The Community Livability and Public Safety Committee of the Olympia City Council held a special meeting on Wednesday, October 15, 2025, from 5:30 PM to 7:53 PM. The meeting covered wayfinding entrance signage design concepts, the naming of three park properties, and a preview of the 2026 committee work plan.
Five members of the public spoke, all in support of the recommended park names:
Note on discrepancies: The minutes and transcript differ on the name of one public commenter: the minutes list "Holly Gattan" while the transcript says "Holly Gadbaugh". Additionally, the motion for Kaiser Woods Park used the name "Marge Young Park" in the transcript, but the official minutes record the name as "Marj Yung Park".
All right. Well, welcome everyone to the Wednesday, October 15th, 2025 regular meeting of the Community Livability and Public Safety Committee of the Olympia City Council. We have a full house tonight in chambers. And um, and in this virtual space, you if you're hearing a ding ding ding, it's just more people uh that are interested in signing on to our meeting virtually. And uh for the record, we do have a quorum with all committee members present. So with that, that takes us to approval of the agenda. I invite a motion to approve tonight's agenda. Move to approve tonight's agenda. Second. All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Agenda is approved. All right, that takes us right along to public comment. Uh Don, thank you for sending me uh a visual of the public comment list. It looks like we have five folks, and uh, I'll just call you all up in order. We have uh two minutes for uh for public comment each. So just keep that in mind, and I believe there will be a timer. Don, is the in-person timer on? Yes, it is. Okay, great. So if you will uh stand up to the podium, um, as you hear your name being called, you can speak into the microphone and look to uh the left of uh the council of Dais, and then you should see um a black rectangle with uh with your time on it. Neil have two minutes. If the two minutes does elapse uh before your comments are finished, um we are excited to get public comment and so uh do try to wrap up your comments, uh, but you can you know finish your sentence. And with that being said, uh we'll go ahead and start with our first public commenter. That is Karen Frazier, followed by Mark Fauch. Well, good evening, uh members of the community livability and public safety committee. My name is Karen Fraser. I'm here this evening on behalf of the Remembering Jolene Unsold Steering Committee. I'm honored to be invited to represent them here this evening. We are here to submit to you a letter from our organization, which I provided to staff, urging you to endorse the recommendation from your parks and recreation advisory committee to name the new park on the Yelm Highway in honor of the late Jolene Unsold. Jolene Unsold represented the people of our area with great energy and great distinction as state representative and a member of Congress. She was an active resident of this area. She's well remembered and greatly appreciated for her outstanding achievements on behalf of parks, recreation, the environment, public disclosure, public employees, educators, Puget Sound, early childhood education, working people, retirees, and much, much more. She was an avid outdoor recreationist. Jolene always exemplified the highest standards of public service. She was also a trailblazer for women in public service, and naming a park after Jolene would be a great step forward, saluting a woman who carved important paths forward for women leaders of today. There are very few parks in Olympia named after women. Naming this park after Jolene would be positive step. Our letter contains the names of 78 endorsers, many of whom I'm sure you know, and I'm sure you will hear from others. We urge you to forward this recommendation to the full city council. I'd be happy to respond to any questions. Or call all of the folks that can do public comment. And at the end of public comment, there's an opportunity to um to hear responses from committee members if they're feeling so inclined. So with that, we have Mark Fauch followed by Rita Robison. Good evening. My name is Mark Fauch. I'm a long-time resident on Boundary Street.