Des Moines City Council Meeting Transcript June 25, 2026

# Des Moines City Council Meeting **Date:** June 25, 2026

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## Roll call and pledge

**3:49 — Mayor Yoshiko Grace Matsui:** At this time, I would like to call the June 25th, 2026 Des Moines City Council meeting to order. Council member JC Harris will lead us in the pledge. Please stand if you are able.

**Council Member JC Harris:** I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

**Mayor Matsui:** With that, please let the record show that all council members are present. Are there any correspondence not previously received by the council?

**City Clerk:** No, mayor. Thank you.

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## Public comment

**4:32 — Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Now it’s time for comments from the public. We ask that you keep your comments respectful. When I call your name, please come to the podium. You’ll have three minutes to speak. Please state your name and city of residence. First, I have Pam Cooper.

**Pam Cooper (West Seattle):** Hi, I’m Pam Cooper. I live in West Seattle. I work with Chris over there, protesting on the weekends with the Trump stuff. So I’m here to protest the Flock cameras. We don’t really know where the information is going. We don’t even know what they’ve done with the DOGE information that the DOGE boys took. So I don’t trust that. I’m not a paranoid person. I just know that this is not how we treat people, immigrants being followed. So the Flock cameras need to be out of it. I’m not going to talk real long. One of the things that I wanted to do was to misquote kind of Ben Franklin. I’m going to paraphrase, but basically he said for people that want to give up freedom for security, they will have neither. And I think that’s kind of where we’re at in our country right now. So I want to thank you for your attention.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Melissa F[e]lchetti. Is that right?

**6:05 — Melissa F[e]lchetti (Des Moines):** Melissa F[e]lchetti. I’m a resident here in Des Moines. Live right down the street. So I’m also here to talk about the Flock cameras. And I want to say first thank you because I do recognize that the police department here has been doing a lot with transparency, making things available. There’s clearly a good faith effort to do a good job with this, but there’s still a lot of privacy concerns, a lot of other concerns. My personal thing as a former stalking victim is about privacy and malfeasance. There are many cases so far across the country of people misusing this system in order to stalk people and harass kind of their perceived enemies.

So this morning I went to the Flock transparency portal for Des Moines and I downloaded the last 30 days of data, and 50% of them had no reason for the search listed. 17 searches were categorized as sex offenses. Not a single one had a reason listed.

In November of last year, there were two official statements. The Des Moines Police Department has verified that no federal law enforcement partners have access to our Flock data, and that these measures — which were the upgraded safety concerns — these measures effectively close any front door, back door, or side door pass to our data. And yet on June 8th of this year, there was a reason for a search that said “OSA to ATF for unlawful firearm sale.” ATF is a federal agency. And this is what’s called a side door search. So what it means is ATF as a federal agency doesn’t have access to the data. So they contacted somebody who does and had them search for them. So that’s the sort of thing that we’re worried about. All these things that have no reasons listed — we don’t know how many of them were side door searches. We don’t know how many were done for personal vendettas.

The chief on the February 12th city council meeting did a great presentation about this. Not a single one of the searches had a case number assigned to it. We don’t know later looking through this which ones are legitimate, which ones are not.

When it comes to the actual transparency, when reporters have gone in to request the records, they’re finding that the records that we have access to in these transparency portals are about 10% of what is actually searched. So what we’re seeing is not a real indicator of what’s out there. Where we’re at was really probably close to let’s say 10 to 20%. Half of them have reasons. Some of those are not kind of more legitimate reasons. So I know I’m out of time, but I think that we need to join — there’s 10 other cities and counties in the state of Washington who within the past year have gotten rid of Flock cameras or deactivated them. We need to join them, and at the very least if not, we need to require case numbers. Thank you. I appreciate the time.

**Mayor Matsui:** Annette Fox.

**9:27 — Annette Fox (Des Moines):** Hi, my name is Annette Fox. I’m a Des Moines resident. I’ve lived here for 23 years and I’ve never been here, so this is the first time. I’m having a hard time believing that this Flock camera is still an issue. And it just seems like, you know, we bought all this stuff from Homeland Security that we were getting the worst of the worst, and what we’re actually getting as our neighbors. UDub did an audit just recently that showed that people are querying the municipal camera networks and getting information they don’t deserve to have. And I thought we were a sanctuary city and that the recent Senate bill was supposed to not allow these kinds of inquiries.

I guess I’m coming at this from a different kind of direction in terms of how this affects seniors. We’re all sending emails to each other: do you know anybody that can fix roofs and decks? We’re having to hire for things that we used to do ourselves. And believe me, the people that are showing up are not white. Most of them are Mexican, and those are the people that we’re relying on, and those are the people that are being picked up. I have a friend who’s a housekeeper and she went to this crazy attorney that’s just been disbarred — Alexandra Lozano or something — paid her $15,000. She got a green card with no residency and the case was thrown out.

So as seniors, we’re looking for people to help us. And I have a brother right now that’s in a home because he has Parkinson’s. And it’s run by a family — again — that’s not white. And until we can get Homeland Security and ICE to do what they said they were going to do, it’s affecting all of us. And it makes us mad that we see our neighbors being picked up. And I really hope you’ll take this Flock camera seriously and get rid of it because I don’t think it’s doing the job. Thank you.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Russ Higgley.

**11:34 — Russ Higgley (Tacoma; Director, MaST Center Aquarium, Highline College):** Good evening, mayor, deputy mayor, members of the city council, city staff, and residents and business owners. My name is Russ Higgley. I am not a Des Moines resident — resident of Tacoma — but I’ve worked in Des Moines for over 25 years. I’m the director of Highline College’s MaST Center Aquarium and I’m here tonight to help us sink our teeth into the final details of the truly fantastic community celebration hitting our shoreline this summer: Shark in the Park 2026.

On Sunday, July 12th from 11:00 a.m. to 4 p.m., Redondo Beach Drive South will transform into the South Sound’s biggest street party. This free, family-friendly festival, brought to life by the vital partnership between the city of Des Moines, Highline College, and the Redondo Community Association, celebrates our city’s incredible and official designation as the sixgill shark capital of the world.

Building on last year’s incredible success, we are taking the festival to the next level. This year, attendees can look forward to a vibrant day featuring live music from several groups, including NBC’s *The Voice* finalist Xanfiskum [phonetic]; a feeding frenzy of our favorite local food trucks; a dedicated fun zone with hands-on science and crafts activities. We’re hosting over 50 vendors, including many fantastic new faces, and we’re even encouraging visitors to come dressed in their favorite shark-themed attire. It truly is the perfect blend of economic opportunity, marine education, and pure community joy.

Now, we listened closely to the feedback from last year and we know traffic and parking was our biggest challenge. We are tackling it head on.

First, transit shuttle. We are launching a free, fully ADA-compliant shuttle service running frequently between Redondo and the new Sound Transit Star Lake park and ride.

Second, we are creating angled parking. The city will temporarily transform Redondo Way — you may know it better as Sixgill Shark Way — into a one-way street between 13th Avenue South and Sound View Drive South. This clever layout will safely add an estimated 150 or more parking spots for the event.

Third, street closure. Redondo Beach Drive South will be completely closed between Redondo Way and South 287th from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. This ensures our vendors can safely set up and clear out, completely separating from the public event. Volunteers will be stationed at all key areas to keep traffic flowing smoothly. And we are collaborating with the Redondo community and the Redondo Community Association to secure private parking for our vendors in the nearby neighborhood to ensure a seamless experience for everyone.

The MaST Center is hosting a dedicated Shark in the Park website. This serves as a user-friendly hub where the public can easily access the full entertainment schedule, vendor details, and our event and parking maps. We are also launching an aggressive local awareness campaign to get this information out. Starting tomorrow, new banners featuring QR codes will be installed throughout Redondo, linking visitors directly to the website. Additionally, in the days leading up to the festival, we’ll be placing prominent “avoid the hassle, use the shuttle” signs around the neighborhood to actively guide drivers towards our stress-free parking.

Thank you for your ongoing support of this incredible community event. Your partnership is what makes these milestones possible, and believe me, we are already working on our next big idea — wink wink — to keep making waves here in Des Moines. Thank you for your time.

**Mayor Matsui:** Christine [Christie]?

**14:56 — Christie (Des Moines):** Yes. Perfect. Hello and thank you for this opportunity to speak. My name is Christie and I’m a long-term resident of Des Moines. I’m here once again to ask you to discontinue the use of Flock cameras in Des Moines. We as a community member cannot opt out of mass surveillance. By installing Flock cameras in Des Moines, you’ve created a digital dragnet that tracks the movements of every resident without a warrant or probable cause. In a free society, our government should not be tracking where we go, our daily routines, or the places we gather. Yet this is exactly what Flock enables. The system treats the community members like a potential suspect.

The following cities and unincorporated areas in King County have suspended their Flock cameras after listening to updated facts and hearing their concerned constituents: Redmond, Renton, Lynnwood, Edmonds, Mountlake Terrace, Auburn, Covington, SeaTac, Newcastle.

Let’s just act just like these councils did and protect your community. They knew better and they did better. Will we do the same? History will judge this moment and I hope that Des Moines will be on the correct side. I urge the council immediately to install physical hoods on all Flock cameras and to move to a full termination of the city’s contract. Thank you.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Chris.

**16:22 — Chris (Des Moines):** Hi, Chris from Des Moines. You heard some of the neighbors already expressing their concern. For me, it’s — when we allow mass surveillance to take root, we fundamentally change the relationship between the people and the government. We are essentially saying that it’s acceptable for states to monitor our movements 24-by-7. But a warrant requires probable cause. It requires a specific reason to believe a crime has been committed. These cameras eliminate that requirement and turn all public streets into digital traps.

We are tired of being told that our privacy is a price we must pay for the false sense of security. We have seen cities realize the danger, shut down these networks, and prioritize the residents over the private surveillance contracts, over the money. People’s lives are more important than the money. It is time that this council leads by protecting the right to its residents rather than facilitating the expansion of surveillance networks that have failed to earn our trust and currently threaten our public residents. I urge the council to immediately install hoods on all Flock cameras and move to fully terminate the city’s contract with Flock.

The uptake of our residents that have been kidnapped off the streets the last two weeks have been phenomenal. Phenomenal. Especially on Pac Highway — at least 10. I mean it’s just crazy. They’re running rampant out there, those ICE agents. And if we’re going to facilitate and help them with these cameras or with any kind of databases from DOS or to inlets, it’s just it’s not right. And we — at a city — you can do better. You can put the people first, families first. People are not going home.

Example: someone just went and got their breakfast at McDonald’s. Coffee still hot in their cup. Their apple pies that they bought still hot. They’re not going home.

What are we going to tell these family members? Because the city wants to keep a contract for Flock. You got to think about it. This is real. You’re not seeing it on the news. Local news isn’t covering it, but it’s real.

Maybe go out there on Pac Highway one of these mornings between 7 and 9, 7 and 10. Sit over by Dick’s or by Lowe’s. Just watch them drive up and down the street looking for people. You can’t miss them nowadays. They got brand new SUVs — black ones with a little light now. So at least they’re a little easier to see, but not all of them are like that. It’s just incredible what’s happening out there. And a lot of people don’t understand it and a lot of people aren’t witnessing it. So do better.

**Mayor Matsui:** [Cara Henley?] / [Cara Haney?].

**19:40 — Cara Han[e]y (non-resident; works/shops in Des Moines):** Good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Cara Han[e]y and I am not a resident of Des Moines, but I do work, shop, and spend time here and I have many friends who call this city home. The decisions you make affect not only your residents, but everyone who lives, works, and travels throughout South King County.

I’m here tonight to ask you to disable and discontinue the use of Flock safety cameras and any other ALPR — automated license plate recognition — technology under the city’s control. I recognize that Flock and ALPR technology can be valuable, and they are tools for local law enforcement. This is not a criticism of the Des Moines police department or the people who use these systems responsibly. My concern is the growing risk that data collected by these systems can be accessed and shared in ways that harm vulnerable people.

In today’s political climate, surveillance technology can be used to facilitate immigration enforcement, track people seeking reproductive health care, or support other actions that many Washingtonians do not believe should occur. Several Washington communities have already reconsidered or ended their use of this technology because the risks to privacy and civil liberties outweigh the benefits. I urge the city of Des Moines to do the same.

