City Council - Regular Meeting

Oh, wonderful. Okay.

are we ready to begin tracy that is a loaded recording in progress yes tracy thank you so much welcome everyone you have made it to tuesday august 18th Meeting is now called to order. Tracy, can you help me with roll call?

Yes. Council Member Brandon Whedon?

Present.

Council Member Angela Jefferson? Present. Council Member Joan Caffey? Present. Council Member Eileen Swarthout? Present. Council Member Megan Sullivan? Present. Council Member Peter Agabi?

Present.

Council Member Kelly Von Holtz? Present. Mayor Leata Dahlhoff? And I am still here.

Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Look how quickly we're on to item number four, special items. We have Proclamation International Overdose Awareness Day, August 31, 2026. And we have Councilmember Sullivan who's going to read that proclamation.

Thank you, Mayor. Whereas observed on August 31 every year, International Overdose Awareness Day seeks to create a better understanding of overdose, reduce the stigma of drug-related deaths, and create change that reduces the harms associated with drug use. And whereas overdose deaths occur in all communities among people from every walk of life, and whereas overdose deaths are preventable and can be caused by alcohol, over-the-counter medicine, stimulants, opioids, and other substances, And whereas, like many places in Washington state, we need to continue to treat drug-related harm as a public health issue and invest in best practices that save lives and build communities. And whereas, anyone can visit the statewide resource, www.stopoverdose.org, to obtain naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medication. and recovery helpline at 1-866-789-1511 for 24-hour information and help. And whereas, Tumwater stands beside those who have lost loved ones to an overdose and who have a substance use disorder and are diligently working towards recovery, And now therefore, Lieta Dahlhoff, Mayor of the City of Tumwater, does hereby proclaim August 31, 2026, International Overdose Awareness Day, and calls upon the people of the City of Tumwater to join in raising awareness around drug overdose by reducing stigma through initiatives related to education, prevention, treatment, and recovery support for substance use disorder, signed this 18th day of August, 2026.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Sullivan. We have Two people, right, just two, is it two? Looking at you, two? From Thurston County Public Health and Social Services Opioid Response Program, Katie Sjozic and Kateri Wimsett, here to join us. Do you two wanna come up to the podium and say some words? It'd be awkward if you said no. It'd be awkward if you said no.

Hi, I'm Katie Strozik. I'm the Opioid and Overdose Response Program Manager at Public Health and Social Services. First, I want to say thank you to City of Tumwater for doing this proclamation again this year. It's been multiple years now that City of Tumwater has done this proclamation and it really shows dedication to our community and our efforts here in Thurston County around opioid and overdose response. I also just want to say a huge shout out to Tumwater as a whole. You guys have a lot of great things going on as far as opioid and overdose response. You've been great partners with our opioid abatement council. We've been really fortunate to move that forward to get opioid settlement dollars into our community, which has not been a small feat by any standard. You also have a great substance use prevention coalition, Tumwater Hopes, in partnership with the ESD 113. And you also have a thriving relationship with Tumwater Police Department and our law enforcement assisted diversion program, which has been great to divert for pre-arrest so that we can get folks into the treatment and recovery services they need instead of putting them into jail, which doesn't really help them. So we're really fortunate to have an Overdose Awareness Day event again this year. International Overdose Awareness Day is really near and dear to my heart. I've responded to overdose of loved ones and I've lost many friends to fatal overdoses, unfortunately. Overdose Awareness Day is a time for us to be able to memorialize those who have been lost to a fatal overdose. but also to recognize the impact that it has on our community, on friends, family, to recognize those who have survived a non-fatal overdose, as well as those who have responded to an overdose that's been in progress as well. So there is an Overdose Awareness Day event on September 2nd from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. downtown at Franklin Street Harm Reduction this year. I have flyers that I'll be able to pass down. And I just want to say, Tumwater is really fortunate. We have a lot of capacity. building that's happened in Thurston County over the last five to six years as far as bringing more peer support services, law enforcement assisted diversion, treatment options, and we've been lucky to have some of them right here in Tumwater, one of them being the Chehalis Tribes shayla's tribes medications for opioid use disorder clinic that's kind of right down the road we're very fortunate for our syringe services program to be co-located with their mobile clinic downtown olympia as well as franklin street harm reduction so it's just been really great to see the support from tumwater not just from city council but from city staff from law enforcement on a continual basis tomorrow has also had an extremely present being at our Thurston County Opioid Response Task Force and related work groups over the last five to six years as well. And I just can't say enough appreciation for the dedication from the folks at Tumwater for the work we do and for the collaboration as well. So thank you.

Thank you, Katie. Does, I know Mayor Pro Tem Von Holtz is on lead. Council Member Whedon, Thurston County Opioid Response Task Force, and Council Member Agave on the Opioid Abatement Council. Do any of you three want to say anything? Your mics are live.

All right. You want me to go first? Mayor Pro Tem von Holtz. Thank you so much for being here. And this is, I put this on my calendar. Oh, sorry. I got to almost do it.

We don't apologize. Sorry.

I'm not. being a part of LEAD has taught me so much and I'm really just the stories that you hear of people who were able to get treatment instead of ending up in jail is really inspiring and so the putting people together within the community to get people the actual help that they need rather than pushing that off well is just incredible. So thank you for all the work that you're doing. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember, Mayor Pro Tem von Holtz. Councilmember Gabbay, you want to talk about any comments about the great work you're doing on the Opioid Abatement Council?

Sure. My experience with drug overdose or substance abuse goes back to my education and to my wife's profession as a mental health nurse. I have often been told that here in Thurston County that we have all the resources that we need to take care of people who have substance abuse, who are suffering from that addiction. But given my work with the state, that is not often the case because sometimes when you go in for treatment, unless you're forensic psych, you go in and go out, so there is not this long-time resources that is available for them to dial into. For the opioid abatement program that the county, that we tend to, this is what the county is getting into, my hope is that Once that is stood up, that we will have additional resource within the community to take care of that problem. So I thank you for being here tonight, and I thank you for your job.

Well said, Council Member Murgabi. Council Member Whedon.

Just like, thank you for being here. Representing the whole entire overall group, drug addiction has a multi-layer, multi-faceted background. And at the end of the day, these are still people. And there's a feeling that they are not people in a lot of aspects. So giving a face and a name to people that are struggling with addiction, that have passed due to addiction. It's important that we continue to have these conversations so that we can address all the facets, the underlying rehabilitation, going back and forth. They're going to have ups and downs. But in order to continue to move forward and have a better community, better world, it's just great to have the recognition. So thank you for being here. I appreciate the work that you do.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you, Councilmember Whedon and the reminder of our humanity. Any other council members want to give any comments or compliments to Thurston County? Councilmember Sullivan?

Just wanted to appreciate public health as an essential part of a thriving community. Thank you for what you guys do. Councilmember Swithout?

Thank you. I appreciate the work that your team has done. I remember when the first, the whole, the first Opioid Task Force took, it's been a few years since you started.

So 2008. Six years. Okay.

I remember when it started and I appreciated that we still, that you still participated. So I really appreciate the work that you're continuing to do and the impact you're making. So thank you.

That's good. Council Member Jefferson, do you have anything you'd like to impart?

Yes. With drug addiction increasing in Thurston County and with limited resources, what brings you joy?

Oh, man. I think seeing the personal stories of the lives that have been changed. I've done this work for over a decade now, so six years here in Thurston and five years in Lewis, and had countless people come back to me and talk about the programming that I've been involved in starting, folks who come to our syringe services program, and getting to hear stories of people and sharing how hopeless and down that they felt and how judged by the community they felt and how the programs that we're able to implement and stigma reduction and community building have really wrapped around them and changed their lives and seen people move from homelessness, inactive drug use, to being housed, employed, reunited with children, and seeing just the real-life tangible lives changed from the work definitely brings me joy and hope.

You are making a difference. Thank you for your service. Thank you.

Great question, Councilmember Jefferson. Great answer. Councilmember Cathy, do you have anything you'd like to share?

I do. I would like to make a comment from the perspective of parents and the loved ones of those that are struggling with addiction and the help that they have gotten and Council Member Jefferson used the word joy. of some of the parents who thought their kids would never get off drugs. And, and so I've enjoyed hearing some of those stories all down through the years from, you know, school teaching to being out in the community and hearing the thank yous and the relief and the joy that family members find after after the success of a program like this. So I just wanna thank you for hanging in there, because there's a lot of days of no joy, and you're still there. So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Cathy, for that perspective. Katie and Kateri, would you be open to doing a photo op with all of us in the front? Yep. Okay, let's do a photo.

Three, two, one.

and then Jason do we also have this scheduled to go on social media soon it'll be scheduled thank you so much okay We are moving on to item 4B, presentation from Thurston Conservation District. We have two other people representing another type of environment, but it's all together. We have Thurston Conservation District Executive Director Sarah Morehead and Board Chair TJ Johnson, who are going to be providing an update on the work the Thurston Conservation District is doing that may have an impact on Tumwater. Do you two want to take the mic?

