Vancouver City Council

0:00 (upbeat music) - Welcome to Vancouver City Council. Today is Monday, August 3rd, 2026. This afternoon, we discussed some public work off Burns campus supplemental and we chatted about some development activity. You're now in our regular meeting. We're coming out of executive session where no decisions were made. We're ready for a Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand and join me. - 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. - Thank you very much. Ms. Stoller, please call the roll. - Council Member Harless? - Present. - Perez? - Present.

0:59 - Fox? - Here. - Paulson? - Here. - Stover? - Here. - Hanson? - Present. - Mayor McEnany-Ogle? - Present, thank you. All present and accounted for. Councilors, you have the minutes of July 13, 2026. Are there any corrections or changes? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. - Move to approve. - Fox, seconded by? - Perez? - Perez. All those in favor say aye. - Aye. - Aye. - Opposed? Motion passes, thank you very much. Council, we have a very special presentation tonight, something very unusual for us. We have a presentation from the Girl Scouts for a Medal of Honor. So, Madeline and Shannon Evers. Madeline Berry and Shannon Evers, would you come and sit up here for just a moment? And Ms. Evers, you have a few--

1:59 - She's built today, so I'll be taking her place. - And you are? - Alicia Reagan. - Alicia, please join us. Alicia, do you have a little story for us? - About this. - About this? What happened? - Would you like to tell it or-- - Now, there is, there you go, got the microphone lit up. - Yes, so Madeline was on a trip with her Girl Scout troop in Greece. Some of her troop members are with us and behind us, and Madeline saved a young child from drowning in the ocean. She was in the water herself, noticed that a child was struggling. I believe heard and saw a mom in distress, and she pretty fearlessly ran right into the water, and because of her, that child is still alive. And I believe her mom said she had no fears, 'cause she's a pretty good swimmer. So she's here being honored by the Girl Scouts of the USA and Oregon and Southwest Washington.

2:56 - So Madeline Berry, what is your side of that story? (laughing) - Well, it seemed like just a usual day on a little trip with my friends. We visited an island that, we were just gonna be there for one day, and we were walking around, kind of exploring the island, going on this trail. Then we stopped about this beach just to kind of check it out and stuff, and then me and my friends, we were kind of hanging around by the shore, and then all of a sudden, I hear this woman screaming, and I was confused on what was going on, so I turned around, and she was kind of pointing in our general direction, and so I followed where she's pointing, and then I see this little boy in the water, kind of bobbing, and I didn't think or anything. I kind of just jumped in, and I picked up the boy and made sure he was breathing and everything, and then I sent him back. - Madeline, how old was this child, do you think?

3:56 - I don't know for sure, but we think about six, maybe, or just around that age. - And how did you learn to swim? - Well, I grew up with a pool in my backyard, basically my whole life, and so me and my brother would always go swimming in that, and then I did a couple of the Furstenberg swim lessons, but I was a bit advanced, so I kind of did extra stuff on the side, but then other than that, throughout Girl Scout camps, we had this extra deeper zone that some people, if you pass the little test that there was, you would have to wear a life vest, and so that kind of pushed me to want to swim more, so I didn't have to wear a life vest. - How exciting, and we are absolutely blessed that you are in our community. How absolutely wonderful. Now, what we usually do is make a presentation with a few of us next to a sign, but you brought some colleagues with you, and so I'm gonna ask Council and all of you

4:55 who are in Scouting to join us over by the wall. Someone will take some photos, I'm sure, but let's take a moment. Councilors, do a little walk. We're going to join Madeline over there by the wall. Girl Scouts in uniforms, come on over. Leaders, come on over, join us.

5:20 - You guys are in front, you're the important one. - All people in the back. - Come on over. - Councilors, join us. - We're just here for support. - That's okay, join on support on the end. So whatever, we've got lots. Scoot in a little bit, scoot in a little bit, scoot in a little bit, scoot in a little bit. Come on, join me on the end here. - We have all the cameras out and about. - Thank you so much.

6:17 (audience applauds) - You need your medal. - Oh, a medal? - You need your medal. (audience laughs) - This is from Girl Scouts of the USA. - Okay, there you go. - Beautiful. - Congratulations. (audience applauds) - So Madeline, we hope they give you a free trip back to Greece.

7:16 For saving a little one. Nice job. All right, that brings us into community communication, where we talk about items on the consent agenda, and we have one person, Carmen De Leon, please. - Am I talking to these? - Yep. - See the one? - Yep. - See what I mean? - Okay, so my name is Carmen De Leon, and I go by Mellow. So we're talking about these agenda items, right? So let's go over these items then. Let's see, agenda item four. Contract for opioids that they're gonna drive around. I'm wondering, are they gonna drive around and give people rigs and syringes and drugs? Because that defeats the purpose. I understand coming to people at their own level, they're on the street, yeah, you gotta help 'em,

8:15 but this really needs to be a seriously oversight. Somebody needs to see where every dollar is going, because as we know that they supposedly spent 600,000 on laundry, which I still don't believe. So for them to spend approximately a million a year on driving around helping these tweakers, I wanna see that. I wanna see less people on the street, falling over because they're on dope, and actually getting treatment done if you guys are gonna approve it, which I already know that's why it's on here, because everything on here gets approved. So anyways, the other one was, oh, that's the public hearing number eight, number eight. So the Pearson field. So I'm wondering, what does contract, according to, what is it? 5.2.1, security of data.

9:11 So the data in development, and implement, and maintain appropriate administrative, physical, and technical safeguards that are designed to ensure the safety of the data, and the city's data, and $5 million on data, because I didn't see anything about new runways. So why is all this data being stored at Edison Field? I don't understand that. What is this, a data center being put into Pearson Field that is getting mixed in with the language here? Because that's exactly what it says, that it's the city's data, and it's not to be taken out of the United States. So how does that work out? Is anybody gonna answer me, or am I just gonna talk to myself? - You're giving testimony. - I'm giving testimony, I know, but I have a question. And my question is, why is $5 million almost,

10:08 I mean, what is it, $400,097, is that half a million dollars on a data center that's right here at Pearson Field? Why is it hidden in the language that it says the customer, or the consumer, the consumer, but it's actually Oregon? So you guys are giving half a million dollars to Oregon to be working at Pearson Field. So I don't understand how come it says, I lost the page at the very beginning where it says, this is actually Oregon who's getting paid to do this. So why is the state of Washington, or the city of Vancouver, giving half a million dollars to Oregon to supply our own data center, and have our own data in our own city? Why are you giving money to Portland? - And that is all that I have on communication on the consent agenda. I'll bring it back to council. Councilors, we have six items on the consent agenda. Are there any items you would like to pull? Item number one.

11:07 Any others? - Three. - Item three. I'll entertain a motion on two, four, five, and six. - So moved. - Hanson, seconded by? - Stover. - Stover. All those in favor say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? Motion passes, thank you. Councilor Fox, item one. - Do we have any staff here to answer questions on item one? Okay. Well, I was just reviewing this item, excuse me, is easement release, and it has the dimensions and drawings for the previous or the current easement, and then it has drawings and dimensions

12:06 for the new easement, and the existing easement didn't have as a total, it didn't have like a total area of easement, but I was looking at the two drawings to just see if there was a difference in size, but also I was, I guess, more concerned about where, I guess, they begin and end, if this easement was meant for public access. I was just wondering, doesn't, I'm not clear if this easement goes from Chocklove Drive to Southeast 5th, or if the new easement ends in the parking lot of a privately held parking lot, so I was just wondering if I could get clarity about that. - Steve Wall, Public Works Director for the city. Sarah, is Eric or Ryan on? - Steve, we have Ryan on. Can you see him on your, there we go. We need it on both sides, Ms. Dollar. - Thank you.

13:03 - Good afternoon, council, mayor, and everyone else in the audience. Ryan Laposa, Transportation Manager. So this was an easement that was originally dedicated by the church, which owned all of the property between Chocklove and 5th Street, and when they developed, and they had done a development some 20 plus years ago, and when they did that development, the city required them to create this pedestrian easement along their south property line, and this was intended to be a public easement that would essentially allow pedestrians to move more directly between that 5th Street, that bend in the road there at 5th Street and Chocklove,

13:58 and they created a pedestrian access way through their parking area. That existed for many, many years. If you look at some old Google Maps, you can see what that looked like from the Chocklove side, and then over the years, that kind of disappeared. It was mostly a striped easement, and the parking lot ended up getting re-striped, and that facility ended up disappearing, and then eventually, they sold part of their property off. They short-planted it, and they sold part of the property off, and now we have IQ Credit Union who's bought this parcel, and they came to the city and wanted to know if they could relocate the easement off the actual parking area and into a different space, and so we've been working with them for quite some time to get that done, and that's what's before you now,

14:57 is a relocated easement. The size of the new easement versus the old easement, it might not exactly be the exact same size. The intent is the same. It's to provide a space where pedestrians can move through this space, and basically get from point A to point B, east and west. I think ultimately, and of course now, the city owns the parcel to the south, which is the Chockloff Building, and the Chockloff property that we purchased, and so I think over time, we're also going to be looking at possibly creating a pedestrian connection possibly within the city property, so for now, we're just simply moving the easement off the parking lot on the IQ property into a space that's not part of the parking lot.

15:56 The original easement on the church property, which is the parcel to the east, still remains. That's not being touched. Ultimately, we may end up just putting the entire pedestrian facility on the city property. That's a possibility, or we may just leave everything the way it is, the way these easements are going to be established. We're just trying to keep our options open as we go forward. - So my question, one of my questions was, are they still able to go from Chockloff to Southeast Fifth? And your answer is yes, technically, but there's just no striping. - Yes. - There's just no striping or anything that would tell a person that they could legally cross these properties right now? - We will work on that. We will work on wayfinding and delineation to make sure they understand that there is a facility there that they can use, yes. And then we're also looking, with the work that we're doing on Chockloff as a part of our

16:55 Chockloff 112th Complete Streets project, we're also looking at potentially having some type of crossing of Chockloff in that same vicinity where that easement connects with Chockloff. - Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And I'd support having a crossing there, too. I mean, it's that roadway, and there's so many folks that do walk and move through that space and that area, too, to not have another crossing, safe crossing, seems pretty short-sighted on our part. So those are all the questions I had. Thank you. - Counselors, do you have any, Counselor Stoburn? - Thank you, Mayor. Ryan or whoever, so a number of years back when the planning was happening for the Mill Plain BRT line, the modeling was done to look at the intersection

17:52 of Mill Plain and Chockloff. And when that happened, the model showed the potential that if we put, if we eliminated the left-hand turn from westbound Mill Plain onto southbound Chockloff, we could potentially solve one of the worst intersections in the entire county. And along with that would have come a station for the Mill Plain BRT that didn't end up materializing because we weren't able, we struggled to be able to justify closing that lane given current street configuration.

18:50 The key reason is if we did that, the concern would be, people would cut through the grocery store part, not Fred Myers, but Trader Joe's parking lot. - Trader Joe's. - And we couldn't put the stress there. The long point I'm getting to here is we need an actual street that connects Chockloff with 5th or 116th, and so my key question is where, have we been at the table, have our interests been at the table in this negotiation to think through the needs that we have in order to fix the overall street network in that area? - Well, we certainly had conversations

19:48 about this easement issue. We've not come at this with the idea that we're interested in having a new street through here, and we have reopened the conversations with C-TRAN and with the surrounding businesses about putting in a westbound BRT station on Mill Plain at Chockloff. We've gone back, we've taken another look at that intersection, we've taken another look at where that station could go, what types of changes to that intersection it might take to make that happen, and we have a proposal that C-TRAN is advancing, and they are, right now my understanding is they're just finalizing a scope of design services with their consultant to get that proposal from what's now preliminary to final in hopes of being able to start construction on that next year. So the idea of having that westbound BRT station at Chockloff is back on the table.

20:47 And so it's, you know, there's a lot of challenges with traffic circulation in this area, mainly just you have that bend in the road, and it would be nice to have a road that went over and tied into Chockloff, but at the same time, I think we've got ways that folks can move around through there that doesn't necessarily necessitate that, but it is good to have the pedestrian component there to alleviate that issue. Okay, I thank you for the update on the BRT station, 'cause that's been pretty important to me. I still think that there's a lot of reasons to close that southbound turn lane, and in order to do that, understand that there needs to be additional street network. So, but that satisfies me for this particular moment. Thank you. - Thank you, any other comments?

21:44 Thank you, Ryan, thank you, Steve. I'll entertain a motion, item number one. - Move to approve item one. - Fox, seconded by? - Stover. - Stover, additional comments? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? Motion passes, thank you very much. Councilor Stover, take item number three, please. - Thank you, Mayor, this is continuation on discussions that we had last week and the tabling of this item for a week. I really appreciate Mayor Pro Tem Fox bringing up the charter. It was great to reacquaint myself with that document that did not assuage my concerns, however. In fact, it just reiterated them. So, one, according to authorities and responsibilities, I feel very much like I am acting

22:43 within the responsibilities that were laid out. So, the charter sets out that we started with one document of $126 million, that got updated a couple of years later once refinement happened to 136, then further refinement happened, and that was for 136 with the 2024 start date. A couple of years later, it was further refined and four million was taken off of that number. The charter talks about a $7 million a year escalation, so we take 132 and we go from year 2024 to 2026, that's $14 million, so now we're up to $149 million. The document that was presented to us this week

23:42 says that there were 17 million and 12 million of cost reductions, but somehow we go from 149 million to 225 million. So, the numbers, I'm still struggling with the numbers. - Mayor, do we wanna mention that we went all over this? - Just a moment, Councilor, let's go ahead, and I know where you're going, but hold on. Councilor Stauber has asked a question. Staff, go ahead. - Jean Singer, Facilities Capital Project Manager, and so I'll answer a couple of questions, answer, so two points. That was written in 2021, so that estimation would have been done in 2021 before we actually had true escalation numbers. So, all that was done before we saw the historic escalation that's occurred. So, since 2020 to 2026, this Portland metro region

24:40 has seen about, oh, I need all my paper in front of me. It's 37% escalation, so actually you'd have to go back and do the math on that original number and apply the true escalation that has occurred. We covered that in the workshop today at four. I'm happy to follow back up with that with those numbers if needed. That actually took that 126 number to a number of 175, 172. That was without actually a selected site. And then, when you add in the site costs that we've actually occurred, you're in the range of 200 million. - Any other questions or comments? Councilor Stover? Any other comments or questions from the council? Okay, thank you. I'll entertain a motion on item number three.

25:36 Fox, seconded by? - Perez. Additional comments from anyone? - One additional comment. It concerns me that it's $1,000 a square foot. And that's pretty astounding. Thank you. - All those in favor say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? - Nay. - Nay. - Motion passes, thank you very much. That concludes the consent agenda, brings us into the public hearing. This is a public hearing. An ordinance adopting an interim official control pursuant to RCW 36.78.390, relating to the Evergreen School District Capital Facilities Plan adopted as part of the City of Vancouver Comprehensive Plan,

26:32 in accordance to VMC 20.915.060, and imposing a moratorium on the calculation and collection of school impact fees by the City of Vancouver for Evergreen School District under VMC Municipal Code 20.915.060 for the duration of six months, based on and adopting certain findings of fact, justifying this action, and establishing an immediate effective date. And staff, please, thank you. - Good evening, mayor and council. For the record, Chad Eichen, Director of Community Development. I'd like to provide a brief overview of the subject of tonight's hearing. On June 8th, city council enacted an interim control ordinance and moratorium on the city collecting Evergreen School Impact Fees for six months, until the district's Capital Facilities Plan, or CFP, can be adopted by council.

27:31 Tonight's public hearing is a requirement of state law in order for the interim control ordinance to remain in effect. So the council has already adopted the findings of fact and imposed the moratorium. This is a required process step. If there are no changes after the public hearing tonight by council, the moratorium will remain in effect until the end of the six month period. So the Evergreen School District adopted an updated CFP, which says that because the school district has adequate capacity at all grade levels for the next six years and expects the student population to actually decrease, that they do not need to collect impact fees, and that the city of Vancouver, city of Camas, and Clark County should revise the ESD impact fee in their development codes to be zero. The moratorium means that the city will not collect

28:30 impact fees on behalf of the Evergreen School District while it is in effect. Just a quick summary of the basis, or the reason for this, it has to do with timing. State law says that for the city to collect or revise school impact fees, it must first adopt the district's capital facilities plan in conjunction with the comprehensive plan, or alternatively, as part of the city budget process. The CFP was not included in the recent comp plan update, so as a result, the next opportunity to adopt the Evergreen School District's CFP is later this year when the city council adopts the biannual budget. As I mentioned, if there are no changes tonight by council after the public hearing, the moratorium will continue for the full six-month period, or until the CFP is amended, sorry, adopted,

29:30 and the VMC is amended to set the Evergreen School impact fees at zero dollars, whichever is first. Happy to answer any questions. - Thank you. Councilors, do you have any questions of Ms. Jarkin? Hearing none, I'll open the public hearing. Carmen De Leon, please. - Shocker, right? So I'm Carmen De Leon, Melo De Leon, and I was reading over your little thing here, and in case you didn't know, there are some schools that are actually making money and selling off electricity because they have taken their parking lots and put solar panels in them. So instead of all this money they say they don't wanna charge, which I don't think they should be charging schools anything, so I think it should go on forever in case you're asking, which you're not, but anyways, yeah. So places like Japan-- - Ms. De Leon, I'm gonna have you pass the bus. - Yeah, I'm telling you how to save money so that they cannot have to spend it all,

30:29 because in Japan, they clean the place themselves. In other words, the principal himself does the toilet cleaning, and the kids clean up the kitchen after they have lunch, and that's how they save money on janitors and stuff, because they take care of it themselves. That's how you teach kids to be responsible, by making them responsible for their school, and saving money on the janitor and expenses and yada yada. And by the way, he said that some schools are closing, yeah, Christian schools have tripled in attendance because of certain things being taught in public schools that their kids, they don't want to learn. So in case you haven't seen, the King School over there on 78th Street towards Hazel Dell is massively growing, 'cause my granddad's school holds 2,500, and these are only like 500 capacity, so they're tiny schools. But anyways, if you wanna make smarter people, countries like Sweden have disowned the thought of learning on the internet.

31:26 It's back to paper and pencil, which is cheaper books, because this generation is the first generation dumber than the last, and we can thank all this technology for that, because now you're relying on that to think instead of your own brain. The brain is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. And when you're letting the computer do this, and the computer do that, you get stupid people. So when you say that you wanna put money into technology and stuff, I say, put them into things like, yeah, we need plumbers, we need mechanics, we need hands-on labor, people are back again. People need to have home economics again, and these things are, you want livable? You want people to face the real world? Well, then give them real-life situations, you know? And that doesn't include making them questions themselves and confuse themselves, no. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, that's what's important. And putting them in real situations, which is grow your own food, you wanna save money?

32:25 Have a garden, and I've seen those playground areas, there's room to grow your own food, and teach them, hey, we grew it, now we're eating it, now we've done something great. Be creative. How come you want people to buy things out of a box and call that food? Instead of getting it out of the dirt and off a tree, like God made it to be, you're supposed to, God gave you every single herb with seed to enjoy, and people need to have their kids growing food instead of thinking that nutrition comes out of a box. Like I said, this generation's the first stupider generation on the last. - That closes the public hearing. Brings it back to the council. Counselor, do you have any other questions or comments? None, thank you. I'll entertain a motion. Fox, seconded by? - Perez. - Perez. - Roll call vote, please.

33:22 - Council member Harless. - Aye. - Perez. - Aye. - Fox. - Aye. - Paulson. - Aye. - Stover. - Aye. - Hanson. - Aye. - Mayor McEnerny-Ogle. - Aye, motion passes, thank you. That brings us into new business, and this is the contract for professional service agreement for Pearson. And who will be presenting this? Airport manager Meredith Fox. - Hi there. - Good evening. - Good evening. The airport master plan is what we're planning here at Pearson Field coming up. It's pretty old. The last one was done in 2013. It's outdated, so in order to get federal funded and keep those funds continuing for the airfield for the future, this master plan needs to happen.

34:21 And it's also gonna be providing an updated FAA validated obstruction data analysis. And that's gonna be pretty important 'cause we know how unique Pearson Field is with the waterfront and just keeping it safe. And we're also gonna have quite a few meetings in front of the public welcoming community feedback. So here today to get the contract going. - Thank you very much. Councilors, do you have any questions? Yes, Councilor Stover. - Thank you, Mayor. I just wanna reiterate something I mentioned last week. Had the opportunity to go out to Grovefield, which is owned by Port of Camas-Washougal. Meredith was there as well. We got to see this particular firm that's before us tonight as a potential consultant run through the beginning

35:20 of the master planning process out at Grovefield. So it was very interesting listening on that and excited about us getting kicked off here. Thank you. - Thank you. Councilors, you have in front of you approval for the contract for professional service agreement for Pearson Field master plan to Century West C10225. Do I have a motion? - Move to approve. - Stover. - Stover, seconded by? - Hanson. Additional comments? Hearing none, those in favor say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you very much. And that takes us into communication from the council. Councilor Harless. - I'm sure all of you are experiencing and have already seen the air quality advisory that has gone out.

36:17 Right now it's over 100, which is unhealthy for sensitive groups. But by early a.m. hours tomorrow, it's gonna be unhealthy for all groups, probably through Wednesday at least. So make sure to wear a mask outdoors, reduce your outdoor exercise and exposure, keep your windows closed. If you have a C, put it on recirculation if you have that option. And then for those that may not know, you can very easily create your own box fan filter. You just need a 20 inch box fan, a 20 by 20 by one inch filter of the 13 rating. And you just put that on the backside of the fan, either through like a bungee cord or some tape, and that will help filter your air and keep those windows closed. And also reduce your own pollution

37:15 that contributes to the air quality right now. And it's not just from wildfire or smoke, it's also a smog ozone advisory, specific to Clark County as well during this time. So and do check in on your neighbors, especially elderly and other folks that have health conditions. And maybe offer if they don't have a circulation filtering method of going and making that DIY filter for them. Yeah, that's all, thank you. - Councilor Perez? - Thank you, I just wanna, as a city councilor, my comment is really, I feel for our colleagues in Spokane, in the city there, and I just stand in solidarity with them. And more importantly, the courageous first responders that are working there to tirelessly protect the lives and property. While here in Vancouver, we're also experiencing those effects of the wildfire smoke

38:13 that's degrading our air quality, it's just a reminder that wildfires affect all communities across our area. On top of that, we also have our heat dome upon us, and so we do have a severe weather alert issued for tomorrow until Friday, and wanna make sure that our residents and the public can check our website for cooling centers, can check the Council for the Homeless website for locations, and if anybody needs a ride to any of those cooling stations, C-Tran will give them a free ride, they just have to say that that's where they wanna go, is my understanding. So with that, just a staunch reminder that as leaders of a city, it affects us all of what's happening across the state. - Thank you, Councilor, Councilor Fox? - As I mentioned last week,

39:13 there was a Children's Justice Center meeting last Thursday that I attended as your representative, and as part of our coordination with that committee, we were discussing a little bit more on our joint efforts to lobby for changing the law, that basically right now is a felony if there is methamphetamine and some of the other drugs that aren't really that found in homes right now, that children are endangered by those drugs. There's been efforts for the last few years to add fentanyl to that list of drugs, so it would become a felony if children are present, children are endangered by those drugs. One of the issues that we've been facing

40:10 as a city, as a county, would be that there's a lot of discussion at the state level about concerns with changing that law, and I've brought it all to your attention before, but I wanna say that, again, this year, I think we have a little bit more momentum locally, so that's why I wanted to share this update with you, definitely putting together a memo. I'll share it with you when I'm done, but it'll just recap all the things that we've been doing over the last few months, the legislators that we've been talking to, and some of the next steps, so I'll send that your way, blind-copied. - Great, thank you, Councilor. Councilor Paulson. - Thank you, Mayor. Just wanted to share that last week, Thursday, I accepted an invitation from the First United Methodist Church on Main Street to come to an open house that they were holding. I learned a lot, and I'll summarize it for all of us. So first of all, just to orient you,

41:09 it's 33rd and Main Street, Caddy Corner from the Old Memorial Hospital campus. They will, not very long from now, have a vine station right out in front of their front door on the new Purple Vine, which will go from downtown Vancouver up to Washington State University Vancouver. They've been doing a fundraising campaign to raise $2.5 million to refurbish their sanctuary, including a significant investment refurbishing their pipe organ instrument, which is a unique and distinctive instrument within the state of Washington, but also to make some updates to their sanctuary that's currently used as a performance space by Clark College because of the acoustics, and it's a sought-after space for folks who are wanting to do arts in our community. And with the new changes to the sanctuary, they're taking the risers out and making it a much bigger stage with a lot more flexibility for a lot different types of events. And so they were 60,000 short of their goal as of last Thursday, and they're very confident

42:09 that they will achieve that goal and begin that renovation posthaste, and they hope to be open with their newly renovated sanctuary with the new instrument a year from this December. I also learned that they offer other types of events, special events, like they do a performance of the silent movie Phantom of the Opera, and they play the famous Bach music that's associated with that that the public is always invited to join. But their overall objective, which I think is the most important thing I wanna underscore, is that their goal in making this investment is to create a space that's part of our arts ecosystem, where more arts performers and artists in general have access to another space in our community where they can make performances happen. And the way that they said it was six days a week, this is a space that's underutilized, and we'd like to see it utilized more. So I wanna congratulate the congregation on raising the funds and making that investment and thank them for adding to our arts ecosystem. Thank you. - Thank you so very much.

43:09 Councilor Stoeck. - Thank you, Mayor. So I'm gonna be chasing you around tomorrow night for National Night Out. Check in to find out if your neighborhood is hosting an event. If not, there's probably a neighborhood very near to you that is. Like I said, I'll be chasing the mayor. I know for a fact that every year, every year that I try to do this, I never get to as many as I want, and I definitely don't get to as many as the mayor does 'cause she moves a heck of a lot faster than I do. The second thing is obviously voting day is tomorrow, and I strongly encourage people to get your ballots turned in before the election started. The projection was we would have a 45% voter turnout tomorrow.

44:04 By tomorrow, as of today, we only have 25% turned in, which puts us on course for a 35% voter turnout, so a full 10% less. And this is an important election, and we need more than just a third of our voters participating in the decisions that are before us tomorrow. So turn in your ballot. Thank you. - Thank you, Councilor Hanson. Thank you. Yes, our hearts do go out to the folks in Spokane and the 647, perhaps as many as 800 structures that have burned, sent a note off to the council over there, and I understand a lot of support is coming from the west side of the mountains to help out with all of that.

45:00 National Night Out, city manager, just news came in just a few minutes ago. The largest National Night Out festival was at Furcrest.

45:18 They are canceling their National Night Out because of air quality and heat. I sent a note off to Public Health to see if they are sending out any notices because now that Furcrest has canceled, other neighborhood associations of which there were 12 were added on the calendar, and I don't know if a notice is going out to those neighborhoods. - Yeah, William Cooley, our community engagement manager, shared Cress's update with all the neighborhood associations. - So each neighborhood association will be making their own determination then, but the largest one at Leroy Hagen has been canceled. They'll look for a new date. A lot of vendors and everyone else have rented things to do that, but that is a big cancellation. However, weather's supposed to cool down

46:17 and then we have the Arts and Music Festival, fourth year here at Esther Short Park with evening performances of the Vancouver Symphony each of those nights and huge turnouts. So let's hope the smoke moves on somewhere but doesn't settle here in Vancouver for that. All right, city manager, you have a couple items on the agenda. Long-range facilities plan briefing, please. - Yeah, I'd like to welcome the staff from General Services up here to talk with the council about this. This is something that has been a, I wouldn't necessarily call it a background project that we've been working on for a while, but it's a way for us to really gather some data on the age and condition of our facilities so we really have a clear understanding of what it's gonna take to be a good steward of our public facilities moving forward. So I'll just ask them to go ahead

47:14 and give you the council the summary of the findings. - Hello, I'm Geraldine Moyle, the General Services Director and the group before you is here to give a briefing like Juan said on the city's long-range facilities plan. General Services initiated this work to understand the city's existing facility portfolio and through collaboration with all city departments identify the gaps in needed facilities that allow us to provide services across the city. You may have noticed in the report that was provided to you in the council packet that it lacked punctuation. This was a document compression issue and we are working with Sarah to ensure that a more readable document is included in the record. You should have found a more readable document on your chair. - We did. - Excellent. When with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Linda Carlson, the Property Management Program Manager who will introduce the team.

48:14 - Hello, Linda Carlson, Property Management Program Manager. The long-range facilities plan is intended to serve as a strategic planning tool that evaluates our existing facilities, identifies future space and operational needs and establishes a framework for making informed data-driven investment decisions over time. This plan also supports the future growth of the city. To do so, the plan was initiated during the comprehensive plan process and completed in late 2025 to allow the incorporation into the 2026, 2036 comprehensive plan. While the plan looks well into the future, it is designed to remain flexible and evolve as the city's priorities, service levels and community needs change. Our consultant, Makers Architecture and Urban Design will outline the planning process and methodology, share the key findings, recommendations,

49:11 next step actions and implementation benefits and begin a discussion about the city's long-term facility needs and priorities. With that, let me introduce you to our consultants, Julie Bassick and Beth Batchelder from Makers Architecture and Urban Design. Together, they'll be presenting an overview of the planning process and the goals that guided the development of the long-range facilities plan. - Good evening, Council. My name is Beth Batchelder and I am with Makers. Thanks, Linda, for the introduction. We are a small women-owned planning firm in Seattle and we also have an office in San Diego. This effort was also supported by McKenzie, who is an architecture firm that has offices here along the West Coast, but especially in Vancouver and Portland. So looking at your overall facilities

50:07 and the history, Vancouver has done a great job over the years keeping pace with growth and the facilities investments. That said, including the significant projects that are underway, notably the public works facility, the operations center, which stars for that because you're light years ahead of many other jurisdictions. That said, you know that there has been significant growth, recent growth, and there's going to be over 40% growth within the next 20 years. And more investment is needed in your facilities to keep pace with that growth. So this long-range facilities plan is an effort to strategically think and plan for facilities investments to address all these issues, to improve your city services and anticipate, prepare for that regional growth.

51:07 This process, we have worked extensively with city staff. We've had oversight leadership team that's helped with everything. We have done many interviews and some focused work sessions. We've also toured 27 facilities and then worked closely with your leadership team and city manager throughout. The scope of this project, we covered 30 city-owned facilities and also included the planned facilities, five leased facilities, all totaling just about 827,000 square feet. And that covers the five major functional areas, administration, public works, the parks, recreation, and cultural services, and your public safety. Looking at your overall portfolio,

52:04 you have a decent base in assets, but it is aging. And over half of your facilities are functioning sub-optimally. And that is just going to, that and the conditions are just going to continue to exacerbate as it anticipates growth and you continue to absorb that growth. Also to note, if you are budgeting currently annually, 2.4 million for major maintenance, but in order to adequately cover, according to industry standards, maintaining your current facility portfolio, the goal is to actually increase that to 4 million annually. So looking at all of the challenges that your facilities face, I'm gonna do a quick recap of your issues here. Police, your headquarters, they need to move out of that facility.

53:03 It's undersized and it's aging. Your precincts, while they are in decent shape, they are not that old, they are at capacity and they do not have any room for growth. Your evidence storage, you need more space there. And also there is no long-term solution currently for training for your police department. Fire, you have some really new facilities, but you also have some aging ones, specifically station five, that is in poor condition and at capacity. Your training facilities are also inadequate and new stations have been noted as needing in the water to serve the waterfront area, as well as Northeast Vancouver. Administration is doing pretty well. You have a gorgeous facility here at City Hall. It's in a prime space in your city. But there's some things that are needed

54:03 that were noted by your staff, such as larger meeting space, some training area. We know that the parking is limited. We know you also have done some work on some mobility studies. And we also are aware that you are planning to address many of those issues by the development at Chokolove, including addressing the customer service. Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services. Your community centers, you have some really old ones that you've been investing in, and some new, like Furstenberg. Lots of really heavily used and active places, but they are at capacity, and many of them do need modernization. And then there are some, such as the Luebke Senior Center, that are just underutilized. We've also noted that some storage is needed to support supplies for your downtown events and volunteers.

55:02 Public Works, you are very familiar with all the needs there. The facilities are in critical condition, which is why you've chosen to move forward with those investments. And we also noted that your Water Resources Education Center is underutilized. This facilities plan, we focused on some six facilities. You'll see in your packet, these facilities were the ones that were most challenging, and they also had quite a few different potential solutions. And we worked through those with staff, kind of talking through the different possibilities in order to move forward with some recommendations. - Thank you, Beth. I'm Julie Basik. I was the partner that oversaw this development, and I am delighted to summarize our recommendations, the cost estimates, and the funding strategy.

56:01 A little context first, as you all know, having been involved in a number of facilities projects, major investments in facilities can take over a decade to complete. So these are a marathon, not a sprint. This is about setting the city up to serve the community for generations to come. It's really smart that you are not waiting, that while, that you're investing in plans like this one, so that in the interim, as you are positioning to fund those major investments over time, you have guidance on where to target resources, how you can improve use of the space that you currently have, and how to set in motion things like land acquisition that help you in the near term with relatively small investments position yourself to have the most flexible, cost-effective, longer-term investments in your facilities.

56:59 This map and list summarizes all of the key recommendations from your plan. We're not gonna go into them in detail, but I will summarize some of the high points. In the immediate timeframe, so the next five years, focused on police headquarters for two new and two remodeled fire stations, the customer service improvements at Chalk Glove, the work you're doing at the Arts Hub, the major project at the Operations Center, and then once that project is done, depending on the future of community court, providing space for that facility. In the near term, we recommend remodeling some existing underutilized space at the East Precinct, as well as addressing some parking deficiencies there. Helping provide vehicle evidence storage expansion with some additions at your evidence storage facility,

57:57 that's the area in which their storage is most efficient. Remodeling and eventually rebuilding Station 5. Doing some minor improvements to shuffle rooms, improve meeting spaces, and potentially activate the first floor of City Hall facing the park. And then doing some minor improvements and connecting Marshall and Luebke to improve the use of those spaces. Medium term, identify the fire station serving the waterfront, and then a host of opportunity-driven projects that are either based on potential partnerships, such as the Joint Training Facility, or when growth demands. So when your population is there and you are ready, then you're gonna need to invest in some new public safety, as well as parks and recreation facilities in North Vancouver.

58:54 Moving on to costs, a couple caveats. We have taken costs that were already available from the propositions and/or your own budget, or were provided by ACC Cost Consultants, who was our partner on the project. For all of the recommendations where we have phased them in a particular year, we've escalated the costs. However, opportunity-driven projects, we're using our 20, $25 as those can happen anytime in the future, so we didn't have a year to escalate. They are full project costs, including soft costs, sales tax, et cetera, and notably they are based on information provided as of the pre-final report, which was completed in December 2025. So Council has already seen costs evolve in 2026 for your current ongoing projects.

59:52 These costs in the report are timed for when we finish analysis in December 2025. This chart summarizes costs by phase. You can see in the immediate term, there is a significant investment primarily driven by that orange bar, the operations center. The projects in this time period are immediate critical issues, and the ones that are scheduled later are less critical or designed to serve growth over time. You can also see that after this significant investment, there's significantly less planned to meet your facility's needs in the near and medium term, although if you focus on the gray maintenance portion of the bars, you'll note that every five years, we recommend increasing your maintenance budget

1:00:49 to match closer and closer to industry standard, which you reach at 2040. So we recommend a stepped approach in which you plan to increase your maintenance funding over time. Opportunity-driven projects, North Precinct, North Community Center Joint Training Facility, and some of those new fire stations, those will be planned in the appropriate time frame as growth demands and funding allows. Speaking of funding, how are projects of this magnitude accomplished? Many of you are probably aware, but just in case, we have seen that many, many of our city and county clients have transitioned to councilmanic, voter-approved, and revenue bonds as the way to get these facilities done. We have a long history of successful voter-approved bonds in Washington state.

1:01:48 We pulled together some interesting facts we thought might be helpful for city leadership and council, a number of fire bonds, some variety of police and public safety bonds, as well as those combined with other types of city facilities, and then successful parks and recreation bonds as well. Obviously, council will decide what the appropriate funding strategy is for each of these projects when they come before you as part of the budget process, but working with city leadership, we thought it was useful to identify a potential funding scenario so you'd have a sense of understanding how will we, how could we fund these projects? You can see the immediate near term, a fair number of them are already budgeted, although I will note that Fire Station 5 new construction

1:02:44 and police headquarters and property are not fully funded by what is in your current budget compared to what we recommend in this plan. Remaining projects in the immediate near term would be funded through general funds, current or future levies, general obligation bonds, rate payer funds for the Public Works Operations Center, and some potential state and federal funding. In the longer term, those projects are funded, we typically see with levies, voter bonds, and then impact fees for the areas that will be supported by, needed by growth. Okay, wrapping up here, we would like to close with two slides, one that summarizes your next step actions. So those are to complete the projects that are already underway, as well as to initiate planning

1:03:42 for the next step of near term projects, East Precinct, Evidence Facility, Station 5, reconstruction, City Hall, and Marshall Loop Key. Establish a project funding strategy, so consider and work with your staff to understand how you plan to fund those future years of facilities investments, and work to increase the maintenance budget over time. In summary, this plan will address your facility deficiencies, reduce risks, and bring your maintenance up to standard. It'll ensure your fire and police functions have the facilities they need to provide the emergency response your community depends on. It will consolidate public safety training, which we think is a really interesting and potentially beneficial project to solve a major need of both your fire and your police department in a very efficient and cost effective way.

1:04:41 It'll extend the life of your beloved Parks and Recreation facilities while planning for their future replacement. And finally, if it's appropriate, it outlines a plan to activate the first floor of this building so that you could have a more dynamic presence once the customer service functions are moved to Chokla. Thank you very much, we'd love to answer questions. - Thank you very much. Councilors, there's a lot here, and the document that you have at your seat helps explain several pieces of that. But do you have some questions right now or comments? Councilor Fox. - One of the pieces that kind of rose to the top for me when I was looking at the diagrams talking about the growth of the city and the city population, and I was just, well, I have two questions

1:05:40 around the growth piece. The first one is the amount of square footage of facilities. Was it just based on population growth, or was there something else driving it? - So I think you're asking about the square footage of facilities here. - Yes.

1:06:07 That is the orange solid line is a representation of when you constructed facilities and they were added to your portfolio. They were probably added based on population growth, demand, and a variety of other factors. So we're not really sure of the motivations if that was your question. The dotted line moving forward is including the future facilities square footage that we recommend in the plan. So it shows, oh, actually it jumps to what is already planned and budgeted. So that probably includes the new operations center, square footage, and new fire station. - Yeah, I guess the, yeah, looking at that chart just made me wonder, again, kind of the line, the progression, there was quite a dip, I guess. I wasn't at the city at the time. I mean, I was a resident of the city, but I observed during the recession in 2000,

1:07:06 the early 2000s, that the city basically had a lot of leased facilities that they ended up getting rid of. A lot of staff were let go. And so I would imagine that there would have been a dip in square footage that the city no longer utilized. I'm not sure if they gained that square footage back over time. It seems to me like they've been slower about growing city facilities since that time. So I just kind of would like to better understand that. And then also understanding it's not as large of a proportion of our workforce at the city, but those folks that can work remotely seems to me like we've been talking about that from the city center development standpoint, that the growth and that they've been saying that office space is not in demand. And so I'm just wondering how that conversation

1:08:05 about us basically not turning back our ideas about having kind of mixed use housing downtown and just having housing plays into us as a city saying we need more office space in these coming years. So I'm just kind of trying to understand more of this more current workforce trend, understanding that like police, fire, and parks are kind of a separate discussion. So that's where I'm at. - I can look into the trend of our square footage from back prior to recession to where we're at now and to see where we've grown and where we've been stagnant or where we've decreased and get that back to you on that. - I appreciate it. Kind of the decisions about, yeah, use of the space. If those kind of new thinking has been put forward since that time.

1:09:02 - And I can just add that I think it's a great point that this graphic, I don't believe includes leased space. I think it is only city owned square footage. So whatever addition and or dips would not be shown there. So that's a great point. And we should note that in our report. And I would also say that we, as part of this planning, given the trends in workforce and the different ways of work we did not anticipate growth in the office area. So it was driven by growth in emergency services and parks and rec and public works. - Okay, and my last question is, there was a part of the report that talked about the underutilization of the water resources center. But then it just, that's all it said.

1:10:01 So could you expand upon your ideas on how to better utilize that resource center or not use it anymore? I mean, we're spending money on updating it, a lot of money. - We actually talked through a bunch of different scenarios and we know that the public works facility that is being built eventually will be at capacity. We also are aware of some other leased facilities that are being used by the public works folks, such as the Washot facility. So I think that this is an ongoing conversation that needs to be maintained as you move into a new space, similar to administration with the move to Chokolove. You, once you finally get settled in the brand new operation center, that will help you to understand where your city is growing, where your operations are going to be needed. We discussed there might be some potential need

1:10:59 in the west side of the city to have a public works satellite or even equipment drop space. It's really just a matter of looking, once you are in your new facility, trying to understand what is needed after that to be able to accommodate your staff and your operations. That could include better utilizing the recreation education center or it could also be possibly making use of other spaces, getting rid of leases. It's really just something, a conversation that still needs to occur. - Okay, any additional questions, Councilor Fox? All right, Councilor Perez. - Thank you. A little bit along the same lines, I would like to see all the lease spaces that we have and getting that more bigger picture.

1:11:58 And I'm coming at it from the lens of our budget in the future. Was there, and I'd like to see the facility consolidation recommendation that was on here and wondering if there's going to be any more once you do take a look at the leasing spaces. Did you look at surplusing or divesting or disposition of any facilities? - Actually, we did. And I cannot remember, yeah, thank you, Geraldine. I don't, I think we, through the recommendations, in some cases, there's divesting of facilities as, for example, the Public Works Operations Center. Obviously, a number of facilities will be divested once that is constructed.

1:12:56 I think other, I can't remember other leased facilities. - I mean, that was a pretty obvious one, but looking at the entire ecosystem that we have for facilities, if we have a list that at least, at a certain time, we would want to identify a surplus or an opportunity to divest, especially within context of our projected budget. - Julie. - Would it be fair to say, rather than divest, part of what your analysis looked at was how to better use space that we no longer need, such as City Hall? I guess we shrink, there's more opportunity. - Yes, and I also think, in the future, if you do invest in a joint training facility,

1:13:54 with or without other jurisdictional partners, you'll be able to recapture the variety of facilities that fire and police currently have and use, as well as not paying to rent training facilities, which is a significant cost, annual cost. I will say too, just to clarify, the lease square footage was not included in this particular chart that we were speaking of, but overall, your facilities, we did look at anything if it had city staff or it had operated a city function, what, regardless of it, if it was leased or owned, was part of what we looked at. - I'm sorry, Geraldine, what did you say that we only looked at what? I didn't quite hear you, your microphone wasn't on. - I don't recall us identifying many buildings to--

1:14:53 - Divest. - Divest. A significant amount of the analysis, though, included how to reuse this facility as we shrink our footprint. If you think about the uses we're moving to Chalk Love and our recent shrinking already of each of our department's square footage in this building, that has provided a significant amount of space that we are actively leasing. We just leased the southwest quarter of the sixth floor to KPFF. We continue to have the rest of that sixth floor available. Our fifth floor tenant will have space available

1:15:51 in August of next year, so we will have additional space, and we will have significant amount of space on the first floor available for lease as well. So, a lot of it is about how we compress our square footage in this building, and perhaps others, and how we reuse that space for other uses. - So this long-range facilities plan really isn't all-encompassing of all our facilities? - It is encompassing of all our facilities that employees report to work. - Okay, so but it doesn't identify where employees are not reporting to work? - Correct, so we don't have that many facilities where employees don't report to work. - Okay. - I think if I may, Geraldine, it's also important to note that most of the time when we're vacating a facility,

1:16:49 a lot of times they are ones that are economically obsolete, and so our focus would not necessarily be on surplusing or disposition, but on redevelopment of the site. The operations center is a good example of that. The current VPD headquarters might present some opportunities to do something unique over in the reserve, so that tends to be what we look at, is how to take the properties that we own and leverage them into fostering new development, rather than just a straightforward disposition. - And I guess that's my point, is that if we're seeing trouble with budget in the future, we should be looking at making some hard decisions, and part of that is assessing where, what services or what areas we no longer use or need. If we identified the water resources, education, and other areas that are underutilized, that's just an identification, what is our plan for that? So just a huge concern for me,

1:17:49 not having a complete picture of all our facilities that we lease and own or rent out, whether employees report there or not, so that we could be smart about how we're working this. I get the operations center, I get the fire and public safety, and that's good, but we have this other piece of the pie and picture that we also need to acknowledge and identify, at least be transparent with it. - Absolutely, and that is certainly something that we can bring as a supplement. I would add to that our underutilized property without buildings, right? We own a huge amount of property that's vacant, that was not a focus of this, the focus of this was facilities, but if you add that plus those buildings that we lease out, which I believe, looking at Linda, is relatively few, actually, we can certainly provide that information and continue this conversation. - Yeah, all right, thank you.

1:18:47 - Councilor Haile, any questions? Councilor Stover. - Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the report. So I'm gonna just kinda go through in a lot of different questions I have. What is DVPC? - Domestic Violence Prosecution Center. - Okay, thank you. And when you come back with that list, and this new and recent facility is still a black box to me and I'm not seeing it here, so I wanted to understand where that is and how that fits in. On page seven of the report, there are solid lines and there are outlined lines, but I'm struggling to understand what those mean.

1:19:46 That is part of the optimization for accessibility and the faintness of some of the hues is difficult for folks with visual impairment, and so we outlined the boxes that were not as saturated with color. There's no difference in the outline versus not outlined. - The older facilities are full color bleed and the lighter facilities are younger. - Okay, thank you. Okay, that makes sense. Can we go to slide 15? I thought it was 15, it's definitely not that slide. It was showing near, yes. So we have, oh, it's, okay. I was confusing immediate.

1:20:46 One is immediate. I was reading intermediate, but then it says near term, so I was getting confused. Okay, got it. Now I'm there. Thank you. - Councilor Paulson, any questions? - Thank you, Mayor. Thanks for the presentation and first of what I'm assuming will be many conversations in the years to come. We've got a lot of work to do and a lot of facilities to talk about, a lot of difficult discussions about how to prioritize and pay for potential investments. It's been helpful for me to understand the scope of the report through the dialogue that's already taken place. So facilities in the context of this study means places where employees show up to work and that helped me answer what I thought was a question. And then I looked at this page again and I realized we have the art sub on here. And so now I'm back to my question, which is art sub doesn't have any city employees

1:21:46 reporting to work there nor will it in the future, but we've included it here as a facility. And the reason why I'm getting stuck on this is because Geraldine, you mentioned that we have a lot of city owned properties that weren't included in the scope of this report, some of which is vacant land. But one which comes to mind for me is the historic reserve, which is a significant amount of assets that we own. We don't operate, but it's not in the scope of this conversation. I know that we don't have employees reporting to work there, but we don't talk enough about our ownership of that asset, our management of that asset, our financial commitment to that asset, and we should. And so whether it's in conjunction with this study or if it's a separate work stream or a workshop where we talk about that, it was in our prioritization poll that we took a couple of weeks ago about the budget, but there wasn't really a lot of detail about what that means in terms of financial commitment or planning, and it's been a long time since we've talked about that.

1:22:45 But that was essentially a gift that we accepted from the federal government that we've put in the hands of the historic trust to manage on our behalf, but we own that property, and we have an obligation to that property. So whatever mechanism we can bring that into the conversation, we need to do that. And then these are minor quibbles, but we can renovate the historic, the police headquarters. It has historic status, but that doesn't preclude renovation. So that's a little bit of misleading statement. And also to say that the Arts Hub is largely dormant. I bristle at that notion as well. Those are just a couple of examples of, I could go on, I don't want to belabor the point, but there were some factually inaccurate statements in this report that caught my attention. So looking forward to the ongoing conversation, but also I think it's important, and this kind of builds on Council Member Perez's point, like this is part of a broader conversation

1:23:43 about budget issues and revenue challenges that we face and prioritization. And I know it's important to start a conversation someplace, but I think it's also important to contextualize the conversation. And if we have adjacent issues like the property we own in the historic reserve, I think that should be part of this conversation as well. Thank you, Mayor. - Thank you. Hang on just a moment. You have a couple of bubbles on this map that might be off. You have one on an island in Oregon, the purple with a white dot. We would love to annex that entire island, but I think Oregon wants to keep it. You also have a blue bubble with a dot way up high, police headquarters and property. What is that one? - That would be, in your report it has an asterisk

1:24:40 because this is where we are assuming would be a good spot to put a future headquarters for the police. So the property has not been identified, but knowing that there is potential to move to the north and to grow in that direction, that is just a potential spot. It is not actually naming any specific place that this is planned. - So would that still be complete immediate project? - The headquarters, you currently have in your budget $20 million set aside for relocating police. So this project does include some of that budgeted funds, but that does not cover it totally, just what Julie was saying earlier. - So I would hope that people would understand that, but we might wanna clean up those two bubbles.

1:25:39 Councilor Hanson? Okay, all right, thank you. All right, thank you so very, very much. City manager, let's move into cryptocurrency. - Thank you, mayor. So I'll start off by saying that the resolution that was included with the council packet has been edited quite a bit. The one that was provided that was included was provided prior to the county legal review and to our legal review. And what it really did, there's a newer version that in essence keeps everything the same except narrows the scope. Because what the resolution was asking the county to do was to actually get into regulating cryptocurrency-related businesses. That is an interstate commerce issue which doesn't fall under our jurisdiction. So it was really narrowed down to the point for what we could actually impact at the local level, which comes down to the location of cryptocurrency ATM machines.

1:26:37 And so the reasoning behind this is just because cryptocurrency crime, in particular targeting seniors, has been something that has been observed as being on the rise by the Vancouver Police Department. In the last statistics that we have, Vancouver had about 124 people that were impacted, but the dollar amount involved was over $15 million. And that's just Vancouver. That doesn't include other communities in the county. Some other ones, like Battleground, had a significant number of cases. Camas had a significant number of cases. And so the approach here, I think, from the Elder Justice Center was to ask the county to take the initial action on it. What we're seeking from council tonight, really, is the head nods that the council is okay with Councilor Perez being able to act on your behalf to sign this resolution from the Elder Justice Center. That will go to the Clark County Council. Then if the Clark County Council chooses to advance it forward and adopt an ordinance

1:27:37 that would regulate the siting of cryptocurrency ATMs, Vancouver would then follow suit with one inside of our city limits, so that there'd be kind of a cadence of events here. I'll ask Councilor Perez to weigh in on if there's anything that she feels needs reinforced or that I may have missed in that discussion. - Just a moment, Councilor Perez. Let's get the resolution up on the screen, because what is on our documents right now is everything with exchanges and mining. So Ms. Dollar, could you bring up what is under consideration tonight? And scroll down to the second page. That, if you could blow that up a little bit larger.

1:28:34 City Manager, this is the document that says the Board encourages the City of Vancouver to explore regulatory mechanisms consistent with their authorities, da-da-da-da-da, but it wants a county-wide ban on cryptocurrency mining, commercial cryptocurrency exchanges, and that is not what we are talking about. - Yeah, the one that was included in the Council packet, there was a revised version that was provided, but it came in too late to add it to the Council packet. - So do we need to get the new copy? - Let's see. - I can, there is only on that now, therefore be it resolved paragraph instead of mining. It is now cryptocurrency automated teller machines.

1:29:33 And commercial cryptocurrency exchanges and large-scale cryptocurrency-related businesses operations have been struck. So it just focuses on ATMs.

1:29:58 - Okay. - Yeah, if you give me a second, I can actually share it with Ms. Dollar, and she can pull it up in Teams. - Thank you.

1:30:28 (paper rustling) - While they're pulling that up, Councilor Perez, would you like to talk about the resolution? - Sure, so this resolution is drafted by the Elder Justice Center, which I sit on as a representative of our city council. Chair Sue Marshall is the county council representative on there, and we have the prosecuting attorney general's office, and we also have our detectives and VPD Zachary on there.

1:31:23 And so this has been identified as a big issue with fraud and abuse of our elderly community. So to be able to address this issue, the decision was made to have a resolution by the Elder Justice Center board that could be used at the county level and parallel at our level at the city to work together to protect our vulnerable populations. So the data that city manager has shared with you is data that's been put together by Detective Patterson and shared with the entire Elder Justice Center board just to see across the board all the cases that have been happening. So if you look at the adjusted loss with all the data on there, it's over $21 million on there, and a good chunk of that is in the city of Vancouver.

1:32:21 So the step is approval from city council that I can sign on as a representative on Elder Justice Center. Then that goes to the county council where Sue Marshall will present it, and if they approve and accept that ordinance, then we can make the decision to then pass the ordinance for the city. So it would be county, and then it would be our city. And hopefully other cities would follow suit. So there are other cities in the state of Washington, Spokane, Spokane Valley, Anacortes, Kennewick, and such, who have done something similar. There we go. Thank you so very much. - So there's the cleaner version with the one that would actually be up for consideration with the Elder Justice Center.

1:33:20 - So if the county passes this, then it comes back to the city of Vancouver to determine the regulatory mechanisms that work within the city, or do we expect the county to have overall mechanisms? - So part of the reasoning behind having the county also take action becomes that if you think about the UGA, it really wouldn't do the city of Vancouver much good to do a ban in the city limits if they were still allowed out in the UGA, because people would just direct them out into that area to get to the ATMs. So countywide action could occur first, and we could, I believe, follow with an ordinance of our own. - Of our expectations of the businesses that have these in them, and how they are removed or reported, et cetera, et cetera.

1:34:17 So our regulations might be different than, say, battleground, okay. - All right, thank you so very much. Councilors, do you have any questions of Councilor Perez or the resolution? Councilor Stover. - Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Perez, for bringing this forward. Thank you, Legal, for looking it over. So we have talked about other cities, but other cities are not listed here. So I would love to see the Elder Justice Board amend this to bring the other cities into the resolution. So other than that, I'm fine with giving authority. - Okay, any other comments? Okay, I'll entertain a motion then. Move, oh. - Oh, go ahead.

1:35:15 - Move to grant Council Member Perez authority to sign on behalf of this Vancouver City Council a resolution of the Elder Justice Board directing the regulation and banning of cryptocurrency automatic teller machines. Second, Fox. - Any additional comments? All those in favor say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you so very much. City Manager, any other item? - Just a note with some of the earlier conversation amongst the Council, we have already posted the information about the air quality warning and the heat warnings on the city website, including our information about the procedures around cooling centers. And then just for the benefit of the staff, we would be looking at our own air safety protocols and heat protocols to protect our staff

1:36:13 that have to work outside. - So City Manager, would you ask William to go ahead and send that note to the neighborhood associations that are planning national night out events so they can make decisions? - I believe that was done before the meeting concluded. - Perfect, thank you so very much. Councilors, that concludes the business of the Vancouver City Council for today. And we will now go into the community forum. This is the opportunity for folks to talk to us about any item not on the agenda. And it is also our policy not to videotape this. We always audio tape it. So let's go ahead and turn off CVTV.