[1:58] All the Yakima City Council, this is the meeting of December 9th, 2025, to order. We'll start with roll call, please.

[2:05] Where? Here. Brown. Here. Five years. Present. Diesel. Here. Glenn. Here. Herrera. Here. Roy. Here. Thank you. Please stand and join us to the Pudzal Agents.

[2:35] Then we'll have interpreted services.

[2:46] Thank you.

[2:50] Thank you.

[2:53] Next on the agenda is public comment.

[2:55] There would be 35 minutes to lighten for public comment with two and a half minutes first

[2:59] speaker in order to allow as much opportunity as possible for audience participation.

[3:03] Written comments and you know messages are strongly encouraged that you can send them to

[3:07] all council.

[3:08] When you come to the podium, please identify yourself in the city in which you look.

[3:14] Tonight, we will start with Forbes Mercy, Adam Chauvin, Toby Opsary, and Ken Wilkinson

[3:23] and Director of Parks and Recreation.

[3:28] Thank you, Mayor and good evening, Council.

[3:31] I always love bringing you great news, and certainly this holiday time of year, so many

[3:36] things to be grateful for, and always grateful for gifts.

[3:39] So, in your packets under consent, we have a resolution for the acceptance of a donation of $115,000 from Mr. Forbes Versi for the installation purchase of an outdoor calisthenics gym, the Chesterleet Park, and then some other items as well.

[3:59] So I'm going to invite Forbes to come up and let him talk about it and also Adam Tobia and let them share with you the great things

[4:06] But I just want to say so much gratefulness and thanks to Forbes and for Adam for all the things that you have done for this community and continue to do so

[4:15] Forbes, if you'll join me and Adam too.

[4:22] I understand you put last year's donation to Good Use, that was the daycare program up there in the park and we had a lot of people where it will drop their kids off and

[4:30] and have some good activity for them for the time.

[4:34] So, yeah, come on, it's had a tough year,

[4:37] a $3 million cutback, followed by the Levy failure

[4:39] with six.

[4:41] Missing by only 364 votes.

[4:43] In my view, that happened because the public

[4:45] didn't fully understand how deeply the loss would affect them.

[4:49] The city's limited to 1% revenue growth

[4:51] while facing wage increases of 3% to 7%.

[4:54] Eventually, those lines collide, and we're seeing that now.

[4:57] I believe the levies should be-

[5:00] Personally, now that residents clearly understand the consequences. While we wait, we're facing cuts

[5:07] that hit the core of Yakuwa's quality of life, especially in parks and recreation. Even

[5:13] if funding is restored later, many programs won't return for years. So I've asked the

[5:18] community to join me in stepping up with tag donations to support the programs they care

[5:24] about. My contribution today is part of that effort. And I hope it continues a year round

[5:30] until these services are stable and able to be applied again.

[5:34] After 34 years of the Internet industry, I've been fortunate with a comfortable retirement

[5:38] thanks to the people of the city, by the way, I'm Forbes Mercy City of Yakima, I forgot

[5:43] that part.

[5:44] Okay.

[5:45] I also plan to advocate nationally for Congress to recognize gifts to municipal governments

[5:50] as fully tax deductible.

[5:52] That change alone would motivate many more business owners to support their hometowns directly.

[5:58] So, rather than just being a 23% return on your tax as they would be able to write off a lot more because they're directly responsible to that two cities to their programs for their own town.

[6:11] Last year, a family friend, Adam Tobin approached me with an idea to bring a calisthenics park to Yakima.

[6:18] He researched the equipment coordinated with Parks Director Ken Wilkinson and built a solid proposal.

[6:23] Also, if I may, I'd like to yield and have him briefly talk about what it is.

[6:27] He said about a minute.

[6:31] Hi, Adam Tobias, City of Yakima.

[6:34] So I believe that a calisthenics park will be beneficial for our city because it's easily

[6:39] accessible to all ages, all demographics, and the calisthenics park that we're going to

[6:44] be building will be free and accessible to everyone.

[6:48] So I know at my time when I worked as a youth peer counselor at Comprehensive, a lot of

[6:54] the struggles for the kids that I worked with was they didn't have the funds to join

[6:59] a jam or join sports so using this calisthenics park and my knowledge as fitness coach

[7:05] I'll be able to just allow a more accessible way for health and fitness into our community.

[7:11] Thank you.

[7:12] Awesome.

[7:13] Thank you.

[7:14] He was so nervous about seeing him.

[7:18] I have chosen to fund that project, equipment, installation and the warranty, totally in $54,000.

[7:25] And Chesterley Park has been chosen for a number of reasons, such as the location of the

[7:30] Y, the roller skate park, and we recognize a lot of moms drop their kids off, and they just

[7:37] roam around the park until their kids are done with the Y, so now they can work out.

[7:40] So we get some strong moms out there, and a lot of other people as well.

[7:45] My second donation addresses the loss of youth programs.

[7:48] You know that I'm very committed to making sure the youth has some place to go.

[7:52] With major cuts to parks and recreation and reductions to the gang task force, many

[7:56] kids will be left without structure or positive outlets.

[8:00] That's not a risk we can afford, so I'm choosing to fully fund the 2026 youth parks program

[8:06] for $61,000.

[8:07] I would like to add with the resolution to have that added back into your programs that are used.

[8:13] I'm hoping other people can do some of the other programs.

[8:16] Through my website helpyacama.com, I hope other businesses, business owners will join to help restore the programs that make Yacama a strong, safe, and vibrant community.

[8:27] At the end of the day, these aren't just line items in a budget, they're lifelines for kids, families, and the future of this city.

[8:34] I'm stepping up because Yakima stepped up for me for 34 years.

[8:39] And I believe many others are ready to do so.

[8:42] The same once they see a clear path to making a difference.

[8:46] So let's rebuild the momentum, restore what matters, and

[8:49] show our residents that the city doesn't wait for someone else to solve our problems.

[8:54] We solve them together.

[8:56] Thank you for your time and attention.

[8:58] It doesn't matter.

[8:59] Thank you.

[9:01] I'd like to say I'm done, but I have this a little bit more.

[9:03] Why?

[9:04] Because I didn't quite stop here.

[9:07] I just got a lot of calls and such and as you know, the cell we're going to explain,

[9:15] this is what it was, the short one.

[9:18] So I have one more concern I'd like to raise.

[9:20] I'm a regular donor to the Yakima Humane Society and the city's decision to eliminate the

[9:25] animal control officer troubles me deeply.

[9:28] Without that position, injured animals and strays simply won't be picked up.

[9:33] And when dangerous animals are involved, the burden will fall on police officers,

[9:38] putting them in the most difficult situation where they may have to euthanize an animal in the field.

[9:43] That is not acceptable for the officers, for the public, and for the animals.

[9:48] The person currently serving in that role is dedicated, capable, and working towards becoming a Yakima police officer.

[9:56] Cutting this position doesn't just impact public safety.

[10:00] This is her ability to bridge the time until the academy. Keeping her on is a win-win, good for the city, good for residents, and essential for humane animal management. The city currently spends about 8,000 a month on this role, to ensure opportunity to ensure continuity, no glasses. I'm willing to fund the next three months into 2026 by donating 32,000 additional, specifically earmarked for this purpose. This is a small investment

[10:29] With a large impact for public safety for humane treatment of animals and for supporting a dedicated employee who served this community well

[11:17] Any other questions for me regarding this donation?

[11:21] No, what are you going to do with all I can to ask?

[11:24] We'll find a way.

[11:26] Thank you.

[11:27] Thank you very much.

[11:29] All right.

[11:34] Next is Leslie Rodriguez.

[11:40] Is there a Leslie Rodriguez?

[11:41] Here you are.

[11:43] I

[11:51] didn't realize that was your last name.

[11:52] Yeah, right. It says, it says Leslie Clara on my Facebook site.

[12:12] Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Leslie Rodriguez. I am a health care provider and Founder of Anthropos Health and Counseling Center. And I'm here because I believe deeply in protecting the quality of life that makes Yakima home.

[12:30] And I wanted to thank Mr. Forbes Mercy as well too, but it looks like he may have already

[12:36] left, for creating HelpYakama.com and for lifting up the programs that truly support our community.

[12:44] His vision shows how powerful it is when we invest in the people and places that connect

[12:50] us.

[12:51] I did want to say too, just as an additional thought that I did support rerunning the

[12:56] I mean, I know that there were a lot of people that participated, but maybe you know that the impact of the donations of the community awareness, if that's at all possible, I would support that as well.

[13:12] The Harman Center is one of those places throughout my time in aging and long-term care

[13:19] and through my own family's journey, I saw how much it means.

[13:24] When my mother, Judy Dutty, was ill, the Harman Center contributed, continued to give

[13:29] her moments of comfort, joy, and connection.

[13:33] Those moments were a gift.

[13:35] In her memory, I will also be contributing personally to support the Harman Center and

[13:40] and hope others will join me.

[13:43] Programs like this are not optional, they're vital.

[13:47] They help ensure that we all continue the quality

[13:50] of life we expect in Yakima.

[13:53] Thank you for your time and for everything you do

[13:56] for this community.

[13:57] I really appreciate you, Mayor and Council members.

[14:00] Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez, thank you

[14:10] so much.

[14:17] You're here, you can check his hand.

[14:26] It's Ann NAP.

[14:42] Hi, thank you, my name is Ann NAP.

[14:43] I live in the city of Yakima,

[14:44] And I have a handout for you that I believe the clerk put in front of you.

[14:49] I do support the trolley.

[14:51] It's a seasonal tourist attraction.

[14:53] It runs on a short track inside the city.

[14:55] It's not a railroad, since 1985 it's relied on tax-

[15:00] Mayors, subsidies, and transportation grants help to trolley become self-supporting and work within its budget, say no to this operation license agreement. Attorney James Cromedy commented on the agreement, quote, the city is entering into a joint venture with a marginally solvent organization that places significant risks on citizens of this community. A similar risk exists with respect to environmental liability, debts and liens and operational liabilities.

[15:28] Key issues include one, no more subsidies for trolleys, I gave you a little table.

[15:34] The potential savings in 2026 amounts to $8 million to $9 million.

[15:40] An HLA engineer and estimated the cost to re-engineer and rebuild six avenue at $5 million per mile,

[15:48] going to seal it would be $20 million.

[15:51] Secondly, did the trolley take private property for free?

[15:56] who owns a land under the tracks on 6th Avenue from River Road to the bridge,

[16:01] did owners grant easements or rights of way.

[16:04] 3. The land use application lists the city as the applicant for the agreement.

[16:08] Why does the city need a license from itself, isn't the applicant the trolley?

[16:12] 4. The draft agreement extends to downtown Seala, but Yakima city limits and in the middle of the bridge.

[16:18] Can the city approve operation outside city limits?

[16:21] and for our mental, cultural, and archaeological resource impacts is noted by letters from the

[16:26] yakimination, and others are not fully addressed.

[16:29] After 40 years, help the trolley stand on its own.

[16:32] Sell the trolley bar museum to the Tally Group at the assessed value of 2026, I can't say

[16:38] it.

[16:39] $260,000.

[16:40] $260,000.

[16:42] I'm not a money person.

[16:43] Thank you.

[16:44] I'll shake your hand for that.

[16:46] Declined the agreement, flaws include shifts revenues to the trolley, increases tax pay or costs and misrepresent the trolley as a railway, include the trolley in the lodging tax and prioritize the Ackermas year round needs, police, fires, pulled in committees, centers.

[17:02] That's where tax pay or money should go, say no to trolley subsidies in this agreement.

[17:07] Thank you for listening to me so many times about the trolley and how we spend tax pay or money.

[17:13] Thank you.

[17:21] next is Maria Braimos.

[17:31] Good evening mayor and city councilman my name is Maria Ramols and I'm

[17:36] here to speak on behalf of the Yakima Trolley's. We want to spread some holiday cheer as we have

[17:42] our Santa Trolley going on right now and also knew this year is our candlelight trolley.

[17:48] I want to say for some foremost that we really have a remarkable gift in this community.

[17:53] Something that truly preserves our history while bringing joy to people of all ages.

[17:57] The trophies aren't just a ride. They're a piece of our heritage. They represent a legacy that we can pass down to our children and to future generations to come.

[18:09] In a world that moves so quickly preserving the meaningful pieces of our local history truly matters and I want this for my children and for all of your children as well.

[18:18] I've seen firsthand how powerful this experience is.

[18:21] We've welcomed educational tours from young elementary school students eager and excited

[18:27] to learn about our history here in Yakima families and seniors and some of them who

[18:33] remember writing the trolley as a child and passing this on to their families as well.

[18:38] Visitors from out of state no matter who they are the look in their faces with joy and excitement

[18:43] and the curiosity of the connection is truly incredible and I have seen it firsthand.

[18:48] And it reminds us that the Trolley's are more than a historic attraction.

[18:53] They are a bridge between generations.

[18:55] I've seen how the Trolley's support and collaborate with other businesses in town,

[18:59] from hotels, to restaurants, to local shops.

[19:03] Visitors, when they come here, they just don't ride the Trolley's.

[19:06] They often stay to eat, to explore, and to invest in our community.

[19:10] It's a ripple effect.

[19:12] That strengthens our local economy and brings increased visibility to the town as a whole.

[19:16] One of my favorite things is watching how guests come as they come to visit and soon they

[19:23] fall in love which is my case as well have become volunteers.

[19:26] People who come for the experience but stay because they believe in the mission and the

[19:31] magic of what we truly have here as a legacy in our town.

[19:36] The Trolley's enrich our community, honor our past, and continue to build a legacy for

[19:41] the future.

[19:41] I respectfully ask that your support in renewing the operation trolley agreement because this is so important for our town's story and continue to be for future generations to come.

[19:53] So please vote yes on this agreement. Thank you.

[19:56] Thank you, Australians.

[20:04] The next is Tony Corsi.

[20:16] Tony Corsi, where I laid my heads, where I'm at.

[20:24] 2001, there was an incident

[20:27] back east that we should never forget.

[20:33] And did you know that legislation voted for people

[20:38] to keep track of certain things?

[20:45] Yakima really messed up.

[20:50] I didn't make up the rules, I just

[20:51] followed them.

[20:57] Now I understand this. I bought a telephone number because I was on

[21:02] the 10th hole of the apple tree from

[21:06] 809 and a half South A street worked my way

[21:10] all the way up and I've seen all walks of life and

[21:18] it's very disappointing but

[21:19] anyway I bought that number and I was getting it because my wife decided to go in a

[21:25] different direction which is her choice. She didn't realize what I was doing but it

[21:31] wasn't her business. So when I called that number, I want to know why half a million

[21:38] dollars went into that. She got that number, which she did not get that. So you guys heard

[21:45] me the other day. Yeah, but you're not going to answer that question because you haven't

[21:51] answered any other questions, which is real sad because the legislation voted to see if

[21:58] People were doing correct things with the funds.

[22:03] What do you guys rate yourself?

[22:06] I know what I did.

[22:09] Yeah, and you still have you have to sit down and talk and negotiate.

[22:13] Mr. Trump, whether he gave you a pass or not, that's his prerogative.

[22:18] You guys got to figure out something.

[22:22] That's what you're saying.

[22:23] Thank you, Mr. Corsi.

[22:25] Thank you, I'm y'all.

[22:26] Those are all the slips I have.

[22:28] I forgot to mention earlier, if anybody else wishes to make public comments tonight, they should pick up a form in the lobby and turn it into the clerk.

[22:34] You still have time to do that, if you would like.

[22:37] Mr. Bieler, is anyone online who would like to address the council this evening?

[22:41] No mayor buyers, there is not.

[22:43] Thank you.

[22:44] Then I will close the public comment portion of the meeting.

[22:48] Now we're going to open discussion for the good of the order and we're going to recognize our going council person through and start with City Manager Vicki Bickier.

[22:56] Yes. Thank you, Councilor Mayor.

[22:59] Good evening. Tonight we are going to take a moment to recognize two individuals who

[23:05] have dedicated their time, energy and hearts to serving the people of Yakima, our Retiring

[23:11] City Council members, Janice Ceo and Danny Herrera.

[23:15] Public service is not easy. It requires long hours, occasional five-hour public meetings, long

[23:24] long budget discussions and tough decisions and a deep commitment to our community.

[23:30] They've been voices for their constituents, advocates for their districts,

[23:34] and also they've been part of the whole city's future too.

[23:39] We've helped, they've helped guide Yakima through the challenges like recovering from COVID,

[23:44] going through a lot of staff changes, and through some of the most complex financial issues

[23:50] use a city can face. But beyond the policies and the votes, they brought compassion and

[23:55] love for the city of Yakima. They've listened to residents, collaborated with the staff,

[24:01] and worked to make Yakima better place for all of us. As they step away from their official

[24:06] roles, we know their impact will continue. And on behalf of the city of Yakima, we want

[24:12] to thank you for your service. Thank you. And for believing in Yakima. We wish you all

[24:18] the best and we hope you'll continue to be part of Yakima's story and Mayor has some

[24:23] we'll take it from here. Thank you. Just any other council person

[24:28] wish to say anything at this point? Go ahead. Yeah. I just want to say thank you for being

[24:36] on this council. I've truly respected and appreciated your guys' opinions on everything whether

[24:45] Whether we've agreed or disagreed on issues, when we first got on council, we made a point

[24:52] to, even though we disagree, we can still move forward on things, and I've appreciated

[24:57] that.

[24:57] and so

[25:00] I wish you guys the best of luck in the future and whatever your endeavors are. I know you are coming on to retirement soon as we leave. You are, all right. Well, that's even probably way more fun than this is going to be. And, you know, God bless you both. Thank you.

[25:30] It's really impressed me with this City Council more than any other than I observed in

[25:35] past years.

[25:36] A lot of times there's a lot of animosity between different council members and the fact

[25:41] that we can share our ideas and our thoughts and still respect each other and still like

[25:47] each other to me is awesome and that's an important part of what life is all about.

[25:52] And don't get lost.

[25:54] You know when we have City Council and you know that you can come and make comments any

[25:58] time.

[25:59] so we want to hear your input forward. Thank you. I wish you the best.

[26:06] Maybe on study sessions. Yeah.

[26:10] When we have a six hour meeting, we'll make sure we get you here.

[26:13] Okay. Anyone else before I close? All right. Thank you. I just want to thank you both. It has been

[26:20] pleasure as a council to have you here, to have your voices be a part of the conversation.

[26:25] And as Deputy Mayor Brown said, sometimes we agree and sometimes we don't, but I think

[26:30] we've had a mutual respect here at the horseshoe.

[26:32] I've appreciated all of the thinking and ideas and things that each of you have brought.

[26:38] And James, I have part of your district now, I think the district will move.

[26:42] Yeah, but we have some of the same constituents.

[26:45] And I hope to hear from you on a regular basis in terms of your community and where you live

[26:50] and things that you would like to have brought forward.

[26:55] Because I like it, so.

[26:56] And Danny, it's been fun because we've

[26:58] seen you go from saying absolutely nothing

[27:01] to the meetings that you come to now

[27:03] and you're making motions and you're

[27:05] recognizing things in your district and in the community.

[27:08] You've been doing that for a while now

[27:10] and just to see you grow in that has been really, really

[27:14] delightful.

[27:16] And so I hope I know that you will stay involved in your community

[27:20] because I've seen you out there,

[27:21] referring basketball games and all kinds of things like that.

[27:24] So I'd encourage both of you just, you know,

[27:26] in your life and in your way to stay active in, you know,

[27:29] in your district and in your community

[27:30] and supporting the city of Yacquim

[27:32] in every way that you can.

[27:33] And I'm personally grateful for the opportunity

[27:36] to share those thoughts with you.

[27:39] And we do have something for you.

[27:41] So this is for Mr. Herrera.

[27:43] And this is for Councilman DCO.

[27:46] Thank you.

[27:47] You're welcome.

[27:47] You can open it now, OK?

[28:03] I just want to say that I've enjoyed being on council.

[28:11] It's been a real learning experience, but I think it's something that so many people

[28:16] I don't know not everyone can do it but I wish everyone could experience it because it gives you a whole new perspective on how the city is run.

