General Legislative Session - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. Snohomish County Council is called to order for our administrative session. Today is Tuesday, September 8th, 2026 at 9 a.m. We're meeting in the Jackson boardroom and also remotely. I'll read the script for public comment and then our clerks will take role. We'll take public comment beginning in person and then remotely in Zoom. Click on the hand icon to raise your hand. If you're calling in by phone, press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak and please start your comment with your name and city of residence. Next is roll call.

Here. Vice Chair Low.

Present.

Council Member Nearing.

Here.

Council Member Mead. Here. Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Chair, we have five members present. Thank you.

We have no special reports, so next is public comment. Welcome. Just a second. Let me get the timer.

Oh, it's on there. I was ready.

a graduate, a father of four, commercial property owner, and a county business owner employing more than 30 employees. Today, your agenda is chock full of budget matters, appropriations, grants, tax levies, property tax allocations, and decisions about public revenue. So let's talk about revenue. Based on my existing store's historical performance, I estimate this Clearview location will generate more than $200,000 in the cannabis excise tax every month, plus another $50,000 in monthly excise tax, sales tax, excuse me. That's more than a quarter million dollars monthly and over three million dollars annually from this location that the county is keeping closed. How much taxpayer money has the county spent keeping it closed? And how much revenue have you sacrificed? I did not initiate litigation against Nomish County. The county sued my business and sought an injunction to shut it down. Rather than use ordinary civil enforcement, the county pursued its most aggressive option. Based on county pay schedules and conservative estimates of prosecutor, PDS administrative, and court time, likely consume between 25,000 and 60,000 taxpayer funded resources and the meter is still running. Meanwhile the store cannot operate and cannot create 20 jobs or purchase roughly 90% of its products from Snohomish County producers. A competing cannabis business helped create the 10,000 foot restriction effectively allowing a tenant, not the property owner, to determine the future use of someone else's property. The county never contacted the property owner James when it changed the code affecting the cannabis use of this building. It never warned him that if the tenant moved out, it would claim his property could no longer be used for cannabis retail. But the county knew how to contact James when it wanted to threaten him and threaten enforcement. The property was marketed and leased for cannabis retail. I signed a five-year lease and invested substantially in rehabilitating, securing, and cleaning it up. Only after that work was completed did PDS contact the owner about a potential violation before any actual violation existed. The building has operated legally as a cannabis retailer for approximately a decade, and county records still showed a valid certificate of occupancy. I opened June 30th, believing the property's certificate of occupancy remained valid. The next day, Snohomish County filed its lawsuit. On July 18th, the county obtained a preliminary injunction keeping my business closed. And this aggressive enforcement continues. Last week, PDS appeared at another one of my locations and asserted a supposed one-mile school separation buffer. They threatened prosecution involvement, intimidated my workers, and disrupted six days of work without providing any legal written authority supporting that claim. That was not harmless. It caused real financial damage, frightened employees, and further intensified the stress this prolonged fight has placed on my health and my family. The prior 2,500 foot standard was quadrupled to 10,000 feet approximately in one month, nearly four years after its adoption, and almost two years into my fight, it remains uncorrected. Please write this wrong. This has cost the county taxpayers and property owner... My family and my workers, industry participants, enough money and time. Enough expense, enough conflict, enough delay. Let us put this behind us.

Patrick, you're out of time. Can you summarize?

Sorry. Let us put this behind us, get back to work, and generate the revenue Snohomish County desperately needs.

Thank you for your comment. Other public comment in person? And are there any hands raised online? No hands raised. Okay. So we'll close public comment and move on in the agenda. We have introduction and assignment of legislation to committees. Under Committee of the Whole, there are items for consideration, so we'll come back to those. You can see the budget items that go up to double E. We have the clerk's report on pending legislation. There's no report. Reports of council committees. Our committees are suspended during budget deliberations, and they'll resume on November 24th. Reports on outside committees. Any reports? Okay, I'll share that we had our law library annual report was provided to council by email, and we had the community transit meeting last Thursday that included consent items and briefings on the community transit and Everett transit merger. Any other updates? Okay, hearing none. Chairperson's report, there's no report. Chief of staff report.