I understand this is not a simple decision and I know policy changes take time, but these are not ordinary times. When the consequences of surveillance can be life-changing, the responsible course is to pause, remove the systems, and revisit the issue only when strong legal protections and trustworthy safeguards are in place. Thank you for your time and your consideration.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. K. Thomas.

**21:43 — K. Thomas (SeaTac):** K. Thomas from SeaTac. Just random notes, if you care. With regards to Flock safety cameras, the good doesn’t outweigh the bad. How many missing children have been found? How many stolen cars were recovered? How many millions of dollars were spent under the guise of safety — which is how I thought of them. But with age comes wisdom. I’ve since learned, and I quote, “We — you — are targeted, tracked, surveilled, and categorized at the hands of a sinister corp whose primary investor is a man named Peter Thiel, chairman of Palantir and known friend of Jeffrey Epstein.” Now, if you don’t know, Palantir is a data collecting center. “The two exchanged 2,000 emails, some discussing the secret society.” End quote.

Since then, ICE depends on it and has used it to kidnap people here locally. Once a pattern has been established — if you aren’t part of the problem, be part of the solution. Just say no. You may not even be the board that signed on with Flock, but be the board that ends it, please.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Christine Ferris.

**23:31 — Christine F[r]ecks (Des Moines):** Good evening. My name is Christine F[r]ecks and I’ve lived in Des Moines for 39 years. I have been involved in the protests against the current president and his policies for a year. I’ve learned a lot about ICE and his attacks on citizens in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland, and others. Our protests try to continue to prevent that brutality from happening here.

We became alarmed at the threat of the Des Moines Flock cameras possibly assisting ICE in tracking immigrants. Flock canceled a pilot program with federal agencies last August. So they do not have direct access. But there have been many reports of either backdoor access or requests for assistance from local law enforcement agencies which have allowed ICE to get the data that they want.

Police department sharing isn’t always easy to track. But reporting from 404 Media found that police departments across the country have been creating Flock searches with reasons listed as “immigration,” “ICE,” or “ICE warrant,” among others. In Oregon, reports found that a police department was conducting Flock searches on behalf of ICE and the FBI via simple email thread. This cannot happen here.

There is a 180-day grace period for agencies with Flock cameras to adhere to the new Washington state regulations. But why do we need to wait until the deadline? The Flock cameras very near schools, churches, hospitals, and medical clinics in Des Moines should be disabled immediately. Those cameras are targeting areas where racially diverse people are either attending or visiting those locations. This leads to more stress and insecurity for those people, even those with legitimate paperwork.

The Flock contracts have been cancelled, paused, or deactivated by several Washington state cities, including Everett, Redmond, Renton, Kent, Lynnwood, Edmonds, and Olympia. In addition, Pierce County Sheriff’s Office deactivated its cameras. There will be more, and I sincerely hope that Des Moines will be one of them. Thank you for your time and attention.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Judy Grand[an]dy.

**26:36 — Judy Grand[an]dy (Des Moines):** Hi, my name is Judy Grand[an]dy and I live in Des Moines. We know many of our neighbors are first and second generation immigrants. We know that Flock cameras allow users to track people’s daily travel and establish patterns. We don’t know how much data from Des Moines Flock cameras — especially all those cameras up on Pac Highway — is aiding ICE in kidnapping our neighbors. We know that ICE has an unbelievable budget enabling them to hire lots of people and buy more vehicles. We know that there is a DHS facility in Tukwila. So we know ICE is in the area. We don’t know how many of our neighbors ICE has kidnapped. But as Chris was saying, it’s a lot and it’s growing every day. There’s more and more because they have more and more people to do the job.

I want people to think about how little we pay — about $2,400 annually per camera for Flock cameras. How else is Flock Safety generating income from our data? The FBI now wants to pay $35 million to access ALPR readers. Who else is paying? What do they get?

Thank you, Melissa, for pointing out the Des Moines Flock camera transparency portal. I went out and checked it today also. And today is June 25th. The vehicles detected in the last 30 days is 247,515. I had also checked it prior to the May 21st council meeting. When I checked it then, it was 235,000 vehicles in the last 30 days. These two data points are about 35 days apart. So there is no overlap in the data. Yes, the number of vehicles increased in June compared to May. This leads me to believe that the two cameras not in compliance with Senate Bill 6002 have not been deactivated.

If we cannot trust that these two have been deactivated, we cannot trust Flock Safety to do anything they are telling us they are doing. Flock Safety has ultimate control of these cameras. The Des Moines police can request that the camera be turned off, but Flock Safety does the actual turning off. Therefore, I urge the council to immediately install physical hoods on all Flock safety cameras and to move to a full termination of the city’s Flock safety contract. Thank you for being concerned about all Des Moines residents.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. K[a]n.

**29:24 — K[a]n (Des Moines):** I apologize. Just got off a cold call. Allergies and sinus hit at the same time. I for one want to acknowledge our police officers. Last week there was a group of them that were down there in the afternoon, in the evening. I’ve seen them — I think there was a call and they were down there and they took the initiative to get out of their cars and walk the pier and interact with the residents and other people that’s down there. And also what struck me was they were conversating with people that they ticketed a few days ago and they had great interaction. That brings a smile on my face.

But what I really come here to talk about is I got booted out of the shed, the snack shop that I was down there. I am not going to read through what I have here, but I am going to give you a package. But I will highlight a few things. I spent two years at the shed. When the concession was completed, I was moved over. I was given a year. A light should have come on. Something — what’s going on, why I was only given a year.

But anyway, how it was decided who occupied the location — it’s very disappointing how that came about. Also, I live down there. I am a block away. I am also an eye and ear of Redondo. I helped clean Redondo the first two and a half years I was there and I will continue to do so, and this will not stop me. My petition I have over close to 800 signatures to ask the city to put the shed back to where it’s at. It’s not like an add-on. This is just put back what it was there before so I can occupy that and that lady could occupy the location where I’m at right now. I don’t know where that lady resides — I’m assuming on the Des Moines side, not the Redondo side. We need someone that’s community-involved, and I have that, and I’ve been doing that since I moved in in 2021.

But I would like to thank you to really take a look at these petitions, and hopefully you can put the shed back and I can occupy [it] and continue on. Yeah, I had a lot to say but this is kind of — if it happens it happens. If it don’t, you don’t.

Thank you.

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## Council member regional committee reports

**32:40 — Mayor Matsui:** We’re currently running a committee of the whole and structure. However, council members do serve regionally on other committees. Do any council members have any items of interest to the public or the council? Council member Harris.

**32:54 — Council Member Harris:** Thank you. The Regional Transit Committee met last week and a couple of items of note. We reviewed the changes in service and there are a number of things coming. There will be 12.5% added capacity if the unconstrained budget is approved. And “unconstrained” is a funny word that just means 100% of the plan that the council has seen, which cut service especially to the south end. And the comment was: if this is unconstrained, I’d hate to see constrained.

There will be — it’s not in stone, but the likelihood is — there will be another 0.1% councilmanic sales tax increase next year. This year was to deal with roads. Next year to deal with transit. If that doesn’t get approved, then you’re into the deeply constrained territory. But 12.5% added capacity — the unconstrained version is actually half of the acknowledged need. So again, we had a lively discussion about what “unconstrained” meant. I walked in thinking that “unconstrained” meant actually the magic wand — what people really need.

On the plus side: the new lake crossing has been a spectacular success. Federal Way, the numbers are up. Kent–Des Moines, the numbers are up. And our Metro will be publishing what they call a “pivot” in August. The rapid — no pun intended — shift from adoption of light rail has made it clear to them that they need to accelerate shifting bus service to be feeders. I’m oversimplifying, but basically east-west. What you don’t want is a competition between Rapid Ride — between bus service — and the light rail. The light rail is so much more efficient.

And finally, they are going to have this thing, a public safety task force. I’ve talked about it before. Frankly, they are more than happy to provide training for police officers and stuff, which — the police tend to respond, “That’s lovely, but we would prefer it if you actually would add more transit enforcement.” But when you’re dealing with the kind of budget shortfalls that they are talking about — in nine figures — that may be the best we can do. I’m bringing it up now because they will be doing sort of a PR campaign, and this is what the attention economy — what I used to call the squeaky wheel — means. We typically get very low public engagement here in the south end about transit needs, even though we use transit a lot. So I’m hoping we can encourage the public to comment about that. I know people are concerned about transit safety, but you got to get out there and make your voice known to get more budget towards south-end transit task enforcement and all that stuff. That’s it.

**37:04 — Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Blosse.

**Council Member Blosse:** Thank you, Mayor. I’m now a member of the King County Board of Health. The role of the board is to advocate for the preservation, promotion, and protection of public health, prevent the spread of disease, set local public health regulations, and enforce state and local public health laws. I was nominated by the Sound Cities Association as an alternate member. That means that I attend and participate in all meetings, but I only vote if one of the members is not present, which was the case last week for my first meeting. So I was actually a full voting member for my first meeting.

We heard from local public health officials on several topics. We heard about enterovirus. If you’ll remember a few weeks ago, there was an outbreak on that cruise ship. A few cases were linked to that outbreak in King County. Those few cases are either finishing or have finished their isolation and monitoring period. No symptoms are observed. It’s probably not a concern in King County anymore.

We talked about Ebola. It’s a growing epidemic in Africa. There has been no cases in the US or King County. Nonetheless, that’s something they’re monitoring, especially with the World Cup going on in Seattle.

HIV — there’s been a huge decrease in HIV cases in King County in new cases. 65% decrease from 2002. So that’s a very promising statistic. Syphilis — a big decrease as well, over 50% in all groups except for pregnant mothers and newborns, which is unfortunate — that we see an uptick in them.

And then very concerning: there’s been an increase in maternal mortality in King County. This is death related to pregnancy and up to one year after pregnancy. So that’s concerning. The Board of Health is convening a working group to study this further and try to offer some proposals to deal with this. Thank you, mayor.

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## City manager report — Q4 2025 financial report

**39:08 — Mayor Matsui:** All right. Now we’ll turn over to the city manager for the city manager reports, and Katherine Caffrey will be presenting.

**City Manager Katherine Caffrey:** Mayor and council, we’re going to go a little out of order on this. We’re going to start with item two and three, which is our fourth quarter financial report and then our first quarter financial report. So I’ll invite Jeff Friend on up to dive into some numbers.

**Finance Director Jeff Friend:** Good evening, mayor. Good evening, council, members of the public. Jeff Friend, finance director, here with the fourth quarter 2025 financial report. Key word there is “final.” So April 23rd, I was here presenting a preliminary fourth quarter report, and now we have final numbers.

The details of the report are in the packet. We have also included charts in an appendix section in this slide presentation, and if council has any questions of any of those charts, we’d be happy to pull up the relevant chart.

So significant updates since April 23rd. We have a list of about five or six. First item would be property tax. So if you recall, we had collected a little bit less of property tax than we expected, which is highly unusual as that’s not just our number one largest revenue stream but also the most stable. So when something happens that’s out of pattern, historically it catches our attention. So we worked with the county and discovered that it actually was related to an assessment dispute between Wesley Homes and the state. Wesley Homes historically is fully exempt from property tax as they are a nonprofit. However, the state looking at the new development decided they would be partially exempt — because what’s more important than being a nonprofit is how the property is used. So as that dispute is ongoing, Wesley has not paid their property taxes from 2025, and therefore we had a shortage.

Operating income — so in April we had a projected loss of almost $46,000. Our final numbers actually swung a little bit the other way. We had operating income of almost $110,000. So it finished stronger than previously reported.

One-time taxes. So we reviewed our sales tax and B&O taxes part of the year-end closing. That led to us reclassifying a large chunk of sales tax — $162,000 — from our regular sales tax to one time. One-time sales tax is the sales tax that the city receives from construction projects that are permitted out at $15 million or more. And B&O tax — business and occupation tax — $7,000 was reclassified. So this is really important. I will probably talk about it in a subsequent slide, as it provides us a clear picture of what is actually our regular recurring activity and it’s not inflated by us missing, say, that one-time tax. So it gives us a clear picture of what’s recurring, what’s not recurring.