[28:26] The decisions that are made and why they're made and sometimes it doesn't make sense to everybody but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

[28:34] So I'm really grateful that I have that and going forward as someone who's going to be active in the community.

[28:40] I have that background to be able to have that perspective on how things are

[28:48] run. So, and I've met a lot of really great people, some of them are still my

[28:54] friends now, now that I've met them. And I think that it'll be fun to go out

[29:00] and be a non-council person and do some things out in the community.

[29:09] I'll be on

[29:10] because yeah, come as a great place to live and that's the reason I ran to begin with is so that I could make some changes or

[29:19] however small that is but I

[29:24] Just really like this community a lot. I've been here my whole life and so I'm gonna continue to be part of it

[29:39] Thank you

[29:40] Everything not just for the campaign and my time on council but before graduating from

[29:44] university, being professional, everything that I do in life.

[29:51] Yeah, it's not easy, it's been on council, being the forefront, being in the news, on the

[29:57] newspapers, you know, everything gone there.

[30:00] Microsoft, it's not easy. First of all, I do want to thank council, Deputy Matt Brown. Thank you here. At a good time sitting next to you. And you know, you did just give me some advice sometimes to make some motions when I was in too sure. And then, yeah, like you said, there's some some mutual respect on council. Because again, like Rich Rick said there. Council that I see before they were very nice. I was kind of nervous. But I'm glad

[30:29] that we were able to work together and get things done as well, and then also Madam Mayor.

[30:35] Yes, working on the aquatic center fundraising committee and all the other community members and I know you're out in the community, so thank you for recognizing that I'm out in the community too.

[30:45] So we'll definitely see each other as well and it's not easy and I just want to make sure that my students and any future students know that anybody from East Yakima or any part of Yakima can do anything, especially you run for city council.

[30:59] to represent the district and know what's their best interest.

[31:03] And thank you to the staff, I know I'm going to continue to keep communication already told, I think some of the police officers that I had grown up with, and obviously chief boy on chief Markham, you'll be hearing from me no matter what comes up as well as staff that's been here the last couple of years I know.

[31:23] So turnovers not always the best, but I know I've met a lot of people that are all over the state are still here as well too, as well.

[31:31] Thank you, Councilor Herrera.

[31:33] Again, we appreciate your presence and wish you well and everything.

[31:38] All right, we will move forward.

[31:41] Next on the agenda is to administer the oath of office for Judge Aaron Masters and Judge Troy Clement.

[31:50] Good to see you both again.

[31:59] Good evening.

[31:59] at the face this way. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, state

[32:07] yearning,

[32:09] solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States

[32:18] and the Constitution of the State of Washington and the Constitution of the State of Washington

[32:23] and I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Office of Judge

[32:31] of the municipal court of the city of Yakima, Washington, according to the

[32:42] best of my ability. So help me God. Congratulations.

[32:51] Congratulations to both of you

[33:10] I was going to make one comment further to Councilman D.C.O. I started my path to City Council

[33:17] after I retired.

[33:19] It does make a difference.

[33:23] The door may be open here in the future.

[33:25] All right.

[33:27] We'll see.

[33:30] Next on the agenda is Council Reports.

[33:33] 6A is that we will have a report from the nominating committee.

[33:36] And I believe that Danny Herrera is going to make this report.

[33:39] Yeah, this is the meeting November 17th, not yesterday.

[33:42] But we had some appointees for the art commissions, bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee and

[33:48] tax advisor committee. None of them were challenges set for some of the positions for the

[33:53] lodging tax advisor committee, but I think we're going to bring that up later. So, yeah,

[33:59] those are the appointees and reappointees.

[34:04] And Madam Mayor, a motion to accept the nominating

[34:09] committees recommendations. Second. So we have a motion by Councilor Herrera and a second by

[34:18] They're definitely wearing brown to accept the nominating committee's recommendation.

[34:21] And I'm wondering if you can give us the names of the persons.

[34:24] Yes, for the arts commission, a point, Brandon Dean, and then Sylvia Marcell was a community rep, and

[34:32] she's going to change the work in artist position.

[34:35] So thank you Rosalinda, to making sure that all positions are filled in the correct spot.

[34:41] And then for the bike and pad, reappoint Jennifer Grint, and Frank Purdy,

[34:45] Any lodging tax advisory area point, sir De Villa and Kathy Kramer.

[34:51] Thank you for sharing the names.

[34:54] All right.

[34:55] Any comments, Council?

[34:56] There is the bicycle and ped committee too.

[34:59] That's the Jennifer.

[35:02] Okay.

[35:06] All right. There's no further comments. All of this in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

[35:13] All right. The motion passes 7-0. Thank you, council. And thank you, and I want to leave the committee for your work.

[35:19] Next is a discussion by the council regarding suggested 2026 state and federal legislative priorities. And, man, be alert,

[35:26] or a community case in some public affairs manage?

[35:28] Just gonna address council.

[35:30] Good evening Mayor and council members.

[35:32] Last week when I was responding to giving you an update

[35:35] on a couple of motions that the council had made,

[35:37] I told you that I would come back this week

[35:39] and give you a little bit more detail

[35:41] on what we are doing

[35:42] and have been doing for several months

[35:43] with regard to our state and federal legislative priorities.

[35:49] I'll just, tonight I'm gonna give you a really quick overview

[35:53] and then based on information we get from the council,

[35:56] So we may need to adjust some of our priorities.

[35:59] But on the state level, so far, we are planning to request funding for our airport modernization,

[36:06] $2 million, also pre-design and design of the proposed Children's Advocacy Center, $1.5

[36:13] million.

[36:15] We're asking for $3 million for the Shaw Creek rerout, which is a project in partnership with

[36:22] of a county. Also, a mill site feasibility study. We imagine that might be in the neighborhood

[36:28] of $150 to $200,000. We're also going to request funding for repairs to Franklin Pool.

[36:37] We don't know the exact numbers for that yet. We're working on that and that will be a request

[36:41] to make. These are capital requests of the legislature. We also are going to support requests that union

[36:49] gap might make regarding the beltway and that Yakima County might make for the Shaw Creek rerout.

[36:55] A few policy things we're following on the state level, a homelessness funding,

[37:01] public records, regulation, rewrites, indigent defense funding will be following all of those very

[37:07] closely and will also keep a close eye on. There may be, if there are efforts that will be made to

[37:12] change a little bit of the legislation on the 1-10th of 1% sales tax for public safety,

[37:16] there's a lot of discussion that that may be redone a little bit.

[37:21] On the federal side, we're planning to request funding for the airport.

[37:24] Again, $2 million, pre-designed design for the proposed children's advocacy center, $1.5 million.

[37:30] Any ongoing project to extend water and sewer services to currently unserved areas of the city.

[37:35] There have been two phases of that project that have been funded.

[37:38] This would be the third and final phase.

[37:40] These are areas that of the city within the core of the city

[37:43] that currently have no water or domestic water or domestic sewer service.

[37:50] Also, we will be, we'll advocate at the federal level to improve funding to prevent and combat wildfires.

[37:59] And we'll also be following progress in various funding bills from this year that Congress is yet to act on.

[38:06] And I'll tell you a little bit more about that in just a second. But from the state level, this is a 60-day session.

[38:10] a short, what's called a short session. It's a non-budget year session. It'll be interesting

[38:16] to see what happens at the state level this year because of course as you may have seen

[38:20] in the last couple of days, the revenue forecast for the state is not good. And plus in a short

[38:26] session such as this, the likelihood of a lot of major policy things happening, it doesn't

[38:32] seemed like that would be very likely.

[38:37] Also on the federal level, I did forget to mention this,

[38:41] the federal level, we're also asking for, we secured $3 million

[38:45] in funding for the Nelson Dam, or the Nelson Project.

[38:49] And we secured that in an airmark in 24 from Senator Murray.

[38:56] However, Congress has not acted on those funding bills yet,

[39:00] So that money still kind of is hanging in limbo there, so we'll be pushing to have that

[39:05] provided to us. And also on the federal level we'll be asking for an air cargo and TSA modernization

[39:15] some money for that for the airport. I think I already said that one. So you guys know how we do

[39:20] some of this work. We will prevent for the funding requests in specific. We provide or we prepare and

[39:28] provide these one-pagers. You can hand this just just an example of a couple of them.

[39:33] It's kind of how we get legislators familiar with the issues that we are talking about

[39:40] and advocating for. And there will be several more of those created as we move closer to

[39:45] the state legislative session in January and the ongoing congressional session.

[39:55] If you have

[39:58] into your discussion.

[40:00] One comment you made about fire control. My perception is I lived in the county or the city for the last 50 years is in the last decade or so.

[40:13] Whoever's controlling the fires is not actively putting them out. And it results in probably some of the worst pollution that the state gets. And it just seems insane. We need to change the policy.

[40:27] just because we get a fire started doesn't mean we don't put it out and I don't

[40:33] feel very convinced that that policy is being adhered to. I think the

[40:39] letter burn policy is way too people are accepting it and that's not a good

[40:44] idea. It's part of why we're closely watching that legislation and determining

[40:52] whether or when, when or whether we would weigh it.

[40:57] On the family center.

[41:00] Did you say that was 1.5 at the state and at the federal?

[41:04] Well, we'll be making dual requests.

[41:07] We're playing, I don't know what the right term is,

[41:10] but because I'm not much of a gambler,

[41:12] but we're covering our bets.

[41:13] Maybe that's what it is.

[41:15] You're hedging your bets.

[41:16] Hedging, oh hedging our bets.

[41:19] Okay, there you go.

[41:19] You would know, right?

[41:24] Do we only need 1.5 for that?

[41:27] No, that's for pre-design and design, but not for construction.

[41:33] That would kind of come maybe not this session, maybe next set, not 26, but maybe 27.

[41:40] What is the child advocacy center?

[41:44] I can give you a high level overview of the project.

[41:46] It was a meeting that Deputy Mayor Brown and I had with some local, a coalition of local people who are working on child abuse a place for us to have like a one stop place for children to get the intake instead of having to go to the hospital and the police station to be taken all around.

[42:07] It includes a lot of different aspects. It's very early. We can bring you some more information about it as it comes together.

[42:14] It may be, I mean, we really have to work on our timing with this, but it's at least

[42:18] something that's in our, on our radar stream.

[42:22] And having worked for a number of years with families or in crisis and children that would

[42:26] go through those situations and seeing parents or foster parents having to go from place

[42:30] to place to place to place and then poor children being traumatized over and over and over again

[42:34] having to tell their story.

[42:36] This is such a fantastic opportunity.

[42:38] It was a very cool project that was brought to me, and I was like, well, this is going to be a big project, so let's figure out if we can, you know, even do such a thing and brought it to Vicki, and we had a nice meeting with those folks.

[42:55] I don't think it was you, Mr. Beeler, but I know we have brought it up the project for the extended water and sewer services.

[43:01] Do you know, I think I asked last time the general area for that?

[43:05] I think it was Scott.

[43:06] I might have brought it.

[43:07] The project right now is kind of if you can picture in your head where a good Samaritan is in the juvenile justice center, it's kind of that neighborhood.

[43:18] That's where the ongoing work is.

[43:20] And then there are a couple of other places, Northeast and Southeast, Yakima.

[43:26] Thank you.

[43:29] I just want to say to our heard you say that we're going to be watching what's happening with Indian and

[43:34] Jeff N. Stolters and so I served on the AWC legislative priority committee this year.

[43:41] And that is one of the top priorities for AWC, representing the cities that we are going to not just be monitoring, but

[43:48] Yes, I may have understated what our interest will be in that.

[43:54] Yes, for the state to provide more monies to the whole communist penalty for an unfunded mandate.

[44:02] And particularly just in the last year and a half, hard to remember exact timeline.

[44:08] There was a state supreme court decision that limited the number of cases that defense lawyers can have,

[44:15] which places more burden on us to find the lawyers and also to pay for their services.

[44:20] For the city's to do that.

[44:22] Again, an unfunded mandate and we need funding to state for that.

[44:28] Any other comments, council?

[44:30] There was some more stuff I think, Rick.

[44:33] You had brought this up I think last week to talk about kind of a resolution or like some other ideas.

[44:42] Is there anything else that you would like us to touch on?

[44:46] I think there's several issues that I have on my list.

[44:50] One of them is stop the Civil War,

[44:53] become unsevil.

[44:56] It just irritates the heck out of me that Washington and Olympus

[45:00] The Olympics are fighting tooth and nail about different issues. Immigration is one, drug control

[45:07] is another. And I would admonish our state to get on board, but we are the United States

[45:15] of America, and when the State Attorney General comes into press conference and says, we

[45:24] have sued the federal government 43 times in nine months, that isn't united, and that isn't

[45:29] what we should be doing as the United States of America.

[45:31] So I'd like to chide Olympia and say, guys,

[45:34] you need to get with the program.

[45:36] And so that's one.

[45:38] The other one, that's a big issue to me.

[45:41] And as we went through the budget issues,

[45:45] the fact that 90% of the revenue that is collected

[45:50] in the city of Yakima goes to Olympia.

[45:53] And only 10% stays here.

[45:56] That is just an insane number.

[45:58] And what it does is it gives Olympia way too much power, way too much control.

[46:04] And we need to have Monisha gets that, I think, that as a city, we should be getting 50% of the revenues that are collected.

[46:13] You know, we don't, it's a very inefficient method to go to Olympia and beg them to give money back after we've sent it over there.

[46:21] Just leave it here in the beginning and let our city government take care of that.

[46:27] But another one that I see that just really bugs me is that in our legal system, we are

[46:35] kind of evolving towards the point where it's okay to break the law as long as you have

[46:40] a good excuse.

[46:43] And I see that in the way that the courts are handling delinquent renters.

[46:51] I see it in the way that we are prosecuting shoplifters.

[46:54] I see it in the way that people are committing other crimes.

[46:58] Many times they're given, they're just let off with very minimal.

[47:03] And what that does is send a signal to criminals.

[47:05] It's okay.

[47:06] As long as you've got a good excuse, go ahead and break the law.

[47:10] We need to fight that notion.

[47:14] The other one that I have, you had a lot, back up on the environment, the state of Washington

[47:22] is statistically irrelevant when it comes to carbon and a lot of people are

[47:28] starting to step away from that. Let us keep our natural gas, let's keep our

[47:34] hydroelectric dams, let's not get rid of all these things that are so essential

[47:39] to the success of prosperity of Washington State just to be friendly to the

[47:44] environment. The other one that I see is being a big issue and it isn't just in

[47:50] And Yakima, it's through the whole state, is that we have businesses, terrible time

[47:57] getting started.

[47:59] It's very hard to start a new business in the best of circumstances, and the way that

[48:05] the climate that we have established in government in Washington State is detrimental to new business

[48:12] and we need more new business in Yakima desperately.

[48:16] The last one that I'll mention is medical care is extremely unaffordable and the more

[48:26] government gets involved, the more expensive it gets, and the less effective it gets.

[48:31] So we need some comprehensive approaches to improve medical care.

[48:38] That's my list.

[48:39] That's quite a lot.

[48:41] You read all that down right now.

[48:42] I will make one note when you were talking about state-revenue cities, part of what is at risk during this session because of the budget situation, revenue situation, the state is in, when we've been here before, and a lot of the funds like the Public Works Trust Fund, that cities rely on to build infrastructure to fund a number of programs are seriously at risk, they have in the past, been led nearly dry or funds

[49:12] just taken from them to help boost the state and that's something of course cities, counties,

[49:17] paying a lot of attention to you during this session and I'm hoping to influence that that

[49:22] doesn't happen yet again. So I thought a lot about this. One of going back to you Rick is a little

[49:31] bit is I think there's I personally think they should be cutting spending at in Olympia.

[49:38] If you're consistently every year in the last three years passing new taxes to try to fund government, I think government is too big.

[49:49] And so, in my opinion, a policy or a statement from the council saying, you have a $2 billion shortfall this year.

[49:58] Well, you need to seriously-

[50:00] We look at actually balancing a budget, not on the backs of the workers of our city. So that's one. The other aspect is, though, going back to revenue sharing, I know the city doesn't have.

[50:14] We get out of a sales tax, we get a 1%, maybe a little bit more on certain things. The rest of it's six and a half going to the state. I think the state, I mean, you're talking 90%, 10% those type of things. I think let's put it in a

[50:29] a place that's there needs to be another one percent going back to counties and cities

[50:34] across this state so that you know instead of six and a half percent the state is going

[50:40] to have to live within five and a half percent.

[50:43] Now how do you pass any of these things?

[50:45] I don't think you do.

[50:46] I mean we're not going to pass them.

[50:47] Here is never going to happen you know we can talk about it.

[50:52] And I think from a perspective of like can we collectively put a statement out as a resolution

[51:01] of some sort that says, you know, Washington is creating an environment of, we cannot

[51:09] afford to live here when it comes to the taxes that have been increased on our businesses.

[51:15] I mean, we've seen it just in our own town in the last six months to a year.

[51:19] A lot of our folks are either, I mean, we're talking businesses that have been here a long time, have packed up and went home and, you know, I think we're going to see a lot more of that in 26 if we do not, if our state does not start changing the course correction of continuously trying to tax their way out of this solution or this problem and, you know, I don't know, I mean, I know Olympia is one way.

[51:46] I would also say that, you know, the governor has said he does not want to pass any new taxes next next year,

[51:52] but he did said that last year and then signed all the taxes in.

[51:56] So, you know, we can, I think, sending a statement from the city is something we haven't done in a little while.

[52:05] Yeah, certainly we have done that in the past.

[52:08] Maybe that is more of what we're talking about with Council Member Glam and resolutions.

[52:13] But of course, also know that your voices are important in both Olympia and in Washington, D.C., we have a great delegation on the state level, from our area, and I know you guys know a lot of them, and if not all of them, and please do make your voices heard to them because it doesn't matter.

[52:35] And I would agree that Council agreeing together on a resolution to press at the state level for changes that every city in our state needs.

[52:48] I think they need to focus specifically on us as a city and what we need the state to do for us because we represent almost every other city in the state.

[52:58] So I think those statements should be directed that way, but I also think that when we do this, not just send it to the Governor, but send it to the legislature and make sure that our representatives have copies of this in hand ahead of time so they know the statements that we're making and they can support our position as a city.

[53:18] That would be great if all the cities banded together and did a statement together and

[53:24] signed it.

[53:25] That would be really powerful because we're all in this same boat.

[53:32] When I think it, yeah, I mean, going back to that, I think it was 91% of cities are facing

[53:36] financial crisis going into the next three years of budget cycles.

[53:42] That's a huge dumpster fire when it comes to local governance.

[53:47] I know I had even the Pasco, one of the Pasco City Councilmen, reach out to me because

[53:52] they are facing a very, it's the same cliff, so to speak.

[53:58] And anyways, I think us sending a statement from this council, I think whether other

[54:03] councils do that, you know, maybe we set the pace, we set the tone.

[54:09] We lead the charge.

[54:12] I've had calls from tri cities and from Clellum as well.

[54:16] Other council persons are facing the same issues we are and need help in that area.

[54:21] So I think if we could take charge, take the lead and encourage other cities, we can

[54:26] create more pressure for the legislature and the government to look at things differently.

[54:33] I have talked with these AWC meetings that I've gone to, every city that I've talked to

[54:40] is in the same issue as far as revenue.

[54:42] One thing I think is kind of interesting is that we passed record tax increases in Olympia

[54:49] last year, and the revenues did not come at all.

[54:53] And to me that's a sign that they overdid it.

[54:55] And to Matt's comments, I just say,

[55:00] It's better to shoot for the moon and land on the roof, then to shoot for the roof and land in the mud.

[55:11] That's it. You pulled that out of the way back. So what would the council like to do at this point, anything? I mean, I think we could craft something. I don't know if we can craft it right here, but I think if we had some policy points that we want to try to hit on that we could agree on.

[55:31] that I'm sure these guys who craft this stuff can bring something back to us at another meeting.

[55:40] So, I mean, for me, I think the policy, one policy point that I think we should hit on is the sales tax revenue share.

[55:48] I think that needs to come back.

[55:51] That honestly would solve pretty much every city and counties issues going across the entire state.

