Clyde Hill News: Elected city officials to consider waiving salaries
Also: City pays $20K settlement; Police recruit recognized for lifesaving procedures
The City Council will meet on Tuesday; some items of interest to Clyde Hill residents:
Clyde Hill’s newest police recruit, Cameron Hanson, was recognized for acting quickly and performing lifesaving first-aid procedures on a classmate during a medical emergency at Washington’s Basic Law Enforcement Academy. More details available here (link).
The City paid $20,000 in a settlement agreement to a former employee, according to bills included in the packet for next week’s City Council meeting (link).
Clyde Hill’s Police Department “has achieved Gold level recognition for 2022 as part of the Lexipol Connect Customer Recognition Program, which recognizes police agencies for excellence in policy maintenance and training. This is the third year in a row that Clyde Hill PD has received this award for excellence.” (link)
Details on other topics on the meeting agenda below; the complete meeting packet is available here (link).
One more item before our disclaimer: if you find this newsletter useful or interesting, please forward it to your Clyde Hill neighbors and friends. Thank you!
Disclaimer: while I am a councilmember on the Clyde Hill City Council, I write this newsletter in my capacity as an individual resident. Any opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the position of the City. The information and references here are from public sources. I welcome email responses — and if the topic is about City business I will respond from my City email account.
Elected officials to consider waiving salaries
The agenda for Tuesday’s meeting includes an item titled “Discussion re: Allowing Elected Officials to Waive All or a Portion of Their Salaries.”
Part of the context here involves the City’s planned ~$490K budget deficit this year. The city’s budget also operated with deficits in 2020, 2021, and 2022. You can read more about the budget issues in this previous issue (link).
The City’s 2023 budget for elected officials is $24,500 (link), or about 5% of the deficit.
The meeting packet includes documents about a City of Stanwood ordinance that allows “elected officials to waive all or a portion of their salaries” (link) as well as the laws around setting salaries for elected officials (link).
A change to elected official compensation and reimbursements would require an act from the City Council as well as approval from the Mayor, and take effect at the start of the next legislative session.
Legal costs & Public Records Requests
Tuesday’s meeting will also include discussion of the City’s legal bills and the costs of responding to public records requests.
An administration memo estimates the cost to the City of responding to the public’s requests for records during 2022 at ~$98,000 (link).
Mayor’s repair work re trust, and more
The meeting agenda also includes an item for the Mayor to update the community on “Progress to Improve Trust with Police Officers,” as it has for the past several months.
According to a document included in the packet, “Mayor Klaas asked the Council for help at January’s meeting during the discussion of her progress in re-building trust with police officers.” (link) The document, titled “Helping Mayor Klaas address the police’s lack of trust,” recaps the issues in the absence of written communication from the Mayor.
Tuesday’s meeting will start with a Comprehensive Plan update (link) and also include a preview of a Compost Procurement Ordinance. Another discussion will continue work to ensure “that policy aligns with practice by removing or amending [municipal] code that is not being enforced.” (link)
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Dean Hachamovitch