Thank you. Just a reminder that next Tuesday our administrative session will be in District 5 at the Lake Stevens Boys and Girls Club. And immediately following that, we are also holding the public hearing for the comp plan amendments for 2026. That concludes my report.

Thank you. Any questions from council? Okay. Next is full council action on items from committee of the whole, and we'll hear items one and two.

Get back up there. Hold on. There we go.

Okay. Let's see. Yeah, my mic's on.

Council considers motion 26-349 authorizing Snohomish County to accept and execute FAA Airport Improvement Grant at Snohomish County Airport for Taxiway Kilo Phase 1 Environmental.

Debbie, I believe we were starting with K, which is full action items at the bottom, and then going back up to 6A. Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm following along not very well.

One and two is under K. Sorry about that.

Thank you. I just wanted to test everybody's stomachs here. Okay, here we go. Ordinance 26, Council considers Ordinance 26-043, setting jail services rates and approving and authorizing the Snohomish County Executive to sign form interlocal agreements for jail services between Snohomish County and jurisdictions located within Snohomish County. Did you want me to read number two as well? Ordinance 26-044, setting jail services rates and approving and authorizing the Snohomish County Executive to sign formal form interlocal agreements for jail services between Snohomish County and Indian tribes.

Thank you. Apologies for confusion. I usually, if we take action, we come back to it under full counsel.

Staff report. Good morning, Council. For the record, Nicole Gourley, Council staff. Council was briefed on these two items last week at GLS. They are for jail services templates, setting new rates with cities for the cost of using our jail. The two ordinances were pushed to this week so that Council could have some more conversations prior to setting time and dates. So today's request is for consideration to set time and date for the two ordinances.

Thank you. Council Member Lowe?

Yeah, I want to thank Council for pushing this out a week so I could have the opportunity to talk with staff. I also talked to Council Member Nehring about putting forward a proposal to help our cities. I think it's really difficult to have such a huge jump so quickly without the cities being prepared for such a huge jump. So I want to direct staff today to put forward a 50% cost increase proposal For next year's budget, 75%. For the following year's budget, I think we need to tip what we're going to do during the budget process with this so the cities can plan as they're planning their budget. I think that's a responsible thing to do. And through that, I think we should set up an external work group where our sheriff can meet with cities, city leaders, whether it's administrators or mayors, put together a work group so that as we do these jail increases in the future, after year two or three, that there's other discussions happening. So it's just not a surprise to our cities. And so I do want to clarify, so 50% next year, 75% the year following, and then the year following would be 100% plus the 3% cost bonus. That's what I want to propose. I think Council should support that during the budget process. Council Member Nehring and I are going to put this forward. Obviously, Council can do what they want, but that's, I think, the most responsible thing to do.

Other comments? Council Member Nehring?

Yeah, ditto to what Council Member Lowe said, I would just say after several conversations with cities as well as with the Sheriff's Office, I think this is a good path forward on getting where we need to go in terms of getting cost recovery, but also providing some heads up to cities that we're not expecting this and kind of building it in over time. So I look forward to co-sponsoring this proposal with Council Member Lowe. Thanks.

Other comments? Council Member Peterson?

Thank you, Chair Dunn. I appreciate the thoughtfulness that goes into this, but I I would maybe like a broader look at kind of different percentages, if you could, if there's a, I imagine that kind of 50, 75, 100, you'll have the numbers, but maybe if we could break those down, if we think, you know, the first year 50% isn't quite enough to cover the cost, should we go to 60 or 65? So just wondering if we could kind of have a chart that would break it down maybe in 10% increments, just so we have an idea of us as well as to be able to communicate.

I can certainly draft that. I would just note that council should, uh, keep in mind that as the percentage changes there, we can't also calculate the booking impacts that is up to city. So just within that, that's a variable that we don't know to this day. And the sheriff's office put an assumption of 50% less bookings in their budget. Because of the increase fee. So just as we develop rates, I just want to throw that out there that we should just be mindful of. Booking habits. That we can't calculate for.

Yeah, I think that is such a variable. I don't I think that's. So I think just that the straight numbers would be great numbers, but I wanted that. OK, that context. I appreciate that. Thanks.

