October 7, 2026

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. We'll move on to introductions. Ally Pickard, Port Commissioner. Joel Cummins, Port Commissioner. Peter Lahmann, Port Commissioner.

Amy Graber, Executive Director. Erin Maloney, Port Auditor. Noel Vazquez, Facilities Director. Thank you. Jay Vander Stoep, Chehalis Basin. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see, let's look for the approval of the agenda

for October 7th. Move to approve the agenda for the October 7, 2026 regular meeting. Seconded. Then moved and seconded. Is there any discussion on the agenda? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Say aye. Motion carries 3-0.

Good of the order, public comment. This time during the Port Commission meeting is for public comment. Public comment is for non-agenda items only. There will be time during the meeting to comment on agenda items. Port Commission welcomes your comments and participation. However, public comment is not the time for the Commission to answer questions. If you have questions and would like to follow up, please leave your contact information with Port staff. If you have a specific records request, please see Port staff so that we can get you the information you require. Please stand at the podium to give your comment. If this is not possible for you, we'll do our best to accommodate your needs. For those attending remotely, please raise your hand in WebEx or press *3 if joining by phone to provide public comment, We will call on you in the order received.

Alternatively, you may submit written comment to info@portofcentralia.com by 2 p.m. on the day of the meeting. You'll have three minutes to complete your comment. When you reach your time limit, we will ask you to wrap it up. Thank you for participating in the Port meeting and letting your thoughts be known. We did have one written public comment from the Chehalis Basin collaborative for salmon Habitat. They sent a letter dated September 14, 2026. If you would like a copy of this, please contact Port staff and we will give you a copy. Move on to approval of minutes. Oh, wait a second, sorry. Good of the order, public comment. We had three people sign in, and Jan Banevich, would you like to comment, please?

I actually forgot my comment, written comment at home, so I'm going to wing it. I would like to suggest that the Port change the name of Centralia Station. The reason for that is because citizens don't know what Centralia Station is or where it is. They think it's the train depot. And if you Google it, that's what also comes up as the train depot. So since the Port has made successful changes in the last nine months, I think it would be a great idea to offer change things for the station and report to that.

Thanks. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the room that would like to make public comment? Is there anyone online that would like to comment?

All right, approval of minutes. I would like to move to approve the regular meeting minutes with an amendment. Item three, good of the order, public comment. There's a line that says Jan Banevich of Centralia declined to provide public comment, and I'd like to edit, to strike that from the minutes. I don't think that that's like a critical element, and it kind of sounds like, I think it was an error of, like, a request to, hey, would you like to provide comment? It was more, it was just so that she had provided the option, because she had signed up for it and it was just to reflect that. Yeah, yeah, I just I don't know how we can write that a little bit. Yeah, I just don't know that it's necessary because we don't take verbatim notes. So, yeah, I'd like to move to approve with that line stricken from the minutes.

[unclear] second? I'll second it. Is there any discussion? That's involved in striking something out? It's just that it'll be edited before we sign, Yeah, not a workload on you or not a heavy lift. No, no, okay, I mean, my comment for this is it reflects what happened at the meeting, so I don't think it's appropriate to strike it. But and I would just add, I understand what Erin was saying is that, you know, when, on the sign-in sheet. You see that someone had checked the box, that they what didn't want to comment, but the minutes don't reflect that. But there also is video that someone can go look at. But for instance, if the state auditor is reading the minutes and I don't, I yeah, but I think that probably that's the only time we put that in there. The only time of that is for I was my mindset was on audit review.

Yeah, but I think it's also fine if they can review the as you said the video that is available online to see that she just declined to provide public comment. Yeah, yeah, I think as a standalone document, it seems odd to call her out. Also, I'd like to just open the floor. We're talking about you as if you're not here. So if you have a comment that you'd like to say, I didn't talk to you about this in advance of our meeting or anything like that. But it feels odd to be speaking about you without your conversation. Do you have anything you'd like to say to that? I kind of agree with you. I have not liked the way that was [unclear].

Any further discussion? So you were here last meeting and you checked the box, but then you didn't get up and [unclear]? Yeah. Okay, you changed your mind. All right.

Right? All in favor of approving the minutes of the September 16th meeting, with the correction amended, with the amended minutes of September 16th striking the Jan Banevich comment, say aye.

All right, okay. Motion carries 3-0.

Entertain a motion for the September 17th special meeting. Move to approve. Second. Moved to approve and seconded for the September 17th special meeting. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Abstain.

Okay, motion carries 2-0 with one abstention.

Motion or entertain a motion for the September 28th special meeting. Move to approve. Second to. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries 3-0.

Move on to approval of warrants. Commissioners have before you warrants 25170 through 25201, totaling $81,011.78. Entertain a motion to approve the warrants 25170 through 25201 for $81,011.78 So moved.

So moved and seconded. Is there any discussion on the warrants? Any questions about any of the items? Did we put an ad in the paper then? The protocol, like legal advertising?

Yes. Anytime we hold a special meeting or a public hearing, we have to do a legal advertisement in the paper Or change a meeting or a standard meeting. We have to announce it to the public in a few ways. And one of them is the newspaper. Okay, so are you talking about item 25198? [unclear] 25197. Yes, yeah, and so that's from... That's not one, that's from two legal notices for meeting change. Yeah, yeah, that's okay, yeah. Any further discussion?

All right, all in favor, say aye. Motion carries 3-0. Thank you.

Old business: Small Works Project Number 26-07, Asphalt Repair. Mr. Vazquez.

Small Works Project Number 26-07, Asphalt Repair at 1709 Midway Court. Over the last couple of meetings that we've had, we've actually talked about finding the right solution and being able to save a little bit of money doing this work in-house. And actually, we were able to complete this job project. As you can see on the picture, that's what it looked like at the beginning. We felt like when we set this up to get it fixed with contractors, the estimated amount that they had given us, and a couple of quotes were a little bit high for what we were trying to deal with and fix. So after having a conversation with the maintenance crew and trying to figure out if we could do it in-house, we felt comfortable enough working on it ourselves. So if you can go to the next slide, please. This is what we had to do after actually reaching out myself to Commissioner Lahmann, since he has a background in asphalt and stuff like that.

I just wanted to get a little bit of input on what he thought that we could do to facilitate this. And he was able to give me just some tips on how to work around stuff like this. And it was really good having the guys learn from what we heard and able to do this actually correctly. Maybe you can go to the next slide. This is the final product as I came down and got them all put together. And it's nice and flat and even. And we were able to definitely learn something new, having some good advice and be able to learn from it. Next time we come up with something like this, hopefully we can fix it now. What do you think the price saving was, doing it in-house? So the lowest bid that we had had was around $9,200 to fix. [unclear] after the rental, that we had to rent an asphalt and concrete cutter from [unclear] Rentals.

That only cost us $200, and the labor for paying our maintenance crew for half a day and the load of asphalt. We probably saved ourselves a good amount of like around $8,000, almost so we were able to save quite a bit of money. Just doing that ourselves. And it's really good to actually have build some confidence within the maintenance crew that we can do. Things that we feel like they might be out of reach and able to fix ourselves and look at the finished product. And actually, Commissioner Lahmann said he drove around and he approved it and looked good. So I think we all did pretty good and that's a good job by Ronaldo and Juan. That's the first time using an asphalt and concrete cutter, and the first time using a compactor, and the first time pouring it down, everything. And we were able to get it done and it looks pretty good and we're pretty happy about it overall.

Thank you. Well, that means next week there's going to be a big old... No. They did a nice job. It's good work. Now let's see, committee assignments.

We tabled this from our last Port meeting to discuss, since Ally was calling in remote. So I think it's easier when we're all here to talk about which committee assignments work best for you, now that we have Commissioner Cummins here.

Commissioner Markstrom was on two committees, the .09 Committee and the Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce. I have been attending the Chamber of Commerce meetings until we found a permanent placement. So I'll let you guys discuss it. So what do you guys think? Do you guys, we have two open positions right now, Chamber and .09.

Joel, do you have any questions about what these groups are? I know you're really new to that. I did research and let's see and looked into it. So like the .09 is interesting because it's fund allocations of that tax, that .09 tax that they're getting for rural development. So apparently Lewis County is a distressed county and out of the 39 counties in Washington, 19 of them are distressed counties. And so that one would be interesting. It's for the, you know, purpose of It's stimulating economy and generating revenue and growth and alleviating that distressedness, right? So.

That one, it looked like there was a county commissioner-elect on that one, a few others, so that seems like a smaller committee. The chamber, bigger, city representatives from Centralia, Chehalis, a lot of different entities. The scheduling on the .09 Committee is Friday meetings at 8:30. That's what I could find. Yes. Right. Yeah. They also can be done over Zoom. Like they're not necessarily in person? That, let's see, they're not very frequent. Quarterly? Quarterly. I got a fill-in driver for me on Fridays.

I could, because, or I could just start. Once a quarter. Once a quarter. Once a quarter for an hour. Yeah. So I could start my job later. So I could make that happen if I needed to. So I'm excited to make new friends and learn new things and see what these are about, how I can help in those capacities and with both of those, the board and the committee? Well, I was thinking that, you know, I know that during the day it's harder for you to do, like, for your work schedule.

I am on the Centralia Downtown Association, and that meets once a month in the evenings, like five or six o'clock downtown Centralia. So I'd be happy to take the chamber and you take the Downtown Association, because that, again, it's a good way to get connected to our community and specifically Centralia. The chamber is a broader group. But yeah, you've got a good opportunity there as well to get to meet people and connect to the community. And the Downtown Association is an entity that is also really focused on community development and revitalization. They're the ones that hosted the roundtables, well, they're half of the entity that hosted the roundtable. The Economic Alliance is the other entity that hosted that. But the executive director, Mackenzie, [unclear].

Yeah, you do that one. At the moment, my, you know, Monday through Friday, Monday through Thursday are pretty flexible. So I can, once a month, I can do... I can have it on... the Chamber is noon to one, especially since it's kind of over the lunch hour. So that's not a concern of mine. But, and, well, I didn't get a chance to research that one then. So, I don't know, I just want to have a preference over. Ally, did you say the CDA, the Downtown Association one, that one impacts your schedule more, The other one would be better?

Yeah. The other one would be better for my schedule. Well, why don't we put you on the chamber. Joel, why don't you do the .09, and maybe the Downtown Association? That's an evening. Yeah, let's try that. Usually the first of the year we go through committee assignments again, let's just try it, for sure.

In the past, these were just dictated to us. And I'd like everybody to have their say, Yeah, and hopefully, you know, make a decision that works for them. Sure. Yep. So let's go with that. Let's go with Ally with the chamber, Joel, with .09 and Downtown Association. Joel, we'll get those meeting times for you for the Centralia Downtown Association. And you don't have to be like in city limits for that. Oh, no, no. It's because we support them and it's as a Port commissioner, You know, and that connection of we're trying to build that community through downtown and just like what we're talking about with the Downtown Revitalization Roundtable that we did. When we did that, you know, it's the store owners downtown and especially because we're really breaking into the retail market, having a pulse on the rest of the retail and the other areas of our community.

They also are responsible for a lot of the community events that happen. They are the driving force behind a lot of the parades in town, and kind of the culture of the historic town. So, yeah, they're a fun bunch, I promise. Did you say Friday is a difficult day for you? Friday is like full time. Okay. It's a regular scheduled route day for me. I just want to mention, the Downtown Association, they have an informal coffee at 8:30 at Dawn's Delectables on Fridays, 9:00 a.m., so they have their merchant hour, so they, like, all the merchants, can come together and I agree with that, I can. Okay, well, let's consider that one.

Yeah, I'd like to introduce

Jay Vander Stoep. He's here to report on the Chehalis Basin. Jay, do you want to give us your little bio, what you're doing, who you are? Sure. I'm Jay Vander Stoep, and I was on the Governor's Chehalis Basin Work Group when Governor Gregoire began that, and then in 2016-17 the legislature passed the legislation to create the Office of Chehalis Basin and I'm on that board. That's been a continuation of the Governor's work group and all. There are seven members on this board: Tyson Johnston from the Quinault Indian Nation, and [unclear] from the Chehalis Tribe; Steve Malloch, Seattle environmental representative; and then County Commissioner Brummer from here; a dairy farmer in the area, Jay Gordon, who's also the longtime head of the Dairy Federation.

