City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, all. Thank you for being here on such a beautiful day. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Council Member Smolko? Present. Council Member Adler?

Present.

Council Member Kastner? Present. Council Member King? Present. Council Member Gilliam?

Present.

Deputy Mayor Johnson? Present. Mayor Whitting?

Present. And just as a matter of course, we like to recognize when we have young people in our audience. We've got a few back there. We love to have them. We know that we rely on our next generation to carry forward the work that we do tonight, and we're happy to see them here. The first item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda. Do I hear a motion to approve? Motion to approve.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Next, we have three sets of minutes. to approve minutes of May 5th. Do I hear a motion?

Motion to approve.

Second. Motion has been moved and seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Second minutes, May 12th. Do I have a motion to approve? Motion to approve.

Second.

Moved and seconded. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes. And the final set of minutes for June 2nd. Motion to approve? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. We will now move on to the portion of our meeting for citizen comments. Could the clerk please provide the instructions on public comments?

This part of the meeting is for general citizen comments. Please reserve any public hearing testimony to that section of the agenda. The mayor will call on those who provided their names in advance. Then the mayor will call for other citizens who wish to speak. For the record, please state your name and address or city council district in which you reside. Please direct your comments to the council as a whole, not individual council members. All comments are limited to three minutes. The clerk will provide verbal notice when only 30 seconds remain. As a reminder, this portion of the meeting is council's opportunity to hear from the community and not the time to engage in debate. Lastly, per state law, this public comment period cannot be used to speak in support of or in opposition to a ballot measure or individual candidacy, and no such comments will be allowed.

Thank you. Our first citizen comments will come from John Hopkins, former mayor.

That must be the warm-up act. John Hopkins, District 1. By sheer coincidence, I happen to be out at the Good Roots facility. You're getting a presentation tonight, Item 5. All I can say is you really need to see it. It is mind-blowing. It's totally impressive. So... obviously support everything that they do. What I was really gonna talk about was all along the Riverwalk, it's coming up August the 1st, you've got your little flyers, fun event, low key, low stress, The Fred Oldfield organization will be there. We do collaborate. We do a lot of collaborating with Arts Downtown, Foothill Trails to Trails, even All Things Fun Sports. It's a collaborative event. The whole point is to get people out on the trails. I think we're doing a pretty good job. It's really become an active transportation corridor. We're seeing so many bicycles there and not just homeless bicycles. I know what you're thinking. People actually going to work. Very effective, but we've got to get rid of the perception that it's dangerous. That is the biggest problem that we encounter. So by bringing in the artists, and we're supporting the artists by doing this because there's a low barrier to being allowed to be there. By doing that, we'll get people out there, people can see the trail, they can see that it's safe, etc. The only thing I would say that is not so safe that maybe our police should be paying attention to is the advent of the fast electric bicycles that are just... Some of the riders... I mean, I like all these electric contraptions, but some of the riders are absolutely nuts. You know, zipping by you at 30 miles an hour, dead silent. You go... what was that you know so that's that's the only thing i got to say that that i consider to be anything close to a safety hazard as far as the river walk anyway thank you for your continued support and hope to see you august the best thank you john uh just a quick one we we are uh going to be adding some people to our boards and commissions and one of the boards that we've got is the

Arts Commission, we're looking to beef up that. So if some of your artists would be interested in serving that capacity, I'd appreciate you reaching out.

I'll pass the word on. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Jim Jenkins.

I'm Jim Jenkins. I live in District 1. I'm going to speak about the 7th Street closure again. I'd like to start with a brief report. For two years in a row, 7th Street has closed during the summer and no one's there. After the last time I spoke, I received a very encouraging email from a council member wanting to meet with me and discuss what I've been talking about. That's going to happen. I've spoken to that member today. And I've also spoken to another member that wants to meet with me so I can tell them what I know. And I'd like to encourage... anyone who wants to know what I know to get a hold of me. I'll meet with you. Take about 20 minutes or so just to kind of walk around and show you what's going on and why it's going on. And then you'll have everything I have. And that's all I can ask. My only intent is for that. I'm not here to try to tell you what to do. I just want you to know what I am trying to say. To do it in three minutes for something that takes about a half hour It takes 10 times, so it's easier just to meet and go through it. So that's pretty much all I have to say. My schedule changed because of the two members that approached me, and that's a good thing, very encouraging. So thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Rose Pettit-Conway.

Yes, hello.

Hi.

I'm Rose Pettit-Conway. I am a longtime resident of Puyallup. I was born and raised here. I don't know how many of you guys can actually say that, but I actually live in the house that I was born in. Got too big. My parents sold it. My mom and dad raised 14 kids in that house. Most of us were fed off of that house. My dad was a Presbyterian minister, so we were very poor. And that ground is the most fertile ground north of the Willamette, right, you guys? And we continue to pave over it and forget our agricultural history. So I'm very happy that our former mayor came by my house years ago and recognized what I was trying to do there, which is encouraging people to grow their own food.

Excuse me, ma'am.

Ma'am.

Pause for just one second.

Oh, OK, sorry. Oh, there you go. So anyways, and so he came by several years ago and saw what I was trying to do there, because I'm trying to teach people whether you have a five gallon bucket or you have five acres, you could grow your own food. And I want to teach children where food actually comes from. And we're missing that here in Puyallup, you guys. I spent my whole summers. picking berries blocks from my house. And now we're paving over some of the most fertile ground in this country, short-sightedly, because we could go up and do the glacial tail flip on the hills and put all these factories and warehouses and things. But we're paving over our beautiful Puyallup Valley. So I am here to talk a little bit about the urban agriculture, We have an overlay now to encourage our agricultural history, but there's also another one that's coming before you guys about being able to own a piece of property, half an acre or bigger, and being able to actually farm that piece of property correctly within what the city guidelines are and stuff. I want you guys to really consider that. There's many of us out there who are just trying to educate people and to make our city Understand it's beautiful. We're also known for being a bee friendly city, right? But yet if you walk around the city, I'm pretty much the only one around my whole neighborhood that has anything to feed the bees. And I sit out there and just study them and watch them and stuff. And without these guys, we're all dead. And so it's like we need to really think about taking care of our history. And so for people like me who are willing, I'm just purchasing another piece of property. And it's been a rundown derelict. But when I grew up, it was Old McDonald's Farm. And I've wanted this piece of property forever. It's stupid for me to try to farm that little piece of property. But I just want to do it because I have two baby grandkids. And I want to teach the kids. And I have people that come to my place. Any of you that live downtown probably know where I live because everybody does and drives by my place because I have all of the pollinators. I grow 400 pounds of sweet potatoes on my parking strip. Probably shouldn't tell you guys that, but I do. And I mean, I grow so much everywhere. So I have people all the time come by from everywhere. I have people come from Mount Vernon, from Olympia and everything to see what we're doing there. And I want other people to be able to do that too. So I want you guys to hopefully vote so that we can go ahead and do that. Okay? So let's contribute to our history and keep people gardening and farming. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll next hear from Val Dent.

Valdez, District 2. I'm conducting a survey that will include all of the citizens of Puyallup. Junior high, high school students, young people that want to get involved in government. Your voice matters. The reason why I'm doing this survey is that in 2021 and 2024, 6,000 surveys were sent out. 859 were returned. That means what you're looking at when you get back the stats, 0.93% is what you're basing your decisions on when you move city stuff around. Now in my journey of walking around collecting signatures, a repeated question comes back. One out of 20 people that I meet know who their representatives are. In my district, they don't know which of the two representatives represent District 2 from 512 to the Shaw Road area from Pioneer up to the top of the hill. They don't hear from you. They don't see from you. I had one representative meeting. I'm kind of starting to feel like it was a forced meeting on them, not me. One that I have a direct email address to and have heard diddly squat from. So I'm asking congregational people, people that live and work in the city of Puyallup, teaching students, I'm asking for your support in this survey. Three simple questions. Who's your representative? How do you rate them? And where are they taking the city? Do you like it? That's it. Three simple questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Zach Sanders.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council. I just wanted to speak a little bit about the good routes that's being presented tonight. I look through that. I think it's a really, really good idea that the city can do that can help. That would be really low cost. And I just want to, I'm really interested in hearing what you guys think about it. And yeah, that's all. I just wanted to share my opinion. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Jim Detweiler.

Good evening, Jim Detweiler, District 1. Thank you for the opportunity to offer a constructive suggestion on how we might get ahead of the culture of our sidewalks and mixed-use paths with the new inclusion and arrival of electric-assisted wheeled vehicles. These are wonderful advancements in personal safety. It gives people an opportunity to move who had difficulty before. parks a lot of cars, or it can as it grows, gets kids outside off their screens in a physically social environment rather than this. So many advantages to it, but I think we can better control where we're going with this and what we want to see 30 years from now. Right now, we have e-bikes, T-scooters, the push scooters, skateboards, one wheels. Segways never really took off, but they may come back. And with the advent of new AI technology. Who knows what devices we may have just a few decades from now, just a few years from now. What do we want Puyallup to look like in 30 years on our sidewalks and shared use areas? A big advantage of controlling this is that we already have an existing standard. that we've been learning since the moment our parent took us by the hand and walked us down a sidewalk or through a store or in any crowded space. You pass left shoulders. On the right, you say, excuse me. You keep an eye out for people. How do you respond and maintain the protocols, etiquette, and courtesies that we're accustomed to? If we stick with those, I think We can adapt to just about anything. Here's some interesting numbers. Walkers move at 2 to 4 miles an hour. Joggers, 4 to 6 miles an hour. Bicyclists, 6 to 12 miles per hour. Skateboards, about the same. And there are outliers. Heavy duty runners may go a lot faster. Bicyclists might speed up at times. But in general, if you were to take each of these and overlap them on top of each other, you'd find a curve that drops off very fast after about six, seven, eight miles an hour. It's the speed differential that really causes the safety issues, just like driving. The faster you're going, if you have a collision, the less safe it is. My suggestion is to... adopt phrasing and kind of an attitude in our public media that puts an emphasis on slow cooperation and so forth. Bradley Park, if you put little signs up there that said 10 miles an hour, it might be an interesting test to see what happens. That happens to be the speed that a lot of cities are using. Just to get you thinking, let's get ahead of which class of vehicle we're concerned about and look at where we really want to go. Appreciate your time.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Michael Craven.

Hi. My name is Mike Craven. I've lived here for 30 years and live in District 3. I would like to make a few comments about the possibility of additional data centers. I'm concerned due to the noise and stories of light pollution. It's very, very disturbing to consider living in such a place. I've been exposed to significant noise through my whole career and have a pretty significant amount of hearing loss at this point. So I'd rather not have additional distractions. I would like to note that the current zoning code that exists is satisfactory for addressing possible data centers and would prefer to have that stay the same. I appreciate your consideration. Thanks.

Next up is Penny Thorpe.

Good evening. Penny Thorpe, District 3. As you know, there are tiered levels of data centers based on the size of the building, the power demanded, and the redundancy of cooling systems. And this goes from levels 1 to 4. I understand currently we have low tiered data centers. I am asking that we place a moratorium on zoning changes until we have had at least 12 to 18 months to truly study the complexities of any new or higher tier data centers. Tonight I'm focusing on water issues around data centers and I have sent you all some information that you can use. What's interesting to me, a single large building can use 5 million gallons a day, which is the same as a town with 10,000 to 5,000 residents. Researchers are working on developing direct-to-chip cooling and immersion cooling, which can reduce water and energy usage, but they're not there yet. Note that as the climate gets hotter, and thank God we haven't had a heat dome here, even though the rest of the country has, they will need more water resources for this cooling. My question is, where will the water come from? If it's the river, are we considering the impact on the salmon and their ecosystem, the farmlands near the river, and of course the tribe? and what impact will their water usage have on residents. Across the country, there are folks with data centers or proposals for data centers that are having impacts on water. In Georgia, the water usage of a complex that was being proposed ended up needing the same amount of the water allotment that the community used. So they decided to nix that proposal. There are communities whose drinking water and irrigation water are now polluted. On the back end, there are issues with wastewater treatment. One question we need to ask is, does our wastewater treatment plant have the capacity for anything that is proposed? In Cheyenne, Wyoming, a data center introduced a rare drug-resistant bacterium to the treatment plant. The fix was lengthy and costly, both in fresh water and financial resources for the city to clean up. And now they have revoked the permit for that data center to even use the wastewater treatment plant. We are calling for a 12 to 18 month moratorium. We also expect transparency, no NDAs, no code names, posting publicly about exploration so residents can learn the full scope of what's being proposed. You have been elected by the residents of the City of Puyallup to represent us, to make wise choices that preserve and protect our communities and our ecosystems now and for future generations. Thank you.

Thank you. Kathleen McLeod.

Kathleen McLeod, District 3. Good timing. As you are aware, there are major concerns regarding the procedural conduct of the Puyallup City Council members. Case in point, in the past, Council members have announced major changes to our Planning Commission documents mere hours before these documents were shared with other Council members and the public. The plan to create a vanity flag was proclaimed after permits were prepared, developers secured, and funds earmarked. The citizens of Puyallup are fed up being blindsided. Starting today and going forward, we the people are going to be proactive. Now, let's talk about zoning and data centers. First, do each of you know and understand the difference between the various types of data centers? Second, are you willing to defer all voting on zone changes until you have full knowledge of the impacts caused by them? Most, if not all of them, are energy gutting entities, which probably will lead to yet higher energy bills for all of Puyallup and surrounding cities and possibly rolling brownouts. Fun fact, data centers are the basis of a nationwide rolling effort to put a moratorium on any new data sites until more research and levels of accountability for impact on water, energy resources, human health, and environmental damage can be determined and hopefully prevented. From New York City to East Coast, Tulsa, Midwest, to Tacoma and Seattle, All of these have moratoriums already in place. This City Council needs to do the same. Before you get ahead of the facts or try to hide your plans or actions from the public, make the shift from a legacy of deceit and deception. Take on the task of care and concern for the welfare of us all. Try it. You might like it, and then maybe we might like you.

Libby Bristow.

Good evening. Libby Bristow, District 2. And I'm here to try and wrap up this four-part presentation and talk about vibration. How many of you have been to Charlie's recently when a train went through? and you sit there and you feel it, and your water glass maybe sloshes around a little bit. Well, think of one of these hyper data centers. That vibration would go on 24-7. There would be no relief. It wouldn't quit. And that's really scary for the people that live there and suddenly are faced with this. okay next thing is jobs what jobs would be affected by data centers a lot of people would be hired to build them and these huge data centers would only employ 200 people the most so for jobs in the city or your area that wouldn't really pan out what happens to real estate what happens to the realtors You know, can you sell the house? No. People that live in those areas are stuck. They can't sell the house. They can't move. They can't get any money out of it. Who wants to buy a house where there's noise, light pollution, vibration, rolling power grid, low water pressure, or even brown water or contaminated water? So yes, one of the jobs that's going to really change or possibly go away. So what we're saying is, Let's get ahead of this. Let's all look for a moratorium on data centers. And so many questions can be answered. We need to halt these hyper data centers. And I thank you and hope you enjoy this food for thought.

Andrew Lennon, Squaredo.