Well, thank you very much. You might recall I was here last spring and under public comment tried to throw a whole lot of information at you about what we were doing.

We didn't notice, TJ. Not at all.

But fortunately, the mayor said, hey, let's have you come back and let's take a little bit more time and really have a discussion about this stuff. So we very much appreciate the opportunity.

TJ, when we say time, is 20 minutes enough time?

I think that's plenty of time.

That's perfect because that's what we've allotted.

Yeah, I think we can do it in that. So our approach here is Sarah's going to present some information, and then I'll present some additional information, and then we'll turn it back to you for discussion and any questions you have for us.

Do you want questions throughout, or would you like counsel to wait?

Do you have a preference?

Choose your pleasure.

Yeah.

Don't give counsel that option.

Mayor, you're running the meeting. I defer to you.

I think it's, I like the engagement. So if council has a question throughout, it fits better. So if you're okay with that and you might actually get more time because if there's more questions and you get more time.

Sounds good. All right. So I'm going to turn it to Sarah at this point.

Alright, hello. Thank you for having us. Just like TJ said, we want to share some information about the work that we do in a little more depth, and especially some work that we're doing in partnership with the City of Tumwater. I love when you click the button and it actually happens. um so first i just want to tell you guys a little bit about ourselves for those of you that don't know tcd is a voluntary non-regulatory entity and we can work together in partnership to sort of extend the city's capacity and goals with the work that we do in collaboration to benefit the residents of tumwater in the surrounding area we work all throughout thurston county and have unique partnerships with several jurisdictions to address really specific needs in those communities Throughout this presentation, we'll highlight the breadth of these services, some of the current work that's going on, identify some of the needs and gaps we've heard from residents within your community and share those with you, as well as some ideas about how we can collaborate to solve those, and share some of the really exciting new and big initiatives that TCD is working on.

I spoke too soon. There we go.

So again, for over 75 years we've been working in this region to protect and enhance the farms, forests, and natural landscapes of Thurston County. We do that through technical assistance, education, project implementation, and lots of partnerships as I've mentioned. We serve everyone from residents of this community, schools, farmers, businesses, neighborhoods, public agencies, nonprofit partners, tribal governments, you name it. And we have a really unique ability to combine public funding, grants, our technical expertise, volunteers, and private landowners all together to make a big change on the landscape and in our community programs. A lot of the core services that we offer are around water quality and stormwater, habitat restoration, agriculture and local food systems, urban conservation, forestry and wildfire resilience, native plants and pollinators, K-12 education, community gardens, there's a long list. So some of the existing partnerships and work within the city of Tumwater. This is one of our sort of shining star programs. Over 30 years old is the South Sound Green Program. It's a K-12 watershed education program, works with all of the schools within this area and throughout a lot of the Deschutes Watershed, which we're in. They focus on hands-on water quality education, classroom trainings, lots of connecting students to science and civic responsibility and local ecosystems. This is sort of a ready-made platform. Oh, is there a question?

Second, Councilmember Jefferson.

Yes, so how does this work with the stream team?

Yeah so we partner with a lot of the stream teams within Thurston County and with cities we do a lot of our hands-on like tree planting work with them we've done a lot of this joint what we call service learning partnerships some of those happen on public properties some of those happen on private properties but this program has been a long-standing partner of the stream team and as we've seen staff turnover at both of our entities that partnership has looked really different along the way but they've sort of been coexisting in this space and working together Some of the other things too is that we do some water quality testing these students. We bring students and teachers and classrooms out into the field and so we'll engage with partners in that space to provide some training and education for students and some learning there and then we'll provide some great data back to a lot of our partners that our students have collected. This is, again, a ready-made model. While a lot of the work that this program does focuses on water quality and, you know, water testing pieces, it is a structure and a system that's built that we've been expanding into other topic areas too, like pollinator habitat or, you know, urban agriculture, interested in that. It's been really inspiring to watch these students now for almost two decades I've been watching them. uh and some of their concepts that they are gathering and that they're coming into fourth grade with our hey we should restore the deschutes estuary and we should take on these big things and it's really fun to watch students come up with ideas when they don't recognize some of the barriers that adults are aware of and and the visionary sort of passion that they bring to that table councilmember whedon has a question not so much a question statement um

I was actually part of this group with Black Lake Elementary that you actually came out and did this and it was a really cool experiment where the kids got to have like the first hand knowledge and get to work with their hands and kind of see how it all interplays together and it was they talked about it for at least a solid week and then the teachers really appreciate it too so I really enjoyed having that field trip day going over there and getting to learn even more as an adult about how it's all interconnected.

And one of the things that's really exciting is sometimes we're bringing youth to our nearshore field trips on the beach that live right here and have never seen Puget Sound or been to the beach, right? And so we're providing those touch points and opportunities. Some of the staff that I've hired now actually were students in this program, right? And so it is this career-connected learning that inspires them into the future to take career pathways within natural resources.

Thank you, I just wanna do a reminder for all of council to make sure your mics are closer, right? Because this is not just for us in the room, but for council member Cathy and anyone else watching. So just, I know we've been on council break. Bring the mics forward. Thank you.

Absolutely. This program also provides teacher trainings, too. We do a summer institute for teachers. Over 100 teachers within Thurston County participate. As soon as those free tickets go on sale live, they sell out in minutes like it's a hot concert. And so we do a lot of that train the trainer, too, where we're providing best available science in connection to learning and partnerships to a lot of educators within our community. One of the other things, and sort of the bread and butter of what the Conservation District is and does, is this voluntary, personalized technical assistance and education to residents of all shapes and sizes, urban, rural, again, everything in between, sort of any question, interest, topic, area related to the outdoors or natural resources that folks have. We likely have a resource, a program, a handout, or a human that can come and support you and understand the unique goals and challenges that are happening on your landscape.

Sarah, can I ask a question? Yeah. So I talk a lot about the urban-rural lifestyle, which is why Tumwater is so important to me, that lifestyle. And I feel like those definitions are changing, and I'm getting feedback like, well, everything will be urban, right? And so how do you define rural and urban? What does that mean to the Thurston Conservation District?

Oh, that's a great question. So I mean, I think for us, what we're what we're trying to do is, in our minds and in our programs and services is close that divide and not necessarily further those distinctions. While we have programs and services that are tailored for folks that are living in a rural community. They're living on large acreage or they have a lot of farm or forest land or we have cooperators that we're working with that are doing container gardening in their apartment on their balcony, right? It's sort of everybody in between and it's finding our programs and services and understanding how to weave those into the real experiences and lives that people have. So I know that's probably the opposite of the question that you asked, but I think rather than trying to sort of separate those, we're trying to figure out how our programs can wrap our arms around both of those populations.

Would you like to? Yeah, I was like, TJ and I have talked about this.

Here we have. I think, so we've changed over time. I mean, historically, conservation districts and this conservation district were very focused on rural areas. And I think particularly in the almost nine years that I've been at the board, we've really brought more of an urban focus to things for two reasons. One is that's where most of the people live. And two, that's where most of our funding comes from. And I'll talk a little bit about funding in a few minutes. IT'S ALMOST AS IF IN THE PAST THE PEOPLE PAYING THE BILLS WERE NOT GETTING THE SERVICES. AND SO OUR BOARD IS VERY COMMITTED TO SAYING IF YOU'RE WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE DISTRICT, WE WANT TO HELP YOU WITH YOUR PROBLEM.