Shay, the city manager of Hoquiam, has recently joined the board. So that's our seven members. And as you can tell, it's a very diverse group of interests and people, and the miracle in today's world is so far. For 10 years, we've made progress together and our votes are not required by law to be unanimous. But before we spend a dollar that the state has appropriated to the office, six out of seven members have to agree. And so functionally, pretty much has to be unanimous, and so far it has. And the good news say miraculous news, is that at the last meeting, they give the running [unclear] periodically, that 241 fish and flood projects have been completed in the Chehalis Basin through this process. And you don't, I mean, occasionally you'll read about these projects, China Creek, which has got quite a bit of attention here, and that's in Centralia.

But a lot of these projects aren't, you know, front-page news. They're small flood projects or habitat projects, almost never draw much attention, when landowners agreed to allow trees to be planted and vegetation and so on, a work that helps the fish habitat. It's not exactly wow news, but I think it's [unclear] that 241 of these projects have been done, and I won't do this, but I could go down, I could start at Pe Ell, go all the way down the basin and talk about individual projects that have benefited every area of the basin, through protecting water systems, protecting sewer systems, starting with Pe Ell. In the '07 flood, Pe Ell had spent about two million dollars building a brand-new sewage facility.

And here comes the flood, and the environmental damage, as all the [unclear] heads down the river and into people's homes, as well as obviously not good for the general environment. And one of the first projects was to build a small dike. And so that's not going to happen again. And anyway, there's been a tremendous amount of progress and a tremendous amount of time and trust that's been built among these members. And as far as I know, of the seven members, there's no personal hostility and we all can talk. It is not that we all agree on everything all the time, but we have good relationships, and that's taken a lot of time in building trust. The project that has taken a lot of time and energy and draws a lot of attention are especially the two big flood projects.

And I wanted to just touch on those. You've seen that, actually. The state first proposed a design that has been used successfully in Japan of a flow-through dam for flood control. In 365 days most years, it's open at the bottom, and the river flows through it at the same rate and volume. It flows in nature today. So it's not functioning as a dam, there's not a reservoir, water's not being stored, but only when the catastrophic storm is coming. Then temporarily, it's used as a it creates a temporary dam. We've been doing research on the three dams now in Japan that are built using this.

And in Japan, the average citizen eats 100 pounds of seafood a year. The average American is about 20. And so this is a society that cares a lot about its fishery resource, and they've decided that those two things can be compatible with this design. So last year, the board came up with five different options that we wanted evaluated in terms of flood benefits. And this first slide is produced by the state's hydrologist, and in green, it just means that they just chose that for the color, meaning less flood water. So they modeled what they call the 100-year plus 20 percent flood, along the lines of what we had in 2007.

And this is with the water retention facility built at Pe Ell, in the very center bottom left, and then also modifying Skookumchuck Dam. Now, it does not have predictable flood storage, but we have a proposal for that I want to come back to, because it's important, especially important for Centralia and Bucoda. So it's assuming those two things are in place. There is the reduction in flood levels all across the Chehalis Basin, and you could look at the diagram. Obviously, deeper green is more of a reduction, a lighter green, less of a reduction. But you have less flood water through every community in the Chehalis Basin, all the way down from Pe Ell to Aberdeen.

The reason you do is this would store 62,000 acre-feet of flood water temporarily during the catastrophic storm. And what's 62,000 acre-feet of water? Well, it's about 120 miles, a mile wide and a foot deep of water. And just, people... 300,000 acre-feet of water came through our communities in the five days in '07. And people don't, you know, what's that mean? A football field, from the 13-yard line to the goal line, there's an acre. A foot deep of water, there's an acre-foot of water. 300,000 acre-feet of water is from here to Kamloops, Canada, and 100 miles north, a mile wide, a foot deep. It's just a colossal amount of water that comes in these giant floods.

So we're talking about a piece of this that would store about 20% of that, 62,000 acre-feet of water. And that is the difference between a big flood. It's still going to be a big flood, but a big flood and a catastrophic flood. That's [unclear] and I-5 being closed. That's the difference between 1,400 homes being flooded or not. So, along with Skookumchuck Dam modification, I want to get to that. So that dam built in about 1970 has a very small, my words, spigot outflow. And so in a normal October, November, when the rains come, that reservoir fills up. And so now it's December or January, when the giant [unclear] catastrophic storms hit, it's full.

So the water is just spilled over, and it's not providing a measurable flood benefit. It also doesn't have effective fish passage. They're built with some ladders, but they don't work. And so the Office of Chehalis Basin has spent quite a bit of time looking at: could you modify that dam to create predictable flood storage, basically have a larger outflow so that in September, October, more would be passed and leaving some space for flood water and create fish passage. And there's been some struggle over this in the past. Quinault particularly wanted to look at removal of the dam, but all of the board members now, including the Quinault and Chehalis representatives, are saying we need to seriously pursue this option.

So that's really a new development in the last six to eight months, and possibly a win, I think, for fish and flood, and the Port, and Centralia, and downstream. All right. So there, next slide. Whoops, that's me. Sorry, you told me now. Oops, okay, I'll just, just for the next slide. Okay, that's better. You're safe right. You are. The next, the other large-scale flood project that has been proposed for consideration is the LAND alternative, Local Actions Non-Dam. And in its [unclear] layout, it would have 24 miles of levees around Centralia and Chehalis, and the same hydrologists for the state, we wanted to say, okay, well, what's the impact of that?

And in green, you could see Centralia, most of Centralia, under that option, is green, meaning less flood water. The shades of pink to red mean higher flood water. And basically the dynamic there is, you know, if you have a [unclear] amount of flood water, and you pick, pretend like it's this room, right? All the flood water's here. Well, if we build a wall here, let's say, to keep this area protected, Well, the wall's going to be higher on the outside of it, right? And that's the dynamic you see there. And we've asked the people who have engineers looking at the LAND alternative to see if they can address that. Because I don't think the public's going to go for a plan that increases flooding on a third or so of the Chehalis Basin.

But no final decision on that, but that's going to be a next step in their engineering. So we've gotten, just in the last month, agreement with the board for the three-year budget. As for the legislature, years two and three, we are in our current [unclear]. But we have a board agreement on how to spend if we get the appropriation of $75 million, which the legislature has done in the last [unclear], planning how those monies would be spent would be set. Half of all of our dollars go toward habitat restoration, so it's fish and flood, our joint legal responsibilities. And half of it goes for habitat, and the other half goes for flood projects. And we've gotten, bringing all the participants, to have 24 million dollars out of this three-year window go toward continued work on the [unclear] dam, as well as six million to go to what I was just describing, looking at other engineering questions on the LAND alternative.

So that's a short one. Oh, I was going to be very good. Maybe one more slide. If you attended the SEPA hearings, One was at Centralia College here in January, and what you saw was the fish abundance for the four main runs that are evaluated, coho, spring and fall Chinook, and steelhead. You saw that at the flow-through dam site, there was a reduction, especially in the coho numbers. But the same analysis, we asked, all right, well, you did this, they call it an EDT model of forecasting salmon populations. You did that for the whole basin. You didn't just do it for this one little reach above Pe Ell. So what did you find?

And so what you found, so what's in blue is no action. In other words, you don't build, in this case, the FRE. And what you see in orange is the salmon populations if you do, and if you look at that carefully, you don't see a difference across the basin, at least that's measurable. And that's kind of the point, that this, and the Flood Control Zone District, that is the county, this can be done. No net loss. In fact, a lot of mitigation measures that increase salmon populations. Last thing, and passed out in January, the Flood Authority, that is made up of the 14 jurisdictions in the basin, Aberdeen, Hoquiam, Grays Harbor, [unclear], Montesano, Centralia, Chehalis, Bucoda, Lewis County, Thurston County, and Napavine.

Anyway, they looked at the green map and the pink map and said, we want to see the [unclear] as the preferable option. That decision again is not, it's not been made, there's more to be done, but there's where we are. And I appreciate very much your board, the Port of Centralia's, support of this process. It's We've gone... we had a catastrophic flood in '86, '90, '96, '07, a giant one, but not probably catastrophic, in '09. And now it's 2027, and I, okay, Gary, I don't literally pray every day, but in the back of my mind is a prayer that we get this done before the next catastrophic flood hits, because it is devastating to our community, and it is going to happen again.

I mean, it might happen in six weeks. It might be another five years. Literally, God alone knows the answer to that, but it's going to happen. It's going to happen again and again and the fish are in decline. And if we don't continue this habitat work, we're not going to have a viable fishery in the Chehalis Basin. I think both of these purposes are extremely important to either directly thousands of families, but indirectly to all. So that's a question. So the LAND model, the pink map, as you said, does that also take into account the changing of the Skookumchuck, or is this a standalone without the changes? Correct. Yeah, it's just really promising to hear the board approval of this, given the Skookumchuck change. I've attended a few of the meetings, I've done some research, and seen the quote-unquote fish ladders that are out there, and it's pretty grim.

And so I'm... that is a huge win, to be able to kind of get the idea that that would be able to be utilized in that way. I know TransAlta has been supportive of it as well, so huge win there, to be able to have better water storage north of town. Yes, yeah, it's, you know, these projects are gigantic, and we've still got permitting, and I mean so. It's not like, Yeah, it's done, but there's definitely processes to push that. So did you want my last slide? [unclear] Did you want to... do you want to go upstairs? Thank you.

Yeah, we'll take any more questions. Do we have questions? Any questions for Jay? So the idea on the Skookumchuck Dam was to bore a hole in it and do that at a very low [unclear]? Not exactly. There's an outflow now, but it's like 300 cubic feet per second, which in river terms, at least in the winter, is not a great deal. So it would be expanding. It's not proposing to create the same kind of... it will remain a dam. Whereas, I say, okay, you call the [unclear] a dam, but it's only going to function as a dam a handful of days every five years. But yeah, still, Skookumchuck will remain a dam [unclear].

It will just be modified to add outflow. And as Questions from the public? Yeah, please. Yes, Jay, so the Skookumchuck Dam, I'm relatively familiar with it. So we're talking about maybe doing a diversion route instead of spilling through the dam. Because at present, when the Skookumchuck Dam has to open its gates, the reservoir is full, which is wintertime, and that raises the level of the Skookumchuck River. So is there a discussion on diverting some of that water? Like you could, you know, channel some of it toward like Johnson Creek, which would eventually find its way to McIntosh Lake, On its way to the chutes.

Where you're taking up a whole bunch of acreage that consumes water in diverting water from the reservoir. Has there been any discussion about that? Or could it be a great opportunity for some hydroelectric power there in the middle of the wintertime also? So the engineers, they look at that exactly, no, but I can tell you they put a lot of options. And what I believe they're coming to is that if you increase the outflow, you're not going to, the idea is not to increase the outflow during the flood. The idea is it starts raining here, October 10th or whenever, and now it's pretty consistent. Well, it's that period that they would use the additional outflow and so that the reservoir doesn't get up to its peak. So that increased flow again will not be done during a time when people are flooding.

It will be the opposite. It'll be letting water go when there's not a flood, it's not harmful downstream, so that you can create flood storage. During the [unclear], you have to have storage within the reservoir, first of all, right? Makes sense, yes. But [unclear], okay, if the reservoir is full, it's got to go somewhere right and then it goes right up over the top. Yeah, yeah, so I was going to say, truly, if you look at the engineers report, I bet they've looked at the bypass as well. I know they've looked at storage basically creating a lot of land, basically a new lake behind it, so you have more storage and that's grossly expensive. Yeah, using existing channels that are already there, it's the least amount of work and engineering.

Thank you, Jay. Thank you. All right, Valvoline, staff report.

Thank you, Commissioners. Valvoline Instant Oil Change submitted to the Port, their concept site plan for review and approval. Valvoline will be a two bay, full-service oil change facility on South Yew Street, south of Chick-fil-A. I'll show you on the [unclear]. So currently, this is Chick-fil-A. Valvoline will be right next to them. They're in the [unclear], South Yew. There's Valvoline. They're proposing a 2,673-square-foot, one-story building. The Conceptual Site plan has to be reviewed by our Land Use planner to make sure that their proposal is in accordance with the Port master plan. So making sure they're following our design guidelines. It could be fencing, it could be their building height, their signage, etc. This is just their preliminary site plan after they've received feedback from the Port, then they will make additional changes. They'll submit to the city for their site preliminary site plan approval, and then they'll eventually submit for their detailed site plan.