I'm not sure if this is a question for the sheriff or the executive's office, but the these jail rates were included in their. In the proposed budget. So in the 2027 2028, can you guys come forward on the record and just help clarify that so if the if the rates are reduced then that will result in An impact to your budget and you wouldn't be able to cover those costs. I

Correct, Sheriff Johnson. That was built in, and the 50% is an assumption that maybe we wouldn't get as many bookings. So, and just for a moment with counsel, appreciate, you know, a year ago we were talking about needing to go back because we were a little behind at the sheriff's office in doing these rates. The work done on it for what it's worth with the mayor's we did give notice to the cities a full year out so last fall that we were working on the numbers and did As you guys know had the in-person meetings where we did go through the rates Some of the mayor's missed it so we had a follow-up meeting so worked really hard to be transparent as far as I can tell there's hasn't been any questions on how we created the rates, but I understand that historically Council has to tip them in or step them in certainly I recommend that if there's a way to do that. But the point that I really need to make today is you know there's 2 pieces when I met with the mayors are talking about the justice fund. which we did try to explain is for county costs. So the majority of the jail costs are our costs, county costs. It's all the felonies. With regard to, if you want to tip that down, we have to find another revenue to plug that hole, so keep that in mind. So I think it's helpful to the cities if we can do that. I think we should do that because there was a gap that came from previous administration plus also inflation and other costs. This is a big bite. But it is also, we just came through two years at the Sheriff's Office where we were underfunded in our CBA, if you recall, for the corrections deputies. So I do caution that we do need to check the numbers. I appreciate Council Member Peterson on that. We need to look at the numbers if the costs are going to come from the Sheriff's Office and we're still looking at cuts and where are we going to cut So just where you're going to find that. Happy to be in a work group to be able to go through this some more, but yes, this is part of our budget.

And the scope would be somewhere, and staff could answer this, but if it's 50%, would that be around $6 million that would need to be cut from the sheriff's budget or corrections budget?

So the way the budget is laid out is the sheriff's office put 50% of the assumed, they reduced... the total revenue by 50%, assuming 50% less bookings in their budget, and then another 50% is put in non-departmental. So technically speaking, their overall budget wouldn't be reduced. You'd be taking it out of the non-departmental section. But how we would need to fill that, Jim and I would need to dig into.

But that's based on a jail rate. That's 100%, not how. Correct. So there's an impact to the sheriff's budget. I mean, we can't absorb a 50 percent reduction. I think it's a bigger question that we need. Because we also have code that directs our sheriff corrections works with the finance department to determine cost recovery or indirect and direct cost recovery.

My hesitancy and why I need to maybe confer with Jim after is because in their budget, technically you wouldn't be cutting their budget because 50% of, they already assumed that they were going to have 50% less revenue in what they proposed. That said, the remaining is in non-departmental and available for them if they reach that. If they don't reach that, then I can't answer right now if we would need to cover additional costs. and where that would have to come from, or if we could just reduce the non-departmental side. So I don't have that answer for you in the moment, and I'll get into it.

And there's a limit to the amount we have in non-departmental?

Yes, it's about 3.6 annually.

Okay. So the question is when. We have more comments. Today is to set time and date, so in addition to any questions, I guess Mike, My overall question is, when are we setting time and date? Is it going to be with the budget? If we want to give cities time, we can pass these rates in October and set time and date in October, or we can move it with the budget.

Council Member Lowe. I'm okay with doing it with the budget process, but I think we need to tip as a council to the cities that we're not going to push 100%. the beginning because as we've already heard from the report and we saw in the executive's budget last week there's about a three million less expected revenue because of the hundred percent uh so we're already expecting a significant loss of our cities going other places because of this but i want to get back to the sheriff since we have the sheriff here um i know you've had a lot of conversations i i saw you this weekend i appreciate the work that you do i know it's been a long process for you and your office But in your conversations with the city, I think you had had some discussions or talked about potentially this 50% option. So can you address that a little bit and is that a comfortable number from your perspective?