The other items that are significant updates is our ending cash balance. Now that we have final numbers, we can calculate these year-end balances. So for cash balance, the final cash balance increased to $2.97 million. So we have slightly better liquidity. That’s an increase about $86,000.

An ending fund balance — unrestricted fund balance — ended at 17.8% of recurring expenditures. The code says we need to finish at 16.67%. And 16.67% is significant because it’s two months out of 12 months of the year. The whole point being that we can cover two months of expenditures if something really bad happens. So we finished the year at 17.8%. We can discuss these a little bit more in a subsequent slide.

So the 2025 year-end financial position: the general fund operating income improved, as we mentioned, from a projected loss to a surplus. The unrestricted fund balance exceeded the city’s policy target, and cash reserves increased modestly but remained below the policy target. So operating income is about $110,000. Cash balance is about $2.9 million, which is 11.6% of recurring expenditures, and fund balance is $4.6 million, which was 17.8% of recurring expenditures.

I do want to point out the difference between cash balance and fund balance. So cash balance is just that — it’s the balance of the cash. Fund balance includes your cash but also includes your accounts payable, your accounts receivable, and other items as well. So that explains why that is a larger number.

So key issues. The way we’re framing the discussion of these issues is we’re going to just discuss what we see, why it matters, and what we are doing.

The first one, as we mentioned previously: property tax — Wesley Homes assessment dispute. As explained, they’re now considered by the state to be partially exempt instead of fully exempt. So this explains why we had lower than expected collections. But also, we’re moving forward; future budgets may need conservative assumptions. So we need to keep in mind that maybe they’re not going to be paying that tax, and so we don’t want to overbudget and then rely on funds that we’re not going to receive. So what we’re doing is we’re monitoring the appeal and adjusting our forecasts appropriately.

Second issue is one-time revenue versus recurring revenue. What we are seeing is a significant increase in one-time tax due to several construction projects. We have about four major projects going on right now that have numerous contractors on them, and that’s generated a lot of one-time tax. We’re going to actually bring this up again in the first quarter report. And why it matters is, it gives us a stronger understanding of our recurring operating revenues, and one-time revenue should not be supporting ongoing costs that are regular and recurring. We want the regular and recurring revenue to be supporting that activity. So what we’re doing is we’re continuing separate reporting of one-time activity. And in the schedule below we see sales tax and B&O tax. You’ll see the sales tax — the budget that we adjusted down to in the fourth quarter was $40,000, because really all year we didn’t see much coming in at all. Then a lot of activity in the fourth quarter. Then we made that reclassification and we ended up actually almost at the original budget — we finished the year [at] $195,000. So that’s why that variance is so big, because going for the first three quarters we didn’t see any activity at all. So we adjusted the budget accordingly and then reality surprised us. B&O tax — we budgeted $15,000, we finished $6,000 over that. So we had a big swing, little margin there.

Revenue trends requiring attention. What we’re seeing is red light camera revenue down 18%, and recurring tax revenue is less than expectations. Why it matters is long-term revenue assumptions may need adjustment. So a lot of these things are assumptions. They’re really important — this year is a budget year and we’re heading into a budget cycle. So all these things that we’re seeing through the fourth and first quarter so far, we’re making note of that and making sure that we’re paying attention to the trends that we see. What we’re doing is monitoring collections and taking declines and other trends into consideration as we approach the upcoming budget cycle and create forecasts.

So I’m mentioning red light running. This is the revenue trend we see. A couple years ago we could pretty much pencil in $1.1, $1.2 million. Last year the revenue finished at $866,000. This follows the natural trend of speed cameras, red light cameras — that behavior improves over time, which is really the goal. But when the behavior improves, the revenue declines.

Number four: expenditure pressures, public defenders. What we’re seeing was last year $223,000 of costs. So that was over budget and more than the prior year. So $63,000 over budget and then $83[,000] more than the prior year. That’s the result of statewide requirements that are increasing costs for all local governments, and there’s no funding source dedicated to offset these costs. And what we’re doing is we’re monitoring the trends, and the costs are also split between the general fund and the public safety sales fund in 2026.

Number five: fleet replacement funding restored. It’s always nice to have good news in finance. So what we’re seeing is basically during the COVID pandemic, one of the strategies for keeping the general fund sustainable was to not set money aside for vehicle replacements, to keep that money in the general fund. Why it matters is over time we basically fell behind in all the funds that we needed to set aside for vehicle replacement. And so the city has restored its ability to fund future vehicle replacements without relying on large one-time general fund appropriations. And it also reduces our financial risk because if we have the money set aside for that purpose, when those events happen that a vehicle needs replacement, we’ve got the funds, instead of being caught by surprise and then having to spend general fund money out of the operations fund. And what we’re doing — we’re maintaining replacement funding at all levels consistent with long-term fleet needs. And we’re refining the replacement funding model to incorporate inflation and changing vehicle replacement costs. So we have a schedule of vehicles, and historically it’s been historic cost. Inflation wasn’t really relevant at the time. Last few years it’s become increasingly relevant. So we want to make sure that we’re not setting aside $40,000 for a car that’s going to cost $120,000. We want to keep it at what the costs are.

This is a schedule of the fleet replacement funding, to kind of visually show what I just explained. This is years 2020 through this year on the bars. The light blue is the general fund portion of the money that is set aside in the equipment replacement fund. So we have a fund for this — equipment replacement — and it receives money from the general fund, from the marina, from surface water management. So there’s different sources because different funds — like the marina has their vehicles, police have their vehicles, the utility has their own vehicles. But we all put it in one place. The light blue shows what the general fund set aside. The dark blue is everybody else. But together you see the total amount. So you can see in 2020 through 2022, during the pandemic there was really nothing sent over to the equipment replacement fund. 2023 finally amped up a little bit. 2024 we realized, oh, we have some financial issues to deal with. So it got cut. And then in 2025 we realized, oh well, if we don’t set everything aside now, we’re in a deeper hole than we were. So it’s really good news that we’re able to fully fund the replacement fund. And you can see in 2026, because we got caught up, that brought that allocation down.

Key issue number six: reserve position. Reserves remain stable, though cash reserves are below target. So we have two items here. As I explained the difference between cash and fund balance — if you look at this schedule, you’ll notice the recurring expenditures under each are different, and the 16.67% target is different. And the reason for that is that for the cash balance, we’re using two different methods of accounting on each line. And the difference between the two methods is really timing of when the transactions are included in 2025. So that’s why there’s a $200,000 or so difference between those numbers. But the ending balances we see again are the 11.6% — which is lower than we’d like it to be; we’d like that to be over 16.67% — as well, and the fund balance is at 17.8%.

So looking ahead to 2026: opportunities. Additional taxable properties in business park, which we’ll talk about in the next report in like five minutes. And public safety sales tax, which is beginning to come into the city beginning in March of 2026.

Risks: our public defender costs, which we have to absorb and right now we don’t have offsetting funding for that. Red light revenue continues to decline and our tax revenue is less than expected.

So our focus areas are building our reserves and monitoring our recurring revenue, because the alignment between recurring revenue and expenditures is important. In 2025 I think it was $968,000 of one-time revenue funded recurring activity.

And [there] we go. Questions?

**53:27 — Mayor Matsui:** Questions or discussion? Council Member Harris.

**Council Member Harris:** So the most important thing is — is the tie indicating support for Brazil, or is it just something totally unrelated?

**Jeff Friend:** I don’t root for teams that win.

**Council Member Harris:** All right, fine. So no, unfortunately not. Okay, so I won’t die. My — I asked a vague question via email and I apologize, but my real question about accrual versus cash is: does it — is it usually — is it a reasonable thing to make the assumption that you’re going to get paid with those? I mean, does it usually — yeah — or is that still too vague? I’m sorry, but —

**Jeff Friend:** No. Just to provide context, the two accounting methods I referenced are cash basis, which we report under, and then accrual basis. And the difference, to explain to the public — if you pay your utility bill: so you get a utility bill for January and February and then you pay it in March. So under a cash basis, it tracks when the cash goes out the door, comes in the door. So under cash basis, when you pay the bill in March, that expense is recorded in March. Under accrual, they look at when did the transaction occur. So because you incurred those costs in January and February, if you report them under the accrual method, you would report them under January-February, not March when you paid the bill. So that’s why I mentioned there’s a timing difference.

So in terms of like if we run both methods and look at the numbers, are we surprised? Not too much. The difference on a $25 million budget is about $200,000. So it’s not too large.

**Council Member Harris:** Okay. So my last but not least — on utilities, do they — meaning the utilities — do they report out the number of units? Because I keep seeing this increase in both natural gas and electricity, which I would assume means that there are more homes or — I mean, in other words, is there a way to account for [that]? Because it’s pretty large for our revenue.

**Jeff Friend:** Yeah.

**Council Member Harris:** Do they explain why? Because I guess I was just assuming that over time — I’ve been a little concerned that maybe some of these would go down, but they’re going up double digits.

**Jeff Friend:** Yeah. We have to look at what we receive when we receive payments. But off the top of my head and from what I recall, it’s mostly a return where they cite their revenue and we get a percentage, and that’s the tax they pay.

**Council Member Harris:** Okay. But they don’t give you any kind of demographics? I’m just — it’s just curious if it’s something that —

**Jeff Friend:** No, we typically see the units when we pay the bill, as opposed to when we receive revenue from the utility, as far as I can recall. But I’d have to confirm that.

**Council Member Harris:** Okay. Thank you.

**56:34 — Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Steinmetz.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** Yep. Thank you. Very, very nice presentation, laying things out pretty clearly. But there’s one thing that I think the public — and maybe up here — you can help us understand a little bit better, and that’s the situation with Wesley. You’ve stated that they are exempt from property taxes because they’re a nonprofit, and yet they have a dispute with the state that is now saying, well, maybe they’re not entirely exempt, and yet our share of the property tax that we’re used to getting from Wesley has not been paid. How do you reconcile Wesley as a nonprofit not normally paying, but we get some? I don’t think anybody quite understands that distinction.

**Jeff Friend:** That’s a fair question. In fact, when we were talking with the county, I was getting frustrated because the data they were giving me included Wesley. I was like, they’re fully exempt. What are you sending me? So it took a while for it to sink into ourselves as well.

As I mentioned, they are a nonprofit. However, it’s the use of the property. And so when I looked at the comments that the Department of Revenue made — they exempted where the skilled nurses are, but they didn’t exempt anything else. And so what we’d have to infer from that is that they’re considering probably the lodging — or the rooms that are not connected to the skilled nurses that serve a health care purpose — would be taxable. And I think that would be what the point that Wesley’s disagreeing about. So that’s as far as I can infer from the information that we’ve seen.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** Yeah. And I understand that’s the current dispute, but what you have indicated is that our overall property tax bill is down because Wesley’s not paying anything to the state, and yet that implies that something was being previously paid by Wesley, right? I’m trying to get at the past.

**Jeff Friend:** I guess I can clarify that. So historically they’ve not paid any property tax, and when the county has sent us information to base our levy on when we request it, that’s not included Wesley. So it never has. So then when we did the property tax levy for 2025, unknowing — unbeknownst to us — that amount, $133,000, was included in that and we based our budget on that. And then because there’s this dispute, they haven’t paid that yet. And so we didn’t receive it. And so then that’s why we were short on property tax more than we would have ever expected, because we didn’t realize that Wesley was included. And it was the first time they ever had been.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** So the county had sent us data not specifying that Wesley was included. So we didn’t realize that Wesley was included because we’ve assumed they always are not included.

**Jeff Friend:** Correct. Because the county would send me a worksheet that just has one number on it. They don’t send me account details. Unless I go on their website and look up a property, I don’t have any information on what their accounts they’re including or what’s going on with that. They give me one gross large number and that’s what we work from.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** All right, that makes a lot of sense and I understand it much better. Hopefully everybody who’s watching. Thank you. Nice presentation.

—

## City manager report — Q1 2026 financial report

**1:00:12 — Mayor Matsui:** Okay, as Jeff pulls up the next presentation —

**City Manager Caffrey:** I appreciate Council Member Steinmetz commenting on the presentation. Jeff’s tried to really talk more about takeaways in these reports, and so we made some pretty significant changes for tonight. So any feedback on that is appreciated. So it’s not just Excel spreadsheets now.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** Yes, sir. I guess if you spout numbers at someone constantly, they don’t retain them as much.