[55:57] And you know, even in like Seattle for that matter, those guys would be just blown away.

[56:07] But anyways, needless to say, I think that would be one if I could champion home that one.

[56:12] I think if we could just, can we do this without emotion, just direct staff too?

[56:18] Okay, thank you, Mr. Wheeler, maybe you can Sarah and Vicky Baker can head the charge here,

[56:23] but take the information that Rick brought and take the suggestions that Council may have

[56:28] it would be important items to include on that and bring back to Council some of the

[56:33] interim resolution.

[56:35] I like the stuff that you put together as well, so I'm glad that we're heading in this

[56:39] direction and I nothing ventured, nothing gained, I'm excited to see what happens in Olympia.

[56:47] One of the things that I've noticed when I've been over there, it's almost more important

[56:52] to pay attention to what the other side is saying, that it is to what the legislators are

[56:57] sitting there listening because, and I say this with regard to rent control, the people

[57:03] that were there voting or arguing in favor of rent control were wearing t-shirts that said,

[57:08] housing is a human right, we should get it for free. And what we need to do as a city is if

[57:17] And bring out how ridiculous that is because in the arguments that took place last year,

[57:23] the businessmen and the people who gave very good arguments on why we should not have

[57:29] rent control were ignored.

[57:31] And the people who said housing is a human right, they're the ones that got the ear of the

[57:35] legislator.

[57:36] So, we kind of have to go a step further and look at that as we go forward.

[57:45] that's right. So probably I'm sorry probably in the first on the first meeting in January maybe the second meeting would be better because your first meeting is a little bit busy and so maybe we'll shoot for the second meeting in January.

[58:00] Provide you more comprehensive as I said it's very beginning and then bring forward to you a draft resolution.

[58:05] Everything on the funding side, though, I think was great.

[58:09] Thank you.

[58:10] You want my outline?

[58:11] I'll pass it to you.

[58:13] You can do what you wish with it.

[58:16] I think that, you know, in particularly in the light of what Deputy Mayor Brown shared about,

[58:21] let's look at that at the sales tax, we can press against unfunded mandates because that's what gives us so much grief

[58:28] that if they're demanding something, they need to fund it.

[58:31] Yeah, I mean, I do think too that the Gint defense aspect is another huge, big problem.

[58:43] But, you know, let's say I think there's, and I, you know, this is one of those things

[58:48] that it's probably not going to get solved in 60 days in this short session.

[58:52] They might not even listen in 60 days to do these type of things.

[58:56] But it is something that you lay the groundwork for, you know, the next long session that is

[59:00] coming the next year so I think there's I think this is something for us to at least send out that way.

[59:08] Well if we can also as a city we can do this as leaders in the state we can be a city that leads away

[59:14] and not only us to it but as many cities as we can get to join us in continuing forward in every

[59:20] session those things that the cities agree on are important. One other thing to remember is that

[59:26] The counties are in the same situation.

[59:28] I went to a Yakima County meeting this morning

[59:30] and they're facing the same battles we are.

[59:34] For sure.

[59:35] Yeah.

[59:36] Any other comments, Councilor?

[59:38] Just kind of an anecdote.

[59:40] I was talking with a former mayor of Yakima

[59:43] and she told me she was very familiar

[59:46] with all the legislators over in Olympia.

[59:49] And she said that after her term of service

[59:52] that the director of the EPA came up to her

[59:55] and said, I appreciate the fact that you were there because...

[1:00:00] I knew I had to give, you made me realize that I can't just do whatever I want. There's another side of the issue to look at. And so that just one individual made a difference. And so I think we as a city can make a difference.

[1:00:16] And we have done that. I remember when going over to Olympia with the then chief of police

[1:00:21] and talking about not changing the structure of juvenile justice. And we were successful

[1:00:28] in those efforts. So, yeah, we're just one city they're talking about.

[1:00:31] When does session start? It starts. I don't know this in particular. It's, yeah, it's

[1:00:37] the second Monday, whatever that is. Okay. So we have a little time. Yes, we do. Thank

[1:00:42] Thank you.

[1:00:43] Any else?

[1:00:44] Council.

[1:00:44] If not, we'll move on.

[1:00:46] Okay.

[1:00:46] Next thing on the agenda is a consent agenda.

[1:00:49] Item listed are considered a routine, but the City Council will be enacted by one motion without

[1:00:53] discussion.

[1:00:54] A council member may request to remove an item from the consent agenda, and if approved,

[1:00:59] that will be placed on the record agenda for discussion and consideration.

[1:01:02] There's an E-Council person, which is to remove an item from the agenda.

[1:01:06] I would like to remove item E. Any others?

[1:01:11] If not, then clerk, would you read the agenda, please?

[1:01:14] Item 7A is approval of minutes from the December 2nd, 2025 City Council regular meeting.

[1:01:20] Item B is November 2025 investment transaction report.

[1:01:23] Item C is approved payment of disbursements for the period in November 1 through 30, 2025.

[1:01:28] Item D is an ordinance relating to city personnel, adopting a classification and compensation plan for city employees to be effective January 12, 2026,

[1:01:36] and repealing all preceding state ordinances in the City of Yakima Municipal Code.

[1:01:40] Item F is a resolution authorizing the City of Yakima to accept an anonymous monetary

[1:01:45] donation and the sum of $50,000 through BNYML Interest of Delaware for use to assist

[1:01:50] in funding the General Operation of the Harman Center.

[1:01:53] Item G is a resolution authorizing a contract amendment with Transportation Demand Management

[1:01:57] LLC for Senior Tours Transportation Services.

[1:02:01] Item H is a resolution authorizing an amendment to airport lease agreement between the City

[1:02:05] of Yakima and McAllister Museum of Aviation.

[1:02:08] Item I is a resolution authorizing the City Manager to adjust the 2026 airport rates

[1:02:13] and fees within the master fee schedule.

[1:02:15] Item J is a resolution authorizing the City Manager to execute change order number one

[1:02:20] for the fire alarm system replacement at the Yakima Air Terminal McAllister field.

[1:02:24] Item K is a resolution authorizing the acceptance of a grant with Washington State Department

[1:02:29] of Transportation to design and construct an overflow parking lot at the Yakima Air Terminal

[1:02:34] McAllister Field.

[1:02:36] Item L is a resolution authorizing an interlocal agreement between the City of Yakima and Yakima County

[1:02:40] for phase one of the Shah and White Hollow Creek's flood control project.

[1:02:44] Item M is a resolution authorizing a fire services agreement between Yakima County Fire District

[1:02:49] number 11 and the City of Yakima. Item N is a resolution ratifying and proving the city manager's

[1:02:54] execution of a grant agreement with the Washington State Office of Public Defense accepting the

[1:02:59] terms and conditions for a grant for 2026 through 2027.

[1:03:04] Thank you, almost like a roll call, but we need more.

[1:03:06] I'll move to approve the consent agenda and give Rosalinda a high five for that one.

[1:03:11] That was a long one, yeah.

[1:03:13] My second.

[1:03:14] It's where you have motion by Deputy Mayor Brown, the second by Councilman D.C.O. to approve the consent agenda as red.

[1:03:19] And we do need a roll call, but please.

[1:03:20] Buried?

[1:03:21] Yes.

[1:03:22] Brown?

[1:03:22] Yes.

[1:03:23] Buyers?

[1:03:24] Yes.

[1:03:24] D.C.O.?

[1:03:25] Yes.

[1:03:25] Glen?

[1:03:26] Again?

[1:03:26] Yes.

[1:03:27] Herrera?

[1:03:27] Yes.

[1:03:28] Roy?

[1:03:29] Yes.

[1:03:30] All right.

[1:03:30] Motion passes 7-0.

[1:03:32] All resolutions are adopted.

[1:03:33] Thank you, Council.

[1:03:35] I want to go back to item Ian, even though Mr. Mercy is not here at the moment.

[1:03:40] I had a great opportunity to visit with him about a week and a half ago.

[1:03:47] And he is just an incredibly generous person.

[1:03:52] And I will say this because I've said this about our city before.

[1:03:55] This is the most generous community I have lived in in my entire life.

[1:03:59] People at every level in this community give resources, time, energy, creativity, and so I just want to say that flat out.

[1:04:06] But I do want to recognize the efforts of Forbes Mercy, not only for the contribution he is making, because he is able to do that.

[1:04:13] He said that, he's able to do that.

[1:04:16] But because he's leading in a way that we need community members to come forward and lead in the situation the city is facing right now.

[1:04:23] So I want to commend not only his gift, but his leadership in giving substantially and in talking with other businesses to see what they can do in the same and I just really appreciate it and Mr. Wilkins will like to speak again just want to echo what you said Mayor

[1:04:39] We're just so fortunate in this community, especially for parks, I mean whether it's Forbes or Rotary Clubs or

[1:04:45] Kwanisclubs and Lionsclubs, you know so many times I've been able to come before you and share just great news of

[1:04:51] somebody's wanting to partner with us to make our city great and that is one of the best things about my job that I'm

[1:04:57] able to work with these people to be able to come

[1:05:00] Thank you for your support. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Any other questions? I don't want to discount the person that gave the 50,000. No, we should recognize that it was anonymous. It was given through an organization similar to Yakima Community Fund, but it was an anonymous gift. We do want to recognize that. So thank you. Any discussion?

[1:05:25] Move to adopt the resolution. Second.

[1:05:29] So we have motion by Deputy Mayor Brown, a second by Councilman Burke to adopt the resolution.

[1:05:36] Would you be in a place, in full?

[1:05:37] This is a resolution authorizing the City of Yakima to accept a donation from Forbes Mercy in the sum of 115,000 for

[1:05:44] use in purchasing and installing an outdoor exercise gym at Chesterly Park and to be used for other programs and services.

[1:05:52] Brown?

[1:05:53] Yes.

[1:05:54] Buyers?

[1:05:55] Yes.

[1:05:55] DCO?

[1:05:56] Yes.

[1:05:57] Glenn?

[1:05:57] Yes.

[1:05:58] Yes.

[1:05:58] Herrera?

[1:05:59] Yes.

[1:05:59] Roy?

[1:06:00] Yes.

[1:06:01] Yes.

[1:06:02] The vote is 7-0.

[1:06:04] Motion passes and the resolution is adopted.

[1:06:06] Thank you, Council.

[1:06:07] All right.

[1:06:08] Move moving on.

[1:06:08] We have no public hearings this evening.

[1:06:10] We're going to move into our department item.

[1:06:12] Starting with 9-A, which is Municipal Court assignment of lawyer and entity screening presentation.

[1:06:18] And judge masters and judge comments are coming forward to present to us.

[1:06:24] Welcome again.

[1:06:33] Good evening, Council. We've put together a presentation. I know there's a presentation

[1:06:39] from City Legal about a month ago, maybe a little bit longer about the new

[1:06:44] Indigenous Defence Standards, and there was some questions about the screening process

[1:06:48] and how that works, so just Clemens and I have put together a presentation about the court

[1:06:54] rules and the laws surrounding the emergency screening as from the court's perspective.

[1:06:59] So we sent that packet, but I also did send a copy of our screening form just so that Council could take a look at that as well.

[1:07:08] As

[1:07:11] you know, I'm Judge Aaron Masters, Judge Troy Clements, and so we'll just get right into it.

[1:07:19] It is a cornerstone of our criminal justice system that people who are charged with a crime.

[1:07:26] And so just for perspective, Yakima Municipal Court deals with any misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor offends that occurred within the city limits of Yakima.

[1:07:36] So those are the cases that we're seeing.

[1:07:38] And any person who comes before our court that is charged with a crime has the right to an attorney to assist them at any stage of the proceeding.

[1:07:45] So that starts when they get charged all the way through, they have a right to an attorney.

[1:07:50] If they cannot afford an attorney, they have the right to have one appointed for them.

[1:07:56] And so that's where we come into these indigency dispensed standards.

[1:08:02] I mean, we can go into how you could waive that right, but generally everyone has a right

[1:08:08] to an attorney.

[1:08:09] That is a cornerstone that's provided under almost every constitution down.

[1:08:15] That is a right.

[1:08:16] Starts a Gideon versus Wainwright in the 60s, basically, a person was not represented,

[1:08:23] convicted of a crime of Supreme Court, said, applies to the States to the 14th Amendment.

[1:08:27] So, since then, people show up in court that do not have the financial resources get a court

[1:08:34] appointed attorney. So, that's kind of the framework we're working in, and then there's also the court rules,

[1:08:40] and so we reference the court rule that also outlines that and so often here

[1:08:47] Miranda warnings and people are told right out out of the gate they have a

[1:08:50] right to an attorney if they can't afford one and often in certain types of

[1:08:55] crimes like DUI they're allowed to talk to an attorney before they go through the

[1:08:59] BAC screening room type process so it happens very early on often in the

[1:09:05] process before they ever get to court. So what

[1:09:11] we're talking about are

[1:09:13] indigency screenings and that's in line with the indigency defense standards

[1:09:17] that counsel heard about. In the legal context when someone is defined to be

[1:09:22] indigent, they lack the financial means to pay for an attorney without causing

[1:09:26] substantial hardship to themselves or their family. At that point when they are determined

[1:09:31] to be indigent, the court would appoint an attorney to assist them at no expense

[1:09:35] to them. So in the state of Washington there are several ways that are

[1:09:41] person under the RCWs, a person could be considered indigent. One of those is

[1:09:45] their annual income is 125% less of the federal poverty guidelines after

[1:09:51] taxes. They are CW-10-101-010-3A-C. Talks about-

[1:10:00] The benefits that someone, so government benefits, someone could receive that would automatically consider them indigent, and we've listed them there, some of them are food assistance, health insurance, TANF, those types of things. So if you're on any one of those programs or you receive benefits, you're automatically indigent under the law. How do you check that they're actually on these programs? That's what we're getting to. Okay.

[1:10:31] But by law, if you do receive those, you're automatically

[1:10:36] indigent under law and qualify for public defense.

[1:10:41] And also, if you've been involuntarily committed to a public mental health facility,

[1:10:47] or again, are below the 125% of the federal poverty guidelines.

[1:10:51] Just for reference, we've included the 2025 federal poverty guidelines.

[1:10:58] and these are the ones that would be used to screen.

[1:11:01] And so, under that, it's also important to talk about

[1:11:04] what a household could be under the federal definition

[1:11:06] of a household is basically anyone that is within a household

[1:11:10] that needs to be supported regardless of age

[1:11:12] or marital status.

[1:11:13] So, that's after tax.

[1:11:16] So, taxes are taken out, that would be like net income.

[1:11:19] So, that's what we're talking about.

[1:11:26] In Washington and then the City of Yakima, I know council is very familiar but it's estimated

[1:11:35] that 80-90% of the defendants in Washington are indigent and do not have the ability to

[1:11:39] pay for attorneys.

[1:11:42] Between 17-22% of the population, depending on where you look, what sort of you look to

[1:11:48] the population of the city of Yakima lives below the Federal Poverty Guidelines, the state

[1:11:54] average is 15%. And then from the news release, from the governor's office, 28% of Yakima

[1:12:01] County residents receive SNAP benefits, which is the highest percentage of any county statewide.

[1:12:07] So if you look at those numbers, it's a pretty substantial portion of the population of city of Yakima

[1:12:13] that's meeting those emergency standards, and then additionally 35% of the city of Yakima households

[1:12:20] are what are considered, quote, Alice households. So those are the asset limited

[1:12:24] income constrained employed households, and those are households that don't necessarily

[1:12:29] receive or meet the income threshold for those benefits that we talked about, but they still struggle

[1:12:36] with the rising cost of living. They struggle with inflation, and it would be a substantial financial

[1:12:41] hardship for them to have to, for example, hire an attorney if there was a criminal charge.

[1:12:45] And so the 35% of the city of Yakima household is also fit into that category.

[1:12:52] Any questions about that?

[1:12:55] Questions, council comments?

[1:12:59] One of the things that kind of concerns me is that the cost of

[1:13:06] trying a case is getting so expensive, it's just out of touch with reality.

[1:13:11] And I think what we see on the county level is the prosecutor chooses not to prosecute crimes because

[1:13:21] they've had the resources or the money to carry it through in accordance with the rules.

[1:13:27] So they just drop the cases and I'm like, well, they don't charge them and that's an interesting issue.

[1:13:32] Because a lot of the cases we'll see your second degree burglaries.

[1:13:37] If you've been trespassed from a store for shoplifting, let's say, and you've been trespassed.

[1:13:41] If you go back into that store with the intent to commit a crime, a property crime, that's technically a second degree burglary, a felony.

[1:13:47] Those typically aren't being charged right now at the county level.

[1:13:51] So we're seeing because of the crisis of indigent defense, we're seeing more and more what should be felony cases,

[1:13:59] trickling down and putting more pressure in our court to deal with cases that are really technically felony cases.

[1:14:06] Sometimes there are violation of protection or your third one under the statute of a felony.

[1:14:11] Sometimes those are not charged.

[1:14:14] Various types of domestic violence, assaults will not be charged at the county level for the same reasons.

[1:14:20] We're seeing more and more of those cases so as the indigent defense standards get ratcheted down.

[1:14:26] We're going to start seeing more felony type cases that should have normally in the best of times where everyone has resources.

[1:14:33] is be charged in superior court, end up in municipal court.

[1:14:38] And so, not only are we going to be dealing with typical misdemeanor crimes that we deal

[1:14:43] with, but also felony level crimes that aren't being charged in the county.

[1:14:53] Bomber.

[1:14:53] I mean, we're seeing it more and more all the time.

[1:14:57] You know, it's just it's it's it's trickle down

[1:15:00] It's a trickle down effect because they have to prioritize. I mean, the city prosecutor is going to have to prioritize as resources get slimmer. What types of cases at each level can they handle? And so it keeps, you know, something, you know, rolls downhill, as they say. And so that's kind of a rat. And so we're going to see more of that effect as time goes on.

[1:15:29] I would predict unless there's state intervention, maybe in funding indigent defense, obviously

[1:15:35] the counties are involved in that right now and probably a lot of the city is looking

[1:15:39] at unfunded mandates as the mayor said.

[1:15:44] So that means we're, as we get ratcheted down, are we just going to start tossing misdemeanors

[1:15:49] out?

[1:15:49] Well, I mean, it's, you know, priorities of prosecution, right?

[1:15:52] So in any office, I mean, Sir, I'll tell you, it's like, if you only can prosecute

[1:15:57] so many cases you've got to pick the most serious ones you're going to focus on.

[1:16:01] The lower level ones are the ones you might have less ability to prove beyond a reasonable

[1:16:06] doubt that's the legal standard.

[1:16:08] They might not get charged, right?

[1:16:10] So it's a vetting or triage every day on what cases are going to make it.

[1:16:17] So it's a policy issue too, I mean, you're going to have illegal camping or trespassing second

[1:16:25] degrees from the lower level crimes or quality of life crimes. There's not

[1:16:29] their resources, maybe those who want to go and you focus on driving on the

[1:16:33] influence, domestic violence crimes, the more serious misdemeanor crimes, so all

[1:16:38] of these things start having consequences and so we're not here to talk about

[1:16:44] that, but I think it's all intertwined. So you can't just look at one piece of the

[1:16:50] puzzle and go, well, let's look at indigency without looking at all of the things that go

[1:16:57] into it.

[1:17:00] Thanks.

[1:17:01] I went to the grocery store with my wife and she says, I forgot my purse, you gotta pay.

[1:17:06] And I said, oh, that's a good excuse, we don't have to pay, let's just go.

[1:17:11] And the clerks, at first they laughed.

[1:17:13] But then they came right out and they said, last week we had somebody that came in and took

[1:17:18] $800 with the stuff and refuse to stop and left and got away with it.

[1:17:25] And then the other clerk had a story from the same week.

[1:17:28] So what we're seeing is lawlessness is becoming a very popular pastime.

[1:17:32] And we've got to find a way to stop it.

[1:17:35] You see robberies, right?

[1:17:37] Some of these cases aren't just burglaries or robberies.

[1:17:40] They assault a clerk, and that's why you see a lot of the stores

[1:17:44] tell their employees not to get involved.