AND JUST TO FOLLOW UP ON THAT, YOU KNOW, OUR WORK IS ABOUT PEOPLE AND IT'S ABOUT THE LAND. AND SO WE WANT TO SERVE THE PEOPLE WHERE THEY'RE AT AND THE LAND WHERE IT IS TOO. AND SO IT REALLY IS THAT SORT OF STITCHING TOGETHER THE URBAN

interface i love that councilman Jefferson you had your hand up did you want to yes i did how and why might a homeowner reach out to you can you give me two examples

Oh, I can give you 30. But two of those examples to got it. A lot of folks are interested in habitat, right and small scale habitat. One of the things that homeowners are often really interested in is pollinators, right birds, or butterflies, bees, things like that. And they're interested in doing what what can I do in a small footprint or a small scale to increase this these really critical habitat types. And so implementing hedgerows is one of the things that we get a lot of questions about. And so we can offer people often how to guides, maybe invitation to a workshop or a demonstration planting that we're doing locally where they can come out and sort of see firsthand and get some experience. and then get the tools to install them themselves. We've got a bare root native plant sale with really low cost plants that we can invite them to. If they come and provide some service at a work party, they can get a voucher maybe to go to that plant sale and install those themselves. That's one of the pieces that we get a lot of questions about. We also get a lot of like backyard gardeners and backyard food producers. We've got a small farm equipment rental program somebody wants to start producing their own locally grown meat chickens in their own backyard right how do they process that well you can come to us and you can learn how to do that whole process from start to finish yourself you can get your soil tested at the conservation district understand what kind of nutrients you're working with within your garden beds and we can provide you a site-specific recommendation for how to amend those soils and grow your own food excellent thank you

Sarah, you just reminded me, I love that idea. So one thing that we are experiencing at Town Water is Homeowners Association. And they're CC&Rs. So our fire chief and police chief and myself are going to do a tour. We're going to do demographics around 11 distinct neighborhoods in Town Water and get them all together. In one neighborhood that I am close to, because I live in it, there is a neighbor who has turned their front yard into raised garden beds. And I experience the fruit of that labor. I get the produce. And I have neighbors who say it's lowering their property values. So I would love for us to connect and talk more about setting expectations, because I want to support people having and growing their own. But I'm realizing there's a disconnect I'm experiencing with homeowners associations and CC&Rs. Do you get any of that? Do you hear any of that?

some to some degree because we're a voluntary organization people that come to us want to work with us and they want to invite us into their communities to work with us we often have gone out and worked with homeowners associations gone and done presentations to homeowners association boards around any given topic maybe it's creating a fire resilient community maybe it is that's coming up a lot as well

Would you all be interested in maybe joining us on some of those? Sure. Our fall tour? We would love that. We could provide all kinds of information. I'm going to take that as a yes. I'm going to take that as a yes. It's a yes.

Okay. It's a yes. So like we just talked about, you know, our model is pretty valuable to community residents because we are voluntary, non-regulatory, personalized. We have these practical solutions that we can hand people, meet them where they're at and sort of whatever size, scale or location that they live. And just to follow up, a lot of the residents within the area, the Tumwater area, are interested in commercial agriculture, wetland and wildlife enhancement, forest health, pollinator habitat, flooding and wildfire concerns, riparian restoration, prairie habitat, and then small acreage and urban property management in general. This is some of the site-specific data we've collected from Tumwater area residents. And I just want to note this photo that was taken here was taken from one of our recent community listening sessions when we developed the South Thurston Community Wildfire Protection Plan of which a lot of folks, maybe in this room even, and elsewhere were engaged. A lot of fire authorities that serve the South Tumwater area, and it covers a lot of the South Tumwater area in UGA. But it's a lot of residents coming together, identifying needs, gaps, interests concerns around wildfire putting it into this plan so then we can take that and create some actionable steps whether it's creating fire wise communities again one of the popular things that we meet with hoa is about all right continued opportunities to expand our partnership this is one of the really big hot topics that i mentioned that folks are interested in which is community gardens and urban food access educational programs like Farm My Yard, which links folks that might have a yard to folks that want to grow food in that space instead and does some matchmaking there. Just connect residents and knowledge to land to grow food. There's a big gap currently in urban agriculture, and not a lot of services are provided outside of sort of the conservation district on the scale that the community is interested in needs. A lot of residents may lack complete knowledge. They may be venturing into growing their own food for the first time. They might lack access to sufficient water or startup infrastructure and resources. There might also be multifamily communities or smaller urban parcels that fall outside of a lot of the traditional government-funded agricultural support programs. And so things that we could think about collaborating on are really doing some targeted focus on urban agriculture, technical assistance, doing more small space and container gardening education, thinking about community orchard planning, continuing to focus and provide services for soil testing and composting. Also offering some water efficient opportunities for growing your own food and turning lawns into food producing landscapes. providing again that pollinator friendly habitat and creating additional edible landscapes in public spaces strengthening our farm to school garden support programs and providing some urban farm and business programming I want to highlight a little bit we have just completed a series of projects with the city of Olympia around this, trying to help them address some of their challenges and needs around urban agriculture. We've also done some similar projects with Yalm and Bukota, but in the city of Olympia, we did sort of a mapping project of agricultural land existing in potential agricultural land within the city in the UGA and then did a phase two map on top of that where we looked at and compared access to different socioeconomic metrics to where food producing opportunities would be and provided some recommendations about how we could increase that and provide more walkable access to food. From that sort of spurred a big lift and focus in creating community gardens throughout the city. We did a ton of partnerships with transitional housing communities, taught residents how to grow food, developed the infrastructure with a ton of partners like GRUB. and continue to provide some maintenance and create some community garden ambassadors that can continue to be pillars and leaders in those communities that we've provided some education to that can continue to inspire current and future residents to grow their own food. Sarah while you're taking a breath council member Sullivan had something yes you mentioned in the long segment something about community orchards and I was curious what that term means yeah absolutely a lot of people call you know there's food forest is a term community orchard is a term but it's it's providing space usually on publicly owned land that's accessible to the community to provide food producing species. So berries, nuts, traditional fruit trees, things like that planted in part of the landscaping. There's all kinds of different considerations around that too, around maintenance and things, fruit drops on the ground, stuff like that. But it is starting to catch on and there's systems and frameworks in place that a lot of jurisdictions and their public works departments are exploring and creating some pathways for. But it's free food for the community.

Councilmember Cathy, years ago, I remember asking for that in our roundabouts and being told no, because an apple could fall on someone's head. I mean, that was years ago, Councilmember Cathy.

Years ago. Some of this stuff is years ago. I remember years ago. when TJ held one of his first gatherings and talked about how he was about ready to be driven out of his neighborhood because he was changing his front yard into, you know, people were up in arms at that. And yeah, this is so exciting. I'm having a hard time holding myself together here. I mean, we've been through and excited about and hopeful and tried things for many, many years here in Tumwater. It's like, well, goodness, here they are all together, all the recommendations and know-how. So it's just pretty exciting, isn't it, Mayor?

I know. That's why I was like, I'm watching your face and I can see you. Well, that's why I would like, when we get an update next year, I would like to make sure that Tom Water is on that slide.

Yeah.

We would love that. Councilmember, thank you Councilmember Cathy. Councilmember Agave.

And I don't mean to sign Debbie down. Besides being a recreational grower, I grow tomatoes and peppers. And the little that I've grown that I gave away because I have so much was pumpkin that I accidentally grew. So have you guys have a catalog of somebody be successfully growing something that have surplus of that they can actually feed themselves for X amount of time and give away that besides just putting fish crop in the ground and watch them grow.

Yeah, absolutely. So we do everything in partnership and this is a great opportunity to partner with things like the food bank and some of the other food bank support services in some of our smaller communities. they have some great programs for gleaning, right? Farms, gardens, or diversion programs where you can provide that food there. Even food that is produced that is maybe no longer fit for human consumption, right? There are connections and diversion pathways so that that goes back into maybe livestock feed, right? And food there. A lot of our even small grocery stores within Thurston County will have that local farmer connection. And so all of their produce that's past its prime goes to feed livestock within the area. The district oftentimes works as a switchboard operator or a broker in that process connecting folks that are interested in a service with the other side of that even if we're not the end goal recipient.

Do you want to add anything?

Did they fit into the farmers market?

What?

Did they fit into the farmers market?

Does any of it go to the farmer's market? I think it depends. Yeah, I think it depends on who and what model folks are producing food at. Some farmers like TJ, maybe I'll let you speak to that, have a community supported agriculture model where there's food going direct in subscription boxes to folks.

Do you want to?

Well, I wanted to address the other point about the way we help people who have these surpluses and stuff. We have a huge network of volunteers. And so we have people that are actively doing this stuff for themselves. And we have classes and workshops to show other people how to do it. Some of the community garden initiatives we've done the last couple years, we're not only teaching people how to grow food, we're teaching them how to preserve the food, how to can it or dry it, how to use it, how to cook with it. So we're kind of looking at the whole system from when the seed goes in the ground to the food goes in the person's mouth. Thank you.