**Jeff Friend:** Okay. So this is the financial report for the first quarter of 2026. Some of the issues you’ve just heard about in the fourth quarter report you’ll see again here. So this might be a little redundant, but we might be able to move through it a little more quickly since we have the base knowledge from the previous quarter.

So our financial position through March 31st: what we’re seeing is that general fund revenues exceeded budget by 3%. I double-checked that today, because I’m just not used to saying that after the first quarter. Expenditures were 2% below budget. So expenditures were right on track. And operating income totaled $26,729. Why it matters: the general fund is performing slightly better than budget through the first quarter, which you’ll see in this presentation is unusual. It remains, however, too early to draw conclusions for year-end results. And what we’re doing again: monitoring — monitoring is a lot of what we do — revenue and expenditure trends.

So as I said, it’s unusual. This is the first quarter over the last few years. You can see that we’ve had losses from 2022 through 2025. This actually isn’t that concerning, as in the first quarter we do not receive property tax. And so if we incur our regular level of expenditures without our main, our largest revenue source, we’re going to have losses. So in 2026 this is not the case. We’ll see why that changed in 2026.

So there it is. One-time revenues remain strong. One-time sales tax totaled $242,227 in the first quarter alone, which exceeds the annual budget by $42,000. So we budgeted $200[,000] for the year. We received $242 [thousand] in the first quarter. One-time B&O tax totaled $34,355, which is almost half of the annual budget. Why it matters: major construction activity is generating significant one-time revenues, and these revenues improve current year results but are not a sustainable source of ongoing funding. So what are we doing? Continuing to separately track recurring and non-recurring revenues. And this is really key for the budget cycle coming up, because we really need to align the recurring expenditures with the recurring revenues and not rely on the non-recurring revenue.

We have the new public safety sales tax revenue. What we’re seeing is the city began collecting the public safety sales tax in 2026. We collected $44,736 in the first quarter. The reason it’s only $44,000 is because we receive sales tax two months after it’s collected. So that’s why we’re beginning in March, because that’s when we receive what was paid in January. This does track to what we budgeted for the year. We budgeted $450,000. And since March, we have been in the neighborhood of about $45,000 a month. So for 10 months, we’re tracking pretty well. Why it matters: provides a dedicated revenue source for eligible public safety expenditures and helps offset increasing public safety costs. And what we’re doing is evaluating eligible expenditures to maximize the benefit of the new revenue source. So we haven’t really assigned any expenditures there, but we will — likely, very likely — assign public defender costs there, as that was in the budget and also other public safety costs.

Property tax base expands. This was alluded to a little bit in the fourth quarter, and this is where we tip our cap to our legal department. What we’re seeing is King County confirmed that improvements on two business park parcels will be added to the tax rolls beginning 2026, and additional taxable property may still be identified. So the backstory on this, to give this context: the business park has been around about 10 years, and the port owns the land. And we’ve done, under the direction of the city manager, a lot this year is look at those parcels, find out what’s going on. Because a privately owned parcel is earning property tax at a much higher rate than the port-owned property is paying leasehold tax — which they pay because they’re a public organization, they don’t pay property tax. There’s always been like we get just a little bit of leasehold tax. But there was a big difference. And so we got a hold of the leases, legal reviewed them, discovered basically that the port owns the land but private entities own the buildings. So the city reached out to the county. County agreed on two of them. We’re still working with the county because we believe firmly that there are more than just two parcels with improvements that are taxable. So why it matters is it provides potential ongoing property tax revenue growth. And what we’re doing is working with the county and reviewing additional parcels and omitted tax opportunities.

Public defender cost pressures. So what we’re seeing again — public defender costs totaled $71,854 the first quarter. Costs are trending above historical levels. Again, statewide public defense requirements continue to increase costs on local governments. There’s no dedicated funding, and projected actuals exceed budgeted expectations. What we’re doing is we’re continuing to monitor the level of these expenditures. We’re evaluating the budget impacts and future funding needs, and utilizing the public safety sales tax revenues where eligible. So if we look at the schedule here, from 2022 to now, you can see it increased significantly in 2025, and then we’re projecting almost $300,000 of cost in 2026, which is double what it was in 2024.

Revenue trends requiring attention. Again, regular sales tax is $34,000 below the prior year and red light camera revenue is significantly below budget. So regular sales tax — so this is not one-time sales tax, this is just the regular recurring day-to-day sales tax — is one of the city’s largest recurring revenue sources. Collections provide an important indicator of underlying economic activity and future revenue trends. Continued flatness or decline could impact future general fund performance. So what we’re seeing now, so far through the fourth quarter and into the first quarter, is really that that regular sales tax is pretty flat. So we don’t know if it’s going to decline, but we know — at least right now — it’s flat. And then we’re going into again a budget cycle and we have to consider what economic factors are affecting that and then forecast appropriately. What are we doing? We’re monitoring expenditures and evaluating budget impacts and future funding needs, and utilizing public safety sales tax revenues where eligible.

So the red light camera revenue, I believe, was $97,000 in the first quarter. And if we were used to getting $1.1 million for a year, $97,000 in one quarter is — that’s the lowest I’ve seen it since I’ve been here. So hooray for the safe drivers.

Looking ahead: opportunities. Strong development activity. So again, that’s the development activity would be the large projects we have going on. We have the new public safety sales tax coming in at a budgeted level and expanded property tax base. So we have some good opportunities.

Risks: again, the public defender costs, red light camera revenue declining, soft regular sales tax collections, and one-time revenue should not fund recurring expenditures.

Focus areas coming out of the first quarter is very similar to the other, last quarter prior to this: maintain expenditure discipline, monitor recurring revenue trends, and preserve general fund stability. And we are [done] — two questions.

**1:09:12 — Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Steinmetz.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** Yeah, Jeff, one thing that caught my eye is the regular sales tax that appears to be declining. Is there a relationship between the number of businesses that are revenue — or retail — has that declined as well? Or have you had any chance to do any analysis to see if there’s a connection there?

**Jeff Friend:** So at the end of the report there’s a sales tax report. And I think for the last maybe a year we’d say, “Oh, construction’s carrying us, everything else seemed just flat.” Not really declining in any significant way but just holding steady to the prior year. And so we’ve learned, like, if we see construction carrying us, let’s make sure that’s all recurring and separate the one time. That’s one of the clues. But we see it — it’s really not declining necessarily, but it’s not really growing either. So we just kind of see everything across all the segments that are in that report just kind of flatlining or at least maintaining their historical level and not growing or declining significantly.

**1:10:23 — Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Council Member Blosse.

**Council Member Blosse:** Thanks, Jeff. How is the collection for the warehouse square footage tax going?

**Jeff Friend:** I think in the first quarter, I’d have to check, but I think it was about $100,000 that we had. Because a portion of what we received in January got put into the prior year, so that kind of lowered it a little bit. But we had received some in April, but I haven’t had a chance to look at the second quarter numbers yet.

**Council Member Blosse:** I remember we had issues with some warehouses not paying before. It’s getting better now?

**Jeff Friend:** Yeah, I would say in general with just delinquent taxes, we’ve really been assertive, I’ll say, in collecting those. And so we are getting to have a number of payment plans with those businesses paying, regardless of what tax it is. So we are collecting delinquent taxes, and the square footage tax we’re keeping an eye on. We’ll have to check out what came in in April.

**Council Member Blosse:** And then those new warehouses that are being built, that’s going to increase our revenue that way, too. It’s our hope. They look pretty big.

**Jeff Friend:** So, yeah.

**City Manager Caffrey:** Well, those are again the model that legal discovered. So we don’t know yet how those are going to get classified, but we’re hoping the work that really Matt, Tim, and Jeff did on the existing buildings will help for this. I think it says a lot, too, that there’s a lot of taxing districts on a property tax bill, and we’re the ones saying, “Excuse me, this isn’t correct,” and none of the other taxing districts seem to have done that.

**1:12:02 — Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Council Member Harris.

**Council Member Harris:** Yeah, I usually don’t like to be rhetorical or whatever, but thank you for your attention, legal, on the whole business park thing. I just spent years at the corner of 24th and I would look to the east and I would see that one thing, and then I’d look to the west and I’d see another thing, and the population sees these shiny buildings and they thought it was something else. You — your work will — you know, people always focus on restaurants and ribbon cuttings and everything like that, but that’s like the meat and potatoes that the city is going to — yeah, it will be wonderful as long as this city exists. And thank you.

**1:13:00 — Mayor Matsui:** Thank you, sir. Deputy Mayor Achziger.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Yes. Thank you for the presentation, Jeff. So in anticipation of the west business park coming online, I take it that we’re in a position where we’re not going to see the same confusion that’s happened in the past.

**City Manager Caffrey:** Well, the square footage tax on the front end, they know about that. So some of the issues we had — since that was a new tax last year, I think — will be smoother. We are optimistic and feel like we have a really good position with the county to say, “Look, you just concluded what we concluded on these — that applies to those.” But we don’t know that yet for sure. So we’re still working really closely with the county on that. So I don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** And do we have any idea when the west business park is going to come on next year?

**City Manager Caffrey:** I think it’s next year is when it’ll start like leasing up.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Okay. Will we be including that in our projections for ’27, ’28?

**City Manager Caffrey:** We’ll include a phased approach for square footage for sure. I want to see how things continue to go with the county before I count property tax. So we will keep a close eye on it. But again, some of the positive things that Jeff’s talking about in first quarter are because we were extremely conservative with how we budgeted for ’26. If you all will recall, we brought back a budget and lowered some revenue projections so we could prevent some of these roller coasters the city had been on previously. So as we go into ’27, ’28, I’m going to continue to be highly conservative. I’d rather come to you and have Jeff be like, “Look, we’re above,” than the opposite.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** I think we all appreciate that. Thank you.

**1:14:55 — Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Council Member Harris, for your second time.

**Council Member Harris:** I actually had a follow-up on the Wesley thing. I don’t know if in your last position — did you say that the taxable portion was the lodging and the non-taxable is the —

**Jeff Friend:** It was — it’s everything that wasn’t the skilled nurses, from what I saw on the DOR website.

**Council Member Harris:** I just — maybe Washington is different, but it was a thing in Michigan where you’d have these mega hospital complexes that were, you know, run by the Catholic Church or something like that. And at a certain point the state said, “No, you’re a bajillion-dollar corporation,” and started doing collections. Is that kind of — so what you said kind of struck me as backwards. I thought it would be more that the medical facilities would [be the taxable part]. I’m asking you, is there any like precedent for this throughout Washington with hospital systems? And if that’s not your experience, that’s fine.

**Jeff Friend:** Yeah, I really can’t speak to that, I’m not sure.

**Council Member Harris:** Okay. Thank you.

**1:16:15 — Mayor Matsui:** Well, thank you again. I want to reiterate what I heard Council Member Nutting say, what I heard Council Member Harris say. Thank you to legal and to Finance Director Friend for tracking down the mystery of whether or not those parcels should be taxable and added to the rolls. I appreciate your due diligence and your work on that. I know it must be a highlight that we can all put in the books to say that you accomplished that, and hopefully are setting a precedent for the other properties that are coming online in the future. So, appreciate that very much.

I do wonder how much our just economic uncertainty — if people are just buying less — contributes to sales tax, and how much we’re seeing come in. Because folks — I know, and I’m seeing — I think some of us have seen, who are involved in our nonprofit industry and sector, that participation is down and people tell us they don’t have money to spend. They’re concerned, and maybe they’re holding on to more of it even if they have the same amount.

**Jeff Friend:** I think what’s in the back of my mind is when inflation was at 10% a few years ago, but people were still shopping. So it’s that kind of upset what your expectations would be. So that’s why I’m cautious about determining like, well, it’s going to slow down or grow, because they’re not behaving normally — at least a few years ago. But yeah, I think gas prices probably have been significant in as far as what people are spending.

