You would go through but could if we don't come to a candidate can you bring that another candidate that that candidate back up again.

Question. I have not run into anyone attempting to do that before, but arguably that would be a decided final action that would require probably a motion for reconsideration if somebody wanted to bring up a candidate who had been actually voted down. If the motion died for lack of a second, then I think you could make that motion again. But I think we'd have to go through the reconsideration machinations if you wanted to bring up somebody who'd already been voted down in that sequence.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Any additional questions for Ms. Archer? I'm good. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Archer. Okay. Yeah, thank you. We will see you in an executive session.

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you.

506. Next candidate's at 515.

I'll be right back. Okay.

We're not pausing. We're not muting. We're rolling.

Yeah. So don't say something you don't want on camera. That's what Ms. Brandy's saying.

Without saying that?

Without saying that. I just say it. You know me.

All right. How do you feel about bugging an M for a friend?

I had a terrible throat.

Any electricians around here?

How are you? Good. I should be able to make it. I used it all Tuesday and haven't. No, I'm not going to help you. No, thank you. I appreciate you. I think we'll get through. I think we'll get through.

There's an outlet here. I don't know if...

I'm going to try. Yeah. I don't want to trip anybody. Okay. Nor do I want it on camera that we're not following any... Any... If it's under the table, I think I can get by with it. Can I have a taxi for a moment?

for being reconnected when we did the remodel, just vaguely. But then again, I've slept since then, so.

And woke up.

Yeah. So we have 515.

My meeting, my meeting the other day. I won't do it over the hot mic.

Because we won the night before, did you watch? Yesterday? We actually pulled it off, so we got slacked on Tuesday when we were here. And then we put up a half-decent game yesterday. Julio hits a three-run donger and then Colt hits one too. Brian had a great showing.

He, he, he throws great at home. Yeah.

And then today I didn't get to watch any of it. All I saw was 11, nothing lasers for laser. Yeah. I do. I do.

Yeah, well.

When I have absolutely decided we have no chance of making the postseason, I will cut it out.

There's going to be a time when you want money. The whole division is terrible. Everybody else is terrible.

They're terrible. We're only two and a half back now, right? So an Astros loss yesterday. The Texans won.

So we're still in it. The leadership gets out.

Right. At this point, the wild cards are fading into the distance, so I don't have to worry about that.

The further we get away from wild card.

because he's so, so he's so not only great, but he wants to be like human. He wants to continue the work. He wants to do all those things. Yeah. Is it more than one?

Yeah, I think there's multiple weeks.

Wait, is there only one episode out right now?

I saw a part of it.

I value it. I saw some snippet on social this morning where they put out that Jordan Yeah, right well, it's about where he was going with that by him and working with the team excellent Jackson We have we have well, it's not working and well in those shutting down. That's what we need to

And the triangle offense is all about YM. So it's like.

All right, Kenny, I will invite you up to come take a seat right here at the end of the table with us. uh as i understand you should have gotten a little bit of uh information from the clerk's office let me know about how uh this process will go again i'll just remind you there will be a two-minute opening statement we've got five questions we're gonna allow about five minutes a question i'm not going to stop you if you want to spend a little more time on one question versus another but at some point i will have to close that section and we move into your two minutes closing section as well. So with that, I will let you take your two minute opening statement. Before I do that, I'm going to tell you one last story. She's going to turn the screen light on here. You're good to go. With 30 seconds left, if you can see it out of every corner of your eye, there's going to be an orange light. I'm going to give you a little point over there. I'm going to let you know that orange light and that the red light means we got it. You're done. You're done. Okay. Perfect. Go for it.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you guys for hearing from me.

Yes. You're not done. You can go beyond five minutes. Oh. But you just have less minutes for other questions.

Okay. Okay. I got it. Thank you. So I know that you guys have read my materials, my resume, my cover letter. I don't know that I touched on, I come from a family of public service. My father was in the military. He worked for Habitat for Humanity and my mom was a school teacher. They were very invested in their community and they really modeled that for me. So that's kind of part of my tapestry, which is why I feel compelled to give back to the community. And I think my resume reflects that with my community service. Although I've worked in local government my whole career, I'm by no means an expert on county government or city government or local government. And I think one of the things that I can bring to the city council is that I know I don't know everything, but I'm willing to learn and I'm willing to ask questions. That is one of the things that I don't shy away from on some of my other boards. For example, we had a meeting this week. And the woman was talking about something. I was like, okay, hold up. I don't understand. Um, and I don't have a problem doing that. Um, my job obviously requires research. I'm happy to research, um, and inform myself. And so I think that that is an asset that I bring. Um, so I intend to learn, I intend to ask questions and offer suggestions based on my experience and whatever I learned in my education. Um, I am very proud of our town and our community. I love the parades. I love all of the community involvement. I love the farmer's market. And I love the fact that we have a dedicated city council. I love the fact that you guys are really working and dedicated to making sure the community is better. I would love to be part of that. I like and I'm proud of the diversity of the council. I know that many of you um work for county government i also work for county government i don't think i necessarily have the same restrictions because i work for an independently elected official so there may be not as many conflicts there if that's a concern um i'm not a politician but i have a genuine heart to be to give back to the community thank you uh

understanding the role was our first question yes in your view what is the proper role of the city council member and how would you balance representing the views of your cons of our constituents with making decisions that are in the best long-term best interest of the entire port orchard community so i understand that my role as part of city council much like being

a member of a board of directors, as that you are policy makers. We're not involved in the day-to-day operations of the city. They have their managers to offer management for their employees. And as a policy maker, I understand that what we need to be listening to is our constituents, but also looking at our fiscal responsibility. So I have sat on a couple of boards. I understand that it's very similar to that, and I'm comfortable with that. I also understand, I don't know if I touched on this in my introductory package. One of the things that I think I'm good at is collaboration and getting people to the table. And we're not always gonna agree. Obviously sometimes the answer has to be no, but I really pride myself on trying to get everybody to a yes. And so I think that's really important as part of the city council with the constituents and the financial responsibility that we have.

Strengths and contribution is our second question. Okay. What unique experiences, skills, or perspectives would you bring to the city council? And how would you use those strengths to help the council better serve the residents of Port Orchard?

Well, I kind of touched on it in my last answer. I think one of my biggest strengths is collaboration. As one of my roles in my job now, I'm the board director of the multi disciplinary tasks most multi disciplinary team for special assault so it's kids upstairs, which is special assault investigations and victim services. And as part of that I liaison with a number of different disciplines, and so I have a lot of experience networking. And I often will tell if we have new executive directors, for example, at the ywca. rebuilding Cope, I will often tell them, I may not know the answer for you, but I know, I probably know who knows the answer and I can network with them. And so I think knowing what you know and what you don't know, but also who you know, I think is really important. So that's, I think my biggest strength. I think I also have had enough experience, you know, I mean, my role is an adversary, but I have a lot of experience being respectful of people's time, being respectful and having a respectful dialogue within meetings and making sure that everybody is heard and heard in a way that is meaningful to each person. So I think that's one of my strengths as well.

Our next question will be around managing growth. Port Orchard continues to experience significant growth. How do you believe the city should balance accommodating growth while preserving the character quality of life, infrastructure, and financial sustainability of our community.

This is where I will rely heavily on my asking questions and doing my own research. I'll be honest with you, I am not an expert on growth management. I know almost nothing, but I'm happy to educate myself on that. I know that that is a big concern. I know I've heard, you know, my friends who live in the community have expressed concern. I've heard other people within government that expressed concern about that. I'm not gonna be able to sit here and tell you, here's how you can do it, but I will tell you that I will look into it and I will listen to people and I will try to be a thoughtful contribution.

The next question is around our most pressing issue. What do you believe is the most significant issue currently facing the city council and why you believe it deserves the council's attention?

Well, I think the last question is really what hit on it. I've spoken to a couple of people that work for the government, and I think the growth management is really the biggest pressing issue. I know I have heard from people in just my community, like my friendship in my community, that that is an issue too. I know permitting is an issue and making sure that businesses pay their own way into it so those citizens aren't paying for their infrastructure. So I think that's the biggest pressing issue that the city has. Was your question the city or the city council? Same. Okay. Well, yeah, for me, it's a little bit different. The answer is a little bit different. For the city council, I do think it is just coming together and making sure that we can have a collaborative discussion and respectful discussion so that we're balancing all of these different things and being able to move forward because I think our community deserves the ability to come cohesively and move forward.

Okay.

Our next question is around fiscal stewardship. The City Council is responsible for being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while meeting the community's service expectations. What principles would guide your approach to budgeting and fiscal decision-making?

Well, I mean, it's prioritization, right? You have to figure out what your constituents want and what the city needs and be able to prioritize that way. We have to do that in our office, in the prosecutor's office, we have to be able to figure out, we have this amount of limited resources, what are we gonna prioritize as far as prosecution? I can tell you recently, we had to make a difficult decision that we didn't have the resources anymore to staff infraction hearings. And so we just had to cut that. So it's those kind of things that I know you have to prioritize. I was part of years ago at the beginning of my career, I was part of a work group with citizens when Russ Hauge was the elected official and he wanted the citizens to come together and figure out, okay, what do you guys want the priorities to be? Like, what is it you would like us and what's the least priority? And so, you know, I think that has to be a discussion both amongst the city council and then listening to the constituents is just figuring out where do we best put our money and where it's going to be the biggest bang for our buck, I guess.

I'm going to ask the first clarifying question before I turn it open to the rest of the group. You said something in your opening statement on our worry about the county and its county policies. I'd like a little more clarification on what you meant by that. Because I do have a little bit of a worry because we regularly have two members that have to stay.

Sure, sure. And I understand. So I work for a separately elected official. So Chad Enright is separately elected. His policies don't have to necessarily align with the commissioner's policies. So for example, as I understand it, and I could be wrong about this, as I understand it, if there is a city council meeting that falls in the middle of the day, the county's policy is you have to take the day off. I have consulted with our civil division and she's like, no, you don't have to do that because you're under separately elected. There are gonna be things that I'm gonna have to conflict off of. Obviously, if it directly involves my office, for example, I can think of maybe three things. The contract that we have to do the criminal prosecution here. I would have to conflict off that. My understanding is that's never been very contentious. It's pretty pro forma as far as signing it. A second one that I can think of is I know that the city owns a building where one of our divisions is renting from, so any decisions about that. I have been involved in discussions on my office's side of it, so I would have to conflict off that. But I honestly think that just because the county is involved and the city is looking at it, I think there are a lot of situations that I can articulate why I don't have a conflict and I could still engage with that. Thank you.