My concern is obviously just keeping our funding full because we haven't seen that. And, yeah, when we met with the mayors, the mayors did have some conversations. One represented, can we tip it in over four years? Certainly know my place in that meeting. That's really up to the council. I don't know the full revenue picture. I thought maybe 75, 100%, honestly, is what was in my brain. I don't think I threw it out because it's really not my decision, but I do think a work group is smart. Because even sitting here today, what those options might be, I think a work group could help come through to help you have an informed decision. Certainly, our partners are important to us. We want them to have the jail open. Lots of alternatives. That's why Nicole's speaking a little bit about where people might go. There are other jails they can use. There are alternatives outside of us, for sure, including LEAD program and other things. Because, again, we're talking about non-felony crimes. So there's only a couple of classifications that are violent crime that for sure you want to book. But many cases we're talking about trespass and theft where alternatives might work for the cities. We want to make sure they have a solution. And if we can help be that solution in our facility, I think that's really important. So there are some variables. I appreciate the opportunity for the conversation.

If I can follow up on that. So if we put forward a 100% increase, we've already budgeted in about a $3 million loss or $3 million that's not going to come in because we know they're going to go other places. Do you have an estimation if we did a 50% cost, maybe this might be for CARA, If we did a 50% cost, do we have an idea of how many cities might go other places? I mean, will this definitely help that we don't lose as much of cities going other places?

I don't know the answer to that. That's a valid question.

I think Kara wants to come up.

Kara, can you help with the budget impacts? You guys can sit at the table, too, if that's easier.

I'll just stand right here. Standing feels great today. So, thank you all. Chief Budget Officer Karamein Hester, nice to see you all. So, I think these are all incredibly valid questions. So, our jail rate revenue is about $3.6 million for the first year, about $4 million the second year. And so, if you were to decrease that, you would decrease that revenue by 50%. Now, I think the flip side is that when those costs come down, you could actually see the bookings go up. So, that's where the sheriff brings up, I think the work group is a really brilliant idea because it's like, what does that do to the staffing? How does that change the operations of the jail? Because you could have the situation where, as I said, revenue goes down because of the decreased rate, but actually that 50% booking is wrong. So we actually have to push that number up. So that's kind of the, to Nicole's point, that is the variable that we cannot predict. And then that revenue is general fund revenue. So it's not sheriff's office revenue. So while the budget for the sheriff's office, the appropriation authority for their expenditures could be kept the same, that would mean the revenue coming into the general fund would be decreased. And so that 50% would be a significant decrease of revenue to the general fund. Does that make sense?

My last follow-up. Thank you. That's a really good explanation there. The issue, though, is with an external work group, that's not just going to happen next week. I mean, it's going to take a lot of time. I kind of envision it happening over the next year of having these conversations and working forward. If you have other ideas on the external work group, I'm sure Nicole and Jim can work with you guys and with the sheriff and put something together. But I think my expectation is this is probably a year-long process. If you have a shorter time frame that you think this can happen in, I'm all ears for sure. Thank you.

Just while Kara is still up here.

Sure, Council Member Mead. Thank you.

So I might be misunderstanding this, and it's totally possible, and Jim can cut me off and say you're doing bad math. So we're talking about losing revenue with decreased bookings. But the whole reason we're talking about adjusting the fees, increasing the fees, is because... Each booking is costing us. We're not recovering cost for the bookings. So if we've done the calculation, are we losing, I don't want to use the word profit because it's not a profit, but we have costs, too, to those bookings. And the costs are not the same, or we're not recovering the costs based on the current fee model. So we're not just losing $3 million. Is there a number that we see as a loss? Is it $1 million, costs versus reduced fees?

So, actually, the Sheriff's Office and I have been discussing that. I don't have the number off the top of my head, but currently we are losing money on a per-booking basis for those bookings under today's rate model. Right. Right? And so looking forward to the way it's set up in the 27-28 proposed executive recommended budget, we will not lose on a per-booking basis. So it will be flat. So cities and towns, the way it is set up, are paying exactly what it costs to book that person.