Thank you. Good evening, council members. My name is Angelina Sciardo from Pierce County District 2. My topic today is on homelessness emergency response. So reviewing my records and also your previous agendas, raised the question of, is there direct action to face homelessness head on itself? Not just as a feature or like a side comment or attachment to another plan to take into consideration. While grateful to at least have this, our city of Puyallup needs more. We are in the summer months as I have previously warned about more visible homeless individuals on sidewalks, corners, and streets as a result of financial hardships, including human trafficking. According to the Pierce County website, I know that there is a homeless crisis response system that funds emergency shelters, rapid rehousing, and transitional housing programs. While this is an intention that sounds well, what is there for a homeless person to have access to as a resource while homeless? So for example, a person gets kicked out of their residence during an abusive encounter, of some sort because there isn't one way to kick out a person from a place they bought. And there's nowhere to go as businesses are closed during the early morning hours. There's late evening hours on weekends and also holidays. So who do I call? 211? Already have tried that, and I've heard other people's testimonies about their operations. If someone picks up the line, the homeless person is either told to go in person during certain hours or there's nothing they can do. If they don't pick up the phone, then the automated machine takes off on a whirlpool of nowhere, not even allowing a voicemail message. How does this get a person off the street? It doesn't. So there isn't a response there. The Comprehensive Life Center is put as another resource, but it focuses on mental health and disability services and is also open five days a week instead of seven. So what do you do with this option that still does not satisfy the need for emergency housing for the sane who need shelter? These are just some questions to put forward to a larger plan that we so desperately need in place for victims of violence, too. Thank you very much.

Next, we'll hear from Bree Morell.

Hello, council. I actually live in Eatonville, but I am a nurse at Good Samaritan. I'm here in solidarity with SEIU and the Washington State Nurses Association. I don't have any talking points, so I'm just going to have to tell you what my day looks like. MultiCare is offering us to do less or do more with less. We're working really hard, and the acuity of patients are getting sicker. And if you have the misfortune of meeting me, you're not having the best day of your life. I'm going to start my day just by asking you what your goals are. What are your goals for the day? How do I get you home? How do I get you home safely? What do you need? But the more patients I'm given, the less ability I have to do that. I can't ask you what you need. I have a new patient coming, and maybe you need me. And if I have four patients, that honestly only gives me 15 minutes every hour to talk to you. And then your family also might need something. Am I able to help you? Our nurses union is asking for a good contract where we have safe staffing, and I can take care of you as a person and not you as a body part or a room number. You're a person to me. You're not the heart attack in room nine. What you need matters. And the more people I see, the less I'm being asked to care for you and your family. So I hope you just are able to reach out to MultiCare. They have the money to give us safe staffing. They have the money. And you guys matter. And that's why we do our job. That's all I have for you. Thank you.

Next, we'll hear from Alexis Pineda.

Good evening, council. My name is Alexis Panetta. I live right down the hill from the hospital and work at said hospital as a housekeeper. I'm sure this board has heard that the Good Samaritan is currently in contract negotiations. And as a bargaining team member for SEIU, I come here tonight to let you all know how it's been. I'm new to bargaining, but I'm fairly confident that it shouldn't feel like talking to a brick wall. MultiCare's negotiator has shut down SEIU's proposals for what we believe is fair pay and reasonable requests. They've been dragging out these bargaining sessions, wasting our time, our own PTO, and days off just to try and stall. Now our CEO is retiring and suddenly departments are in poverty and they're letting people go home early. It sounds to me personally that they're trying to save pennies where they can give that man a golden parachute while we've been the ones who have done the work, broken our bodies, and spent hours at this hospital all so they can run and make millions doing it. We work hard for our paychecks. All that hard work can't keep up with rent, bills, and surprise expenses, though. MultiCare needs to step up in bargaining and how they take care of their employees. I should be able to miss a day in a pay period without jeopardizing my ability to pay rent, bills, food, or gas. All of MultiCare's employees should be able to thrive instead of just survive. Our ask tonight is that you tell MultiCare to give us, members of the community, a livable wage that is comparable to other MultiCare facilities. We are demanding a fair contract now, and it's time for them to stop dragging their feet. Thank you for your time.

Next we'll hear from Bud Metzger.

Bud Metzger, District 3. Good evening.

You were talking in the other meeting about running a well and efficient city and that you had lots of money and because of your wise decision making with money and I disagree. You've said in the past that you didn't want to fix the bump on Seventh Avenue Southwest because it cost too much money. And in fact, you derated staff prior to that, that why wasn't it fixed? And when you were told it was going to cost more money, you said, well, then don't fix it. Just fix it as needed to get by. That's a person that's been on the council for 10 years. But instead, he spends, what, how many millions of dollars on the fair street? And he doesn't fix our street. None of you discussed it or debated it with him. That's your job. It is a kumbaya up there. You need to actively debate things, not come with pre-decisions. You're not educated enough to know. I hate to tell you, but you haven't been participating in the city that long, a lot of you. When it comes to the police department, recently I told you domestic violence isn't funded well enough in the city. You guys say you don't debate stuff, but you just take the next meeting to debate our points. Well, do you keep seeing domestic violence issues in the city? I do. Our officer almost got hurt the other day, a fourth. We need extra help for domestic violence. Otherwise, that person could do more outreach. They can't because they're so busy. They can't because it's happening. I mean, do you have to watch the TV to hear about your city and that somebody's trying to kill his wife or something? I mean, give me a break. And with respect to the police, all right, we're going to have traffic studies. That's important. But how about adding another officer to traffic? That's money. So you say you have extra money and you're doing well. You're not funding a lot of things. When that person came and said the cemetery wasn't getting taken care of, do you think it was staffing? Yes. Of course it was staffing. But you're not staffing it right because you don't care enough to look into it. You don't know the departments. Same with public works, the streets department. How many people work on the streets? Do any of you know? I doubt it. Well, there you go again. So we need to look at what our needs are, not come up here with weak arguments, talking to yourself, telling each other how good it is. This isn't, you know, people didn't show up when there was COVID. So you guys got used to talking to yourself. Mr. Mayor, the speaker's reached three minutes. Three minutes. Thanks a lot.

Next speaker will be Eric Shoese.

Hi. Hi. I'm Eric Shoese. District 2, thank you for letting me speak. I have a note here. Freedom 250 Oversight Report. That's the, I think it's 53 pages, 52, 53 pages? report going into the possible fraud, well, the fraud of funds with the whole America 250 thing, basically taking donor money, mixing it with taxpayer-funded money, and then doling that money out to vendors and such at a higher rate than they should be. So my question is, where's our flag? Literal question, not rhetorical. Where's the flag? Anyone? Oh, you're not allowed to answer a question? Damn it, that sucks. I really want to know where our flag is, you guys. I'd like us to have the 150 in the bank, but also, is it invisible? Is that why it was so expensive? Maybe you guys should read into that. I would love to know where the money went. I'd love to know if we're part of that national fraud attempt that they're talking about in D.C. That might be something worth looking into. The Madagascar plan, just some history here. I forget the exact date, but the Nazis decided they were going to take all the Jewish individuals across the territories they had conquered, and they were going to ship them off down to Madagascar. That was the original plan. Kind of like how we're gathering everyone up and we're going to ship them off to wherever.

So we're kind of following the same pattern. Excuse me, Mr. Mayor. This is out of hand. You need to monitor this meeting. This brings us back to... They're accusing us being Nazis and it's out of hand. What? No, no, no. Not you, sir. No. You're implying that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for taking control. Sorry.

I will...

I can change it.

Our city attorney is. I'm sorry. What's your question, Mayor? You heard Council Member Kastema's comments that this was inappropriate. These comments are inappropriate.

They may be inappropriate. That's up to the individual listener. But they have not violated any rule of free speech at this point. OK.

Proceed, Mr. Show a seat.

Thank you. Thank you. No offense was intended. This is a historical statement because I would like to think none of us want to be Nazis. But while we're talking about warehouses and selling city property to things, I just think it's important that we recognize the historical relevance of what we're doing in comparison to what's happened in the past. Historically, they ended up with too many people in small locations, found out they couldn't actually get them to Madagascar, and it was currently owned by the French, but whatever. And they ended up coming up with other solutions. So with, you know, ICE just up the road, it's something we should all be aware of.

Thank you.

I do feel the need to respond here that the flagpole is due for delivery in the next week or so. It will be installed. There are some details in terms of treatment to the flagpole to make sure that it is stands up to the weather and so forth. So it's not invisible. It will be here. It's taking a little longer than expected, but there is no fraud or anything going on in this city. Thank you. With that, that's the last of the requested citizen comments. Is there anybody that would like to speak from the floor? OK, well, I'll take this one over here. Please state your name and address or district.

Hi, my name is Peggy Sloan. And I live in Orting, actually, but I work at the hospital. And that's why I'm here today. Do you still need my address? No. I can't remember what district. 31, I think. So I'm here today to speak on behalf of my patients and my fellow nurses. We've only been in contract negotiations since beginning of the year. We've been out of contract since the beginning of April. Many of us live in this community, but all of us take care of the people in this community. And we want to be able to get you a cup of ice and not have to choose if it's your cup of ice or this patient's life-saving blood pressure medication. We shouldn't have to. We've been asking MultiCare for years to staff their hospitals like their family was in it, and they've never done it. But your family might be. So I really hope that you'll reach out to them and let them know how important it is that this is an important part of the community. MultiCare provides employment to many people in this community and care to all of the people in this community unless they get shipped out because we don't have beds, which is a real valid problem and something that can't be solved unless you can bring in nurses. Right now, we can get paid more working at TG, and we have safe staffing ratios there. I don't know why this community deserves less. I don't think it does. And that's all that I really need to say. Thank you.

Anyone else?

My name is Jennifer Newman, and I'm in District 2. I work for Good Sam. I'm a dietary aide. I've been there for nearly five years. And we are not getting a living wage. Why do people in Tacoma get so much more money? It's not like it's any less expensive to live here. I'm barely getting by paying bills, gas, food. I don't have any extra money. And it's not fair. We need a living wage. We've been out of a contract since October. It's insane. They need to pay us a living wage. We're all here because we all work there. We care about our patients. We live in the community, and we want a living wage. Thank you.

Hi, my name's Brad. I live near Puyallup. I'm here to talk about the flock cameras that you guys have all over the city. There are at least 28 flock cameras here. Flock is not a safety mechanism. They take facial rec, they take pictures of your car, every single dent you have, every single sticker you have on it, they track you for at least 21 to 30 days. If I go past All of them, one time a day or three times a week or any time, I'm getting tracked all the time. We should not be tracked by a government that wants to be Nazis and they want to be fascist when we have the First Amendment right. Like the guy said, what that guy said is a First Amendment right. If you want to take away First Amendment rights, we can all sue you for doing that. The other problem is that I agree with people that say that we should have moratorium on data centers. Here's the problem. I think we should outright deny data centers. Data centers are bad for every single person across the world. And the reason why they want to have data centers everywhere is so they can fund the ICE and fund the flock cameras, which control everybody. Flock cameras are the first step towards a Police state, police around the country and in this county and in this part of the world like to break the law. Swank is one of them, and he's our Pierce County Sheriff. Can't wait for him to get fired.

Are there any other citizens who would like to speak?

Samantha Miller, I'm out of district. I just wanted to say I am not a healthcare worker, but I have been in a hospital. So I appreciate you all and I stand with you and I hope that you all get what you deserve. And I also agree with people that are saying we don't need data centers in our city. And yeah, thank you.

My name is Paula Lucero. I'm in District 1. I work at Good Samaritan. And I am here just to kind of personalize our plight. I'm a cardiovascular technologist there, which means that I treat heart attacks. I'm on the team that treats heart attacks. I don't personally do it. I work with cardiologists who do. And we serve more cardiovascular heart attacks than anybody else in this area. Our cath lab was just awarded a STEMI award, which is ST elevation MI. We have more than... of the other hospitals almost combined so we do a lot of business here in Puyallup and I think that that's probably because we are the we are the hospital we serve a very large area and to personally put what we're fighting for on it my co-workers at TGE make ten dollars more than I do an hour and I was born at that hospital and I still live in this community and I'm 26 years with MultiCare. And I don't want to leave good Sam, but this is what it's coming to. We can't recruit. We can't retain. And we are in the most dire situation of your guys' lives, potentially. We are the ones. We have to live 30 minutes within response time to the hospital. When our pagers go off, we have 30 minutes to get there from wherever we are. It determines where we can live, where we can rent. And there are other hospitals within call distance where we can all go to work. And I'm speaking personally, but I also represent all of my coworkers and every member of SEIU by saying it's pretty sad that we could leave our community hospital and go anywhere else within driving distance and living distance and make more money. And it's time for Good Sam, not MultiCare, maybe MultiCare, but MultiCare Good Sam specifically, to stop taking advantage of us. We want to stay in this community and we want to continue to provide great care. And I don't want to have to leave and go somewhere else, but it's pretty hard to stay when there's that much of a discrepancy. And that's a pretty big one. It's not the biggest. There's one more that has a bigger pay discrepancy than that. But it trickles down, and it goes for every one of us. We're all being paid less than other facilities, even within multi-care. And we're not even talking about other institutions, St. Joe's, St. Pete's, all of the other hospitals who are making more. Please help us to... implore MultiCare Good Samaritan to pay us more.

Any additional? Okay, we'll move on to the consent agenda. The consent agenda is the portion of our agenda that is considered to be non-controversial, and therefore we can approve it. as a group. Do any of my colleagues feel the need to remove anything from the consent agenda at this time? Hearing none, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Move approval.

Second. The motion has been moved and seconded. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any motion passes. Okay, now we will move on to our ordinances. We'll have a first reading of an ordinance amending Chapter 8.08, Animals, and Chapter 20.20, Single-Family Resident Zones of the Puyallup Municipal Code. And we'll have a presentation from Shane Pierron.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Shane Perrin. I'm the Code Compliance Officer for the City. Happy to be here. I'm kind of a unicorn. I only show up every five or six years. In this presentation, we're going to talk about some code amendments that are regarding urban agricultural activities in residential zones. So the purpose of the updates, back in 2017, the ordinance was changed so that if you had a vacant lot, you could no longer do urban agricultural activities on that property unless there was a house on the property. And if it's vacant, you can't have a house on it. So this update will allow RS lots or sites And sites just means contiguous lots. To engage in urban agricultural activities, including these vacant sites, if the owner of the property lives inside the city limits. And it's incidental to the owner's personal use, owner's residential use. Like I said, currently it's only allowed as an accessory use to a residence. If the lot is vacant, it cannot be used for urban agricultural activity. And the second part of the code is amending Chapter 8, which is the animal code. And currently, animals are divided up into small farm animals and large farm animals. Small farm animals are bees, because they're not large, and goats, mini goats, and chickens, fowl, things like that. Large farm animals are horses, swine, cows, bulls. and goats. And so this is amending the code to allow, normally you're allowed one. On properties that are one acre or greater are allowed one large farm animal on them per one half acre of field. And this is amending it so you can have two goats instead of one. Because a goat only weighs about 150 pounds. And a bull will weigh 2,200 pounds. So it doesn't seem very fair that you can have one goat the same as you can have one bull. So that is what we're doing for that. So there's three changes to the code. The first one is sites under one acre. These are actually for sites less than one acre in size would allow urban agricultural activities if they are owned on these vacant sites, if they are owned by natural persons, have residential property in the city limits. And again, it's only for incidental use only. The vacant site cannot be used as a principal commercial use, meaning that someone couldn't buy a vacant property in the middle of the neighborhood and just start Dairy we still have zoning codes about those things The second part of the code The proposed revision of the code is for sites one acre or greater and the difference between the the two revisions between acre Less than one acre and sites one acre or greater is the difference between what size animals you can have. Anything under one acre would be the small farm animals. Sites one acre or greater would allow large farm animals. But otherwise, it's the same. It would allow urban agricultural activities on vacant lots if the property owner that owns that lot lives within the city limits. And the final revision, again, is for Chapter 8. On sites one acre or greater, full-size goats or sheep can be kept at two per one-half acre instead of one. And it also allows for the temporary use of goats greater than that ratio for vegetation and weed control, as we did at the park a few years ago, where we brought in the goats to chew down the vegetation. So it allows citizens to bring in the goats if they've got a few acres in town full of blackberry briars or whatever, they could bring in a herd of goats and have them weed it naturally. It also provides for if a public nuisance is created, of course, that is not allowed We've analyzed all the proposed amendments and found consistency with our zoning code and all the codes that we've... What am I thinking of? Sorry, my mind just went blank. Your comprehensive plan. Thank you. See, I am not a planner. And we had a public hearing for the Title 20 changes before the Planning Commission last week on July 8th. The Planning Commission forwarded a recommendation of approval in a unanimous vote. And staff, the Planning Commission does not have any purview over Title 8. staff recommends passing that section of the code and we recommend a approval and you're going to deliberate this and our next steps would if you approve it we'll bring it back for second reading next week any questions deputy mayor johnson

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to go back to, I'm glad you differentiated between smaller livestock versus large. So let's go back to that for a moment. I know you talked about some of the mini goats or mini sheep or whatever these type of animals are. This new revised proposal, how does that increase the ratio of how many animals on an acre or under an acre lot? Tell me what that increases it from. Where does it currently now and then where would it go to allow for higher density, taking in light the smaller nature size of the animal?