Any other clarifying questions? Anyone else on the panel? Perfect.

Hearing none, we'll move into your closing statement. Okay. um well i didn't i didn't prepare any remarks for that and to be honest with you i think i've been somewhat concise maybe too concise um but you know i'm not again i'm here to learn i would i would love to learn about county development um my heart is for public service it's what i've modeled for my kids um and i've you know we've been in kitsap county my entire career we've been in the city of port orchard for the last 12 years and i've just enjoyed um i've enjoyed watching how it's developed i I don't have any reason to, but I take great pride in the South Kitsap High School Parade. I think that's super cool. And I would love to do more things like that because I think it does really bring us together.

Well, I want to say thank you for your service to our community and thank you for putting your name forward. Yep, I appreciate it.

Do you guys have an idea? Is it the August 11th?

It could possibly be tonight. Okay, all right. It could be the 11th, we don't know.

Okay, sounds good.

We'll see how it goes.

Yep, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for your time, yep. And I left water for the next person. Perfect, thank you, Kenan.

Have a good one. Thank you, Kenan. Hype squad, like it. All right, team, our next candidate's at 550. I'll just remind you the mics are hot here. We'll see you in five minutes. very concise.

We can learn from this experience.

I learned from every experience. Whether or not I recall that lesson is sometimes.

Hopefully we won't have this experience again.

yeah this particular one that's the hope did you happen to look up did you have any questions don't worry i'm not shy yeah i did not this i know about you too thank you for not showing up upside down this evening

I don't know what you did, but it worked.

Actually, Fred gave me the hint. So thank Fred Chang back there in the audience.

You can thank him right now.

I owe him a copy.

You've got to pay for them.

This is the place that you want to catch up here. This is the place.

This is the place now? OK. Well, he works a lot. I know that.

Yeah. I'd better go back to work after this. There you go. Just to make sure time cards are done. Really nothing big. It's Thursday. Is that stuff you can do at home? Well, it's in the paper. Yeah, but I try not to take it home. Do you? OK. I'm the same way.

I used to do quite a bit at home, and I try to take less and less.

on what's going on. We still have over twice as many planners as we do now. And one just submitted a resignation today. By budget or by just openings? By numbers.

By FTE budget. I'm asking, are they cutting you or you just don't have people in the seats right now?

They're not cutting us. But they're not allowing growth. In 2008, we were hardly growing. We had like seven, eight times. Now we have three.

like to come join us at the table come on up we'll get started here in just a moment i'll just invite you sorry about overdressing we're going to go out to dinner later we don't know where so we thought we'd dress for the best i would help i wish i could dress a little better i would normally be that i work outside and so i wear shorts here regularly i always i tell my My peers, I always feel bad about it, but I don't want to be working all day and not have shorts when I'm outside.

Well, the other thing is that I taught a lot of college kids over the years, and when they knew the old guy in the sport coat was the one to listen to, it really helped. I hear that. I hear that.

Well, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I believe you got some information from the clerk's office to kind of walk you through what tonight will look like. But essentially, we're going to give you two minutes up front here for an We're going to have some timing on that. I will tell you the two opening and closing statements are going to be held a little more to that two-minute type rule. The five minutes per question is flexible, but we have to remain all within the five minutes. I can see the light from here. Can you see it? Perfect. I was going to say, green is you're good to go. Orange means you have 30 seconds, and red means we're out of time. I will also give a little point right over towards Brandy that you will know that the orange light is on at that point.

All right, and I'd really like introductions all around too. Okay, perfect. Mark Lewis and Paula. That's package. We're in our 50th year of marriage if I live to December.

Okay, good caveat, good caveat.

And your name?

Mark Trenary. Trenary, yep, yep. I'm Scott here. Council members free. Thank you. Eric Gordon according to John Morris.

Yes, and several of you have said yes, we got one more. Yeah, and I went to the first town hall and also to the Givens Park thing. So met a few of you there.

Excellent. Yeah, well, let's jump right in. I'm going to go ahead and give you two minutes to do your opening statement.

okay uh i think what i'd like to um tell you about is how a newcomer is not just a newcomer but new blood certainly it's been about 15 years that we've been very intentionally visiting here just like we did after college when we decided where are we going to live and find good work and we ended up in that community for 42 years except for a master's degree. So we went to Ann Arbor for that and then went back there, built a home, raised the kids there. Now the kids and grandkids are here, Bainbridge and Belfair. So we very intentionally for years had been going to Port Orchard, see what we could build and we love where we are. We've got a one story home, no steps for old men. It's really nice. And so now what I've been doing is we hit the ground running as soon as we got here because we've always been very, very focused on volunteering. And so you've seen from my resume, I'm at the farmer's market. I'm on the advisory board of the senior center. I've put my name in at helpline and also at the library. They don't need anyone right now. So here's the thing. I kind of all my adult life said, I'm going to run for office. I'm going to run for office. I couldn't. A real mainstream journalist, a journalist with a master's in the field working at a newspaper for my 40 years, you cannot join political things, period. You can't have a sign in your yard. Your wife can't put a sign in your yard, or they'll take you off the news business. So yeah, so that's why now I can finally do it. And I was very excited to get a chance to be here. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

Excellent. Thank you, sir.

Now, I would like to ask you, if you wouldn't mind, since we go through all the questions, I would like to start with the most pressing issues, blah, blah, blah, that one, and then we can come back to it. Sure. Because everything that I say will impact the other questions.

So I'm going to let you weave that in to keep consistency among all candidates. I'm going to stay in that same one. But how you answer and what you put into that answer is completely up to you. No, it won't make sense. However you plug that in there, I'm still gonna have to ask the questions in the same role just to keep everything fair. So we're talking about understanding the role in our first question. In your view, what is the proper role of a city council member and how would you balance representing the views of your constituents with making decisions that are in the long-term best interest of the entire Port Orchard community?

I'd say that a very important role, especially in a strong mayor system like you have here, is that, as I will talk about when I get to that point, foresight is really, really important for a council where you don't necessarily have to do a lot of the infrastructure nuts and bolts, but you're very involved in that. But you need to look way ahead because I'm going to talk about 30 years ago what you should have done, what we should have done. This is my city. I live here. But I wasn't here 30 years ago. There's a couple of things. So foresight and their companion action aspects, which would be planning and community engagement in what you see when you look down the road. And that's what I think is very important. And it's kind of a bigger thing that you need to keep in mind because it really kind of seems like with the strong mayor system, the mayor is so into the trenches all the time that I think you have the chance to really be looking long-term in things. And I do want to address that later on. So the role of city council is to practice good governance, to be watchdogs over all of the important functions of the city. And I mentioned foresight for that reason that you'll see, but basically we need to listen to everybody when they come to the table. And I would do that with an open heart and with good listening skills that I had to learn from the students who I didn't want to listen to. Yeah. So I think that that will do it there.

Okay. Okay. Our next question goes around your strengths and contributions. What unique experiences, skills, or perspectives would you bring to the city council? And how would you use those strengths to help the council better serve the residents of Fort Orchard?

How many city council meetings do you think you've sat on and committees and public? I've done more than so many. And that's, you know, I've seen it happen in so many different things like, you know, a really intense time when the police chief is on the hot seat and then also incredibly boring. ones where I didn't fall asleep over there. The skill set that I would bring is that I've seen a lot and the learning curve may be a lot less because I've gone over all the public documents kind of thing because I've had to and Freedom of Information Act requests and going through those and dealing with very sensitive issues when they come up in public sector. because good governance means listening to all viewpoints and it can be really challenging at times. So what else was the question?

What unique experiences, skills or perspectives would you bring to the council and how would you use those strengths to better serve the residents?

I am a book editor and a reviewer and an author. I've worked for a publisher and worked with creative folks. I have a whole lot of creative juices, always have. And even in the journalism years, I was involved in theater, arts, concerts, et cetera, as one of the things. Because a good journalist in large organizations gets to switch around about every five years because you get bored with cops and courts. And then I do county government. And they let you move on to another area. So I've got a really wide range of background in that sense.

Our next question revolves around managing growth. Port Orchard continues to experience significant growth. How do you believe the city should balance accommodating growth while preserving the character, quality of life, infrastructure, and financial stability?

Port Orchard has been among the faster growing communities in western Washington and it has been an interesting situation where there are a lot of paychecks here but they're from across the way and that kind of thing and there's a lot of communities where there's a metric where Is there like a full-time job for every man, woman and children? That would be great. Right now in Port Orchard, it's about half of our 17, 18,000 people. If you count everybody, there's about that many jobs, half of that. So about 9,000 full-time with benefit jobs within the city. That's kind of a different mix than some communities, but it's one that we can live with. We have, We have an interesting situation too with the population growing older here too. And they can have a hard time dealing with the growth and we need to support them in any way that we can too. As far as like infrastructure, there's great progress right now with the project that starts in November, I believe, downtown, the flood control and things. And then we have a couple of traumatic years of working on the gorst. That corridor is going to be a lot to deal with, but it will potentially really help Port Orchard too. So in terms of handling the growth, I think that, you're on the right track. I mean, there's a little bit of everything going on that is needed to keep the goal of somehow keeping people connected to what's going on here and for them to hopefully be sympathetic to the challenges that you as a council have.

Our next is around the most pressing issue. What do you believe is the most significant issue currently facing the city council and why do you believe it deserves the council's attention?

