City Council - Regular Meeting

It is called to order. Will everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Will the city clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Castemar?

Excused.

Councilmember Smolko?

Present.

Councilmember Adler?

Present.

Deputy Mayor Johnson? Present. Councilmember King? Present. Councilmember Gillian?

Present.

Mayor Wedding.

Present. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

Second. Moved and seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. We've got a number of meeting minutes that we need to get caught up on. So we'll be considering minutes for June 16, June 30, July 14, and July 21. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes of June 16? Motion to approve.

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Minutes of June 30th?

So moved.

Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Minutes of July 14th? So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Minutes of July 21st? Motion to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. OK, we'll now move on to citizen comments. Just for those that may be new, we have slips over on this table on the side there if you want to sign up to speak. We'll consider those that have signed up in advance and then open it up for anybody that has not submitted one of the sheets. So first, we'll hear tonight from Mr. Dave Churchman from District 2.

Mr. Mayor, would you like me to read the instructions first?

Yes, I would. Thank you.

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 have 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 a 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. Mr. Churchman.

Good evening. I'm going to talk about the flag. A few months ago, we had a whole cadre of VFW guys sitting here. led by Josh Wilden and our council rep, county council rep. And they stood up here and expressed that that flag needed to be built and bought based on patriotism. But they sure gave me, I'm sure many other people, the impression that the VFW was going to pony up quite a bit of money to help pay for that thing. Well, not so. Public records, this is the entire list. Excuse me. Nine names are on the list. None of them are VFW. Only one council member, and that was the mayor himself, and I don't think he was in favor of the flag to start with. Only three of the nine actually live in the city. That tells me that there's not a lot of support in this city for that flag. And not a lot of support from the VFW either. Now, Mr. King over here.

Point of order.

OK, now we have a council member.

We have a point of order. What is your point of order?

must follow the rules.

Please don't address individual candidates.

It was surprising when someone erects their own flag in their own front yard. Someone who wanted the flag to be paid for by the city, the big one. Now they have their own teaming version in their front yard, which apparently is not too popular amongst these neighbors. This means that the whole concept of this flag was just a vanity project for someone. It's also not on time either. Now I see the VFW wants to march downtown here. For what reason? Are they going to march to where the flag is supposed to go? It's pretty... Pretty lousy. This whole thing has been a disaster for someone's vanity. Do you find this funny up the end there? Dave. Thank you. Mr. Churchman.

Well, next here from Val Dent.

Val Dent, District 2.

Snake oil refers to deceptive marketing practices for health care, but can also be used for other forms of deception. Hustler, depending on actions, describes an ambitious entrepreneur, or it can be used to describe a scammer, a gambler, or a common con man. My numbers for the vanity poll are solid. Your mocking me will not change that. The numbers don't lie. You are right that the monies will only be .00013 cents per household due to the fact that it will be paid for during the next 150 years on current city taxes. you still have not disclosed where the long-term monies for pole inspection, cleaning, continued weather treatment, and flag replacement, which by the way, should have a ceremonial retirement and raising each time, and the traffic controls needed for such actions. You also stated this was a veteran's memorial during the push for a yes vote. All written accounts call it a civil memorial. As a military and veteran supporter, I personally find it distasteful on behalf of the military veteran groups in the city of Puyallup and their supporters on how this was verbally presented as a veteran's memorial when it was never that and calling us unpatriotic for calling a no vote. Surrendering city streets to a school district who's in blatant violation of their own traffic safety rules because you don't want to enforce their rules or spend the monies to enforce the regulations is outrageous. This impacts 22 elementaries, seven junior highs, and three high schools, as well as local communities that they are in. If you do it here, you will do it somewhere else. How you vote on this will decide my next actions to be taken. The quiet train zone. I agree that better crossing protection is needed for the streets involved and the millions of people from around the world attending the Washington Event Center, but you just can't fix stupid. There are at least 15 establishments selling alcohol within 450 feet of the seven crossings. There are approximately 25 cannabis stores with a Puyallup address. There is a small switching yard on Pioneer Way with two live rails and at least three active sidings and one private railroad. The Federal Railroad Administration and BNSF will have that final say. I will fight any further spending on the quiet zone. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from John Hopkins, former mayor.

Thank you, John Hopkins. District 1. I have a completely different spin on the flag thing, and that is it creates a phenomenal opportunity along the trail for a viewing area. We should... make the most of this opportunity, have a couple of benches there, some planters, a nice sign saying what it's about, 250 years and all that kind of thing. And Arts Downtown would be happy to help in any way as far as putting something there that's appropriate. So we offer our support. And Foothills Rails to Trails, we're pretty good at ribbon cutting and stuff like that. I love the idea for that point of view, even coming from an English-Canadian-American or whatever the hell I am these days. The other thing, you know, we've got to do everything we can for the trail. One thing that... I would suggest you do, is Ranger Chris. This has been a tremendous position. He has been an ambassador for the trail and for the parks. I mean, he's very helpful, lead walks, etc., etc. I don't know if you know, but he's not year-round. He's seasonal. He really should be year-round because he's phenomenal value. He adds a degree of safety. He's also a liaison with Chad Pearson. All this stuff kind of helps, you know. So the more that we can do to assist, to make people feel safe... these points of interest, these places of interest. Like when we get the link to Tacoma, all these should be celebrated and make the trail feel safe by doing more urbanization on it. So people look around and go, oh, this is cool. I feel safe here. And then more people come, and then when that happens, people feel even safer. Final little comment, all along the Riverwalk, considering the weather, it did quite well. We had more vendors than we'd had before. 34% came from over 50 miles away. And that was kind of surprising and very good. So LTAC ought to be happy about that. Of course, the artists like the opportunity to have a low bar for displaying their product. and Foothills Rails to Trails were happy that they signed up more membership. And so collaboration, that's the key word. A lot of collaboration between a lot of different people, a lot of different organizations, police, parks, you name it, Fred Oldfield, loads of them. So thank you for your time.

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

Jim Detweiler, District 1. Just a quick overdue thank you to the Parks Department for removing the soggy cedar chip from the Clark's Creek Dog Park so that it can drain to the underlying sand below again. It's so much better. People are coming back. No complaints. But a reminder, a new load of sand will replenish what had been removed to get all the chip out and keep the surface a good distance above the waterlogged ground below, if that's possible. This is a little off agenda, but this year's Puyallup 101 is three weeks away. It starts on September 17th. If you haven't been, oh man, I'd suggest going and bringing your spouse, your neighbors. It's a 10-week course designed to educate residents about the city operations, decision-making, and it's a way to get involved in our citizen advisory boards if you have a special interest in our parks or new building designs, for example. You know, everyone who attends or participates in these city council meetings or the millions watching at home does so because we really care about our city. We often have very different visions of what that is, but we're all united in wanting what we believe is best for this town. And taking Puyallup 101 will absolutely make you better informed, a better observer, and participant in these decisions and these council meetings. And frankly, it better empowers you to hold our elected officials accountable since it arms you with more of the inside knowledge that they have so that you can offer more constructive ways they can make Puyallup what you want it to be. Each Thursday night, class tours one of the city's departments, like the sewage treatment plant, police department. Each Puyallup 101 class is supposed to be 90 minutes, but our class with Chief Engel was so fascinating and transparent, it went on to well into overtime. And if we didn't have to go home and feed the kids and let the dog out, I think we would have been there for two more hours. There's a lot of top talent working every day for Puyallup. And you don't see it when you, I mean, no offense, but you don't see that kind of talent when you just come to these meetings or watch them. So I'd highly encourage you to put Puyallup 101 in your browser. There's only one out there. First click, you come to fill out the registration form and commit to attending this really empowering look behind the scenes of how wonderfully our city is run and how relatively small it is. We've got 200 people and another 100 in the police department, but it's pretty small. You'll need some transportation to a couple of the locations, and there's a little walking, but You know, you don't have to trot. You can do it real slow if your heart won't palpitate. My apologies to Saxon Rawlings, but just don't be late. Do Puyallup 101. Trust me, you will be so glad you did it, and I'll look forward to seeing you there. Thank you.