[1:17:45] they want to get shot, they don't want to get somebody stabbed over, you know, some

[1:17:51] property, right? So they're not doing that. We see people getting assaulted. So if you

[1:17:55] assault somebody in the commission of a theft, that's really a robbery. So we're seeing

[1:18:00] a lot of robberies, too, technically, they'd be a second degree robbery. They're not using

[1:18:04] a firearm or a knife. They're physically assaulting the lost prevention officer, the clerk.

[1:18:10] That's a robbery, we're seeing those quite frequently too coming down.

[1:18:15] Again, it's because of the pressure in the Superior Court, they don't have the resources.

[1:18:20] So those more serious cases are now filtering down in a misdemeanor court.

[1:18:25] Can you guys as judges advocate at legislation at the state level?

[1:18:31] Can you testify on bills, can you do that type of stuff?

[1:18:34] Now, it can't really be involved in politics, because we're supposed to remain neutral.

[1:18:40] I mean, we can talk about the issues that are affecting the courts.

[1:18:44] I mean, that's always something that-

[1:18:46] You could do that.

[1:18:47] Sure.

[1:18:47] And we, as municipal court judges are members of the district and

[1:18:53] municipal court judges' association, they have a legislative committee and

[1:18:58] the priority is to take, they also have their legislative priorities.

[1:19:02] and there is a legislative law day where the judges do go and advocate and speak to those issues

[1:19:09] that have been deemed a legislative priority for the courts under that association.

[1:19:16] But judges are neutral decision makers.

[1:19:19] I was wondering now that we certainly have much more voice.

[1:19:24] Well, they're expertise on actually what they just were communicating.

[1:19:28] And I'm going, man, more people need to hear from you guys on what this is doing to local communities.

[1:19:33] I mean, we can try to articulate it, but we're not sitting in your shoes and seeing this stuff firsthand.

[1:19:39] Your voice is so much more powerful in actually showing this is what these decisions are making.

[1:19:47] When you make this decision, this is what's happening.

[1:19:50] So the trickle down effect, I'm like, man, that's like gold right there.

[1:19:54] like you just said. So this is kind of a flow chart.

[1:20:00] In how you determine indigencies, somebody, the court has to look at, you know, when you're looking at attorney fees or whatnot, in misdemeanor court, typically, and I throw in the number of 1,500 to 10,000, and it could go over that. It could be under that for a simple misdemeanor to a more complicated series of domestic violence, assaults, protection order violations, and attorney may charge more. But typically, I'd say,

[1:20:29] If 1,500 to 5,000 is probably mid-level, 5,000 maybe for a DOI up to 7,500 depending on

[1:20:37] the attorney you're going to hire.

[1:20:39] And so you have to weigh with the reality of hiring somebody in the community is.

[1:20:46] In the other circumstances, whether that person's working, whether it's seasonal work, we have

[1:20:51] a lot of people that are not working right now.

[1:20:54] They may work during the summer, they don't work right now and so they don't have funds.

[1:20:58] and so they're technically indigent right now.

[1:21:02] Things we can't consider, and we hear people say,

[1:21:06] well that guy bailed out at, you know, $15,000.

[1:21:09] He's got money, he can afford a attorney.

[1:21:11] Well, actually, into the statute, you can't consider

[1:21:13] whether your friends or family, and often friends and family

[1:21:16] are the people that are pulling together resources

[1:21:19] to bail somebody out.

[1:21:21] So we can't look at that, that's not a factor.

[1:21:25] You have to look at the person's individual means, it's a means to us.

[1:21:32] And so the statute also outlines levels of indigency, so if someone's indigent, those are the people

[1:21:38] that receive some form of public assistance, and we would point an attorney to assist them

[1:21:44] at no expense.

[1:21:45] And then those are also the people, and we've talked about this before, during the budget talks

[1:21:49] about the legal financial obligations, they're likely to have their legal financial obligations,

[1:21:53] restrictions, stricken, at sentencing, so there would be no fines assessed.

[1:21:58] Indigent and able to contribute those are people who make too much money, so

[1:22:02] those are likely the Alice households that I earlier referenced.

[1:22:04] Those who make too much money to receive public assistance.

[1:22:06] But when you look at all those other factors we just talked about, it's not financially

[1:22:11] feasible for them to hire an attorney to assist them, so we would deem them able to

[1:22:17] contribute. This statute requires that we do a

[1:22:21] promissory note with payment terms that

[1:22:24] forth in writing has to be a sworn affidavit and

[1:22:26] there has to be continuing monitoring of their

[1:22:29] indigency status and we'll talk about the feasibility

[1:22:33] of us able to do that in just a moment. And then

[1:22:36] if someone's not indigent then they just hire

[1:22:38] an attorney to assist them. So they hire

[1:22:41] private council. So there's kind of the

[1:22:42] three levels that are outlined in the

[1:22:44] statute. Okay, so our current

[1:22:47] intergencies screening process, and I think it's really important to talk about the statute

[1:22:54] when it comes to screening. The court is not, has to be confidential. It can't be on

[1:22:59] the record, so because it can't be available for use by the prosecution. And it used to

[1:23:06] be that the court would go through the screening process on the record and ask the questions

[1:23:10] and be very detailed about it and the person would give them the answer we can't do that.

[1:23:15] And so the reality of it is that currently because of that we just ask them if they have

[1:23:24] the ability to hire an attorney to assist them.

[1:23:26] If they say yes, then we say great, we'll put it on the stock it, make sure you have your

[1:23:32] attorney hired by the next time you come to court.

[1:23:35] If they say no, we appoint an attorney to assist them.

[1:23:37] And we tell them at the conclusion of your case where we can have this inquiry on the record

[1:23:43] because the case is concluded, we're going to talk about your financial situation and

[1:23:46] make a determination of what, if how much money you may owe towards the cost of your

[1:23:51] defense.

[1:23:51] So that's our current screen process.

[1:23:54] And that's because of the RCW that's referenced on the slide there that it has to be confidential

[1:23:59] and it cannot be available for use of the prosecution.

[1:24:02] So if we were going to do an in-depth screening with documentation, it would be have to be

[1:24:06] off the record.

[1:24:07] and it kind of have to be under seal.

[1:24:12] And if it's all over, good luck collecting.

[1:24:16] Well, I mean, that's the other issue we'll get to the end.

[1:24:18] You can order people to pay, and they don't.

[1:24:22] And so then they go to collections.

[1:24:24] And so a lot of this becomes academic at some level

[1:24:29] because even if people are ordered to pay, they often do not.

[1:24:35] And so we did include the verification methods.

[1:24:37] The current statute does not require that financial information needs to be verified.

[1:24:44] It says it's subject to verification, but doesn't outline that we have to verify it or a process for that to be done.

[1:24:53] So to thoroughly vet and screen defendants for indigency can be a substantial cost, especially when it's

[1:25:00] It's not mandatory to do so. Because I mean, it's like any kind of business. If you can't audit what somebody's saying, right? And verify. And so if you think about it, it's like, how do you, how do you go about doing that? There's a lot of different rules and regulations we were talking about this today. How deep can you die? I mean, are you going to have them verify W2's like you wouldn't mortgage loan or something like that last two paychecks? How much time does that take?

[1:25:29] you're going to have to hire somebody in our office to go through each application, audit them.

[1:25:34] If you think about how long it takes in a bank to do these things, we've got hundreds

[1:25:40] thousands of people coming through how realistic and how much manpower to get

[1:25:46] what percentage of money, and we'll get to that, but I think that's the bigger context you have to

[1:25:51] put this in, right? It's like how much money do you invest to get very, maybe a very little

[1:25:57] out back because to really catch somebody and I think the concern is there's people getting

[1:26:02] free attorneys and we should make them pay. Well, you got to figure out who's able to actually

[1:26:09] pay and catch the people that are saying they can't pay, right? I mean, that's the end of the day

[1:26:14] what we're trying to do. If we're going to do this, you're catching the people that say they couldn't

[1:26:18] afford it but actually could. So that's like an investigation basically.

[1:26:23] There are no state systems to look and see if they actually are receiving state assistance.

[1:26:29] I think at the state level you can when we start talking about federal income and those

[1:26:33] types of things, I think it may get more complicated to verify because you know federal government

[1:26:38] doesn't always cooperate the same level maybe a state agency would.

[1:26:45] When I first became a landlord, we got a significant amount of money that was owed through

[1:26:51] collections, but in the last five years, I don't even send them to collections anymore

[1:26:56] because it never worked, they never pay. It's just the reality of people don't. They

[1:27:02] know that they can get away without paying and all the teeth have been taken out of the

[1:27:07] collection agency, so you can't really do it and think.

[1:27:11] If people are, they do have the means and they say they don't, can their wages be garnished

[1:27:17] Or have had no no it be more like at the end of the case when we have that call

[1:27:23] equates like most of the most of people you'll probably see are like might be able to contribute to pay right so you order them to pay

[1:27:30] I mean we're talking like

[1:27:33] Was it a hundred dollars now maybe that's something we could change right for a public defender

[1:27:38] So it's like well that public defender doesn't actually cost a hundred dollars. It's a lot more than that

[1:27:43] But then they don't pay so

[1:27:47] You know, you can go through this whole process and still not get anything potentially from a lot that middle group now

[1:27:53] The people that think that's concerning are like the people are driving

[1:27:58] Expensive cars they come up until the court. Hey, I don't have any money, but oh by the way

[1:28:02] I have tons of assets that I don't want to sell, right? I don't want to get a

[1:28:07] Helach loan on my house or have to take equity out of my house to pay for my mess up, right?

[1:28:13] So that's I think when we're starting to look at this, those are the people you think you're going to capture, right?

[1:28:19] But how do you do it, right? You got to have somebody that's going to audit that

[1:28:23] Take the time and right now with our staffing we'll get to that. It's like that's a big job for somebody sit down and

[1:28:29] Pour through these papers and then start

[1:28:32] Investigating, right, so

[1:28:34] So then the question is what percentage are you actually talking about in our community that have those means that we're missing?

[1:28:42] So, you know, I don't know.

[1:28:43] Better in court.

[1:28:45] Right.

[1:28:47] So, just to kind of visualize the change,

[1:28:52] been using the screening form versus our current process of just asking if they have the ability to pay,

[1:28:57] I did, we kind of put some numbers together.

[1:29:01] This isn't, there's some room for error,

[1:29:05] and it's because it's really difficult to just get an exact number of the number of cases

[1:29:09] is where a court appointed attorney was assigned.

[1:29:11] But we took the number of new case filings.

[1:29:14] This is admitting any sort of probation violation

[1:29:17] or any reason why someone's case would be refiled.

[1:29:20] So these are just new case filings every year

[1:29:22] and then using the audit numbers

[1:29:25] from the city manager's office

[1:29:28] for the new court appointed counsel assignments of that year.

[1:29:32] We subtracted those numbers and figured

[1:29:34] that's likely the private cases

[1:29:37] the private cases where private council was obtained. And if you look somewhere around February

[1:29:43] of 2023 is when we made the switch towards just asking if they had an ability to pay versus

[1:29:48] doing the screening form. And those are kind of the numbers. If you look at the total cases filed

[1:29:57] and the number of private cases, it's rough.

[1:30:00] Definitely about 10-ish percent of the new case filings, which if you recall, 80 to 90% of the defendants in the state of Washington are in-gent and require court of point of council. So, it is falling along that line of 10%. But just kind of a visual. And I, I would like to say that this is the same people, or the people that say yes or no, when I ask them, do you have the ability to hire an attorney to assist you?

[1:30:30] So, if they're going to say no, I do not, they're still going to give me the same answer

[1:30:35] if I'm asking what their income is, how much, how many assets they have, the same answers

[1:30:43] are going to come no matter how we ask the question.

[1:30:46] And I don't want to imply that I think people are lying because I don't, I think that that's

[1:30:51] just the community we live in, that an overwhelming number of people that come before the court are

[1:30:55] meeting those indigencies standards and they truly don't have the ability to hire an attorney

[1:31:00] to assist them. But if you're talking about trying to dig down, just simply re-instituting the

[1:31:07] indigencies screening form and having people fill it out without requiring some sort of documentation

[1:31:12] and verification outside of what Judge Clemens and I can do on the record, where it's not going

[1:31:18] to change the number of, it's not going to change. And if you look at the numbers, I mean about 10%

[1:31:24] of the people are hiring their own attorneys. So if you believe 90% are indigent and that

[1:31:29] other 10%, the people want to hire an attorney? They do. People typically if they can want

[1:31:36] a private attorney and it's just kind of the way it works, you know. It's not to disparage

[1:31:42] public defenders, but I think a lot of people think you're going to get more bang for your

[1:31:46] buck if you hire your own attorney. So a lot of the people have the means do that. And I

[1:31:51] I think the numbers reflect from changing,

[1:31:54] from asking those questions,

[1:31:55] and not about the same amount of people

[1:31:57] are going out and hiring their own attorneys.

[1:31:59] So you don't see a radical change.

[1:32:03] Is there a limit to the amount of time

[1:32:05] so they can be provided as attorney?

[1:32:07] No.

[1:32:07] Any time you have a case before the court?

[1:32:13] So we did put together kind of what an in-depth

[1:32:16] intergencies screening would look like.

[1:32:18] Going back to the written form that I provided

[1:32:21] to Council on the packet. In custody defendants it's a little difficult because they're in custody,

[1:32:26] but we would have them complete the form with the attorney. We have an attorney that comes to

[1:32:31] arrangements and they represent them at a arrangements so we would have that attorney review the form

[1:32:34] with them and fill it out. For out of custody defendants we send them summons to have them come into

[1:32:39] courts. We would send them the interdency screening form with their summons, with instructions on how

[1:32:44] to complete it and tell them that we wanted supporting documents to be brought to support

[1:32:51] their assertions on the form. They would have to sign the form under penalty a perjury

[1:32:56] with those documents and then we would have a way to screen them at the arrangement.

[1:33:04] If we were going to do a screening it would be something like having one of our judicial

[1:33:09] additional assistance have the window open and it's solely dedicated to reviewing documentation

[1:33:14] with their application and determining whether or not they meet those indigenancy standards

[1:33:20] with the documents and then saying yes or no. For those in custody defendants they obviously

[1:33:25] if they're in custody would be unable to provide any proof unless they were to bail out and

[1:33:30] if they did bail out they'd be instructed to bring supporting documents. And that's kind

[1:33:35] of where we would run into, we kind of run into that cost-benefit analysis because in order

[1:33:42] for the court to then institute this, we would likely need a full-time cashier who could

[1:33:48] run the cashier window because as you recall, we have our judicial specialist running that

[1:33:52] cashier window right now, unlimited hours.

[1:33:55] So anything that's important to look at too, you're going to have to run through 90% of them

[1:34:01] and spend time that do qualify.

[1:34:04] So you're going to be sending a lot of time looking at people that qualify for a public defender

[1:34:11] and verifying because you have to use the same system for everyone, you can't just pick and choose.

[1:34:16] So you're going to be spending a lot of time just rubber stamping and trying to audit people that qualify.

[1:34:22] So that last ten percent or maybe that one or two percent of the people that might be trying to gain the system,

[1:34:28] You have to weed through 98% and to get to that, so that's a lot of time.

[1:34:37] And so, some of the barriers to the more in-depth formal interest in the screening increase

[1:34:43] costs and lack of available staffing, so the judicial specialists right now, max capacity.

[1:34:49] So we would need a cashier to operate the window because that's the one place where we would

[1:34:54] have to run that screening through and then just kind of from the courts.

[1:35:00] The respective should someone say that they are indigent, but do not provide the court with required proof, or we do the indigency screening, and we find they're not indigent, but then they go and look, and they really can't afford to hire an attorney to assist them. Then what do we do at that point? Do we put them in jail? Because they're not following a pre-trial release condition that the court has ordered them to do? Do we require that they represent themselves? And in order for some to represent themselves, we have to go through a colloquial with them.

[1:35:29] them, and what if they say, no, I don't want to represent myself.

[1:35:32] I want an attorney picking and slow down the processing of cases.

[1:35:37] We have these speedy trial rights that we need to make sure that we are preserving.

[1:35:43] So 60 days if they're in custody, 90 if they're not.

[1:35:47] So you're talking like a retainer, typically, the defense attorney, you have to have the

[1:35:52] money up front.

[1:35:53] So even middle-class people that have decent jobs don't have $5,000 always laying around to drop off to get a defense attorney.

[1:36:03] So even if your income on paper is not indigent, maybe even far over it, if you have a bigger family and you're living paycheck to paycheck, you may not have $5,000 sitting around to do that, even though technically you're not indigent.

[1:36:17] Do many people represent themselves?

[1:36:22] Not a lot. Obviously you have a constitution right to do that.

[1:36:28] I would say people who, people do not represent themselves because they don't have the money to hire an attorney.

[1:36:33] I should say people who represent themselves right now are representing themselves because...

[1:36:37] Variety of reasons.

[1:36:38] Yeah, but it's not for inability to pay for.

[1:36:41] Usually not good ones.

[1:36:42] Right.

[1:36:44] Now, there are some sayings about people that represent themselves, what the client is.

[1:36:51] So yeah, you have the right, but then the court's up against speedy trial and you're saying,

[1:36:58] well, I think I can't afford it, then you're in a colloquial potential with a defendant asking

[1:37:03] a way of a constitutional right, so right to speedy trial when they're not represented.

[1:37:06] So you get that gray area of people that have jobs, but they don't have $5,000, they're sent in custody.

[1:37:14] It's like, why need you to wave speak?

[1:37:15] Well, I could probably get an attorney in three or four months from now.

[1:37:19] Well, that's beyond the time for trial.

[1:37:22] So these time frames are constraints, too, with over dealing with, because maybe that person could.

[1:37:28] But then as a judge, I'm like, well, I'm going to ask you,

[1:37:30] unrepresented to start waving constitutional rights.

[1:37:33] I don't like being in that position.

[1:37:35] I think it's a good position, so.

[1:37:39] When we also, in this barriers, there's that middle,

[1:37:43] indigent, but able to contribute.

[1:37:46] If we started instituting that, that requires a promissary note.

[1:37:49] And then regular vetting of the affidavit with financial monitoring.

[1:37:55] And again, we just, the resources to do that, to kind of continue to monitor that right now is not.

[1:38:04] We do not have that in place.

[1:38:06] So there is no state system that you guys can put in this individual.

[1:38:12] You could see if they're receiving benefits of any kind, you could see.

[1:38:17] Because if they're receiving benefits, they've already done income verification,

[1:38:21] they've already done all those things.

[1:38:23] And so there's no, yeah, baby.

[1:38:27] But I'm going, but there is no system that you guys have to be able to pull at the state.

[1:38:32] There are some courts that we've reached out to.

[1:38:35] We did reach out to other courts and just kind of see what other courts are doing for

[1:38:39] indigencies screening.

[1:38:40] Just a lot of courts have their own office, the public defense, and the public defender's

[1:38:48] office does the screening and kind of assigns the cases out.

[1:38:52] There are some courts that have dedicated clerks who do verify benefits through DSHS, and

[1:39:01] so there is a way to do it.

[1:39:02] there are courts that have access to it, but we just do not currently have access to that.

[1:39:07] So that's something that we could look into.

[1:39:08] I'm not sure if it's as easy as a system or if it's just having a contact at DSHS,

[1:39:13] they call them up and ask them.

[1:39:15] All right, but still that's resource that we don't have right now in terms of personal and personal.

[1:39:21] But again, I think the big picture is how much do you invest to get what return?

[1:39:25] And I think, you know, we heard the comment, there's $200,000 and maybe, maybe there's $400,000 invested to get maybe the 200,000 collections that never gets paid.

[1:39:38] So, I don't know, I'm not saying there couldn't be money there. It's not clear cut.

[1:39:43] And I think when you look at the indigency rates in our community, they're high.

[1:39:48] I mean, if you haven't been to our court, I didn't encourage anybody to come into court.

[1:39:53] I'm Monday morning, and take a look at who's rolling in in custody, and you will...

[1:40:00] People find out real quick without asking any questions, they do not have the sort of the funds to hire an attorney. It's obvious. They're in a bad place, and they're truly indigent people. They're suffering, you know, in the community, and they're committing crimes of poverty, basically. So it's obvious. They're not going to hire an attorney. And even the people aren't in custody. It's pretty obvious as you do this for years on who maybe

[1:40:29] be able to pay, you can tell. Now, is there some people are slipping through the cracks?