Maybe not the most pressing, but certainly one that deserves some serious attention. And if I were to take you back 30 years, to a certain time when the county welcomed, the county bought the Givens Community Center and started it and welcomed seniors in there as a tenant for a senior center. And at the same time, this is for Mrs. Ancilla Tripp, before she died, she left the county, left the city, a really choice piece of property. You know, if you're facing Fred Meyer to your right is Bethel and across the way is city property for about 5.2 acres. And then mostly I think West Sound Utility District going up the hill, but then there's a city water tank up there. That 5.2 acres of really choice land, which a commercial real estate broker has priced me at about $800,000 in terms of value, that was designated. She got some consideration for some things in her estate, but she willed it as for parkland or public good only public use only and unfortunately right now i think the mayor just approved west sound doing lay down of the bethel project junk there and that's not in the city ordinance which i have a copy of because i got that through the freedom of information act too and the problem is some of that pro junk has can leach in rainy weather and everything not good for something that she said don't ever touch it it's supposed to be you're not supposed to cut a single tree there until it's used for something and that's where i ask you us as a city why didn't we start thinking about something the something is that 25 20 of our entire city is made up of senior citizens and it is growing and those seniors are not exactly the wealthiest folks in town and that with foresight would have been okay because i talked to your the planner what is his name jim jim yeah and he said oh that's not in the plan so you'd have to put it in and in five years it might be something you know so if you had thought about it you know, could say, we've been thinking we're going to have a lot of seniors and okay, they have a senior center, right? It's in the wrong hands. Senior citizens are hyper local people. Grandma will not go 15 miles to a senior center. Granddaughter won't take her there. And when you're much older than me, you can't go any farther than, you know, half a mile to your senior center or something. So in a lot of small towns, in our size range, far and wide. You find the senior center in the former five and dime. They just clear it out and put some couches in. It doesn't have to be a lot. But they're happy with it, because that was where the Five and Dime was, and it's easy to get to. We don't have anything downtown, and I've been empowered by the advisory board, which I'm a member of, and you know that well. And I've been empowered to kind of get on this topic. And I am a person who likes to really go for something when it's meaningful, when I can get my heart around it. And those ladies are so nice. It's more women than men there. and I call them the ladies in their 80s, and Duann and Corina Zorina. This is great, and the advisory board is like, I'm a lot younger than the rest of it, so I'm trying to do what I can. Okay, so the county, in the past year, when they realized that that building Oh, no. No, no, no, no. In the past year, they realized just how bad it is. And more than a year ago, they could have come to you, unless they quietly did it to your mayor and said, we are launching thousands of dollars of study on every aspect of that awful building. It's so bad. The electrical room is like Frankenstein's lab. I mean, it is so bad. And the plumbing, they just cut it off and cap it because they don't know where it goes. And the sewer gas rises all over in that place. And the power goes out on a regular basis. And we got old ladies with flashlights going around looking for circuit breakers. So parametrics, lots of money. And I don't know if Warren Root told you about it. And then they paid even more for executive summary of it all. By the way, I've got to stop. God bless the county for giving us free rent for 30 years. But it belongs in the city. But no good deed goes unpunished. I intend to hold them to things a little bit too, in the sense that they should have given us better warning. They knew they were nervous about the building more than a year ago, and they didn't bother to tell us until May. that it was going to close next year anyway so the executive summary had three choices uh one two and three one was 30 million dollars to renovate another was 30 million dollars because of relocating and tearing down and the third was 1.7 million dollars to sell it on the open market. Footnote one, except we don't know anything about asbestos. Footnote two, except we don't know anything about the fire marshal who comes through once a month to recertify us because it could burn down any time now. So the footnotes make me think they're gonna put it on the market and that some developer is gonna pay $1. Well, we want, as a 501 , we want to, I have so many people already on board In theory, on a steering committee, we will finance buying with you, with the county, with everybody possible, the CEO of Peninsula Credit Union, et cetera. We will buy it from the county over 30 years. They'll get a little bit of money instead of blowing all kinds of money on electrical and HVAC and plumbing and everything else on a regular basis. And we will tear down 75% of that 50,000 square foot building and mothball the nice part that's left the strongest part until we can afford to bring the seniors back because we are looking at masonic lodge where they can't they never make any money from nine to five it's all nights and weekends and parties and so they're pretty excited that they might get some money for us their spot is not too bad i think i'm done i'm just telling you everything i could squeeze in perfect yeah i was going to let you go on for about one more minute I'm really good at lectures.

Okay, if you're ready to move on to the last question. Oh no, there's a last question? There is. The last one is around fiscal stewardship.

Yes.

The City Council is responsible for being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while meeting the community's service expectations. What principles would guide your approach to budgeting and fiscal decision making?

careful investment on the side when you're not talking about the operational budget. I think in the state of Washington, we have to have a balanced budget, right? Yes. But then what do you do to carefully protect the remaining resources from year to year to year? Finally, for the first time ever, your AA plus credit rating, you've never had a Standard & Poor's before. It just happened in the last couple of years because of the City Hall job. And prior to that, you were literally just spending out of your pocket, which was awesome, but not necessarily a way to really build a fiscal reputation going forward in case you run up against something like somebody asking Half a million dollars for a senior center. You know, it's good to have credit out there too. So I think both strategies are important. Acting like a frugal person, you know, taking care of business and really being tough about projects. Oh, I can give a good example. In our school district where we raise the kids, amazing high school was proposed. We voted it down. It was so elaborate. A year later, we voted down another one that was less elaborate. The third time, for millions less, we got beautiful painted concrete, brick, cement, yeah. Beautiful high school, it's still doing great. It's an example of how it's important to draw the line, to sometimes say, we don't need all that, because they had so many things that you don't need. So that's kind of my feeling about it, yeah. I have something to share with each of you. Hold on just a second.

Any clarifying questions for our candidate?

No, but this has been fascinating.

Well, I try to have entertaining lectures. We're gonna give you your last two minutes for the closing statement you'd like to make.

I hope that I can be on the city council. I don't know, what else should I say? I'm here. So this is a very up to now oh this is my closing statement so what is this this is a vision statement of faculty facility and core purpose the next one is how we would potentially finance it and the final part is what we would do and it's that scary idea of demolition and everything and then i oh gosh it's called save our seniors sos whatever a steering committee and it has mayor county board City planner grant writing team is needed local financial institutions. I've already been there I've spoken to both rotary clubs West Sound Utility is on board local developers and building trades really important I've already got a really interesting architect with construction management experience I've done a Freedom of Information Act request I have huge blueprints of the entire building dating way back when, so that an architect can see what's saveable and what isn't, that kind of thing. And commercial real estate brokers, I got two of them working on it. Local insurance, I'm thinking of somebody. And interior design is later.

Yeah.

I didn't mention that I'm the president of the pocket billiards club there. They have two beautiful nine foot tables at the senior center. And I don't know where those would go, but I will terribly miss them if it's, we can't figure this out.

Well, thank you for your passion. Thank you for taking the time and coming in and talk with us today as well. I appreciate it. I'm often accused of being passionate. RIT, looks like we're back here.

everybody to sit here and have your attention, right? That was brilliant on every level.

So much information.

We have to be careful about what we talk about. We're in an open public setting, so I don't want to get to that part yet, because I want to make sure that we can talk about it.

You've seen his presentation at your Royal Recluse? Yes. Very similar. High active guy. Lots of spirit. Lots of charge. Thank you.

My comments were as much about him as that presentation. Right, right. My comments were as to the presentation. Same here. I agree with you.

No idea. It's crazy not to know that.

Well, right now, it's crazy.

We have an opportunity.

Correct, to set that up front. but then I'd use it If that's .

Whether you attend or not, you pay.

You do, right?

Whether you attend or not, you pay. You're a member, and I don't go. You're telling me those are the current rules. What's a bowling alley for a breakfast with one person? Especially 16 books. That's with Ted. My dad picks up the bill. I don't know.

So my dad just moved into adventure. Oh, he did. Okay. He's got an independent living apartment. Jackson. Yeah.

I thought you said your son at first. I was like, how does that work? I didn't think he would qualify.

It's a pretty nice apartment. He's doing good.

The front lobby's nice.

The front lobby's nice. They got a billiards room. They got workout facilities. They got a men's get-together.

Yeah, yeah. It's a gravel road guy.

But my son and I went and had dinner with him there because you're allowed to hang out and have dinner. They charge you six dollars.

For a dinner? For a dinner. Oh, I'd be eating up there all the time. I know, that's what I said.

I come here a lot, Dad.

Permanent. Can you imagine that?

Eric would make you

I was offended if I didn't.

I'm gonna agree. I always let Dad pay. I'm gonna fight that.

He wants to reimburse me for the fans we ran into and all that stuff.

In Arizona last week, My son picked up a bill, my daughter, and I, that's never happened before. They're like, no, no. Well, the first one I picked up was 250. There's five of us, and you're there for a minute, and it's like, oh, this is gonna be a long week. So I'm waiting for that day. This is gonna be a long week, but then I see all the kids are just like, I'll get this one, I'll get this one. I just sat back like, okay, you know, like. All right.

So my follow-up question to that is, does that mean I can take you off my phone plan? Does that mean I can just start cutting all those ties? Oh, you can buy this? Okay, I'm just going to take... How old are your kids?

26 and 22.

Okay, so 26 is up. First thing for my kids.

He just got off my car insurance. Oh, 26? He paid it. At 26, yeah. He just got off it. He bought a new car, so that's how he got off of it. My daughter, she's on my car insurance. This is crazy. She's on my health insurance. Don't ask why. I promise you, firefighters have way better health insurance than the county does. But coming to this open enrollment this year, she's

As I understand, you got some communication from the clerk's office talking a little bit about how tonight would go.

Yes, yes, yes.

But just as a reminder, we're going to open with a two-minute opening statement. I have five questions in a specific order that I'll ask. We're going to give about five minutes. I'm going to give some leeway if you want to spend more time on one question versus another, but I'm going to keep us somewhat on track to get to the end at a certain time in two minutes at the end for a closing statement. Little lights over there. Green means you're good to go. When it hits orange, if you can see that in the corner of your eye, great. If not, I'm going to give you a little point over there. That's what that means. It just means, hey, your time on this particular section is coming to an end. But make your choices from there. And we'll go from there. Any questions?

No, I don't think so. Perfect.

Well, let's go ahead and start and I'll let you make your opening statement.