So that will be the more detailed building plans, etc. Erin, if you want to kind of go through some of the slides, just kind of slowly. This will... It's not the best visual, but it will show what they have submitted. And I would recommend your approval as this has been reviewed by our Land Use planner. And I will also say I also had it reviewed by the Port's engineer. I had some questions on some of their utilities, and I wanted their feedback to make sure. It didn't affect any of our other adjacent parcels that the Port still owns, and our engineer did provide some feedback. And they will implement those changes before they submit for their detailed site plan. [unclear] to approve the concept site plan submitted by Valvoline Instant Oil Change. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any commission discussion?

Yeah, I would like to thank Amy and staff for the work they did on this. Amy went over the prints with me and it's a very nice looking project, very well done. So is there any public comment on this section? Seeing none, I'll close this.

That's kind of in the Salzer Valley watershed. Is there mitigation for high water situation, because Valvoline has pits, for the crew working underneath the vehicle? And is there any high water table mitigation considered? At this point, I would [unclear]... fall on the liability of Valvoline. It would be on your part, some full disclosure: we're going to have some high water tables during some times of the season.

Environmentally, that's all being reviewed. They're going through their own SEPA process. Right now, it's just their preliminary, are you good with the site details and stuff, that they are proposing, sort of a basement style for, you know, being in the, as you referred to, the pits. But those are really good questions, Mark, and I will check into that as well. Yeah, that's the next step in the process, that's the next step. Yes, right now, it right now is really preliminary. They were, yeah, just those pages, yeah, working. And then there are all the safety and risk and all those sort of things for the next phase of development. So yeah, yeah, Any further questions from the audience? Anybody online?

We have a motion to approve the concept site plan. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries 3-0.

Essential updates, staff reports, Regional Economic Development District. Erin. Last meeting, you all decided to send me as the emissary for the Port to the Economic Alliance of Lewis County meeting, and [unclear] with the Evergreen Coast Regional Partnership was there, and that is a regional economic development district that includes Thurston, Mason, Pacific and Grays Harbor counties. And they are exploring the possibility of adding Lewis County into that group. And it's a bit of a process. It has to have two parts. One, the organization has to change their structure to include our county, and also it has to go forward for federal approval.

So it'll take a while. It'll take probably at least 18 months before if they decide to go ahead and do it for it to be approved. So right now, they're just kind of exploring before they even start the process. If Lewis County even wants to join. And in order to join, you have to be a contiguous county, so because the borders...

So the benefit of Lewis County joining this group is that they are a 501(c)(3), and that status allows them access to additional grant funding. That the Economic Alliance does not have access, too, because they are a different type of organization. And so it's not membership-based so it doesn't cost our entities to join. The EALC pays into it, but they also have additional sources of funding. So it wouldn't cost the Port or any of the other entities to be part of this group. So the consensus was more of an exploratory conversation, and it was agreed that they are going to continue moving forward with the process. Everyone was pretty on board with it. The next step is for the Lewis County Commissioners. They're the ones who will formally approve joining the group, and then they will, like I said, restructure and then submit in about six months or so to the federal government for approval. So that is what I learned. Well, great, thank you.

Yeah, so I don't know if there's going to be additional meetings and conversations, I would imagine so, but I'm sure we'll hear from Todd Chaput as it arises. Okay, thank you. Awesome. Yeah, I think that's really good, important work. Executive Director report. Well, I would like to thank the commissioners for attending the Revitalization Roundtable over at Dick's Brewing. I gave a presentation on Centralia Station development, where we're at, where we're headed. I also had Vanessa Herzog, our broker from Lee and Associates, to talk about how we market the property. I felt that that was really important so that the community and the Downtown Association, everyone kind of understands how we're attracting businesses to our community.

And I felt we received good feedback and I thought was a really good community meeting. I attended the Association of Washington Business, they had their manufacturing week and they have this big tour bus that they all come down on. They make these stops along I-5 and one of their stops, which is exciting, is Rogers Machinery, one of the Port tenants. And I was able to go over there and attend that tour with them. Rogers did a great job showing all of the products that they create. They were really into it. I signed the bus as the Port of Centralia, and I saw that it was in The Chronicle, and they had some great pictures and I was really happy that Rogers Machinery was able to be there. They're one of our they are our longest Port tenant at this time. So to have them recognized, I thought, was great.

On Monday, as part of the Centralia Livability Committee that I'm on, I attended a tour of the City of Hillsboro with Deputy Mayor Kelly Smith Johnston, Councilor [unclear] and the City Manager. Some others were supposed to attend, but we're getting into flu season, I think, and I thought that was a great opportunity. We met with the Economic Development Director of Hillsboro, the community development director, the mayor, [unclear] in transportation, and they talked about how they are able to attract businesses to their community. Things that they do, they are a little bit different, you know, they are a suburb of Portland, they have a lot more land. Their population is 112,000.

But it was nice to hear their feedback and get their input and be a part of that. Yeah, I appreciate you going, because it's a big step in collaborating like, I don't think nine months ago I could ever dream that that would be the case, that we're on a shared committee with the city and looking and planning together for community building and development. I'm blown away that we're at that place right now, so And I know it's been in the paper, and we did a press release on it, but we did record with Yewturned, which is the developer for Chick-fil-A. They did change their name, they were [unclear], so confusing, but they've told me that they're starting construction this month. They actually told me the 12th, but Patty said they haven't done their pre-construction meeting yet, so I'm thinking, I'm saying, we're good with them starting this month.

And they estimate six to seven months for completion, depending on weather. So I'm really excited for the community to see that it's been a process to see, you know, the mobilization and construction starting, I think, is important. And I just think that it's going to make all of our other surrounding property there more attractive. And we're working through those other agreements, working through that marketing with Vanessa, as we talked about at the Revitalization Roundtable. As part of, since we're discussing Centralia Station, we are currently working on the Bill of Sale for the Yew Street dedication to the city. Now that our right-of-ways have been taken care of, we have to dedicate that road and the utilities to the City of Centralia. And I'm hoping that by our next Port meeting, our first Port meeting in November, that that will come before you for review and approval.

And I will also need to go to the City Council for their review and approval as well. And on another note, the state auditor has narrowed down their time frame. They said, oh, we're going to start in November, early November, and we said, great. But they already started sending lists of things that they wanted, and Erin and Noel have been helpful as well, helping. We're starting to gather all the documentation and uploading it to their portal. So staff is going to be busy for the next probably 30 to 60 days on audits. So if we don't get back to you, to the community, right away, we're a small staff dealing with a large audit, so just be mindful of that. And the audit is for all of 2023, '24 and '25. Correct. Yeah, yeah, it's a big audit. It is a big audit. Yeah, and that is all I have for you.

Thank you. Commissioner reports. Yeah, so the first thing I want to talk about was the Tractor Parade project. I know, Joel, you had mentioned, we were chatting at the Revitalization Roundtable about how you had some great ideas for that. And so I was wondering if you just want to take that. And you can spearhead with Noel and work together on that. I think that would be great. Is that... Yeah, that's fine. Will you? Okay. Yeah, yeah, I've done a few, and hopefully my pastor doesn't watch these videos and suddenly think that now I'm doing his again. I always do our church's. I wouldn't [unclear], but I'd like to piggyback on that. Since it is the Port's 40th anniversary and we are sponsoring it, we are going to be reaching out to our tenants and encouraging them to also have something in the Lighted Tractor Parade.

I think that would be great to have the 40 years of the Port and then also with our tenants, kind of following along. Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah, yeah, and if not, they can pitch in some lights. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, and I gave Noel some little magnet hooks that are how I usually attach lights to the [unclear], without damaging the tractor and things like that. No, no, this is our first float. Yeah, first float. Yeah, yeah, and your first float. Yeah, I did. Yes. And we're sponsoring. Yeah, we're the sponsor of the parade, so yeah. What is the budget for that? Can we talk about that now or is it? You know, we should get you and Noel together and then you guys can make a presentation.

Okay. [unclear] for a budget [unclear]. Yeah, yeah, sounds good. But if it's something that needs to come to commission, we can, but yeah, just let us know. We will not be buying a new tractor for it, just for lights. Yeah, we already have the tractor. Yeah, yeah, or we can borrow one from [unclear], because they have a nice, big [unclear]. Borrowing from the tenant is something unique. Okay, and then the other one is, yeah, the Revitalization Roundtable went really well. I appreciated that we all were able to be there and kind of work towards... It is a continuation of developing a relationship with the other entities.

It was disappointing that the Outlet Mall team wasn't able to be there this time. But it has been, and, you know, just a really great year. We've done it once a quarter. The hope is that we'll be able to continue to do it next year. My understanding is that it's the City of Centralia that has funded this, and so I really appreciate them and their vision in that. And so being able to get together with the Economic Alliance, the Downtown Association, the Port, all of the, you know, downtown merchants, all of it coming together and talking about what can we do? How can we improve things? How can we have better connection? And then instead of competing with each other, we're all working together and we recognize our strengths in individual areas. And I think that's so important as we, you know, break into the retail market at Centralia Station.

How do we not create redundancies or have a step on toes or push businesses out or things like that. We have such a wonderful community here and we need to continue to like, find a balance between growth and retaining and supporting our current community. So I think that that was really great. I would encourage, I will bring it back forward if the funding does continue and we do end up having this in the next year, I will bring it forward again, that we should all be participating in that. I think it was really valuable. That was all there. So thank you both for coming to that, and I kind of was like, put that forward for us, and I really appreciate you guys doing that. And then the last thing that I wanted to bring up was providing the meeting notes to the public. That's something that we don't do, that a lot of other entities do, like Centralia City Council, they post on their website.

So basically, our meeting packet, all the documents that we get minus the executive session documents or things like that. But I think that we should be publishing the meeting packet to the public. I think we should redact the payroll page. I think that's pretty standard practice for us not to include the payroll page. That just itemizes out staff salary and benefits and their retirement profile, and things like that of how they, And so I don't know that that's, I don't think that that's included in the City Council. And I feel like it's more of a personal thing that, I mean, it is public record. You can request it if that's something that you choose to do. But I feel like as far as just posting it on website, that'd be too far.

But I don't know how you, how does the Commission feel about making those documents just on a weekly basis when we post the agenda? It just includes the meeting packet as well. I think it would be a show of good faith and just transparency. It would allow people to be able to easily review, feel like they're up to speed, without even having to come in here Or watch a YouTube video. I agree. I once in a while actually read the stuff that the city puts out for their meeting. It's nice to have that option. For clarification purposes, with that, there are times where we add things into the packet after it's been sent to you. It might be a public comment.

It also could be, for instance, Jay's presentation came in later. How would you want to handle that, you know? And I think that I think in those situations to me, I feel like we, I don't want you guys to kill yourself. Trying to like, then re-upload it, because by that time everybody's either on their way here or whatever. And those, yeah, those last minute changes. I don't think we need to do. If there's like an error or something like that, it needs to be corrected because, you know it's inaccurate information going out. I would change it, but I feel like once the just the basic meeting packet that comes out at the beginning, I think would be sufficient. Unless, unless there's an error that needs to be corrected, I don't see a reason to do that. See if we have to check and or adjust. Okay, yeah, yeah, it goes forward, yeah, and if there's something big like that, like, Like Jay's presentation, we have the maps on the screen here.

But in the past, like with the budget documents or things like that, we have printouts here. So if there was something that we really felt like needed copies, that we could just have copies [unclear], rather than re-uploading on the website. No, no, that's a good idea. Yeah. Okay. All right. We'll make that change. Yeah. Please see what you can do to make that happen. Okay. And then one, I did say it was the last thing, but I do have one more thing, is that as we move into 2027, we have to have a new website. And so I don't know, as we're heading into budget and things like that, that is going to be an expense. I might be jumping ahead to budget, but I'm just stating again that, like, we're going to need to have a budget line item for it. Or, you know, I want to start, like, the process of researching who's going to build our website.

It has to be ADA, and that is required by the end of 2027. We have to have an ADA website. And so, just thinking and planning of that, it kind of comes from the idea of, like, you know, we're going to be uploading documents and things like that. I don't know if that's something that we can do in-house or not, but we won't be able to do the website in-house, I will say, like, just the standards and things like that. You have to have someone that can do coding and things like that. But it might add some expense to the [unclear], because right now you just upload the PDF. And so there might be some training that needs to happen as we move to that, of like, I don't know what software is needed or something like that, but there may be some expense or training, because right now it's easy.