And I think a lot of the opportunities for partnership and collaboration that we identified here would help further the Tumwater Food Systems Plan that you guys adopted last year, and we could be a thought partner in how to turn some of those ideas into implementation. Urban forestry wildlife and pollinators again a group of topics that I've already mentioned there's some interest in. TCD has been at times again a technical service provider on some of your urban forestry codes here within the city. We have a forester on staff as well as a lot of other technical folks in various disciplines from education to habitat to climate change and others. And so we are providing those technical sort of service inputs to jurisdictions as they're doing code updates. We also do a lot of urban and sort of peri-urban forestry site visits with In the city of Tumwater and around, there's opportunity for expansion certainly within the city of Tumwater and partnerships there. Also looking at not just creating wildlife habitat, but also some of those wildfire resilience points. There's models out there for urban tree canopy assessments, continuing to partner on tree care workshops. Again, we offer a huge native plant festival every year with low cost bare root plants. between 1,500 and 2,000 residents from our community and actually all over Western Washington that come to this. So we're a huge influx of that native plant material into our community. And again, like TJ's mentioned, we like to gather a lot of people, volunteers, and do a lot of community education and workshops about how to increase that. And this is one of the number one sort of homeowner or suburban resident calls. It's usually around wanting to integrate native plants into their landscape or create pollinator habitat. We also do a lot of community science and monitoring and some of the things that we're looking at in the future are how to engage citizens in doing that sort of community science and monitoring around native species within our urban areas. I also want to highlight this photo here, which is at the Deschutes Preserve, not too far from the city of Tumwater on the Deschutes River. It's a great partnership that the city has been involved in, and Oli Ecosystems is the property owner here. We're doing massive amounts of restoration and resiliency within the Deschutes watershed on waters that flow right through the city of Tumwater. We're doing a mile and a half stretch of restoration along Elwanger Creek which flows into this collaborative property site. One of the things that I wanted to highlight here is again that this is a super large piece of property adjacent to the city that's providing a lot of habitat corridor extensions of wildlife transition you know going through the city to our rural areas as well as providing things like groundwater recharge and flood mitigation along the Deschutes speaking of that preparing for increasing seasonal water demand water conservation is really a huge hot topic for all of us right living species on the planet and so in addition to doing some of the things i mentioned like helping urban residents with more efficient drip irrigation right to reduce their water use we're also looking at things like the deschutes preserve where we can help the property owner there in this case a land trust sink massive amounts of stormwater into the ground to recharge our aquifers. And so I just wanted to highlight sort of the scale and breadth of the work that the conservation district does from the individual residential backyard homeowner to these really large scale sort of regional restoration projects that recharge a resource for an entire community or an entire watershed.

to do a time track about five more minutes okay perfect timing this is my part here so clearly we do a lot and of course it costs money to do this so i want to talk a little bit about our funding our base local funding is called rates and charges and it comes from everybody who lives within the bounds of the district including all the residents within the city of tumwater For many years, that rate was set at $5 per parcel and 10 cents per acre. And that brings in about a little over $500,000 to us each year. Our budget this year is $10 million. So everything above the $500,000 has been leveraged in terms of state, federal, or other grants and contracts and things like that, which is good. But a couple of years ago, our board got to thinking about, we need a sustainable funding strategy, because what happens if those federal and state grants aren't there? And we all see where things are headed there. And so we spent some time thinking about that. And fortunately, the legislature gave us a new tool a couple of years ago. They changed the state law, and they changed that cap of $5 per parcel to $25 per parcel. and 10 cents an acre. And so we looked at that and said, well, if we went to that higher level of rates and charges, we could bring an additional $2 million a year into Thurston County, which in good times would allow us to leverage even more federal and state money, and in not good times would help us stabilize our work and not have to cut back too much. So our board proposed that. And under the law, we had to have a public hearing on that proposal, which we did back in June. We had 28 people testify, either in person, online, or in writing. And all 28 of those people said, please raise my taxes. It works out to about an additional $0.06 per day for the average property owner in Thurston County. So our board passed that. And the next step is it needs to move through the county commissioners. And the obvious question is, what are you going to do with that $2 million? Well, the first answer is we're going to save farmland. Thurston County is losing more farmland than any other county in Western Washington at a higher rate than anywhere else. So we are planning to dedicate $1 million of that $2 million to farmland preservation. Right now, the only source of farmland preservation money in Thurston County is the Conservation Futures dollars. Over the last five or six years, they've spent about $200,000 a year on farmland. We have an additional million dollars to bring to the table. It's going to be a game changer for protecting farms in this region. And then the other half of the $2 million is a whole range of other initiatives, including something Sarah's going to talk about in the middle in a minute. But what I want to leave you with is the last step to get this approved is the county commissioners. They will be holding a public hearing on the rates and charges proposal sometime this fall. We don't have a date yet. But we would very much like to see individually as council members or potentially collectively as a council, we'd like to see you weigh in in favor of that, recognizing that this additional money can do a lot for our community with farmland as well as all the other great conservation work that we're going to do.

TJ, do you have like a draft letter of support that you're going to send to the jurisdictions that we can then present to council?

Not yet, but that's a great idea. So we will follow up with you on that. Yes, and we made the same request to City of Lacey recently at a briefing with them. The other super exciting thing that this new money is going to let us do is to move forward with our long-planned Conservation Education Center, which I know you've all heard a little bit about. And it's a very complicated project, but money was a piece of that. And I'm going to let Sarah talk just a little bit about the Conservation Education Center.

I think also one of the things that I'm really excited about is not only has our local rates and charges stayed the same since the early 90s when we first adopted that and the costs in the world and the populations around us have increased since then, but this is a funding source that really allows us to champion the local priorities of our local communities. As TJ mentioned, we're primarily grant funded and we do, for every local dollar of rates and charges invested, We bring $17 additionally into the community, which is a great return on investment. But some of those dollars also have strings or geographic requirements or specific topical focuses. And so this is our most equitable funding source to be able to serve the residents that actually live here and steward these lands. One of those things, like TJ mentioned, is our conservation education center. Folks really want to see a space that they can come learn firsthand, see some of the work that we do. A lot of what we do is on private landscapes. And so they want to come and see what conservation looks like on the ground. They want to learn about it. They want to try it before they buy it. We want to have space. Like I mentioned, our native plant sale has 1,500 to 2,000 people, we're starting to attract high volumes of residents here locally and regionally to the conservation district for our services and our educational opportunities. Our programs and services continue to grow and our community and through a lot of our focus group work and feasibility studies have said We need you to create this convening space where we can all come and do land use planning together and convene and talk about all of our differences and our different stakeholder input. And that's what the conservation really does really well is we're right at the center of all of that sort of melting pot of ideas and opinions around land use. And we bring the technical service and the education to that. So this is a proposed sort of regional hub, a space again for demonstrations, partnerships, and technical assistance. We've been having conversations with some of the former board members of the Tumwater Farmers Market about resurrecting a Four Seasons Farmers Market. And sort of our sweet spot geographic area that we're looking at is right here. in Tumwater and sort of south Tumwater area so we want to be close to I-5 we want to be centralized in the county and that puts us right in your backyard so we want to continue to explore partnerships with the city on the development of this center because it's definitely going to be a benefit to area residents and businesses but it's also going to be a regional draw for folks I'm going to skip over this slide in sake of time, but essentially working together we can increase and expand a lot of impact within the community from education to natural disaster to creating resilient landscapes together. And some questions that I'd love to leave you with, and we can send you later an email, are just what would you like to see? What are your largest natural resource management gaps? Are there priority areas? Maybe they're HOAs. Maybe they're resources. Maybe they're audiences. Maybe you have specific plans or obligations or strategic goals. And you can see the Conservation District is a partner in helping you solve those. So we would love to hear from you. And certainly now or later is great because we want to create a bright future for all of Thurston County, including the city of Tumwater. And we're together to help people and help the land. Thank you. Are you able to also share these slides? You have them in multiple formats. Yes.

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, with get. Got it.

Thank you.

And then more to come. And I definitely TJ knows my bias that I would like that in Tom water. So it's very important to us and counsel. I know that I do want to keep going. So if there's anything, can you follow up? TJ, you want to bring us home?

I was going to say, as Sarah said, we very much have sort of centered on the South Tumwater area and specific parcels that we've talked about and looked about. And we would like to see those conversations move forward. We got a Community Economic Revitalization Board grant earlier this year to move that project forward. So we're to the point now where we really do need to locate a space because we've done

feasibility studies and lots of planning we're ready to go and we want to work with partners to make it happen i'm looking at utg and i'm looking at a city administrator simmons we're on it thank you both thank you for having us so more to come thank you thank you for your patience everyone else we have now come to the moment for public comment

At this time, we will receive public comment. You may comment on items relating to the city's business not scheduled for public hearing. When I call your name, please come up to the podium, speak into the microphone, and state your name and contact information for the record. Each individual will be limited to one three-minute period to make their remarks, regardless of the number of topics they wish to address. Speakers may not comment upon, promote, advocate for, oppose, or speak against a pending initiative, ballot measure, or candidate. All comments shall be directed towards the council as a whole, not to individual council members and not to members of the audience. Please refrain from destructive behavior such as booing, hissing, audible comments, cheering, or clapping. We currently do not have anybody online that wants to give public comment. And in the audience, we have Dave Nicandri.