Okay, thank you. So my name is Lisa Williams Floyd and I'm running for Port Orchard City Council because I believe in our community deserves thoughtful, responsible leadership focused on people who call Port Orchard home. And I've been here for 19 years yeah i'm a small business owner um been running my business since 2007 and i'm gonna go back to that part later but let me finish this part so um i've dedicated myself to serving others building organizations supporting families and finding practical solutions and complex challenges so my specialty is actually seniors, but I also have a nonprofit and I've helped some of the schools here in Port Orchard, Orchard Heights and Mullinex Ridge under Barbara Pixton, who was the principal. And I understand the importance of listening, accountability and making decisions that positively impact our residents, local business and future generations. Port Orchard is growing, and with growth comes both opportunities and responsibilities. I believe we must focus on maintaining safe neighborhoods, improving infrastructure, and supporting local businesses while protecting the character of our community and ensuring the growth benefits of people who already live here. And I'm not running on politics. I'm really just running because I live here in Port Orchard and I just think there's just some experience and things that I can bring to the table.

Perfect. Thank you. Let's run into our first question. Our first question is around understanding the role. In your view, what is the proper role of a city council member? and how would you balance representing the views of our constituents with making decisions that are in the long-term best interest of the entire Port Orchard community?

Can we repeat that one more time?

In your view, what is the proper role of a city council member and how would you balance representing the views of our constituents with making decisions that are in the long-term best interest of the entire Port Orchard community?

Um, so, um, making local laws that benefit everyone or try to benefit everyone, um, uh, proving best budgets, um, representing residents and working with the community to see what our needs are, um, providing oversight, helping with planning and representing the public, helping improve the quality of life in the community. So I'm one of those, you know, also with small businesses, I'm one of those that, you know, I'm the one that had problems getting permits. It took me three and a half years to get permits. I think it was just a little bit, it was a little bit challenging. So I've had problems with that. I've had other businesses come and explain how they almost lost their business trying to get their permits and just keep their business running. So, I mean, there's some things I think as a city that we can maybe improve on and, um, especially right now with it being so hard for small businesses. Um, so I just think there's just some things that, um, as a city we need to look at. Yeah.

Our second question is around your strengths and contributions. What unique experiences, skills, or perspectives would you bring to the city council and how would you use those strengths to help the council better serve the residents of Port Orchard?

So one is going to be our strong listening skills because we're going to have to listen to our community and to the residents and understanding them. and what the needs are for our city. Problem solving and trying to see how we can help solve the problems to make our city and community better. And financial responsibility, clear communication, and experience working with diverse groups and businesses. Okay, after all that.

That's up to you.

Let's repeat the question.

What unique experiences, skills or perspectives would you bring to the city council and how would you use those strengths to help the council better serve the residents?

And I think a lot of it is just my experience as being a business owner and again working with the people of not just Port Orchard but I've worked with several communities here just because I'm in senior care and you know I understand like the gentleman that was before me I understand his his little spill on the senior center and, you know, and that Port Orchard, we need to figure, kind of figure that out too. Even if we have to do a partnership with somebody or collaborate or something together to have a good senior center here in Port Orchard. And some other, you know, again, like I said, three and a half years for permits, yeah. So we'll see how that goes. We'll see if we can get it done. But yes, I'm excited. Yes, after three and a half year, wait. So there's some, yes, there's, you know, and I know a lot of things we're doing now with the infrastructure and trying to improve things here. So and, you know, congestion and housing and, you know, Port Orchard has grown a lot and And I'm sure we're going to grow more.

So, yeah. Well, let's dive into that. Because that's our next question. Managing growth. Port Orchard continues to experience significant growth. How do you believe the city should balance accommodating growth while preserving the character, quality of life, infrastructure, and financial sustainability of our community?

Um... So we're growing. Our infrastructure is really not good at all. And I know we're trying to improve on that right now. So I know that's something that Port Orchard is already working on. But I just think that we have to also put in consideration the residents and I know the traffic and the affordability and the economic development and just, I don't know, we just have to listen to the, I don't know, that's when I would just have to really think about some more. And that's part of the city council is just really putting our heads together and like trying to work it out and listen and how we can still grow but keep all that integrity Yes, so I'm not for sure I can give you the correct answer on that.

Sorry about that. No, don't be sorry. I'd also tell you there's not a correct answer. I don't know. Did any of you go to school to do this? I didn't go to school to be able to sit down to do this. Scott says yes. I guess he did planning, but maybe a portion of what he said. No, it's very complex. It is. There's no right answer. uh let's move on then to our next question around our most pressing issue what do you believe is the most significant issue currently facing the city council and why do you believe it deserves the council's attention

Okay, permits, one. Again, I think it's the infrastructure. I think it's traffic congestion, housing and affordability. Sometimes I think it's safety, because like where I live, there's no sidewalks, but you see the children waiting for the bus out in the middle of the road. you know so um and economic development i mean there's just um quite a yeah there's a yeah um Yeah, and then helping local businesses, because I'm not for sure how they're going to, yeah, really local businesses too, and ensuring that our residents in our community have a voice, and as being part of city council, we're the ones that have to hear those voices and see what we can do to make their voices heard. You know, just trying to do what we can for Port Orchard and the residents.

Our last question is around fiscal stewardship. The City Council is responsible for being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while meeting the community's service expectations. What principles would guide your approach to budgeting and fiscal decision making?

making sure existing resources are being used efficiently, seeking grants and partnerships when possible, and possible collaborations, maintaining our reserved funds as much as possible, managing debt, and supporting local business to strengthen the city's tax base, and being very transparent. Okay, and then repeat that question.

Yeah, absolutely. The City Council is responsible for being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while meeting the community's service expectations. What principles would guide your approach to budgeting and fiscal decision making?

Yeah, okay. I think that, yeah, I'm gonna stick with what I said.

Any clarifying questions for Lisa before I move us into her closing statement?

No? Okay.

Two minutes for your closing statement.

I don't think I'm gonna need two minutes, but thank you guys for listening to me today. And thank you for taking the time to learn more about me and why I'm dipping my toe and running for city council. And I don't know. I might just jump all in in April, we'll see. I just believe leadership starts with listening, showing up and being accountable to the people we serve. I'm asking that you look at my experience and my dedication and commitment to our county and to our city and to be part of the city council, I think together we can work toward Port Orchard that honors its history, embraces growth, supports local business, and remains a place where families can thrive. And I would be honored to be part of the City Council, Port Orchard City Council. And thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for all you do in our community. Thank you for taking the time to put this together and come and see us tonight. We appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Nice meeting you. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it. Thank you. Nice meeting you.

More to come. You guys know what house it is, right?

The house that you said were your sidewalks? I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you...

So the house is the one above Arby's. The White House that sits above ours.

Oh, you're talking your business. I'm sorry.

I wrote down a whole different kind of thing.

I want to know where they are. The sidewalks, because I'm making notes of those things.

Yes, it's taken forever. And I'm like, but it's just an eyesore.

But it sat there forever as well. Yes. I thank you for buying that.

Three and a half years. That's awesome. Yeah. So hopefully it starts on Monday.

Thank you very much.

Have a wonderful evening. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

I always think what makes a good city council is it makes up all types of professions and life experiences and like, I mean, like you told me, you went to Pepperdine, you first told me, I was like, I'm fascinated. You know, I mean, like, I love it.

Facts, so many facts.

How are you?

museum you should bring him down here sunday i talked to him about it yeah we're going to try and do that have you been down here yeah yeah i was here last summer yeah unbelievable i mean it's pretty amazing last summer was so hot like we needed some shade somewhere well they got um multiple pop-ups yeah they're like bigger ones they're not pop-ups they're actually permitted

that's good yeah we tried to do the whole thing last summer and it was it was bacon oh i mean those cars are so expensive i know so expensive i know someone who owns several several inherited and whatnot and um i can imagine the upkeep yeah and then another friend of mine he um put i won't say a thing here but like well over six years like i mean like big money into a car and he has several cars and they're all in his garages immaculate immaculate it's pretty cool it's pretty neat

I made a comment, so I was with some friends in Arizona.

I was down there, and their daughter was playing, so they were down there, and I was telling them about my friend's car.

I was like, I was... put in to restore this car, a car that was gifted to him by a gentleman who really wanted it restored All the work. All the work. It was a body. It was a body that was packed up. So I said, yeah, he's been. And the couple that they were with was my friend. And she played in college with her coach. And they lived down there. So they came to watch her daughter too. And they all have cars. Sure. Like, no big deal. Like, we have ones that we paid, you know, we put, you know, 300 grand into it. I was like, that's possible? Came back, told my friend that, and he goes, for sure it's possible. Just jaw dropped to me, you know, the amount of money that people. Yeah, yeah. But, but, I'm saying that. My sister owns a fishing boat that is way more than I paid for my own. I mean, it's unbelievable. If we go to San Juan, it's like, let's go. It's just unbelievable.

How long is it?

30 feet, it's more down here. Yeah, it's a kingfisher. Oh, yeah. And it's really nice. Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, but example, like, I mean, so if that's your hobby or if that's your hobby, right? I mean, that's your hobby. I mean, you're into it. Yeah. I can see that. You got to remember, like,

It was an import and I hated it because every other summer it seems like something's going on. And I've always had outboards since I was in my 20s when I started owning my own boats. But if you buy this boat at $50,000 or like the one I had in Alaska was $100,000. down here, if you take care of it, and you have great experiences, and you keep the motor sound, and you go to sell it, you might lose 15 grand on the sale, depending on whether you approved it or not. You gotta ask yourself, was those years of fun worth the 15 grand you lost? Absolutely. Absolutely. Hey.

There's a gentleman that lived in my neighborhood. He's moved. But he would buy, down here, a truck and a boat. And he'd drive it to Alaska. And he'd put up for sale the day he's there. It's sold for at least what he asked for it, the package. And they'd take the cruise ship back. because there's cruise ships that you can take, so he times it, and they're empty cruise ships, you know, and so he'll take a one-way cruise back.

Yeah.

And so him and his wife would do that, so they'll drive up there. Yeah. And by the truck and the boat here, and takes them up there, and he says they're sold the first day.

I have friends that live for cheap trailers, RVs. Yeah. They'll go to Burning Man, stay in them, and bring them back and sell them for more than they pay for them.

Burning Man?

They're into Burning Man. He's the fire guy.

As long as they're reliable. What's that? As long as they're reliable.

Yes. Yeah. No, he knows what we're looking for.

Have you ever been? No.

No. I don't know if I want to go or not.

What was it? Was it two years ago that they got all mudded in?

Yeah.

And they couldn't really leave?

Yeah, they had to be evacuated or something.