So we aren't making any profit if we adjust the fees. If we don't, we're losing money per booking. So I guess the question I'm asking is, is it a bad thing to cut our bookings in half if the fees are not recovered? If we're going to phase this in and we're going to do 50% first and we see a 50% reduction in book, isn't that a good thing for the county financially? Shouldn't the costs for the jail go down that year? because we're not actually recovering the true cost of each of those bookings anyways.

Right. I think that's the policy question in front of you, which is, is it a good thing to decrease the number of bookings and make sure that we have full cost recovery? So I think you're asking exactly the right policy question.

I'm asking you as the county's finance person, and then we're talking about the jail, and maybe if the sheriff has an opinion here, but from my perspective... We're just the fiduciary up here. We're talking about just the money, dollars and cents. Obviously the cities and the mayors have an issue with this too, and I totally get that in relation to their budget. That's our problem to the extent that we have to have good relationships, but our focus as the county council should be on our county finances and right-sizing our fee model. So I just need to know if we take a vote like this, are we losing money as a county? Which one is financially... the better deal for the county. And I don't know the answer. I can't do the math on the dais. And I'm going to ask Jim probably to end up doing that over the next however long we're waiting until the hearing. But I just don't know if you've already done some calculation on 50% reduced booking. That's probably actually a good thing or not. I don't know.

Right. And so I think from the standpoint of full cost recovery, that is the policy we've set. And because of that, we expect a 50% reduced booking. So it is just, we believe that that is a... So I think that's definitely a consequence. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is we wanted to suggest an internal work group with Jim and myself and Nicole to really look through and look through all of these items and gauge all of those different variables that we're talking about today. So just a small internal work group to get to these questions.

So my suggestion had been for an internal work group. I'm hearing external, which I agree would take longer. Also agree we don't want to come to this point every three years where it's more of a, well, agree we should engage our cities and not have to come to this point every three years where we're, looking at this decision more in an isolated way. So I had worked with staff to have a verbal motion that would create an internal work group because we do have code that directs us on this to work to include both sheriff's office and finance the executive so that there's full cost recovery or indirect and direct costs. So thoughts on internal, external? I see external as longer. Internal would be directing staff to create an internal working group that would answer some of these questions and have a recommendation for how much we can absorb for implementing for a step process. Councilmember Neering.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. I think one of the biggest questions I have, and I think none of us are going to have the answer to, is this 50% number that we've built in. None of us have any idea if it's going to be 50%. That's, in my mind, a placeholder, right? It could be 80% of cities say, no way, we can't pay this. It could be zero. They might all go out and look for alternatives, and there's an alternative to be found, and we don't lose anybody. So that 50%, as far as I understand, there's not any math behind that. That's sort of a placeholder. That's the number that we really need to hone in on, depending on how we adjust these levers, how many cities are going to decide to stick with it versus not. And I don't see how we get that answer without including cities in the conversation. So I think an internal work group is fine, but I think we do need to have conversations with cities, whether that's a formal external work group or some other mechanism. We're not going to get answers on what our participation is going to be or our continued engagement from cities without having those conversations with them. So that's my thought on it. Thanks.

Council Member Meade.

Thank you. Maybe, Jim, you can help me understand this. I still don't understand why we care about the bookings going down. Doesn't that mean we're saving money? These bookings are costing us money.

So if you all, most of you have taken a tour of the jail. The jail costs are the jail costs, right? You can't save costs without shutting down a module. So by them reducing, by a city reducing the number of people coming in, it's not reducing our overall cost unless we can close a module, right? So the bookings matter because if they reduce their bookings but we're not able to close a module, our then essentially costs are going up, right? Does that kind of make sense?

Yes, except, so I did tour the jail. We can close a module, but also there's overtime requirements for deputies taking inmates to hospitals and sitting for 12 hours. There's other costs associated with per inmate basis, right? What about the medical, are all of the specific hours for the deputies, are those things not calculated in? As far as savings that we would realize if we had a reduction even though the reduction doesn't result in Necessarily a module being closed or we don't realize any savings for reduced bookings unless so for somebody going to the hospital those are billable costs to the city direct outside of What's under the contract I would look at The sheriff's office for transport.