**Mayor Matsui:** Gotcha. And my additional question is, I know we are working very hard in terms of our accounting discipline to not use so many one-time or non-recurring revenues for recurring expenses. But I’m wondering if there is a level that we should aspire to to say we should get 10% in of big new monies from building or from one time, to help our budget on a regular basis, and how do we grow to that. So not that we can bank on it, let’s say, but so that we can have it be a healthy part of our ongoing regular — not recurring, but regular — income.

**Jeff Friend:** Yeah. I think one of the ideas that came up during the last budget cycle, or at least afterwards, was that $15 million value point I think is about 20 years old at least. So that maybe that could be adjusted for inflation to where it’s like maybe $20 million is appropriate, and if it’s a $15 million project, then we don’t have to discuss if that stays in the general fund or not. So maybe there might be some updating that could happen that would get us to that goal.

**Mayor Matsui:** Okay. Well, looking forward to a recommendation then in the future. Anything else? Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

—

## Chief’s recognition — Sergeant Eddie, 25 years of service

**1:19:12 — Mayor Matsui:** All right, we’re going to go back to item one, but before we do, it is someone’s — can I say the number? 39th — 39th birthday this year today. So there is, I’m sure, nowhere else she would rather be. Yes. I did get a great — I don’t mean to outshine you, Eddie, but it is Chief’s birthday today. I’m sure there’s nowhere else you’d rather be than at a council meeting.

**Chief Ted Boe:** No, it’s where I was hoping to be tonight.

*[laughter and applause]*

**Mayor Matsui:** Happy birthday. Happy birthday.

**Chief Boe:** I don’t know how to follow up with that. I need a moment. No. It is actually interesting — the reason I’m here tonight on my birthday. I will say it is an important birthday. We’ll call it that. Reason I’m here is because I chose to be here. They told me not to be here, and I realized that I had something on the agenda that I couldn’t miss. Celebrating our people is a super important part of this profession. And as your chief, it’s super important to celebrate milestones with our family. We talk about a brotherhood. Brothers show up for each other on important events. So that’s the reason I’m here tonight — is because I choose to be here.

So with that said, Eddie, I’m going to humiliate you a little bit. I won’t be too mean. But I think there’s some things we should talk about. One of the things we’ve recently started is using challenge coins to recognize important milestones in people’s careers. The history of challenge coins goes way, way back to little brass medallions in service, and really it’s a moment of recognition of an important moment in somebody’s life and their belonging in a crew or a group or an organization. And I think in this case we’re recognizing 25 years, which in this profession is a major accomplishment and one a lot of people don’t make, quite frankly. And that recognition is a recognition as well that you’re joining a unique club. Right? The club is not just MoPD, it’s not just the club of officers, it’s really the club of people who have given service over literally 25 years. And I think a quarter century is an important mark.

So with that said, Eddie is joining us tonight for his 25th. And Eddie started with us in June of 2001. He was a lateral officer, so he had six years with another agency — actually 31 years of total service in law enforcement. Like everybody does here, he starts in patrol. He quickly was identified as — it’s called a master police officer. So somebody who has displayed a level of skill such that we actually identify them as a master officer. And in that role, new officers use them as a mentor. So really, it’s a mentoring role for new officers. To say, “Hey, whatever this person’s doing, you should emulate that behavior, because that’s what we expect of our new people.”

He went on to become a traffic officer in our former first traffic unit. He will tell you all about his days riding Harleys with shiny boots. As you guys know, traffic’s a little bit of a thing for me. So gave me a little tear in my eye and moment of pride when I find out that he’s a former traffic guy — writing tickets, jumping out of bushes with his radar gun and giving tickets all over town.

He went on to have several roles, and in 2022 was promoted to the rank of sergeant. Talked a lot about my feelings about sergeants and the importance of sergeants. Eddie has a unique role, in my mind, in his position as a sergeant: that he runs our field training program. I talked about 20 years ago, him being that person you look up to in law enforcement. The culture you set with your new people is the culture of your agency. It doesn’t matter what I say as your chief. I’ll be totally honest with you. It matters in this room. What matters on the street is those leaders in your training program, and what you set as the training standard and the example for the people in your agency.

So it’s funny — when Eddie was giving me his little list here of his career accomplishments, he actually minimized the administrative sergeant being a — death sergeant. And to be fair, Eddie, I will say it’s the exact opposite. It is the position that actually sets that standard for what is that mentoring standard, what is that leadership standard, and what do new people need to accomplish to do this job the Des Moines way, the right way, the ethical way, the professional way, every single time. So with that said, it is an absolute honor to present you a challenge coin for your 25th year of service.

*[applause]*

**Mayor Matsui:** You’re not going to come give a speech?

**Chief Boe:** I thought you were going prepared. No, I’ll let him off the hook. Thank you very much, council, for letting us do this in front of the council, letting us recognize our people. It means a lot to me, and I appreciate it. Thank you.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you very much. And congratulations.

—

## Strategic plan implementation update — economic vitality

**1:24:33 — Mayor Matsui:** All right, we’re going to move on to our next item. I hopefully Chief Boe will also be going home. Don’t forget your balloons. I drove to Fred Meyer for those. Okay. Our next item is the strategic plan implementation update.

**City Manager Caffrey:** Rebecca and I are going to kind of do this one together. So later on tonight on the consent agenda, you all will be considering the strategic plan. And so I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I think no matter what, we’re pretty close on adoption of that.

But one of the things that many of you have asked me already — and last night I was at the CAB meeting with the deputy mayor and Council Member Steinmetz, and we were talking to the CAB board members about the strategic plan. And the very first thing I was asked was, “These are really nice words. I like your pictures, but what’s actually happening?” And I’ve heard that from you all as well.

So tonight is the first presentation that’ll start really getting into the meat of what’s the work that is actually underway by staff internally. As you all were going through the strategic plan, obviously all six priority areas are very important, but I think it’s safe to say that economic vitality received the most discussion and focus from this group. So we’re starting there.

So tonight we’re giving you an informational update on a multitude of initiatives we have underway. All of these will be coming back to you for decision points or feedback. So just know this is — I’m just introducing you to work we have going on. But all of these will come back. This is also not like everything we’re doing on economic vitality. This is really the work that’s happening between now and the end of the year.

So as a reminder, this was your goal, and then the language — the strategies that you identified. It really focused here on really an economic development strategy, meaning a real plan on what we’re going to focus on. There was a lot of discussion on revitalizing downtown. And then there was a fair amount of discussion about how can we really encourage business investment in our community and how can we make that easier for people that are coming into the community that are developing. And then of course there was a lot about the Pacific Highway corridor.

So to get started, when we look at like what makes a thriving downtown, there’s a whole variety of factors that go into that. And this is by no means the ultimate list, but these were sort of the recipe ingredients to achieve this. I did sort of put a hash line around the marina because, as you all know, here in Des Moines, it’s hard to talk about downtown and not the marina. The two are so closely connected.

Now, tonight I’m going to talk about specific initiatives we’re working on that touch on four of these ingredients. I’ll be highlighting things we’re doing in the land use front, market conditions, infrastructure, and tools. Now, creating a thriving downtown — some of these things the city has a big role in, right? Like what are the land use decisions there? Other things, like market conditions, are largely out of our control, but we want to make sure we’re facilitating as good of a situation as possible.

So these are the items we’re going to go through tonight. You can see I’ve organized them by sort of the ingredient they fall under.

So the first one is a study that we’ve just started. Rebecca and I had the kickoff call earlier this week. I’ve heard from many of you all a real interest in talking about zoning and density downtown. And every time somebody talks to me about it, I say, “Okay, but we don’t want to just like start painting with that paintbrush until we really know what we’re trying to achieve.” So what this is is we will be taking the council through several different scenarios in conjunction with the planning commission to really look at more than just asking you what you want downtown to be like. It’s more about why has downtown not achieved that vision previously? Where have there been limitations? What type of developments are feasible and is there a market for? And then using that collectively to figure out what are some land use changes the council can consider that are feasible here — both from a community perspective but also from market.

We will be looking also at the financial implications of those zoning changes. So if you zone for X, what type of revenues and costs does that generate? So the information and the process we’ll be going through — there’ll be a series of work sessions that you all will be doing both at council meetings, and then we’re also looking at a joint meeting with the planning commission for the council and planning commission. That’s really so that both of you all are informing sort of the end results and what those policy recommendations are at the end. So when the council, if you so choose to tackle zoning or density, you have a real game plan and a lot of thought process behind that. So that project is kicked off, that will run through early 2027. But you’ll start seeing a lot of check-ins and participation from you all on that this fall.

Rebecca, do you want to talk about this one?

**Community Development Director Rebecca Deming:** Yeah. So this was a request that came from the council to staff, and that was put on our work plan for this year. So we have started doing some research on looking to bringing back options for a vacant commercial space registration program. We have started looking at some different cities and how they are handling this, including Olympia, Everett, and Seattle, and trying to look at some other options from around the country of what some of smaller cities are doing. We’re not finding as many in this state, but we’re just trying to bring together some different options to show you which way we want to go. Identify barriers to occupancy and redevelopment and finding ways to bring those tools and options back to you to see which direction you want to go.

For the planning commission work program: the planning commission is going to be looking at all the different zones. We’re looking at hopefully — not this year but maybe next year — doing a wholesale look at the zoning code update, which will be a slow process. So they’ll look at each section, each chapter. See where we might want to make updates on top of what we talked about with the downtown. There might be updates needed throughout the entire chapters — including what development regulations need to be looked at, where there’s housing capacity needs. We’ll talk a little bit later in this presentation also about some of the other regulations coming down from the state, and transit-oriented development requirements. So not just legislative requirements that are needed, but other things that are in process with the planning commission.

Same thing — land use policy and zoning, downtown density, we talked a little bit, and development standards. Those all are through that planning commission work program. That’ll all make its way through to you to be reviewed and decided on, and with those different decision points and recommendations that come through the planning commission.

**City Manager Caffrey:** Switching now to market conditions. You all will recall the Port of Seattle grant for economic development that the council accepted last year. ECONorthwest [transcribed “Ernesy”] Consulting is working on that. So some surveys that are specific to business owners and property owners will be going out in the next week or two. That will begin giving us some really good data points again on why has development not happened here? What are barriers? What are challenges? That data will then also help inform some round tables that will be happening later this summer. And of course we’ll be sharing this information with the ECONorthwest study. So the data we’re going to learn firsthand from folks will absolutely inform that work as well.

On the tools section: something that we’d like to do some analysis on and bring to the council later this fall for consideration is the multifamily tax exemption tool. So this is one of the very few economic development tools that the state of Washington affords cities. And so what we would like to do is look at some various scenarios on what would this really yield for the city. So if you’re doing this tax exemption, do the benefits outweigh that over the long term or not? So we’ll be looking at some of those tools. This does not require direct general fund spending, but it can make a meaningful impact on growth — but you want to make sure you know what you’re foregoing. So again, we’ll go through the whole exercise and make sure council’s comfortable. We currently do not have this policy.

**Rebecca Deming:** We talked a little bit about this in a recent meeting. We applied for an opportunity zone on Pac Highway. We are waiting to hear. We’ll find out in January 2027 whether we get that designation. It’s to attract private capital development. It’s a tax incentive program, so it doesn’t affect the city necessarily, but it brings more people and hopefully creates more investment, and it hopes to complement that future transit-oriented development that we’re required to bring in a couple of years.

**City Manager Caffrey:** Finally, I also frequently get asked about when we’ll start talking about turnback planning with WSDOT as 509 gets closer to completion. We anticipate that at the end of the year we will begin those conversations with WSDOT. The turnback process is a formal one. There’s usually a good fair amount of negotiation, primarily about what final payments may come from WSDOT — maintenance of the road. But the control of Marine View Drive, although it does mean taking on the cost of it, it also allows us to really control that road better. You can control streetscape, access management, land use. So when we think about how downtown — Marine View Drive is like a critical part of that. This really puts us in the driver’s seat on that. So we look forward to beginning those conversations with WSDOT, like I said, towards the end of the year.

So again, those are sort of the four areas we’re targeting right now, with more to come. This is a little bit on what you can expect on timeline. And so with that, we’re happy to answer any questions.