People were having to go around looking for food and everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a little pop-up city.

There's a lot of things you look at now as we've matured and go, you know, I'd like to do that, but no, not anymore. Not anymore.

Yeah. There's other things.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, one of the things for me that I just, when I was younger, I was all about it, but today I'm like, I just can't see doing it, is getting up at five or earlier in the morning to go skiing.

Skiing?

Skiing. It's like snow skiing? Yeah. Now I'm just like, that's just too early.

And it was an every weekend experience.

Yeah. And now, when I go to Crystal, it's like, I have to fight sleep coming back. Oh, yes.

Oh, that's a long drive, too.

And it's a long drive.

And then the traffic can get so bad in between.

Well, up through Bonney Lake is just nuts now. Yeah. Oh, I know. Yeah, that place is taking off.

Uh-huh. It's a bedroom community like none other.

Yeah.

I mean, it just, yeah. Am I violating something by being here?

I don't think so.

You'll tell me, right?

Yeah.

Okay. All right.

I can't imagine the lip tickets any longer. Oh, yeah. To spend that kind of money to stand in a line. Oh, yeah. It's longer than it was 25 or 30 years ago.

has a bike park, mountain bike park, so you just put your bike on the chair, take it to the top, and ride down. It's 100 bucks for a day's ticket.

Where's that?

Stevens Pass.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I didn't know that.

It's pretty fun. Can you take it all the way up? You can take it all the way up.

And then you just ride your bike down on the trails?

And then you just ride. They have a bunch of different trails, like 15 miles of trails. Oh, cool. But it's fun. Towards the end, I was a little bored doing the same old trails. But you go to internationally known for its miles, I don't know, hundreds of miles of trails. It's internationally known. I didn't know that. Same deal, but their tickets are like $70 Canadian.

Oh, yeah.

And so, like, and Stevens was bought out by, I believe it was Vail, or whoever owns Vail, that corporation.

Oh, well, everything. Just think of it. I mean, golf fees and everything are so high. But I love bike riding. Do you have an e-bike?

I have a regular mountain bike and a downhill e-bike. It's specific to downhill.

Really?

Yeah. And then I have another e-bike that I can ride.

So the answer is yes, you've got bikes. I've got a couple. You love to bike.

Yeah. My other e-bike is more of a team moto. It'll do like 45.

So what is a downhill specific e-bike? I know. How is that different from?

It's got suspension. It's got suspension. Which, come on, give it at a meeting.

Regular e-bikes can't have the old Schwinn bike suspensions that we had. Back in the day. Banana bikes back in the day. They've got to be better than that.

Well, and it just depends on what you're getting to, because some of them are super heavy, and they've got to have some meaty suspension to them.

Yeah. My downhill... So how far can you go on a charge? 30 miles. That's decent. It fits 95% of those riders out there. And you can work as hard as you want. You can turn off the motor. That's what I tried to do.

I don't like to use this very often. I mean, you want to get a workout. But it's really nice to have. And especially in traffic. I don't trust traffic at all. I'm so concerned. I like to just get through it as quickly as possible and get on the trails.

Do you have a throttle?

Uh-huh.

Yeah. I think I can go almost over 20 miles just throttle. And my max speed is 28 miles an hour on the throttle.

Mine's about 23, so mine's lower.

75. 75 pounds is my max. When I don't have it on full e-assist, I go out with my buddy who, so we go to the top of Bing Mountain on our bikes. He is unassisted in any way, shape, or form. He is also a pro. Well, he works at the truck store. He is the So we go up there but I can get mine because he's training me up and I have a super heavy bike and he's got one of those. can lift it with your fingers mine's pretty light too but it is so we'll go on a 50 mile ride and i'll still have power left oh yeah 50 or more depending on the ride now he takes me on some hills and we're going to do some hilly stuff i'm going to lean into my e a lot more but if we're flat i just like to do my own thing and with a 75 pound bike that still takes some work yes it does um

But isn't it fun? There's just nothing like it, you know? The freedom.

And I have a second whole battery, so I can go 100 miles or more on mine, depending on what we do. Good for you.

You've got a little more youth.

Well, I have a second battery that just gives me a whole other charge, and I can just take it, and I have saddlebags, and I can keep it in. I always take it with me just in case we get into something he wants to do.

Yes. My Emoto will do about 50 miles. Okay. Mm-hmm. On the slow, on the 28 mile an hour limit, you do the extended play, it's probably 25 miles. But if you go sport play, it's like, it's 25 miles. The extended play is 50 miles. But you're doing like 40, 45.

You've got to be really careful.

You do. Green Mountain's got a lot of challenges.

We only take the road to the top. Oh, you're not taking the road to the top. No. Managing some of those rocks without a motor with a 75 pound bike? Some of those steep spots don't work for me. We've tried some stuff on some trails. So we've done some of the other trails that don't go to the top Specifically if you're going in on the Gold Creek Trail, you know, you can split to go to the top Yeah, or you can take that over that bridge that second bridge and go that way We'll go that way on our bikes and cut through along the lower portions, but I won't take any of the trails

that area but i haven't biked it but i mean i've almost gotten killed from the bikers in that area coming through holy cow they're supposed to redevelop the trails so they're supposed to be one way and then looped like the layered loop system and dedicated to riders horseback riders yeah i wish they wouldn't take all the motorized off of the gold creek trail

Yeah, keep if they want to keep and go the Wildcat trail and still have options to go to the top. I wish Well, I want to give them something I don't want to take everything for us hikers. Oh, yeah Well, I'm with you there and if everybody else agrees that we should just say no motorized on Green Mountain at all I'd be down with that but I'm not trying to bogart Green Mountain just

It is tricky, though, to combine hiking and biking on the same trail, even though they say it can be done. You know, how many times you slow way down, you've got a dog, you're getting around the dog, or whatever they're doing, and, you know, it's tricky.

It is, yeah. I try to leave a good impression. I will stop. If there's horses, I will stop and get off my bike, you know. Yeah.

There aren't a lot of those moto bikers out there doing them.

No. And that's scary when you're on top of a horse, too. Oh, yes.

Oh, that is really dangerous.

Yeah, you've got to be there. ATVs going up that trail.

Yeah.

But aren't we lucky to have these trails and things so close by that we can do this, just get out?

It's so much fun. Tomorrow will be our third time on Reno this week. Oh, really?

So you have a bike rack on the back of your bike or car? I generally do.

I'm not going to bike it. I'm going to trail run.

Oh, yeah, oh, okay.

I try to stay in shape because I haven't been doing the hiking and climbing that I wanted to this year.

It's kind of hard to get it on.

It is, and then timing-wise, so then, you know, even Sunday I wanted to go hike, but one, I had to have my partner fall through, and then I was like, do I really want to drive all the way to go through?

No, I had other things to do.

You know, life just gets annoying, so I just ran over there and ran up and down to get back in another morning. I had a lot to do. I had a lot to do that morning. Very cool.

And so your dog just runs with you?

She does. She does. She's my little... And you, I heard, oh, what a cutie. She's got a lot of energy, too. She does.

I hike with my friend's dog, and she's a great big goatee.

But sometimes it gets a little too warm.

We have to watch out.

So I wouldn't have been able this afternoon, especially in the dark. If it's in the sun, she gets overheated.

Yeah, he's a big dog. He's like almost 90 pounds. And so we have to kind of be careful. When we get higher up, it's usually better, but it can be...

I don't think so. Jay.

Hey, Jay.

I think you're the only one I've never said hello to. I'm glad, because we ran into each other on the campaign trail.

Such a good day.

I think it's going to start, I heard, clearing out tonight and tomorrow. Oh, good. A little bit.

Yeah.

Was that the one by the garage?

What in the world was that? I saw that. Yes. I just learned about that this morning. That is a sickness, you know?

I don't know. I don't know, Scott.

I didn't mean to do that. I'm just kidding. Was this arson? Yeah. Yes. Oh, OK. Yeah. Here and down. Totally weird. The county posted it on the sheriff's page.

Okay, well, we're gonna get started with our final interview of the evening. Cindy, as I understand, you got some communication from the clerk's office.

I did.

To talk to you a little bit about how tonight's gonna look, but just as a reminder, we're gonna give you two minutes for an opening statement. We've got five questions loaded and locked and loaded for you. We're gonna give approximately five minutes. I'm gonna let you know when we're at that five minutes. If you wanna use more time on one of the questions versus another, absolutely, and then a two-minute closing statement. Out of the corner of your eye, if you can see it, you know the green light, orange light, red light. Orange light's 30 seconds left. I'm also going to just point over towards Brandy, so when you see me do that, you can kind of see it right there, but I'm also going to point so that you can see that's all I'm giving you is that the orange light is now on.

Okay.

Okay? Yep. With that, I'm going to go ahead and get started and let you start with your opening statement.

Okay. So I'm starting by saying I'm Cindy Ligurelli. Most of you know that. I'm thanking you for taking the time to do all these interviews. I know the last several weeks especially have been hard on you guys with long hours, and having been through this in the past a bit, I appreciate all the time you've been spending. I think the process is very thoughtfully done, so thank you much. A little bit about me, 24-year resident of Port Orchard, and many of you have seen me often as I've been involved with the local politics and civic matters for probably 17 years or so. I'm currently retired, and I actually do have time, once again, to invest in this position should that happen. My elected experience is position five in 2011, and I served 12 years on the council. I was Mayor Potem in 2014 and in 2022, and served on quite a few committees. Used to be ED Tourism. public property, and then I was chair of utilities, sewer advisory, and the Festival of Chimes and Lights. Most of you know about that festival, which is no longer. Regarding community service, you've seen in the resume and in the answers to the questions, but I have been a volunteer and fundraiser for nonprofits for over 22 years here in Port Orchard. So I'm you know know a lot of people in the community and i'm connected um i'm past president from the rotary club so i know people from the rotary club and served on boards uh as recently as just this year with south kitsap helpline oh yeah okay all right um anyway so 29 years of business ownership and and married have a daughter, and I'm out of time. But I love cats, hiking, biking, and dog street.

Excellent.

We specify that sometimes you can use longer time.

So I'm going to let you roll over any of that over into some of this as well. Okay.