I get so few goat complaints that I don't know what the current, I know the current ratio for large farm animals is you're allowed one per half acre for everything over one acre. I think under a half acre right now, you're limited to four.

Yeah, so I get the large animal, but if you're, let's just say you're allowed with this new code, two large animals per half acre or something, if I understand correctly, it would seem to me you would be able to duplicate that to more smaller animals per half acre and not just two.

Right, yeah. And so you are allowed, that would apply to just the regular small animals as well. Let me...

So here's what I'm thinking, not to put you on the fly. I'm going to go ahead and support this with a contingency that we get that information back before second reading. I'd like to know how many small animals are going to be allowed with this new revision to make sure if we're going to make changes, let's make responsible changes now, then do it again another time later. I know that some of the goats and even some of the sheep, they don't really have a problem with a lot of stinky stuff going on. And even their waist is much like a rabbit pellet, so they're really not very smell-orientated. And some of those pygmy goats and those small goats, I mean, they can be the size of a small dog in terms of size. So I'd like to make sure that we have allowable density and not just... let's say two pygmy goats per half acre would be a little bit, you know, stringent. If you can have, you know, one large bull or whatever per half acre, I want to make sure the ratio is consistent.

Right. And so I did look it up while you were talking. Lots accommodating for miniature goats must be a minimum of 6,000 square feet. And they're allowed a ratio of two miniature goats per 10,000 square feet of property.

Okay, two per 10,000. Okay, that's great. So that's, yeah, that's plenty, I think, in an acre you're talking about.

Yeah, acres, it would allow four or eight because it's 43,000 square feet.

Yeah, that's good. So with that contingency in mind, I fully support this ordinance first reading. I'd like to make a motion to do such to entertain approval of first reading as stated here before us in item 4A.

We have a motion. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Motion passes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Shane. We'll now move on to considerations and request presentation of considerations of installing a Goodroots Northwest food distribution locker at the city's Memorial Center. City Manager Steve Kirkley will introduce our speaker from Goodroots.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. It is my pleasure to introduce the CEO of Good Roots, Stacey Krenich. She's here tonight to provide an overview of the proposal before you, which is to allow the city to enter into a license agreement with Good Roots to install a food locker at our Memorial Center parking lot. So I will turn it over to Stacey.

Welcome, Stacy, and we're happy to have you with us. And I'd just like to go on record. You've already got a food locker up at Pierce College in the city, correct? We do, yes. Thank you. Perfect.

It's working well, I think. I heard that you visited it. Thank you so much. um hello everybody uh thank you for having me here this evening um i i travel in uh pax and so i i have my board president here uh bill pew my vice president todd allen um and marybeth holmes that is our locker manager our programs manager and terry moore that is here to support our organization in a multitude of ways. So thank you so much. I wanted to tell you a little bit about the locker program and first and foremost to tell you that as an organization since 2020, it's been our great honor to serve Puyallup citizens. We rose to the occasion when a need happened for delivery service. Transportation, as you know, throughout East Pierce is spotty at best. And vulnerable adults, those with disabilities, and quite frankly, people with jobs, we were delivering to for all of 2020. until we pivoted into this locker model that was supported by Pierce County Council. Specifically, Council Member Morrell has been a champion to us. And from that, we've been able to leverage additional funding to bring into East Pierce And it is currently a $10 million program. We have three congressional appropriations. We continue to funnel that money, almost like thinking about these lockers as a franchise, where once we're able to land them in a community, we're able to fund them with stakeholders to be able to serve the vulnerable populations that we're working with. In particular, Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland funded the locker at Pierce College. And Senator Patty Murray has signed on to continue to support those lockers into 2027. The reason being is because that is the protection of future workforce, keeping students in school. It's a 52% food insecurity rate at Pierce College, which is unbelievable to comprehend. But the most crushing fact about that is that they're unenrolling from school. to be able to address basic needs. When we put the locker there, I do want to circle back a little bit that in serving Puyallup residents, it first started with delivery and then we were able to migrate them over to the locker usage. And what we found was a pattern of behavior. If you don't know anything about me, most of you know a little bit about me, but I'm from nordstromtalk.com. So consumer behavior is a very interesting term. thing to me. And consumer behavior in a population that does not really get assessed is, I'll spend the rest of my life trying to figure it all out. But what I know to be true is after 5 PM, it's go time for the lockers. And that's because those are working families that are accessing the lockers. Taxpayers right now are paying, you just heard our beautiful health care workers here talking about how one day of missed work means that they can't afford gas and groceries. That's the reality for a huge percentage of the population right now. I know it's so hard to relate to for some of us, but it is a daily reality for 30% to 40% of the population. And then the more impacted that you are, whether it be with disability, lack of transportation, or just trying to go to school and get an education, Those stats continue to get higher and higher. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about the lockers to familiarize yourself. Currently, we have about 600 Puyallup residents that are shopping at the lockers. I'm sorry, 600 orders are fulfilled monthly. Over the last five years, in value, in terms of what Good Roots has been able to fundraise and bring right into your community, is right around a million dollars a year, just a little bit over. It has been our great pleasure to do that. We see this entire East Pierce area as our neighborhood. Oh, Steve, you told me about moving this forward, but... That arrow?

It's not working.

Let's see.

Just use the left and right arrow keys.

Yeah, that's not working. Let's see if I can bring the mouse over, see if that works.

Oh, okay.

To give you just a little bit of background, the impact that we're seeing today, I mentioned older adults, that's 18% of the population, at least 41% are youth. We're serving an incredible amount of youth and families. And about 2,000 orders are being fulfilled weekly as e-commerce. They're like, when you go to the grocery store and see an order being fulfilled in those black crates, we are fulfilling those orders that way at our hub. So we have currently 10 lockers throughout the region. You can see Bates Technical and Pierce College. Our expansion will continue into college, as that is what is currently been funded. But you can see in East Pierce, two lockers in Bonney Lake, two in Buckley, Wilkeson, Carbonado, boarding in South Prairie. And Sumner, we have a locker down at Tagote Farm currently. Let's see if this, oh, there it goes. Currently, we are in partnership with the city of Bonnie Lake with an MOU and a leasehold, the city of Orting, Wilkeson, and Carbonado. The leasehold and the MOU is really important, especially in grant writing. So when I go to the state emergency management, to the Department of Commerce, I have 11 leases and addresses that I can fund to. And that's been part of the magic of us being able to work in these collaborative partnerships with cities to continue to bring money, both federal, state, and local, right here into the county. The address is key. And so that is why, with the amount of participation that we're seeing in the city of Puyallup, it would be very helpful for me to have an address here that I can continue to fund and bring money in to support these lockers.

Let's see.

So they're just like an Amazon locker. And I have a video because I could sit here and explain it to you forever and ever. But Mary Beth created a video with our marketing team at Hemisphere. Yeah, thank you.

Follow these simple steps to place an order at a Good Roots locker. Start by going to goodroots.org. Click the shop button. To become a member, you only need to register once. Enter your information. Please indicate if you are a student. Click submit to finish. Check your email in two business days to receive your shopper ID and PIN number. Write down your Shopper ID and PIN. You'll need them to place orders in the future. To start shopping, click Shop Online Weekly with Shopper ID and sign in. Type your Shopper ID and PIN to log in. Click Categories to explore items. Click Items to learn more. Use these buttons to change the quantity. Click Add to Cart. Click Main Menu to view all categories. Your point balance tells you how much you can order. Every customer has 100 points to spend each week. When you are finished shopping, click Checkout. Use the arrows to select a locker near you. Check the request lower locker box if needed for accessibility. Choose a time and location. Review your order on the confirmation page. A copy will also be emailed to you. When your order is ready, you will be notified by text or email. Make your way to the locker. At the Good Roots locker, press the start button. Access your locker with your pickup code or shopper ID. Your locker will open automatically. Take your items from the locker. Close the locker firmly. Press the finish pickup button. place a grocery order at a Good Roots locker today.

Great, thank you so much. Let's see, we'll go back. Thank you. So each of these, we're filling about 300 orders a day right now. And the convenience, a lot of people will question me, gosh, this is so convenient. Do you think it's being overused? is it being taken advantage of? What's really interesting is we currently, across a 400 square mile service area, have 6,000 registered households. That's our memberships. Of those memberships, between 1,200 and 1,500 households shop every week, not the same. So we don't have this repeat dependency. We've actually, because we have had online data since 2020, I can analyze that consumer behavior. You really get to know what's happening. And what I found is data that probably no other food bank will tell you. Because right now, food bank success in the food system is based on how many pounds of food you get out and how many people you serve. And my question has always been, what about the quality? What if we could reduce reliance? What if convenience would create less dependence upon things? What if we were consistent with what our offering was? How would that change behavior? If we changed our behavior, what would that look like? And what we have seen is something that even exceeded my expectations, which is of the 1,200 customers that are shopping weekly, they are only shopping every month when given the choice of when, where, how, what, all of the things, plus a customer service agent right at your fingertips. The majority of our customers choose to shop one or two times per month. when they need it, no scarcity. And I used to be bonused at Nordstrom off my units per transaction, so I track it religiously because it is about our sustainability. And in 2021, it was 75 units per transaction. When given 100 points, I like currency. So 100 points have always been given to our customers. When given 100, 75 were selected in 2021. When the lockers went live three years into this pilot that we've been running, our units per transaction are under 30. That has allowed the economy of scale, that has allowed our organization to basically scale into our own efficiency and to our own efficiency. our own efforts to reduce scarcity. The Costco toilet paper, the thing that we saw, that doesn't exist in our world. If you can always get fresh milk and eggs and produce right here from the Puyallup Valley, you're just going to get it when you need it. Because I've had customers reiterate back to me when we had our market up on 410, I almost grabbed milk. But then I thought to myself, what you guys say is, just get it next week if you need it. I don't need to take it home today. And so we're seeing that. There's many examples that I could sit here and tell you all night, but what we're seeing is something quite extraordinary. And it's scalable, and it's nimble, and it's healthy. I think so much when we have health care workers here, and my mother was a nurse, and thinking about the trickle impacts. So when you shop at Good Roots, it's like shopping at Trader Joe's. These beautiful lockers are not distributing top ramen and noodles. They are working people. They're working families. They're working students. They are retired individuals that now live on property that they bought for $25,000 that's worth over a million, and they can't afford the property taxes. This is who our customer is. It's a huge percentage of the population. And the very first week that we launched the locker, it's such a huge population that has not ever been paid attention to before. that when we went to go refill the lockers after its first maiden voyage of distributing, I found a piece of paper inside the locker where somebody had ripped it from their mail, like a bill. And they wrote in whatever they had in the car. I think it was a lipstick pencil, actually, and said, thank you for noticing me. which to me is just a stunning and generous notion. And it's what we build from every day. So it takes about 109,000 here in Pierce County. You might have heard United Way speak about ALICE. These are asset limited, income constrained. These are people living in apartments, our health care workers that are trying to make this all work. and they earn too much for aid. And so this is that gap for them, that this is the way to keep the gas in the car, keep paying the rent. We want our landlords and our businesses and banks that are lending money for these cars, we want the economy to be healthy. And some of that requires just a little bit of input. And that's what our specialty, that's our market niche right there. So there's three gaps right now that we are coming to the city to discuss after years of having skin in the game and rolling up our sleeves as an organization. And so right now we're already serving hundreds of households. We're not planning on stopping that, but it's getting more precarious as more scenarios come into play. So right now, you have food banks in Puyallup, and we're not trying to replace any food banks, by the way. Everything I'm describing to you is what, in any industry, Dean and I are from a similar industry, I've identified a market niche. That market niche happens to be quantified as 61% of the population. That's older adults, those with disabilities, and working poor. That's our market niche. Currently, you do not have a facility functioning in Puyallup that is making that work. Unfortunately, the taxpaying citizen that is working and paying their taxes does not have access to the social safety net that their tax dollars paid for. This is what this is doing. Students can access the lockers. The Pierce College locker, the students up there made a choice, the student government up at Pierce College. They didn't just want to feed the students on campus. They said, we want to feed and make sure that families in the surrounding areas have enough to eat and can come to this campus and that we're part of that solution. That was really great. But as we launched that locker in Puyallup and got that locker in close proximity to the people that we serve here, it became so flooded that we no longer can serve students through that locker. That is how flooded it is. We are having a hard time fitting Pierce College students into the locker, and Fort Steilacoom students at Pierce College are coming out here to get food now as well. This has been a phenomenal resource for families, and it's at risk right now. And so that's the timeliness. Why, since 2020, we've been kind of bankrolling this. Why now are we coming here? This has become a situation that we really need to talk openly about. Right now, downtown is left out, and so we're on the campus, which is just a little bit south of downtown, right? But the downtown area, as I click through here, I was going to show you a map. Here we go. The geographic snapshot here can show you that these are the households that we are currently serving that have memberships, maybe not shopping every week, right here. And you can see in South Hill that locker that is at Pierce College is being utilized by Puyallup citizens that are in South Hill. But there is still this... a very dense population of downtown Puyallup residents that need access. There's about 245 households currently sitting in this area. I want to back up and look at To be able to bring a locker to downtown Puyallup, we would need to have an MOU. We would need to have a trusted, safe site. I will tell you, not one of these lockers, it's another question, has ever been vandalized. This equipment is being visited by the demographic that I continue to talk about. We are not seeing activity around these lockers. They are at fire stations. And you can talk to all the cities that we have MOUs with that will tell you it's one of the things they're the most proud of. So please feel free to reach out to our partners in East Pierce City and tell them what their experience has been in partnering with us. And to be able to anchor that access, we are coming to Puyallup to ask for $80,000 to purchase and to sustain that locker in that first year. Giving us that address allows me to work collectively with you to identify things like emergency management funding, to be able to add you to grants as we are writing to healthcare companies and philanthropic organizations. There was one other thing that I think I missed. I got really click happy because I didn't follow Steve's instructions. Right back, yes. So the annual cost currently to run the college locker at Puyallup, I just wanted to make sure to quantify this. At the amount of usage that is happening today at that Pierce College locker that was intended for students, it is now costing about $201,000. So I'm not coming to you for $201,000. That is something that we've worked with Marilyn Strickland on. I am asking for the downtown location, which is $80,000, to be able to land that site and work with you on getting that located at, it sounds like, Grayland Park.