[1:40:34] Absolutely. No doubt. But how much do you have to invest, catch the people, and we don't

[1:40:41] like it, right? We don't like the idea that somebody is driving away in a $80,000 BMW, and

[1:40:48] they just told you they can't afford an attorney. I mean, we've all seen it periodically in

[1:40:52] our careers, and you go, huh, is that reportable income, or how did you pay for that? Maybe

[1:40:57] It's on the books, off the books, you don't know, right?

[1:41:01] But they have assets.

[1:41:02] But how do you catch those few that are,

[1:41:05] yeah, and I think I agree with Judge Master,

[1:41:07] I think most people are pretty honest in front of the court.

[1:41:09] I don't think they're lying.

[1:41:12] Are there a few?

[1:41:13] Sure.

[1:41:14] And what do you invest to get that money?

[1:41:18] That's the question.

[1:41:19] You think like fraud rate would be like 1%, half a percent?

[1:41:23] Oh, no.

[1:41:24] I mean, you have to invest that to find out, right?

[1:41:27] You're going to have to invest all the time and resources and what's your number going to increase?

[1:41:31] I mean, I still think it's probably pretty small, right?

[1:41:34] Because I think that people really cannot afford attorneys, probably go out and buy them,

[1:41:37] and go pay for one, so there's only a few people that probably that really can afford it

[1:41:44] that just go with the public defender or light of the court.

[1:41:48] So, I'm not, and it's not that we're not doing it, right?

[1:41:52] So at the end of every case, we have Lizena factors, so that's a case.

[1:41:58] We have a fact, we talk about, hey, do you receive any forms of public assistance?

[1:42:02] We talk to them about their financial situation to determine if we're going to assess legal financial obligations.

[1:42:08] And it's very rare that I have someone who has a court appointed attorney that's like,

[1:42:12] sign me up for $3,000 in fines and fees I can totally pay it.

[1:42:17] Most of the time, it's either I'm receiving public assistance in the form of food stamps or any other listed way that would fall under the interdency statute.

[1:42:26] Or they say, you know, I'm not currently working. I got laid off because of this criminal charge. I hope to work in the future, but I have five people in my household.

[1:42:36] They'd still qualify for a public defender.

[1:42:39] They're still meeting those indigency standards

[1:42:41] and we're striking discretionary fines and fees at the end.

[1:42:44] And so I would say when you look at people

[1:42:46] who had court appointed attorneys at the beginning

[1:42:48] and when we get to the end,

[1:42:50] not really seeing a huge disparity in the people

[1:42:53] who are paying their fines and fees

[1:42:55] enabled to have them assessed

[1:42:56] versus having the public defender court appointed council.

[1:43:01] But I do want to make,

[1:43:02] If we're talking about intergencies screening, you can talk to think about it in a couple

[1:43:08] of ways.

[1:43:08] One, is the money aspect.

[1:43:11] But two, I think, and this is maybe what troubled the council to begin with, are these

[1:43:17] intergencies defense standards that are coming down where you're seeing kind of this reduction

[1:43:21] in cases, unless we can hire more attorneys.

[1:43:25] If you're looking at this screening process in, okay, well, if we catch, if we have this

[1:43:31] Just one person who's determined to be not indigent, that means there's one more case that we can charge that we potentially go to an indigent defense attorney, so a court appointed counsel, then there may be value there if you're looking at it in that kind of unit valuation, because you want to be able to prioritize charging and you're concerned about cases that are going to be charged.

[1:43:54] So there's that aspect of it.

[1:43:57] Well, I think for me, one of the concerns I have is typically, I mean, if you're committing crimes, you're fairly decent that can continuously trying to game a system.

[1:44:07] You kind of, if you've gone there multiple times, if you've gone this, you know, you know how the system works, you know, the flaws in the system, you know exactly what things to say and not to say.

[1:44:19] I know this, I've had family members who have, I've seen through their games on the

[1:44:23] same aspect and I go, man, I wish someone else would see through these games and how

[1:44:29] much are the taxpayers seeing that fraud rate.

[1:44:36] While I say, I agree, like the cost benefit analysis, right?

[1:44:39] Okay, so are we seeing a 1% is that $100,000 can you employ someone for that?

[1:44:44] Probably not.

[1:44:45] I don't know.

[1:44:45] Is there a way to automate this type of system of verification?

[1:44:52] Is there AI or is there software or is there something that can do some of that?

[1:44:57] I don't know.

[1:44:58] I guess that...

[1:45:00] That was my only concern is how people do know how to game a system. I think you'll find that people are in the criminal justice system at that level. They're not working. They're not their indigent. They're getting, we say working a system. They're going to be on public assistance. They're already going to be per se, what we call per se, indigent under the statute. And they're the chronic repeat offenders, the revolving door. They're not working.

[1:45:29] I mean, some of these guys you can talk to are gals that have never worked.

[1:45:34] So, you know, you've never had an income, you're indigent.

[1:45:38] So, you've been in and out of the jails and superior core, federal core, municipal core.

[1:45:45] And they're probably unemployable anyway.

[1:45:47] Correct.

[1:45:48] So, you're dealing with a population that, you know, there's only, you're not going to squeeze

[1:45:54] anything out.

[1:45:55] I mean, it's just the reality, I mean, I think Vicki would tell you, the amount,

[1:46:00] the law and justice, whether it's a city, the county, it's a huge part of the budget everywhere

[1:46:05] in every community. It's because you have to deal, that's the cost, I guess, of free society

[1:46:11] and having the rule of law. If you want to put people in jail, this is part of the system.

[1:46:17] You get a public defender if you're being charged with a crime by the state and a cost

[1:46:24] money. And there's no way around it. Attorneys aren't free. Public defenders aren't free.

[1:46:31] Going to law school isn't free for, you know, four years of undergrad, three years of law school.

[1:46:37] I think the average people get now is probably about 200,000 out of law school now. So they're not

[1:46:42] going to work for free. So it all builds and costs. There's built-in costs. But I think our

[1:46:49] presentation is tell you it's not as simple as just saying, get people to pay this, vet

[1:46:54] out those people that are gaming the system, right?

[1:46:59] Because you have to apply the same rule to everybody.

[1:47:02] You can't just pick people out and say, well, this guy's dressed really nice, and I think

[1:47:05] he's driving a nice car, so let's pick his out of the pile and we're going to audit that

[1:47:09] guy.

[1:47:10] But nobody else.

[1:47:11] I mean, you can't do it that way either, right?

[1:47:13] So.

[1:47:14] One of the things that, as I've talked to people that have been through the legal process,

[1:47:18] They just keep coming back to me and say,

[1:47:20] I paid my debt to society.

[1:47:22] And I think what I would really like to see you

[1:47:25] as judges do, emphasize to these guys.

[1:47:30] Even if we paid your attorney, even if you paid your own

[1:47:32] attorney, it was a very expensive process

[1:47:35] that you forced all the citizens of Yakima to go through

[1:47:39] because you committed this crime.

[1:47:41] And try to find ways to say, guys, it's time

[1:47:45] to step up and become a productive member of society don't come back every time, you know,

[1:47:51] creating that atmosphere to me is more important than trying to get every last penny from an

[1:47:57] indigent tenant or criminal.

[1:48:01] I mean, we do try to say that, but I mean some of it, we're dealing with chronically addicted

[1:48:07] people.

[1:48:08] It's not rational all the time, I mean they're driven, their motives are driven by different

[1:48:12] things that it's not rational. I mean if they sometimes sober up and jail for two weeks

[1:48:18] or a month, they're different person. You're not talking to the same person anymore.

[1:48:21] When they're out on the streets using drugs, they're not making rational decisions.

[1:48:27] So I think you're right. I mean, when we all talk about it, theoretically that's how you want

[1:48:33] to deal with people. But I can tell you, some of the people that we're dealing with come in on

[1:48:37] Monday and see there's no rational conversation you're having with a lot of

[1:48:42] these folks. I mean you're lucky to get through an

[1:48:44] arrangement with a conversation, not like a deep deep thoughts moment. This is

[1:48:50] just like can you answer yes or no five times so we can get through a hearing.

[1:48:56] A lot of people do have you know we talked about it before underlying mental

[1:49:01] health disorders, substance use disorders, and the resources within our

[1:49:04] community aren't there. One thing that Judge Clements and I have worked to do is try

[1:49:09] to refer people, you know, we have pamphlets in the courtroom for the

[1:49:13] recovery navigator program and we try to refer them to that so that they

[1:49:16] can get access to resources within the community that can help them with those

[1:49:20] underlying issues. We try to connect them with resources. When the court has to do

[1:49:26] the state of the court, we'll talk to you about the now-formed community

[1:49:30] We're working to try to interrupt those patterns and try to get people in contact with the resources that we have within our community to try to stop the behavior to try to address those underlying issues to try to help them be successful and kind of plug those holes that we see, you know, with housing, having a license, not having a job, trying to, you know, interrupt the pattern for them.

[1:49:54] Is there a lot of percentage of people who take those routes?

[1:50:00] Right now we have about 12 participants. That's pretty good. Yeah. Really, we just got our public, our dedicated public defender. We got an award of state funds through this administrative office of the courts to pay for the dedicated public defender. So that's really helped us because it's helped us just kind of a dedicated attorney guide everyone through and kind of keep them in line. But we have a really great group of people that are working really hard.

[1:50:30] right now and we're working to kind of build our relationship with treatment providers and resources

[1:50:36] within the community to try to connect people with Camp Hope and other places to try to disrupt

[1:50:42] that because at sentencing we can set up there until we're blue in the face and talk to them about

[1:50:49] wanting to make different life choices and you know really thinking about how they've impacted

[1:50:54] their lives, their family's lives, the community's lives, but for a lot of people it comes down to interrupting those underlying patterns that are driving the behavior.

[1:51:06] I think it's pretty wild that out of 50 states, there are five that don't fund public indigent defense and we're one and I think when you look at the community, I would say probably three out of four people have no idea.

[1:51:24] that that is even a thing in our community, maybe even higher than that, 4 out of 5 have

[1:51:29] no clue that the state doesn't just pay for this aspect. And when people talk about crime

[1:51:37] and they talk about all these things that go on, I'm going, this one aspect here is such

[1:51:43] a huge burden on the city taxpayers. And because of the caseload counts and all those things

[1:51:50] that are going on, it's just going to be a fun job to try to navigate through trying

[1:51:57] to be pick and choosey on which cases that you're going to actually have to do this

[1:52:01] with. And the community has no idea that they have no clue that these things transpire

[1:52:07] this way. When they, if they see crime go up, they go, well, it's those gosh darn council

[1:52:14] people that didn't do something, but I go, is it, when we can't fund indigent defense and we can't prosecute crime?

[1:52:25] To the fullest extent.

[1:52:27] The indigent defense is kind of an interesting problem because it's only a money problem.

[1:52:34] We also live in what people consider a legal desert.

[1:52:37] We have to be able to recruit people to want to come to Yakima, to be public defenders.

[1:52:45] And I know I've shared that I came here, I came right out of law school in the recession in 2009.

[1:52:51] And I did not want to be a public defender, but came here because that was the only job that I can get.

[1:52:56] And I'm very thankful for it.

[1:53:00] But recruiting people who want to come back to be public defenders, that's another issue.

[1:53:06] especially when you're trying to compete with bigger counties like King

[1:53:10] County, Pierce County, Sonoma's County that can pay a lot more per case than

[1:53:15] smaller rural counties can. So it's a much larger problem than it seems on its

[1:53:24] face. Well, Yakima has really two great judges, so thank you.

[1:53:29] Yes, we appreciate you're coming tonight. Yeah and if anybody wants to visit the

[1:53:36] If you haven't done it, anybody who hasn't done it, it isn't eye-opener and it's a worthwhile

[1:53:42] endeavor to see really how it's made the sausage, I think, because you can only see it from

[1:53:50] afar, but when you're actually in there, I think you get a better idea of what the courts

[1:53:55] in the communities up against, too.

[1:53:57] So I've been to a rainbow, but I've also been to graduations from the drug

[1:54:05] curve for life, and those particular people are probably at some level higher

[1:54:13] functioning than a lot of the people you see coming into the system, you know,

[1:54:17] and so it gives them an opportunity for success. There's something they catch on to

[1:54:21] about wanting to work for family or other things. They really make a difference

[1:54:24] We should have our first community diversion court graduate here at the beginning of the year, so make sure to extend an invitation when we get to do that graduation.

[1:54:36] Thank you.

[1:54:37] Thank you very much to be here.

[1:54:38] Thank you.

[1:54:44] Next is item 9B, which is our Friday Department Master Plan presentation and our fire chief Aaron Markman's here.

[1:54:50] And

[1:54:54] Erin, excuse me, if you would please introduce your guests and other people, maybe online as well.

[1:55:00] Absolutely.

[1:55:03] Good evening, mayor, council members. So the gentleman sitting to my left may look familiar to you, Zach, with the Sage Land Consulting LLC, is here present tonight to present the Fire Department Master Plan, and then also online should be retired Fire Chief Bob Gehr from Pasco and retired Deputy Chief Ed Dunmar also from Pasco. To answer any of the analytical questions that may come up

[1:55:32] regarding the presentation this evening.

[1:55:35] So I'll turn it over to Zach.

[1:55:36] All right, thank you, Chief Markham.

[1:55:37] Thank you Mayor Buyers, members of Council

[1:55:39] and a good evening.

[1:55:40] Once again, good to see you all again.

[1:55:42] It's been a little while.

[1:55:43] Zach Ratkai was stage land strategic

[1:55:45] and great introduction of our team here

[1:55:47] for the Fire Master Plan.

[1:55:48] We could not have done a lot of the technical analysis

[1:55:51] without Bob and Ed as well.

[1:55:54] So just kind of want to run through some of the timeline,

[1:55:58] the composition of the master plan.

[1:56:00] a few of the larger recommendations and then we will stand for questions and any follow-ups from City Council at that time.

[1:56:10] So, why would you typically need a master plan for any City Department or Yakima fire?

[1:56:17] Well, really it was a chance to identify needs, whether it's facility needs, infrastructure needs, staffing, generalized operational capabilities.

[1:56:26] But also looking at, okay, so when and where would we apply some of these needs?

[1:56:32] Do we need to change some items immediately?

[1:56:36] Are there some short, medium, and long-term recommendations or

[1:56:40] emerging issues that we need to address and where can we allocate resources?

[1:56:45] Now resources could be what's currently hired and

[1:56:49] staffed within the fire department, but also what is equipment, apparatus, what's the long term?

[1:56:56] what do your facilities look like?

[1:56:58] And so sort of you want to, you know, triage what's currently happening now, what's needed

[1:57:05] in the future, near and long term, and really doing a master plan is a great way to open

[1:57:10] the hood and really take a look at all the items and issues going on.

[1:57:16] So part of the process we utilized for the master plan was really just sort of a generalized

[1:57:21] assessment.

[1:57:22] So we had a great station tour, I know Bob and Ed went on a tour of the Dispatch Center as well, but really we wanted to see, okay, what does Yakima Fire Department do?

[1:57:32] So generally you look at a fire department, you kind of have a general idea of what a given fire department does, but fire departments differ in the services that they provide, the services that they contract out, the community relations, type of things they provide to their community.

[1:57:49] So, we wanted to look at, what does Yakima fire do and look at some of this, oh, always

[1:57:54] stumbled with that.

[1:57:55] Some of these statistics and operational statistics and information that we could

[1:58:01] glean from the last number of years to identify trends as it compares to just general

[1:58:08] happenings in the community, whether there's big events for fire, whether it's small events,

[1:58:12] just the general day-to-day, but also look at the statistics in relations to growth and

[1:58:17] and development patterns within the community as well.

[1:58:21] Next we would do an analysis.

[1:58:23] So is Yakum Fire Department currently meeting standardized

[1:58:26] metrics whether they're from the state

[1:58:28] or national standards or just general standards

[1:58:31] and they're standing in the community?

[1:58:33] Are they responding to calls, assisting where needed?

[1:58:37] We do do a comparison.

[1:58:38] So we looked at a lot of the regional departments,

[1:58:41] departments around Washington State

[1:58:44] for communities of similar size,

[1:58:45] but also knowing that there's difference with an urban fire department, you would have in the Seattle area, even Spokane to Central Washington, so we did look at some of the departments in the Tri-Cities region, other similar agencies around the state.

[1:59:02] Also, are there national and state mandated trends that are something that Yakima fire needs to be mindful of?

[1:59:11] From that, we gathered recommendations, short medium and long-term recommendations based

[1:59:18] upon a number of different areas that we looked at, and then provided a report on this.

[1:59:26] So some of the focus areas that we looked at, in fact all the focus areas we looked at

[1:59:30] was the general organization and the management of the fire department, your capital assets,

[1:59:36] so that would be your facilities, the staffing of the fire department, so everything from

[1:59:42] administration down, service delivery to the community, community risk, the

[1:59:48] partnership and just the provision of emergency medical services, paramedic

[1:59:53] services, hazardous material response, and specialized technical rescue.

[2:00:00] Generalized planning for the fire department, the airport, the Washington State's raiding bureau, and a fiscal review. And then from there we looked at future system demand based upon trends for growth and development, and what we could generally glean that sort of on the horizon what we would need to look at.

[2:00:22] So that came up with a number of findings and recommendations. We grouped them into short, medium, and long-term, and that goes for each of those areas that we described in the previous

[2:00:31] slide. And in general with a short-term recommendation, you look at high impact, not necessarily high

[2:00:38] impact, but maybe more immediate impact, and a little bit lower cost if no cost, which is always

[2:00:44] good in the public agency. So that could include things like policy and process updates within the

[2:00:51] department, just modernization of standard operating procedures. Are there different staff assignments

[2:00:57] that could get a little bit more of a return on investment for the community based upon the current staff allocation and hiring that is currently in place.

[2:01:06] Are there any training or administrative actions that could be revised to kind of set the tone for the future?

[2:01:14] Medium term, that would generally be something that might require moderate investment from the department.

[2:01:21] that could be anything from additional staffing to vehicles and equipment,

[2:01:27] whether that's updating or repairing current vehicles or even procuring current vehicles.

[2:01:32] Now, some of the vehicles are pretty expensive, so that could be more of a long term recommendation.

[2:01:38] But it also looks at expansions of programs.

[2:01:41] So, you know, programs for the community or programs within a department like specialized airport rescue,

[2:01:47] technical rescue hazardous material.

[2:01:49] And then long-term recommendations are the ones that require significant capital investments.

[2:01:55] So these are your new fire stations, your renovations to fire stations, facility, you

[2:02:01] know, infrastructure development, whether there's water delivery systems for, you know, the

[2:02:06] airport fire station, for example.

[2:02:08] Some of those that would require significant planning and significant investment as well.

[2:02:15] So going through the report and just pulling some examples here and then we want to open

[2:02:20] up to questions for anything that you read, anything that you have concerns about or anything.

[2:02:25] But some quick short-term examples, maybe not quick, but short-term examples could be,

[2:02:30] you know, just greater communication of the department identity, what they do out in the field.

[2:02:34] Generally, in local government, the most visible people you see if your employees are your police

[2:02:39] and firefighters. But is there a way for fire to sort of trumpet their identity out to the community?

[2:02:48] Workforce and succession planning, so utilizing your current workforce, how are you going to

[2:02:54] grow your team, promote them from within, but also how can you plan their allocations,

[2:03:00] shifts, training, that sort of thing. Enhancing Spanish language capability and having the Spanish

[2:03:09] language in the community as well. Recordkeeping or just assessing records, data keeping,

[2:03:15] keeping those sorts of things, and then having Yakima fire more present at like a planning

[2:03:22] and development reviews, so they have more of a stake in the future as the community

[2:03:26] grows, as new subdivisions come in, as there's new commercial developments that could certainly

[2:03:30] impact fire, you know, having a seat at the table through that.

[2:03:34] So those are some simple, maybe not simple, but, you know, some shorter term examples that

[2:03:39] we pulled from the report.