Yeah. And let's just, if anything else, one thing I'm rather proud of, and I think it sheds light on relating to people. I have a daughter who was born blind, and so I've been an advocate for special needs kids all my life, and she was actually gifted. Graduated from high school early, and she came out to Washington State to go to college. And she wasn't 18 yet, so that helped to bring me out here. It's something that really has helped me. My mom had polio. And so, you know, just growing up with all of that, I didn't have anything really to deal with. But taking care of them and having them be near and dear to me makes a difference in responding to people when they have their needs. Just saying that. Thank you. Perfect.

Our first question is around understanding their role. Uh, in your view, what is the proper role of a city council member and how would you balance representing the views of our constituents with making decisions that are in the longterm best interest of the entire community? Okay.

Um, technically. The role of the city council member is setting policy, improving the city budget, passing laws to govern the city, dealing with city growth and resources and public safety. Part of the beauty of running for an office is exposure campaigning gives us to members of our community. It's in the door-to-door that we connect and learn so much about what people think of city government, us, what their problems are. And what I found is so many people did not really know what the council members did. One guy was asking me, are you going to vote for the racetrack? And I went, that was a long time ago. Because that was going to matter whether he voted for me or not, things like that. And we're educating people all the time about what the council really does and how much we can impact their lives. But it's not a lot of things that they think it is. And of course, there's the division between the city and the county, which is confusing. and state and federal. So a lot of what we do, I think, is educating people, connecting with them, educating them, trying to find out how it is that we can help them, directing them to resources for help. So back from the campaign, there were things that could be easy fixes by just connecting them with staff or what was going on here. There were other things that, you know, complaining about downtown is a big explanation. And there were other things that were just dreams. As far as long-term interests, a lot of my opinions had to be challenged because I'm kind of a, I love the green space, I love elbow room, but when it comes to growth, I had to deal with the reality that a lot of the growth was going to be very dense, and that's not my cup of tea. And in fact, I feel sort of strangled in some of the neighborhoods. But the fact that we have more housing as a result of it is something that we have to deal with, and especially into the future. There's just going to be more density. Nick Mon really was talking about that at one time, and I really appreciated what he had to say because it's a different view than what I had. I grew up with just so much space and freedom. it really is important just to be mindful of providing housing for all walks of life. And we have to be really careful of that. And so the plans that we have are very important to so many people. And I'm just saying, when the council worked back and forth to come to consensus on some of these things, it was just a real effort of what we thought we liked or would be comfortable with and then the final product, and that really was taking into consideration the future. When Nick was talking about the different kind of design standards, oh, I'm gonna run over on this, and how we just have to be thinking about getting more people in certain areas, denser housing, but opening up other areas to kind of compensate for that. really changed my thinking, especially with considering children. That was something. Another thing I had an issue about were roundabouts, something that we were told would be the only solutions for a lot of our transportation problems. Well, back in the day again, When we were talking about roundabouts for Tremont, the corridor, the first designs were rather small and compact, and I really protested that, just like, no, what are you thinking? Roundabouts, blah, blah, blah, and too small, and how are the emergency vehicles going to get through? Well, over time, as we worked that all out, there were extra lanes added, and... yes okay and i've got a short one down the way okay you can use it i'm just i'm just trying to get game okay so you know where you're at yeah i've got a real shorty back here okay so um so then um you know I love what we do and what we have now with the Tremont Corridor. But I was so opposed to it, I would squawk and make all this noise, but the fire department came back and all of the emergency services weighed in, the council weighed in, and it turned out to be such an amazing product. And so I've watched this over the years, and you don't have to panic about things anymore. That is the whole point of this wonderful group of people working together and having staff fill in the information, the data that's needed for all of that. So making decisions long term. I think that at this stage in life, in our community growth, that is absolutely what we have to focus on. It's the future.

Our second question, Cindy, is around strengths and contribution. What unique experiences, skills, or perspectives would you bring to the City Council, and how would you use those strengths to help the Council better serve the residents of Port Orchard?

Well, unique. I've actually been on the council for 12 years and it was a lot of education that I received as a result of being on the council. Historic knowledge is something that I have that I think is valuable. And I was just thinking even on the topic of water alone, the history of how we provide potable water for the public is such a hot topic these days. It's kind of the new gold standard. We're going to be able to provide water for the population in our country. How are we going to deal with that? And that is something that totally fascinates me. And since we have to draw from aquifers here, we don't have a reservoir like armerton and we don't have you know mountain runoff like some of the communities it's a whole different way of dealing and thinking with things and being responsible and how much growth can we handle that was something that i often wondered about is are we going to run out what happens when the aquifers start and when we're going deeper and deeper and we ran into a problem with a foster pilot I don't know how familiar you are with it. It was so disheartening to actually have a scientific model that wasn't really working, and we were stuck with having to deal with it, and then trying to get water rights, trying to plan for our future. We have this beautiful location of a well that we couldn't even get started using. So much of what we do as a body runs into that kind of issue. And you don't find that out until you're here. And you've got staff saying, oh, guess what? You can't do that. It was a great idea. That is partly what I come with is that we've already kind of been through a lot of that and know some of these limitations and really can actually be ready to just jump right in. I love infrastructure. I love utilities. I even love sewer. I know, don't tell anybody, but I really do love that. So, and then I was thinking if it just, the amount of time it's taken just to, be on board with things. There's so much to learn just in every aspect, whether it's utilities, transportation, housing. All of the regulations and everything that we deal with and that we come up with and that we're challenged with is something that takes time to learn. And so I'm just saying my experience has really helped me with that. And costly, I'm looking at the Tremont Corridor project. We used to talk about several million dollars for that project. And it came in at, what, $21 million at the end. And we kept having overages with each meeting and just saying we had to approve it. And it was starting to get really scary how much money we were putting into that project. And now that's the norm. That didn't used to be the norm, but that'll get into a budget thing later on. uh but having chaired several of the committees especially dealing with utilities i do think that i come with a background of quite an awareness the sewer facility is also a concern of mine and conveyance so i have that information at hand it's something that i can utilize and i do think experience speaks for something so i'm done with that one

Our next question is around managing growth. Port Orchard continues to experience significant growth. How do you believe the city should balance accommodating growth while preserving the character, quality of life, infrastructure, and financial sustainability of our community?

The Growth Management Act of Washington Basically, as you all know, requires us to manage population through the comprehensive land use planning, which is what Port Richard has been doing. And what we're required to do, believe it or not, it wasn't always done. We had to pay catch up at one point, and it's made a huge difference. But identifying critical areas, we have a lot of wetlands around here, which make a lot of challenges for building. trying to balance the regulations and not to have development be so cumbersome that it turns into an expensive endeavor, so expensive that the average population can't afford it. So it's balancing the regulations and which ones are really essential and which ones are not, or maybe don't fit our area, or are meant for a bigger city, or, or, or. I'm seeing the density in McCormick Woods and it blows my mind that we could have had such growth in so little time. And my big concern is actually the infrastructure, the transportation routes, how do we manage that much traffic in these areas? We do have plans and we're all working on them to build out transportation corridors, but it isn't keeping up at the rate of growth. So that's a lot of work and a lot that has to be dealt with. um i do think the roundabouts that are being worked on now will make a huge difference for getting a lot of that traffic moving but you know the becca quarter is going to be still a long ways up before we can really utilize the quarter the way that we need to meanwhile traffic backs up and you can see it oh i mean how far down the highway can you go sometimes it's more than five minutes okay um But that's a lot of what we deal with, that awareness. We're the ones in the traffic too. This is affecting our daily lives. You see people there, they've gotta get to pick up their kids and they're stuck and it's stressful. So quality of life, probably has changed a bit here by adding on this additional density, depending what time of day you have to move around in this place. And that is something that we have to be very mindful of and to keep planning for. To be so careful with our resources that we don't waste anything so that when the opportunities do arise, we can move forward with that next project. Because each project changes it. What it really does is move the traffic a little bit somewhere else for the minute, It's fun and interesting and essential. A unique situation in a small town, a small city as ours, is the amount of growth that we're experiencing so quickly. Also, I was always concerned Would our sewer plant be sufficient for growth down the pipe? How long will our sewer plant be able to manage that kind of growth that we have? And what capacities? At one point, it's getting to be a pretty old plant. And back in the day, they thought it was going to be so huge and last so long. And now look at the challenge we have. Well, thank heavens we have the new Mina Pump Station. That really made a difference. Of course, that whole thing was scary for a period of time. But it's how do we continue to plan for that, have the funds for it, and not outprice the populations with the utility bills going up so high. Just a continual, something that's always that we need to be mindful of, the affordability. And of course we have impact fees now, which we didn't always have, and that makes a difference that new growth will pay for.

Are you done? I didn't mean to cut you off. I just wanted to let you know it's getting to the end.

That's fine. I'll probably pick it up somewhere else.

Yeah. Well, so our next question is around our most pressing issue.

Yes.

What do you believe is the most significant issue currently facing the city council and why do you believe it deserves the council's attention?

Well, I didn't think that I could say that there's just one issue because there's so many fronts and quite truthfully, Right now, I think the council needs to work on building trust and respect with one another. And I think that it's just been, I'm not saying that in any kind of judgment, I just think that it's been hard on people. And it's been... It's a challenging time when you have to regroup and work through things. And I just think that it would be nice to have the council just be unified and work together. And that doesn't mean agreement on every issue. It doesn't mean that at all. It's just get... back into working well together. I'm not sure, I haven't been to every meeting or anything, but I just have a bit of a sense and you can kind of feel the current. But, aside from that, and I just said it, staying on task with improving the transportation corridors is huge. Finding the choke points and continuing to work on those. Plan ahead. Transportation is just so expensive. So seeking the grants and keeping ahead of that is huge. Again, I'm talking about infrastructure, sewer plant. Can we handle the growth? Do we need to be thinking about it? There's not that much in some of the capital improvement funds. We would need so much more. How do you do that? I am not 100% sure on this one because I'm a little out of date on the well 13. And are we in line with that? I don't think we are, are we? You guys, do you know?

Is that the one in McCormick? I'm not even good with the numbers.

Oh, that's the one by Fred Meyer up in the area up there.

That's still Foster.

It's still Foster, okay. It's still Foster.

Okay, well, there are- Eleven's up. Is eleven the one in McCormick? Okay, that one came up in the morning.