Thank you, Jim. I had it in my... Mayor's comments this evening to talk about Puyallup 101. I don't think I could have done it as well as you did.

Well, we've only got three weeks.

There you go. And registration is limited. So if you want to do it, you better get signed up soon. OK, next we'll hear from Jim Roeder. Jill. Jill, sorry. I'm not .

Hi, Jill Roeder, District 1. I did want to comment on the good roots that I support a city funding that. I also do not understand a quiet zone. Why would we want a quiet zone near a train track? I live within, I don't know, a block, two blocks of the train, and you get used to it. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't make sense to me to not have a train sounding when it goes by. I also did want to comment on the... data centers and flock cameras. I think that they have both snuck up on us and I just want to say that I don't think we should be approving or accepting without question data centers as an option for use on property that is being considered for various uses just because there have been or currently is data centers there. I agree with Councilmember Smolko that the AI and hyperscale data centers of today are very different than from 30 years ago. I also want to comment on flock cameras that the map footage that I have seen shows. I mean, it's just crazy how many there are out there now that they weren't there two years ago. And I feel like there is a connection between data centers and those. I don't know. I could be wrong. I have questions. Who decides where these cameras go? Who decides if they're on private or public property? Who pays for the cameras? Do property owners get paid for having them? And if Palantir is the creator and backer of all of this collected data, what are they doing with it? Even if you or the police are having a limit of 30 days or seven days of access, what's stopping the people that do provide those cameras from collecting that data permanently. What are they doing with it? I feel like the federal government is using that to do their finding people, kidnapping them, deporting. I don't know. The timing just seems suspect. And do we know? If we are contributing and helping with Gestapo taxes, we do not want to be part of that. Anyway, I know we don't know the whole story behind it. So I just think we should consider that. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now hear from Matthew Karras.

Just give me one second, sorry. All right, so this comment is in coordination with over 70 members I've talked to throughout this month and over 200 members I've talked to throughout the year, but mainly this summer, both in person and online. Tonight, I'd like to bring a few things to your attention, all of which are in regards to how we communicate with each other. First, on August 20th, many community members reached out to me that someone was ran over on the intersection of West Pioneer and 2nd Street Southwest, Puyallup, Washington at 8.22 PM. This was during your concert at the park. I received this information after a community member sent me a pulse point notification. After consideration with other community members, they have requested that the city publicly publish a response inquiry with current state, county, and city codes in regards to pedestrian city versus traffic Meridian Avenue North and South Route 161. Moreover, we asked for a public disclosure of what happened on the city website and what could be different for future events. I understand that this was an outdoor event. However, many believe that any city-sponsored event should have personnel that could help with opening and closing, as well as additional concerts at the park's security for the event who could help facilitate safety precautions. Second, I would like to thank the city for having a public and parks recreation meeting and civic engagement classes. However, I feel that the timing and preparation for said events did not give enough time for many community members to either attend or respond. My suggestion is to have smaller, more frequent meetings so folks who can't attend one meeting or a series of meetings could possibly attend another meeting or a series of meetings at a different date. Also, to post these meetings and events earlier and on other social media platforms besides Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, any one of those could work. I bring this up because many folks have expressed frustration over the funding of the flagpole and the new skate park. However, many cannot make the meetings due to work or family obligations. From my understanding, many local skateboarders have expressed confusion over the creation of an entirely new skate park. They expressed that they wanted some minor revisions to the current skate park, such as having a roof barrier, a pump track, and half pipe. Also, many community members are unsure about how the skate park will be funded, in other words, which tier. Lastly, community members are frustrated by the use of flock cameras and ALPRS cameras in our city. There have been many nationwide cases of misconduct. Through my understanding, both flock and ALPRs record license plates and use an AI-mappable database to track where drivers are going. Currently, there are over 50 officers nationwide who have been accused of misconduct. All right.

Thank you. Are there any other citizens who would like to speak at this time?

Good evening. Don Cottom, District 1. I live very near 7th Street and 7th Avenue Northwest. And from my living room chair, I can look out my window and see a very beautiful and huge black walnut tree, which we just refer to as the tree in our neighborhood. But as I was walking my dog, I found out that there's a sign there. And it was planted by C.J. Pihl, P-I-H-L, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right. And it was planted on the day that our state gained statehood, November 11th, 1889. So it's going to be 137 years old, if I can do my math right in my head, and we just celebrated our 250 years as a country, and we'll be celebrating 137 years as our state. So if you want to come see the most beautiful tree in all of Puyallup, come to 7th Street and 7th Avenue Northwest, and look, you can't miss it.

Thank you. Any further comments? Seeing none, we'll move on to our consent agenda. The consent agenda are items that are considered to be non-controversial and would likely pass with a unanimous vote. Is there anything on this consent agenda that one of my colleagues would like to remove for separate discussion? Seeing none, is there a motion to pass this consent agenda?

Move approval.

Second. The motion has been moved and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion passes. OK, now we'll move on to our ordinance item 4A on our agenda. This will be a first reading of an amendment to PMC chapter 21.06 regarding critical areas. And we'll have planning manager Chris Beal give a presentation.

Good evening, Council, Mayor. My name is Chris Beal. I'm the Planning Manager with Development and Permanent Services. So tonight we're going to give a brief presentation and overview on our Critical Areas Ordinance Update. This is Title Appealment Chapter 21.06. So why is the city updating our critical area ordinance? This is required as part of our comprehensive plan periodic updates. And you guys might remember that. We did adopt that in the summer, July of 2025. So it was quite a while ago. The updates to our critical area regulations are part and parcel with that comprehensive plan update process and needed to be completed just after that. The best available science recommendations have to be considered as part of the RCW for GMA, for Growth Management Act. And the last major update to our critical areas ordinance occurred about 20 years ago in 2006. And there were some significant updates in 2018 around wetlands. So what are critical areas? Under our ordinance, we regulate geological hazard areas. So those are steep slopes or landslide hazard areas, seismic erosion hazard areas, and volcanic. Aquifer recharge areas. So those are areas of the city that recharge our groundwater and our aquifer supplies. Wetlands, fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas, including streams. Those are the critical areas that we regulate under our ordinance. The scope of the proposed update includes definitions and terminology. So actually most of the ordinance, there's about 54 pages of code text. Around 27 pages of that are 165 different definitions. About a third of those are getting updated. We're adding 17 new definitions, mainly for consistency with best management practices and updates to other scientific documents. There are sections around applicability, exemptions, and exceptions. We're making some minor updates to those, as well as around our critical area report requirements and permit procedures, our general mitigation standards, so things that are required when somebody submits a mitigation plan for impacts. There are also wetland regulations, article number nine. Some of those are cross-references to our definition section regarding delineations. Minor updates regarding avoiding impacts, so what they call sequencing or avoiding impacts by basically either not impacting a wetland or avoiding it during development. There are also minor updates regarding disconnection of buffers when there are streets or roads or buildings between a buffer and an upland area. There's a clarification on some practices that we've already been doing where the buffers basically end where roads bisect buffer areas. We also have a kind of more of a significant update around our stormwater integration. The stormwater manual regulations, as some council members probably know, have progressed over time to protect wetlands. So there are duplicative regulations between the critical area ordinance and our stormwater rules. These changes would basically integrate the stormwater rules into our wetland chapter to make them current. We also have a few other updates in that wetland section around formatting, reformatting our mitigation replacement ratios. There's no new ratios in there, but it is a reformatting for ease of implementation. And then we also have some reformatting around our in lieu fee option for wetland impacts. Under our critical aquifer recharge areas, there are updates to underground storage tanks and above ground storage tanks consistent with state law. And then our prohibited uses list, so things that are prohibited in areas that could cause impacts to groundwater. And then finally, we have some updates to our geological hazard areas. Not too much there. Some issues around our exemptions, as well as adopting the current volcanic hazard area maps that you guys saw during the middle housing update.

What's not included in this draft?

So the August 25th draft does not include the proposed Article 10 amendments around riparian management zones or stream buffers. Council previously reviewed those amendments on May 5th and staff is exploring some partnerships with other professionals to further look and study that science and review those recommendations. So that is my presentation tonight. This is a link to the project website. My email is up here as well in case anybody has questions. You can access the project website with that QR code, but I'm available for any questions from council. Thank you.