[2:03:42] some medium term examples. Now this is capital improvement planning, not necessarily capital investment, but certainly looking at what is needed for facilities, what is needed for equipment, apparatus, and sort of at least marking that down and having that plan to say in a number of years we're going to need to look at investing here, so that way early on you can start looking at, okay, what's the priority here? What can we do as we get into budget season?

[2:04:08] and that kind of ties into an equipment replacement plan as well, so you're not looking at a piece of equipment that's one or two years past its useful life, but you're looking at it, you know, five years ahead of time to say, hey, we need to get these sorts of things.

[2:04:22] We need to start planning, looking around what we need to do, what we need to budget for that.

[2:04:29] Modernized training practices, so some of the training within the department but also certifications, greater certifications for the team

[2:04:37] to help serve the community and then implementing some community risk assessment programs as well.

[2:04:46] And then finally, some of the long-term examples, as we all know,

[2:04:49] upgrade and expand facilities, new facilities, new fire stations.

[2:04:55] We don't have a list of five additional fire stations, but you know,

[2:04:58] just some things to keep in mind.

[2:05:00] In mind, as the community grows, as annexations come around, that sort of thing. And then some

[2:05:06] of the stuff out at the airport fire station, too, recommendation of, you know, upgrading

[2:05:11] the water and foam infrastructure, potential relocation, as you look at the airport master

[2:05:16] plan and some of the things you have out there to address that need.

[2:05:21] So what's next? This is just a master plan, so really we're identifying what's happening

[2:05:27] planning now, what might be needed in the future, but internal planning within City Hall

[2:05:33] within the Akima Fire Department to look at, okay, where can we get our best return on

[2:05:37] investment with current resources allocated?

[2:05:41] Look at strategic planning, so we divided into short, medium, and long-term examples, but

[2:05:46] this plan did not go into the prioritization, and this is going to cost this much in the

[2:05:52] next five years, because really that is something where we brought to the Fire Department.

[2:05:57] Here's what we see now, but you are the boots on the ground here in Yakima, so what is the most feasible?

[2:06:03] So recommendation for a little bit of internal strategic planning to prioritize some of those short, short, medium and long-term examples.

[2:06:12] And then, you know, just long-term planning, so, you know, look at, you know, trying to lessen your impacts currently, but look at, okay, what do we need to look at in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road for the fire department?

[2:06:27] as well. So that was kind of a quick run through of a pretty big document, but we do have

[2:06:34] Bob and Ed on the line to answer some more of the technical fire-based questions. Chief

[2:06:39] Markham is here as well, and we'll stand for questions of Council at this time.

[2:06:44] Council?

[2:06:48] So I do have a question. One, was this master plan developed?

[2:06:52] We worked on it all of

[2:06:56] starting June of 24.

[2:06:59] I thought it was early

[2:07:00] research. I couldn't remember

[2:07:02] exactly what the day was.

[2:07:04] So obviously the

[2:07:08] budget situation in the city

[2:07:10] really is going to hamper

[2:07:13] the ability to move forward

[2:07:15] with the master plan.

[2:07:17] And what

[2:07:21] do we see as

[2:07:22] Is the things that are most affected with what's happening with our bed right now?

[2:07:28] Well, some of the things that I think would be the most effective is we could focus on the training of our staff as it exists right now.

[2:07:35] There's several areas of improvement as far as if SAC fire officer one training.

[2:07:41] It's at a minimal cost there are instructors that are local here that can provide that training.

[2:07:47] But what that does is it benefits in the long term as far as number of hours that are required.

[2:07:52] Weakly for ongoing training once you have firefighters and fire officers that are trained to hire levels with a certification that goes along with them.

[2:08:01] It's also required for future development we would like to have as essential basis for

[2:08:09] promotional opportunities within the department right now.

[2:08:12] It's usually based on ten or into the department if you've been there for five years as a firefighter.

[2:08:18] You qualify to test for the position of lieutenant.

[2:08:21] And beyond that, there's no other certificates that have academic criteria that go with them

[2:08:29] to base that experience, even when you go forward into the captain's rank and the shift

[2:08:33] commander's rank as well.

[2:08:35] So these training opportunities cuts the training obligations of our members down, almost

[2:08:45] by 50% and so that gives us opportunity to try to not jam all that training while we're

[2:08:50] trying to run calls and stuff throughout the shift in the days.

[2:08:57] So the trainings that we're talking about, you know, kind of moving in directions, whatever

[2:09:02] they are, are they going to help in our ratings with, for example, community ratings for fire

[2:09:10] insurance?

[2:09:11] Absolutely.

[2:09:12] So the fire officer training that I just spoke to was one of the areas that we were penalized were given the merits for in that area.

[2:09:22] We were doing a lot better in the initial firefighting certificates because as we brought on brand new people,

[2:09:30] we trained them to the firefighter one level in their first year and they accomplished that right after getting out of the academy.

[2:09:38] the next step is to get them trained in the firefighter to certifications which

[2:09:43] reduces their hours even more. So we were to accomplish that on the

[2:09:48] firefighter level but we weren't on their fire officer level.

[2:10:00] Any other questions?

[2:10:04] So just generally throwing it out there, it may deviate from the question of the master plan. But for any of you, including the two gentlemen, gracious enough to join us online tonight.

[2:10:15] If you understand the situation of the British in the city right now, what would be your thoughts on the master plan? How that's going to affect our master plan?

[2:10:30] Well, I'll speak. I never she's in Chasco and never been hesitant to open my mouth and appropriate.

[2:10:37] really. Or as some people say, I do a good job of explaining things poorly. One of the,

[2:10:44] you know, you look at the fire department, the council looks at the fire department, and

[2:10:48] we're kind of the department that just keeps on taking. That's the feeling. It is keep

[2:10:55] pouring money into us. But in reality, the fire department can give you a return on your

[2:11:02] investment for the citizens of the city. And that really comes down to the surveying

[2:11:07] rating bureau, rating of your department. And every step right now, you're currently rated

[2:11:12] a protection class three. You go up to protection class four and your homeowner's insurance

[2:11:18] goes up 15%. You go to protection class five. From a three, your homeowner's insurance

[2:11:24] goes up 30%. So focusing on those things where there actually is a return on your investment

[2:11:31] in your fire department can really help you.

[2:11:35] We went through that in Pasco many years ago

[2:11:38] as we really transformed the department

[2:11:40] that needed a lot of work

[2:11:43] and were actually able to

[2:11:47] take a bunch of bank capacity that the council had

[2:11:50] to do a bunch of improvements

[2:11:52] and virtually got no comments at all

[2:11:55] about taking that bank capacity.

[2:11:57] But in the meantime,

[2:11:58] time, even the mayor who had been kind of a doubter at the time, you know, called me

[2:12:03] and said, hey, chief, my homeowner's insurance went down $150 a year and I'm paying like

[2:12:10] $25 more by taking the bank capacity. So you can get a return on investment in your

[2:12:17] fire department if you strategically plan that and work it out through the reading bureau.

[2:12:23] know, I know you're up against some tough times and I know you're going to have to make

[2:12:29] some tough decisions on what you do to balance the budget.

[2:12:32] But I would strongly encourage you to look, as Chief Markham said, what are the things

[2:12:37] that we can do that are low hanging fruit that bias rating bureau points because you close

[2:12:44] the station and you're probably going to lose at least one protection class rating if

[2:12:51] not too. I don't know exactly. I'd have to spend some time with the Reading Bureau and do some

[2:12:56] mapping and look at statistics. But I think you have some opportunity to look at some of that

[2:13:04] low-hanging fruit and what can you do to preserve your protection class three as you go into the future

[2:13:11] and then go from there with other larger capital improvements.

[2:13:22] I would just like to say one of the biggest challenges that we faced during the process of retrieving

[2:13:31] the data for this far to part my master plan is we were right in the middle of a change

[2:13:37] over to a new reporting system.

[2:13:40] So we're trying to get legacy information out of one system called emergency reporting

[2:13:47] while we are already in the process of changing to another program called ImageTrend.

[2:13:53] Now it was the reason we had to change reporting software because it was the other software was

[2:14:00] no longer going to support the legacy software that we had been using for the last 19 years.

[2:14:06] So we had no choice, we had to pick one of two that was suitable for Yakima Fire Department, and the other one was actually even more cost prohibitive to go to.

[2:14:16] So we were in the middle of that transition, which complicates looking at the same type of data through two different software systems.

[2:14:27] So they made it challenging, but we worked through that.

[2:14:32] Fortunately, Deputy Chief Dunbar from Pasco was familiar with the software that we're going, that we had just transitioned to.

[2:14:40] So he was able to, you know, navigate that and pull reports when we were just getting started using it within the first quarter of the year.

[2:14:49] Thank you.

[2:14:52] All right, any other questions by Council?

[2:14:54] Comments?

[2:14:55] We'll probably have questions, but not this evening.

[2:15:02] Thank you. Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate it. Thank you, chief.

[2:15:11] Next on the agenda as item 9c, which is a second public meeting and resolution on the consolidated annual performance evaluation report, the caber regarding had funding and our city development director, Bill Preston is going to present. Good evening, council. So as I presented a couple of weeks ago, the caber for, we had our first public meeting.

[2:15:36] public meeting. This is the second one.

[2:15:39] Basically, the report that was provided to you outlines basically the accomplishments and

[2:15:47] the fund sources associated with the Office of Neighborhood Development Services.

[2:15:52] And so what we're really just looking for tonight is approval of that report.

[2:15:58] We did not receive any public comments or comments at all regarding the report.

[2:16:05] And so tonight we're just looking for authorizing staff to submit that report to HUD and meeting

[2:16:17] our obligations there.

[2:16:20] Any questions, council? Nope.

[2:16:23] Then I'll turn to the motion. I move to adopt the resolution.

[2:16:27] Second. A click would you read the full resolution for us, please?

[2:16:32] This is a resolution adopting the proposed 2024 consolidated annual performance and evaluation

[2:16:38] report.

[2:16:41] Thank you.

[2:16:41] I'm sorry.

[2:16:42] Were you going to open the meeting for it?

[2:16:44] It's not a public hearing.

[2:16:46] It's just a receiving comment.

[2:16:48] We're not receiving comments.

[2:16:49] Okay.

[2:16:50] I thank you.

[2:16:51] All right.

[2:16:52] So we have a motion from Councilman DCO and a second by Deputy Mayor Brown to approve the

[2:16:58] resolution.

[2:16:59] We'll need a little hobo place.

[2:17:02] Buyers?

[2:17:02] Yes.

[2:17:03] DCO?

[2:17:04] Yes.

[2:17:04] Glenn?

[2:17:05] Yes.

[2:17:06] Herrera?

[2:17:07] Yes.

[2:17:07] Roy?

[2:17:08] Yes.

[2:17:09] Berg?

[2:17:09] Yep.

[2:17:10] Brown?

[2:17:10] Yes.

[2:17:11] All right.

[2:17:11] The vote is 7-0.

[2:17:12] Motion passes, and the resolution is adopted.

[2:17:15] Thank you, Council.

[2:17:16] Next is item 9-D, which is a resolution authorizing an operation license agreement with the

[2:17:29] All right. Thank you, Council. So we have been talking about the trolley agreement for a while now. We've had

[2:17:37] I think six or seven extensions to get us to this point. So before you today is the revised

[2:17:46] 2026 through 2030

[2:17:49] operations

[2:17:51] Operation maintenance agreement with the Yakima Valley trolley

[2:17:55] So this has all of the edits, changes, modifications that we've talked about over the last couple of months.

[2:18:05] Specifically regarding the general fund contribution towards this agreement.

[2:18:13] And the only thing in here right now is just the routine items that the city would have to do if there was no.

[2:18:24] operating agreement in place and so it is in appendix D or exhibit D so it's

[2:18:30] things like the gas utility bills the electric utility bills water and sewer

[2:18:34] bills solid waste and then phone internet and alarm and that kind of stuff so

[2:18:39] everything else is covered by the Yakima Valley trolleys so there was some

[2:18:46] discussion regarding the insurance we would build them we would we would do it

[2:18:52] under ours and then we would build them for that insurance and then they would pay us back.

[2:18:59] There is still the $10,000 fund from the streets department because you know if track

[2:19:08] a pop or if there's something out on the roadway that needs to be done that's still within our right

[2:19:13] away on our road so that Scott has still continued to keep that in the public works and streets budget.

[2:19:21] One of the, some of the chatter that I've kind of heard about this is that there was

[2:19:29] some discussion regarding, you know, what is maintenance.

[2:19:33] So we kind of to further define that in here a little bit.

[2:19:38] Maintenance, any maintenance activity that's over $1,000 has to get at least the Community

[2:19:46] the development director approval and then there's a level for the city manager and then ultimately a level for the city council that that's all in here as well.

[2:19:56] Well, the maintenance, really, that...

[2:20:00] That we're talking about for this agreement is things like, you know, if they get a broken window, a door breaks. If they need to roll rocks off the track or pull some weeds or do some general small stuff like that. A lot of stuff around the trolley barn and the museum. And then some general maintenance stuff on the tracks, nothing of any real significant consequence. So we did do the SEEPA.

[2:20:28] Like we had talked about a month ago or so.

[2:20:33] We did receive some comments, however, the city did issue a determination of non-significance.

[2:20:40] Trevor can talk about that if you have any questions about that.

[2:20:44] So right now, there is the trolley agreement before you.

[2:20:49] I'm willing to take any questions or questions, Council.

[2:20:54] What was the thing that Trevor would like to say?

[2:20:57] If you have any questions regarding CPI.

[2:21:01] So he was here for that.

[2:21:04] Any questions regarding CPI,

[2:21:08] all right?

[2:21:10] So I guess in that, if it's non-significant, there's no expectations, and he needs to

[2:21:14] be done.

[2:21:15] Okay.

[2:21:16] Good.

[2:21:16] Thank you.

[2:21:16] A lot of the comments revolved around project-related work, which this is an operating agreement

[2:21:23] not project-related.

[2:21:24] The projects themselves will have their own super projects, such as the Sixth Avenue Project.

[2:21:30] Okay. Thank you. Thank you for billing me and I'd like to be here a little late, but you know.

[2:21:37] Any other questions or discussion council?

[2:21:41] As I've looked at this trolley agreement and what's been going on over the last several months,

[2:21:48] we're in a severe budget situation and as I look at what the trolley is done,

[2:21:54] And I never really paid a whole lot of attention

[2:21:56] to how much it was being used,

[2:21:58] but basically it operates on weekends during the summer

[2:22:02] and then on Halloween and then on Christmas.

[2:22:06] Last year, the biggest usage about over half of it

[2:22:11] was during the Christmas program.

[2:22:14] And so what we have is a trolley

[2:22:17] that has a lot of sentimental value

[2:22:19] and it has a feel to a certain part of the population,

[2:22:23] but it is an extensively used and as I compare that usage with the Harman Center or Franklin

[2:22:31] Poole or Lyons Poole, I think those assets are all much more important than allocating

[2:22:42] money for the trolleys and the desire of the trolleys people has been to expand the route

[2:22:51] and be much more, have a lot bigger route to cover and as a city council we voted that we did not want to limit that in any way.

[2:23:02] So I would propose based on the circumstances that we're looking at.

[2:23:09] If we don't want to commit to a multi-million dollar expansion of the trolleys, then it's time to just end it and be done with it.

[2:23:20] So I would move that we do not approve this operation and that we look for other opportunities

[2:23:28] or decide what to do with the trolley.

[2:23:34] So that's my motion.

[2:23:37] The motion is to not approve the operating agreement.

[2:23:42] That's correct.

[2:23:44] I think that we need the money back in the budget.

[2:23:47] It's not a time for open discussion, you made a motion, we need to get a response.

[2:23:55] Motion dies for lack of a second.

[2:24:02] Do you have any other motions?

[2:24:11] Well, first of all, thank you for presenting.

[2:24:14] Appreciate the clarity of that and the work done by staff and the employees both on just

[2:24:18] being able to operate as they are right now.

[2:24:21] So thank you, Ms. Martin, for me hearing me calling you.

[2:24:25] Clerk, would you read the resolution, please?

[2:24:29] There's no motion on the table to approve it.

[2:24:34] Do you want a motion before you have it read or?

[2:24:36] you can she can read it and then there could be a motion so yeah which is

[2:24:40] actually probably the more proper way it's just that I reverse it most often so

[2:24:43] would you read the motion please or that resolution this is a resolution

[2:24:48] authorizing an agreement with Yakima Valley Trolley's to operate maintain and

[2:24:52] promote the city of Yakima's Electric Railway System and Museum

[2:25:02] We have a motion.

[2:25:09] I would make a motion to approve the resolution. Are you authorized to do that? I am the same as any other council person. I know more than 30. So yes, I can.

[2:25:27] And motion dies for like a second. Here we are a council.

[2:25:39] We just move on then. I need. Yes, really okay. We'll move on to 90.

[2:25:46] Thank you, Mr. Preston. Well, I mean, can we have some discussion before we move on though, Rick? I mean, there was no discussion. It was you.

[2:25:59] What are you guys thoughts?

[2:26:05] Well, my thoughts are this.

[2:26:07] The trolley is operating.

[2:26:09] They have picked up responsibility with this contract that they didn't have before.

[2:26:14] They would like to at least send the capacity they are now to continue operating to be a quality of life service to our community.

[2:26:21] And it has historical value, it has quality of life value, it has other value in ways as well.

[2:26:28] So, to be able to do that, as they are right now, we need to have a contract in place

[2:26:35] or a contract expires to the end of this month.

[2:26:37] It's a five-year contract, but in that, according to my understanding, the terms of the agreement

[2:26:42] or that your party can cancel that at any point, okay?

[2:26:47] I would prefer that the trolley become its own entity away from the city, and that they

[2:26:54] They fundraise in order to and they can they can we can sell the trolley barn to them and then they can do what they need to do to

[2:27:03] to make it

[2:27:05] can continue and

[2:27:08] Possibly find some funding so that we could fix the tracks, but I don't think the city should take this on at this time unfortunately

[2:27:16] I think the trolleys are great, but I think that the city

[2:27:21] Has gotten rid of a lot of things that

[2:27:25] are more important. So, that's my thought.

[2:27:29] Thank you for that. I will say this, they can buy the Taliban, but we actually, we own the track.

[2:27:37] We own, can you explain that, Sarah, how that works? Or maybe you just press there?

[2:27:42] I don't have the documents in front of me, but we were sold the track and all the assets.

[2:27:47] So I think we could look back and see how that transfer occurred and evaluate whether we can sell all the assets much like we purchased all the assets.

[2:27:54] So that's as we're donated to us from the railroad.

[2:27:58] So I don't know off the top of my head,

[2:28:00] but I think they were donated.

[2:28:02] Yeah, but we've received them in some sort of transactions.

[2:28:07] And I wouldn't be totally opposed to that.

[2:28:10] However, that's their contract expires

[2:28:12] the end of this month, which means they would not

[2:28:14] be able to operate while we're trying to figure it out.

[2:28:17] So my preference would be to approve the contract.

[2:28:21] They can operate for as long as we are.

[2:28:23] they feel it's necessary and move toward making those changes, all those things take time.

[2:28:30] Good night.

[2:28:33] In regards to the trial, I mean, I would agree with Councilwoman DCO on this fact that

[2:28:37] there, I mean, I do think there are costs that are just going to exist, whether we are operating

[2:28:44] the trolley or not, the building is still our building, the tracks are still the tracks,

[2:28:49] the things are still the things, right, they're not going to go away.

[2:28:52] whether this agreement's in place or not, it's still happening.

[2:28:57] My only question really is, is like, how long does that process take for us to unwind it?

[2:29:06] From the city, not from like, you can't operate as the trolley, but you can operate on your own type of thing.

[2:29:17] because I think for the vast amount of things that somehow the city is involved in all the time.

[2:29:28] I feel like this is one of those things that I go, this really shouldn't have the city's involvement as much as it does.

[2:29:35] This should be a community-led thing that they want to keep and do. It's theirs.

[2:29:43] That's my thought. That's why I have a hard time approving an operating agreement or seconding

[2:29:49] emotion.