**1:35:11 — Mayor Matsui:** Council questions or discussion? Council Member Nutting.

**Council Member Nutting:** Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, City Manager, and Rebecca for the presentation. I’ll hold all of my comments. I just want to say that prior to me being on council almost 13 years ago, we did have a multifamily tax exemption. It didn’t work. Nobody used it. I don’t want you spending a ton of time on it. So that’s just my comments and my personal feeling about it. We repealed it, I don’t know — probably the fourth year I was on council. So that’s where I’m at.

**1:35:50 — Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Council Member Steinmetz.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** Yeah, I want to say thank you for the presentation. I think you’re putting some meat on the bones at this point, and that’s really really appreciated. This is obviously going to bring us in some good data that is going to allow us to make smart decisions. I especially like the idea of looking at why hasn’t development happened, figuring out what those barriers are, because frankly, it’s been a lot of sort of ad hoc — we think this is the problem, let’s do it — without necessarily knowing the data to support that. And so I think this is an excellent approach, and it is painstakingly slow for the public. That’s what we heard last night at the CAB. People want to see it now, but it’s a step-by-step process. And at least those of us that understand it appreciate what you’re doing, and appreciate the fact you’re going to go get us the good data and put some meat on the bones. Thank you very much.

**1:37:00 — Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Harris.

**Council Member Harris:** Thank you. And you can put your earmuffs on now. The Port of Seattle has invested about $170 million into this city through sound insulation and various stuff. To have one sentence about the impacts and so on — it is hard to overstate what the effect they have on this city — have had on this city since the ’70s — this thing called the Sea-Tac Communities Plan.

And my comment is that the council has — the thing that you hear from residents is “I love our little town” and we do not — we’re in this constant denial that the small amount of regular sales tax we get every year, and everything, that somehow something’s going to happen that elevates us. But just looking at the warehouse district — there is the revenue stream that people don’t see. It’s just the underlying thing that is where the city is going to get in — is where the city should go. Because otherwise the amenities and stuff, I struggle to see how they pay for themselves and make the city — I’ve seen in this denial since I’ve lived here as to what the airport does — plus, minus, potential, and so on. And I wish — it’s not your thing. It’s the council vibe. But that’s been the council vibe for 30 years: is to pretend like there — this ginormous thing that’s just the biggest thing in the world — is not part of our thinking on everything. But it’s close to half of the homes in this town. And a ton of land. And I’m just struck by how if I were from Mars or from anywhere else and I read this document, it would make me think that there was nothing of that impact for miles around. I’m just used to being in a city where you have this huge factory, and you just know that’s the thing, and it’s just part of your thinking across every domain. I’m not — I’m just being rhetorical. But I wish this were something else. And thank you.

**1:40:04 — Mayor Matsui:** Thank you so much. Council Member Desimone.

**Council Member Desimone:** Thank you for the presentation. I did ask for some of this information to be brought up, and I appreciate all the work that’s gone into that. I actually speak to residents on the daily. I speak to people often and I am actually hearing that people are excited for the potential this city has. I know that when I got here, all I heard was the potential, the potential, the potential. This is how we figure that out. And I appreciate the work that you’re going to put into this. I appreciate the historical information as well, but that’s how we’re going to take this educated guess at what we’re going to do. And I do feel — I feel comfortable speaking that the majority would like to see potential reached. The sleepy little town of Des Moines is, I’m going to say, will be something of the past here shortly, and we need this energy and we need this momentum forward. So I’m excited to see it laid out like this so we can educate ourselves and get there together. Thank you for that.

**1:41:22 — Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. I did have a question about the opportunity zones. Do you know if first-time applicants or folks who do not currently have one get any sort of priority and designation? I didn’t see that in the list.

**City Manager Caffrey:** This is actually only the second time opportunity zones have even been opened. So this is a very newish program. And I think there was over 80 eligible —

**Rebecca Deming:** Census tracts.

**City Manager Caffrey:** And there were only going to be chosen eight or 10. A very small number. So it’s tough. But we did put forth, I think, a really solid application. And I think the Pac Highway corridor, especially with the light rail station, is a very compelling spot.

**Mayor Matsui:** Well, I know we have no control over that. I do wish that that could be part of their consideration — if there’s some other way we can say, “Hey, this town already has two, and if we have zero, can ours be approved?” But thank you for that information.

All right. Oh, I’m sorry, Deputy Mayor Achziger.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Sorry, I waited because I didn’t have a question. I had a comment.

**Mayor Matsui:** Appropriate now, discussion. So go ahead.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Okay. I just want to say that I appreciate the deliberative process. And I think not only the citizens but I think up here on the dais, some of us are impatient to get something going. But I really do appreciate the deliberative process. So thank you.

**City Manager Caffrey:** Appreciate that feedback.

—

## Proposed letter to the Port of Seattle

**1:43:01 — City Manager Caffrey:** So last item, this should be brief, is regarding a proposed letter to the Port of Seattle. So at our last meeting, the mayor spoke about a recent op-ed that was in the *Seattle Times*. There was discussion on a three-city response. Like I wrote in an email to you this week, there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to this ILA with three cities. When you’ve got three city managers, three city councils, three city staffs. So the letter that’s in your packet is really more intended as a letter from the three cities to the port commission. This is not intended to be an op-ed response, because I don’t think it reflects really what the desire was. That will be coming. The city of SeaTac approved this Monday night.

Any questions about that? Yes, Council Member Steinmetz.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** The letter is well cooked.

**City Manager Caffrey:** It’s cooked. Yeah, we just have to cook some more now.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** But yeah, thank you.

**City Manager Caffrey:** All right. Well then that concludes my city manager report.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. I do want to add to that that several of you commented that this was not what we were envisioning when we said we wanted a response to an op-ed. And so I’m very excited that we did agree that we are going to have a second letter that is more intended to public consumption and to talk about potential impacts. This is absolutely an internal type of document that will go to the port on behalf of the mayors. But there will be another one coming. Thank you. And I spoke to both Mayor Moore in Burien and Mayor Eagle in SeaTac — or I’m sorry, the other way around. Mayor Eagle in SeaTac and Mayor Moore in Burien. And they are on the same page about a second letter as well.

—

## Consent agenda

**1:44:41 — Mayor Matsui:** All right, let’s move on to our consent agenda. Claire, will you please read the consent agenda?

**City Clerk Claire:** Item one, approval of vouchers. Item two, NFC Northwest Telecommunications franchise agreement, first reading, 2020. Item three, 2026 Stormwater CMP replacement project. Item four, WSDOT SR 509 right-of-way transfer. Item five, approval of the city strategic plan. Item six, lodging tax advisory committee appointment. And that concludes the consent agenda, mayor.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Is there a motion to approve? Council Member Nutting.

**Council Member Nutting:** I move to approve the consent agenda as read.

**Mayor Matsui:** I see a second by Council Member Steinmetz. Does any council member wish to pull an item? Seeing none, all in favor of the consent agenda as read, please raise your right hand until I call your name. Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Harris, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Blosse, and myself. Passes 7–0. Thank you very much.

—

## Unfinished business — speed camera ordinance, first reading

**1:45:45 — Mayor Matsui:** All right, let’s move on to unfinished business. And our first item is the speed camera ordinance, first reading, by Assistant City Attorney Matt Hutchins.

**Assistant City Attorney Matt Hutchins:** Good evening, mayor, council. Matthew Hutchins, your assistant city attorney, with the staff presentation on draft ordinance 26-049 updating the city’s speed camera program.

As I’m sure you’re all aware after a thousand presentations, the state authorizes cities to use automated traffic safety cameras to enforce their traffic laws. Initially it was just in school zones, but the uses have been expanded recently to include such things as park zones — like we have in Redondo — and school walk zones, which are essentially what it sounds like. It’s roadways that children use to walk to school. Additionally, the state allows cities to have one additional camera for every 10,000 population that do not have to be in a particular zone.

The city of Des Moines has been using speed cameras for nearly 15 years now, I would say, with great success in reducing speeds. Again, originally in school zones, and more recently down at Redondo with our park zone campus.

So given the success and the expanded uses of speed cameras, council directed staff to see if there are more locations in the city that would be appropriate for speed enforcement. And that is precisely what our transportation engineering department did. They looked at a bunch of data — crash reports, complaints about speed, previous speed studies, and a lot of data they put together for the local road safety plan that was passed a couple months ago. And they identified seven locations that were likely good locations for having cameras.

So with those seven in hand, they worked with Verra Mobility, our camera vendor, to conduct speed studies on the ground at these locations to see what was actually going on. Do we have speeding problems there? So that study was done May of last year, three days each location. And using that data, staff took that data and used the parameters that the state puts on where you can put cameras, and identified four locations that we are recommending to the council.

Finding the locations where they’re needed is step one for making sure you have legal cameras. Step two is you need to do an equity analysis of the locations to see when you put a camera in, how does that affect the local livability, accessibility, the environment, that sort of thing. Is it going to be a plus for the neighborhood to put it in, or is it going to be a burden on certain aspects of the community? So transportation department did that as well. Both the how they came up with the locations and the equity study are attachments to your packet.

So what did the speed study tell us? This is the seven locations that were studied last May. It shows both directions at each location, how many total vehicles went through the location over that three-day period, how many of those vehicles, as a percentage, exceeded the speed limit by at least 5 miles per hour — which is the threshold we generally use for issuing citations with our speed cameras. And then if you multiply them out, the last column is how many actual speeders went through that location during that three-day period that would likely get citations if the camera was in place.

So I’ll start with the green rows. That location is 24th Avenue North, the 20800 block, going through the business park. And if you look northbound, 42% of every vehicle who went through there during that three-day period were going at least 5 miles an hour over the posted speed limit, which comes out to more than 2,000 tickets that would have been issued per day. Going southbound, people are not speeding quite as bad, but you can see it’s still over 25% of every vehicle was exceeding the speed limit by at least 5 miles an hour, and over 1,500 per day.

The pinkish-orange-ish rows — that is Kent-Des Moines Road around 20th Avenue, both directions. Again, you can see over 25% of every vehicle who went through there during those three days was going at least 5 miles an hour over the posted speed limit. Somewhere around 1,300 to 1,500 people could have been cited on that day.

And then the top yellow band — that’s northbound Pacific Highway, essentially in front of the McDonald’s. The compliance is better there. Only 11% of people were going at least 5 miles per hour over. But with the sheer number of vehicles going through, again that’s more than 2,000 violators that could have been cited per day.

So obviously if the cameras were there and the warning signs were there, people knew they could get tickets — we’re probably not going to get 2,000 citations per day on the busiest cameras. And frankly, I’m not sure the court wants to see that. But I think this shows we have a speeding problem that needs to be addressed.

So what we’re proposing is we take the three general purpose, population-based cameras, put one at Pacific Highway North, and then put two on 24th Avenue through the business park. So that takes care of our three. The Kent-Des Moines Road location, we believe, qualifies as a school walk zone, so we’d use that authority to place those cameras. And essentially that uses up our allotment of new cameras we can use.

But we do have one more category — that’s the blue rows. Not quite as many speeding violations, less people speeding, but there are a significant number of violations every day. This location is in front of Woodmont Elementary School. We already have cameras there to get school zone violators, but this gives us an opportunity — because this is also a school walk zone location. So what we’re proposing is something a few other cities have done, and Verra said they can do for us, which is instead of just having the camera on during the few hours a day when it’s a school zone, we could have the camera running 24 hours a day. When it’s a school zone, we would ticket the people who are going over 20 miles an hour for that violation. And then the off hours, people who are going faster than the 35 mph posted speed limit, they could be cited under the regular speed violations.

So I’ll just briefly touch on the equity factors. Should really read the report that’s in your packet, [it] goes into a lot more detail. But my takeaway is all of these locations essentially — most the people using the roadway, they come from somewhere else. They drive through the neighborhood and they’re going to somewhere else. That means outsiders are bringing in the pollution, they’re bringing in the noise, they’re bringing in the danger that comes with speeding vehicles. And it’s a barrier to people getting to school, getting to work, getting to transit. And a significant number of the people in the neighborhood tend to come from lower income brackets and are more reliant on those modes of transportation. So our takeaway is essentially if we reduce the speeds in these locations, we feel that is going to increase livability, increase accessibility, increase the environmental health. It’s going to be a bonus for the neighborhood without a lot of costs imposed on that neighborhood. So in short, the equities would weigh towards these locations as we see it.