Stacy, just a quick question, just so I understand what that $80,000 is. Is that the cost of the locker themselves? It sounded like it was going to cover some of the operating costs.

It will. Each year it's $24,930 to cover a share. If you think about our network, it's almost a franchise where you have a managed service. agreement. It's a portion of the fuel, a portion of the maintenance of the van, a portion of the bags that we put the groceries in. It's a very minimal. I want you also to think about the infrastructure of the locker. Although it's 30 square feet, it's actually equivalent of a 3 000 square foot food bank in terms of impact that we're dropping in the city so while it looks like a vending machine it is much more powerful and so the operating cost also includes the annual subscription fee so they are cellular we don't need to log into ethernet or internet we're able to run them and isolate them on a cellular network which is great for emergencies and it's definitely great for us to be able to communicate throughout the network

So I'm still not clear. The first year is $80,000. How much was the second year? $24,930.

And we would also love the opportunity to work with staff on grants and funding opportunities. And just like we worked with Mayor Johnson when the Strickland funds, Mayor Johnson wrote a letter of recommendation for us.

Yeah, perfect. And we'd like to recognize our former mayors. We've got a former mayor, Bill Pugh, from Sumner. You beat me to the introduction. I'd like to recognize him as well. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your work on Good Roots.

And Mayor, would it be OK if I'd love to invite Bill Pugh up to the podium for just a second, if that's OK? Sure, that'd be fine. OK.

Mayor, members of the council, I always appreciate it when your CEO invites you to make some comments to a group. You've heard a lot tonight on a lot of various things. I'll leave you with just something really, really simple. In my over 30 years with the city of Tacoma, 10 years as a staff member with the city of Sumner, and four years as mayor, don't do the math. So there's been one thing that has really defined Superior success, and that has been simple partnerships. And whether it's partnerships with other governmental entities or whether it's partnerships with the private sector, with nonprofits, with organizations, that really defines success. I didn't realize how much though partnerships mean until I ended up, you know helping out with a non-profit and That's really how you move forward as soon as partnerships So I'll just leave you with with that thought you have heard a lot tonight You've heard a lot from Stacy so you can answer any questions you have but After being away from my council meeting for a long time Thank you for your service. I really appreciate it. I

Thank you. Council Member Kastema.

Thank you. Boy, Bill, a question I have for you. You know, as Mayor of Sumner, you talked about partnerships, but I noticed that there is no MOU with Sumner. What's up with that?

Just like anything, it's a process that you go through. And it has to be willing parties on both sides to do that. We are looking at potential locations in there, some south of town, some maybe with the library, because we already have a partnership with the library system up in Bonney Lake. So that's still to be determined. I have to give a shout out to the Sunmer Food Bank in that realizing the need that people have to access. They have opened up evening hours for clients. And so it's a process. And we'll see what happens in the future.

Thank you, Bill. Appreciate that.

You bet.

Stacy, thank you for coming here. Appreciate that. I assume, can you get us a P&L?

Yes, of course.

I would appreciate that. My email is pretty easy to find. I would appreciate that. So let me ask you, you mentioned you get government grants. What percentage of your income is by government grants as opposed to private contributions?

Yeah. And that, as you know, in the last three years have shifted wildly, especially when you start considering congressional funds that needed to be cashed out very quickly in January of 2025. So we had an influx. It's around, when you think about federal, state, and local, between 33% and 35%. Okay, and then the other, what, 65% then is from private contributions. Yeah, 50% of private foundations and donors, and then the other 15% is donors, individual citizens, and then groups, churches, businesses. Okay.

Thank you. The number of volunteers, do you have volunteers who help you? 215 active. How many of those are from Puyallup? Just curious.

I could look that up.

That would be a good number yet. How do you screen people to see who is eligible for these services?

Yes, we have a contract with the Department of Agriculture, which the beginning of that video showed the screening, which is what we are by contract. We need to... Work within the parameters of how that's defined. A lot of what we're doing in the future is to change our business model, but currently what is happening is a customer is self-declaring their percent of poverty and opting in. Pardon me, their what? They are self-declaring their income and their level of poverty. It's self-declared, which is a state standard through the Department of Agriculture.

Okay, so there's no verification of that. But if they say that they're, so I assume if they self-identify a certain income and they're above a threshold, you don't serve them.

if they're above the threshold, they would self-declare. And if they did not self-declare, then they are... No, but my point, what is your cutoff?

Where do you say, sorry, you make too much money?

Because it's self-declared, the state of Washington does not allow us to ask people how much money they make. So there's about 77 food banks across Pierce County that are signed on with that Department of Agriculture contract. The precariousness of that is that that contract gives us federally funded commodities, which the taxpayer pays for those commodities and needs to have access to. If I didn't have a Department of Agriculture contract, I would be... not allowing citizens in our area the right to opt in to the social safety net that they pay for.

So in other words, you just take anyone regardless of income?

We ask them to self-declare. But beyond that, the state of Washington...

Even if they declare, I make $100,000 a year, you would still serve them?

Well, I don't think so. I mean, they would opt out, I would hope. Yeah.

You would hope. Yeah. But you have no threshold, though. In other words, self-declaring at 100,000, you're leaving it up to the person to say, I'm not going to get the food.

I'm following the Washington State Department of Agriculture's requirements.

Right. And those are federal requirements. I got that. Are you familiar with our city's community grants program? I am, yes.

Have you applied to that yet?

I have not. OK, that is a way to vet all of these numbers, your P&L, and go through all of that. And that's what we make everybody in Puyallup do. I mean, we happen to have the largest independent food bank in the state of Washington, which is right over there next to the train station. And then we also have St. Francis House, which has pantry, food pantry there. And in those circumstances, they have to come before us every year through the Community Grants Program, where we do a very close analysis of your P&L and, again, service numbers here. And then we give a grant from there. And I would suggest that that would be the ideal process for you to go through. And I think our city manager will give you due dates on that. I mean, keep in mind, we give the food bank $20,000, and they distribute $20 million worth of food. So the citizens of Puyallup? The citizens of Puyallup and people on the outside, it's $20 million worth of food that goes through there. they don't have to buy from the FDA. They get it from other sources. They source their food by not buying it. It's all free for them. And so anyway, and they have volunteers too, like you. St. Francis House, we give $30,000 a year. And that's the process we go to. I really appreciate your presentation. It's good to see this, but it's got to be taken in context with our entire environment that we have. And I would suggest that you that will inform you of those dates and that we make it possible.

Yeah.

Do you mind if I ask a question? Absolutely.

Do you happen to know the hours that both of those food banks you were talking about are open and how many citizens they serve?

I don't know the exact numbers, but I would say that they're open on Saturdays. And I think that also, considering how much community support they have here, they're all funded by funders from here. They don't get government grants. other than that $20,000 our food bank does. That's all they get from the government. Everything else is from private sector and personal contributions. So that's the kind of support level they have. And we would certainly, if we're looking like I think Bill Pew mentioned the fact that Sumner's now expanded their hours, We have partnerships right now that are fully supported by this community. And I think we have to take programs like this in the context of what we have Maybe they expand ours. Maybe that's an alternative. Or maybe we do both. We do yours. But I think that you have to go through that competitive process. That may involve that you get more local funding, frankly.

I have a couple more questions, if that's OK. You don't know the numbers served? Nope. Either of those organizations?

But I am a former director right here. I suggest it's probably pretty high.

Yeah.

In the thousands.

You knew other stats, so I was just wondering if you happen to know those. I would assume it's in the thousands of people. Do you happen to know if any of those food banks have the federally funded stockpile? And do citizens of Puyallup have access to the federally funded stockpile that their tax dollars pay for?

I think they solicit that $20 million from the private sector, and they don't go to the government sector because of many of the regulations that you just mentioned. And they have the ability to identify people in need, I think, of income groups. And actually, Stacy, this is really a good conversation. We should get the president of the St. Francis House and the director and food bank We should get presentations from them, too. And I look forward to us doing that. Usually, again, the process is all vetted through our community grants program. That's what I would prefer. But I think some of these other questions, absolutely. And I hope, Mr. Mayor, I would ask that you note that and that we ask the director of the Pilt Food Bank so we can get these numbers.

I think the question for us is really not so much that we are replacing or doing a service. It really is that demographic that I explained. And I'm wondering, do you happen to know, of the census tract here in Puyallup, how many households are living below the affordable income level? We have that data, and it's even by section of the city. I'd be interested in that total number as we do math.

I get that. I agree. And I would think that since they target by income, because they're able to do that, that they would address a lot of those people and target it as opposed to giving it blanket and adhering to the federal guidelines. But if there's a gap... We should talk about that, but that gap, again, what we're looking for in Puyallup is we're not looking for dependency. We're looking to help people make through areas of their life and become self-reliant. And so that does require that we look at the current situation where they're at income-wise, etc., And again, I don't mind comparing these, but I do have to have who we currently fund. Again, $20,000 and that big distribution. I think we have to hear from them, too. It makes complete sense.

I'm glad you agree.

Thank you. Appreciate that. That finishes my comments.

I just want to put things in context. Dan, could you tell us what the amount of our community grants contributions were last year?

Yes, it will take me just a second to get that information, sir.

Thank you. I think it's about $180,000. OK. Council Member Adler.

Thank you. Thank you, Stacy and Good Roots team for being here. I appreciate it. I appreciate the detailed presentation. I have a few thoughts. One is, having served on the Community Grants Committee, I'm pretty familiar how that works. I would just point out it may be $20,000 a year, but I would question how much overall in the lifetime of the Puyallup Food Bank the city of Puyallup has invested into the Puyallup Food Bank. I think they've been around for over 50 years, so I would be curious. to find out that number, as well as St. Francis House, both of which I have personally supported financially over many years as a longtime third generation Puyallup resident. I just want to clarify, $80,000 with a MOU would land a locker at the preferred site of Grayland Park slash the Memorial Center. Yes. And that's a one-time allocation request. That is. It is not ongoing for operations. One-time funding. Correct. Thank you. I just want to be really clear about that. It's not lost on me, because I see it every day, that we have a community in need. We're not unique, unfortunately. Food insecurity is something that You know, you have the stats you shared. This is not what I think some people, I think the idea that some people may have about who is dependent upon or needs access to food is actually what it is today. You talked about Alice. I'm very familiar with asset limited income and strained folks. Frankly, I think that that is majority. The numbers show that ALICE population is increasing. And I believe that having additional access to safe, fresh, healthy foods for those in need should not be an argument. Period. Full stop. Now, going back to... Potential MOU an $80,000 investment of one time Which I understand what on our side would likely come from tier three One-time funds is that accurate city manager? We recently had an allocation from tier three funds much more than 80,000, but I'll stop That MOU What is your suggested or what would be the suggested and what has been the term of service or lease?

I know. Yeah. So the leasehold and the MOU, it's two separate things. So the MOU is the terms of our partnership, which in practice, And what we want to be able to convey is that this is the equivalent of a vending machine that is in your neighborhood. So if the relationship for whatever reason from both sides is not favorable, that's a 30-day notification from either party. uh to let us know or to let you know that the partnership for whatever reason is not desirable you might have other plans for that park something might happen right so that gives the city protection and all of our cities have that where they can say in 30 days and they literally unscrew from the ground so that is the MOU. The leasehold is purely that we have that address. Right now, the lifetime of the equipment is 10 years. And so we have a 10 year, but at any point that MOU allows you as our collaborative agreement, it really is about separation.

And thank you. And has there been a time yet where a municipality or frankly, any of your leaseholders come to you and said, we're out. This has been so disruptive. Please take this away.

Our relationship with the city of Bonnie Lake has not always been that they agreed on food security and the definition of it with me, by the way. That is a pretty individual conversation. That's not really what we're talking about necessarily. I'm talking about the situation that our economy is in and that census track. And we do have ALICE data on how many And that's something that I can definitely pull on how many citizens are living below a living wage. And that's really what we're talking about. We're talking about the economy. We're not talking about abusive systems and all that. We're really just talking about keeping people able to all the things that we know to be true from crime rates to everything else when people are struggling for what they need to survive. So the opposite has happened. We have colleges and cities asking for another. It's what we've been more accustomed to.

Thank you. Sorry, not to interrupt you. The expansion at Pierce College Has happened yet?

That was actually funded by Pierce County Councilmember Paul Herrera invested $24,000 in this last community needs budget cycle to be able to expand that to meet the needs of Puyallup.

I don't mean to have you answer for the Pierce County Council, but if my recollection of how the Pierce County Council legislates and does their budgeting, I believe that that was more or less like an earmark, right? Correct. Thank you. I know another colleague here has their button pushed and would like to speak, and I'm sure some of my other colleagues. But this is very matter of fact to me. And so I'm going to make a motion that the city of Puyallup uses tier three one-time funds of $80,000 to land a Good Roots locker pending MOU lease agreement at Grayland Park Memorial Center as intended. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussions? Council Member Smolko.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to address the dependency argument first, directly. The evidence on food security doesn't support it. You know this. People don't use food assistance because it's comfortable. They use it because groceries are expensive and paychecks don't stretch. A food locker doesn't create a need. It responds to a need that already exists in the city. I want to put this $80,000 request in context. Four months ago, this same council approved $149,775.40 for a flagpole, nearly double what we're being asked to consider tonight, funded with existing taxpayer dollars over significant objection of residents. Tonight, we're asked to spend roughly half that amount on a food locker that puts food directly into the hands of our hungry neighbors at the Memorial Center. Kralin Park, if we found the money for a flagpole, we can find the money to feed people. The ongoing $24,930 annual cost of the MOU is a fair question to ask of any expenditure, but I'd like us to ask it consistently. When this council approved the flagpole, critics raised, And the council never really answered the ongoing costs of flag replacement, lighting, and halyard maintenance on that 100-foot pole. We didn't have that number in hand when we voted yes on the flagpole. So tonight for the food locker, we do have that number. It's $24,930 a year. And that's the kind of transparency I think our citizens are looking for.

Mr. Mayor, I move that we postpone indefinitely this motion and that we wait for them to go through the process. And then we will have it before us. The motion can be made, even though I'm not... Council Member Castaneda, you do not have the floor.

I made the motion. Ask the parliamentarian. We had a motion on the floor. We had a second. And we're now having discussion.

I'd like to get a ruling by our attorney as to a motion to postpone indefinitely is, in fact, appropriate when a motion is made and seconded. That's why I ask the motion to be postponed indefinitely till we go through this process. Thank you. OK. Attorney Beck?

So two-part answer. First, you do need to recognize the next speaker before they have the floor to make a motion. But a motion to postpone is a procedural motion, and it can be brought at any time.

Thank you. Thank you. OK. So Councilmember King.

I think I'm in. Never mind. I see my name as number two, but if you want to give Councilmember King, that's fine.

I try to allow councilmembers to speak, anybody that wants to speak before somebody gets a second chance. That's fair. Councilmember King.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for coming tonight and giving us your presentation. Appreciate that. I just wanted to make sure I was following. Council Member Adler made a question. Were there any other cities that had any discrepancies or issues with the locker? And I wasn't sure if I got that. Maybe I missed it.