[2:29:51] If we knew how long it would take to do that, maybe we could have an operating agreement

[2:29:58] that's not five years.

[2:30:00] We can cancel it any time. We can approve the contract tonight so they can operate while the process goes on. But if we don't, then they can't. But they can't. Still going through Christmas. It goes to the end of the year.

[2:30:18] So in two weeks you think I can find an answer. No, but I mean he was talking about Santa. Oh, if I could just kind of.

[2:30:30] respond real quick to your councilman Brown.

[2:30:36] If, how long does it take to unwind, right?

[2:30:38] So there's the process of figuring out the ownership thing

[2:30:41] and whether we can sell, and yes, they could operate there.

[2:30:44] One of the things to consider is that if it was a private

[2:30:51] organization that owned it, now they're in our right away.

[2:30:54] And not only are they in our right away,

[2:30:55] they're down the center of our road, right?

[2:30:57] So now we have an entirely different kind of agreement in place.

[2:31:03] It's much more like a franchise agreement, but it really isn't a franchise agreement.

[2:31:08] But we would have some real maintenance issues that we would want to and need to address

[2:31:15] with something like that.

[2:31:17] So that would take significantly longer or additional time and probably quite a bit higher

[2:31:23] now what that would even look like because I don't really have an example. So I'm kind

[2:31:28] of be making that up as I go.

[2:31:31] So time?

[2:31:33] Yes, that would take time for sure.

[2:31:39] And that's really what I would consider to be acceptable as if we limited them to usage

[2:31:44] of the Pine Street, which is about a half-hour trolley ride. I know my grandkids wouldn't want

[2:31:50] to ride longer than a half hour on the trolley anyway, but if we set it up where they are

[2:31:57] limited to the Pine Street tracks and the museum as is, I would support that. I will

[2:32:08] not support going out 6,000 back to Sela.

[2:32:14] So I would put that motion out there.

[2:32:19] We put the limitation on that they operate only on Pine Street and then I would have moved

[2:32:28] that we approve with that condition that we approve the operating agreement.

[2:32:35] They can't.

[2:32:36] That's a motion.

[2:32:36] Right.

[2:32:37] Our pass.

[2:32:38] Pine Street, right?

[2:32:39] Well, they can get all the way to River Road down 6th right now because that's where the crossing

[2:32:44] is out.

[2:32:44] Yes, and they

[2:32:50] are currently working on fundraising for to try and get that crossing back.

[2:33:02] No second.

[2:33:03] Motion dies for a second.

[2:33:12] The other thing that is very clear is that they're not going to operate again after Christmas until Labor Day weekend.

[2:33:19] So we can bring this up any time in the next couple of months and discuss it if we wanted to.

[2:33:24] It is an urgent issue like it was in the earlier meetings where we said, oh, they've got

[2:33:29] Labor Day, they've got Halloween, they've got Christmas, they've got that opportunity

[2:33:35] to perform then.

[2:33:36] And so we can let this, I mean, we just table this and bring it up a little more.

[2:33:40] I would like to, before we move in that direction, I'd like to comment that they are open for

[2:33:45] trolley rides during those periods, but they're also developing an educational program having

[2:33:49] children come to the trolley barns in the museum and those kinds of things which they can

[2:33:53] more easily do in this way or so.

[2:33:57] But this doesn't stop them from doing that, does it?

[2:34:03] No, in the agreement they have the operation agreement

[2:34:08] includes the museum and the powerhouse.

[2:34:12] If we don't renew the agreement then they

[2:34:14] can't use it though.

[2:34:16] Well if we renew the agreement they

[2:34:17] would also have the ability to operate the trolleys.

[2:34:20] So if you're asking me to tweak that and take out

[2:34:24] the trolley part, then I would have to rewrite it and make the changes.

[2:34:31] I think the hard part is, I mean I understand what councilman Glenn's saying is, are we

[2:34:37] going to spend, as a council, are we going to spend $10, $12 million to allow these trolley

[2:34:45] tracks to go through all the way out to where we have to build it?

[2:34:52] Because if we're not it's it's kind of a moot point. It's why are we signing a five-year agreement?

[2:35:00] If we're not going to have, if, if the council doesn't want to replace the road in that capacity, now, I don't know, I get it. I mean, it's a lot of money to put towards a road. And, and we just got through finishing north first street and hearing everyone's complaints about spending a lot of money on north first street. And the roundabouts, right? So.

[2:35:25] But, and I would agree. I mean, I think there's 12 million other ways I'd want to spend.

[2:35:29] and money than the 6th project, right?

[2:35:33] That project will actually come up,

[2:35:36] I think it's the second regular business meeting

[2:35:39] in January, we're gonna talk about that TBD list

[2:35:42] that I brought back, I think in September, whatever,

[2:35:44] and that's where we're really gonna have

[2:35:46] that discussion much more in earnest.

[2:35:48] All right, really is an issue, we're gonna settle tonight.

[2:35:51] So tonight we're talking about the operating contract

[2:35:53] moving forward for five years

[2:35:56] that we can cancel at any point.

[2:35:57] the council, the cancel it though, it's 60 days.

[2:36:01] 60 days, 60 days.

[2:36:07] When you start talking about other things on, you know, TBD funds.

[2:36:12] There's a big question whether spending any of that money on the trolleys is legal,

[2:36:17] because the TBD is for roads.

[2:36:20] And for what I understand, even in a best case scenario, it's five years before any of this could happen

[2:36:29] But that's not the issue before us tonight, the team.

[2:36:32] No, we've turned the issue down.

[2:36:34] I don't know why we're still talking about it.

[2:36:38] Yeah.

[2:36:41] You said what meeting in January?

[2:36:43] It's the second, so whatever.

[2:36:46] It's the 20th, I think.

[2:36:46] Not the 6th.

[2:36:47] No, not the 13th.

[2:36:48] Not the 6th.

[2:36:50] 13th would be a special study session, so it'd be the 20th.

[2:36:55] That's when the TBD discussion, I will bring forth the way to.

[2:37:06] Well, here's my thought on it, and I don't disagree

[2:37:10] in understanding the financial positionation in the city.

[2:37:12] It's a really difficult issue.

[2:37:14] So, you know, I understand that we'll hasn't seen about the TBD,

[2:37:18] but that's not what we're talking about.

[2:37:20] That's not what we're talking about.

[2:37:20] We're talking about their ability to operate,

[2:37:21] because even if we don't do that, include them in the TBD,

[2:37:25] they still have an operation in an area that's in.

[2:37:27] And without renewing the contract, they don't have them.

[2:37:32] I think there has been two motions that have knocked on forward.

[2:37:36] And so, I mean, at this point, I don't necessarily know, unless someone was willing to make a different

[2:37:41] motion.

[2:37:43] I don't know if I'm motionю in the past that you guys would all agree on, though.

[2:37:48] Mr. Glenn motion to the table it.

[2:37:52] I'll second that.

[2:37:53] No.

[2:37:53] You should.

[2:37:55] I'll second your motion.

[2:37:58] I'll second- I'll second- I'll second- as motion.

[2:38:00] So he's had a motion to table it.

[2:38:02] Yeah, and then Mr. Herrera just seconded.

[2:38:04] All right.

[2:38:05] I'll go with that.

[2:38:06] Well, do you want to- are you motioning to table it,

[2:38:09] or are you motioning to postpone it?

[2:38:11] What's the difference?

[2:38:13] Well, if you motion to postpone, you either move to postpone it.

[2:38:17] And definitely, or you move to postpone it to a specific day in the future,

[2:38:22] moving to lay it on the table usually means you're going to take it up again in the same meeting.

[2:38:25] So I think you may move to postpone.

[2:38:28] I move to postpone it indefinitely.

[2:38:31] Definitely.

[2:38:34] No.

[2:38:35] What the.

[2:38:36] To move it indefinitely would mean that you could possibly never pick it up again.

[2:38:40] And then it defeats the whole purpose of postponing it to something specific.

[2:38:46] But you want to take it up with the other day?

[2:38:47] It's indefinitely killing your second.

[2:38:49] Is that what you're saying?

[2:38:51] Just stick with postpone.

[2:38:53] See, the January 20th.

[2:38:55] To a date to January 20th, would you amend your motion

[2:38:57] to postpone to January 20th?

[2:38:59] No, I can definitely.

[2:39:01] Why don't you think you're gonna get a second on that one?

[2:39:04] All right, so be it.

[2:39:10] The motion dies for like a second.

[2:39:13] You wanna make that motion?

[2:39:17] I'll do it.

[2:39:17] I moved to postpone this item until January 20th.

[2:39:22] Second.

[2:39:24] So we have a motion by Council Member,

[2:39:26] and a second by Council Member Herrera.

[2:39:29] I'm sorry, Councilman Roy, I was looking, I just heard, to postpone this discussion until

[2:39:36] the January 20th, 20th, 20th, 26th meeting.

[2:39:45] All those in favor say aye.

[2:39:47] Aye.

[2:39:48] Any opposed?

[2:39:50] Aye.

[2:39:50] May, what up?

[2:39:51] So, five yes and two noes.

[2:39:53] So, the motion carries.

[2:39:55] Thank you, Council.

[2:39:56] Thank you.

[2:40:02] Thank you, Mr. Preston. Appreciate it. Item 9E is a resolution authorizing an interlocal dream of the city of SEALA for Inmate Housing and Services in the Yakima County Jail and our Chief of Police, Sean Wall, is going to address council. This is an introduction to discussions with Chief Soptik at the time and finished it with Interim Chief Cosmon of SEALA. They were housing their inmates up in Kittites County and they asked for a more reasonable alternative to the County Jail. We were able to secure a two-bed,

[2:40:31] They're going to purchase two beds contract two beds for the entire year and then space available

[2:40:36] It'll be a little bit more the price will be a little bit more when it's over those two beds

[2:40:40] But they will book into our jail. They'll enter their own transports

[2:40:43] And it won't impact our ability to book our inmates because we have

[2:40:47] Between 30 and 40 openings a day. So it's not going to create a lot of work and it'll cover the cost of

[2:40:52] Housing the inmates along with making some revenue for the city

[2:40:58] That's great. I love it. Yes. I move to adopt the resolution

[2:41:03] So we have most of my councilman D.C.O. and a second by Deputy Mayor Brown and clerk would you read the resolution, please?

[2:41:10] Are we going to discuss it?

[2:41:14] This is a resolution authorizing an interlocal agreement with City of Cila whereby the City of Yakima Jail provides inmate housing and services.

[2:41:22] Thank you. Do you have any discussion, council?

[2:41:26] The argument I hear is that it's 150 a day to go to the county, and we're doing it for just 90.

[2:41:32] We're doing it for a significantly reduced amount, yes.

[2:41:37] That was my question.

[2:41:39] Any other questions?

[2:41:40] I'm on the right line.

[2:41:42] Kenneth Tess was the last contract I had with them was in the 80s.

[2:41:48] I don't know what their new rate was for going into the new year, but it was in the around $90 it would be around my understanding.

[2:41:53] was in that ballpark and it's obviously a less there's less travel up to

[2:41:58] Kittitas County so looking for a more local option yeah I think it's great yeah all

[2:42:05] right then we'll take a roll call vote please Tisio yes Glenn yes Errera yes Roy

[2:42:12] yes Ferg yes Brown yep buyers yes in the motion seven Jerome passes and the

[2:42:18] resolution is adopted thank you council and our chief is going to present again

[2:42:22] This is a similar contract conversation we had with the city of Moxie.

[2:42:27] They're not going to book their inmates off the streets.

[2:42:28] They're going to be booked into the county jail.

[2:42:30] But any of the long-term commitments will be held at our jail.

[2:42:33] Obviously, offering them a more reasonable cost to encourage their eight inmates at a long-term basis.

[2:42:39] And again, it's not going to impact our ability to book inmates into our jail.

[2:42:42] And the transports will be done just as we go over the county jail and bring them back.

[2:42:47] Thank you.

[2:42:48] So, Korkos, start with you reading the resolution this time, please.

[2:42:51] This is a resolution authorizing an interlocal agreement with City of Moxie where by the City of Yakima, Jail provides inmate housing and services

[2:43:00] I'll move to adopt the resolution again

[2:43:01] So you have a motion by councilman D.C. I want to second by Deputy Mayor Brown to adopt the resolution as red

[2:43:10] Glenn

[2:43:12] Yes

[2:43:13] Errera. Yes Roy. Yes bird. Yes brown. Yep buyers. Yes D.C.

[2:43:19] Thank you.

[2:43:20] Yes.

[2:43:21] All right.

[2:43:21] Motion passes 7-0.

[2:43:22] Why solution is that?

[2:43:23] Thank you, Chief.

[2:43:24] Thank you very much.

[2:43:25] Where were they going before?

[2:43:26] Moxie.

[2:43:27] Moxie was having them at the county jail.

[2:43:29] They were leaving.

[2:43:29] Oh, county jail.

[2:43:29] Long for.

[2:43:30] Got to.

[2:43:30] So they're saving money.

[2:43:33] Yeah.

[2:43:33] And we're making some.

[2:43:35] Yeah.

[2:43:36] How about me?

[2:43:38] Next on the agenda is our city manager update.

[2:43:41] And I believe that our city manager has comments.

[2:43:44] I do have a few things to share tonight.

[2:43:46] First, I wanted to briefly update council.

[2:43:49] We had to sit down this morning with the state auditors and went through the results of our 2024 City Accountability Audit.

[2:43:57] The city is audited multiple times a year by the state auditors.

[2:44:00] I know you all know that on everything from the budget to the financials and

[2:44:05] a wide variety of things, but this was the accountability audit.

[2:44:08] And I wanted to share with you what was covered in it.

[2:44:11] So it covered this range of topics, utility billing, cash receipts,

[2:44:17] use of restricted funds, procurement, payroll, including wages and over time, accounts payable, open public meeting regulations,

[2:44:26] financial condition, which looks for any signs of financial distress.

[2:44:31] They monitored areas of the city that might have high theft items as well, and we passed this audit with flying colors, no findings.

[2:44:38] So I just wanted to give a kudos to Craig the finance team and of course everyone in all the departments who are doing all of the right things.

[2:44:47] We're very proud of everybody for that, that was a great, great job.

[2:44:51] I also want to briefly talk about the flooding that's happening in our community.

[2:44:57] Which one?

[2:44:58] Yeah, there's a lot.

[2:45:00] So when I want to also thank our first responders because they rescued at least 16 people today from the river. And we had a lot of support services partner who was a really big effort. So thank you to all of you. And it goes without saying to all of us, but out in the public in case people are unaware, please stay away from the rivers and don't drive in flooded areas. It's very, very dangerous. And the rivers are still rising, and the rain is predicted to continue for a couple more days.

[2:45:29] days. I would recommend that people go to the Yakima Gali emergency management of social

[2:45:37] media and their or their Facebook page or their web page and sign up for alerts if you

[2:45:42] live in areas just to be safe. So I wanted to share that in a while. We're also talking

[2:45:48] about flooding. I also want to talk about the flood that we had on Yakima Avenue and then

[2:45:55] And one that included last week during this meeting we had another pipe break that was

[2:46:00] on 16th.

[2:46:01] And I just wanted to bring to you a little bit of information about that because we have

[2:46:07] a beautiful historic city which includes beautiful historic cast iron pipes that are 80 to 100

[2:46:14] years old in places.

[2:46:15] And so they're disintegrating and it's a big problem.

[2:46:18] And we are seeing the results of that.

[2:46:20] It is something that comes up every time the weather changes and we start to see freezing.

[2:46:26] So I would like to bring to you in early 2026 the discussion of our infrastructure and

[2:46:31] all of those problems so that we can work with Scott and the team and put together a plan

[2:46:36] to replace some of these things because I think we all see where we're reacting and our businesses

[2:46:43] and our residents are experiencing inconvenience and problems and insurance situations that

[2:46:50] that we could avoid if we could try to get ahead of it.

[2:46:52] It's a really big problem.

[2:46:55] And so it's something we want to put together

[2:46:57] some information for you to end a plan.

[2:47:00] Is there any state or federal money

[2:47:01] that can help with that kind of issue?

[2:47:04] I'm sure we can definitely ask.

[2:47:07] A lot of that we have funds for as far as the pipes.

[2:47:12] It's the road projects that go along with it.

[2:47:14] So there's a lot of coordination between the two departments.

[2:47:16] But we can talk to our experts.

[2:47:18] We've got them right here.

[2:47:19] and bring to you a presentation about it.

[2:47:23] Need a motion.

[2:47:25] If you want to do a motion absolutely.

[2:47:27] I would move to add to a future council agenda presentation on infrastructure needs.

[2:47:35] A second.

[2:47:36] So we have a motion by Deputy Mayor Brown.

[2:47:38] It's like in my council in DCO to bring to a future study session infrastructure needs.

[2:47:44] All those in favor, please say aye.

[2:47:47] Aye.

[2:47:47] Any opposed?

[2:47:48] All right. Motion carries. So we have direction. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Anything else in Spaker? That's it. Okay. That brings us to other business. Does any councilperson have other business this evening?

[2:48:02] Councilman Herrera. Yes, Madam Mayor. I move to direct staff to prepare a marketing with the King Junior Day Proclamation to be placed on agenda in January.

[2:48:11] So we have a motion by Councilman Herrera, seconded by Councilman D.C.O. to direct staff to prepare

[2:48:18] Martin Luther King Jr. Day proclamation to be placed on the agenda in January of

[2:48:24] 2026. Any discussion?

[2:48:29] And all those in favor? Say aye.

[2:48:31] Aye.

[2:48:32] Any opposed?

[2:48:33] Motion passes 7-0.

[2:48:35] Thank you.

[2:48:36] Is there any?

[2:48:37] Thank you.

[2:48:37] Is there any other business pre-fort council this evening?

[2:48:41] Yeah.

[2:48:42] Uh-oh.

[2:48:44] Buckley.

[2:48:48] I'm ready for you, Rick.

[2:48:49] I'm ready for you, Rick.

[2:48:50] The first item is we had our hotel committee meeting,

[2:48:54] and we had two candidates.

[2:48:55] And as we discussed after we met with them and interviewed them,

[2:48:59] we thought that we would really like to have both of those individuals

[2:49:03] be on the committee because we felt like they both had some very interesting ideas that

[2:49:11] would be valuable to the city. So based on that, I would like to move that we adjust the

[2:49:18] numbers on that committee to allow for an extra person. And as I understand it, I think

[2:49:24] we have to actually increase it by two to meet with the regulations of that group. So I would

[2:49:29] move that we direct staff to adjust the numbers of the, what is it, the hotel?

[2:49:40] LTAC. LTAC group to add two more people to it. Make it instead of four people it would

[2:49:49] be six.

[2:49:50] Yeah.

[2:49:50] My second thought?

[2:49:51] No, instead of eight.

[2:49:52] Is that it would be five and five?

[2:49:55] It would be five and five.

[2:49:56] It would be five and five.

[2:49:57] Yep.

[2:49:57] So is that and do we have that in ordinance?

[2:50:00] Ms. Forum, or how is that established? I'll tie a board to establish my state statue, but we do have our own local requirements because the state statue doesn't require so many people on it. So, I need to go back and look in, maybe, Mr. Bada knows, but if we adopted our local requirements, by resolution we would need to amend those, by resolution. That's sort of asking what we need to do to make the change.

[2:50:28] Yeah, we're going to have to go back and look and make sure that we make it consistent with how we create it.

[2:50:33] Another resolution from what I found.

[2:50:35] It is, Rosalind. Thank you for looking. Rosalind, appreciate that clerk.

[2:50:39] So the other part of that to understand how the set up in the state for LTCH is that you have even numbers on both sides of the issue.

[2:50:48] One side is the hoteliers and those that generate all the rooms that generate the money coming into the city and the other side are people who benefit from that.

[2:50:57] And so we, in the two people that we would bring on, they need to be totally independent

[2:51:03] and not receiving any funds or generating funds, just a name or a voice.

[2:51:07] Or we can have one that is in support of the whole tires position, one support of the

[2:51:13] facility's positions.

[2:51:15] Does that make sense?

[2:51:16] I don't think it is required that way, though.