Mayor, members of the council, Dave Nicandre, 505 4th Avenue Southwest, member of the Tumwater Historic Preservation Commission, and a former member of this body elected in the 1970s, have been here many times over the last 15 or so years, in particular in various moods of deportment, dazed, confused agitated and sometimes amused that kind of rhymes unintentionally but i'm here tonight in humble appreciation for the city staff for the city of tumwater because of two recent encounters i had with them i returned from a long trip to montana 700 miles in one day in late june felt pretty awful the next morning It was before the urgent care clinics could open, so my dear wife said, why don't you just mosey on down to the North End Fire Station? They can check out your vital signs. And they took my blood pressure, which was pretty high, and I knocked on the door. I mean, it was like going to your neighbor. I just knocked on the door, and somebody answered. It was two EMTs. So they checked my blood pressure, which is pretty high, and I said, if my wife had called you to the house and you'd read that number, would you be taking me to the emergency room? For a little higher, yes, but we strongly advise you go see a doctor as soon as possible, which I did, and I'm under treatment for high blood pressure. So in late July, six weeks later, I'm attending the Chrome on the Range car show down at Tumwater Valley. By the way, City Parks Department had a great six-week run, the Fourth of July, the concerts, the Chrome on the Range, the Brew Festival. So I'm down there that night. It was hot. It was in the sun a lot. I hadn't hydrated myself. I hadn't had anything to eat. And at one juncture, I was joking with the EMTs who happened to be there that night, telling them my favorite story of how they had come to my rescue down at the Valley Athletic Club 20 years ago. And I said goodbye to them by saying, hope you have an easy evening tonight. It's going to be a hot one. I hope you're okay. Five minutes later, I'm their first customer. Because I was on the verge of passing out when one of Chuck's staff people, Ashley Degner, I think her name is, caught me before I completely collapsed to the ground. She contacted the very same EMTs. They took my blood pressure. The reading was 115 over 75. And I said, that's the number I've been trying to get at for six weeks. Not the way I wanted to get there, but they doused me with water, gave me some ice, resuscitated. I didn't actually pass out. But I was escorting the mayor, which this is a key part of the story. I have a snazzy antique auto. And I was in no condition to be carrying, transporting someone home, which I explained, I think it was Officer Kolb who was there that night. And I said, I think you should take the mayor home. I said, I just don't want to be responsible. She says, that's very cogent, but it raises the question, should you be driving home? So we had another laugh over that. So they escorted me over to the restaurant, and I continued my hydration. and uh as i told the mayor earlier and i feel a little bit chastened by uh the whole experience but i'm so very thankful on this occasion as i as i always am that i live in the city of tumwater and the city staff your staff at least in this one personal case did an outstanding job on successive occasions and for that i'm very thankful and thank you also mayor for the extra time i appreciate it

We're glad you're okay, because you scared the blank out of me. And I was like, this is what I'm known for. I killed Dave Nicandre. I killed Dave Nicandre at a car show. Yeah, it was great. I don't think I'm going to go next year. I don't think it's bad juju, but it was an amazing event. What Dave did not share was that I said, oh, I could totally drive us home. I can drive your Fiat. And his face, his face said no. So... I still want to drive that car.

Anyone else, Tracy? Not that I have signed up on the list, but is there anybody in the audience that didn't have an opportunity to sign up on the list that would like to give public comment?

I think we're good. Thank you. Thank you, Dave McCandrey. Wait, Dave, you're not going to stay for the rest of the meeting? No, I got to go.

I'm under doctor's order to go home and rest.

Good day, sir. Good day, sir. I'll see you at our next coffee. You're buying, by the way. We are on to item number six, consent calendar. Are there any items that council would like pulled from the consent calendar? I'm not seeing anyone. Would anyone like to make a motion? Please let me know so I can unmute your mic. Council Member Whedon.

I move to approve the consent calendar.

I second.

I got a second from Councilmember Jefferson. Thank you so much. Any discussion on the consent calendar as presented? Seeing no discussion, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you so much. And before I get so excited that I move past the summary for tonight's consent calendar, may appear routine, but these items have meaningful collective impact on Tumwater. Approving the minutes and payment of vouchers supports transparency, financial accountability, and the continuity of city operations. The parking lot lighting ordinance helps balance site safety with impacts on surrounding properties, while the updated council rules promote clear, consistent, and accountable governance. The charitable partnership and combined fund drive items provide an organized framework for supporting charitable giving, and the Launching Tax Advisory Committee reappointments maintains continuity and community expertise in decisions that support tourism and our local economy. Together, these actions help keep Tumwater well-managed, responsive, and connected to the people we serve. Thank you. On to item number seven, council considerations. We have 2026 drought briefing and public outreach. I still feel we need walk on music for staff. Let's do that next time, Patrick.

Okay.

Okay.

As long as you don't make me sing. Not a singer.

You know what? Just no, I'm not gonna do that to you. Okay. Patrick, what do you need council and our community to know tonight?

Okay, so this is just an information briefing, and I really thank you all for your time for letting our drinking water program come and present to you. I have a couple of extremely knowledgeable staff people. We have our senior staff person, water resource specialist, Carrie Gillum, who's a licensed hydrogeologist, and she leads both our wastewater program as well as our drinking water program. And she monitors all of our water use and water availability, so she's going to talk a little about that and our drought declarations and how we monitor our water supply. And then we also have Dr. Alex Kate Helvey, who just started with our drinking water program last October. and she is working on our water conservation program. So she's just starting off with us and developing our program from one that we didn't have a lot of time invested into it to one that we have a full-time staff person for. So I'll hand it off to Carrie Gillum, and she can tell you more about our water.

Thank you, Patrick.

This right here. Just go this way.

So good evening, mayor and council. I think this is my first presentation, even though I've been here for five years.

Do you want us to not look at you, Carrie? Do you want to look at the screen? You're doing great, Carrie.

So, yes, I have, this was presented to the Public Works Committee in early summer, and I was asked that I give a presentation to you. It was such a hit, they wanted you back. I guess so. So, here I am, and in addition, we have Alex Kate, who's going to talk a little more about how we do our public outreach, because a lot of the conversation at the time with the Public Works Committee was, how are we communicating this to our community in general? So, to begin this... Every year we do an annual drought assessment and we are looking at many different sites for information. It's at both at the, you know, regional and national level, state level, as well as the local level, different parts of data. You know, we look at NOAA, which has a lot of the atmospheric and drought information, as well as weather and long-term, you know, kind of outlooks for kind of the national level as an example we have our state climatology office which actually they have many discussions every single month they put out something that they're discussing kind of what the climate outlook or the weather outlook is from month to month I actually depend on quite a bit quite a bit. So the Department of Ecology, they're the ones that make our state drought declarations every year. And then on the local level we look at our own data. We have our own monitoring wells as well as the county has monitoring wells that they have available online. So this is all pulled together and then I start looking at how's it going to impact us here in Tumwater at the upcoming summer. This year we had a drought declaration that actually was a little early than usual. You know, it's been kind of happening more and more early throughout each year that was called by Ecology. Again, they called the statewide declarations. And this will be the fourth time, the fourth straight year in a row this has happened. So this is becoming more and more of an issue where we're having at least you know not just part of the state but the full state being called under either a declaration or an advisory. We have the declaration this year being called mostly because of snowpack and precipitation and soil soil moisture things like that and so those are the things that they you know of course take consideration the most when they're trying to determine whether or not we should have a declaration for any areas of our state. So this is very important for me when I'm looking and making these assessments of just how much of an issue are we expecting here in Tumwater. So another thing additionally is looking at our spring and winter precipitation and temperatures. So unlike a calendar year, we look at a water year as hydrogeologists and hydrologists, which starts on October 1st of every year, runs through September 30th. And so what we have seen since October 1st of last fall is that we have had A lot of precipitation, but it really hasn't been as snowfall, which is where we get a lot of the, you know, that's kind of our reserve, especially for areas that are more dependent on it on the east side, where, you know, slow melting, snow melting slowly over time is able to then feed the different reservoirs that then feed either agriculture or city water systems. We don't see necessarily the dependency of that for us. However, on a regional basis, it fulfills the aquifers that then feed our water systems here in the city. We of course will pay attention to that this last winter We did have a lot of rainfall. It didn't fall as a lot of snowfall There was a lot of flooding and you probably saw that in the news, especially for some of the northern counties And again as we've seen in some of the years past We're seeing more and more flooding because we're having more and more rain rather than snow So This map here just kind of shows where Tumwater is. We straddle two water basins, and it gives the amount of snow that was in those basins at the time. And with them being, you know, the colors they are, the orange, it's not green. We were at a deficit during this time, which was April when I was doing the assessment. So that's usually about the time that we expect the most snow accumulation. because we're getting towards the end of that snowfall season, snow accumulation season, and starting into our summer warmer seasons. So I wanted to give a little bit of talk about where does our water come from and why is it important to look at some of the, you know, the stuff that we were talking about in the earlier slides. All the water that Tumwater gets is from groundwater. Many people think, oh, we get it from our surface water. There's all these nice streams that run year-round. But in actuality, all of our water that we give to our customers here comes from our groundwater systems. We have two different aquifers here in the lower Puget Sound. There's the upper... aquifer that is primarily used by smaller water systems. We have smaller community water systems. It's usually from mobile homes or smaller communities that maybe they have 15 to 30 people. Sometimes they'll be having cooked up to some of the larger ones that go to the lower aquifer such as us, Lacey, and Olympia. And in between those, there's something called the till layer that actually, it kind of makes water slow down, doesn't allow it to transmit very easily between those two aquifers. The upper aquifer, of course, is very much influenced by the precipitation we get. And then slowly over time, we do get some that comes through till and goes down into our lower aquifer that then makes it to our water system. But it usually does have some it happens over slowly over time. But it has its benefits in that because we have that it's able to protect it from a lot of the contaminants that maybe you can see up into the upper aquifers. That's just kind of another added benefit. And then also, we're able to maybe not see as much effects of when things start to dry out in the upper aquifer when there's not as much precipitation. But over a long period of time, like we've had for the last four years of drought, we could see some declines that are occurring in our aquifer that supplies us. So we have locally we have product our production wells and there are 11 of those that are throughout our city. And you can see that they are the sorry, I have to look at my notes.

see how far they are.