No, there were not. And I also wanted to clarify the Sumner question, if I could. So all of these are federally funded, right? These are the legislators in our area that are allowing our organization to put congressionally funded infrastructure where there is lack of infrastructure. So all of our lockers that are in East Pierce, currently in the East Pierce cities, fall within District 8. representative Kim Shriers and Sumner is not in that district when we moved into councilmember Strickland's you are in that district and Sumner is but they were for colleges so our congressional appropriations were directed to colleges that's how that worked so we didn't have and still don't have funding for a Sumner locker because they're congressionally appropriated to the district and to the use I think right now the huge conflict that I'm in is that I have a federal contract that those lockers are supposed to be for students in protecting the future workforce. They're currently being flooded by 600 Puyallup families that are working families that need access to food that their tax dollars paid for after 5 PM when they're off of work. We are no longer in a situation where we can continue to support that in the way that we are because we aren't able to have students get into these congressionally funded lockers that Maryland Strickland paid for infrastructure for them. And so the decision tonight is quite precarious because there are 600 families that get messages from us. that the city of Puyallup was not able to support their ability to access the social safety net that their tax dollars paid for because you don't have a facility that is open and accessible to them. It is a legal concern to me. It should be a concern for you. And that's where we're at right now. The ability for me to serve them, I don't have a congressionally funded locker for downtown Puyallup. I have one for Pierce College, unless there's another college down here. So that's the ask. That's the $80,000.

My other question to that is because of the funding procurement for the colleges from the federal government. Was there any discussion about having a lopper over at WSU in our downtown core on the west side?

Yeah, over the years, and I can speak more off record to this if you want, but what I will say is that we have attempted to invest quite a bit of congressional money into the Puyallup area through lockers at the WSU campus. I've made two passes at that and worked on that for about a year and a half at this point. We have not been able to arrive at a decision, and by we I mean them, on where that infrastructure will be. It's really unfortunate because we had the appropriation from Congresswoman Shrier, so that had a value, or I'm sorry, Strickland, had a value of $100,000. We had the investment from Councilmember Paul Herrera to help land that locker and pay for those costs.

What was the hang-up?

What's that?

What was the hang-up?

The hang-up was bureaucratic systems in colleges.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Council Member Kastner. I would like to move to postpone this indefinitely and have them go through the same process that our food bank and other nonprofits for the community grants so we can vet a lot of this. She, in fact, agrees that we should vet all of these other organizations first. So I move that we just postpone indefinitely so that we get the information and we see what all of our partners here will do in Puyallup.

Point of order. Mr. Parliamentarian, can you speak to the underlying motion that's live on the table, the process?

With the mayor's permission, I can. Go ahead. The underlying motion is the motion to postpone indefinitely is a subsidiary motion. It takes precedence. The underlying motion just basically stays there until the council takes it back up if this motion passes.

and it does require a second and it is debatable all right so uh dan could have you looked up the amount of the community grants yes mr mayor last year the city awarded 179 500 in community grants and and those are generally operating funds am i correct uh so and they can be capital and But normally they're operating funds that are repeated annually.

They're general fund. They're out of the general fund. Just like Tier 3 is out of the general fund. It's all general fund funds.

But characterized, they tend to be repeat. We see people coming back. year after year requesting funds.

Yeah, in terms of the applications, yes.

Yes, okay. Wanted to make that point. So it's a little different than what we're discussing tonight. Tonight we're discussing a capital item.

Mr. Mayor, I still have the floor. I still have not completed. However, I did make a motion. I guess I am looking for a second.

I wanted to clarify that before I called for a second, and I think that I had the floor, but we won't pick at that. So Deputy Mayor Johnson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thanks, Stacy. I haven't chatted with you for a while. I remember viewing some of those lockers when you were over at the Highway 410 area. I think I do recall the initiative to get up at Pierce College. Glad those are going well. I'm kind of inclined favorably for this locker, but I guess I'm frustrated because this is really the first time we've ever openly discussed this here. And it seems a little quick moving, not that we talked about bureaucratic sluggishness. I don't think we're quite to that level, but it does seem rather fast. And I think, you know, Council Member Kastema's, he's aware indefinitely, I probably would modify that to sooner than later, but just as a point of, I'll finish my statement here. You know, look at revisiting this. I'm probably inclined to support it, but I do feel like because it's been rushed without any prior discussion or counsel, because in city government, unlike state and federal, you can discuss these things behind closed doors legally and get your support that you need legally. You can't do that legally as a city. So the first time we hear about it and openly discuss it is right here at the dais. And if we're pure in transparency and pure in thoughtful debate and things, it seems a little bit unfair and rushed to Put the council in a position to vote on something so quickly when it hasn't been thought through especially since I think that we have some precedence of stakeholders who take care of some food things and I don't subscribe that I Don't subscribe that they are the exclusive providers I do believe in diversity and and so I'm not against that but you know I'd love to hear what their thoughts are in terms of talk about collaborations and things like that and So I think an opportunity to wait wouldn't be a bad idea, not in the literal sense that Councilor Castaneda is saying indefinitely, because with some further studies, any of us could bring this back up again and not make it indefinitely and bring it back up sooner. But I do think it puts on a pause, and I do think that vetting is important. And to hear from our stakeholders that provide these things to our city and who we've supported over the years makes sense. I also, too, believe that I want to pause the emotions. There's been some rhetoric that was associating this with the flag situation. And that, to me, feels very political to use that as a rationale and justification of that. A person may believe those things, and certainly that is in their own purview to do that. But it seems like we're aligning this situation, which should be completely different than the flagpole initiative. That's here nor there. That's been done, decided. And the fact that we would associate that, to me, is playing politics with an issue that you don't deserve and that the clients don't deserve, but yet somehow it's mentioned here. And that makes me want to pause a little bit just to give that kind of connection a separation because it's not about politics and it shouldn't be about that. And so those are my thinkings on this and as I mentioned I I too, you know in terms of vulnerability I had times throughout my life where I didn't have any money and I had to go down to the DSH office and get a food stamps and that wasn't a very fun time and I lived right here in the city And so I empathize with those who are working for and having a hard time so that none about nothing about this is insensitive to my awareness personally and as a council member and deputy mayor and But I do believe that there is some wisdom in just pausing a little bit getting a chance to hear from some of our stakeholders. And if we had some follow-up questions, we can certainly bring you back and ask some follow-up questions so we can separate any association of politics versus supporting this wholeheartedly without that tag to it. And to me, that was what caused me when I heard that to really put the brakes on a little bit and say, no, we're not going to go there. This is not a political issue. It shouldn't be. And no comparison should be, in my opinion. associated with that because it's unfair to you. So with that context in mind and courage in mind and protecting the process of your organization associated with that, I will second Council Member Castelma to pause. I will, I'm not going to amend your motion, but I will state for the record as I second this, Council Member Castelma, that And definitely, it's not the word that we focus on. It's more of a follow up after we hear from our stakeholders. And I promise that if this motion passes, which I think it could, that we will bring it up sooner than later. And it won't be something that we drag on and put on the back burner and forget about it. Because I do believe there's some merit here. I do support it as concept. I think there's some dignity with that. You can go in dignity and pick up food without having to feel like you have to go stand in line at a soup kitchen and be seen, which is kind of humbling. But it's okay. It's part of the process. So that's my thinking. I don't think it requires necessarily a comment or question, but I really wanted to articulate to you and publicly my thinking behind it. I think there's some wisdom here. I trust that the council will see that wisdom and know that we're not going to take this indefinitely, but we will come back with it. And I think we'll have a more knowledgeable, educated, probably, in my opinion, I think, probably pass with a higher ratio of support rather than split support. So that's my thinking. And so I have a second.

I think if I may, Mayor. I just wanted to follow up. Are you Deputy Mayor Johnson?

Yes.

I wanted to follow up and thank you for your comments. And it is unfortunate. I'm not really familiar what you're talking about, honestly. I don't follow that that closely. What I'll say is I work for the taxpaying constituents whose congressional dollars flow through our organization. uh very loyal to them as as should you be and so regardless of what discussions happened here which honestly it's a lot of baggage guys i don't know what it really has to do with but it has nothing to do with people living below living wage in the city and so i want to just refocus there i also just want to kind of dial back to um in 2023 when you visited my organization multiple times and were very enthusiastic about the lockers and wanted to put them all over Puyallup. And perhaps I confused that enthusiasm I mean, genuine interest in us working. And so I have pumped the brakes for five years. I have invested a million dollars of congressional, federal, and state dollars. I haven't come to you for anything, to my knowledge. A letter, which you were very enthusiastic to write. So this being a sudden discussion, I've had discussions with a lot of members here. visits at our lockers over the years. And perhaps I confuse that with genuine engagement and desire and just respect and regard to our organization for continuing to work with the citizens of Puyallup. It is unfortunate, the predicament that I'm at in Pierce College, and I am very I'm very sorry to have to convey that message to the constituents that you serve that we're not going to be able to. It's just we are at a capacity scenario. What I'm asking you is to not support me as a food bank. I'm asking for infrastructure where your city has not been able to work with me, with the college, to be able to get infrastructure where there was something congressionally appropriate. I don't have that anymore. The time was ticking. We pumped the brakes many, many times. So to say that this is a new conversation or even a surprise from somebody that wrote a congressional letter is a little off-putting to me, a little disrespectful to our organization. I just needed to tell you that, Dean, because I don't know what to make of that, honestly.

Well, I'll respond, Mr. Mayor, since I didn't ask for any comments, but you offered them. And then I won't want to comment from this. I want to kind of straighten out the record. When I say pump the brakes, it's the first time that we as a council collectively have discussed this issue, not individually. Oh, I see. So I want to clarify that there's a process, as you may or may not know, with city councils, that we cannot talk about these things with more than three people without considering a violation of the public health act. So when I say pump the brakes, it's the first time this has officially come to the council for us to discuss as a majority. So please don't misrepresent that because that wasn't the case. I told you at the very outset that I do— and nature support this. But I think it would be good for the council to discuss this in a process to pump the brakes, not you. So again, I want to clarify that because that's a big distinction. And I don't think you should misread it in any way personal. But this is the process that we have as a council. We cannot have these conversations legally off the record. It has to be public. And so I think waiting a little while to discuss this more and hear from our stakeholders would be wise. And so that's all I have, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member King.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just as a clarification, obviously, this first ask was originally for the $80,000. Will there be a continued ask for that $24,930 each additional year moving forward? Is that something that you intend to do?

We haven't currently discussed that. And I've never applied for a grant with the city of Puyallup. I mean, what I would hope, as all the cities that work with us, that opportunities would arise for us to cover the cost. And that is something that has been formulated organically, either through other grants and collaborations. So I guess as I mean, I'm not going to write out a bill for you right now, nor is anything going to be a surprise. That would be much like how I work with the city of Bonnie Lake, whether it be an emergency management grant or a leasehold agreement with them where we store their emergency supplies. There is reciprocity to how we're working, but there isn't a formal agreement, no.

Sure. No, I appreciate that. And I appreciate everything that you shared with us tonight. Obviously, we do have a need in our city. And I do think that your model is very unique. And so I don't want you to be discouraged by the comments that you had heard tonight.

But I want you to- I've never experienced anything like it, to be honest.

Oh, welcome. And I wouldn't take it, and I know it might be difficult to hear it this way, but I wouldn't take it personally because as one of my colleagues said, this is a process.

Yeah.

And this is the first time we've had a chance to discuss this as a council. And so, you know, as... Other things have been brought into this discussion. Those other things took a couple times to get right, and we got it right. And so with that, don't be discouraged. Keep fighting the good fight. Keep marching and doing the right thing, and I look forward to seeing this another time. Great. Thank you. Okay.

Councilmember Kastema. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Stacey, there's no offense intended at all. It's just that we have other partners in this city who provide this service. They provide food. And it's unfair to those members that they go through a process of evaluation through our community grants program that look at the P&Ls that do an examination of them And in this case, we go around that entire process that we have set up in the city, and it just shows favoritism, shows special privilege. And I don't think that that's in line with what we have always talked about with our community grants. And if the members here want to talk about increasing the community grants allocation in general, We can have that discussion when we have our budget. But it still has to go through these process. Because if not, Stacy, you're a very nice person. And it's very articulate. I see that you have a lot of support. But so are the other people we have in this community who believe that they are meeting the needs or that they have an idea that may better, they may have an idea that better meets the needs. And we have to look at managing this as best as we can. Again, $20,000 out of that grant gives us 200 to 300 volunteers with $20 million worth of food. St. Francis House, again, it amplifies. It's a force multiplier. But it's very organic and supported by the community. So again, I think we just owe them the respect of having them come before this body. If we're going to go around the entire, circumvent the entire process, we at least owe them that respect, because they have been partners for us for years. And this is the first presentation I've ever seen of this organization. Councilmember Johnson, as deputy mayor, is absolutely correct. We have to discuss here publicly. And so that's where we're at. And I hope you would just respect that process, OK? Thank you.

I incredibly, if I may? Yes. I do respect due process for sure. And this was purely, I am sorry that this felt like an introduction. When Mayor Katzma was in office, I gave this presentation two years ago.

Pardon?

I gave this presentation two years ago.

Well, it wasn't on, you know, the first I had ever heard of an allocation associated with this was this weekend. When I received a PowerPoint, that was the first I'd ever heard of an allocation. And I thought, wow, that's going around the entire process that we laid out. And I hear a lot of ideas out there, a lot of different presentations. There's a lot of difference between that and then implementing it and asking us to fund that without the input of our partners and without going through the process that, again, seems like favoritism. And we don't want to do that.

My apologies for anything that felt different or unjust or unfair.

I'm not saying it was unjust. I'd like to wind this up. Thank you. Thank you, Stacy. We do have a motion on the floor that's been moved and seconded to postpone this item until a later date.

Clarification. Point of clarification. I actually think there was no amendment to the motion to remove indefinitely, quote unquote.

I think, Mr. Mayor, may I comment? A motion that is made that's called a motion to postpone indefinitely is a motion that postpones it for the remainder of the session. That's a Roberts Rules order. And I think our attorney can advise on that, hopefully. He can correct me. It's been years since I've made that motion. But that means that as of this meeting here... Can we get the parliamentarian's position, please?

Certainly.

That's fine with me, Council Member Adler.

A motion to postpone indefinitely means it's postponed until the council moves to take it up again. So there's no set time. There is a higher priority motion to postpone to a particular date and time. That could be made, but the motion to postpone indefinitely is not amendable in and of itself. It's only subject to the higher priority motion to postpone to a specific time and place and date.

Thank you for that clarification.

I lost you there a little bit, Joe. Could you restate that?

I will try. A motion to postpone indefinitely means that it's not coming back until the council moves to bring it back. It's not amendable. That motion is not amendable, so you could not amend it to a time specific. But there is a higher priority motion that could be made to postpone to a specific time. And it takes precedent over the motion to postpone indefinitely, just like the motion to postpone indefinitely took precedent over the main motion in that same order.

OK. Mr. Mayor, may I please make a comment? Yes. Thank you. Stacy, I just want to say, I want to take it to her. I want to learn more. And I'm a little fuzzy on, I just want to be able to make a comment before we vote on anything. And that is, is it possible for us to, or maybe that, I believe in process. I believe in doing things the right way and not trying to show favoritism in the community. I get all of that. But is there a way that we can kind of create baby steps in the direction of maybe saying, yes, we want to look into an MOU sooner than later so that when the funds do come in, we can just cut a little bit of red tape. Somebody help answer that, please.

MOUs are pretty straightforward. It's a process between two parties. And once council directs us to proceed with that, we would work with the organization and come up with an MOU.

And how efficient are we with the timing of that?

Pretty quick. Okay. At the end of the day, it really is more your approval of the MOU, but in this context, I would not see that as being overly complicated.