You can just upload the bigger PDF file. But as we move to having it be ADA, that might change. And so I'd want to hire an expert to be able to do that, and then whether or not you can handle it, or it's something that we just pay a service to have done. So. Okay. Yeah. Joel, yes. Well, yeah, that, that revitalization was really neat to come in at the tail end and just feel that momentum, energy and collaboration. There was a lot of just having everybody at these tables, and from all those different groups was really neat to see. And there was lots of ideas, lots of reporting.

Like how they just took each table's answers and put it all on that white... that big board. You know, the presentations, the library. It's the kind of stuff that you don't hear all at one place.

And you have to pay attention to pick up those details of the progress and changes as an individual. So just going there and getting a big chunk of context, it's really great. So what else to report on? That's about it. Yeah. Right. I think. Since our last meeting, I attended a City Council meeting. Last evening, I attended the Career and Technical Education meeting at Centralia High School, the advisory board annual meeting, and I sit on the construction advisory board. So I talked to them about us. And maybe having a better relationship between the high school and the CTE classes and the board, and a little over a week ago, I had a meeting with staff from Senator Cantwell's office down in Vancouver, and we talked about the moratorium and the North End Industrial Access Road and transportation issues in Centralia, talked about Scheuber Road and the need, you know, it's nice to build the middle, but you kind of have to have something on both ends, so it works.

So we need, you know, we might be able to use some congressional help for that. And I will be out of the area for our next meeting, so I will miss that. But you guys carry on. I know in the past, when certain [unclear] were missing, they canceled the meeting. I think we need to move forward and have business, whether we're here or whether everybody's here or not. Two out of three. [unclear] So you guys carry on. I should be back for the first meeting next month. Okay. That takes care of that part. Now we're supposed to move into a budget workshop.

This is where the fun stuff happens now. So in the past, we haven't had a budget workshop and I thought it was important, especially with two new commissioners and changes here at the Port, that we kind of go through the budget, and it will help Erin and Noel and I, with your feedback on what is important and what we should budget for, especially when it comes to capital projects. But I wanted to kind of go through and explain the budget and why we budgeted the way we did with certain things. So I'm just going to go line item by line, if that's okay with you. Yep. Okay. All right. So the first item under operating revenues is lease revenue. There are three columns here. There's budgeted, so this is what we budgeted for the current year and what I'm projecting it to be at year end.

And then the proposed for 2027. And by the way, this will be my last year doing this. I'm just taking over for Erin, and she's new in this role, but next year this will be you. So for lease revenue, it's really, the projected year end is down. And the reason why it is less than what was projected is because we have a vacancy at 2120 North Park Drive, which we're marketing right now. I did budget for a vacancy for the first quarter in 2027. Wishful thinking that that won't occur, but I just want to be mindful that that's why that is down. We do have two leases that are up in 2027.

The first one is [unclear], and I've spoken with them, and they are interested in signing a new lease agreement, so I did keep them in the budget. The second one is WildBlue, or Viasat, and we do a ground lease. They have the satellite [unclear] here, and they were continuing their lease until their satellite falls out of orbit. And I'm waiting to find out if they're wanting to continue. It might only be a one-year lease agreement if their satellite is still good the minute their satellite is out of orbit. They're not going to want to continue their lease agreement with the Port, but so I did budget for them. But I have not heard back.

The next line item down is sign revenue. This is the LED sign, the electronic display sign at WinCo. We are the owners of it. We plan on generating revenue. Chick-fil-A has expressed interest on wanting to advertise on it. We're going to charge WinCo if they want to advertise on it and then any other future users. I'm budgeting the bare minimum right now for what I think that we're going to get. It could be higher, it could be less, I'm not quite sure, but there has been expressed interest and we're working on getting into that system, getting into the sign and figuring out how to set that [unclear] from this office. Or is it, you have to go to the... It's controlled? Yeah, there's like an online portal thing. Yeah, yeah. Okay. [unclear] into the sign.

[unclear]. Well, it's, the next line item down is landscape fees. We charge each of our tenants, not just the ones that lease from us in Park I, but the other ones that own their own property. A landscaping fee. We like it to be uniform. And Juan and Ronaldo and Noel do a great job of going around and making sure that all the landscaping is taken care of. And even in the winter, they'll take care of, you know, if it snows and if there's a storm, they'll take care of the debris. And so that is what that is from is money that we receive from tenants on landscaping. How does our service compare to comparable contractors? Landscaping contracts? It is cheaper. Cheaper. Okay. So I have been, as leases go up, I have been increasing that.

They have the opportunity to go, some of the ones that own their own property to go and get their own services. But uniformity has been important in the past to the commissioners, on how that is, how that looks. The next item down is the service contract for the Flood Control District. The Port has been the administrator for the flood control, the flood control has their own commissioners. We are just there to assist them with getting their budget done, getting that recorded and also doing the report that is needed for the annual levee inspection for the Army Corps of Engineers. In the past, the Port maintenance crew has went out and kind of maintained that levee. This year, I decided to charge the Flood Control District for our time and some landscape supplies that we purchased.

And I'm going to continue that going forward. And miscellaneous operating revenues, that is a little higher this year. Projected year-end is higher than what was budgeted, and that is due to, we do have a tenant that has had some late fees. We started charging for some public records of certain sizes, and that is money that has come through. I'm keeping the budget proposed for 2027 the same. I'm being optimistic that we're not going to have tenant late fees and not large public records requests. Yep, For non-operating revenues for sale of fixed assets, we budgeted in 2026 a large amount. That was, we were anticipating closing with Wilco, Coal Valley, which was bringing Chipotle, with the Chick-fil-A developers, and then also LPC.

A lot of those projects have delayed. Coal Valley has walked away from their purchase and sale. Wilco's still trying to work out their site plan. And so for projected year-end, it's only the closing with [unclear], the developer for Chick-fil-A. And I am proposing only LPC closing for possibly next year. And if I'm being honest, that might not even happen next year. It all is dependent on our interlocal agreement and our developer's agreement, getting all of that done with the city and the county. That's when their clock will start. They have feasibility periods. They had all this time. But I am thinking being optimistic again, that we are going to get that accomplished. I have a question, sure, because in my mind in the past, when I've looked at that number, I think we're artificially inflating our budget.

I mean, we're making a wild guess and we don't know, so why do we, why do we include that before we know that we have that? Peter, I'd say it's not a wild guess because we are under contract. Okay. And it is a contract to close. And that's the only time I add it in the budget. If we are under a contract to close, that's when I budget for the money.

I mean, you know, like, yeah, like this year, I mean, 13 million to one point... And we had purchase and sale agreements to close on them. And so I feel like with the state auditor, they would question, you know, why didn't you include that in your budget, if you have a contract [unclear]. But, you know, not all projects close, right? During the feasibility period, they might say something occurred, we don't want it, it's really it's really up to the commission. If you don't want me to budget for those purchase and sale agreements that we are under contract with, we can take that out. That's ultimately up to you. As the treasurer, I think that's a terrible idea. I mean, like, I understand that we had, that the commission had budgeted 13, and now we're down to one for the end of the year. But in January, I don't think anyone could have predicted the process and the and all of this, that has happened with the delay.

And then, you know, I, yeah, we have to, like... Yes, that is a steep change, but I don't think that... I think that this is an outlier. From my review of, like the history of the Port budgets, it feels like we're, we've maintained, pretty in line with those things. And yeah, with the signed purchase and sale agreement, we really should be budgeting for it. I will say, Amy, Noel, Erin, you have done an amazing job of not spending that money before we had it, right? And so in the past, I would say that there has been issues where the administration has spent these dollars before they arrived, [unclear]. Right. And so I think that Erin and Amy have a much different perspective and that it's not a matter of cash for like we were budgeting.

It doesn't mean we're spending it right. Like budgeting it in, you know, it's like, OK, we're anticipating that happening this year. But if we don't get that money, we're not spending it, right? And in the past, I mean, I'll just call it legal fees. There was a lot of money kicked to legal fees in this mindset of, oh, we're just cash for it. Whereas, you know, just because we have a signed purchase and sale agreement, that we have to treat those dollars, we need to account for them. But they are definitely treating them as conservatively as possible and recognizing that, you know, we're not spending money before we have it. Like with Chick-fil-A, you know, now that we've finally closed on Chick-fil-A, we can pay off a lot of those debts that we acquired in the line of credit and things like that have been settled. And in the future, I trust and we as a commission will make sure that just because it's budgeted doesn't mean we're spending the money, right?

So we're budgeting, you know, for eight. And if we don't have that eight, we won't spend it. I would like to add to, I should have stated this at the beginning, is that a Port budget is very different from a city budget and a county budget. Where they have to, they have all these different funds, they can't intermingle funds, they have to be very careful with expenses. You know, with the state auditor, we are a proprietary fund where we have pretty much just one fund. We do have two other small accounts. We have rent security account, but we really just have one fund, the General Fund, and our budget is strictly a managerial tool. So, yes, there are times where you will see port districts that will have supplemental budget hearings. It's really just to inform the public that they're making a change. We're not even required to do that.

And we have done that. We've done that twice now, this year, or once? We haven't approved any supplemental budget. No, we've done budget updates. We've been working on budget updates. Yeah, so, yeah, just so you know, and so the public. You'll see differences between the city and the county and the Port, and then that is the reason why is there? Each jurisdiction has different requirements. And I guess I was like, I was wondering why... well, I already said, you know, why we're counting it before we have it, but you know, and I look at that, well, you do an amended budget when you do have the revenue, but no, what you said makes perfect sense that we're under agreement with these people. So, yeah, I don't have a problem with that. I just wondered why we didn't, yeah, and that's why we're doing this, Peter, so you guys can...

I want all of us to be on the same page as we go into approving our preliminary. Or do we have a note section that goes with this? You know, at the end, you know, it's an item such and such, you'll have a note that that's why this was chosen this way or no, that's what that's what today is for. Okay, but I can, if you would like me to, No, I'm just, I'm just wondering about the process. Okay, since we've never done this, I know we're brutal. Yeah, The next line item is interest income. We budgeted higher because we thought we would have some property sales done by then and would be gaining more interest. As you can see, we're only at seven dollars in interest income compared to six thousand, and so I'm budgeting less for next year. I'm assuming being optimistic again. We're going to be able to get this closing done with LPC and be able to earn some interest on that money until next budget season.

We'll decide what we'll do with that money if we record with LPC. Property taxes, we're waiting on the Lewis County Assessor's preliminary numbers. So what I'm doing is just showing now, and it'll be shown this way, and probably during our preliminary budget. The same numbers as the year before. I don't have new construction numbers. That's where any new construction that has occurred. You can levy your last year's levy rate against that new construction, and that normally is what results in an increase in taxes. And this also needs to be a commission discussion. Depending what those numbers come in at what you, what levy you would like to look at, do you want to increase one percent, keep it the same. And then we also have the refund levies. And Joel, just so you understand that, there have been some refunds, quite a few refunds, that have affected all taxing jurisdictions in Lewis County.

Large refunds, one in particular is Sierra Pacific. So they fought their value, their assessed value, and they won in court, and they were required to refund that money. So, for instance, if we were supposed to get, yeah, so they take it out of our levy. So, for instance, we budgeted [unclear]. Yeah, so let's say we've budgeted 1.3 million and they refund 300,000 in taxes. We don't get that 300,000, but we have the opportunity to recover that 300,000 in the next levy. But that is ultimately up to you three. And Peter, you are not going to be here at our next meeting, and that's probably where we need to discuss it.

Erin, do you have our... When are we adopting our final budget? I think it's the second week in November, so really the first week we'll, we will probably [unclear] our preliminary. Well, you guys don't adopt the preliminary, but we'll put on record our preliminary budget by our next meeting. And then the first meeting in November, I think we should have a discussion about what you guys would like to do in regards to the levy. Before we go and adopt the final budget in the second meeting in November. Does that work, everybody? Yeah, absolutely. Brush up on your levy info, Joel. Leasehold excise tax, forest board tax and private harvest tax are all kind of determined by what is occurring. Leasehold excise tax, all of our tenants pay leasehold excise tax to us. We remit it to the state, and then the state divvies it up amongst jurisdictions, so we get a little bit of it trickled back.