Carrie, we don't apologize. That's why we have notes.

You're golden.

So, yeah, so you can see that we got the little W's. They're kind of scattered throughout the city. And then around each of those we have monitoring wells. They're part of our wellhead protection area. So not only are we looking at water levels, we're also doing water quality from those wells. We've got a little picture example of what a monitoring well looks like. It's usually just a simple simple tube in the ground I guess to describe it and down below that is a production well you can see there's a lot more we got a pump that's actually put in there and then all of the piping that then goes to the different treatment locations and stuff within that well field it's not it's not oh wrong thing okay So here I've got an example. On the left is a production well and its water levels. And on the right is a monitoring well that's located nearby it. The monitoring wells are located in our shallow aquifer. We are planning on putting some in our deeper aquifer so we can get a better understanding of what's going on down there with water levels. But in the meantime, we have our production levels or production well levels that we look at. And you can kind of see they do look very similar. This is showing the depth to water. So you can see in some years the water level has gone up and then in other years it's gone down. And lately, because of our drought, we are seeing that some of the water levels are going down, which then impacts how much water may be available for us in our system. Currently, we're doing okay. Our system is doing okay, but by monitoring this and knowing what's coming up, this is how we're able to keep on top of our communication to our community about making sure that we're being good about water conservation. So this leads to our water shortage response plan. part of the so in the water response plan, that's where this assessment is required that we do every year. And this helps to set up for every summer what stage we're going to start in of that water shortage response plan. So the there's different stages that are, you know, based on severity, and whether or not there's certain needs to be certain restrictions that occur for water use for different users.

and carrie are you open to questions while you're presenting or should i counsel to wait sure no sure you can ask some questions councilmember jefferson thank you carrie so are we always at stage one or are we at stage one at the beginning of summer

So these stages are usually set for summer because that's when we have the most strain on our system. We have peaking that occurs. During the rest of the year because there's less water usage, we don't really have a concern about there being a water shortage plan or water shortage issue. However, the water shortage response plan is also made for if there is something that happens that we would need to institute it. So let's say earthquake mm-hmm and we have damaged pipes we have to have water shortage response if we have a failure of numerous pieces of equipment in the middle of summer numerous wells go down that would require us to also but primarily for when we're doing our assessment for the drought assessment we set the stage at the beginning of summer depending on what we think our outlook is going to be and that yes every year we do start at stage one and we have for the past but it doesn't mean that we couldn't end up in another stage in the future it just really depends on what our outlook is and what our current production is so that's what that's primarily for i just wanted to know what was the negative of just staying or maintaining stage one at all times uh I mean, that's something I really haven't thought about, but just kind of here on my feet, I would say, you know, there's that whole thing of when we're constantly having people on alert, it kind of get alert fatigue.

Okay.

So it's better, especially because we want people to pay attention and do the conservation measures that we need at the most during summertime. Okay. It would be best to like really promote this and have that stage one during summer. And then also be able to use it when we do have an event, maybe during other times of the year. Okay. Because really, we start, we use, we see that most customers will use like 75% more in the summer because of irrigation usage than they do during the rest of the year. So even with the potential breakage of things within the system, we may not actually have to put a shortage response action in place.

Okay.

Thank you, Gary.

so um one second carrie councilmember gubby can you back up to that previous slide please the one that shows the um yeah this right here so for 2025 at least the one in um i think mustang right 2025. yes the orange one yes is that depiction of the amount of rainfall we had in 2025

It has a little bit of 2020. So it'd be like if you were to try to think. So I look it was the water levels in the spring of 2025. So it's kind of looking at the precipitation that started in October 2024 forward. Thank you. So yes, with the water shortage response plan, we have these different stages and there are triggers that then make us determine which stage that we're gonna start in. And like I said, we pretty much always start the summer in stage one. So the way that we determine the triggers is basically how much water it is that we have available to deliver. And that is based on this next slide, which is the present possible production, or also shortcut for it is P3. P3 is the maximum volume of water that can be pumped from all our wells. And we base it on a 22 hour day because our wells need to have some rest time. So we can't pump it for the full 24 hours a day without really wearing them out. So it's based on how much volume can we get from currently what we've got in a 22 hour day. Right now we do pump capacity testing. twice a year, in the fall and in the spring. So I know how much each well can put out in GPM, in gallons per minute. And that's how I'm able to then determine when I go to do this assessment in the spring, what is our present possible production? And that tells me how many millions gallons a day that we have available to deliver to our community. And you can kind of see that there's a little bit of an example here. These are all just made up of four wells, make this amount, give us this gallons per minute. And then on a 22 hours per day operation, we have this amount. This is our P3. So then this is what I know that I can then get. Then we have triggers, and it's all based on a percentage of that P3. So stage one is automatically what we're in, just to start out with. And of course, we're just doing community outreach and saying, conserve the best you can. Here's some ways to do it. We have a lot of social media and stuff that goes out before we even get into the peak of the summer. Stage two has two different ones. It is based on 90% of the P3 over three days consecutively. Then there is another one that is 95% of the capacity. And these will just be an example I'll give for at least stage two over a one-day period. The reason why I have that arrow in the dash outline is because we have had some years where for one day we have reached that 90%, but not for three consecutive days. So we've gotten close. But luckily, because at least usually it's when we have those heat waves that are going through, they don't last that long. And so we're able to recover and not have the stress continue for two more consecutive days, which would then put us into stage two. So. Luckily, we have been able to not have to move up any other stages, have to have restrictions put on any other of the basically users, although the city would be the first to take those restrictions. But we then start looking as of June 1st, and actually this year. I did it even a little bit earlier because we were already seeing that we weren't getting a lot of precipitation in May. We look at every day what we're producing. How much water are we producing? How does it compare to what we have for our P3 and those triggers? And I just keep watching every day and seeing where we're at. And then if there is something that occurs in the system, like a well goes down, i have to re recalculate the p3 and then keep monitoring so that's what i do all the way through september 30th and usually by that time we're out of the peak season of water usage that's the irrigation season's usually like may 1st through through september 30th and so that's our biggest use of water carrie before you change slides council member sylvan

You mentioned that if we reached one of these junctures that the city would be the first one to make the reduction efforts. Yes. Can you briefly touch on what that looks like? Yes.

So primarily would be like reduced irrigation on waterways and maybe some of the landscaping areas. We also, you know, there's certain activities that we would do that we don't, we usually try to reserve for winter like flushing, main flushing and things like that. And we also, at some times, when we know that we can foresee that something is coming ahead, like we had the chlorine shortage a few years ago that we thought we might not be able to be able to put out as much water, we reach out to some of our partners like parks or school districts and ask them to kind of watch the amount of water that they're using or see if they can skip a day of watering. So there's those kinds of things that we try to handle internally first before we then reach out to the community and say, Like you can't water a lawn today or something like that. Or even businesses, you know, residents or businesses, we try to, that's our last, like when we start getting into stage three and stage four, we start having those type of, you know, restrictions or even just voluntary, you know. So we take the brunt first and try to cut back on our water usage here in the city before we then start stepping out into the community and telling them to do it. Thank you. Sure. So here, oh, nope. Okay. I don't know if a slide went missing or what. So this summer we're at stage one, as I stated. We've already done quite a few community outreach. We had messaging from the mayor that we were able to work on. We've done some bill inserts. And we have some social media that's gone out working with our communications department. Alex Kate has worked on website content that has already been updated. And they were also working on some of our newest rebates and continue with our incentives. We give away free You know, things like shower timers or shower heads or a lot of the stuff that has actually been going is the outdoor water conservation thing, which is kind of something that is the most used and the most water consuming during the summer. And then we have included in our water quality report, at least over the last two years, kind of what our water use efficiency has been. And that includes what our system leakage has been and how we're reaching our conservation goals. So we're reporting back to the community of what it is we're doing and how well we're doing it. And there's still more planning that's going on. Like Patrick had said, we now have a full-time conservation person that's going to be able to you know, actually get us a new plan with new goals that are more oriented towards what we want to focus on into the future.