[2:51:19] No, I think that you have to have it and correct me if I'm wrong.

[2:51:22] I think I have to have an equal number of people who are the hotelier, the people who

[2:51:26] who are creating the LTCH money,

[2:51:30] and then you have to have an equal number of the people

[2:51:32] who would be eligible to apply for the LTCH money,

[2:51:36] and the eligibility is set forth by state statute.

[2:51:39] And we can bring that information back to you

[2:51:41] so that you can see who's eligible,

[2:51:43] and who wouldn't be like what kinds of entities

[2:51:45] would be eligible, and not eligible when we bring back

[2:51:49] the resolution, so you know what you're looking at

[2:51:52] to add to people to the committee.

[2:51:57] So, you have to follow under one of those two categories, so you can't not be associated

[2:52:04] with either one of those.

[2:52:05] You could choose not to take any money, I suppose, on the one side, but you still have

[2:52:10] to be eligible to take the money.

[2:52:12] Okay.

[2:52:12] Thank you for the clarification.

[2:52:14] Interesting board.

[2:52:15] It is very interesting.

[2:52:18] And so, do we actually have a motion on the forehawk?

[2:52:20] I don't.

[2:52:21] I didn't catch a second on that.

[2:52:22] I was there.

[2:52:23] Okay.

[2:52:23] Okay. Would you read the motion, please?

[2:52:26] I have to move that we direct staff to adjust the number of LTCH committee to add two more

[2:52:32] people.

[2:52:32] Okay.

[2:52:34] And we have a second, so we have a motion by Councilman Glenn and a second by Councilman Roy

[2:52:40] to direct staff to come back with a resolution that would reestablish the number by two additions

[2:52:47] to the LTCH committee.

[2:52:49] do we need to amend the motion for resolution sake I think we'll bring it back

[2:52:55] the way that it needs to be back okay just making sure the motion I'm not

[2:53:02] dragging this on you started it we have a motion on floor all of those in favor

[2:53:09] please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 7-0. Thank you. Any other business?

[2:53:17] Yeah, I mean it's more. Okay, all right. I'm back on it. We're not it's not it's not six

[2:53:25] hours. Not at 10 o'clock yet. No. Yeah. Some of us have worked tomorrow, Rick. So I was talking

[2:53:29] with some of the individuals on the staff and they indicated there was a possibility that we

[2:53:38] We can kind of scheme things around without actually raising taxes right now to save the

[2:53:44] jobs of a couple on the police force and I thought I like that idea and I didn't quite

[2:53:50] understand the whole concept and and Mr. Schaefer said he would be happy to come and explain

[2:53:56] it.

[2:53:57] So I would like to have us entertain his-

[2:54:00] We would be delighted to have Mr. Schaefer come forward and talk about an income opportunity.

[2:54:10] Yeah, yeah. Well, good evening. What you're referring to is the utility tax on all of our utilities here in the city. Refuse, water, wastewater, stormwater.

[2:54:24] The way the utility tax works is that the revenue that each of the utilities generates through their rates to cover the cost of providing that essential service is then taxed by the general fund and brought in.

[2:54:37] And so right now each of the utilities is set at 20%.

[2:54:42] So anytime that is raised, you know, usually what we do is then we adjust the rates for the customers to recoup that cost.

[2:54:51] I have a question on that.

[2:54:54] So there is an RCW that talks about being taxed twice.

[2:54:58] and you cannot do that in YouTube.

[2:55:00] It was passed about three years ago, four years ago, I want to say, but it was talking about how you cannot, you cannot tax, you cannot put it into a rate and then said then tax it on the other backside of it. So, for example, you can't say there's a tax for 20% on our side, on the backside, and then also have a sales tax or any other thing on the utility side. That'd be double taxing. There is an RCW that says that.

[2:55:30] Our bill, we don't charge our customers any utility tax.

[2:55:34] We charge ourselves utility tax.

[2:55:36] So we charge ourselves tax on the revenue that we make from the rate.

[2:55:40] And that's the in lieu tax.

[2:55:42] So the 20% is the tax that we tax the enterprise fund for bringing in the revenue.

[2:55:46] So there's no sales tax on any utilities?

[2:55:49] No, they just charge a rate.

[2:55:52] They just charge the rate, but no taxes on the rate.

[2:55:55] My understanding is, I'm sorry, that we can do that with a 1% margin without having to increase the rate, is that correct?

[2:56:03] Well, that is something that we looked into as far as if you were to raise it by 1%, so it all comes to 21%.

[2:56:09] That the utilities could absorb that cost without having to go back and adjust the current rate to pass that on to the customer for a temporary period of time.

[2:56:18] Either through a sunset clause, however you determine that, or if it stays in place, then we would then, when we go to do our rate adjustments, I think in four years, we would include that 1% in addition to what is needed for that utility to cover the cost.

[2:56:37] wasn't that one of the things that we got rid of last week when we were when we deleted

[2:56:42] all the taxes. I think we could have talked about this last last time, so.

[2:56:48] We could have talked about it last time, yeah.

[2:56:50] Yeah.

[2:56:52] I don't think we can do anything tonight, so on our agenda, so.

[2:56:58] So the idea would be if we wanted to pursue this and try to save those jobs, we would have

[2:57:04] to suspend the rules and then have a vote on it and is there a feeling that we want

[2:57:10] to pursue that or do you don't want to?

[2:57:13] Well, there's nothing drafted to do such.

[2:57:18] We drafted the proposed ordinances at your last meeting.

[2:57:23] I think if you move to suspend the rules, you could move to enact an ordinance that increases

[2:57:30] is the utility tax for waste water, refuse, storm water, and the amounts of 1% in the form

[2:57:40] that was provided at the last meeting.

[2:57:44] And we could include a sunset clause on that

[2:57:48] because if we're looking, if we're looking

[2:57:51] at doing the 1% so that there's no increase of cost to the taxpayers in their utilities,

[2:57:56] we're just taxing ourselves.

[2:57:58] We could do that for a limited period of time of the stay two years or three years, whatever

[2:58:01] We think would benefit from what's the monetary increase if we did that 1% what they were just talking about collectively

[2:58:09] It's about $600,000. Okay a year

[2:58:13] Yes, okay

[2:58:17] Right for all of it would be for all of them the 1% and we could say for

[2:58:25] Three years have it ended the end of the three years

[2:58:29] So the idea behind that was that we have some

[2:58:33] train police officers that are scheduled to be laid off and we would be able to keep

[2:58:37] them and so that would save us from having to replace them when our monetary situation

[2:58:41] improves.

[2:58:44] Which retaining them is easier than hiring and retraining, that's for sure.

[2:58:48] So I would move to suspend the rules so that we could entertain a motion.

[2:58:54] I'll second that.

[2:58:56] So we just actually that just requires a consensus council.

[2:59:00] No, it takes five minutes.

[2:59:03] So it's reduced.

[2:59:03] The rule requires a majority of the council presence.

[2:59:06] So it requires four.

[2:59:07] Okay, sorry.

[2:59:07] The moga bag of the moga.

[2:59:08] It requires a motion majority per our rules and procedures.

[2:59:11] No, okay.

[2:59:12] So let me bring them up real quick just so that we're-

[2:59:15] No, just suspend the rules takes five votes.

[2:59:17] Here, I can I can bring it up just a sec.

[2:59:20] The reason I ask is because every other time we suspended the rules we've not voted we just have consensus the council.

[2:59:26] So, okay, give me two seconds.

[2:59:29] Thank you.

[2:59:29] And while I'm doing that, I can say that if this passes and if the council wants to do something,

[2:59:35] if you take a quick recess, I can draft whatever ordinance you would like and then we can

[2:59:41] come back and you can look at the actual language of the ordinance tonight if that is something

[2:59:49] that the council wishes to do.

[2:59:50] I

[2:59:53] think under the circumstances if we approved then the chief would know that he could

[2:59:59] recent.

[3:00:15] So under your council rules of procedure, the suspension or waiver of rule section says that no rule of the council shall be suspended or waived without the vote of a majority of all of the members of the council present at the meeting.

[3:00:26] So, just a simple measure, we need that for, okay?

[3:00:29] But, of course, the past any tax you still need for.

[3:00:32] But then, just a suggestion takes for.

[3:00:35] Sorry, I do have a question before we suspend rules.

[3:00:40] On the, you're saying there will be no rate increase to tax fares.

[3:00:47] Correct.

[3:00:48] We would absorb the cost of 1%.

[3:00:51] So, what that looks like is for like wastewater, they would have to absorb about two

[3:00:56] $260,000 a year, which wouldn't go to projects or to operational costs, water is about

[3:01:04] $144,000 a year, solid waste, about $110,000, and storm water about $50,000.

[3:01:11] And they have the capacity to absorb it?

[3:01:14] Yeah, temporarily, like I said, but once we set the rates in about four years, we'll incorporate

[3:01:20] that.

[3:01:21] If it doesn't get taken away.

[3:01:22] If it doesn't get taken away.

[3:01:23] Only one percent you couldn't go two percent if we go two percent or more than we're gonna

[3:01:29] Adjust the rates to recover those costs. Yes

[3:01:32] Yeah, then that would happen immediately rather than having a period of time

[3:01:36] We don't have that word. There's no cost of the taxpayers. Yeah, so three years would be at the sunset then probably

[3:01:43] Or that's what council decides

[3:01:45] Because I think that if I remember correctly, we're looking at the rates that are set right now for the next four years

[3:01:52] Yes. Okay. We just set those. What's that?

[3:01:56] We set those rules already. Yes.

[3:01:59] And this would, and this money that we're saving would specify the saved couple of police officers in?

[3:02:06] Is that how many? What does it look like?

[3:02:08] It can be used for any general from purpose.

[3:02:11] And if you want officer positions, I would probably need the chief to give us the numbers.

[3:02:16] I don't have that memorized, but there were CSO positions. There were analysts positions.

[3:02:21] there were different positions, so I think they all have different prices.

[3:02:26] Chief Boyle would 600,000, sorry, how many officers would that save, or positions, I guess?

[3:02:33] Foot officer, like, car, yeah.

[3:02:35] If you were to do the 600,000, we would be able to, so that equals about four police officers, three to four police officers.

[3:02:42] It would be the analysts, and the CSOs would be saved, and probably a police officer.

[3:02:46] because an analyst is about 90 or sorry an analyst about 120,000 a full benefits

[3:02:53] and package pay and benefits a CSO is about 90 to 95,000 in that ballpark

[3:02:58] where these officers are around 160,000 full wages and benefits would that be

[3:03:03] all of the cuts proposed no no no because they were like there were like 20 or

[3:03:09] There's been a role in there.

[3:03:10] The animal control is four positions and removed from the budget.

[3:03:15] And then there's three that are losing their, that are either losing their jobs or two of them are trying to relocate to other positions within the city.

[3:03:22] Then there's the three analysts that are on the two that were coming out of the $6 million cut.

[3:03:27] And then there's 12 police officers in a sergeant position.

[3:03:30] And then we could, we'd have to evaluate if we, depending on how much money came to the police department,

[3:03:34] whether we can promote a person to take that role, to be able to keep the pro-accumidate, those would be things that we look at.

[3:03:41] And so those would be internal decisions you would make, Chief, if that has to what positions they would be.

[3:03:47] Okay,

[3:03:51] I mean, if you're feeling what would be your most important positions that you would look at.

[3:03:56] I think right now the Community Service Officers and the Animal Control is an important role in our organization because it provides those quality of service or quality of life positions.

[3:04:05] the analysis provide the reports and the data and the quality or the transparency portals and maintain those.

[3:04:11] So looking at at least one of them staying on board would be vital for

[3:04:14] anything for us. And then the police officer positions and being able to keep our pro-acc unit,

[3:04:18] working the downtown area that's really made a lot of headway in the area.

[3:04:22] We need another sergeant for that and we have to evaluate how much money we got to be able to make that happen.

[3:04:27] Okay. All right, so we actually, I think we have a motion.

[3:04:32] Yes.

[3:04:32] We do.

[3:04:33] I guess.

[3:04:33] Thank you, David.

[3:04:34] Yeah.

[3:04:35] And so the motion was to suspend the rules that we can make a decision this evening.

[3:04:39] Yes.

[3:04:40] Right.

[3:04:41] So all of those in favor of suspending the rules this evening please indicate by raising hand

[3:04:46] with a yes.

[3:04:47] Yes.

[3:04:48] Yes.

[3:04:48] Two, three, four, five.

[3:04:49] Okay.

[3:04:51] Did you say yes?

[3:04:52] Yes.

[3:04:53] Thank you.

[3:04:53] Okay.

[3:04:54] That is 7-0 and so we are.

[3:04:56] Thank you, Council.

[3:04:57] Motion passes.

[3:04:58] We'll suspend the rules.

[3:04:59] so we can take.

[3:05:00] action tonight, if we desire to do that. It's my move that we adopt the hold on, hold on, let's discuss first or something. Hold on. I would like to see this ordinance. Okay. I've printed them upstairs. So, but they don't have a sunset clause and then that's not what was proposed last time. So if you want to add that we can. But, but yeah, if you want to take a quick recess, I can go grab them. How much time would you like us? I need five minutes. Five minutes to go up and get what I've printed.

[3:05:34] and then I can print out a new copy and okay you want to do that well I'd need actually I mean council direction if they want a

[3:05:43] sunset clause in it I think we should yeah yeah council's generally be an agreement to a sunset clause because that is going

[3:05:50] to protect the rate payers for a period of time okay great can we just do a resolution and then have it

[3:05:58] presented at the next meeting? Is that satisfactory or not?

[3:06:02] Every meeting you put it off is another 30 days that the rate can't be charged, I suppose.

[3:06:09] So it's up to the council.

[3:06:10] Whether you want me to bring this back on January 6th, or-

[3:06:14] Could you take a five minute recess?

[3:06:15] Yeah, we're going to be assessed for five minutes.

[3:06:18] Thank you.

[3:07:40] Council back into order.

[3:07:43] Okay.

[3:07:43] I move that we include a sunset clause for three years on-

[3:07:50] Yeah.

[3:07:50] What are we calling it?

[3:07:52] On the proposed resolution.

[3:07:52] On the proposed resolution for the, or the, or the, or the, yeah.

[3:07:57] So we have a motion by Council on D.C. on a second by Council on Glen to add a three-year

[3:08:02] sunset clause to the resolution that is being put together this evening.

[3:08:06] All those in favor, please aye aye aye in the opposed.

[3:08:10] All right motion passes and so now we're going to go on your recess for five minutes to give

[3:08:14] our attorney an opportunity to put the resolution together.

[3:08:17] Thank you.

[3:08:18] You can go to the back.

[3:17:04] We

[3:17:07] need to go to this. I do not want it to go into the abyss. I think you can direct the city manager to utilize the

[3:17:19] money for whatever you want, because this ordinance is, talk about the entire tax amount.

[3:17:30] It's difficult to parse out 1% for this or 1% for that, but I think the council can give the city manager direction about the budget.

[3:17:37] And if your direction is, you're increasing this tax 1%, and you expect that money to go into the budget for the police department, I think that the city manager would follow that direction.

[3:17:48] we would hope. I move that we adopt these proposed ordinances and direct that the funds be allocated to

[3:17:56] do one at a time. Yeah we should do one at a time because they're all taxes. So the first

[3:18:03] is from water wastewater. I move that we adopt the ordinance amending the waste and wastewater tax and

[3:18:14] and allocate that money to the police department.

[3:18:17] I second.

[3:18:18] So we have a motion by Councilman Glenn,

[3:18:22] a second by Councilman D.C.L.,

[3:18:24] to authorize a 1% increase of water and wastewater tax

[3:18:29] and direct city manager to put that money toward

[3:18:31] the police department.

[3:18:33] Is that work, Sarah?

[3:18:35] I think so, yeah.

[3:18:36] As long as the city manager understands

[3:18:38] what your directive is, I guess I shouldn't speak for her.

[3:18:40] Yes, I understand.

[3:18:41] You want that to go in the police department.

[3:18:43] that's it.

[3:18:46] We have to do a roll call vote. We need to read the ordinance. Yep. This is an

[3:18:53] ordinance amending the City of Yakima Municipal Code section 7.64.020 water and wastewater tax.

[3:19:01] We'll take a roll call vote please. Errera? Yes. Roy? Yes. Berg? Yes. Brown? Wow. Yeah. I guess so.

[3:19:14] byers? Yes. Decio? Yes. Glen? Yes. All right. The motion passes 7-0 and the resolution is adopted and I before we move on I want to make a comment here because these three ordinances are very similar just on the different utility costs. I want to make clear to our listeners tonight that this is not an increase to the rate payers. This is a 1% tax that's basically that the city is putting on

[3:19:43] ourselves for those services that those departments can absorb and the medical be put toward the police department.

[3:19:51] Okay.

[3:19:53] Okay.

[3:19:53] Thank you.

[3:19:53] I move that ordinance number 2025.

[3:19:56] The most important thing is that I can listen to the code.

[3:20:00] On the stormwater tax, the adopted and the money allocated to the police department. I second. Clerk, would you read the ordinance, please?

[3:20:10] This is an ordinance amending the city of Yakima Municipal Code Section 7.64.040 stormwater tax. Roy,

[3:20:21] bird? Yes. Brown? Yes. Fires? Yes. TCO? Yes. Glen? Yes. Irra? Yes. All right. Motion passes. 7-0 and the ordinance is done.

[3:20:35] So before we go on with the Refuse Tax, 21% is actually a 4% decrease from the current rate.

[3:20:45] What?

[3:20:48] Refuse Tax was a very great increase to 25% earlier this year based on a City Council decision back in 2019.

[3:20:59] That was for Yakima waste.

[3:21:02] Yakima waste only?

[3:21:06] We can raise the tax on private care and that one's used to actually start funding Clean City for the first time.

[3:21:13] I take back my words. I move that we approve ordinance number 2025 regarding the refuse tax and allocate the funds to the police department.

[3:21:26] Second.

[3:21:28] So we have a motion by Councillor McLennan and a second by Deputy Mayor Brown to,

[3:21:35] could you be the ordinance placed for me, I'm sorry I forgot.

[3:21:39] This is an ordinance on any in the city of Yakima Municipal Code, section 7.64.030,

[3:21:46] refuse tax?

[3:21:47] Thank you.

[3:21:48] So, then we have a motion by Councillor Vergett and second by Councillor Brown and Deputy

[3:21:53] Mayor Brown.

[3:21:54] to approve the resolution on the rough use tax bird yes round sure buyers yes

[3:22:06] diesel yes Glenn yes Irrena yes Roy yes all right that's 7-0 and motion passes the

[3:22:16] resolution is adopted. Thank you council.

[3:22:22] I just think it's I just want to say I

[3:22:25] think hell has frozen over because Rudy Berg has voted for this. First tax

[3:22:33] I'll ever.

[3:22:36] Well yeah me too but for Rudy I just want to say that's the first

[3:22:39] time in the history of his entire time here. I'm just throwing curveballs.

[3:22:45] Okay. Is there any other business before the Council this evening?

[3:22:51] I'm going to cut Rick off if he has one more thing.

[3:22:55] Do you have anything else, Council Member Glander?

[3:22:57] I move that we take the rest of the year off.

[3:23:01] Just to say the Council, not the whole staff.

[3:23:05] Okay. We have some meetings this week.

[3:23:09] So I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

[3:23:13] Madam Mayor, I move to adjourn to our next council meeting on January 6th, 530pm here at

[3:23:19] this city hall.

[3:23:20] I second.

[3:23:21] So we have a motion by Deputy Mayor Brown on the second by Council on DCO to adjourn to

[3:23:26] our next regular city council meeting, January 6th, 530pm here at City Hall.

[3:23:31] All this is a favor say aye.

[3:23:32] Aye.

[3:23:33] Michael, please don't turn the camera off.

[3:23:35] I just want to say to the city of Yakima, Merry Christmas.

[3:23:40] I hope you have great holidays and that we'll all be blessed moving forward in the

[3:23:44] New Year.

[3:23:46] Thank you.

[3:23:47] Good.

[3:23:48] Merry Christmas.

[3:23:49] Oh my goodness, they're ready.

[3:23:50] Woo!

City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript