City Council - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Good morning. Welcome to Thurston County Board of County Commissioners Tuesday, morning agenda setting work session for 04/14/2026. It's 09:04AM. My name is Ty Menscher, chair of the board. My left vice chair, commissioner Wayne Fornier, commissioner Emily Claus, commissioner Grant on Zoom, and commissioner Mihiel is excused in DC, for work related purposes.

County manager is excused today, and we have assistant county managers, Jennifer Walker and Josh Cummings, clerk of the board Amy Davis. Our main, task is to do a first review of next week's business agenda. So pull that forward, and we'll call that meeting to order at 2PM. Pledge of allegiance to be led by commissioner Grant land acknowledgement approval of agenda, and then a proclamation for National Counties Month.

Yes. We'll have, a few different members of our leadership team at the county speak, and then we'll have the opportunity to recognize, employees that have thirty plus years of service here with the county. Oh, wow.

Alright. Any questions on this? Are we taking a recess?

Yes. A recess with a photo. Okay.

Recessing photos. Alright. Then, public comment related to agenda items, county manager update. Anything on tap that we know of?

I'm aware of at

this time.

Okay. Consent items five, sub one, office of secretary of state elections information security grant.

Indicated that she would be here to present this. So I will send a quick note to Brandon, and maybe we can move on to the next one.

So we'll go back to item one. Item two is central services item resolution and call for sealed bids for Thurston County Public Health and Social Services solar installation project.

Good morning. Kim Burnett, director of central services. We're requesting authorization to advertise for sealed bids and to set the bid date and time for receipt of bids for this, installation of the solar panels at 412 Lily Road Northeast, where public health and social services is housed. The design work has now completed for this project. The project includes the installation of a complete code compliant and fully operational rooftop photovoltaic system and battery energy storage system.

The system will produce electricity during the daylight hours and store it on-site to be used during nighttime hours, which will reduce electricity pulled from the grid as well as ultimately help reduce our utility bills. The engineering estimate for the installation is between 900,000 and 955,000 and is fully funded through the Clean Energy Community Grants Program awarded by the Washington State Department of Commerce. And this project was included and approved in the twenty twenty five-two thousand and thirty Capital Improvement Plan. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Since for Kube on the solar

project, we talked about selling buildings and the potential of that one if we are able to move public health in there. How does this if this is a grant and that's state funded dollars, how does this affect our ability to sell a building?

There should be no effect other than it will help with resell of the building having the installation of the solar panels.

We wouldn't have to pay the state back.

I would imagine

there's some type of

Rebecca, do you

There's gotta be something there where so we can just assume that grant install the solar panels and then sell the building. And there's no issues with that.

We can double check that. But I believe we've had this conversation before and I looked

into it years ago when we first accepted it.

Right. I will double check.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions? That's a good one. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Item three, contract award for the official county newspaper.

Morning, commissioners. This is our annual item to award the contract for the official county newspaper for the term of 07/01/2026 through 06/30/2027. On April 9, two bids were received, and the lowest apparent bidder was the Squali Valley News. We have a a post contract with them that legal has reviewed. There's been no changes to the contract since last year.

Last year, only had one bid. Right?

That's correct.

Do we know who the other bidder is?

It was the Olympian.

Okay. It's just a matter of prices, what we go by that, as long as they meet the circulation requirements and everything. That's right. Okay. Any questions on that? Okay. Then we will move to item four, commissioner's office setting a public hearing for ordinance amending Thurston County code two zero two zero two five special meeting notices.

Yes. A few years ago upon the county's move to the atrium, several, codes were updated to reflect the new building address and location for special meeting notices for regular meeting notices. The official boardroom was updated. However, one oversight was that, the location of special meeting postings was not updated. And so that entire section is the same as it was when we were at the courthouse.

So postings must be listed at Building 1. And, recently, Building 1 has been repurposed and is used now for court operations. And so it just came to our attention that, when we're posting things on the windows of Building 1, it conflicts with court securities procedures. It was also something that we just kind of stumbled upon last year around this time. We have just been in the process of updating the code to reflect the new address for the E 3.

This is a cleanup?

It's a cleanup item.

Any questions on this item? I see auditor Hall is here. We can double that to item one. She's raised, which was office of the sec secretary of state elections information security grant. Good morning, Audrey.

Morning. So this is a grant that the secretary of state's office has awarded, every year for, gosh, maybe four years. No matching funds are required. It's pretty restricted. We can use it for security only.

Any questions?

Commissioner Klaus.