So I then will turn it over to her.

Like I said, I had a really cool slide, but I don't know where it went now.

Well, I wanted to show it. I mean, Carrie, I feel like that was on purpose. So like as a teaser that then you're going to follow up with us. Man, yeah.

I was going to show you because what we did, what happened, if anything I'll speak to it, is we did have wells go down and it actually shows where I had to adjust our P3 triggers because I actually keep a graph. It's for the ability for like Dan and Patrick to be able to look at it and go, oh, this is where we're at. And I also be keeping track of temperature and rainfall to kind of show those environmental effects too, because I've been very curious as the temperature goes up, how does the the production or demand goes up because, of course, we have to increase production in order to cover demands. And I had a thought in the slide, but maybe as we were doing some edits, it got deleted. But yeah, I was able, I had to, because at two different points, we had some wells go down in our Palermo well field, and I had to adjust the P3 triggers. So I was like, oh, this is so awesome. I'll show this because I didn't have it in the first one.

Well, I look forward to seeing that one slide. I just want one slide. I wanted an email. Okay. I can do that.

No, I just wanted to say, can you circle back with that one slide?

Oh, Angela. I mean, Council Member Jefferson. We went through the whole entire council meeting without having to say that.

So anyways, Councilmember Caffey, look at it. She wants it too? So Alex, Kate now is going to talk more about how our outreach is working and what she's been working on in order to also get this messaging out because of the drought declaration, especially.

Thank you, Carrie. Well done.

Mayor and Council, it's great to meet you all. I'm actually going to go back to just emphasize this a little bit more. A lot of these efforts are part of the Water Conservation Program. Councilmember Jefferson, you know, asked why we can't be in this sort of stage one all year, and Carrie had a great answer to that that I think is really important about letting folks be on alert when we have the most strain on our system. But the Water Conservation Program does run year-round, and so just because we are not under stage one doesn't mean that we're not putting the word out about opportunities to conserve water and providing those resources to our community we have the utility bill inserts is something that we've really stepped up this year the amount of water conservation messaging that's going out to the community in those and we've seen a huge response in the first one the may one that we did that included water conservation magic messaging there's a little screenshot from it here but we highlighted our free outdoor and indoor water conservation kits I believe all of you were recently provided with your own kits to sort of see what we make available to our community at City Hall. And we saw a massive increase in interest in picking up those kits from the community just based on advertising it. through the utility bill inserts. So that's a platform that we want to continue to utilize.

I did have one question on that. Absolutely. Those who are on well that is not part of the infrastructure with Tom Water, how are we connecting with those neighbors?

Sure. So our water conservation program is primarily oriented towards drinking water customers of the city as a municipal water utility. The Water conservation kits are available really to any who come to City Hall and ask for those. But the messaging is primarily focused towards our drinking water customers because that's where we're trying to reduce the strain on our system. But the social media campaigns, the website content, the educational resources that we provide are available to all and broadly applicable. the same measures that you would take at home to help reduce strain on your own well are the things that we'd like folks on our water system to do to reduce the strain on our system so there's a lot of broad applicability there i would love to see i've talked to dan over the years about this right of

Those wells that maybe Tom water could purchase down the road. So how do we build those relationships with them now? Right, because they're going from one bill with PUD or their own well, right and how we might acquire them down the road with is that look like to be part of the infrastructure and Tom water and I'd like to build that relationship now. Right, because you're going from because I'm on well and septic and my part of Tom water and most of my neighbors are as well. I don't have any access to any of this. I don't get any of it. only reason because I serve as mayor and I talk to Dan all the time, right? And I asked for an email to how do I get those kits for all of council, right? And I've given mine out to my neighbors, but those who are in a more rural environment, but eventually will be part of Tumwater infrastructure, I would like those opportunities to build that relationship now. If we could just make a note about that. Thank you. Thank you.

And then Carrie mentioned our water use efficiency report that goes out with our water quality report every year. That's also an important opportunity to let the city know the goals that we have put in place for our program, the progress that we're making towards them, and really help folks understand how they can be a part of water conservation in our city and working towards those goals. And I'll talk about the regulatory requirements there a little bit more on the next slide. But yes, a lot of the water conservation program works alongside the water shortage response plan to help the city, A, respond to a water shortage when we have one, but also to put us in a place where we won't and that we're prepared. The water conservation program, as a municipal water utility, we have certain requirements from the State Department of Health that we have to meet as far as running a water use efficiency program. There's a sort of broad planning goal. We have to operate under a water use efficiency plan in Tumwater. That's our water conservation plan. Our current plan was adopted in 2019, and they run for a 10-year cycle alongside our water system plan, so we're still under that plan that was adopted now a while back. Part of that plan is goal setting. Those goals are put together and completed by our body of electeds, by the council, with public input. That's part of the mandated process from the Department of Health. And then our plan also includes all of the measures that we're going to undertake or evaluate to try to help us meet those goals. For a utility of our size, we're required to evaluate or implement at least six different programs or efforts in three categories. So looking at indoor residential, outdoor water use, and ICI, which is institutional, commercial, and industrial water use. We also have an annual reporting requirement. So that's where we have to go to the Department of Health and to the public and say, we produced this much water this year. We used this much water. Here's any water use that was lost to leakage or unaccounted for in our data. Here's the progress that we've made towards our goals and the work that we still are doing to move us further down the line towards those goals. And it also includes, lastly, a distribution system leakage standard. So distribution system leakage is any water that is unaccounted for. So it includes both physical leaks of water from the system as well as billing errors or data management errors that cause water to leave our system that we don't know where it went, even if it went somewhere and was used well. So we're working every year to move that number down. Working with our operations team, Carrie does a lot of work in this area as well in our accounting and monitoring our water use to make sure that we're using all of our water responsibly. Under those water conservation program regulatory requirements, I want to just point out that we're at a key moment of flux transition and opportunity for our water conservation program. Part of that, not necessarily me specifically, but the bringing on of a full-time staff member to focus on water conservation really expands what it is that we can do as a city and the amount of focus that we can have on this really important area. And we're also starting to move towards a new water conservation plan. We have an update coming down the line, you know, two years, you blink and it's passed. We're certainly not waiting until then to start planning for the future and expanding the efforts that we take under this program. So we have a lot underway right now to see what we can take on, what will be the most effective for our community under the water conservation program. And with that in mind, we've established some priority areas for the water conservation program to work. The first is efficient irrigation. So almost 40% of water use in the city of Tumwater is seasonal. That means beyond the minimum amount that our city needs to function. We have this increase. It's not entirely irrigation, but it's highly driven by irrigation. And so we see this as a focus area where we can both provide incentives and also education to folks to help them run those systems more efficiently. But the first action that we need to take is making sure that all of our city systems are run up at a high standard and conserved as an example for our community. So we've been working closely in the water conservation program with the Parks and Recreation Department and with the streets and right-of-way maintenance crews and transportation and engineering to make sure that we're running those systems well and also to put improvements in place. So we've installed smart weather, smart controllers on parks already that are responding to weather data and environmental inputs to reduce watering when we don't need it and to make sure that we're operating our systems efficiently. We're going to be doing the same thing on a number of our streets and right of ways. So that goes beyond just a weather sensor and saying that we're responding to wind and different other climate elements to make sure that we're only watering when we need to and making sure that all of our infrastructure and our watering procedures are as efficient as possible in the city. And we're using those steps and measures that we take both to improve our water use and our water efficiency in the city, but also as learning and as a model so that we can step forward and provide opportunities and resources to other large landscapes in our community. An example would be the school district running very similar properties to our own parks. There are lessons that can be learned, there are resources that we can provide when we know worked well for our own properties. Community empowerment is also a huge area of focus. Kerry mentioned, and I mentioned again, our free conservation kit program that we've seen a huge spike in interest in this year. We also provide a number of rebates to folks that are putting water efficient appliances into their homes, toilets, washing machines, and smart irrigation controllers specifically. helping to incentivize folks to take those steps towards efficiency at home, and then education and outreach. One of the things that we really are wanting to do with this program now that we have more staff capacity is to build out a strategic plan for education and outreach around water conservation. Because it's really easy to get caught doing a social media post here, a social media post there, a mailer here, and not making it part of a broader vision, making sure that we're touching all the different audiences within our community and their needs. And then there's a lot of timing and cycles and ebbs and flows to water conservation about, you know, when people need to be checking on their sprinkler system. Okay, then, you know, irrigation system dies down and it's an opportunity to focus on leaks inside the home as we prepare for the winter. So there's a lot of strategy that's been built, a lot of resources that exist for education and outreach around water conservation. And we want to build our library and our strategy for the city of Tumwater. It started with some updates to the website. It started with some social media and some utility bill inserts, but that's going to continue to grow as we build out that plan and prepare for our next water conservation plan. And then lastly, I'd like to mention city operations. There are a number of things that we can do as a city and as a water utility to keep water conservation at the forefront. Some of that is modernizing infrastructure. The city is partway through updating water meters across the city so that we have the most modern technology and make sure that we're getting all the useful data that we can from water meters citywide. We've updated just in this past year flow meters at our... water wells to make sure that we know exactly how much water we're producing and we're tracking that well. Data management practices across the city. As we develop a new water conservation plan, we want to make sure that that plan is data-driven. And it fits the specific needs of our community and our opportunities. And that comes from taking a huge, huge library of data across an entire water system and making sure that it's kept well, processed well, and can be used to inform decisions efficiently. Sometimes the Excel spreadsheets can get out of hand. So there's a lot of work to be done here to make sure that we are understanding our system well. And then lastly, there are other policies that any city has that can touch water conservation in ways that people may not always realize. And one I'll mention here is our municipal code, the landscaping code updates that are underway. That's something our program's been involved in advising that process and making sure that water conservation is part of our consideration. There's a lot of opportunities there. So I'll go ahead and wrap up, but I just wanted to provide that high-level overview of our hopes, our dreams, and our ongoing work in the water conservation program. We're really excited about where we sit and the opportunities that we have to move this forward. Even though we're experiencing drought, you never want to be in that position, but it's drawing a lot of eyes to the good work that can be done in water conservation and the responsible stewardship and management that everyone can be a part of. So we're excited about it. And thank you. Really appreciate the time.