Okay. Well, I'm excited for the funds to come in and doing the due process for that, so thank you.

Okay. Are we there? Are we there? Motion to postpone indefinitely. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Nay. Roll call.

Council Member Adler?

Nay.

Deputy Mayor Johnson? Aye. Council Member King? Aye. Councilmember Gilliam?

Aye.

Councilmember Castemire? Aye. Councilmember Smolko?

Nay.

Mayor Whitting?

Nay. Motion passes. We'll now move on to our other business. We'll have a presentation on the 2027-28 biennial budget by Finance Director Barbara Lopez.

Thank you, Mayor Whitting. And good evening, Council. Barbara Lopez, Finance Director. So just wanted to give you a brief update on the 27-28 biennial budget, where we're at, and some of the things that we're seeing with that. Tonight, I plan on giving you a little bit of economic context behind where we're at with the budget, talk about the general fund itself, and then go into a little bit more information about the streets budget, now that it's not tied to the general fund as much anymore. And then wrap it up with lodging tax in tier three, talk about those two sources, and then what our next steps in the budget process are. Tonight's presentation is about conveying information, getting feedback from you, answering any questions that you might have. No decisions are requested at tonight's meeting. So just a little bit of budget context around what is the economy looking like out there. I think that most of us can go to the grocery store, to the gas station, to other places and kind of see that it's... It's struggling. People are struggling. So one of those things is inflation continues to be high. In this particular, until this morning, April 26 was the last CPI number that we had, which was 4.9%. As of this morning, the June numbers came out, and we use what they call the half one metric, which is like the first half of the year metric. So that actually came in at 4.4%, which is a little bit better than what's showing on the slide. But you'll see how that kind of filters through the rest of the presentation as well. So job market's kind of tough out there. Job seekers are kind of finding it hiring to be really slow. Businesses are cautious. They're being very cautious about hiring and creating new jobs and roles because everything does feel so uncertain right now. And with some of the consumer trends, obviously people are still spending on everyday essentials. But some of those discretionary things, not able to spend as much on those. So we're kind of seeing some of that in our sales tax data. So while the economy could be probably much worse, it's a little tough to want to actually pin really high hopes on where it is going in the future It's hanging in there for us, specifically in Puyallup. But again, we've got plenty of folks that are having a hard time with groceries and gas and just everyday expenses. So the other foundation setting piece that we use is the budget stability policy. This is probably old hat for all of you, but it does bear just repeating it out loud how we build our general fund budget. So for the general fund itself, basically we have core revenues. So our sales tax, our property tax, our other taxes, things that we charge for like permits and things like that. We look at every single line item individually on there. And generally, the budget that we pick moving forward is the lesser of the last two full years of known amounts. So that would be 24 and 25. We do take the sales tax lesser amount and inflate it by 3% per year. So that adds a little bit of increase in their property tax. We actually estimate what that levy amount would be and include it. And I'll talk a bit about that a bit later. Any tax rate changes, which there's none that I'm aware of at this moment. And then if we do have revenue sources, we budget those very conservatively. I'm not aware of any of those at this moment either. So those core revenues are intended to cover our core expenditures. Those are the tier one core services, which are the, it's basically operating all of the programs in the general fund. like police, parks, finance, different departments, all of the different departments for the services that we provide the city. We need to pay debt service if we owe money out there. And we've got a transfer that we do for street maintenance and repairs. We'll talk a bit about that as well. Then there are tier two capital needs. So these are annual replacements towards replacement of end of life things, like all of our vehicles, computers, and other equipment that are set up on a replacement type schedule. So at the end of the day, the core revenues would need to cover the tier one and the tier two items. Tier one would always have priority over tier two. Then at the end, basically at the end we get tier three monies when our revenues come in higher than expected, our expenses are maybe lower than expected. That's where it can create some tier three monies that can be used for one-time capital projects. So that's the underlying foundation for building the general fund budget. So what you see on this slide are the anticipated core revenues for the general fund for 27 and 28, which are $64.5 million and $65.8 million. They're in alignment. They've been created in alignment with the budget stability policy, and they are very similar to those that were presented to you earlier in the year at the council retreat in February. Not really much has changed. Not seen anything so far this year that would warrant any changes to those. One thing that is included in here is the 1% allowable increase in the property tax, plus a little bit for new construction. The sales tax is based on 2024 actuals, because that was less than 25, plus 3% a year. I've been doing a deeper dive on the sales tax just because we are struggling a little bit in sales tax compared to where we might want to be. But it's actually looking like this forecast is still a reasonable forecast based on what we're seeing so far. And then another bigger component to it are the utility taxes on the city owned utilities. So those by Puyallup Municipal Code, we increase each year by the construction cost index. So that's 1.5% plus any catch up per the 2022 utility rate study. So 2027 is the last year of catch up rate increases for that. So those are the core revenues that we're building the general fund budget around. So then when we get to what we call baseline expenses, so essentially what the baseline expenditures are kind of reflects the necessary costs to provide current levels of service. We're not adding anything new. We're basically just taking what we are doing and what is it going to cost us to do that in the next year. For salaries and wages, you'll notice I've still got on the slide a 5% increase in 2027. That will be 4.4, unless we've got a collective bargaining agreement that says something different in there. So these numbers will change a little bit based on that. Medical benefits, we do have a 10% increase budgeted for each year. Medical costs keep going higher and higher, and we need to be able to make sure that we're able to pay those claims as they come in. Most other things are strategic 3% increases for most items to try to keep pace with inflation. just be able to buy the supplies and equipment and services that we need. A few exceptions are fuel, because fuel has gone so high. There is a heftier increase for fuel to match those current trends. And then under services, the public defender costs, we anticipate going up quite a bit based on the rulings as far as how many cases a public defender can take and all of that. And then some of our own utilities, where we pay for electricity and things like that, have been increased to what our expected costs are. So the baseline expenditures then for 2027 are expected to be around 63.9 million and then 66.1 in 2028. Again, those will change a little bit based on CPI. and doing the recalcs on that. So kind of the bottom line is that overall, OK, the biennial budget does balance. So we've got a little bit of revenues that are more than expenses in 27 offset by reduction in 28. So overall, the biennium does balance, which is good news. We've had years where that hasn't been the case. The challenging part is that that leaves limited funding available to address any other needs that are coming out. Department requests, excuse me, facilities, lifecycle maintenance, additional street maintenance, those sorts of things. So there's definitely not a surplus for spending there to address additional needs. So I did want to talk just a little bit more about streets. And on this particular slide, my intention here is to... We have all sorts of different facets of streets and costs related with streets. My intention here was to show you and to try to make it a little bit clearer how much we spend on certain kinds of... expenses for streets so the first big category is street operations that's the personnel day-to-day materials equipment you know to go fix potholes do day-to-day maintenance traffic signals electricity for the street lights that are out there some of the costs for Public Works Administration So for 2027, we expect that amount to be just over $5.2 million just for day-to-day street operations. $3.3 million of that is coming from the transportation benefit district sales tax that was adopted. And then an additional $1.5 is coming from real estate excise tax. And then we do get some fuel tax monies that help fund that as well. The repair and maintenance, that's the $1.1 million from the general fund. Those monies are for more preservation activities, like chip sealing, asphalt overlays, bigger repairs to sidewalks. We also have some debt service that we're still paying on some street repairs and work that was done several years ago. That $700,000 comes from the traffic impact fees. So the first $700,000 go towards paying for that. I will say that the debt service will be paid off in 2028. So we've only got a couple more budget years for that. And then those monies would be available for something else. And then what's left are capital projects. So there's about $1 million left of real estate excise tax and fuel tax that is eligible for those larger capital projects, more of the rehabilitation, the reconstruction, and adding capacity projects. So we wanted to focus just a little bit more on the repair and maintenance, that $1.1 million, and what does that pay for and what does that not pay for. Mayor, with your permission, I'd like to let our Public Works Director, Ken Davies, speak to the next couple of slides.

We'd be happy to hear from Ken.

All right.

Good evening, Ken Davies, Public Works Director. So I'd like to begin to provide some context of where we are today. Since 2006, our street system has grown from approximately 140 centerline miles to more than 160 centerline miles, an increase of about 14%. During that same period, the annual budget for repair and replacement has remained essentially unchanged at $1.1 million. The purchasing power of that funding has steadily declined due to inflation and increased construction costs. As a result, we were able to chip seal approximately 6.7% of the street network annually in 2006, and then today we can only treat about 2.7% of a significantly larger system. In other words, we are maintaining more infrastructure with the same dollars, while those dollars buy considerably less than they did two decades ago. This reduction in treatment capacity has a direct impact on long-term condition of our streets. This slide illustrates why preservation is so important. Pavement naturally deteriorates over time, but the rate of deterioration accelerates once it reaches a certain condition. The graph demonstrates that relatively low costs for preventative maintenance can extend pavement life significantly. So if you look at that graph, when we do a chip seal, it just goes back to 100 and starts over again. So it's a really low cost currently, about $6.50 a square yard. While if we delay maintenance, so we're letting it go down that graph, the roads are much more expensive getting to rehabilitation or where she had reconstruction projects later. On the left, you'll see the average pavement condition index, or PCI. For each functional classification within our system, we're beginning to see the effects of funding constraints reflected in these values. You notice the residential... is dropping to like a 69. And that's probably one of our most difficult, just because the funding for grants and whatnot is a little bit more difficult on residential roads. The key takeaway is that every dollar invested in preservation while roads are still in good or fair condition helps avoid substantial higher costs in the future as fewer streets receive timely maintenance, more of the network moves towards that tipping point where preservation is no longer sufficient. This slide compares our current investment with what staff believes is a more sustainable funding level. Today, the $1.1 million annual budget must be spread across multiple maintenance activities, including pavement preservations, which is chip seals and overlays, street repairs and replacements, which includes alley work, tree removal, guardrail replacement, for example, sidewalk link and repair, city bridge maintenance, underground storage tank fund, traffic programs, and signal replacements. Those competing needs limit the amount of work we can accomplish in any single area. Based on our pavement analysis and current condition costs, staff estimates an annual funding level of approximately $3.2 to $3.3 million would allow us to implement a more balanced preservation strategy, increase the number of lane miles treated each year, and better protect the city's investment in transportation infrastructure. This isn't to suggest that funding must reach this level immediately. Rather, it provides a target that reflects what would be needed to maintain the network more effectively over the long term. To summarize, the cost of preserving streets continues to increase due to inflation and higher construction costs. Our current level of maintenance is no longer keeping pace with the needs of the system, and we're beginning to see that reflected in our pavement condition. The current annual budget is $1.1 million, while we estimate that long-term need to be about $3.2 to $3.3. I will go ahead and turn it back over to Barbara for the last bullet point.

So based on the need in this particular area, we are looking at options in the 27-28 budget to try to at least lessen that gap between what we currently have and what is felt as needed, knowing that the general fund really doesn't have any more money to kick in, just looking at what might be other options for that. So one of the things that could come through as a recommendation for you to consider is to allocate a certain percentage of any tier three monies to the street repair and maintenance. When the budget stability policy was first created, one third went towards getting our reserves back up, one third went towards debt service, and one third then was left over to be able to be used for capital projects. So it's similar in concept to that. So that may be a recommendation that would be coming out to help lessen that particular gap in funding. So just a last couple of quick topics. Lodging tax in tier three. So lodging tax for external organizations, there's $853,690 that's going to be available for the 2027 awards, which is about $140,000 more than last year. So that might help get a few more dollars out there to fund those organizations. And then with the city-initiated projects, there's about 686,000 that was existing and unallocated. We're adding just over another million funding for 2027. So there'll be about 1.7 million available for city-initiated projects. And then on the Tier 3 funding side, at the beginning of the year, we started the year with about $10 million in Tier 3. Over the last few months during budget council meetings, different things have come up, such as the parking lot, the flagpole, the Quiet Zone grant match. that we've deducted out of that. We've also got $5 million still reserved for the jail remodel. So based on that, there's just under $2.8 million available for applications in this budget. And then the last slide, our next step. So right now, staff work is underway to build this budget. Departments are identifying and preparing their budget requests. We're starting to go through those and evaluating the needs and the priorities there. We're also doing our next phase of work with the priority-based budgeting framework so that we can reframe our budget in terms of the programs that they serve. So we are working on assigning costs and revenues to those. We'll be coming back with that information in October at the budget study sessions. And then developing our six-year capital plans for streets, parks, and utilities. That work is underway. So the next steps after that, while the city managers already started to review some of the items for the proposed budget, but then figuring out what will actually go into that proposed budget that we bring to you. so we'll prepare that and that is due to you all on October 5th by law and Council budget study sessions are scheduled for October 13th and 14th and then based on whatever comes out of that we're tentatively targeting October 27th for the public hearings and first readings and then November 10th for second readings So with that, we're happy to take any questions, any feedback that you might have for us.

I'd just like to make the comment that those road statistics cause me great dismay. And that's a task we need to take on as a council, in my opinion. Council Member Kastema.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So we passed the transportation, I get the acronyms all messed up.

TBD.

TBD.

TBD, Transportation Benefit District.

Yes. Help me out here, Barb, because I thought when we did that, all of our shortcomings, all of our consternation with everything dealing with transportation would be over. And I look at this maintenance budget and the gap we have to fill there. What's the long-term prognosis?

We need to figure out a longer-term way to deal with it.

So TBD didn't solve this?

It did not solve it. Basically, what the TBD did was it got the general fund out of the business of paying for most of the street operations because we had a general fund issue that we were trying to solve in the last budget cycle.

Correct. We still do pay, however, correct, out of the general fund.

Only the 1.1 for street repair and maintenance. Right. Got it. Yes. Okay.

Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Deputy Mayor Johnson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a question that I think I learned from my colleague, Council Member Castema. But I'd love to know, and even in future presentations, to know how we're doing compared to other cities within Pierce County in terms of financial health. It's always, I mean, obviously we're focused on responsibility to take care of the needs of Puyallup, but it helps us appreciate to know the storm when other boats are facing headwinds. And it might reassure us that although it may be difficult compared to what it could be in neighboring cities, they're dealing with things much, much more intense or maybe much, much better. And anyway, so in future presentations, I'd love to know what other cities, at least in the Pierce County area, are doing so that we have something. Because it goes back to Council Member Kastamon that you're Lean Six Sigma and the metrics and all those things. I mean, how do we know that we're doing good budget-wise if we don't have any comparisons to other cities and we still operate the way that we should be? And I say that because my suspect is that we're doing quite well compared to other cities. This is my guesstimation, and maybe I'm wrong, but it'd be nice to know that although we're struggling compared to other cities, for sure, Tacoma and other ones, I heard University of Place is struggling and things, but I'm not sure. That we're operating pretty financially sound and not in a the boat isn't sinking We're taking on a little bit of water over the bow, but but I think we're still in pretty good shape So anyway, that would be a few helpful in future presentations to kind of compare us other cities Unless you happen to know that off the top of your head

I do not. When you go to try to compare to other cities, it's very difficult to get to apples to apples. And so it would be what metrics would we be looking at to try to make those comparisons. So trying to figure out what that might be that would be an apples to apples basis.