Thank you, chair. I'd like to move this item to department items. And I did ask a question via email yesterday, and it sounds like we're working on getting a copy of the grant agreement because that was not attached in the AIS. So I'll be looking forward to receiving that. But other than that, do you know I tried my best to find information in the two documents that were attached, but are you able to shed any light on what all this entails?

I see in the sheet at the end, threat detection software, And it looks like it may be related to some of the stuff we've been talking about, recently. So I just wanted to know if you could share any info, or I can also wait for the grant agreement if that answers my questions.

We would have to go into executive session. Okay.

Other questions? Okay. Thank you, auditor Hall.

I guess, chair. Sorry.

Yes.

If we would have to go into an executive session to discuss this, can we set up an executive session to get any questions answered?

At the boards, if you would like to, when would you like to do that?

Not right away. Just before the item is approved. So that would be before next Tuesday.

Is that something that would require a motion?

We can check with legal on their availability. Availability. We don't have any meetings tomorrow. So the next chance would be next Tuesday during agenda setting prior to the business meeting.

Okay.

Okay. So Paul, please follow-up on that. I think if there's a question asked and it can't be answered outside of the session, I don't

it wouldn't strike me that we would need

to have a motion to do that. I think that's

So you'll the board will receive the material. The board will receive the material on the grant, have an opportunity to review that, and then Tuesday morning, have an executive session.

Yeah, I'm following up, as we said previously, with the auditor in terms of if there's a grant contract. When I was reading through the document, I'm not sure if there's a specific grant contract. So we'll follow-up on that just based off of what I was looking at. And as auditor said, this is, I think, the fourth iteration that they've received for grant funding.

Okay. Let's go on to item five, community planning and economic development interagency agreement between Washington State University and Thurston County. This

item is the memorandum of agreement between Thurston County and Washington State University for their extension services. It is in the amount of $144,215 for the year of 2026. We do review and approve these on an annual basis. I want to highlight that this does reflect a $28,000 reduction from the agreement that we had with WSU Extension last year as part of our broader reduction package in community planning and economic development. And those reductions were made to the native plant salvage program.

Questions for Ashley?

Thank you.

Item six, contract for the federal fiscal year '20 fire management assistance grant. This is emergency services.

So it ends here. And

Miller Todd, emergency services director.

Hi. Good morning. Good morning, commissioners. Ben Miller Todd, director of emergency services. Just very quickly, this is actually a result of a federal audit, before every grant cycle is closed out. Notice that this is all dating back all the way to the Bordeaux fire, 09/08/2020. This is how long federal FEMA audits take. But for every grant that's issued through this FMIG or fire management grant system, it's requested by the state if many homes are threatened. In this case, a 175 homes were threatened and 10 output buildings were destroyed in the port Bordeaux fire. They identified about $12,000 in additional funds that we could receive.

We've already met the match. It's a 75, 25, 25 for local, 75 from the federal grant that we've already met the match. And so this is just authorization to accept those additional $12,000 in funds for public support that was provided for fire response. With that, I'm open to any questions.

Questions for Ben?

Nope. Good to go. Perfect. Thank you, Ben.

Item seven is public health and social services. We've got the next few. Twenty twenty six, twenty seven behavioral health community grant award to Thurston Mason National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Yes. Thank you. Jen Preheit, director of public health and social services. This is a request for the board to move to approve the final community grant. There was just a delay in contract negotiations for the award to Thurston Mason National Alliance on Mental Illness or NAMI.

This is 20,000 in 2026 and an additional 20,000 in 2027 for the purpose of providing mental health education and treatment coordination in middle and high schools through their Ending the Silence Project. And so this was based upon that one time community grant award through Treatment Sales Tax Advisory Committee That resulted in 12 total proposals, but this is the final one, as I mentioned, where the advisory committee and subject matter experts reviewed and evaluated all the proposals. They were presented at the January 27 BOCC agenda setting. The rest were all approved have gone forward and this is just the final one.

Any questions on this contract? Okay. Next item also public health contract with South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity Talichin Townhomes Phase two.

Good job. Talichin, yeah. And so this is for an amount of 434,000, 57 and 35¢ to buy down the purchase price of 14 units in, correct, the Phase two of the Talichin Townhome development to be sold for affordable homeownership. Just as a quick background, this is part of the 2024 annual entitlement of the CDBG program funding from HUD to provide a variety of activities that serve low income households and individuals. This funding is the one that rotates between the South County and Tumwater, and 2024 was a Tumwater year.

