The Yakima City Council held a study session on September 9, 2025, at 5:00 PM in City Hall Council Chambers. The meeting covered the 2025 second quarter financial report, a community development update, and a comprehensive city year-in-review presentation. Council members present: Mayor Patricia Byers, Assistant Mayor Matt Brown, Councilmembers Reedy Berg, Janice Deccio, Rick Glenn, and Leo Roy. Councilmember Danny Herrera was absent and excused.
Good evening and welcome. I will call to order the Yakima City Council study session on September 9th, 2025. We'll start with the roll call, please. Bird? Here. Brown. Here. Byers. Present. DCL? Here. Glenn. Here. Roy? Here. Herrera is absent and excused. Thank you. Next is public comment, and we will have 15 minutes for public comment this evening. If you make a public comment, please make sure that you fill out a sheet in the lobby and turn into a city clerk. You'll have two and a half minutes, and when you come to the podium, give us your name in the city in which you live. Also a reminder that I don't have it in here. Well, anyway, there's no election airing allowed from the podium, which means you can't talk about any candidates about that's coming up in November. Thank you. All right. I have two things I want to talk with you about tonight. They're both in the uh envelope that I put on your desks. Uh the first one is a report from Mr. Gorchester of Performance Plain LLC. Mr. Gorchester is known in Olympia as the money man because he puts together huge financing projects for the state and for their uh contractors. We asked him to come to Yakima and look at our Sixth Avenue project to see whether it could be built. Excuse me, whether it could be built uh in the full meal deal with the track, the trail, the road and everything without having to raise new taxes, because I know that's a big concern of yours. He said absolutely yes. He said it would be easy because you have the TBD money that you can use as match for some excellent state grants that are available for this type of project. So I'm just asked that you read through what he has written, study it, uh, get to know it, understand it, because I think it'll give you the roadmap of how to get funding done without having to raise taxes. That should be a big relief for you. The other thing I want to talk to you about is the SEALA line from uh from the ridge to the uh end of the line in SELA through CELA Gap. We recently had that inspected by a professional rail inspection service, and uh they found that the track was, quote, in uh very good condition. Um they found two defects. One was a broken rail, one was uh uh vegetation and tumbleweeds that block the track. Those are the only things stopping it from being used again for the trolleys. Uh our volunteers can replace that broken rail. We can remove the vegetation, and the track will be ready to go again. We can do that at no cost to the city. And I know you have heard from other people that are saying, oh, it's gonna cost 20 million dollars to reopen the SEAL line. Absolutely untrue. Please come to us for information about the track, about what can be done, what needs to be done, what's already been done, and we'll always give you the straight truth on it, and we'll always be happy to meet with you any time as long as we need to. So call on me if you need to. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.