You just never really know how much it's going to be. The same with Forest Board and Private harvest, so I kind of keep those around the same. That's normally around 15,000, sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower, but it's easier just to keep it around that amount. Operating expenses, maintenance and operations, these categories. These line items are all based on taking care of our buildings and our landscaping that are not capital projects, so this is maintaining it. So, for instance, engineering and architecture that could be an issue of, for instance, we have a maintenance shop that we're wanting to put a carport on, and we needed an engineer to go look at it, to say, is that feasible, and paying 500. That's where we would put that item the same with surveying. If there's a tree right on the property line and we need to figure out who the tree belongs to, that's when we call the surveyor.

Other professional and legal services: these legal services are strictly only for legal that involves our property and our building, so it could be leases with future tenants that is not capitalized. So lease disagreements. It might be an issue with a current tenant that needs something for financing and needs, like we just did recently, that's where those legal expenses go. Utilities for [unclear] buildings, in this category, is the utilities that we're paying on our vacant buildings. So because we have a vacancy, we are paying utilities when we don't normally. And so I'm estimating that it's proposing that's going to be higher in 2027 for that purpose of that vacancy in the first quarter.

Building maintenance and supplies, again, because we've had the vacancy, we did put a little bit more work into it. 15,000 is reasonable. We don't really know what is going to happen in regards to what is going to need to be maintained in the future year. So 15,000 is the range in the past years, that we're normally paying for that maintenance. Telecommunications and security is for our alarm system at the maintenance shop. And then maintenance salaries includes Noel, Juan, and Ronaldo. And it's a little bit less this year. We were a little short staffed. And that explains that difference. But I am showing that we're close to what we budgeted for this year, again for next year.

And then the same with maintenance, benefits and taxes for all the employees, including the administrative employees and maintenance employees. Excluding myself. I am... The CPI is 3.4 percent. We've always looked at CPI August to August for prior years' comparison. And I took that number and I rounded it up for all employees so that it would be kind of a whole number. So if someone was at 24, and the CPI ended up being 24.8, I would move them up to 25 an hour. So this, what is budgeted, does include that raise for our all of our maintenance staff. Miscellaneous benefits and taxes includes pension, includes health insurance, all payroll tax. All of it is included in that line item for our maintenance employees, miscellaneous land maintenance.

Again, that could be going and cleaning up a piece of area land that maybe had stuff dumped on it. It could be striping, some little striping that needs to be done on a parking lot. Fuel, I think, is self-explanatory. Equipment maintenance, [unclear]. Landscape supplies, we are a little bit less, maybe things are working well, that is normally our irrigation system. We have a very dated irrigation system. Poor Noel and the maintenance crew have done a lot of work trying to troubleshoot and fix our sprinkler system, but we're. We ended up spending a little bit less this year, so I'm budgeting the same, though, because, again, [unclear].

Street landscape, street lights, pump houses and storm water: this is maintaining, this is paying for the street lights on the roads that we own. It is we have pump houses that provide the irrigation to all of our landscaping. We do not use city water for our landscaping. We like to use, use the those pump houses and those wells, and we pay electricity, we do repair electricity on those pump houses. And the same with landscape equipment rentals. In case we need to rent a piece of piece of machinery, it could be a large tractor or something but we haven't really had to do that recently. It's like the two hundred dollars was spent on the... Yeah, yeah, asphalt, yeah. So going down to salary and benefits, this is strictly only for administrative, doesn't include any maintenance.

So salaries administration is currently it's just Erin and I, and I did write a note. Eventually, we are going to need to add probably an administrative assistant to handle the front office work, helping with creating files, We're utilizing what we have now. I did not budget for that. I think that we can wait and see how it continues. And if the Commission thinks it's important, we can add that to the budget. But for now, I, I didn't have that, but I think that's something that we're going to need in the future.

Yeah, I would say that, please check in with us as time goes on, of how you're doing and what you're feeling like you need. But also, I'd really like to finish paying off Heaton before we hire more staff. That's one of the reasons why I did not budget for it. I did... Commissioner Lahmann has mentioned in the past that he would like commissioner salaries separated out of administration salaries. And you'll notice I have a separate line item for commissioners. The other line item I created separate was Heaton severance. I felt that that, you know, it's not really a salary, it is a severance, and so I wanted to separate it out of those other salaries.

There is six months left on that in 2027, okay, and Peter, you had a comment about that to me, Yeah, I suggested, if we had the money, that we pay it off before the end of the year. we would still be obligated to pay the benefit of the medical benefits. And that kind of thing out through the term. But then I thought about it some more after I said that. Well, it's a low-cost loan, because we're not paying interest on that money. So, you know, and it might hit his income tax bracket, bump him up into another, for example, so I don't worry about that. I will be honest, I haven't... I would have to look at the... It might not be part of the agreement.

Yeah, it might not be allowed. Off the top of my head, I don't know that that was... I don't see anything in there. That will be lost. Yeah, I don't.

Anyway, just so. Yeah, it would be OK, because we're talking about $108,000 paying early, which is not in the grand scheme of our budget for the year. I don't... It's not a huge expense to either put on to this year or next year. But I get the sentiment of wanting it to just be done. You know, $108,000 is a bit. Amy's been doing a good job. We've been paying off our debt, smaller debts. And I appreciate it. It's looking good. I just thought that was another way to pay it off. I thought, well, it's like a non-interest-bearing loan. And I will say, Peter, it creates a little bit more work. Because I had to create a note and make a termination liability for our financial statements for it. So then, you know, sooner might make that a little bit [unclear].

But yeah, I do agree. You're not paying any interest on it, and we could use that money for other things as it comes. But it's ultimately up to you three. Well, just something. And also, yeah, I'll look at the agreement and see. I'll chew on that idea. But yeah, half a dozen [unclear]. It stings either way, paying the dollar amount stings. Yeah, yeah. So the next item is, I guess, Social Security and Medicare. That is going to be lower for 2027 because there's less administrative. Labor and Industries, the pension, and the unemployment, and the FMLA is all going to be less than what was budgeted for 2026 that is due to lower administrative expense.

Even though you're [unclear] Heaton's termination, on his severance pay, you still have to pay FICA, the Social Security and Medicare. But you don't have to pay Labor and Industries. You're not paying a pension expense, you're not paying any of that, it's just the Social Security and Medicare on that. The other thing I noticed when I was going through this today is that what I haven't added in here is Heaton's COBRA, which is going to be an additional 12,600. So I will add that as a line item before our preliminary budget is recorded. Oh, and just so people are aware, like I try not to use acronyms. COBRA means, like, it's a continuation. That's his health benefits that we're paying, of course. Still, we have to pay his health benefits. And the program is called COBRA.

I don't know, it's an acronym of some sort, but yeah, it means health insurance. And I'm still [unclear] on 6,300.

So health insurance has gone up as it does every year, and so it is going to be higher for staff and commissioners, but there is less staff, administrative staff, on health insurance and the outside services. On the second page is marketing. So the first line item is marketing and community relations. This has normally been areas where we put our newsletter when we've made sponsorships when we made donations for flower baskets. It is our web updates, because I feel that that is, you know, relating with the community, providing them information. We did cut a lot of things out this year to save money.

The projected year-end is about 38,000. I'm proposing 40,000. But if you want to do more than what we currently have budgeted, into next year.

I do. Okay, I do. One is the website. We have to have an ADA website, and that is, like, [unclear] [unclear]. We have to have, like, someone who is specifically trained in the public entities website standards for ADA. And so that's going to be an added expense. I don't know if you can pull a guesstimate or something, or if we want to start researching what that is. But we can start researching that. But how about, in the meantime, we keep it what it was last year and we just won't spend it. I mean, just because it's been budgeted doesn't mean we plan on spending it. We're very fiscally responsible here. We try to spend as little as possible. And so we could budget for that, as we work on getting the numbers.

Yeah, but I agree. Yeah. I also want, but I also want to [unclear], this would be a commission decision, but I would like to consider matching the money that we give to the Economic Alliance, also giving to the CDA. And so, like, just having, you know, because we do that support. And I think it would be better to just have it be like the same across the board for all of them, rather than, you know, the CDA doesn't get anything right now, and the Economic Alliance, I think, is 30. No, they don't receive anything this year, and in the past, we've only given 15. Oh, but yeah, so that is on my next item, for membership. That's down further. That will go under membership dues. But I agree with you. Yeah, I feel like... whatever. Okay, so I thought community relations would be that as well.

But okay, CDA, we could put CDA in there. Yeah, so let's just keep it 75, and we could do something there. Membership, we'll do Economic Alliance in that one. Okay, accounting and auditing. So we're undergoing... we budgeted for the audit. The audit is starting later this year. I think some of it's going to carry over, their invoices. I budgeted 65,000 for their audit. The last audit, I think, was around 50. They've increased their rates quite a bit, hoping it's less, but I think we're probably going to be in the range of 65,000 for this three-year audit. The other thing I added into the proposed for 2027 under accounting and auditing is hiring an outside CPA firm to prepare the financial statements. I've prepared them myself the past three years.

I'm in a new role now. I think it's better that an outside CPA reviews and kind of puts it all together. Our previous CPA, I'm just going to say it, ghosted us. And she did a really good job, though. We've had really good audits and she did a really good job. And I don't know what she was going through, But we sent out two different RFPs at different times trying to find CPA services, and no one responded. And Erin, not that long ago, contacted CPA firms directly and didn't get a response. But I was finally able to make a connection with Baker Tilly, which was previously Moss Adams. And we met with a woman who works in their public agency area and talked to her about what we would need.

And she did provide a contract, which we're reviewing right now, but it was cost not to exceed $29,000. The first year is always going to be the most expensive. That's when they got to get everything into their records. And, but I do think that they would be good to work with. They're a well-known firm that are very versed in GASB and GAAP, Governmental Accounting Standards Board and governmental accounting principles. I think that that I think that would be and I think it's important to have an outside person looking at it. And then, yeah, and just, the public has called before, that there have been questions about the finances and showing that transparency. And also, you know, yeah, we pay, we're going to pay $50,000 to the state because then they come in and do the audit.

It's not just a couple little... Yep, yep, yep. Like that $50,000, or, you know, 65 that was budgeted, is really specific to the man hours. It's not just like a fee that we pay. And that's why we have to predict what it is. Because, you know, the behind the scenes of that is they have rates for their staff, and they bill us for the hours that they spend reviewing it. And so you can see that you know, it is a very detailed process. And they won't stop until they're satisfied. And we pay their hourly rate based on that. And so, anyway, I really... It's an important process. I know it's something that the community has asked me about a lot in the past. There's been question about doing, you know, like a forensic audit or different things like that. I feel like this is a really great opportunity that this is the good starting point of.

You know, the state is going to be doing an audit of the last three years of our finances. And like I said, they are going to do a deep dive into all of these things. And then if something came from that, if there was a red flag or something that was discovered, then we would, you know, work towards a next step. But at this point, I just wanted to reassure the public that Amy is doing everything she can to make sure that, you know, everything is reviewed and that, you know, we are transparent and showing that, you know, things are being done correctly. And I think an outside CPA is a great cherry on top. Yeah, I think so.

The next item is security service. I did budget for security for the 4th of July weekend. That's really what that is about.

It is a decrease because we did have security here for Port meetings for a while, We got rid of that. And so this 4,500 proposed for 2027 is for 4th of July weekend.

Legal expenses, general and administrative. We budgeted 70. We're at $174,000. We had a lot of legal expenses related to land use and the moratorium and appeals, and that has all, is calming down. I do think that... I did keep it at what was budgeted only due to potential land use that might carry over from this year, regarding the interlocal agreement, the developer's agreement, things that we're dealing with in regards to the city and the county. But I didn't budget for SEPA appeals. And I didn't...

I should also say that this also has to do with general legal regarding the Port. So should we, can we have an executive session for that? If we have potential litigation, we need to have an executive session. We have to have an attorney present, our general counsel present. And so that, that is what that budget is, 70,000. Yeah. Did you hear that? We're not budgeting for SEPA appeals.

The next line item is legal expenses, public records. There are times where we get really in-depth, long. Public records requests that we need to get legal advice to make sure that we are providing the correct information. We're redacting the correct information, or we're not redacting information when we shouldn't. The reason why we have those legal expenses is really to save the Port from being sued for not following the Public Records Act. I found... Erin is now our public records officer, and thank you for taking that over, but I have found that when I was in that role, it can be very challenging. And sometimes you need that reassurance from legal counsel that you were doing it correctly because it's all on your shoulders.