Okay, and that is supposed to be a huge source of water for McCormick and for Port Orchard property. So that's a huge priority. That's something I would just love to sink my teeth into and get that going. if that can be done. Because when we start, you know, we haven't finished the water system that we had intended of joining our system in McCormick Woods. And that, I imagine we're still buying water from Farmer Town. hugely expensive. Once we're able to join those systems and not have to purchase that water will be such a happy day. Working on that, of course, still working on the waterfront improvements downtown. Everyone, everyone wants to see our little town, you know, happy and rebuilt and all of that. But we see one step at a time and look all the complications, you know, raising the level of the streets, the expense of all of that, and then having a landlord that doesn't care very much about the town and owning so many buildings. A lot of challenges in this little town. So keeping city services timely, accessible, permits, all of that, and safety. I think safety has always been a real huge issue of having a friendly police presence to ensure citizens and their properties are safe. There was a period of time when I think people were feeling pretty insecure about that here, but I think that that has turned around quite a bit, and I'm thankful for that. and enforcing the laws already in place. That was my blah blah for that one.

Our next question is around fiscal stewardship. The city council is responsible for being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while meeting the community's service expectations. What principles would guide your approach to budgeting and fiscal decision making?

$214 million budget cycle. I am fiscally conservative. So the principles I follow is that I really do think that we have to be very careful about sticking with a budget and having reserves. We went through a period of time when I was on the council when we did have some issues and rainy day funds and things were being used. Thank heavens we had people who planned ahead and the city was wisely managed and we made it. But I think we're on the edge at the moment. We just don't know. There's so much uncertainty of people being able to afford just everyday life and kind of push to their limits. So if anything should happen further, I mean, look at gas and groceries and everything else. Families are really struggling. And given that nearly 10% of Port Orchard's citizens are below the poverty line, I think we have to always keep that in mind. So it really calls for such careful management of funds, not going out too much on a limb. and really making sure that whatever we invest in is essential, is making a difference, and trying to be very careful with every single resource, going after grants, being careful not to go past deadlines, different things like that, just being on top of the finances. They say the average household income in this area is $90,000. But it takes $72,000 to $102,000 for a family of four just for usual expenses. So there's not a lot of wiggle room there. And people, I think, are spending a great deal on housing. We know. I mean, some of these mortgages are so scary. that if anything goes wrong with job loss, sickness, health issues of any sort, that puts our population at risk and we might not have as healthy a community. We've been through these cycles before. I feel like we're near one now, even though we're celebrating this growth and a lot of influx from other communities. But I think we have to be very careful. And so my approach is, again, being very careful to follow the budget and to allow for reserves so that we always have something to work from.

Okay. Yep. Thank you. Are there any clarifying questions for Cindy? Seeing none, I'll move straight into allowing you your two-minute closing statement.

Okay. I'm trying to think of where I'm at. Okay. As explained tonight, I'm saying I'm no stranger to you. I've been involved. You know me for the most part. And I do care about this city. I do think my elected experience coupled with 29 years of business entrepreneurship has prepared me for this vacated position. I had been working to be part of a solution to the issues that have risen over the years that I was serving. And the city's come a long way from what it was 15 years ago when I got involved. I do think we're moving forward with downtown revitalization. We have growth occurring in every area. We'll see some traffic congestion eased for the roundabouts that are being built, but I think we just need to continue to advocate for grant funds, continue these transportation improvement plans, and pressure the state to deal with our state highway corridors. The utility sector has long range plans to manage growth, with advocating for water rights to allow for that well 13 to go online to service a majority of our areas. And now we can celebrate this newly rebuilt marina pump station, which allows for the additional conveyance of sewage to our sewer plant. As a council member, I would continue to support our police by providing the necessary equipment and fair salaries so that our community will remain a safe place to live. I'm a 24-year resident of Port Orchard, an experienced leader in the Port Orchard community, and better equipped than ever to serve on the City Council. I thank you for your attention.

Thank you. Thank you for coming out and spending time with us tonight. We really appreciate it.

It's been a pleasure. So nice to see you. Thank you.

Good to see you. Thank you.

I have something I have to say before we break into the executive session.

So does Ms. Archer before we go into that too. So it might be something she might clear up before we do that or.

Did you want me to read the executive session statute? Is that what you're saying? No, I was saying I need to recuse myself. Oh, I'm sorry. I missed it. I apologize. I am. You're asking if you legally have to recuse yourself?

No, no, I wasn't. He said something to you, so I was just listening.

I just needed to know if she was going to have clarification for whatever you need to say.

Sorry. Mayor Pro Tem, I am recusing myself from the next two agenda items due to a conflict of interest. I have filed a formal grievance with the State Bar against City Attorney Archer regarding the legal guidance provided on the matter of the position by vacancy and associated Open Public Meetings Act violations To protect the integrity of this proceeding and reserve my legal rights, I will not discuss, deliberate, or vote on appointing a candidate to the position by vacancy. To do so would create an irreconcilable conflict as the pending request for disciplinary review directly challenges the lawfulness of this appointment process. I will now leave the council chambers and request that the city clerk note my recusal and departure in minutes.

Um, point of order yes. I think we should pull the council to see if they feel that, uh. Council member deadman should recluse self based on those issues. I do not. I believe that as a council member, she has a duty for this process and to support the council.

Um, I guess, uh, city attorney archivist here and she speaks from what I was reading, um, in the law. Um, I would only be have to have a problem recusing myself being that I do have a conflict of interest. Um, if there was a quorum issue, but there is not a quorum issue because there are still five council members here.

Okay, what you're referring to is the statute that says, if a majority of the council is forced to recuse itself, then everyone is eligible to vote that doesn't apply in this context. In any way, okay, but I guess is there any kind of language where they can stop my refusal?

Unless I thought I had something to do with a form or something like that.

Otherwise, by the conflict, then there's nothing.

There's a point of order on the table. There's no legal mechanics associated with this request of the single council member. So I don't have any legal input as to that.

And so I need to rule on that point of order, but I need some insight, Charlie. I don't know that, I know Jay's asking for her to participate, but I don't know that I have any answer other than I'm looking for my parliamentarian to give me some guidance here. I don't think I have anything for Jay's point.

Recusal is a personal decision of each of an individual council member. And to the extent we have rules that govern refusing to vote on things and abstaining from voting, that's different than a recusal. I do note that I can't dive into the legal risk issues associated with this because there are significant legal risk issues associated with the statement that was made because it was largely untruthful. However, as to the recusal, that's entirely her choice.

So there's no legal risk. I don't need to even take us into executive session to discuss her recusal.

I cannot. Yeah, I cannot be in an executive session with the councilwoman because she's an adverse party to the city at this point. So unfortunately, I can't give you that legal advice in an exact session. She's adverse to the city.

So do we have worry that she can continue to serve on council if you're employed as our city attorney?

That's a question for another evening. OK.

Perfect. Would Councilmember Dedman stay for a second? I have a second question, point of order.

OK. What's your point of order?

Before she leaves.

She has not left. She's in the room with us.

Thank you. So my question is then, is your intent to recluse yourself from the voting if we choose to vote on a Councilmember Knight since you will not be part of the executive session?

With the vacancy and fill in the vacancy, that's what I recuse myself on. And then the only thing left after that would be adjournment. So that's why I was. And then that's, I was just going to go ahead and leave because when you're voting.

So, you plan to vote chambers all together and just leave because.

in terms of both of those, I've stated, I've, you know, if there's a conflict.

Thank you.

Okay. Council Member Warden. Yeah. Ms. Archer said it's a personal choice. I know why I recused myself. I'm not going to not recuse myself because we vote not to. So if you want to go home or do whatever you want to do.

Yes, I've stated the reasons for my recusal. Thank you.

At this point, Ms. Archer, would you read what we need to read?

Yeah, absolutely. The council will enter into an executive session, proceed to RCW 423110, subpart 1, subpart H, to evaluate the qualifications of a candidate for appointment to elective office. The time will be 15 minutes, 20 minutes. What's the council's preference?

I'd like to start with 15, and I'll go from there. 15 minutes. It is 735. We will be back here at 750. Are we bringing Jay in? We are bringing Jay. We're bringing in the money. Thank you. You guys are going to call? Yes. We've got things handled.

Good.

Oh, they got all their stuff there. Should we just put it? I forgot to ask. I wanted to confirm with John that that was okay, but I'm sure it is. Are they moving the tables? Yeah, we were instructed that while they were in there to move it because they were going to come on and actually take action.

on the new website. Just look at it and welcome all feedback. No, I'm just joking.

It's not funny. Awesome.

Good, because I just think that's one of the easy skill sets for PPRs and communications. No, two different ones.

Let's try to get this turned up.

Did you guys use Next Request?

Yes. We just got them probably in May. So I won't use any other systems.

It is 7.50. We are going to ask for an additional 10 minutes, and that will be our only extension.

Jay, come back on.

Okay.

Brandi, do you have to allow Jay back on?

Oh, not unless he, no, he should, no.

He's still on, he just can't see.

He should still be on.

Okay. I think this room goes like this all the time. I almost brought sleeves again tonight, but I said, it's still going to be 80 when we're done. I shouldn't need sleeves. But then I said, but what about inside?

or that i've actually actually heard i believe last night we were in the getting our vehicles when it went off last night yeah i remember that yeah yeah even i don't know if i'm just not in what do you call it i tuned it out i tuned it out

People, I think, same thing, right? If you'd like to do that out too.

All right. Thank you. Welcome back from executive session. Looks like Council Member Rosapetti.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Temp. I would like to put forth the candidate for the open council member seat. I'd like to put forward the name of Tiffany Mitchell.

I'll second for sake of discussion.

So we have a motion on the table to appoint Tiffany Mitchell to our open seat five on Port Orchard. Is there any discussion? Jay, you made the motion. You get to lead us up.

Thank you. Basically, I was looking during this process for somebody to build consensus and have a firm grasp of legislative experience. I think Tiffany showed this. through her, you know, basically what she showed during both the interview process, her resume, and what we've seen of her outside in the community. Not the strongest interview, but I think also a little bit on the nerve side. But I think she can build consensus and bring a good growth to a collaboration also to us. And I think it would be helpful at this time.

Thank you, Jay. Council Member Trenary.