Thank you so much. Any comments from council before we move on? Also noting the time. Council Member Swarthout.

My only comment was I'm thinking about when you're talking about visiting with HOAs that some of the HOAs, I know the one that I lived in and I was on their board, the covenants are like 40, 50 years old. And it takes a lot to change those. And so we're still working with the same kind of, you have to have a green lawn, you have to have all this stuff that isn't really applicable any longer. And so I'm wondering about how I'm trying to assist HOAs in trying to to change their yeah their landscaping as long as you're out and about so but how difficult that is but if we can change the way we do our front yards maybe and not so much grass and maybe a more few more gardens so i love that and councilman i think you just volunteered to join me on the tours for this fall thank you so much i would like to do that thank you you're welcome i just wrote your name down thank you okay look at that thank you anyone else uh councilmember kathy i see you have unmuted

i have unmuted because i want to say that you know you you wonder how all of these things that you have so described so well and how it touches the whole city and every everybody's lives um and and how much our community here at least on my spot um pay attention to what the city does so we we don't water unless we see that you are watering the grass in the middle of our street And when you water, we think it's okay for us to water our yards or whatever. So that's one of the ways that we're conserving. If the city waters, we can do a little watering. If they don't, go talk to your plants, but don't water.

Thank you, Council Member Cathy.

Thank you for being efficient in your work. And thank you for this report. It's really...

Thank you. Well said. Anyone want to go after Councilmember Gatwick? Councilmember Jefferson?

Yes, I would just like to thank you two ladies. Very knowledgeable. Excellent briefing. And it's good to know that you're at the helm. Thank you. I didn't know it was so detailed, especially with that last slide that you had, Carrie. That's good stuff. So make sure you circle back with me, okay?

The second time you have said circle back. Would you stop circling back?

I feel like I should just walk around and show you this.

We've got scientists in the house at Water Resources, and we have graphs to prove it.

We'd love to share our data. I love that. Council Member Agabi.

So our water has a lot of calcium in it. Over a period of time, your showerhead does have a low calcium deposit. So now my question is not a problem. My question is, does that hasten our capital, our investment, and how we maintain our wells and the devices that pump up the water? So we have a lot of calcium deposits.

Oh, oh, like, OK. Kara, if you can come to the mic. Calcium deposits. Yes. That's what the question is. OK, I wasn't catching that. So all of our water everywhere has natural, you know, different minerals in it. And it's just, you know, we learn those don't get treated out. It's not part of a treatment process or anything. So it doesn't have to do with what we're what we were pumping or anything. it's just it's natural in the water we have calcium we have magnesium we have you know even a little bit of sodium too so it's just it picks up the natural minerals that are already down there in the rocks that hold our aquifer so that's where that comes from you know if it's really a big concern I mean for the most part we have what they consider you know moderate hardness of water it's not really a hard water so other other places if you were to live you'd probably have even more mineral deposition but if it is a very big concern and some people do just would rather not have it at all there are water softeners that you do you know install into homes to take care of that issue okay but we do not do that for the city so okay thank you

Thank you, Council Member Gubbe. Anyone else? Any other questions or compliments for our staff? Besides wanting that extra slide that Carrie will share with us. I see Council Member Cathy's finger.

I just have a quick question because it's bothering me a lot to watch what's happening on the Colorado River. and the reservoirs getting down to non-functional and so forth do you do you get involved in conversations that relate to that or do you as you know water people uh look at that and then look at our situations or because that's that's quite dire yes and actually i used to work for the arizona department of water resources

So this is, I used to live there too. I grew up there. So this is kind of near and dear to my heart. I do have conversations about it, mostly with people who still live there, like my family. And I also have conversations with people here in Washington because one of the things when I moved up here 16 years ago was The idea of water shortage is very different. I mean, we were definitely aware of it growing up in the desert. There has always been the potential for drought and water shortage. It's dry. But up here, there's always rain coming from the sky. Every winter season, there's always water in the rivers. I remember it's like, you know, so many times I would have people come to visit and they're like, you have blue lines on your map, but I see no water in your river. It's like, yeah, that's the desert. That's the way it is. One of the things that I take from my experience and the fact that I grew up in the desert and now living in the Pacific Northwest is I tell people that we need to be looking at the desert Southwest and seeing what problems they are having so we prevent that for us in the future. It doesn't mean that we need to run around with our hair on fire, but we need to realize what a precious resource we have right now and how we can conserve it. And that both means on the physical level, but also making sure we don't contaminate it. And we are finding that there's a lot more contamination that is occurring out there as we do more and more testing. And, you know, everybody has... You know, everybody influences that. And it's down from the household level up to the industrial level. You know, what you do in your backyard and what you decide to put on your lawn affects the water you'll be drinking in the future. And so... yes i am very aware of what's going on the southwest i i watch the news i talk to my family members um i've had many friends who have moved from the area because they are concerned whether or not they would be able to sell their house in the future so they've decided to leave now so you hear them we should definitely be paying attention And also, I've also recommended, I even just sat on our Washington Water Future. They had a recent stakeholders meeting. And I had said, we should be asking them how they're doing things. Because they reached out and said, well, what is it that has worked for us or for you here in Washington that we should be communicating with others? I'm like, we probably should actually be asking the people in the Southwest. What is it that has worked or not worked for you? And obviously, there's probably a lot of stuff that hasn't worked. And then we don't want to duplicate that up here.

I know that we could talk about this for hours, and we will continue to do so. We still have an executive session, and I just want to be mindful that we will be ending at 9. And I don't want to go over. So is there anything else for this meeting, knowing that we will have ongoing discussions? Thank you so much.

You can always email me.

Well, you're going to email that slide. Yes. And then we continue the conversation, but we don't violate Open Public Meetings Act. Okay, thank you both. With that, we are on to the mayor and city administrator's report, and I'm going to defer, because we have been on council break from these meetings, and we still have an executive session, which is estimated to be 15 minutes, so I'm gonna bypass my report and go to city administrator Simmons.

just a real quick shout out to the parks and recreation department we had over 3 000 people to a successful brewfest event with 47 breweries cideries and distilleries from bellingham to portland to westport all coming to tumwater 14 food trucks and three bands and 40 000 in sponsorships from local businesses to support the event one last shout out to police fire i.t and all the city departments that support the event it takes the whole team so thank you everyone

Nicely done, thank you. Next we're on to council member reports. I'm gonna ask you all email in your reports if that works for everyone. Thank you so much. We are now to item number 10, executive session. The council will now meet in executive session to discuss collective bargaining pursuant to RCW 42.30.140, parentheses four, parentheses P. The council will be in executive session. Michelle, do you want 15 minutes or can you do 10? We're gonna do 10 minutes, and we're gonna come back at 8.54. No action will be taken following the executive session.

Michelle, what room are you going to?

You're going to Sunset? Sunset?

Mm-hmm.

All right, I'm going to follow you.

One of the things we really need

A LITTLE BIT. COUNCIL MADE THAT DECISION. I'll be right back. Vegetation versus non-vegetation. Oh my gosh, this is being recorded.

We used to get them a lot more often once a year.

Maybe once a year, twice a year.