So the city of Tumwater approved this at their 05/07/2024 meeting. Thurston County Board of County Commissioners approved it at 06/18/2024 meeting. And each townhome each home in the townhome development will be sold to a household making less than 80% of the area median income. And the total award amount will be divided equally between those 14 units, resulting in 31,000 approximately for the purchase price buy down. And so those sales are expected to begin in this summer.

Any questions? Nope. Item nine is a contract with City of Olympia for operations of Quin Street Village.

Yes. Correct. And the amount of 440,000 is recommended by the Regional Housing Council. A little bit of background, the city of Olympia operates the Quincy Tiny Home Village project, which has more than a 100 tiny homes or provides exactly a 100 tiny home, shelter. The annual operating budget is approximately 1,700,000.0.

The City of Olympia contracts with Catholic Community Services for operations. And in the past several years, a portion of the operating funding has been provided through the state's ERP, encampment resolution program. And during the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six state fiscal year, this funding was reduced leaving an operational funding gap. So the city of Olympia made a request to the regional housing council and, a 440,000 to cover the funding gap only through 06/30/2026. And they approved this at their 03/25/2026 meeting.

It's provided from local home fund sales tax revenue collections. In 2025, local home fund sales tax collections exceeded projections resulting in the additional 444,000 of additional revenue. Providing this funding will not have any negative impacts on any of the other, projects in the homeless response system. And this also will, over the next, several months, the RHC is working to identify the strategies and priorities as requested to address the funding needs for QuinStreet operations for the 2026, 2027 and future years and beyond. So more to come on that.

That's going be my question, what happens after this funding runs out? More discussion. To be determined.

To be determined. This was exceeded projections. So it was good that we're able to fill a gap right now before the June.

But yes,

more to come on the rest.

Questions on Quincy operations contract. Alright, thank you. Clerk. Commissioner Mahia. Thank

you.

Commissioner Mahia, welcome in. We're on review of the consent items, and we're up to item 10, which is amendment number one to master interlocal agreement with Lock Clean Water Alliance for roadway and utility activities. Karen Weiss, of Public Works.

Good morning. Karen Weiss, Director of Public Works. So this is a request to execute an amendment, the amendment number one to interlocal agreement between the Lotte Clean Water Alliance and Thurston County. The amendment the agreement itself allows for resource sharing between Lotte and the county includes staff and contractor support, equipment and materials for roadway utility and utility maintenance activities and also authorizes cooperation on joint roadway and utility, related maintenance and repair projects. The initial agreement was executed on April 2021 for a five year term, and this amendment will extend the agreement, which will remain in effect unless either party terminates for the terms of the ILA.

It also adds some clarifying language that contractor work is included under the agreement and sets an annual maximum amount payable for each jurisdiction each calendar year. This agreement is particularly beneficial to our Thurston County small water and sewer utilities that adds contingency resources in cases of emergencies. And the Lotte board authorized this amendment on their end on 03/11/2026. Questions? Was somebody at the table involved in that?

Apparently. Other questions on this one? So if I understood, you said we had a five year, but this one's going to be just an indefinite term?

Indefinite unless either of the parties decides to terminate. And

it's been used in the last I

don't believe we actually have used it, but it's great tool to have in our tool belt for sure, especially beneficial, again, to small utilities that we have.

Approved by law on March 11. Any other questions from Karen and Matt? Right. Next up is, also public works item 11, master contracts for furnishing and supply of various asphalt materials. Okay.

This also may seem familiar to many of you as we do this annually. This allows us to, supply various kinds of asphalt materials used regularly in our road maintenance activities. Our the amount and timing of our need for these materials fluctuates during the year. So to secure the best unit cost for each material when we purchase it, we issued a call for sale bids, to obtain guaranteed prices from multiple vendors for a one year period. We received four bids, and we are asking to, award master contacts to all four of them, Granite Construction of Everett, Lakeside Industries of Olympia, Miles Resources of Puyallup, and Tucci and Sons of Tacoma.

And at the time of the need of the, the material, we would issue a purchase order, which would be based on lowest price after evaluating, factors such as available supply, cost of materials, and the travel requirements. Questions?

Questions? No. I don't see any. Thank you. All right. That's it. Only see all three times. Can go forward. Rate Item 12 is resolution to call for sealed bids for 1 83rd Avenue to US 12 Sergeant Rose.