Well, maybe Talika could help with that in terms of some metrics that would take a look at that. So, I mean, again, I'm not looking at analytical exact, but just overall general budget. You know, we're 2% under, 1% under, over, whatever. kind of some good company or in better company is helpful. So anyway, that would be some thoughts on that. But other than that, I think he helps in pretty good shape considering how tough it is. And I will affirm personally that, you know, we're going through some tough times. There's no question about that. And, you know, the pain pinch, at least for a lot of people, including myself, is real. So I empathize with that. But I want to thank the city and the and the council for responsible budgeting and running a pretty tight city to be in as good of a shape as we are now. And I'm very fortunate to those who have gone before us who set the tone for the culture of our city to have these nice revenue streams. Because I do know that you know this, is that compared to other cities, our ratio of sales tax is much higher than many other cities in terms of income. So we're fortunate. We're not depending upon a huge majority of our budget coming from taxes, from property taxes from our constituents, but really a huge influx of exorbitant money coming from sales tax that's been great in the car lots and the mall and the Costco. We're very fortunate to have, for kind of a smaller city, have that kind of tax revenue. So I think that's pretty unique to us, isn't it?

Yes, that is pretty unique to us. What I would say is that there's pros and cons with all variations of different types of taxes. Yes, property tax doesn't necessarily grow at the pace of your expenses, so there's some limitations there. But also, our sales tax revenue is much more subject to changes based on economic conditions. So if people are struggling to put food on the table, put gas in their vehicles, they're not necessarily very likely to go buy a new car. So there's tradeoffs with all of them.

Yeah, I think our ratio is pretty good. Let's see, I'm trying to think. There's one other thing that's interesting I was going to mention, and blasted, I can't think of it. But overall, I think we're in great shape. So thank you, Barbara.

Council Member Adler.

Thank you. Thank you both for the presentation. I always enjoy when solutions are brought forward. Although we're not making that decision here today, I do appreciate the recommendation and teeing it up for a more thoughtful conversation in the future related to tapping some of those tier three dollars, for which, when we get there, I will be supportive of. And I really want to thank you for starting and setting the tone of your presentation related to affordability and what individuals are having to deal with every day in this economic environment and being very sensitive to that. That's very important. I watched a CBS News clip. the other day over the weekend. And it was about how individuals are now going into debt using credit cards to meet their daily needs. food, housing when they can, et cetera, gas, utilities, but particularly food, and that defaulting on that debt. And so it's very real. And again, I just want to thank you for, of course, keeping our constituents and our residents in the center and being thoughtful of what you bring forward to us. Thank you.

And Barbara, will we see you in October? Yes. You will see me in October.

OK, great.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Council Member Kastema. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I was thinking about data, if we could look at per capita numbers. In other words, per capita, what is our maintenance budget? What's our capital construction budget, et cetera, on a per capita basis? That would be interesting, you asking about metrics. And that might be a way to approach that.

OK.

Thank you. Thank you.

OK, any more questions or comments? OK, let us move on to our Puyallup Public Library Strategic Plan, presented by Library Director Nicole.

Hello.

Hi, Mayor and Council. Thanks for having me here. So I think the mitt's driving. OK. So I just kind of wanted to go over some of the highlights, I guess, of the strategic plan that we have coming up. If I skip anything that you're interested in, be sure to ask questions. But I'm just going to pick out the things that I think are the most important. So here we go. This is basically what we're going to go over. You guys have already seen this, I think. I do want to point out, though, the two little girls in the picture there, they are Paisley and Zoe. And they actually booked our display case so that they could share their horse collection. So it was kind of adorable. So I like to include them in any presentation. Just some of the things from the past. We were voted best library of 2025 for the best of the South Sound. Also, we've had 1,353 programs and we had 46,918 participants. Now that seems kind of high, but we do have a lot of passive program to be inclusive. So like our scavenger hunt, we have between 1,100, 1,200 a month, but one month we even had 1,683 participants. So we've always got something going on. Here's our SWAT, which Talika helped us build. If you have any questions about that, you can hit me up after. So what I wanted to point out here As our community's hub, one of the initiatives that we have coming up, we want to enhance the building entrance. It is very worn, looks a little rough, so we're going to be focusing on ways that we can make that more welcoming. Also, we want to upgrade our infrastructure. Largely, we're looking at our HVAC. We're working with facilities and have a grant in. The work would be about $4 million. So this is a matching library capital facilities grant. So hopefully we can get a match for that. So we would be getting $2 million from the state. So working on that. It's not just a matter of like, oh, we're a little bit hot in here. We've had three fires and five major leaks. And so one of the leaks even took out all of our AV in our meeting room. So we've had to close for this. And also, we're a warming and a cooling center. So these are real concerns. So that's really where we're focusing there. On the next goal, I think I would like to point out item three. We're trying to expand career development resources and pathways to support staff growth, engagement, and retention. So we don't really have a budget for training. So we're also looking outside at different grant opportunities. The professional development grant through the Washington State Library, we've applied for that five times this year. And so we've had five people attend trainings or conferences that otherwise they would not have been able to attend. So that's really great to invest in your people. Yep. And then on this one here, I'd like to talk about item two, upgrade the library visitor counting software. That helps us inform decisions about staffing and service planning. So we put in a new system called TrafSys. It's a people counter. What we had previously was basically just a beam. So every time the beam was broken, it counted as one. But if you were holding a baby or you went in side by side, it still just counted as one. This doesn't have facial recognition, but it does see head and shoulders. So if we walk in side by side, it'll count too. We also get accurate information hourly for ingress and egress. So like, when is everyone leaving? Did everyone come in in the first hour and leave? Did they stay all day? We have better information. So that helps us be smarter with our staffing, how many people are at the desk, things like that. The next slide. Yeah, is really just where we're spending a lot of our energy right now is reviewing and adjusting the materials budget to balance physical and digital collections. So we've found that our Digital checkouts through Libby, every year they go up. If you just look at June, in June this year there's 8,000 checkouts for the month. Last year in June it was 7,000. The year before it was 6,000. So we're allocating more of our funds to the e-content. However, OverDrive has a monopoly on that service. So something that you might buy through Amazon for $15 or $20, libraries are being charged between $60 and $180. So it just kind of depends. Well, there's a lot of factors, like is it a one-time checkout, a five-time checkout, six-month access, multiple use? There's a lot of factors, but still, even for the one-time use, we're looking at probably $60. So it's about three times more. So ALA and other groups are working to kind of fight that, but we're trying to find the balance with our budget to meet the need without decimating the budget. And... Questions or comments?

Councilmember Kastema. Thank you. Two of my favorite words, strategic plan. So a question I have, what do you think are the, if you can give me three of the biggest challenges that the library is going to face in the next five years?

Well, I mean, two just popped to mind. So one is the infrastructure, the HVAC. It's a very, very costly repair, but it's absolutely necessary. So that's a huge challenge. And I think that the other thing that the most present need is we have an aging ILS system, which is our catalog, the integrated library system. And we use a system called Horizon, which, just to kind of put it in perspective, I graduated from library school in 2003. And everyone was saying, oh, Horizon's on its way out. And here we are. And many libraries still use it because it's a workhorse, but it doesn't really keep up with the times. And I think that we're going to get to a point where other systems that integrate with that system are no longer going to be compatible. So our other options are shrinking because they don't work with Horizon. So I think that's going to be a costly challenge and a lot of work.

Okay, other question. How will AI... influence the library system here and you know if you want to kind of talk further in scope feel free to do so but how will it impact the city of Puyallup library that's a huge topic but I think what I will answer is you know for us the

issue of ai is that anyone can pop into chat gpt and write a book and then self-publish it and so then you do that and then you put in a purchase request and want us to buy your book we've just made money for you so we've recently changed our collection development policy that we don't knowingly purchase or support AI products. It's happening with audio books too. And I know Pierce County has the same issue. It's pretty broad.

So someone will, excuse me, a little liberty there. So someone will just publish 10 books a month. They could.

Wow. We have people who come in and will write their resume just in AI, which is using chat GPT. Yeah. OK. Thank you. So those types of things. But it's huge.

Fascinating. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions? I should never ask Deputy Mayor Johnson. Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah. Do you still operate a independent library board? Are they fairly active? Or is that kind of fizzled out over the years? And give me a little bit about that aspect of that.

is not okay were you done i'm sorry well i think so i just got excited yeah the board's awesome and they're very active we have a very strong board and uh yeah okay all of our policies uh go through the board and we discuss the direction of the library and i mean they're our biggest advocates yeah okay um maybe uh city clerk because i've been on the um

Board appointments committees the library boards not on our Oversight is it that's that independent board or what? Pursuant to the P out municipal code appointments to the library board and made directly by the city manager. Oh say oh you oh you you do that What was the rationale behind? I'm just curious of history on that. I mean we appoint boards to every single You know aspect of our study, but why is this one independent? It's interesting. I think the council should look at that. Is this the only board that's independent that's appointed as kind of an oddity?

Let's get some information. Deputy Mayor Johnson, there are a couple of other boards that do not go before council. One of those is the fire pension board. The other one is our left board. Those are independently appointed due to representation required by RCW for police retirees or fire retirees.

Right, but there's representation by the council on those, right?

Yes, for the fire pension board.

Yeah, so there's somebody on the council. But I think it sounds like the library is the only unique one that has no representation by the council and or is not appointed by the council committee. team, is that, or the council and direct, right? That's correct. Pursuant to the code. I'd like to take a look at that. Maybe have someone take a look at, is that something we want to incorporate with the rest of the boards as they have with every other board that we have as a process, unless there's some RCW that prevents us from doing that. This is an internal something through Puyallup. Maybe it'd be interesting to take a look at that. So anyway, there's a thought, because I do think we need an active board and be nice if council had some insight on that, like we do it with every other board and It's inconsistent with other boards, and I'm wondering why that's singled out.

Steve has been doing a really good job. What's that? Steve has been doing a good job.

Oh, no doubt about Steve, but the council runs the city, and Steve works for us collectively, and I think if council wanted to, we could certainly implement that consistently. But don't doubt that he's not doing a great job. I don't doubt that at all. I do want to go back to the AI products of books. You mentioned that... As a library industry or as a library individually that you don't purchase or participate any AI developed books? Is that correct? Is that industry or just policy for this one?

It's pretty much industry wide. Industry. Yeah.

Boy, that's interesting to me. Maybe there's some reasoning behind it, but it seems to me a little bit discriminatory if someone wants to use a tool. I remember the old days of coming out with a typewriter. If you did it handwritten, then we would buy it, but if you use a typewriter, we're not going to buy it anymore. That's interesting to me that that would be a disenfranchise of somebody. I mean, there could be a screening process, but to ban all works, writing works, that someone used an AI tool to put the information together is interesting to me. But this is a learning curve, right? So right now it may be banned. Maybe there'll be some metrics put in that would allow some filtering and not disenfranchise. Because there could be some great, I mean, the few times I've used AI, it doesn't do all the work for you. You still have to do the input, the changes, the modifications. I mean, so there's not like it just spits it out and blows this thing out with no input. So there is some work involved. But anyway, that's an interesting comment. I'd love to learn more about that in my own personal time. But that's all I had. Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Gilliam.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Nicole, I just want to say you're phenomenal. I appreciate your professionalism, the way that you work with community partners, being on the Library Foundation Board myself, the way you keep us all in line to the best of your ability, but just share with us your needs so that we as active community members can work on behalf of of the library and support you and your great work. So Nicole is a phenomenal leader. She listens to her team. She supports people really well. She supports the community really well. It goes out of her way to find out what's going on and how to meet those needs for the community. So I'm a huge fan of you, Nicole. I appreciate you. And she's even putting up with student interns who choose to finally show up. So really grateful for you. You are doing a phenomenal job. I really appreciate you.

Thank you, and I really appreciate you, too, and appreciate the work that you do with the foundation beyond here. One of the first pictures we have on the slide show is of the foundation silent reading event, which is a fundraiser to pay for capital expenses that are not covered in our budget. So I know that a lot of work goes into all of that, and everyone has multiple jobs and commitments and children and games and dance and all of that, and still everyone makes that happen. So it's really huge. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. Appreciate it. We'll now have our city manager's report.

Just very briefly, you have a meeting next week, and the items at this point that will be on there, there will be a public hearing on the moratorium for the battery energy storage system facilities. That's a required public hearing. There's no action, just the public hearing. There will be the resolution to set a public hearing for the street vacation facility. pertaining to Puyallup School District. That resolution setting the public hearing will be before you. And then seeking some direction from you all on House Bill 1406 funds and the process you'd like to use for those funds as we are looking towards this year's budget. There might be a couple other items that may be added, but at this point, those are the three substantive items. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move on to Councilmember reports.