I think that's included But I defer to Susie I

For when we have folks go out to the hospital, we're basically eating those transport costs. The only thing that cities have to pay for is the actual medical bill of that inmate if it was exclusively theirs or shared with other cities. So the actual ER costs, unless they have insurance or they're picked up by AppleCare or something else, they're picking up those costs. But we take care of the transport costs. And Nicole described that very well. If we have enough of our city partners that want to go somewhere else, and the struggle is there's not many places they can go. We have a 24-7. We have medical. And a lot of the misdemeanor gross misdemeanor bookings that they're looking at often need medical attention after hours. So that's why they're kind of limited where they can go, unfortunately. The 50% was really just a placeholder, but coming back, if we have enough drop-off that we can close a module like she described, there would be savings for us. It is a day-to-day, and that's the classification piece you probably heard about in the jail. There's some people that can't be with other people. And so it's very important that we keep track of who can be in each module. And, and if there's more information you're interested in that, I think both, you know, work groups are important. Partnering with our cities longterm, I think is very important. And I think internally to be able to answer these questions for council members would be really valuable and we can have the right people in the room for you, council member.

Okay. Thank you. So the answer, go ahead, Nicole.

From a broader perspective, I would just like council to bring to council's attention, um, There was a decision made to move forward with the jail study, which is currently out for RFP. And I believe that jail rates is one of those things that is going to be looked at. So just for awareness as we're talking about this.

And that's a good point that as part of, and thank you to council, the funding, your funding to, you know, we were behind what it's been 10 years and council member Neering brought forward, let's take a look at the jail. And part of that is taking a look at our model that we just put forward, an outside look of it. So we expect to have that done by March, roughly. So in the first quarter-ish, we'll start looking at those funds. So we can always come back to council on some of this. But I think we can answer many of these questions with the right people in the room.

So just to wrap, just to finalize my question. So a reduction in bookings does not necessarily equate to a reduction in cost to the jail, which is why it's relevant that we'll see a reduction in bookings.

Yes, it all depends on how many people are booked, what they're booked for. Cities can book a lot of people, but maybe they're all felonies. It is just a mechanism that's moving literally every day.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Lowe.

So you talked about having the right people in the room. I think when I looked through the jail cities a couple weeks ago, it's been a couple weeks since I looked at it, I think two cities, Everett and Arlington, are 50% of the additional revenue. So I think if we're going to have the right people in the room, I would start with the city of Everett and Arlington since that's about half the cities that are paying in, almost half the thing. And if those two cities go somewhere else, that's where we're really going to be in trouble potentially.

Council Member O'Neary?

Yeah, thanks, Sheriff. Just maybe one more question, Sheriff. Sorry to bring you back up. But there is a difference when it comes to jail costs on booking versus housing, right? So if we reduce the population, that's going to probably reduce the costs in housing. But booking, my understanding is you have to be staffed for that no matter what. You could have one person booked or 100 booked. It's still going to cost you to staff booking, correct?

Correct. We always have the same number in booking.

Yeah, okay. Thank you.

Councilman Peterson?

Thank you. I think to go... Back to your question, I think an internal work group. I think we should get started kind of immediately on that because that will inform the broader work group, I think that. And just an aside on that I would also like to have a little bit of a look back to see how how long and how much we've kind of underfunded or undercharged our city partners. Over the last five years or you know, when ever the last time we really did a deep look at this We have that info so we can bring that yeah, because that will help inform the conversations and then maybe within that kind of internal group That's we can report out to some of the cities as we're building that broader. So I think we could do both I think the internal group we need some answers pretty quickly so we can work that into the budget and then the external group I think to councilmember Lowe's point is is a long-term effort as we move down in the future years to figure out how we're going to deal with jail costs, not only in this budget, but I think, I mean, jails are insanely expensive, and is there a way to come up with better ideas, better funding for other court systems, better funding for other diversion programs that the cities want to partner with? I think those are some important broad conversations that we can have long term. I would support an internal work group to start, in 12 minutes.

And I would I would note as a sheriff mentioned, there are the lead program and now we have the new start center opened in Everett and with direct referrals from the Everett police and their embedded social workers so that would help with some of their diverting some of their jail costs for misdemeanors. Council Member Neering.