That's me. Public works is requesting permission from the board of county commissioners to call for seal bids for a project on 183rd between Empire Street and Sargent Road. This is just outside of the city of not the city, the unincorporated city of Rochester. The pavement condition of 183rd is beyond the repair of any preservation treatment can provide and must be completely rebuilt. 183rd has an average daily traffic volume of 3,700 vehicles per day and has minimum shoulders to accommodate bicyclists, pedestrians, or any errant vehicles.

The proposed project will include a single travel lane in each direction with five foot shoulders. Other improvements include guardrail installations, slope flattening, and stormwater improvements. The estimated total project cost is 3,336,000.000. Public Works received a grant from the County Road Administration Board for 2,200,000.0. The remaining cost will come from a combination of county resources, including transportation impact fees and storm and surface water utility funds.

Any questions for Matt? Alright. Very good. Next one up is resolution call for sealed bids for Mud Bay Road pavement preservation.

Public Works is requesting permission again from the Board of County Commissioners to call for seal bids for Mud Bay Road pavement preservation project. This project will address surface conditions on Mud Bay Road Northwest between US 101 And Overholst Road 101. So that's coming off of the 101 going up the hill towards Olympia. That's basically the project limits.

It's a small stretch.

About a mile.

Mile? Yeah. From one zero one to overhauls?

Ty's mind is blown.

I don't think that's right.

I'll tell you what. I will follow-up It's pace of like

it's like yeah, it's a very short little piece. I mean

What was the bridge measurement story? Oh,

you had to go there.

I'm challenging that ball and strike call.

Remember with which your drone is Oh.

Will follow you. Careful. The sheriff's here.

Targeted enforcement there.

I am so off my game right now. The improvements include grinding and removing the top layer of asphalt and replacing it with fiber reinforced hot mix asphalt. Putting the fiber in the mix gives it a longer, pavement life. Along with improvements of the road surface, public works will be upgrading the sidewalk ramps at the intersection of Mud Bay Road and Delphi Road to meet the current ADA standards. The estimated construction cost is $2,700,000, and a 100% of this funding will come from the pavement preservation program grant. So no match required.

Which is a federal? That's a federal. No match. Okay. Any questions on this one? Just so I know, because that's right, right in my wheelhouse there, is that when would we be expecting that kind of summer?

Subject to good weather, especially when you're doing an overlay. It has to be you can't have any moisture at all. So usually, our overlay projects are July, August, September. This summer. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Alright. Then item 14 is sheriff's office. Contract with city of Tenano for law enforcement services.

Good

morning. Good morning. Yeah. So

the historical context here is that Tenaino has been kind of dwindling for some time in terms of their police departments. There were conversations two years ago where I was asked to come propose what a contract would look like. They delayed and delayed, and now they're at the point where they're down to their final two officers. And they are make they are in ongoing conversations with the county and the sheriff's office as a whole about contracting in the long term. In the short term, however, I reached out to the mayor because I had some concerns about them having two very inexperienced police officers with no supervision.

So they the chief is on leave. The sergeant at the agency has taken a job offer with another agency. So all they had left was a school resource officer and then one police officer who was basically handling calls within the city. And so in those conversations, we had to kinda figure out what was best in terms of liability and continuity of service for all involved parties. That includes the sheriff's office, including, you know, if a Tenano police officer, responded to a domestic violence call and needed help, who's in charge on that scene?

They don't have a supervisor. Technically, their supervisor would have been the mayor, who has no police experience. So in having conversations with the mayor, we made the decision to shift both of their police officers into the schools because they have a school resource officer contract they have to fulfill still. And we would handle anything off school property. So that is the current status quo for the city of Tenaino. It's going fine. Our our deputies are handling all calls of service at all levels. So that part's all going well. What I asked for in some meetings with the county commissioners was a bridge. We need some time to get to whatever that long term contract is going to look like.

And right now, we there is no contract between the city of Tenaino and Thurston County for the services that are being provided twenty four hours a day outside of school limits. So this contract, it looks similar to the Rainier contract. It is a monetary contract just to get us over the next six months to buy us some time so that I can sit down with all the stakeholders and figure out what Tenaino can pay for and what services they want.

Questions? Yeah. I've I've made my comments about the the contract, and I understand the concept of being temporary. I I still have those concerns of it being a proper contract, but I understand the intent. I think those concerns have been kind of validated by the internal auditor, and that's something that we'll probably learn more about in the next couple weeks.

But I understand the intent here. My only request, and I made this in the meeting the other day, is that before we sign anything, we make sure that HR and the PAO have reviewed it for the civil service rules and that RCW 41.1. Because before we assume any liability with their employees, I want to make sure that everybody completely understands what that means and what that could potentially look like.