Right That if you were to be sued for not providing something, that you have that concern, that, man, that's what's all on me. And so having sometimes that reassurance, like, do I redact this? Do I not redact this? Because RCW sometimes can be complicated and it's up to interpretation and making sure that that is correct. So we did budget less this year because I, again, am hopeful that we're having less public records requests. I do think it is probably higher than even what we'll need, but I'm just putting that in there just in case. Yeah, public records is one of those things that, you know. So projected year-end is $23,000, It is an expense. It's expense worth spending to bring transparency to the community. And also, yeah, making sure that we're following all the rules, We'll say that this year, on top of just asking clarifying questions, there was a lot more back and forth arguing with a commissioner who didn't want to turn over records. So I think that we all are in a better place to be able to do that.

You know, we bought Port-issued cell phones to be able to make calls on that. We've made other policy changes to try to help as well, so that we don't have so much of that back-and-forth banter. It's cool. Yeah, who are the typical requesters? Is that, like... No, I would say that, yeah, it's a good mix of anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe [unclear]. You can have a conversation with Erin. Erin could explain a little bit about public records and getting the lowdown on. Yeah, what that process looks like, and I will add, too, that that also includes some of them, regarding... Some of the requests will be information that might be on commissioners' personal cell phones, emails, etc. And so declarations have to be created. And the affidavits that commissioners have to sign saying that they have reviewed their personal information. And so that is...

Legal counsel prepares those items to make sure that they're exactly what is written for the requester. Yeah, and what they searched. They're verifying that they searched that information. Legal advertising, as Joel had mentioned earlier, that is for when we are advertising for special meetings, those legal requirements that are required. It is higher this year because I included in there our executive director job posting, that was a bit more expensive. And so I do. I did budget a little bit higher than the previous year for 2027 only. Because we're doing more community meetings as a commission. And so making sure that we can still do those community meetings, we'll advertise, we'll [unclear] them as special meetings, and we can still do that. So that's why I wanted to budget higher for that.

Yes, yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. Signage: I feel that there is less need, but I did still include 1,500, in case we need to say truck route here, no trucks here, that sort of thing. We have some budgeted for signage. Then down to general administration. I kind of kept everything the same in regards to computers, supplies, repairs and software. That is our QuickBooks software, our Adobe. We're pretty good about using our computers until they die, till we get that [unclear]. [unclear] got on her computer. Postage, I kept the same. Printing, photos and copies, it was higher this year due... and the postage was higher this year due to the vacancy notice postcard that we had sent out.

Office supplies is, I'm thinking, projecting it's going to be down to what we budgeted, but I would like to keep that the same. You never know when something happens. Promotional hosting, I'll explain this to you. Promotional hosting is if you have a client coming and you buy them lunch or you go, buy them coffee. That's kind of the old school way of how they used to handle it. Now it's a lot of Teams meetings. I have had some clients come and meet with me personally, but they don't want to go do lunch, they don't want to. It's just quick, get the deal done and let's move on but I did keep it in there in case we want to buy lunch for them if it's during the lunch hour, coffee or cookies. But we haven't, honestly, really used it, because times have kind of changed.

Travel, staff: I wanted to budget more for staff to attend more training. Yeah. The same with commissioners. I think it's important. Training is good for the staff, but I think it's also good for the commissioners as well. Other business meetings, that is lunch meetings, pretty much, when you're buying. I might go have coffee with a city councilor or have lunch with a city councilor. What we're trying to implement here is, quarterly, have lunch with all the staff and invite one commissioner. We've done it with Commissioner Lahmann, we'd like to do it with Commissioner Pickard, Commissioner Cummins next, where you get to know the staff on a more personal level and stuff. Yeah, of course. Just support staff, the whole staff, and putting the maintenance and [unclear], you know, us.

But also we can talk about what we're working on individually, and you can provide feedback, and I just think it's good. Yeah, relationship building, but that's normally what that is for. Insurance is higher. We have a building vacancy, and insurance rates have increased. Membership dues: so I continued what was budgeted for 2026, because I'm really leaving that up to the commissioners. Yeah, this is where you budget, you'll budget for your Washington Ports Association, the Economic Alliance of Lewis County. This one is really cheap, The Washington Association of Public Records Officers. It's important, they have meetings there. I think it's 25 a year. But there's also, we can budget for the chamber.

And for the... Yeah, no, you're... No, have you... What's on the WAPRO certification? You're working on that? Yeah. I have [unclear]. Oh. Yeah, yeah. So I fully support WAPRO. No, it's a good idea. They have great training and conferences. I've been more on the MRSC, but yeah, Let's keep up with WAPRO. But yeah, I think that, so yeah, this is kind of what I was talking about earlier, about the EDC and WPPA and things like that. It's like, I think that having more, well, maybe not the WPPA, they have kind of a scale, right? But I think for, you know, the CDA and Economic Alliance and things like that, they get an equal disbursement from us.

I feel like they both do the same thing. You know, they're both economic development. They're equal. I mean, in my time of being on both boards and seeing our interaction together, I feel like they have a very equal spread to what we do. So, and I know that Economic Alliance has asked for more funding, because we do half of what Chehalis Port does. What do you all even do? Oh, yeah, yeah, less than half what they do. So, I don't know what the dollar amount is that we want to set, but I think that that would be kind of my preference is whatever dollar amount we set, like it's each entity has the same contribution. What do you think, Peter?

We're still on the seminars and education? Membership dues. Membership dues. Membership dues. Oh, okay. Jumped up on [unclear]. Yeah, EDC and everything else. And then also what you would want to do for the chamber. Yeah. Yeah.

Washington Public Ports, I'm definitely in. Yeah. You know, whatever theirs is. The other ones, I'd just like to see what their numbers are, what we think. They don't provide. I mean, if you just want to be a member, for instance, if you just want to be a member of the chamber, I think it's, what, $200, $285 or something annually. Economic Alliance, in the past... we haven't done it this year. In the past, we've become a member at $1,500. But I know that there are other entities that give more to have more of that membership and collaboration. I do think that the Economic Alliance has been a good support system, and we've been collaborating well along with the CDA. I do think it would make more sense, as Commissioner Pickard was saying, that you come up with a number and that could be allocated possibly to the chamber, the Economic Alliance, and the CDA.

That's ultimately up to you, but I think paying a little bit more, maybe not as much as some of the other ones, because we're trying to be fiscally responsible. But I think showing that contribution is also showing that we're rebuilding those relationships and helping with that collaboration. Yeah. The Economic Alliance is working on some data that we would definitely benefit from. They've got some good, oh man, I can't remember the name of this program. Placer.ai. Placer.ai. Gold star for [unclear]. Okay. So Placer.ai is this program where it's tracking consumer data of how long someone's in a store. You guys all know this because we went to the economic roundtable and they talked about it. But just for the public, it's a way that we can get statistics on shopping in our area, shopping that's leaving the area, like when you go up to Olympia to buy food or groceries, or whatever or clothes.

And all of that kind of data helps us with marketing our land. And so we want to bring in new different businesses to Centralia Station that aren't redundancies. You know, we don't need another McDonald's. We don't need another Starbucks. And so being able to go out and target and find new businesses to bring to the area, that would be a benefit. We have to prove to them... They don't, you know, we don't have, like, a list of people knocking down our door, 'Hey, can we move to town?' We have to go in and like, put out, like, a dating profile about, like, here's Centralia. Here's what we need. Here's the average time that people are spending in the store. You know, those sort of things like that, and so that's the cool thing that the Economic Alliance is working on right now, is getting access to those kind of statistics. So then we can...

And I want to add that they have been doing that for us this year. We needed information on any new residential developments. They've been helpful. The city has been helpful on gathering that, but we haven't paid them anything this year.

Yeah, we should do some. Well, I could just do the general membership this year, but proposing for next year, I'm going to write that down.

I don't... I don't know what you... I mean, it could be... Do you want to start off like 5,000 each, to each entity, or do you think it should be more? That would be [unclear]. Plus, there are three main local... Yeah, the WPPA kind of tells us what... Yeah, WPPA is already set, and so is the WAPRO. But the Economic Alliance, the CDA and the chamber.

See, I see... well, preconceptions on the CDA. You know, for years they have, if you're not within a five-block area... So I think they're doing good things, but they do it in a very limited area. They don't do Centralia generally.

Well, that has not been my experience anyway. I think that one of the things is that part of that is that the historic district is set, like they don't pick the area. It's like this is, I don't even know what entity it is outside of them, but they have this constraint of this is what is deemed our historic district. And they always are pushing that and trying to meet more need. One of the ways that they do that is through community events. Community events are a lot broader than that. And they've also... They did the flower baskets clear up Main Street, clear, clear Main Street, and then also up further towards your building. Even though I know you're not in the historic district, but that is kind of building on Tower.

No, but I mean, I, and they don't set that, you know, they don't set that, but they I do see, you know, being on their board and also just being a community member and seeing. I think we all know what the CDA is. Whereas I mean, I used to live in Olympia and they I didn't really have. And whereas ours is very active. And like with the Revitalization Roundtable, they have been an amazing community builder. And bringing economic development is one of their main goals, and I understand that. Like, like more of their grant funding and things like that, that they have. With their focus to just the historic downtown core there, that is, again, it's set for them, of what they have, and so when they get dollars that are earmarked for, you know, like beautification of a storefront and things like that.

Or security advancements to a storefront, those you have to be set to that particular area. So, yeah, and they chose it because I was there when they started right? It's not something that they can... I know how that works, right? Okay. It's not something that can be easily expanded, but I feel like it. I would hate to exclude them just I don't mean to exclude. Actually, another one of my beefs is the Chamber of Commerce. What the CDA does now, they're picking up the [unclear] that the Chamber of Commerce used to do, and [unclear]. Okay. So what does the Chamber of Commerce do for us now? You know, they used to handle the events, they used to handle the parades, they used... and they backed off on all that stuff. Yeah, and they have a new leadership change there as well, which is going to kind of change, change things quite a bit for them.

I assume, as Kevin kind of kicks off and takes over, I think November is when he's really gonna take over. Cynthia's retired. So there's definitely going to be some changes there. I know that a lot of their focus had been with Cynthia was like ribbon cuttings, she was doing ribbon cuttings for new businesses, but then also ribbon cuttings for, like, everybody was giving... there was a lot of ribbon cuttings for all the great kinds of things. So, yeah, no, that's another entity that I think that I'd like to give Kevin some time to get his feet wet, and he knows a lot about the community, you know, he's been on City Council for years and he knows a lot of people, so I don't think it'll take too much time for him to kind of get up to speed, but kind of letting him have time to get in sync with his team and kind of figure out what it is that the future is, then having him come and meet with us, or give a presentation, or some sort of way of connecting with them, I think would be valuable.

And I would like to add, too, that this is only budgeting for 2027. During that year, you can determine for 2028 that maybe you didn't feel that that was beneficial and then make the change, you know, that next year.

[unclear] Yeah. But I would like to know what you, I would like to know what you would like. Well, I think. Should I budget 5,000 each or do you want higher? I think that's a fair number. I was saying at least five. What we've got. Yeah, at least five for what these entities do and knowing what other entities contribute to them. I think the difference is that, you know, like, we way under-support some of these other entities. So, yeah, I don't know what the... I would take your lead, I guess, you know, you know our budget and what would be reasonable? Okay, so yeah, well, whatever it is, my main goal is, it should be fair, equal, you know, everybody has the same.

Okay, yeah, so continuing on conferences and seminars for commissioners and staff and seminars and education, I made those a little bit higher. So, [unclear]. Office utilities, office garbage collection, I'm keeping those the same. We're actually a little bit less than what we budgeted, but you never know, with rates increasing etc. The office telecommunications is higher than budgeted because we have Port cell phones, and so I budgeted higher for that amount. But they are pretty cheap plans, and I haven't quite figured out how to use a cell phone all the way yet. So there's that. We had to do Android.

It was cheaper, the cheaper option, often. But every time I'm learning Android, every time I get confused, I'm like [unclear], and they're terrible to deal with. So we've got to keep it. Yeah, we can't go back. We can't go back. So for bank charges, it was higher than budgeted due to... We had to renew our line of credit sooner, and we have to renew it again next year. I will say that if you look down at long-term liabilities, we have paid off our CERB loan, which is Community Economic Revitalization Board Loan.