Well, I'll just say that Tiffany did not interview as well as I was hoping that she would, but she does have a lot of experience that can be a pro and in some cases that can be a con. She does express a willingness to learn and she listens well, which I appreciate that as well. My only real concern with with appointing Tiffany Mitchell is that would be a fourth member of our council who lives in the McCormick Woods area. And I think that's a disproportionate number of council members living in one area on the west side of the Highway 16. And it changes the dynamics of the representation a little bit. I understand for some of you that that may not be a point I'd rather see someone that lived on the east side, maybe a downtown resident or someone on the east side of Highway 16 to even out the voting in that respect.

Councilman Warden.

Yeah, I'll say I understand those concerns. We've had them. We all live in the city. Everyone's email works the same. Everyone's phone call works the same. Everyone's approachable the same with regards to where you live. I definitely think that this is a year and a half appointment and that voters can decide after that how they feel about two can live in one neighborhood or one community. I don't think that for a year and a half that makes a big difference, but I want you to know I do hear that. I do hear the concern. But until we, with the population that we have in the west side of Port Orchard, and with coffee with council, a lot of people that come there are from McCormick Woods. They're from the west side. some pretty involved people as well. And I definitely would like to see the whole city involved. I looked at addresses as well. I highlighted where they live, where they live to. That's one of the first things that I did. I think Tiffany didn't say a lot, but she answered every question. Her resume is very, very well done. She answered every question without word salad. And I encourage everybody, we're not going to go back and look at it today, but if you went back and looked at it, and we're only discussing one person, correct?

You can make comparisons, yeah.

Yeah, I'll say I think Paul, as young as he is, I think that he said a lot. He touched on a lot of things as well. He said being young, someone said it might be a detriment. I think it could be a positive. being young like he is. I think it encourages more people in our area at a younger age to start getting involved and engaged in local politics. He has a lot of strengths. He's on planning commission and so is Tiffany. She's on planning commission. committee commission planning commission as well um that's that's a big positive to me is going through the planning commission part and then um just like you did as well i think it's um i definitely skipped that part but i think it's very um helps you understand the growth of port orchard specifically in what they're dealing with and the issues they're dealing with So I appreciate Paul doing that. I thought he did well. I thought Tiffany did well as well.

So I think I understand and agree with all that's been said so far. I do take your point that this is for a year and a half. I think all the candidates had strengths and weaknesses that they brought with the interview, brought to the interview. I too was impressed with Paul. I think he did a really good job. I was impressed with Tiffany who came kind of barehanded and fielded- No notes. No notes and fielded all the questions just straight out of her head. And so she was rather succinct. And she also talked very well about her answer. She spoke very well. And so I appreciate that. I note that her former political experience was as a state legislator for Oregon. I'm hoping that that can bring some value to a city of our size. And I expect that we might learn something or two from Tiffany.

You want a second bite or you want me to give my two cents before you go to second bite?

Okay.

I like Tiffany. I like a lot of the people that we have talked with. And I would say I was trying to approach this with taking out personal relationships but i bring that into every decision that i make here upon council so i don't know that i can completely discredit that either i will say i try to be objective as best as possible in thinking through all eight candidates i will say tiffany definitely was rose uh to the top for me in um i don't know if i have a full-on rank of per I would say, but there's definitely a set of candidates that I would like to see move forward and come out of this, and Tiffany's in that mix. I think she looked really great on paper and had a good interview. I too was expecting her to completely knock that, I won't even say home run, I was expecting a grand slam, and I think maybe my expectations were super high there, and that some of that has to do with knowing that she had that experience in the Oregon legislature as well. But I think there was a couple of things that came out of her mouth that really hit me hard as well. And one was just her response around budget. I couldn't get on board with that, right?

Just saying, I don't know 100% your budget through and through, but I understand the budgeting process.

If I can help and understand a state's budgeting process, I think I can figure out and work through the cities with the team. She also said, I'm one of seven. So I don't have to have all those answers. I can lean on my counterparts as well. And then another huge thing that really drove it home for me with Tiffany in particular was her willingness to speak up. And I know you all know because I talk about it all the time to go advocate on our behalf down in Olympia and to outside of the four walls of this city. And I think that is a skill set that we could shore up on this council i think it is something that i absolutely believe when she says she's going to uh march the the steps of the capitol on behalf of the city's assistance of port orchard uh i believe her through and through when she says that uh you know i think a candidate like paul technically i think interviewed very very well uh and i mean it's hard for me to say that it's absolutely you know better than Tiffany did, but he definitely surprised me in that interview and he really did well in the things that he said, but I think I really did like Tiffany and I think I can move forward. I'd like to call for the question. I like talking through Tiffany. We're going to get second bites of the apple. Mark had his hand up and then Jay had his. Mark?

I'm kind of stepping into a different apple. I just want to recognize and thank all of the interviews for coming in. They all did very well. They made it for a hard decision. By all means, I was expressing a concern I had with But her willingness to learn, you brought up a good point, to learn about the budget. To me, that's important. With someone with that kind of experience, sometimes they know it all. And we didn't see that out of her. We didn't hear that out of her. So I'm more than comfortable with moving ahead with that decision if that's the decision of the council.

Okay. Council Member Ross-Petty.

I'd like to call for the questions, Mayor Pro Tem.

You got one more? I think I have to call for the question once it's been raised. Or does he need a second?

It requires a second. It's not debatable.

Unless there's a second.

Yeah, it requires a second to move forward.

No, we're not quite done, so I'm hearing we're not quite done council member. So I am going to allow a little more deliberation. Would you like to deliberate?

Yeah, I would like to have just 1 last point about it is, uh. i think maybe because of youthful enthusiasm i think paul needed to read the room a little bit better um and this is not about paul it's a it's really a discussion about we have a a motion on the floor about tiffany's possible candidacy coming in as council member um and i'm going to say this not in rebuttal but i i think you know we're one city and where people live is not as strict as we think it is i go you know when where i live you know i did a lot of walking and uh quite frankly I have a lot more people ask me in West of 16 what's happening with historic Port Orchard and all the projects going on than I do when I'm downtown people asking me what's happening West of 16. I think that we are engaged as a total city and I think we need to continue to keep the focus on that. Not only with projects, but not try to put people in boxes. Thank you.

Thanks. Councilman Wharton.

Yeah, I just think it's important to recognize, like Trenary said, you know, it's important to recognize everybody that came out here. It's not easy. I mean, coming here and answering questions about, you know, basically tell us how governments run and all aspects of it, a little different than putting a sign in the ground. It's tough. And so I want to thank everybody that did come out. And I definitely encourage people that when election time comes, I'd love to see the same people out there running for city council or trying to be on planning commission or trying to be on civil service commission or trying to be on... KRC, Try Me On, all the different things that's out there, you know, and getting involved. It takes a lot to put your name out there. It takes a lot to sit in the chair and answer those questions. So I just want to thank everybody that did come out today and on Tuesday as well.

Councilmember Dean. I don't think I could thank the candidates better than Eric just did. But I wanted to go over a couple comments that were made during the interview. And for people that were listening, I apologize. But when it came to the question about understanding the role, she really emphasized that it was important that she be a conduit to the people to the city, from the people to the city. And I think people were really wanting that, really wanting that. With respect to the question about strengths and contributions, there's many things she said, but she said that she understands growth and what stimulates cities, and she understands what the unfunded mandates do to jurisdictions everywhere. And I think that was important. And she also said, like you mentioned earlier, that she knows how to talk to legislators. And I agree with you. We all could do better at that. I think you're probably pretty good at it. I know I'm not very good at it. with respect to managing growth. She said, we need to also take a look at how we benchmark ourselves against other cities. And I don't know that we do that enough.

That's a quote.

Yeah. And I think that maybe we should be looking at a little bit more broadly, how are others doing this? With respect to the question about the most pressing issue, you know, she talked about growth, of course, and I think everybody would agree that if that's not the issue, it's certainly one of the top two. But she also said, you know, we can't forget that the tribes have a role in what we do. And we are seeing, as I think most people know, that there's an interest by the tribes to invest themselves in the city. And we need to make sure we have a strong relationship with what that development could look like. And it could go well or it could go not very well. And would love to see some housing, for example, incorporated into tribal development plans. So I think that was a really good point that she brought up. And then with respect to how she responds to sort of fiscal management, she related the story about how she manages her own personal finances. and if she manages the city's finances like she does her own i think we're looking at a very good fiscal manager but she also admitted i have a lot to learn on that so i think she brought some good strengths to the table and i think she admitted where there were things that she would need to lean on experts for so um i i think that uh i'm

like to call for the question. Well, I'm going to give my last little bit. Everybody else got two bites. I'm going to give my last two bites. So I'm just going to throw this in. I too want to echo a little bit what Jay said about I thought about where people live and what that looks like. And I also thought about if we really had that concern, we'd have districts like Bremerton does. And so I threw that right back out just as it came in because we have a mechanism to ensure that if we want to, but we choose not to do that here in this community. I think that if we want to go down that road, we should. I just lost my other one, because you said something that triggered it. And now I don't remember what it was. So I'll leave it be. That's what my only two cents. So call for the question. We have a motion on the table to appoint Tiffany Mitchell to fill the vacant position number five on the Port Orchard City Council. All those in favor, please say aye.

SPEAKER 2. Point of order. Point of order.

SPEAKER 1. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER 2. I was going to ask for a roll call vote, please.

Okay, roll call vote. Since you get to ask for that, Councilmember Rosa Pepe, how do you vote?

Yes.

Councilmember Warden, how do you vote? Yes. Councilmember Diener, how do you vote? Yes. Councilmember Trenary, how do you vote? Yes. Councilmember Morrissey votes yes. The decision is unanimous and the motion passes. We have nothing else on the agenda. Unless they had something for good of the order, they can't wait until next Tuesday. The cruise is this weekend. We hope you can get out and be downtown on Sunday. The Port Orchard Rotary is having a pancake breakfast in the backstage alley if you want to get some breakfast there as part of that as well. But good call. Thank you for that. I won't be here Tuesday. And Council Member Ward?

And wishing you the best, Eric.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Okay.

Good luck to you. With that, this meeting is adjourned at 820. Thank you.

Thank you.

Recording stopped.

Will you be making the call to Tiffany?