Yeah. And I'll double check, but I believe this was taken before both of those organizations and cleared. So

Okay. Then I'll want to

have a meeting

with HR to make sure we understand that because the concerns that I expressed to HR, she said were valid. So before we sign this, we need to understand what potential liabilities we are taking on.

And this contract is backdated. So we took over on April 6. So this this is backdated April 6 from the day that we took over. So the the way that we came up to the numbers was we just prorated what six months of coverage would look like and backdated it from from that April 6 designation. So that's that's how we came up with the math.

Other questions for the sheriff's team? Not hearing any. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Next up is item 15, appointment to the Lewis Mason Thurston aging Area area on aging council.

Fifteen and sixteen are appointments that were discussed back on March 31 prior to the spring. So these are now coming forward for formal appointment.

Okay. Are there any objections to the appointment for the area on aging council? Is that Commissioner Grants?

Yes.

Council. That's a reappointment. Is that a good appointment, Commissioner Grant? Are you

Yeah. Absolutely. I'm in complete support.

Okay. Very good. Then next up is appointment to treatment sales tax. Candice Bowman. Any questions or concerns on this one? This is recommended by the group. They do recommendations usually.

Yes, they did. And the board reviewed this on March 31 and provided direction to move forward.

Okay. All right. I'm hearing objections to that. We have voucher list from March 9, March 16, and March 23. Any questions or concerns? Alright. Then, department item, public works contract award for payment pavement preservation, 2026 chip seal.

Good And good morning. My name is Matt Othlin, Thurston County engineer. First off, I wanted to follow-up with commissioner Menser. It's 1.1 miles. So we just confirmed that you speed up and down that hill.

I can't yeah. That's hard to believe. Alright.

Alright. Sheriff Sanders left the room. You're okay. So we're here to request that the board of county commissioners award a contract for the pavement preservation 2026 chip seal project. On 03/19/2026, a total of two bids were received for the project.

The low bid was from Doolittle Construction of Snoqualmie, Washington in the amount of $2,290,000. Contract work includes chip sealing 29 miles of roads located in the Southeast quadrant of the county. This is about half of what we are able to do two years ago. The cost for the project will be paid from the county road fund. The project is scheduled to begin later this spring or early summer when temperatures are warmer.

And, again, this is us maximizing every dollar that we have remaining, for preservation work. You'll notice that we asked for a budget authority less than 10%, and that was to be able to maximize the amount of road road fund dollars that can be used in this project to get the most mileage out of this year's contract.

Commissioner over here.

Thank you. Matt, just to you a couple follow-up questions. So, what were we at two years ago?

About six 60 miles.

So from 60 miles, we've gone down to 29 miles. And this was just because of the shifts from the road fund to the general fund. Is that correct?

That's correct, commissioner.

Thank you. I also have a question in terms of, you know, just gas prices right now. Right? We're seeing kind of that impact come through. You know? Are are we seeing that at all translating in kind of these projects at all?

We are. And we actually have a unit bid item in our preservation contracts to adjust for the cost of oil in the contracts. And that's supposed to make up for if the the price of oil suddenly spikes and the contractor bids something down here. We want a good deal, but we also don't we also wanna make sure it's fair to the contractor too. So there is an escalator item that adjusts with the contract to make sure that the fair compensation is made, to the contractor for what they're paying for the price of oil.

Is it, like, take a certain threshold to trigger that? Or

It does. I can't tell you what that threshold is right now, but there is a threshold.

Okay. Other questions? No. Alright. Thank you. So looking at my phone, I see what was imagining where you get off the one on one. You're talking about it's going to be paved all the way out past buzzes.

Correct. Yeah.

That's definitely a mile.

And there is a vicinity mass.

I'm going say that's like We need

to take a trip out there.

That's like 100 yards. I'm get a huff at the 101. Makes me

That's a good question.

Alright. Public comment related to general matters follows. Commissioner community reports, and that is adjournment. I had look at the the clerk because we don't have our advisory board's item on the thing. There was this sitting on my desk related to housing authority.

Oh, is that the

We had, like, an another applicant or something. Is that

Yeah.

And it was provided to Hatch. And so they are taking that applicant back to their board of directors for review and consideration also in addition to the four other ones that they've already reviewed.

So that will come back to us.

It will come back to us with their with a new or potentially the same recommendation.

Okay. I'll hang on to that for now then. Other commissioner items? Okay. That's it. Time of the agenda. We're adjourned. Okay.