Yeah, thanks, Chair. So I'm not opposed to an internal work group, but again, going back to my question is more on how, what's the impact going to be with cities? Who's going to continue with the county versus who's going to look elsewhere? So what question are we trying to answer with the internal work group? Because if it's just about, you know, how do we have full cost recovery, I think we've kind of gotten those answers. So whether we should phase it in, I don't imagine anybody internally is going to be a huge fan of phasing it versus getting 100% at once. So I'm just curious, is there a question that we don't have the answer to that an internal work group is going to bring us answers on? Because my biggest question is, what's the city participation going to be, depending on how we set up these jail rates? And we can't get that answer without talking to cities. So again, not imposed to an internal work group, but I'm not sure I understand what questions we're trying to answer with that.

So my thought was that it would be a recommendation for that staggered implementation and fully understanding what we can absorb in the budget without having to decrease the potentially decrease the correction side in order to make up for what were the county is essentially subsidizing the cost to cities at this point. So I can read what was put together, but it would be an It would be a recommendation for staggering that implementation in a way that the county is able to absorb it without large impacts to the sheriff's budget.

Okay, so that sounds to me more like a finance question or a... I guess when I think work group, I think policy. And the policy is council, probably us engaging with cities, engaging internally with stakeholders. It sounds like the questions you've asked, which are all good ones, are more just budget questions that we would ask finance or share of finance staff. Maybe apples and oranges here. When I'm thinking of work group, I'm thinking, like, we should be engaging cities, getting those policy questions answered. I think that needs to happen, and that can probably happen simultaneously to us asking those budget-specific questions to finance team.

So in the past, this body has done a staggered increase, which has resulted in over-budgeting, over-costs, and under-budgeting. when we did this three years ago. Council Member Veloz?

So to bring us full circle all the way back, my opportunity for today was so we could tip our hand to the cities, and I think we haven't tipped our hand to the cities at all about what we're going to do. So I do think we need to have another discussion on this, maybe after your internal work group, so that we can potentially tip our hand to the cities. Um, I don't, this might be a procedure for, for our chief of staff, but, uh, maybe during the department presentations, maybe as we finish the sheriff's portion that morning or whatever, continue an extra 20 or 30 minutes where we could have a discussion so we can still have the opportunity to tip our hand to the cities before we do the budget process. That's my thought, but I'll defer to the chair or whoever else on how we can continue this conversation before budget.

Because we could also send a letter to the cities if we have a verbal agreement in public discussions.

Another idea. Go ahead. Okay, so for the first idea, I'm looking at Jim who has the schedule posted up on his laptop right now. We could either schedule it directly after depending on already sent out the schedule to the department so depending on how much time we have left over or set aside some additional time and length in the day which they could that definitely could occur during that week um and as far as uh sending out some sort of communication to the cities following that discussion i'm happy to help facilitate that at the direction of council so the action today is to set time and date on a public hearing we could set that time in october and continue it with the budget and if we have a decision by

mid-October, that would indicate to the cities.

And I'll also note that the first date that is suggested for the budget items is October 20th, which will be then continued to the final adoption. So we are looking at October 20th for the other budget items as well.

Council Member Dunn, if I may. With regard to the work group, a lot of times I come in front of council and we have questions that I feel like can get into the weeds a little bit. So I still want to offer, even if you don't go into an internal work group, we're happy to meet. 20 minutes is oftentimes we can spend 20 minutes talking about either just booking and modules. And so I want to be able to give each of you as much time as you want. So if you do continue with the internal work group, we're happy to participate and answer all those questions. So when we do come out at budget for the 20-minute conversation, all those have already been answered. So we'll be available regardless. Thank you.

Thank you. So the action is to set time and date. We also have a proposal for an internal work group. We have another motion for an internal and another one for an external. First, we'll look at setting time and date. Is everyone comfortable with setting time and date for October 20th and it can be continued with the budget or we can decide it then to share that information with cities. Okay, so is there a motion to set time and date on these two items?

I move to set time. Do I need to do them separate or together?

You can do them together as long as you say both ordinance numbers and may I clarify that if you're doing it along with the budget, it's 1030 and 6 o'clock.

Okay, I move to set time and date for ordinances 26-043 and 26-044 to Tuesday, October 20th at the hour of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. 1030. Oh, sorry, 1030 a.m. I see it here now. 1030 a.m. and 6 p.m. Second.

Okay, it's been properly moved and seconded to set time and date on these two ordinances. Is there any additional discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Chair votes aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes 5-0. Next, I'll make a motion for creating an internal workgroup. I'm happy to consider any amendments, but I move to direct council staff to establish a workgroup to review the proposed jail services rates and identify potential staggered implementation options that would cover all anticipated costs for jail services, both direct and indirect, for council consideration. I request the work group include council leadership, members from the executive staff, and members of the sheriff's corrections office, along with the appropriate staff from each of those offices.

I have a procedure question. Can the chair actually make a motion? Okay. Thank you. Second.

Okay. Motion has been made and seconded. Is there discussion? Any questions? Okay. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes five to zero. Did you want to make a motion for an external group or come back?

No, that'll be later since it's a longer process.

Okay. Okay. With that, we'll move back to items under Committee of the Whole. So item under six, we have item A, which is for reassignment. And for consideration.

Council considers motion 26-349 authorizing Snohomish County to accept and execute FAA Airport Improvement Grant offer at Snohomish County Airport for Taxiway Kilo Phase 1 Environmental.

Good morning, Chair Dunn, Vice Chair Lowe, and Council Members. For the record, Deb Bell, Council Staff, proposed motion 26-349 would accept and execute a Federal Aviation Administration grant number 3-53-0028-071-2026 for Taxiway K Phase 1 for the amount of $1,195,741 for reimbursement of expenses related to environmental assessment or NEPA for the airport improvement program to build a new runway. The motion would further authorize the airport director to approve any amendments not exceeding 15% of the original grant amount and further authorize the executive to transmit the grant to the prosecuting attorney's office for review of the grant agreement under the state of Washington laws, United States code, appropriations rules, and FAA authorization acts. The grant offer requires a matching contribution of 5% not to exceed $62,934. The grant itself may be amended for up to 15% if necessary to cover eligible expenses incurred during construction. The FAA grant offer expires on September 10th, 2026, hence the request to expedite. The grant concludes in four years from the acceptance date, ending in September of 2030, and a one-time, one-year extension may be requested. The request in action today is to consider the motion as any delay beyond today's date for execution would jeopardize the federal funding. This concludes my staff report. I'm available for any questions, along with Airport Deputy Director Dawson Frank and Airport Engineering Manager Kevin Latsom, who are both available online. Thank you. Questions from Council?

Is there a motion?

I move approval of Motion 26-349. Second.

It's been properly moved and seconded to approve Motion 26-349. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes 5-0. Items B and C are for assignment to Committee of the Whole to move to September 9th for consideration. So if there's no objection, those will move to tomorrow. And then next we have our 2027-2028 budget items.

Council considers the 2027-2028 biennial budget items, two through EE. The proposed action today is to set time and date for a public hearing. Suggested time of date is Tuesday, October 20th at the hours of 10.30 a.m. and 6 o'clock p.m. Good morning, council members.

For the record, Jim Martin, council staff. Items D through EE comprise the motions and ordinances included for the 27-28 biennial budget deliberations. They include levy ordinances, annual construction plan motions, transportation improvement motions, school capital facility plans, grant work plans, schedule of rental rates for fleet services, conservation district rates and charges, and the executive recommended budget adoption ordinance. Progressive action is to set time and date for a public hearing on all items D through E.E. with a suggested date of October 20th, 2026 at the hours of 1030 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Thank you. Questions from council? Okay. Is there a motion?

Can I just say so moved on that? Second.

It's been properly moved and seconded to set time and date for a public hearing on items D through E.E. for Tuesday, October 20th, 2026 at 10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes 5-0. We have other business next, so please review motion 26-373. And next is executive session.

Thank you. Council has need for an executive session for pending litigation pursuant to RCW 42.30.110, paragraph 1, subsection I. Estimated duration is 10 minutes with possible action to follow. And that puts us at 9.57. Thank you.

Council is now in executive session. Council has returned from executive session. We have no other action and we're adjourned for the day.