So the ordinance that is before you today does a few things. The first is it’s a statement by the council that the Kent-Des Moines location, the Pacific Highway location, the 24th Avenue location — the excessive speeding at these locations makes these locations an increased chance of collisions happening. And the report that is in your packet, I think there is substantial proof to support that.

Second thing would be the council would be authorizing the city to use cameras both in school walk zones and at locations the council has designated as an enhanced risk for collisions.

Third thing would be council would be allowing the Woodmont school zone camera to be used 24 hours.

And essentially the meat of this is if this ordinance were passed, all of the locations that I discussed would be authorized to put cameras in. And then there’s a few bits of old language that needed to be cleaned up as the laws changed at the state level over the years.

So just next steps. Obviously, if the council approves the ordinance, cameras don’t go online the next day. There’s a few steps we have to go through. We’re going to have to reopen our contract with Verra and get an amendment to account for the new locations, the new uses. And that’ll have to come back to the council. And if approved, we tell Verra they can go ahead and start work on locations. We will work with Verra, work with PSE, find the specific locations, do the permitting, get power to the cameras. And of course the court will have to configure their systems to be able to process the new infractions as they come in. And state law still requires a 30-day posting sign warning period that we would also use for testing the systems and probably sending out warning notices. But once the 30 days is complete, then the cameras can go online.

So that is the end of my presentation. There is a motion on the screen. Are there any questions?

**1:58:09 — Mayor Matsui:** Council, do you have any questions? And this is questions only. I’m going to go to Council Member Nutting first.

**Council Member Nutting:** Thank you very much for the presentation. My question comes to the one new camera per 10,000 population. Currently there’s a construction project in my neighborhood that’s lasted quite a while. And it hasn’t really slowed anybody down. And the replacement on 16th really didn’t slow anybody down. Does that preclude any kind of extra temporary cameras for construction zones? Is that something that we’ve looked at?

**Matt Hutchins:** I don’t think that we’re authorized based on our city size to have temporary cameras in construction zones. Construction zone cameras are generally on interstates right now, and so we’re very limited in the types of cameras we can use and where we can place them. And so we’re not authorized to have those.

**Council Member Nutting:** Thank you for the clarification.

**Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Steinmetz.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** Yeah. Outstanding presentation. Really good job of justifying these locations for these cameras and I appreciate that. My question revolves around the school walk zones. Kids aren’t walking to school 24 hours a day. It seems incongruous that you are using the school walk zone to cite somebody at midnight, or during summer vacation when the kids might not be going to school, or on weekends. How does all that play? Is it just the definition says if it’s there you can use it 24 hours?

**Matt Hutchins:** The quick answer is yes. I’m just going by the definition that’s in the statute. I would suggest however that schools are used by children outside of those hours. They will go to the playground on the weekends, in the evening. And there may be schools who have children who have activities that hold them late after the school zone — you know, they still deserve an opportunity to get safely back to their home. So I guess that would be my two-part answer.

**Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Harris.

**Council Member Harris:** Just to be clear, this is authorizing any school zone to be extended to 24 hours.

**Matt Hutchins:** Yes, but if we — yes, potentially, if we have a school zone that is operative and we believe there’s a speeding problem there that would justify it, we should be able to go to 24 hours as an administrative matter.

**Council Member Harris:** That would not require a council vote?

**City Manager Caffrey:** No. You’re authorizing the general concept. But we have to do the equity studies like we’ve done here. And so we would — and then we have to have a notice to proceed back to the council from Verra to install any new camera. So we will always come back to the council with any new future location. It will not be done administratively.

**Matt Hutchins:** And because we only have the justification for the one location, the ordinance as written spells out specifically the Woodmont location. So we’d want justification for further locations. Then we should amend the ordinance to give further authorization to those sites if appropriate.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Council Member Blosse.

**Council Member Blosse:** Thank you for the presentation. The ticketing would happen 5 miles over the posted speed limit. Is that correct?

**Matt Hutchins:** Correct. And that’s what we’re doing so far with other cameras. I believe that is what we said the existing ones are at — 5 miles.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Deputy Mayor Achziger.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Yes. Just for clarification, the speed limit would adjust at the Woodmont site depending upon the hours. So all we’re doing is really enforcing the speed limit using the camera there to enforce the speed limit 24 hours a day.

**Matt Hutchins:** Correct. So at 8 a.m. the speed limit is 20 miles an hour. Anyone going over 25 would be getting cited as a school zone violation. If it’s at noon when it’s not a school zone, speed limit’s 35. So anyone going 40 or more would be cited under the ordinary speed law.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Thank you for that clarification.

**Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Nutting for your second time.

**Council Member Nutting:** Thank you, Mayor. Just for clarification, how many speed zone cameras do we have? We have Woodmont and Pacific Middle School. Is there one up there? Is it just Woodmont?

**Matt Hutchins:** We do have one up at Pacific. I can’t remember if it is back online yet, but it had been out for a while.

**Council Member Nutting:** Okay. But those — there’s only two school speed zones in the city.

**Matt Hutchins:** Believe that’s correct. Yes.

**Council Member Nutting:** Okay. Thank you.

**Mayor Matsui:** To Council Member Harris for a second time.

**Council Member Harris:** Maybe I missed it, but are you — you’re authorizing like this range of anywhere along Kent-Des Moines within this set of blocks? I mean, there’s not like a specific — I’m just — it’s a pretty windy bit of territory.

**Matt Hutchins:** Yes. Well, it is sometimes difficult to place these cameras. So it’s hard to before we actually get out there and doing the engineering to pick a specific spot. So it would be — I believe between 20th and 24th, but I think probably more towards 20th.

**Council Member Harris:** Okay. And a quick — I asked last time — is there any clarity now as to what the signage would be in a school zone? Because it is a thing after — when it shifts from one speed limit to another. I’d be very curious to know what it’s going to look like to people visually.

**Matt Hutchins:** Yeah, that’ll be a question for our transportation engineering people. They will probably consult with the MUTCD standards to try and figure out —

**Council Member Harris:** Could we get that before the second reading? Maybe something? Pretty please.

**Matt Hutchins:** Yes.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Deputy Mayor Achziger.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Yes. Thank you. As far as implementation — can we implement these as it’s available to come online, or will we be doing it on a one-time basis? Are we just suddenly going to turn all the cameras on at once? Or for example, if we’re having delays with having to deal with Puget Sound Energy to site a camera, have the power to a location — as opposed to, say, Woodmont. I assume that it’s just a matter with Woodmont of coming up with the proper software that would allow it to happen. So these could be staggered. It’s not going to be a single implementation date.

**City Manager Caffrey:** Yeah, and they likely will. As you recall with the Redondo cameras, we had a lot of delays with PSE doing the power on those. So Verra believes generally they can do all their work in 90 days. But that is reliant on PSE doing their work in 90 days, and generally that doesn’t work. So — but you’re right that the Woodmont ones is as simple as just reprogramming. There’s probably some process to that, and coordinating with the court. So that’s not something that’s going to be just flipping a switch. But that’s going to be the easiest because the cameras are already there. The other ones will completely depend on where the power is, how far it needs to go, and all that stuff. And then just a reminder that Verra does cover the installation costs, which can be significant. So they pay all the upfront costs, and in exchange the city signs a five-year contract. So that covers their upfront costs.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Thank you.

**Mayor Matsui:** All right. All my questions were answered. Thank you very much for your presentation. Is there a motion? Council Member Nutting.

**Council Member Nutting:** I move to pass draft ordinance 26-049 to a second reading on the next regular council meeting agenda.

**Mayor Matsui:** I hear a second from Council Member Steinmetz. Any discussion? Council Member Blosse.

**Council Member Blosse:** I support the new cameras. I’m a little uneasy with the 24/7 Woodmont camera. Like Council Member Steinmetz said, using the authority of a school walk zone to have tickets at 2 a.m. — I think it goes a little against the spirit of what the law is, even though it is allowed. I think it could be confusing to drivers to have two different sets of speeds that are enforced at different times of the day. So I’m a little uneasy about it. Kind of want to hear from my colleagues maybe on that, if you have some thoughts.

**Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Desimone.

**Council Member Desimone:** I do have some thoughts. The speed limit is 35. We’re not changing the speed limit. All we’re doing is reminding you that when it’s not 20, it’s 35. So we’re encouraging better behavior. I believe we’re not changing anything. We’re just encouraging better behavior. So if you did want to do 80 at 2 a.m., we’re discouraging that behavior at that time. So the speed limit isn’t changing. We’re just changing the consequences. Which I will be for it.

**Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Nutting.

**Council Member Nutting:** Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Council Member Blosse, for your concerns. I do believe with the shortage of having officers that can sit on patrol and the calls for service in the city, I think this is a force multiplier in an area that consistently — when I’ve been on a ride-along, we’ve seen several vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed in that location. And to agree with Council Member Desimone, it is encouraging people to slow down in that area. It becomes a pass-through in the early to late evening and early morning hours, and so I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. Thank you.

**Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Steinmetz.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** As someone who has made a contribution to the city coffers from those particular cameras, I can tell you they do change behavior. They really do. And that was a long time before I was on council. I just want to clarify that. But I agree with Council Member Desimone. It’s just enforcing an existing speed limit. And yes, we’re using the rationale for the school walk zone. That — I was wondering whether or not that might change or limit what we can do, but apparently not right now. So I think it’s okay to enforce the speed limit. And to Council Member Nutting’s point, we don’t — we hear often from people: speeders, speeders, speeders are a problem. Well, this is something we can do to address that issue. And we can’t afford to hire more police officers, let alone get Officer Eddie — I’m sorry — back out there in his Harley and his boots, as attractive as that might be. You know, it’s just not feasible. And this is a way that we can actually try to address some of the problems. So I’m okay with it.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Deputy Mayor Achziger.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Yes. Thank you. And I would just remind everybody that, you know, as we saw earlier with the red light cameras — I mean, we looked at it as, “Okay, there’s declining revenue.” That’s a success. We’re actually changing people’s habits and we’re actually educating the public that, “Hey, you need to go the speed limit.” So I think all of this is indicative trying to change behavior to make our roads safer, and I think it’s commendable.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Council Member Harris.

**Council Member Harris:** Surprise. I have concerns. I was thinking how delightful it would be if you could flip a switch and get all four online at the same day. I think that it will come across as very expansive to people. And I agree — you know, red light cameras are just a very different thing behavior-wise from speed cameras. And I understand everybody should go the speed limit and — but we tend to conflate things like the noise at Redondo with — there’s just a certain point where people will feel micromanaged. And we talk about this small-town vibe and so on. But I’m nervous about — you know, people should definitely drive a speed limit and so on, but when I think about the complaints that I hear, they tend to be east-west, because we have a surprising number of really entertaining roads like 223rd, 260th and so on, 272nd. And if you wanted to change behavior, I don’t know — that’s just my anecdotal thing rather than some of this stuff. I think it will irritate a lot of people. Maybe it’ll change behavior. But we have a certain amount of throughput on Kent-Des Moines Road, for example, and people are going to hate it. So, yeah.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Deputy Mayor Achziger.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Yes. I’d just like to point out that the park zone cameras in Redondo have resulted in a significant lowering of the speed. The problem in Redondo — there is still the speed element. That’s not going to go away. We have people that are actually — the scofflaws are there and they know exactly where the cameras are and they will play their games on trying to not get caught on the thing. But there has been a definite effect on the amount of speeding down there.

Noise is another problem. We’re working to address that separately. But I think it does go a long way towards educating people that we don’t need this meeting. And the other thing is, too, is that — and I am amused sometimes when I see the social media posts and everything about, “Well, the road — that speed limit is just not adequate.” I mean, there were people that were saying, you know, it was 25 miles an hour through Redondo, was the speed limit, and they’re going, “Well, that should be a 35 mile an hour road.” And other people say, “Well, okay, why should I be ticketed for only — it’s actually six, I believe, is what the cameras are set at — six miles over the speed limit?” Limit means limit. So it’s, I think, a case of people are coming up with excuses for their behavior, but they’ll learn.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. All right. The only thing I wanted to add is that imagining someone going over 40 on 16th Avenue is frightening. And we know that people routinely go more than that. And I — if I could drop the speed limit on 16th, I think that would even be more helpful. Where I work, in the city, the speed limit was dropped around almost all streets by 5 miles after an entire family was hit by a car outside of middle school. And I think it does make a difference to sort of say, “Hey, you need to slow down.” And there are consequences. Because that corner was notoriously — people sped, people didn’t look. It was on the crest of a hill. It was a recipe for disaster. And it took that level of disaster and really loss for the city to do something. And I think that this supports our safe streets, our Target Zero — yes, Target Zero — Vision Zero goals. And I look forward to seeing those cameras going online.