We are going to be paying off the MO contract loan, we're paying it off four months early. The Fry contract loan has a non-prepayment clause, so we will be keeping that and then we have paid off the line of credit. So the only debt that we owe is this Fry contract loan, which is actually fairly minimal. I think it's $240,000 off top of my head. I think that's what it is that we owe on there. So that's pretty much debt-free. Pretty close, pretty close, as debt-free as we can be. Yeah. Yep. [unclear], that's right. Yep, yep. Capital expenditures. I would like Noel to talk about the landscape, landscaping side of things and the land improvements and the road maintenance, because I've had him do some research on what we need to do in regards to maintaining the roads, the parking lots, and what equipment we need now.

So, first of all, we're talking about landscaping maintenance and equipment. One of the things that I'm proposing for the upcoming years is that we need to replace our primary mower, that mows all of our main offices and both of our main roads, here in North Park and Galvin Road. The last mower that we bought was bought before I was here in 2017, I believe it was. There's been 10 years of using it, over 1,500 hours of time on it. It still works and stuff like that, but we always have to figure a way to like keep it working. It's coming to the point where we are taking it to get it serviced almost every year, and paying to bring the tractor to service is about $75 an hour. Sometimes it's like quite a bit of time on that, so at this point in two, three years of getting it repaired, we're going to be paying what it would take to just replace it with a new one. And it still kind of functions at times.

And sometimes it doesn't. So that's one of the things that I would like to look into, replacing. I was able to work around, or go around, a few dealerships and actually get some quotes from different dealerships that sell mowers and stuff like that, like [unclear] down here. And actually, I was [unclear] here, and I was able to talk to them about what we need and what we're looking for. We actually had it here with a very expensive mower. It's like a big [unclear], satellite-operated. So we did not add that one to the budget. It was fifty thousand dollars. Well, I will say we spent one thousand, two hundred dollars. This pay cycle for tractor maintenance, so I appreciate the proactive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we're always doing a lot of [unclear] kind of maintenance, because we rely only on that primary mower. And when we don't have it, like everything around here just outgrows, and it doesn't look pretty good. And I think the Port is looking in the best shape that it has looked in a while, but it's been taking a lot of handwork to just get it there. The other thing that we are looking for in the future is a possible replacement truck for our 94 pickup truck that we also use for snow plow, and actually to spread sand and salt on the streets that the Port owns through the snow season. From my experience, it's been here, that truck has been here since like the late 2000s and stuff. So it's been here for quite a bit. It's outdated. It's also coming to the point where it has to be maintained literally every year.

Right now, it's at the point where we don't know what drains the battery every single day. So it's always getting charged or get jumped just to get it started and used. So it's not really good for us when we have an emergency in the winter and we have to start snow plowing, and that thing does not turn on. And like we mentioned, if we are covering, if we are having tenants pay for landscaping fees and stuff like that, that's part of our stuff: take care of sidewalks, take care of parking lots. And if we're not going to be able to do those duties, then that's going to fall on us. So that's something that I wanted to propose. I've been looking at trucks with a certain attachment, and it's not, at the time, with this economy that we're dealing with right now, even used trucks are not going to be the cheapest, but I feel like it might be a necessary purchase, if not this coming year, hopefully the year after for sure.

So talking about... But is that... Okay, but you budgeted $50,000 and you're buying a truck and a mower? The mowers are a lot more expensive than we think. They're in the range that would be between $17,000 and $25,000, depending what we want. I just mean like the cost seems too low to me. That's why I put possible truck upgrade. I'm leaving it up to you to add more to the budget. Okay, I'm thinking like because 50 is not going to get us to the truck that I would want to buy for us. I would want to buy a truck that's going to last another 10 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that the Port in the past has bought things secondhand, so we always have... I'm fine with secondhand, totally, but save yourself 25% of that. But yeah, I want something that's going to be reliable.

Yeah, 50 seems low. I have a question, Noel. This truck, would it only be used during wintertime for snow plow? What else would you use it for? No, we would have to make the adjustment of also adding a flatbed to it and a dump, that would be able to dump, because it would also be used for daily work. So the one that we have right now is actually used for daily work when we start trimming trees, when we start edging, trimming bushes and doing, like, right now, that we did all the work. That's the truck that was used even to go pick up the asphalt and dump. Because it's the only truck that we have, one of our three trucks, that dumps. If we don't have a truck that dumps, everything's going to have to be hand-shoveled off the truck. The other things are going to have to be taken by hand. And it's just adding more labor, and also, probably, it's less safe for our employees. So we need something that would be [unclear].

When I talked to our past executive director, he was the one that purchased the truck, before he left. I had a conversation with him about how that truck came around, and he mentioned that it was just bought secondhand. And then the Port itself had to pay to get it fitted with the attachment for the snow plow, the attachment with the flatbed, and be able to dump and all that stuff. So we can buy the truck, and then we will have to also invest in making sure that it's viable to have a snow plow attachment and a flatbed included to that as well. So there are options of trucks that already come with one attachment, but don't come with the other one. Which is also something that we could be able to get into in the future. But I am interested in making sure that we have something for us in the upcoming year in that department, with the mower included.

We try really hard to save a lot of money on the maintenance side of things, even a lot of the jobs in-house. And I think every now and then we probably could get something that that could help us out. That's functional from the day that we buy it equipment or cheap employees they don't pay.

Yeah, so yeah, I would, I would suggest, to come back with a higher dollar amount because 50 is not enough. Okay, I'm going to increase that to a hundred thousand, strictly to give him room to get the [unclear], if we do purchase it. Yeah, you guys, yeah, it's a large purchase. I'm still going to bring it before the Port Commission to approve it. Yeah, and get those attachments on there, but also wiggle room, because this also allows for other areas. If we have a pump go out, things like that, I need wiggle room to have those capital projects done as well. Do you watch the state auction? Yes, I'm very... I have it saved on my computer, the surplus stuff, or the local [unclear] that that could help us with that. Actually, the truck that we're talking about used to be, [unclear]. Probably back in the '90s, when it was first commissioned and stuff, like, we purchased a lot of equipment through there.

Yeah, and then go ahead on the next aspect that I'm talking about, the land improvements, and some of that, it's the seal coating and striping of parking lots. And also on Park I and Park II. I had taken the time to actually do some research from our past on what we had to work on. And I can definitely print some of this and add it for you guys. Same with the quotes from all of the mowers that actually got to test out and look into now. Well, real quick, I just want to say that some of our buildings, that although they are leased, it is our responsibility to seal coat those parking lots and stripe them. How often do you think that needs to be done? So from what we have seen in the past pattern, it used to be done every two to three years. And then we have not actually done any of that since 2023.

So we're a little behind on that aspect of the seal coating and crack sealing, and it's starting to show throughout the roads. We started to see a lot of weeds growing through the cracks, and the parking lots, we've seen cracking in the parking. That's becoming a little bigger, which can also cause what we just don't want, which is a sinkhole, when there's water penetrating and [unclear] there from underneath. On those situations, from the list that I had made, that backtracks all the way to 2015. I can see that the price has increased in those situations, depending on the size of the lot, but it has also increased quite a bit. I mean, just last time that the road striping was done and all of Park II. It was 22,000 compared to when it was done in 2019 that it was seventeen thousand dollars. So to get that proper estimate right now, it would be a little complicated, but just know that's probably going to be out there.

And I would like to add, for the landscaping, office and maintenance and equipment, for projected year-end, that's going to go up. We've had... we had to replace the pump at North Park Drive for our irrigation system. It wasn't pumping out correctly and I didn't want our landscaping to suffer from it, so I said, Go ahead, and how much? How much was that, Noel? For our current pump, Yeah, the pump we're replacing, it's going to cost us about, I believe top of my head is almost $3,400, Yeah. And then it ended up being a lot lower than we thought. We took the time to go out there and actually research it with the [unclear] company, And then we're like, Hey, actually, you have a lot of the things that needs to change, so it'll be a plug and go. So we're scheduling that here pretty soon to hopefully start working on that, keeping all of Galvin as great as possible, and feel proud of what we're doing.

And that's why we budget a little bit more in those items for situations that come up that arise like that. Also, back on the striping, you know, you can rent [unclear]. I mean, you guys did so good with the asphalt. You can rent a striper over at the rental, and it's not difficult. Yeah, you know, you have to consider, though, for the striping on [unclear] Road, that's the most important, because we have the chip trucks. But we also have to do the heat on the railroad crossings, so we have to... That's one of the reasons why we contract, you know, and we actually have been very fortunate that the city probably uses, like, [unclear] for training purposes, because they're not very straight. And, but we never have to pay for it, right? Well, some of [unclear]. [unclear]. Yeah, but yeah, the only other thing that I have for it is that at some point I had a conversation also with our past director and how we can maintain everything green and looking good. He said that over a period of time, every now and then.

They used to hire like a fertilizing company to come out and fertilize the grass and make the lawns look fluffy and very green. I personally take a lot of pride in the outside work and I would like to continue to support all of us to go that route and feel good about how the Port looks and stuff. And, you know, at some point, if not this coming year, or next year, I can get you guys some real numbers on that. So many little ones that I would like to pursue. I just want to share that with you.

Peter, are you good? No? Well, yep, okay. So the next line item is Centralia Station land, WinCo sign. Yes, you'll see the projected year-end. This is where I put everything regarding that, that hasn't been capitalized yet, so these are really my construction in progress accounts. So the money that we're spending on Chick-fil-A, Wilco, the WinCo sign, that's all going to be capitalized by the end of the year. It's going to offset that sale of fixed assets. It'll go into certain land accounts, and land improvements that we've done, legal expenses for all of our easements that we've recorded. All that's going to end up being capitalized, so that's why you're not going to see a budgeted amount.

But I decided, you know, next year I'm going to throw some money in there, because we have to finish our east side boundary line adjustment. But I'm working on trying to get that completed by the end of the year, along with our easement agreements, our declaration of access and parking that we're going to have to do on the east side of Yew Street, and then also future purchase and sale agreements. So as clients are coming and they're interested, we have to negotiate and draft those purchase and sale agreements and go back and forth with legal counsel, with the client's legal counsel and them. And so budgeting for some of that money, I think, is important, but it will all be written off against the sale of that property or capitalized to that land account.

The next line is, I separated out Centralia Station from Park I. Park I, I budgeted 25,000 in legal expenses for LPC and another company that we're working with on the sale of a lot on North Park Drive. And so that's just some legal expenses involved with maybe future purchase and sale amendments with LPC and then also with the purchase and sale agreement with this other company. If that ends up working out, and we do end up recuperating those costs when we sell the land, yes, yes, those are all. Yeah, that's why I don't put those in legal expenses, because it offsets with that sale. And then miscellaneous building improvements is [unclear]. I would like to get some, you know, advice from the commissioners. We have talked about, we have to replace our maintenance shop that we have on the MO property.

That's part of the purchase and sale agreement with LPC. We have a building on Midway that we're changing over to as our maintenance shop, where there is a... Well, I'll let you talk about it. Yeah, you don't have to stand up. Yeah, stand where you're at. It's after five. Yeah, so there's honestly... Our maintenance shop will have to be replaced. We're going from a very big old [unclear]. I think they used to work on logging trucks on that property. So it's a big garage with big doors. And we're going to have to move a lot of the stuff that we have there, two tractors, all tractor equipment, all of our trucks that we park in, and whatnot, wood chippers, and a lot of the stuff that we store there. It's going to have to go into Midway Court, 1709, which is a way smaller size, probably one third of the size of it.

We have talked about how do we keep our property safe and kind of where, how are we going to be able to store all of our equipment in there? So one of the ideas that I came up with was the fact that we could build a carport over the loading dock, to keep it from the weather. So we were able to get an engineer out here to check that out. We were able to get a company that builds sheds, customized sheds to come out and look at it. So there's progress in that. We're still working on getting the details if it's going to be a doable situation. We are coming across a couple of questions that we need to get clear by the county or the city. if it's able to work and build on top of a loading dock. But we need to keep a lot of our equipment dry and stored and also safe. So we might have to build a little fence and whatnot around it.

With... over the past, we have dealt with a lot of people who just park on some of our parks every now and then, even if there's no parking. Why not? People stay overnight there, and we just want to make sure that we keep everything safe. So we're going to have to have security cameras, and we're going to have to do a lot of that stuff to keep our equipment intact. So that is the plan that we're working on, and Amy and I have been having conversations about how we can make that a safe place for our equipment. And that possible permanent spot for our maintenance shop, which is also within the tenants, which is nice, If something happens, We're just a step away from fixing it, too. Yeah. So what is budgeted there is that carport addition for the maintenance shop and then some other. You know, you never know if an HVAC system is going to go down at one of the buildings that we own, even here, the Port office.

But I wanted to talk about, it's been discussed before, about expanding the conference room. Larry [unclear] is going to be vacating the building by the end of the month. And yeah, I think the end of the month, He keeps extending it.

Sorry, he's having a hard time [unclear]. but I think, yeah. So possibly punching out this wall, opening up the office that used to be mine, that's Erin's, Now we'll be taking over the whole building. I think before it's been expressed that that was kind of a priority and something that is needed. I think in times of, you know, I was kind of surprised with the budget workshop that we would have more people. But, you know, it's really ultimately up to the commissioners on whether that is a priority. I know we've looked at it in the past and it was around eighty thousand dollars. I think we're looking closer to 150. The other thing I would like to do is if we're going to do that, I would like to upgrade our telecommunication system, our phones, our system's very old. Some people have a really hard time hearing me on the phone and being able to upgrade our telecommunication system. And maybe having a better sort of, you know, conference phone format or whatever in here.

I think the Owl works good. But conference calls, doing something a little different with the telecommunication. So with the building, 150, and then telecommunications, another probably 30,000. And what are your thoughts on that? I would say that, you know, our space is really small and it feels uncomfortable for most people to sit here. You know, you're so cramped in this space and this table is gigantic in a way of, like being like, wide in the middle and narrow in the end. So, but you know, when I started, I came in and I moved the table around, you know, I added the flag for the flag salute in. Yeah, we're just so squished in here. So I do see the value of a bigger room and my other thought was the bathroom.

We don't really have a bathroom for the public that's easily accessible, right? We do have a bathroom, but it's behind the employee area. And I feel like when you're in a meeting I don't think that it feels really comfortable. Like you can't interrupt and say, Hey, where's the bathroom? or may I use the bathroom? Whereas, you know, like at most entities, the bathroom is kind of just more obvious to the public. So if we did renovation, I feel like that could be a benefit to the community. The community aspect for me of having a comfortable space for them to be in as far as enough room. And yeah, we do get packed up in here pretty frequently. And then also, you know, being able to reorchestrate a little bit and have probably that bathroom that we do have be available to the public, but have it just be more seamless in the public space?

And their experience of the space of just being able to go and not have to... Yeah, I think, I think that there could be a wall. You know, if you punch this out and there's a wall there, then we can even maybe use the bathroom door a different way. But that would be the public restroom. The other thing that I would really like to get rid of is the... What do you call those doors? The swinging... And instead maybe have, like, a window or something that there's more security for staff. Not necessarily saying that we're afraid, but you know that only staff is allowed back there with the swinging doors. You know, I will be back in my office and I'm the only one here. I will hear that swing, and I'll just kind of like, Okay, who, who is here? Yeah, and because I didn't, you know, they didn't ring the buzzer or whatever.

So I think if we have, if we change that up a little bit. But I do agree that there's a way to get rid of this table, and maybe have a dais, like the council, kind of something a little different, that's a little smaller, and then being able to have, like your own screens kind of like what they do in regards to this. And I just think there's opportunities to make it more inviting than what it is right now. Yeah, yeah, well, and I will say security is an issue that I've talked to you about before. We have had seasons where we've dealt with a member of the public that was genuinely scary. And I made the decision. I said, you really need to lock the office for a season because this person was showing up. And, you know, I heard from other areas of our community leadership that was something that was of genuine concern.

So, yes. And I do worry about my staff of, you know, two young ladies here by themselves. At times you have poor Noel out on the tractor somewhere and you're here alone in the office and having it be, you know, a secure space. So then we can have it be... So, yeah, it is open to the public, because, yeah, those swing doors, there's no way to secure them right? And with Larry moving out, you know, yeah, there's even less because he's right there on the sidewalk, by the parking lot. And so he sees... You know, there's times where I've come and he sees, and he's kind of... Yeah, yeah, he sees what we don't see. No, you don't see, you guys are on the back side, you don't even see. And so he always is kind of like he's kept an eye on the parking lot, or he just, I don't know. He always was like, Well, you know, at least he waves at me through his office window and he's kind of keeping an eye on what's happening there. So I don't know, I definitely see the benefit of it.

Okay, I'm going to shut up now. Have you had, like an architectural firm, come up with a couple different concepts? No, but I can budget for that. I mean, that all be part of the budget, is, should we bring someone in, have them look at it, talk about possible design, and then we can bring three different options to the commissioners and then talk about it. But I want to make sure it's budgeted for. Yeah, I think that would be a reasonable addition. So the Port owns this whole building? Yeah, yes. So once [unclear] is gone, we have access to all the rooms, at least [unclear] footage, so we can rearrange your offices, we can make it our space and [unclear]. Yeah, that's, yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah, because I've thought in the past about kicking this wall out, you know, just go down this side. And if you have those offices over there, that might be the way switch the two back offices here.

You know, that might be, yeah, you know, but you're looking at staying in the footprint that we have. That's one way to do it. Are we going to kick a big wall or two out? I think we can't go that way, because that's our [unclear]. I think it's cheaper to stay within our footprint, yeah, and just expand what we have because we really don't need it. I mean, 30 years down the road, maybe we don't need more space, but we have seven offices. On Larry's side, there's three, two, three, there's three, so six, seven currently, and then a small little conference room. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so there's eight rooms or so for the side for that side. And then a couple things to note. But yeah, so I'm just saying, for the public's sake of, like, one, I mean, if you have an architect, they're going to look at this and they'll come up with two or three different options for you.

And they're going to look for the most cost effective. Yeah, but, but for now, I just want to know, like, are you good with me budgeting for it? And it sounds like you guys are going to be budgeting for it. Yeah, I see the value of it. Yeah. If we start changing plumbing, start changing electrical access, the cost is just really [unclear]. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I don't think we can change the plumbing, but on my wish list is a bathroom for the public to just be able to access. But also not right off the meeting room. Like if that was the bathroom door, no one would use it. You know what I mean? Like, if you're going to interrupt the meeting and then you're just right here going, yeah, I'm fine.

Okay, so figuring that out. Figuring it out in some way. Yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly. Let's show it. Yeah, yeah. So one other thing I wanted to mention in regards to the ad valorem tax, the property tax, is that we do have a requirement with our line of credit that we will continue to levy that tax. Our line of credit is based on the property tax. It doesn't mean you have to increase it, but you do have to continue to levy that. You have that choice at the line of credit renewal to try and change that requirement if you want to, which I believe that's up in August of '27, or you just don't renew your line. Which that makes me uncomfortable, because you never know when something comes up that you're going to need it later.

But I'm just letting you know that you have to levy your property taxes. That is a requirement of your line of credit documentation with the bank. Isn't there a charge with the bank for a line of credit, whether we use it or not? Yeah. [unclear] fee. No, there's a renewal fee, but you don't... There's a renewal fee of, it's roughly around 4,500. There's a fee to the bank, and then you have to pay their legal expense for their review of the documents, which we prepare. And it's reviewed by our, well, was reviewed by Larry, but that that is the only fee to renew it. So yeah, it's roughly around, Let's just say $4,000, $4,500 a year to automatically renew it. But you're not paying any interest because you don't owe anything on it if you don't, if you don't use it.

Okay, so the ad valorem tax, that is a tax levy that was instituted by the Port on the Port District residents? Yeah, it's just the regular property taxes. Yeah, okay, and so then we got a line of credit from a bank with that kind of as collateral. Yeah, it is. It is basically that you agree to pay that line of credit from the taxes that you levy. It's based on... It's a general obligation. There are different kinds of debt. There's revenue debt, so you'll say, I'll pay this debt based on the revenue I receive. They require that this debt be paid from property taxes.

The line of credit is really for extraordinary expenses. Well, sometimes it's also, we have used it in between getting property tax, basically cash flow. Yeah, yeah. It's in the times that, because we only get, really... It's 1.8 million credit limit, yeah, and taxes really come in around... Prime, whatever. The [unclear] is the duration, a year. Sometimes it's two. We just paid it off with the Chick-fil-A sale. No, we currently don't have it, and so it's just kind of sitting there. [unclear]. Yes, yes, yeah. So yes, there are times, like, we get the majority of our property taxes twice a year. That's when taxes are due, your property taxes are due.

That's when those chunks come in. So there'll be times where it will be... You're not getting that tax revenue in, and so you might need funds from your line of credit to pay some of your other expenses. But you'll just pay it off as soon as you get your property taxes in. Or the same with the property sale with Chick-fil-A, we've had to use that to pay for the electronic sign that's going to generate revenue. It's going to end up being a revenue generator for us. But we needed money to make that payment. So we had to use our line to make that payment until our tax revenues come in. That's what we've used it for in the past. And also in times of construction, when we're doing infrastructure improvements and things like that. It will take a while to get, you know, if you have a grant to get that money from the grant. So you'll use your line because it's all going on reimbursement. So you'll use your line to make those payments to the contractors until you get reimbursement from whatever the state grant is.

Yeah, that, that's that. Pay for ridiculous severances sometimes, and, you know, yes, there's... yeah. But we have run... when we had to be on the line before, I would keep a very minimal amount of money in our general fund, to try to have as much paid off on our line. So we weren't on our line as much, basically keeping our cash down so that we're not paying as much in interest. So there was a lot of moving money from the line to the general fund, months and months, to just try and keep those interest costs down, and keeping our cash... So you'll see our cash balance would be low, but really it's because I'm just trying to control how much we had on the line and how much interest we were paying on the line.

And you've done an amazing job of getting rid of that. I do like, going forward, just, you know, that there's a conscious decision when we do utilize it. I don't mind having it as a safety net, but I want the commission to be aware of what it is. And I know you have done that, but, you know, that we are aware of its usage. Yeah, are you good? Let me look... [unclear]. This has been the longest meeting in a long time. [unclear].

I think I'm done. I will add, for the administrative salaries, that I would say that I kept the same for Erin, and... or I gave her an increase, but if her salary increases, anything for myself would have to be determined by the commissioners and in an open public meeting and for the staff. You guys are approving the budget, approving the budget for the salaries for administration and for maintenance. But ultimately, it's up to the executive director to give those increases to the staff, which I plan on doing. Yeah, but just as an FYI, that you're not determining what the salary is for the staff, other than myself, You banked the COLA into yours?

I did not. I think I did the same. But you guys are going to have to vote on that. Well, I know the budget for a COLA, we'll vote on it, but I think that we should budget the COLA. I don't know if, you know, each group. Well, the state's not having raises. Really? It's impressive. Well, they have a, they have a budget. Yeah, so yeah, they have, how many hundred... Yeah, they have a budget deficit. Yeah, right. But I mean, I don't know, COLAs are pretty standard practice, and I don't want that... COLA means cost of living [unclear], cost of living increase. So it's not a raise, exactly. It's just like keeping up with inflation, keeping it in... The point of it is that, you know, you're keeping an employee's salary at the cost of inflation, because you need to stay competitive.

And it is very common that, I mean, one of the most common reasons that someone will leave a job is because they can do the same work over here and make more. And so we keep Amy, or we keep Noel, or we keep our staff, if we can, because their costs are going up. I mean, we know gas prices, food costs, all of those kind of things are going up, and we have a ridiculous historical knowledge base in our staff. We have an extraordinary... long time.

Do you know how long you've been here? Like 20 years? I have been here 22. Erin has been here 18, and Noel has been here eight, eight in September. Yeah. So that historical knowledge and training and skill base. It's expensive to bring an employee back up to that if you even could. So, anyway, [unclear]. What about last year? Did everybody get that pay increase last year? Yeah, we did. Yeah, we approved a COLA for everyone.

I will add that there were some contracts. The executive director had a contract where the COLAs were automatic. Then. It's not in my contract, so I... but I'm fine with that. I think it's good that the Commission vote on it. Anything from the public? Yeah.

Yeah. Move to adjourn. Perfect. Just like that. Come on. You have a second? Second. You need to adjourn. All in favor?