Councilmember Kastema. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. To address a few comments that were made this evening, just so the public knows, there's no data centers that are planned that I have scoured everywhere for the city of Puyallup. We have had a data center already since 2011 at the Benaroya facility. Then Voltage Park AI and artificial intelligence data center did come in last year. I think most of us here attended the opening of that. I agree with many of the concerns that the audience has that we have to be very careful. in light of expanding data centers and what we're seeing across the United States. I think that, in fact, I think there will be solutions eventually, but I think that we have to be very cautious. But people have to keep in mind that we already have them here. So when people say we don't want data centers, I have to tell them that that piece of property was originally a microchip manufacturer back in the late 70s. Then Matshutsa purchased them, microchip, all of that. It's a place with redundant power, fiber optic network, et cetera. So it tends to lend itself towards that. However, I did check the resources. And there is cities not going to be selling property to a data center or anything along that line. I just want to lay any fears that are out there. I do want people to be aware of this, though, is that in the Northwest, our power rates are going up. And people truly now are using their electric cars, electronics more often. And data centers contribute, but not in a major way. They're a contributor. Frankly, what I think we have to keep our eye on, and it's kind of altruistic, but we set a goal that by 2045, 100% of all the energy that we use in Washington state will be generated by non-carbon sources. It will be renewable, non-carbon emitting. And frankly, I think that's an impossible task. But our utilities, both public and private, are trying to do whatever it takes to meet that goal. Hence, next week we're going to be talking about those batteries. And those batteries, the current technology, they're pretty dangerous. They can cause a lot of environmental damage, etc. People blame PSE, but they're only trying to create an infrastructure that can store energy when it's actually created, such as wind and solar. Obviously solar during the day, wind predominantly at night. Obviously, it blows during the day, but at night is when you get a lot more of the major thrusts. And both of those do not match the peak time of when people use energy. So they're trying to come up with storage mechanisms that can store that energy, and it's all about meeting those goals. I believe there's another one that is 80% by 2032. Just keep that in mind. that I saw the PSE projected increases in power, and I think it's like 20% over the next two, three years. And it's already been a huge increase. Again, most of that is because of infrastructure buildup that they have to do. I'd like to talk now about the Fourth of July. Wow, Puyallup did it right. The third, Red, White, and Kaboom, was a great event that the Chamber of Commerce was really one that facilitated that. There was a fun run. Kim Fields worked on that. But that was very well attended. And I thought just went over spectacularly. At the same time, on the 4th, we had a cruise event. That's Mark Crosby's group that started early in the morning at 9 o'clock. So we had hundreds of classic cars going around Puyallup. We had our standard farmer's market. But at 4 o'clock was an event. that was tremendous, right out here in Pioneer Park. I was talking to people who came from Seattle, from all over, because they wanted to see a brass band. They wanted to see someone really commemorate 250th anniversary of the United States. And I think we did a pretty good job. Obviously, the list is too long for me to think, but the Chamber of Commerce, the FW, American Legion, Main Street Association, Cruz, Puyallup. I think the best part of it, and I didn't really expect this, was when Jack Taylor and Andy Anderson or the Declaration of Independence. It was moving. I've never really heard it read from beginning to end, plus they put the names of all the people who signed it. And while I was listening to that, I thought to myself, you know, those people who signed that were signing their death warrant. That was tyranny. They were signing not only the death warrant for themselves, but obviously their families. A lot of people would have been impacted with this had the United States not won the Revolution War. Revolutionary War. And I noticed there were two names on there that really stood out to me, John Adams, second president of the United States, and Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. I don't know if the public knows, but they were arch enemies. when they were in their political prime. They were just at it. Thomas Jefferson kind of is said to be the one that created a political party. But he utilized media, all of this. But they were at each other's throats. After they got out of office, they went to each other and they said, let's get together. Let's be friends. But we can never talk about politics. And the correspondence between those two, I believe, totaled like 150 letters over the years, something along that lines. But Thomas Jefferson, a little note than me bringing these two up, is he was determined to die. on the 4th of July. He was going to hold out till the 50th anniversary of the United States. And at this time, Thomas Jefferson was living a couple hundred miles away from John Adams. Thomas Jefferson held out. The doctor would do whatever medication to keep him alive, and he would ask what the time was. And when he was assured that it, in fact, was the 4th of July, the 50th, anniversary, he passed away. Well, wouldn't you know, that very same day, John Adams passed away, the 4th of July. And they say that John Adams, I hope I don't, I think, this is off memory, but I think verbatim, John Adams thought Thomas Jefferson was still alive. And his last words were, Thomas Jefferson still lives. not knowing that Thomas Jefferson had died before him. And it's one of those tributes to America. They actually set a tradition at that point. Because if you study European history, French Revolution, all that kind of stuff, just a bloody mess when it comes to people somehow coming back together after they've been involved in these conflicts. But they set a precedent. in the United States for some time as an example of people to put aside politics. and realize that there is so much more that binds us, so much more about being American than whether you're an R or a D or whatever the case may be. And they set that precedent and that example. So when you had Andy Anderson and Jack Taylor, when you had them giving that, talking about the Declaration of Independence and then mentioning every single name, boy, the meaning really came home. And I hope... We repeat that. I mean, it was very enlightening for me. And I just, I hope they do it. Because I don't know if I'm going to make the 300th. And, you know, anyway, if I did, it would be very high tech and would not be something that I would probably find pleasing. So with that, thank you, Mr. Mayor, for those extended remarks. Council Member King.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I mean, what a phenomenal night of discussion and debate and conversation and hearing from those in public comment. In particular, the nurses that were here. We hope that they will be able to work through those bargaining agreements and being able to be paid and being able to stay around in our city, that would be a phenomenal situation to occur sooner than later so that way we don't lose great nurses in our city. Just a little update about the flag. Last numbers that I heard, we were at 57,000 right now in total monies raised with, I know, more that have pledged that they will be contributing very soon. So I have no doubt that we will be able to get that flag fully funded by the public in a private way. What my colleague, Councilmember Kastema, said regarding data centers and energy, that is a big issue. And I would have to agree with a lot of the items that he brought up and that we got to make sure that we monitor how those data centers get placed. And I don't know what that future looks like, but we got to make sure that they do not disrupt our community at all. And whether that means that they get placed in different areas or whatever the case may be, we need to make sure that we have that taken care of appropriately. And that way we do not disturb our wonderful community. Moving on to the July 2nd, 3rd, and 4th events that we had here in the city. We had our Thursday night market on July 2nd, and the Red, White, and Kaboom, which was fantastic on July 3rd. I had somebody tell me that the fireworks were the best that they've ever seen, which they were quite nice, I might say. They reached far above expectations. Good Sam in our downtown there. And so they were high. They were beautiful. They were big. And it was an amazing turnout. I had the opportunity to be there with a few of my colleagues to kick it off. And it was an amazing, amazing event. The Puyallup 250 on Saturday, starting off with the Farmer's Market, which was a great turnout, then followed up with the Puyallup Sumner Chamber of Commerce. kicking off the PL 250 official event later on that afternoon. That also was a great turnout. The reading of the Declaration of Independence was phenomenal. take my hat off for Andy Anderson and Jack Taylor. They were top notch and just the entire event was fantastic. And I just want to say thank you to, uh, all of those that were a part of it here at the city of Puyallup. Uh, but also more importantly, uh, the Puyallup seminar chamber of commerce, uh, and, uh, working hand in hand with the main street association to make sure that the transition from the farmer's market to the, 250 event was great and cruise Puyallup turned out and they had a great turnout with all their cars and so it was a great great event I was honored to be a part of it all and to be standing there with a lot of you side by side as we celebrated our 250th and I can't wait to see what we what we have in store for the next 50 years So I hope to make it. And I'm not even the youngest person on the council anymore, so I can't even say that. But I hope to make it. Gosh, I'll be 95 at that time. Hopefully I can do it. But anyway, thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Council Member Smolkoff.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll keep it short and sweet. I just wanted to remind everybody to vote. Check out your mailboxes for your voters' pamphlets and your ballots should be coming soon if you haven't gotten them already. And get out the vote. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor Whitting. I can't believe I'm about to say this. I may get some some fans, might get a few non-fans, but I too enjoy the Fourth of July, but I was kind of wondering if maybe... Purell might at some point look at Not banning but limiting the amount of fireworks going off and deep into the night And I know that this is a 250th and I believe in you know blowing out fireworks and having a good time But it seems like every year seems to be a little bit more intense and I think about you know people are dealing with you know trauma and I think about animals and and tranquilizers and all the stuff that people are locking themselves up into rooms with tranquilizers just to deal with it. Again, it doesn't affect me directly, but I am empathetic with the long window. I know that some cities ban outright. I'm not suggesting that. I'm not suggesting that we you know, we do anything, but I do think it wouldn't be a bad idea to entertain limiting it, you know, say from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. and we're just done, you know, after 10 p.m. How many hours do you need, right? I mean, I don't know. And, you know, the enforcement issue, of course, is, you know, a whole other story. But I do wonder if at some point we should entertain it because it does seem that, you know, I mean, how many hours in your neighborhood do you, I mean, do you have to shoot off fireworks? Anyway, that's a thought, just a point of conversation perhaps. I do know that if we ever entertain it, we have to, I think there's a process that if we were going to, let's say, hypothetically limit or even ban, which I'm not suggesting ban, but it would take a year. We'd have to talk about it now, and then we'd have to let them sell next year, and then the effect would go the following year, I think, but... Anyway, there's some thoughts on that. Council Member Kastema, thanks for your conversation about these two individuals and how beyond the policy they were able to find common ground and enjoy life together. I think this, I'm going to give kudos to our council. I think for the most part, we do a pretty good job here in Puyallup. We have differences. There's no question I've experienced it with many of you here off and on. And some of them are very, you know, recent differences. But after those recent differences politically, I've engaged several of you here after that fact, and it's amazing the sincere ability to overlook that and to talk about the measure at hand now and not hold chips on their shoulders is remarkable. And so anyway, I give credit to the city council appeal for really modeling civility, even though we have differences. Because I do remember, many of us remember, city councils decades past, it was newsworthy. There's cameras down here going for it. There was a little bit of hostility and maybe even a little bit of words publicly. They were pretty out of line. But we're not there now. I don't think we'll be there in a long time, if ever. So kudos to the culture that I think we all contribute to for that. Lastly, and really most importantly, what I was really excited to talk about is we kicked off our summer concert in the park series right down here at Pioneer Park last Thursday. We had a Van Halen 80s tribute band come out and play all these fun songs and great turnout. I don't know what the turnout was, Cody, but it was probably pretty full park. And so this week we have a group called Slim Whizzy, who is a country rock and blues band, tribute band. And the one I'm really excited about is a week from Thursday, And we had this, I think this group last year, and I can tell you, I've been to a lot of these concert series. This was, I think, the largest one ever. I mean, ever, all the way around. And it was the Journey tribute band, all Journey songs. And Wheel in the Sky Keeps Turning and, you know, all those wonderful songs. Anyway, get your chairs there early because I think it's going to be packed and fantastic. So great event, young, old, people getting together and they, They even asked me to sing and called me up and said, I can't sing over to the Bean. But you know what? I didn't care. I was having fun with the people, having a good time. So it was a good show. Thank you.

Council Member Adler.

Thank you. I'll be very short and sweet. I'll just say, to piggyback off of the deputy mayor's comments about tomorrow, or tomorrow, Thursday, Thursday's concert. And the band Slim Whizzy, Dr. Corliss is a part of that band, who's a multi-care provider, very well known. And they performed at Red White and Kaboom, and they were pretty terrific. So I've had the good fortune of being enjoying their jams many times, but they were really great on Red, White, and Kaboom. I'll just echo many of the comments from my colleagues here tonight related to the 4th of July America 250 celebration. I am grateful that I was able to participate in all of the events, if not the entire time, for part of the time. And it was very, I mean, especially Red, White, and Kaboom. I mean, it was outstanding. Vendors were closing up shop early just because of how many folks were there. I felt like the fireworks show was great. I mean, one of the best. And I'm really glad that all of those partnerships and hard work and long days and long nights came together because it is something that absolutely, certainly, we can all be proud of. So I don't know. I guess in 50 years, I'll find out how we do. I'll report back. Stay tuned. In that vein, while I was at some of our 4th of July events, very earnestly, folks inquired about our flag down at North Meridian. And I appreciate Councilmember King's update. Thank you for that related to the funding, which I took a look at the website earlier today, too, and saw that $58,000 completion level that we're at. But earnest, genuinely earnestly, I am curious if we can get a update, city manager, just on where, you know, I know the mayor gave an update, but where we are in the implementation and the timeline. Just want to be, because I didn't know how to answer the question. So I would appreciate just the official update. So with that, that's all I have.

I will allow you to provide that, city manager.

So the flag is set to arrive July 22nd right now, as my understanding. I'm looking at Ken Davey just to make sure I'm correct on that. At that point, we have asked DOT for when they will be installing it. We have not, unless Ken has heard recently, still has not heard back the exact date. So it comes in pieces. So the pole is fabricated in Texas, and they ship it up here in pieces, and then they have to fabricate it. And they have to coat it so that it will last for many, many years. And so it preserves its, and then they also have to put in the lighting, the electrical conduit. So in terms of when it will actually go up, we do not have a date certain yet on that. But once we do, we will certainly let you know. We will be updating the website as we do each week. Thank you to the city clerk for doing that with the dollar amount for the fundraising.

Thank you. Council Member Gillian.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just agree with all of my colleagues' comments on the celebration of our 250th birthday for our nation. I also was very moved by the Declaration of Independent Reading. But I also really appreciated Lieutenant Governor Denny Hex sharing as well. He's a phenomenal man. During the Red White and Kaboom, I have a little confession to make. I definitely spent a lot of time there. And I was in direct heat. And I got to see a lot of my students over the summer. I'm one of those teachers that actually likes my kids. And they're like, Miss Kelly. Anyway, OK. But I got really overheated. And so I decided to look up what's going on in the movie theater. And there's Young Washington. If you haven't seen it, please do yourself a favor and go watch it. Totally awesome. Sorry, now I'm talking like a junior high teacher. It is the life of George Washington from young one until he started the French Revolutionary War and then became a man, if I could put it that way. Go watch the movie. It'll make sense. And then I'm driving back to the red, white kaboom just a little bit too late and All the fireworks are going off. I had to pull over. There was a ton of people that were pulled over just enjoying the fireworks. And all in my head, you know that song from Sandlot? Oh, beautiful for you. Anyway, so who was the guy? Louis Armstrong? I'm not sure. It was somebody with a really great voice. That was going on in my mind as I pulled over and enjoyed it watching the fireworks with everybody else. But yes, go see Young Washington. I am really looking forward to touring Good Roots. I want to see that for myself. I would like to help them know the process and how we get them funding. And I'm really excited to witness that. I also wanted to say thank you to Penny Thorpe. In your emails, you express your concern, but you also give more information for solutions and greater study. I do get a lot of emails, and it's hard for me to respond when the email is... I'm just a human being, OK? And so when you just shoot an email like, you need to do better, and I'm like, you're not giving a solution. You're not giving resources. You're just complaining. And I understand that people can be frustrated about something, but when you email and you don't know all the facts and you just vent, I don't know how to respond to that, just being honest. But I really do appreciate Penny Thorpe and how she has communicated regarding the data centers. And I hope that you've heard of the council and our comments tonight address that in that we're not growing data centers in Puyallup. And so I just want to reiterate that. And then also during the public comments, there was a gentleman, I think I wrote his name down, Jim, regarding electric bike etiquette at parks. I think we need to do that. I would really love to have a sign that says, hey, if you're riding and do pictures, if you got any of these, you get to go 10 miles an hour, stay to the left or use these on your right, do a little bell ring or whatever. I think we need to do some park etiquette or saying these are prohibited in this space. So I really appreciate that idea as well. And with that, I will be done. Good night, Puyallup.

Okay, a couple of things. I went on a tour this past week of the lower Puyallup. There's a flood control zone district that's been formed to study the area down there. It's susceptible to flooding and could cause some pretty serious damage. Hans Unger is representing the city in a lot of that work and I think he's doing a great job, but it's something that we need to be aware of and and pay attention to, I think. I also appreciate Councilmember Castema's words about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. And on that note, I'd like to mention that there's an organizational meeting for Braver Angels, an organization that works to help people have conversations across a political divide without raising the temperature of the conversation. use civility and respect and techniques to help share ideas and allow space for people to have differences of opinion. I'd like to characterize it as agreeing to disagree agreeably. So that organizational meeting is on the 29th of this month at 6 o'clock at Wildwood Park, Shelter 10. If somebody's interested in that, they can email me and I'll get them the information. Another project that's underway, there's a program called Golden Bridges. It's an effort by the Puyallup School District to get people to come down and help in Koshner Elementary School to help improve math and reading scores. So we're soliciting people to come down. It would be a commitment of a couple of times a week. So particularly folks that are retired be a good way to, if you're like me, when your grandchildren aren't close by, it's a good way to get a grandkid fix and help the students that may be English as a second language student that are lagging a little bit because of language challenges. Do a little reading with them, help with their math a little bit, and give them a firm foundation so that they can excel as they go through their junior high and high school educations. And the last thing I'd like to mention is on the good roots. We talked about a process and putting them through the community grants process. And I support that idea put forward by Councilmember Kastema. I pinged the city manager during the course of the meeting and he indicated that the a time to apply for that has passed. So they would miss the cutoff for community grants, and that would mean put them out so we wouldn't consider them for a year. So I don't think that was our intention tonight. It's one of those unintended consequences that I think we want to avoid. I would like to suggest that we authorize our city clerk to open up community grants for for Goodroots to put in an application and go through the process as intended. Hopefully, I'm not sure what protocol is here. Can we, this evening, do that?

Well, I mean, so just off the cuff, I mean, this is a council meeting and a council member obviously can make a motion. This is your meeting, so you make a motion. I would say that my recollection is in the past when the council wanted to open up the process, it wasn't open up for one specific organization, it was opened up for Anybody to apply this issue came up. It was several years back I don't recall the exact but if there was this issue and so instead of just opening up for one At that time the city opened it up for any organization. So But again, this is you know, at the end of the day, this is a budget decision that council makes so does that answer your question?

Mr. Matt's thank you. So so this is a little bit different in that. This is a unique situation that the this particular organization went down the wrong path. And so they would apparently miss out. But if we feel like we need to open it up for all, I would like to make the motion that we open up our community grants process for one week so that Good Roots can get into that.

Second.

Yep. It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Appreciate it. And we will now adjourn into executive session to discuss with city attorneys litigation or potential litigation in which the city, the city council, or a council member acting in an official capacity is or is likely to become a party. The executive session is expected to last 45 minutes, and no further action is expected. Meeting recessed.