So let’s go ahead and move to a vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand as I call your name. Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Harris — I’ll go back — Council Member Nutting, Council Member Blosse, and myself. That passes 7–0. Thank you for the robust discussion.

—

## New business

**2:17:28 — Mayor Matsui:** Now it’s time for our new business items. The purpose is to propose business items to come up on a future agenda. Any recommendation will simply need a raise of hand for three council members. Do any council members have any new business they’d like to propose? Council Member Blosse.

**Council Member Blosse:** Thank you, Mayor. The city recently decided to discontinue the long-running afterschool program, Club Chaos. We’ve heard from a lot of frustrated parents about this decision. I think it’d be good to bring this up to the next council meeting to have the city staff explain the decision, explain what comes next. I think it’d be good to have that publicly to kind of explain that to the whole community.

**Mayor Matsui:** All right. Thank you. So, any other new business items? All right, let’s move on to council member reports, which are limited to four minutes. We’ll start with Council Member Harris.

—

## Council member reports

**2:18:26 — Council Member Harris:** Thank you. I was a bit strappy, I guess, about the whole strategic thing. And I want to use my time to just mention that the single most effective airport mitigation program in the history of any airport around America was called the Sea-Tac Communities Plan, from 1973 to 1976. And you know it as North SeaTac Park, Des Moines Creek Business Park, $350 million in sound insulation, roads, noise monitoring system. It was supposed to be an air quality monitoring system. It was a land use plan between King County and the Port of Seattle. Because back then the entirety of the area — Des Moines was just this little sliver — was unincorporated. And so it was a comp plan. Because anybody who runs an airport knows that it’s not about the air. They don’t control the air. They control land use. And that is why the discussions are with land use planners. It’s uncomfortable to have this discussion, but airports affect everything within five miles. That’s why when you build a big airport now, you site it six miles away from people.

The intent was to create prosperity for the surrounding area. And the discussion with the warehouse taxes and so forth tonight is a sliver of what that should be. And I understand people have passions about downtown and other stuff, and everything like that. But under the hood, the port is the single biggest thing that will ever impact this city. It is the greatest impact negatively and it is the greatest potential revenue source, and we have to become good at it.

I attended the StART thing. No, actually I attended the New York thing — because the Airport Committee is enthusiastic about it. We are a decade ahead of any other airport community in terms of talking with our major airport sponsor. And our relationship is terrible, but it’s 10 years better than second place. We can do better. But we’re going to go backwards if we use everyone who is one or two decades behind us as a model. And the problem is, is that people come into this every one or two years, and they reinvent the wheel, and they do it less well than the people before them. And so I tend to just lean into our development director, because if there is any forward momentum, it will be through land use. It was ever thus. And this is our generational opportunity not to blow it again. And I sure hope we get there. But right now, what I hear at every public meeting is grievance and inaccuracy. And there is no reason for the port to give you a dime if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Thank you.

**2:22:26 — Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Desimone.

**Council Member Desimone:** Thank you. So I had a jam-packed, super-duper fun weekend this weekend, but I did want to talk about going to the MIB — Men in Black — birthday bash. I had a hoot of a time there. It was my first time there. It will not be my last time there. And quite honestly, it was a pretty good Saturday night.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Council Member Nutting.

**Council Member Nutting:** Nothing to report, Mayor.

**Mayor Matsui:** Thank you. Council Member Blosse.

**Council Member Blosse:** I attended the USA-Australia World Cup game at the theater on Friday. Showed up with my son right after kickoff, and it was packed. We walk in there, there’s about a hundred seats on the floor, and that was all taken. Even the standing room on the top floor — it was kind of hard to find a space to watch the game. So, great attendance. I think close to — what — 400 people were there. The bar was open. There was theme food for the US team, the Australian team. So yeah, great event. And it’s a great preview of what the theater’s going to be. There. Everyone’s excited about all the new events that are going to happen there. So that was fun.

And then also attended briefly the soccer clinic with the mayor. There was — that was really well attended. About like 100 kids or so there, having a blast. So that was a great time. Thank you for the city and the city staff for organizing that, and for the theater. So yeah, and I was at Men in Black birthday bash event too. That was fun.

**Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Steinmetz.

**Council Member Steinmetz:** [No content captured in this segment of the source transcript — gap between 2:23:57 and 2:26:20.]

**2:26:20 — Mayor Matsui:** Deputy Mayor Achziger.

**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** So, not to be redundant — all of these things went on and everything — but I will expand on: we do not have a meeting until July 9th. And so July 4th is going to be the big celebration at the marina. It’s “Stars, Stripes, and Sunshine,” and I believe it’s 10 to 4. And so a lot of festivities going on down there, in conjunction with what’s going on — farmers market — and it should be a hoot.

And I understand that there are four members of the dais that — if anybody doesn’t care for what we do up here or anything, that we will be in the — bring it — we will be in the dunk tank.

But I do want to point out that I’m not quite sure how we’re doing this, AJ, but per throw there’s a donation to the food bank that’s associated with that. I don’t know what the limit is or if it’s bring a can or what. But — no throwing cans.

Yeah, no throwing cans at us. But it is a fundraiser for a very worthy cause, the food bank, of course. And so, bring it on. Thank you.

**2:28:01 — Mayor Matsui:** I will say ditto to all of the activities. It really feels like when summer comes along, in the end of spring, that things come alive here and we pack as much into June, July, August as we possibly can. I attended many of the things that were already mentioned.

I want to call out — thank you so much to the staff in community enrichment services who worked on their day off to put on the soccer clinic for youth. We know that they came in to not only support the first 50 young people who signed up, but the extra, I believe, 60 more that came on top of it. So I think we were closer to 100, 120 folks who were there, out running around in the field. And it was great to see. And thank you Council Member Blosse for supporting that as well. It looked like a darn good time. And I was excited to see that they were separated out by sheer size, so that the toddlers — and there were toddlers there — were not competing with like the 12-year-olds. I looked around and went, “Hey, someone knows what they’re doing when they organized this.” So that’s really good, because I would have been like, “Here’s a ball. Go for it.”

We do — and I want to reiterate — have a great community event coming up. We won’t see you here beforehand. So I hope that you have a fantastic July 4th and that you stop by some of our community activities, either down at the waterfront, or at the parade in Burien, or at some of the events that are happening locally in SeaTac as well. I want to remind folks that fireworks are illegal in the city of Des Moines and I hope that you choose to celebrate safely. And I’m sure that your neighbors would appreciate that as well.

There was a call that went out — over some of us — that if you sign up for any sort of alerts from the Washington Department of Transportation, they’re seeking public input around a low-income discount program for the tolls that will be going in on State Route 509. And they’re looking for community input about how that might be administered, or the rollout, or your opinions about it. And so if you go to the WSDOT website, you can find more information that has a potential to impact not only Des Moines but anybody — gateway to South Puget Sound here — who use the 509. So please go ahead and register your thoughts to the state.

I want to put out a personal plug that one of the things that I felt was inspiring and lovely to see over that past weekend was the number of our community organizations that came out in force, volunteered, put together some fantastic events, opened it up to the community for others to enjoy — and they need your help. So if you enjoy having this amount of things to go do, fun events to go to, people behind the scenes are putting that on for free with their own blood, sweat, and tears.

And we would love — I’m speaking for everybody — to see more volunteers show up for Rotary, for Pride, for — let’s see who else was out there — Legacy, for Men in Black. I’m sure all these folks would love to see you come out. So if you have a summer wish list, or if you have family at home for the summer that need something to do, consider volunteering. Go out there and see how you can contribute to some of these massively fun events that are put on by what can sometimes feel like a handful of really dedicated volunteers.

I wanted to pick up on something that Council Member Desimone said earlier — that we heard a lot of “potential, potential, potential.” We saw things like, hey, this is a preview of what the theater could do, the center of town and activity coming forward. But what made the difference for me is how many folks said, “I can feel momentum. I can feel things building up. The amount of activity increases, the amount of interest increasing.” And so it’s not just that we’re thinking about potential — it’s that people come to me, at least, and I hope you all are hearing this too, and say, “I like how things are moving.” It feels like we’re on the edge of moving into a bigger space, that there’ll be some changes.

And that to me is very heartening as someone who has heard a lot about our community’s potential for a long time. It sounds like to me that not just those of us here are feeling some of that coalesce. And so thank you for coming up to folks — coming up to me, telling me your thoughts on things.

I’ll never forget — we were at the Pridefest on Saturday and someone said, “Hey, I might be in the body of a retired person, but I’m a party girl.” So let’s keep it going. And I love to hear that folks are excited about all the activities and lots of things that are going on. So thank you very much.

We’re going to see you — gosh, it’s not until July 9th. Do I have that? Where’s my regular speech? Here it is. We’re at the end of our meeting. Our next meeting will be July 9th. Is there a motion to adjourn? I’m going to look to Council Member Nutting.

**Council Member Nutting:** So moved.

**Mayor Matsui:** Council Member Steinmetz, you have the second. All those in favor, please raise your right hand, say aye.

**All:** Aye.

**Mayor Matsui:** We are adjourned.

—

## Editorial notes (review flags)

A few judgment calls I’d want you to eyeball:

– **Public commenter names.** Several were garbled by the auto-transcript and I made best guesses:
– **Melissa F[e]lchetti** — rendered variously as “Fleti,” “Fchetti,” “Felchetti.” Best guess Felchetti; could be Falchetti.
– **Cara Han[e]y** — rendered “Clara Henley” then “Cara Haney” in her own words. Went with Cara Han[e]y.
– **Christie** vs **Christine F[r]ecks** — these are two separate speakers despite both being long-term Des Moines residents. Christine rendered as “Ferris,” “Frecks,” and “Freicks” — best guess Frecks but could be Fricks.
– **Judy Grand[an]dy** — rendered “Grandandy”; uncertain whether actual surname is Grand or Granady or similar.
– **K[a]n** — the Redondo snack-shop speaker, rendered “Kan”; could be Khan or another spelling entirely.
– **Russ Higgley** — rendered as such; possibly Higley.
– **Council member name normalization** — Blosse, Desimone, Steinmetz, Achziger all corrected throughout from the auto-transcript’s repeated garbles (Boss/Bloss, Desone/Done/Dmon, Simons/Simmons/Simus, Oxiger/Oxer/Oscar).
– **Council Member Steinmetz’s report** is missing from the source between 2:23:57 and 2:26:20 — there’s a roughly two-and-a-half-minute gap with no captured speech, only a marker. I flagged it inline rather than fabricating content.
– **ECONorthwest** — Caffrey says “Ernesy Consulting is working on that,” then a paragraph later refers to “the ECONorthwest study.” Treating these as the same firm (ECONorthwest), which is the consulting firm Des Moines accepted the Port grant for. Flag if “Ernesy” is actually a different entity.
– **Senate Bill 6002** — corrected from “60002.”
– **MUTCD** — corrected from “MUTC.”
– **PSE** — Puget Sound Energy, corrected from “PSSE.”
– **WSDOT** — corrected from “WASHDOT” / “washd.”
– **Sea-Tac Communities Plan** — capitalized correctly. (You may want this rendered with the en-dash; I used the hyphenated form per your style guide.)
– **Sixgill** (the shark) — corrected from “Sixkill” throughout the Shark in the Park section.
– **Redondo** — corrected from “Roondo” throughout.
– **Alexandra Lozano** — the disbarred attorney Annette Fox mentioned, rendered as “Lorzo” in the source. Lozano is my best guess based on her recent disbarment in WA but worth a quick check.
– **MoPD** — Chief Boe’s reference to the department; left as MoPD since that’s how he said it.