Any questions? I'm not seeing anybody jumping on this one. Council Member Smolko.

Thank you, Mary Winning. Just one question, if I can just have one, that would be awesome. Can staff identify for Council whether any provision we are adopting tonight results in less environmental protection than our existing code? And if so, specifically where and why staff believes that change is supported by best available science?

It's a broad question, Councilmember. I can't really think anything off the top of my head that would lessen the regulations. No, not that I can think of. I mean, mainly the regulation updates are for consistency. I mean, like I said, about 50% of the update is actually just updating most of our definitions sections. It doesn't roll any of the regulations back. The only thing maybe arguably you could say is the functional disconnected buffers. But that's been a general practice that we've been undertaking for quite some time. Department of Ecology makes that recommendation and they're documents that we cross reference basically where a road or a building is located in a buffer the buffer doesn't extend beyond a road into an upland area on the other side of a critical area so it's a little bit of common sense there but also clarification of code and it's also just clarification of a practice in the you know 18 years that i've been here we've kind of always been doing that it's just it needs to be in the code so I can't think of anything else really to answer your question of like rolling or lessening environmental rules. That's really not the purpose of the update, and I can't think of anything off the top of my head that would affirmatively answer that question.

Okay. Can I ask a follow-up question?

Absolutely.

It's not really even a follow-up. It's a separate question, I guess. Can you confirm that our action tonight does not adopt or endorse the previously proposed changes to the riparian management zones or stream buffers? and that council will have a separate opportunity to consider these after the additional best available science work is completed?

That's correct. They've all been taken out of the ordinance in order for us to study it further and we will come back to you once we've done that work.

Okay. Thank you. That's it.

Okay. Don't see any other instance, any other council members? Deputy Mayor Johnson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to make a motion to support first reading of item 4A as presented tonight. Second.

The motion has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, I'll call for a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Moving forward, we'll now address resolution Item 5A on our agenda, a resolution confirming appointments to various citizen volunteer boards and commissions. And City Clerk Dan Vessels will introduce the resolution.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Tonight before you, Council, we have a resolution for appointments to two separate boards and commissions. We have an appointment to the Senior Advisory Board for Jody Erickson and then a proposed appointment to the Arts and Culture Commission of Alden Erickson and Mr. John Hopkins.

Deputy Mayor Johnson.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to offer a motion to accept the recommendations for these volunteer boards as indicated by our city clerk, Dan. Second.

Motion has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? I'd just like to say that I participated in the interviews for those individuals and I think they're well qualified and will contribute to the well-being and vitality of our city. I'll now call the motion. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? First reading passes. We'll now move on to item 5B, a resolution establishing an investment policy for the management of public funds. Finance Director Barbara Lopez will introduce the resolution.

Thank you, Mayor Whitting. Good evening, Council. Barbara Lopez, Finance Director. The policy before you gives us the purpose of the policy for the investment policy is to provide some clear guidelines for investing our cash on hand. It's consistent with state laws and best practices. Currently, we are keeping enough cash in our regular bank account to cover operational costs and to offset most of the regular banking fees that we get charged. Additionally, cash that's not immediately needed is invested in the local government investment pool, which is managed by the Washington state treasurer. This is essentially a really liquid place to put your money. We can transfer money in and out at any moment. But we do earn some interest on that. So right now that LGIP is our primary investment tool. It's very low risk, provides a modest return on investment, which is about 3.75%. But without this investment policy, we can't pursue any other types of investments. We're stuck with just the LGIP. So why now? Why am I coming to you with this now? For the past several years, the LGIP has actually had a really competitive rate. Other investments really haven't been pulling in any better interest, and so we've just left the money in the LGIP. However, that's changed over the last few months. Those rates have come down a little bit. They've come down enough that make it financially feasible to really start to look at perhaps some other investment options that are allowed under RCW. So the policy before you tonight actually specifies the parameters under which we could invest in other mechanisms. So what are the guiding objectives under this particular policy? Safety, liquidity, and yield, in that order. So safety is safety of that principal amount. That is, first and foremost, we are dealing with taxpayer monies, public monies, and we always want to protect that principal that we are investing. Liquidity, basically that requires that we structure our investments with maturity dates so that we can ensure that we've got the monies that we need to pay our obligations. in a timely manner and that we don't have to actually sell an investment early and actually potentially lose principal at the same time. And then the third piece is the yield or the return on investment. How much interest would we make on that? We look at obtaining the best rate as prudently possible, having first satisfied the safety and the liquidity portions of it. So what kinds of investments can we make under this policy? Our options are actually dictated by Washington state law. The primary options that we expect to use here would be continuing to use the LGIP as appropriate. Keep some monies in there. The other options, the best options, are US Treasury notes. These are government bonds, federal government bonds. There's another category called U.S. government sponsored entities. Those are things that are fully backed by the federal government. It's like Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, those kinds of home mortgage types of places. And then corporate notes. So the corporate world can go out to the market and issue their version of bonds as well. We could invest in those provided that they've got a low credit risk so that, again, we're preserving that principle and we are making sure that we're fiscally responsible. Some of the things that are specifically prohibited from investing in are stocks. Stocks don't have a specific maturity date. You run the risk of having to sell during a downturn, which means that you would lose principal. Money market mutual funds, while those are pretty safe generally, they are not federally insured and so we would not want to put money into those. Another one would be cryptocurrency. I've actually had folks ask me about this occasionally. It's very, very high risk and often very volatile and so we would never want to put public funds into that type of an investment. And then there would be the other things that we, if there were other investment types that aren't specifically called out in the policy, we would not invest in those either. So we like safe things with a maturity date and specific interest rates specified for our monies. So the strategy that's outlined in that policy at a high level is that, number one, we ensure sufficient cash flow for operational needs, being able to pay our other obligations and capital projects and debt service payments. That is kept in mind first and foremost. The intention with these investments is to buy and hold them until maturity. We don't want to chase the market. We don't want to buy low, sell high, try to time the market. The focus is on responsibly creating some income rather than predicting the market direction. The policy also talks about a few other things such as who are qualified brokers that could help provide expertise in this area as we are looking for investments. How are these investments kept in custody and safekeeping of them so that while we are invested in them, that no one else could take away with those investments and run away with those? Internal controls around it, monthly reporting around it, those sorts of things. So those are the high-level pieces of the policy itself. So approval of this policy would authorize me as the finance director to establish procedures for actually going out and making those investments. Once those procedures are in place, then we could begin diversifying the city's investments. Again, can't really do anything other than the LGIP without the policy in place. So I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Deputy Mayor Johnson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. One of the wonderful things about getting great staff on board and people who are professionals in their expertise areas is trusting their judgment and discernment. To what I've heard tonight, it seems like a very responsible thing to do. So I'd like to make a motion that we trust our finance director, Barbara Lopez, to institute this resolution. And I'd like to make a motion towards that outcome.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. The motion has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Council Member Smolko.

Thank you, Mayor Whitting. I also implicitly trust Barbara for sure, at least to this point. But I do have a question about transparency and communication. Will residents be able to readily see our investment reports? And can we make those reports available through the city's regular financial reporting if it isn't already and it may be already done that way, rather than simply having them available upon request? Can we be proactive about that and just publish them?

Yes, we certainly can because we really haven't been investing in anything in the past. They don't currently exist, so that would be part of the procedures that I would need to develop. What does that report look like? How often is it done? Where can you go find it at? Those sorts of items.

Thank you. Council Member King.

Thank you. Council Member Smolko took my question, but I just wanted to say thank you for your presentation. And that was the exact question that I was actually looking for myself. So thank you for providing that.

Okay. I have a question just about the liquidity aspect of this. Obviously, the city has dozens of funds probably. Are those invested as a group? So do we have to... to protect the liquidity of every single one of those separately, or can we put it all in one big pot and protect the liquidity of the larger pot?

So we will need to specify which funds, like water fund, general fund, which fund is actually contributing to that investment so that they can get their portion of the interest. But we can pool those amounts together. So say it was like a... We wanted to go out and invest $5 million. We could pull $1 million from the water fund. We could pull $2 million from the sewer fund and then another $2 million from the storm fund. We could pool those together to purchase an investment for that. We would want to make sure that we're staggering how we're doing that so that we've always got monies coming available to be able to use. And we wouldn't have really, really long maturity dates. We would probably keep it between like two to three years so that we're making sure that we're not tying up things for too long.

Yeah, I understand the process. I was just concerned that we were having to manage liquidity on every single one of those funds. And it sounds like that it's not necessary. We just...

Not entirely, but what we would do is part of the procedures would be is to figure out what is the amount of monies that we could invest so that liquidity aspect would come into play as we're developing that.

But as a whole, as a combined total, as opposed to each individual fund. Okay, that makes me feel better. The other question I have is, my attention lagged for just a second. Did you say that corporate bonds were allowed under the investment policy?

Corporate notes, yes. But they have to be of a sufficient credit. They have to be in the top... portion of They've got to have a low credit risk with a strong capacity to meet their financial commitments So they've got a they've got to really have that credit rating in the top tiers in order to be able to do that Okay, see and you know that Corporate bonds cause a little bit of me a little bit of a concern So I'll be interested to see your policy on that aspect particularly.

I

One of the things that we would do is limit the amount that we would put into corporate notes like that. Honestly, we will probably start with US treasuries and then the government sponsored entities. That would be the vast majority of what we are going to go look at.

That's why I like you so much.

Again, safety of principle.

Yes, indeed. OK, any other questions? OK. We've had a motion and a second. All those, I see no further need for discussion. So all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes.

Thank you.

And I'd like to just correct myself from Resolution 5A. I think I mentioned that as being a first reading, and that is not a first reading. It's a resolution which doesn't require a second reading. So I correct myself on that one. So we now move on to item 6A. The city clerk is going to give us a presentation on the clerk's office strategic plan.

Yes. Good evening, Mayor Whitting and council members. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present the strategic plan. First thing that I want to point out is that this would not be possible without Talika. Everyone knows the wonderful work that she does with the city. So I just want to point out she's been instrumental in helping us put this together. So briefly, we'll talk about our agenda tonight. We're going to go over just our strategic plan that we've worked on for the last two years. I'll briefly touch on our SWOT analysis, our balanced scorecard, and some of the initiatives that I'm going to be putting forward for the next two years for my office. Here is a summary of our 24-25 strategic plan. We were able to achieve 92% of the initiatives that we put forward. The only one that we were not able to successfully complete is a portion of this plan. That's been a work in progress, so we're rolling that into the future. We've been able to digitize many of our business licenses, many of our applications, going from paper to an electronic form to save the city money. We've begun using AI, along with our operations, again, not only for a pure financial cost that's tangible, but also significant staff savings in time. We've worked with IT to update our laser fish records module so that we can make sure that our public records are performed in a manner that's consistent with state law. And then I have achieved my certified municipal clerk status, and then our public records specialist has also obtained her certification through WAPRO. A couple of key things that I want to point out. A few years ago, we took over a few different programs from other cities or other departments in the city. One of them that we did was business licenses. So from 24 to 25, we've seen a 68% increase in the number of city endorsement business licenses that we've come in. And 90% of those have been approved within 14 days. Just to point out, that process does involve six separate departments through the city to ensure that the businesses are meeting their needs, they're zoned properly, they're legal, so that is a good collaboration effort with everyone. Special events permits, we've improved that by 50%. In 2024, it took 78 days from the time that an applicant put forward their application to the time that their permit was approved. We got that down to 39 days. 100% of those were approved within our target range, which was 45. That target date was set by code. They're supposed to submit their application 90 days before their event. My goal is to get them that approval at 45 days so they have basically a month and a half to finish their planning. And then special business licenses. In 2025, we approved 134 of those. And it is an average turnaround time of 2.3 days. Again, just for reference on that, many of those applications do go through background checks with our police department. And we have other departments as well that are involved. So that is, again, a good collaboration by everyone in the city to streamline that process. And also in the last couple of years, we've worked with Councilmember Adler for our college appreciation events. We bifurcated out that event, so now we have a Pierce College Appreciation Week in the spring, and we have a Washington State University Puyallup Research and Extension Center campus week coming up in September, and you'll be hearing more about that in the next few weeks. Our SWAT. I'm not going to go over each and every one of these individually. I'm just going to point out one from each and how we're able to use each one of them to tie in together. Some of our strengths, we embrace technology. I look at anything that we can use that's vetted through our IT department that can save us time and make the city more efficient. that helps us out because one of our major weaknesses is that we do have a small team there are four of us total in the city clerk's department so when someone is out we have to make sure that we're able to fill that gap that's where that technology helps us out of course having that smaller staff provides an opportunity for us to collaborate with other departments and one of the things we're going to be looking at excuse me going forward is potentially getting interns or volunteers to help us out with some programs because we are short staffed One of the biggest threats that we have is the failure to digitize and preserve files. You'll see a photo coming up here in a few minutes of our file room. It's important for us to make sure that we know what we have for paperwork and we can find it. And again, when you look at our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, we try to tie each one of those in so that we're addressing each step along the way. One of our key areas of focus is customer service and the community experience. We've got some good key performance indicators here. Our customer satisfaction rating for public records disclosure service, percentage of special event permits issued within our target time frame, and the percentage of special business licenses issued within the target time frame. Again, just going back to the first slide, we achieved all but one from our last strategic plan. That is our customer satisfaction rating for public records disclosure service. So one of the key things that we'll be working on over the next two years, and we're going to start to roll that out later this year, is an online survey for folks. So next time you come before you, we have some data and some metrics to show you just how well we're doing in that world. Here's the photo I was referencing. This is an image of our current file vault. This is a significant amount of paperwork. There's actually far more there than what you see, but this goes to some of the things that we're looking at as our internal performance. We want to do a better job of digitizing those records. We're going to be looking at how many boxes can we scan, how many of those have reached their end-of-life per Washington State retention schedules, how do we properly get those taken care of and cleaned out so that the city has what it needs to, and that we're effectively monitoring all of that. Additionally, we're going to be looking in the future at the percentage of public meeting videos that meet the new ADA standards, which will be as it's currently timed for us in April of 2028. There is a potential, I think, that could get pushed out further, but we'll be ready to go with that when it hits. I've been working with IT, and we already have a plan. And also, I'm working on our website with all the other departments to ensure that our website meets all of the current ADA standards, meets the future ADA standards, so that we have the ability to help everyone in the community, irregardless of where they are. Our area focus, people and organizational capacity. So again here, we look at our employee engagement ratings and the percentage of planned digital improvements that we've completed. We hit all but one. We do that by investing in technology. We're looking for different funding opportunities. We've looked to the Secretary of State's Department for grants to obtain equipment or provide services to assist with scanning so that those records can be digitized. We also have been one of the departments that's put in the new employee progress assessment so that I work with my staff to make sure that rather than just providing a performance review, we're setting goals, we're setting expectations, and we're working as a team towards making the city clerk's office better for the community. And then paramount to all of this is our financial stewardship. As many of you know, in the last two years, we switched from massive paper packets to the new iPad digital packets. This was a substantial savings for my department in paper costs as well as printing costs. And so we're always looking to figure out ways that we can be better stewards of the money. One of that is our record storage practices. How can we make sure that what we have in our digital files is necessary to be here? That goes back to one of our key indicators with working with Laserfish on our records management. We now have an automated system set up so that every month when a digital record has met the end of its retention period, we get a report, we confirm that that is no longer necessary, and then we're able to destroy that to free up more space so that we can take those records that need to be there and put them in that place. Council, that is my presentation. Happy to answer any questions. Council Member Adler.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Good work. I think one of your slides with your SWOT analysis called out how your team is mighty but nimble. And I think that's an accurate description. Thank you. Two questions. The first one is, I'm wondering if we can go back to the initiatives slide and the ADA call out. Dan, could you just quickly highlight what that means? I know what it means. I don't think other... It's not often common knowledge. And I am hoping that you'll get some assistance on this from perhaps... are PR professional. I know in other organizations, local governments that I am involved with, the comms team is doing a lot of the work for the ADA requirements. So if you could just quickly explain that. But then my secondary question to that is, so you said April 2028, we would come in compliance. Did I hear that correctly?

That is as it's currently prescribed, yes.

OK. And then that would still be within the federal deadline? Because I know that they extended it, right? Because the initial deadline was like, what, April?

April of 27 for our city, yes. Yeah, OK. so councilmember adler i will do my best to summarize this one thing i'll just let you know i'm considered through the washington municipal clerks association as the subject matter expert on this i actually think emit from our i.t department he brought this to my attention about two and a half years ago and i've been studying up on it and i actually go out and teach many of the other local clerks' associations about these guidelines. So the ADA guidelines that we're talking about are the Website Content Accessibility Guidelines, specifically 2.1 AA. This is a rule that was put forth by the Department of Justice a few years ago that outlines how every governmental website is required to work from screen reader technology to color contrast to specific fonts for individuals with disabilities. It's also going to include videos that are posted on any site that we utilize. That would be both our website, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, any other source of information that we put out there. So we're currently working right now. I'm working with each department. And we have a vendor that's assisted us where we're going through a website refresh when we're removing old content. And I'm working to bring all the PDF documents online up to requirements. That is so that if someone pulls that up and they are They have a vision impairment. They have a screen reader. The screen reader can accurately read whatever is on that PDF document. So we have some software now that is helping us remediate that. It can do 500 pages of a PDF at a time. We have about 4,300 PDFs left on our website that I need to remediate. So it's a slow progress, but we'll be able to get there, I hope, by the April deadline. We do have a tool on our website called Audio Eye. If anyone were to pull up our website in the lower left-hand corner, whether it's on a phone, iPad, or computer, you'll see a little, I like to call them a little stick figure, white stick figure with a blue background. If you click on that, it brings up our ADA toolkit. So that is something that someone can utilize, and it assists with a variety of different technologies to make the screen easier. It can turn off animations, switch color contrast, enlarge fonts. One thing that I actually learned from this is there's a specific font for individuals that have dyslexia. So it can turn that font on automatically for just that individual. And it's something that's across all of our websites. The one that we're focusing on right now are the videos. So by April of 2028, each video that we post, that is not a live video. So this stream on our website would be fine as we have it. We do have closed captioning available for folks on YouTube, as well as our city website and PCTV. once we post that archived video on our website we have to have four separate components along with the video we have to have the video with closed captioning we have to have a complete transcript of that video and the fourth one first one is actually together it's the video closed captioning so i guess technically the third is what's called an audio descriptor file And so that is a requirement for individuals that are blind and can't see what's happening. There has to be someone there that fills in those gaps. In the class that I teach, the state of California has a great video from their water resource department that describes that. Just as a brief synopsis, a few minutes ago I walked around the corner and I came to the podium. The audio descriptor would have to indicate that I was stepping forward to the podium and I'm giving a presentation. So anytime there's a gap in the conversation, the audio descriptor file has to fill in that gap for those individuals with that disability. Unfortunately, all of these rules and guidelines are mandates by the Department of Justice that have no funding that go along with them. So I've been working diligently with our IT department, and we've been letting our city manager know about this as we go forward. We are using all the tools that we can, and we have a plan in place. For cities that have a population of over 50,000, their deadline is April of 2027, as of right now. Our deadline is in April of 2028. So come May next year, assuming the deadlines stay where they are, we'll be able to make sure that the softwares that we're looking at work, that the programs are valid. And so when our deadline comes around, we are already ahead of the curve, and we've met all of those required guidelines.

Thank you. And I know that this has been shared before, but we, well, I can only talk for myself, but I know that other colleagues really enjoy Ask Ezra on the homepage. And I know it's throughout the website on all the pages, but that's very, very good work. So thank you.

Deputy Mayor Johnson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate that. Dan, what stood out to me was that picture of all those boxes with files of paper. Is that an active picture or is that one from years ago? Is that currently what we're looking at in terms of storage?

That's half of the vault that we have downstairs. That photo was taken about two weeks ago.

Okay, good. With that in mind, Moving forward, let's say this point forward, there should be less boxes of paper accumulating versus this that goes back probably a few years, right?

Some of the boxes that are there go back to the late 60s. We also do have historical documents in our vault. We have a brand new box that I just started putting together with our public record specialist. It's historical. We actually have original documents from the 1800s.

Yeah, great. When can those boxes begin to diminish with legal Discarding of those do we know some time frames?

Yes, and I will say it depends on the box So we have some boxes approximately a half a dozen right now that are scheduled their retention period ends at the end of December So we'll be able to get rid of those at the beginning of next year Several of the boxes that you saw there as well as there's a closed filing vault or payroll records that go back to the 60s Those have a 99 year retention period We also have additional boxes in our area there from the development and permitting services. Those contain certain documents that are in definite retention. So as long as the city needs those for its purposes of business, we're required to keep them.

Good. Well, I like the idea of kind of cleaning house per se, especially if there's no requirements beyond what the state allowances are to keep those getting as efficiently. I do like the idea of moving forward, seeing less of those boxes and everything more digitized so there's more efficient I do want to go back into a comment you made about AI. And you seem to have a, since you came on board here, you seem to be very personally and professionally focused. I won't say that we're passionate, but certainly looking for ways to streamline and make things more efficient. So since you first came here and to now, would you say that the use of AI by you and your staff has increased considerably? And if so, How do you feel that that has increased your efficiency in terms of time? Because things that used to take a lot of man hours or woman hours to document can now be done quickly, which means that they too can now begin to work on other things and perhaps accomplish more. So tell me a little bit about that, even if it's loosely or even if it's general assumption, maybe not necessarily quantified by data. but some kind of a sense or direction that you feel that's helped efficiency for city government.

Absolutely. So when I came on board the city clerk's office, I will say was not a well-rounded user of technology. A lot of the things that we did still involved a significant amount of paperwork. So one of the things that I looked at immediately was how can we streamline and make things more effective. Tonight's example is perfect. So on your agenda tonight, city council, you approved four sets of meeting minutes. Approximately two years ago, we switched from doing those 100% by hand in human to using AI to assist. So in the past, a staff member would watch, let's take a three-hour council meeting, for example. They would have to watch a three-hour council meeting three to four times. in order to adequately go back and make sure that they captured everything that was stated and summarized for that meeting when we switched over to our ai software we move our agenda for the meeting into the software we upload the video from youtube and the software provides us as best as it can based off the recording software a complete transcript of the entire meeting it then identifies individuals based off of speakers So Mayor Whitting is typically the current first speaker. So it says Speaker 1. We have the ability to go in and name Mayor Whitting as Speaker 1. It can identify that speaker based off of tone, inflection, and the actual voice. So we have, for any specific council meeting, anywhere from on average 12 upwards to 30 speakers. The software will then create a baseline set of agenda minutes for us. My staff then goes in, and they will rewatch our video one time. And they'll pause it as they go through each section to ensure that the AI adequately gets that information. If it doesn't, we have specific prompts that I've worked with them on. And we take that prompt, and we put it in. And then the AI gives us that prompt back. My staff then sends it to myself. I review it. I make additional edits because I'm here. I may catch something that the AI didn't, a spelling error in a name, or someone meant this, but it picked it up as A, and it should have been B. And we get that done. So from a quantifiable standpoint, I estimate that my staff per council meeting is saving anywhere from seven to maybe 10 hours of actual staff time, depending on the length of the meeting, to generate that. Those savings have allowed us to collaborate with other departments. And we have actually taken on significant work from other departments in the last four years. So pet licensing used to be with the finance department and our police department. It's now done in my department. Business licensing was done through our finance department. We've consolidated that into my department. We do all the special business permits. We also took over the parklet program. We do the parking placards for the business parking downtown and as well as the residential parking. And we are always looking for ways that we can assist other departments.

Fantastic. I support it. I do support it. There are some folks that are against the AI, which of course are tied to data centers in terms of its ability to function. And if we're looking for government efficiency, then certainly city government certainly should be implementing these modern procedures. to provide transparency, documentation, and be more efficient with city staff time to be able to accomplish more with the same amount of staff. And so I'm glad that you're doing that. I support it. And I believe that all of our departments in our city probably will find that in the near future, with help of modern technology, we'll be able to be more efficient, perhaps more accurate most of the time, but still need human bodies to manage and work it so it won't replace this, but certainly has a role. So thank you for clarifying that. Appreciate that. And that's all I had.

Yeah.

Council Member King.

Thank you. City Clerk, your office has earned a lot of respect from the fact that you just said they watch our council meetings four times through in the past. I wasn't aware of that myself. And so the fact that you were able to streamline that, I think, brings a lot of joy to your department for sure. So hopefully that's working out well for you. A couple of questions. And you may have touched on it, and I may have missed it. So I'm just asking, how long would it take, do you think, to digitize the entire vault? What's your estimated timeline?

With my current staff, we could approximately allocate an hour to an hour and a half maybe per week between our regular duties as well as the public records requests that come in, which are seasonal. Sometimes we can go two or three days without them. Today we've received four. Very voluminous ones. If we had consistent volunteers, interns, part-time staff, I've talked with our public record specialist and we estimate we may be able to actually digitize the city in four to five years. Specifically our vault, three to four months. And most of that is just reviewing the files to determine what actually needs to be scanned and what doesn't. Wow.

With everything that you mentioned here tonight, what improvements do you think residents will be able to see first through your efforts?

I think the biggest one for the residents are the people that use our office. Public record requests, we are getting those out faster. It wasn't available in the stats because they didn't want to overload you with too much data. But the number of public record requests that we've received in the last four years has gone up approximately 80%. And we've been turning those out at 30% to 40% faster. So we're getting more volume and we're getting them out faster. Beyond that, it is the individuals that use us for our special business licenses. Next week, the fair starts. If someone wants to get a temporary fair license, it used to be you'd have to come down to the office, fill out a piece of paper or mail in a piece of paper. My staff would get it, fill it out, type up a... special business license by hand and hand it to you. Now someone can sit at their house, they can pull up the application on their phone, fill it out, sign it, and if it's during operating hours, eight to five, they'll typically get that back in five minutes. And all they have to do is print it out.

That's great. Last question. Will the city clerk's office gather any input from the public and the progress that you do make going forward, how will you be communicating that back to the public and the council itself?

So our strategic plan is scheduled to come back before you in two years. We'll be bringing some of those key performance indicators back once we get the survey going for our public records. Once we close a public record request within three to four days, our plan is to have an automated email sent out to that requester with a set of questions so they can fill that out, and then we will compile that and be able to provide statistical data of whether we're doing good, or do we need to improve, what specifically are the things that we have to get better on, and how have we taken steps to do that. As it relates to public records, we're going to be tracking boxes. It's the easiest way to try to explain to folks this is what we've done. For example, last year we destroyed over 200 boxes. To put that in perspective, if you line them up end-to-end, it's 75 yards. At our last check, we had about 320 boxes or approximately 125 yards of linear records waiting to be digitized.

Wow. Well, I thank you for your talk and speech here tonight and presentation. It's all great, and we appreciate the update. Thank you. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Johnson.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I had a follow-up question that triggered from Council Member King that I would like to build on. So Dan, you mentioned Council Member King answered the question on how long would it take to digitize the whole thing and then the vault, and you gave a couple of answers for the whole city at four or five years or whatever, then the vault at three months or whatever it was. Would there be any advantage of efficiency if there was a concerted effort, let's say by council to provide funding or find monies for you to get this thing all digitized, put it behind you and then focus your energy on things that would just bring you up to speed much quicker to get some of let's call it the burden or the weight that's kind of catch up. Would there be any value of efficiency if that was the case? And if so, I'm wondering, depending on your answer, If the council might consider that efficiency to perhaps look at some creative funding or grants that would help that effort get fast forwarded so that we're now in a proactive mode moving forward, not a reactive trying to get caught up from decades of antiquated information. So that would be helpful because I certainly would like to advocate for you for contingent that there is a return on investment of efficiency of time and expediting responses for residents and their things that they're requesting should that burden be lifted off your backs.

Yes, there would be a significant advancement in that. And one thing I just want to point out for the digitization of our records, certain records we're still required to keep. So if we were to go back to the photo, we have, if I had to approximate it, 25 boxes of payroll records. We're required to keep those for 100 years. from the end date. So the ones that we have from the 1960s, we still have to keep to the 50s. Part of the digitization that I'm looking for is to streamline. Several times a year, someone from finance may have to come down and pull up one of those records because DRS has a question about an employee from the 70s or the 80s. That employee has to sit down by hand and flip through those logs, flip through those books to get that answer. That's not time that's being taken out of my department, but that's time that's coming from another department. Once we can digitize that, we store that record in a secure facility. They can pull that up in our system and do a quick search, and we're saving them significant time. Same thing applies to our development and permitting services department. We have multiple boxes, SEPA, shoreline requests, plats. There's information in there that they have to look at as new applications come in. They come into our vault, they pull the boxes, and they have to go through them by hand. So if we can digitize those and actually put into place an electronic system, they can just pull that up and do a quick search, which allows them to do their job faster, which in turn allows the end user or the citizens to potentially get a response done faster. And these are all generally older records. The current systems we have through CityView as well as LaserFish, we have those in place now. but those started in 2020. So everything before that, if we can get it scanned, it not only helps my department with public record requests, it helps every other department that tangibly touches those files staff time.

Great. Well, then I'd like to suggest, Dan, in consultation with Talika, that maybe a post-conversation after this meeting and this teeing this up, at least myself, that maybe there's a brief discussion on, you know, if we were able to get those digitized and completely put a concentrated effort on that, what that data of efficiency would bring across all departments. And if we equate that as highly efficient, freeing up more time versus the cost of doing it, it might be something to invest in and take a look at finding some fundings. And if so, if you felt that it would bring across All citywide efficiency not just your department by doing so then it might quantify an effort by council to find Resources grants or funding to put us in proactive rather than reactive and I'm all about that I just think that would be why so if that's something that Talika and you and others feel that it would be necessary for council to be briefed on. Again, I can't guarantee that we'll find the funds if there's even council interest, but I do think if it's data driven and we can show and quantify that if this is taken care of, we anticipate this much staffing, this much funding, and by doing so we'd be more efficient by this percent and it allows us to accomplish more for our residents and moving forward in all departments, to me that would be worth looking at. And so I'd like to encourage you with some thoughts on that. Thank you.

Thank you all for those comments. And thank you, Dan, for the work you're doing. It's impressive, the initiatives you've undertaken and the progress you've made. And we look forward to having another great report in two years' time.

Thank you, Mayor Whitting.

We'll now move on to our city manager's report.

Good evening, Council. Just an update on the flagpole project. Wanted to update you. It is on our website, but in case... Council or residents have seen it. We did do an update last week, and the Department of Transportation is close to finalizing the foundation, so there has to be a large foundation that will be installed for the flagpole. The design of that is pretty much done, and they are awaiting final approval of that. Once that is done, then they will be able to put in the distinct lighting that needs to occur because of the memorial flag. and then they will begin scheduling an installation time for the pole. I wish I could tell you exactly when that will occur, but at this point DOT has not given us a firm deadline, but they are working on it as diligently as they can along with the Greater Gateway Project. Currently, we have received $57,030 in donations on the project. In terms of next week's council meeting, four main items will be on the agenda. Second reading of the critical areas ordinance that Mr. Beal presented. Our emergency management manager, Kirsten Hoffman, will be here to do a presentation on the city's five-year hazard mitigation plan. We will have council engage in a discussion on the city key policy. And so Mayor Whitting has a potential concept on that that we will be presenting to all of you for discussion on when city keys could be issued. And then Hans Hunger, our city engineer and a consultant, will be doing a presentation on the Road Safety Action Plan. This is a grant that we received from the federal government, $400,000 grant, and the project is kicking off until I would like to come and do an initial presentation to council. That is next week's agenda. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. We'll now move on to council member reports. Council Member Gilliam.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm laughing because I was just We've been away for a month, and I have a record of things I've done as a council member, meetings, and I'm like, wow, it's a long list. I need to do a shout out for Dana, our city staff, who helps facilitate with those of us on the LOFF board, L-E-O-F-F board. We got to meet and make sure our retired police officers are taken care of and got what they need. I had the honor of stepping in for the mayor at the senior activity center for dessert with the mayor. And I loved every minute of it. There was a huge shout out for Doug and Shelby because they do a fantastic job with activities and meeting the needs of our senior citizens that attend the Senior Activity Center outings, events, activities. And it was just so fun to play a little game with them to, hey, what do you want? What are we doing well for you? What could we do better? What is the senior activity doing well for you? What could it do to be better? And everybody felt heard and seen. And it was just a really great time being together. The Puyallup Main Street Association had their very first annual volunteer appreciation meeting. So PMSA is doing a phenomenal job in our community, drawing attention to local business and utilizing volunteers for different events. So I'm super proud of the work that they're doing and the collaborative work with the fair, with the chamber. PMSA has really stepped up their game. So if you have an opportunity, make sure and do a shout out for CEO Julie Dorr and the whole team down there. And Lexi, who does a lot of behind the scenes work. Got to participate in the Puyallup Police Department Community Connect at Maplewood Elementary. I think that was the same day of the PMSA volunteer. There was a lot of multiple events in one day. The ad hoc committee met, and we were able to appoint some people to some committees, and they're phenomenal. Concerts in the park, of course, is something that draws people to Puyallup. But this year, to my understanding, and I could be wrong, and I'll leave it to Deputy Mayor Johnson to correct me, but this year we had our very first Wednesday concert in the park. And unfortunately, due to fires across our state, we had to bring it indoors. And people still showed up. I was so, so impressed. Oh, I had an opportunity to speak with the local service clubs. They meet monthly at the VFW. So I got to hear all of their great work and what they're doing for our community and connect with them. The farmer's market continues to thrive and drop We have a huge following of residents, but also people come to Puyallup just for our farmer's market. Been meeting a lot of families from other local cities that just want to come and play on our playground and enjoy our produce. So again, a huge shout out for PMSA and the farmer's market. The Parks and Recs Department held a, and I'm probably going to butcher this, a pros meeting. And that's where residents got to show up and be part of the policy shaping of our city for Parks and Recs. New Beginnings, I don't know if you're aware of that organization, that nonprofit. They had a luau fundraiser. They support pregnant women and the transition of bringing that life into this world and helping the moms get their feet under them and be able to stand and care for their family. And then the most recent event that I can think of that happened was Nashville Nights. If you were not here, everybody from PLF was here. I mean, OK, I can't really say that. I don't know. Holy smokes, it was crowded. Well done, PMSA. Again, you guys are knocking it out of the park. They had line dancing out in the parking lot in the dentist parking. Is it a dentist parking lot? I want to say Charlie's, but it's the backside of Charlie's off of Meridian. And then they strategically placed bands or artists in different locations at different times to help move people from business to business. And it was a huge improvement from last year. But if I were to do any special recognition, I just want to do a shout out for our Parks and Recs department because we've had a lot of activity in Puyallup over the summer and our city is beautiful. Our streets are clean. Our parks are clean, right? Like you can walk around and feel good about your space. So huge shout out to Parks and Recs. I also want to say a huge shout out to our Puyallup Police Department. When we walk around Puyallup, It feels safe, right? You can relax. You're not worried about anything happening. So I'm just really, really proud of our police department. And then I want to make sure I'm huge. Just so you guys know, that's the last thing I was looking at before the mayor called on me. I'm so sorry. Tomorrow? Tomorrow is One Puyallup. So One Puyallup is where the Puyallup Police Department comes and has a huge gathering. And we just connect with our police. And there's, I remember one year, didn't they do a flash mob and you guys made me dress up as a villain? Now I got to share the story. That's horrible. There was a flash mob dance. And it was a scene that was being recorded from different parts of our city. And the culmination was at the first one, Puyallup. And the dancer person wasn't able to make it. And I just happened to have short hair. And so from a distance, I could be this. So I got to lead the park in a dance. And it was really cool. And I was in a orange jumpsuit. I know it sounds really silly now that I'm rehashing the story, but bottom line is, what I love about our police department and our One Puyallup night is it really does bring our Puyallup police and residents and community together, ultimately. So please let that be your takeaway. And thank you for this time.

Thank you for that. Council Member King.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Last week the city celebrated our 136th year as an incorporated city on August 19th and so for those of you that weren't aware of that, 136 years in the bank and I think we're doing quite well. The Washington State Fair is just right around the corner, and they'll be celebrating 101 years. So make sure you go and visit the Washington State Fair this year. It's going to be a hoot. And let's see, what else do I have? Seeing the city clerk's presentation tonight, business applications are up 68% in the city. Is that correct?

Those numbers were through last year.

Last year, that's what I meant.

Correct. For stats this year, we have already surpassed last year's numbers by, I think, 150 or 200.

That's amazing. That's amazing. People want to do business in Puyallup and Puyallup is open for business. So thank you for that. Puyallup One, as mentioned, tomorrow night and concerts in the park featuring a band called Heart by Heart that has a couple members of the original heart band playing. a little correlation with that. They first became big at this place that had wheels on their feet in Puyallup back in the 70s. Some people might know it. That's not there anymore, unfortunately. But that's where they got their first big gig, and they made it. And so it'll be good to see those folks out there this Thursday in the park. Without further ado, that's all I have left. Mr. Mayor. Council Member Adler.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll be brief and just say ditto to our colleagues that just went before me. I am looking forward to later in September, I believe our council will receive a couple of presentations from some of our partner organizations or organizations, local governments in which we, as independent council members, represent our city on. And I think that those will be very enlightening and educational, not only for those of us up here on the dais, but also our community as a whole. have been working with those organizations to ensure that they have the opportunity to come before us. That's what I spent a bit of our summer break, if you will, on. So thank you. I look forward to that. I'm going to hold to talk about Washington State University Puyallup Research and Extension Center celebration, College Appreciation Week, until next week. But otherwise, certainly, the season is changing. It's 8 o'clock, and it's already quite dark. The sun has set. School is starting. And I look forward to the change of season. But man, did we have a fabulous summer in Puyallup. And for that, I am very grateful. Thanks.

Council Member Smolko.

Well, I will echo everything that has already been said. Thank you for being so thorough. It's great to be back in session. And I want to thank those who showed up tonight in person or online. And I ask that you keep showing up. Before we wrap tonight and before other council members get to speak, I want to acknowledge the passing today of Dolly Parton. Like so many people, I knew her first for her music and her moxie, but what I've always admired most was what she chose to do with her success. Dolly grew up in poverty, and because her father could not read or write, she created the Imagination Library, starting in her own community and eventually putting millions of books into the hands of children around the world, including here in Washington. I think there's a lesson in that for those of us who serve in local government. We don't always have to solve the biggest problems in the world, Sometimes we identify a need right here at home, decide that we have the ability to do something about it, and then we do it. Dolly Parton showed that kindness can be practical, generosity can be transformative, and where you come from should never determine how big you're allowed to dream. And I think that's a pretty cool legacy and a pretty good reminder for all of us who have the privilege of serving our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to share a story that I think it would be helpful for perhaps others. And it's a story about finding freedom from harboring emotions that I have sometimes on things that are political. There's two things that move people pretty passionately. Typically, it's politics and religion. And people hold those very passion and some that disagree on a take and get very emotional. And emotion is not a problem. But I recently had an opportunity to encounter an elected official recently that I politically disagree with on most every policy. But I had a chance to hear them speak and to hear the human side of him, not the policy side of him. There's plenty of information the policy side that I could get all worked up about and disagree with but I chose to set those aside And look at the human side of them and I realized Seems like a very good man and so my paradigm shift that in a sense was birthed out of this by slowing down and just listening and try to hear the human aspect was I now see him through a different lens even though I still disagree with him on the issues. But when I see an article about him I don't get riled up. I don't vent or rant and get caught up into the emotion which certainly people have the right to do. Instead, I typically will do something new. It's called extend grace, recognizing that none of us see it all. I don't. He probably doesn't if he's honest and none of us do. So we're at different stages of understanding and coming to light on certain issues. So I extend grace. I even occasionally will pray for him personally. I don't advertise that, but that's what I do. That's my personal belief. Nobody has to pray, but I certainly do. And then sometimes in some of my folks who may share my political background, I'll cover him personally. by showing the human side of him so that they won't get caught up in the rhetoric. Why do I say that? Well, our police department does a really good job, and their motto is assume good intent. And I think sometimes when we view people or those that we disagree with, we assume the worst intent and that they're terrible, they're evil, they have wicked plans. Who knows what? I mean, I don't know. I just have chosen to try to look. I can still hold my views. Those don't have to change. But I can recognize, I can respect, and I not see them. And I think what that does, and I share this because it might provide liberty to others if some come to this understanding, is that it was liberating for me. I didn't harbor these tensions, so it actually ended up freeing me to be able to extend a different perspective on different views. And maybe, perhaps, I might learn a few things, too, as I am vulnerable enough to actually listen. So I want to thank the council. Sometimes we hear some things, and it's tough sometimes. You get folks that want to share their right to speak, and I certainly embrace that and want that. But it's more liberating if we can move forward and recognize there's a process. To speak frankly, the police building is done. There's some that didn't agree with that. That's fine. It's done. So that subject matter is over. We can continue to raise that, and people have a right to do that, but it's done. All the energy is towards that is, I think, perhaps less than ideal energy. Respectfully, the flagpole's done. We keep wanting to see people that want to bring that up. Certainly, people are welcome to do that. Everybody has a right to do that. But I just think it's time to move on and not harbor in things that have already been decided. Now, you can channel that energy and utilize that for, you know, bring about changes, but it's done. And so it leads me into something that the mayor had brought to my attention a few days ago, and he's going to be hosting, and he can maybe segue into this and expound upon it. He reached out to me. He's putting together a A gathering called Braver Angels is going to meet I think next month in the month of September and I understand this organization is geared to bring civil discourse on various community members, family members who may see things differently and to provide a context of how we can see the humanity in people without getting confused with just the disagreements that we have. And let me close with this, and then I want to go into a more fun topic. But actually, I think this is a liberating topic. So I actually think there's some merit here, at least from what I've learned and experienced, is when we start to see people from a human standpoint, and we can still hold our convictions to be true. We don't have to compromise that. But it frees us from being embittered in the passions that we have in disagreement with people. And quite frankly, as I've gotten older, I want to enjoy life. I don't want to be wrapped up in drinking vinegar, even though I can hold my convictions to be close to the heart. So that's what I want to say about that. That's my personal experience. It's been a paradigm shift for me. I think, and I say this with an element of absolute conviction, that in my opinion, the Puyallup City Council over the past at least eight years, has been a model of what good debate and communication can be and still work together as a team. I think the state and federal government could learn from that. And so anyway, I'm proud of our council and our staff, and I appreciate everyone on this council and what you do and your perspective, but I just think that we You know, we understand that, and it's good for our city. So moving on to a little bit lighter topic, but still fun. You're right, it is the last concert in the park this Thursday. I expect it to be fairly busy. People have been looking forward to it, and I don't know about you, but I kind of like some of that old heart music. Barracuda is one of my favorites. And so anyway, I invite you to come out. And I've heard, again, just as a report, I get people that come up to me afterwards all the time. They're coming in from all over the area to come and be part of Puyallup. Why? Is it because we have better bands? Not necessarily because all these same bands are playing in other cities. But they come here because the culture of what we set here is this area of freedom to set aside our differences for an hour and a half and just enjoy life. And so it's been a real wonderful event. And so I would encourage you to come and participate because It's a kick. So thank you very much, Mayor.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor, for all you do. He hosts the concerts in the park. He does a lot better job of that than I would ever dream of. I was very happy when he agreed to continue his legacy in that department. I appreciate his comments about interacting with people. He talked a little bit about Braver Angels. I had that on my list of things to talk about tonight. We have an event scheduled for October 8th at 6.30 at the Public Safety Building here in Puyallup. Braver Angels is an organization that that doesn't try to change anybody's values. Values are what make us who we are. Those are foundational and important. Our value systems are going to differ a little bit between us, but those are what make us strong. The problem we get into is we think we don't stop to listen to what the underlying values are that other people are bringing to the table. And as Deputy Mayor Johnson related, he met with somebody that had a different value system than he did. But if you can listen and understand the motivations and the values underneath, A lot of the time, those values aren't that much different. We all want a lot of the same things. We want a good place for our kids to grow up in. We want safe communities. We want nice parks. We want good roads. We want a nice library. So Braver Angels teaches people how they can talk to each other. without raising the temperature and break down stereotypes. A lot of the time we stereotype the people that we disagree with and likely none of us are alike. So stereotyping people you disagree with is they may agree with you on 40% of your stuff, but each one of the opposition may agree with a different 40%. We've had that experience on city council where We have different alignments based on the topic we're talking about. So Brave Ranges brings people together. It teaches, it helps you understand the polarization in yourself. so that you can get past that to listen to other people. And again, it doesn't try to change your values, but it tries to open you up to hearing the values and motivations of other people. So again, that event is October 8th. If you're interested in attending, you can text me or email me at my... work phone. Some of the sign-up sheets are not as easy to go to. You can go to the Braver Angels website and drill down, but it's a little kludgy at this point. So if you have trouble with that, you can reach out to me and I'll make sure that you get the link to the place that will make it easiest. So another project I'm working on is Golden Bridges. And this is in conjunction with the Puyallup School District. And some of our younger students, many of them English as a second language students, struggle. And they don't have a firm foundation. And they may have some learning disabilities. And they have all kinds of things that handicap them from the get-go. And it holds them back throughout their educational career. And Golden Bridges is aimed at bringing in volunteers to work with our young people. We're doing a pilot program at Karchner Elementary School. And we'd like to get as many volunteers as we can to come in and help give those kids a solid foundation to move forward through the rest of their education so that they can be fully contributing members of our community. have all the advantages that we would like them to have. So that's another one. And again, you can reach out to me at my city email or phone number if you want to get involved in that program. And as a grandparent, my grandkids are all a plane flight away. So I don't get to see them as often as I'd like. And I love small children. And this program gives me the opportunity to adopt some little kids and contribute to their growth and their development. And I really treasure that. in doing that. And I think there's a lot of people in Puyallup that feel that way and would like to have those kind of connections with young people. So if you know somebody you think might be interested in that program, Golden Bridges, email me. The other two things I had on my agenda, Puyallup 101, it's a great program. It's unbelievable. It really grounds you in in understanding what the city is about. And it's just a really neat opportunity. And it's a pretty big commitment, but it's well worth it. I think we've got one of our graduates here this evening. And would you like to endorse the program for us? Yeah, so we've got one endorsement from one of our graduating members that happens to be here tonight. And again, that reflects his.

I would echo that, too. I'm a graduate of 101.

So am I.

So am I. So look at that. And the people in this room, probably 40% of us have been through Puyallup 101. So that gives you an idea of the community commitment program engenders. And the more people we can run through it, the better city we're going to have. So thank you to those of us that have been through it. And come on down for the people that have it. And finally, the one Puyallup Wonderful event. Come on down. The police aren't the opposition. I will just say that our police department, I believe it's really well run. And a lot of the time, people are afraid of the police because they hear of some police misconduct. And you hear about police departments where misconduct becomes rife because the command staff allows it to become rife and may even participate in it. That's not Puyallup. Our command staff sets a great example for our police officers, and there's a high expectation that our police officers will conduct themselves in a way that treats our citizens with respect. And I fundamentally believe that, and I'm proud of it. One Puyallup, come on down. Be a great time. Thank you. We will now adjourn to executive session. The council will recess into executive session to engage in the process of planning or adopting a strategy or position to be taken during the course of any collective bargaining. The executive session is expected to last 30 minutes, and no further action is expected following the executive session. So don't wait around for us. We won't be back. Thank you, and good evening. Have a wonderful day.