Council approves ADUs ordinances, addresses water damage at Community Center

The Federal Way City Council took action on newly-discovered water damage at the Federal Way Community Center and honored police department promotions during their July 5 city council meeting, which was delayed from its usual Tuesday schedule due to Independence Day.

Noting they wanted to see more research into the state of the Federal Way Community Center, the city council unanimously signed off on a request to fund repairs at the facility’s locker room using the city’s remaining American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money.

Those locker rooms have presented an ongoing maintenance issue for a couple years, city administrator Brian Davis said, though “staff has been able to manage the damage for the time being.”

But the city eventually brought in Rock Project Management LLC to assess the conditions at the locker room this year. The company’s report, dated April 24, discovered rot in the walls of the locker room cabanas caused by seeping water. The mayor toured that damage on May 26 with city staff, city spokesperson David Solano said in an email.

Additionally, one of three boilers that heat the pool needs to be upgraded, city staff said.

“It’s come to a point where we need to take some action,” Davis said. “It’s not a good situation, and it’s something we need to fix.”

Doing nothing could lead to the walls eventually falling over, Davis said. A medium-term fix would buy five to 10 years, but the city instead requested a complete renovation of the locker room to fix the issues fully.

To help fund that effort, the city asked to use the entirety of the city’s remaining ARPA money ($1.74 million) — most of which ($1.2 million) has previously been considered for converting natural grass at Celebration Park into turf.

The locker room issue is urgent, Davis said, and that grass conversion could be accomplished by other funding sources. As an example, the city suggested an alternative funding package for the fields using a blend of primarily lodging tax, parks mitigation and interest revenue monies.

The ARPA money would fully fund the locker rooms at current estimates, Solano said, and the boiler would cost an extra $8,500 — which the city plans to cover using the general fund.

“We want this done right,” Davis said during the meeting. “We want it to last. It’s a wildly popular, great jewel in our crown and it’s very unfortunate it’s deteriorated.”

This is the latest discovery of water-related decay in the community center’s greater pool area. The community center opened in March 2007.

Pools like the community center’s leisure pool should have a roughly 30-year lifespan, according to parks director John Hutton, but that leisure pool needed serious repair work only 10 years in.

In 2018, an engineer finished temporary repairs of concrete fracturing on the pool slide. It held for more than a year, but while the pool was closed during the outbreak of COVID-19, the city decided the entire pool slide would need replacement.

The pool was unavailable from November 2021 through January 2022 as crews demolished the deteriorated old slide, then reopened until September 2022, when crews began installing a new slide.

During that work last year, they discovered more corrosion in the leisure pool, requiring more work. The city has not scanned the pool with ground-penetrating radar, but their contractor has “drilled to the extent of the corrosion to make sure none of it was left untreated,” Solano said.

The city now estimates the leisure pool will reopen in August, Solano said. He said the community center remains “fully safe” for residents. The six-lane lap pool has been fully inspected and remains in “great shape,” the city said last year.

“We are scheduling a full assessment of the FWCC, but the issues we’re dealing with now — the pool slide and privacy walls in the locker rooms — are not related to the structural integrity of the building,” Solano said. “We are confident that if additional problems are identified, that they will be similarly cosmetic rather than structural.”

A recent trip to the community center locker rooms prompted concern for councilmember Paul McDaniel.

“I was shocked … and sad, to be truthful,” he said during the July 5 council meeting. “Now that I sit up here, I look at every asset on our books as a piece of property that I’m required to maintain. … It’s not a maintenance issue as much as a builder issue, and subpar materials. … With that said, I do not believe the $1.7 million is going to cover fixing it.”

McDaniel said he’d like to see the city show the council a comprehensive plan for redoing the locker rooms, what materials would be used and how it would be designed.

Councilmember Susan Honda echoed McDaniel’s concerns and asked for the council to be briefed on the history of the building.

“It’s a beautiful building, but obviously there were issues when it was built,” Honda said. “I just want to make sure we’re not looking at (other problems). … Once you open walls, you’re going to find more problems.”

The city has done an “envelope study” of that part of the building, according to staff, and is working on performing that full assessment of the community center.

While an oft-discussed decade-old legal settlement between the city and the community center builder has come up in city and council conversations, city staff said at the July 5 meeting that they weren’t aware if the fabled settlement ever actually happened, and pledged to find out.

According to their research, the settlement does not exist: “After carefully reviewing our records, we have determined that there has been no prior settlement with the builder of the community center,” Solano said.

Police promotions

The Federal Way Police Department commemorated the appointment of longtime officer and Lieutenant Thaddeus Hodge to the position of Commander. Commanders report to one of the two Deputy Chief positions in the department, who in turn report to Police Chief Andy Hwang.

Hodge, a veteran of the U.S. Army, holds a bachelor’s degree in business management. He has more than 26 years of law enforcement experience and is a founding member of the FWPD. His experience includes patrol, traffic, special operations, felony detective and advisor to the police Explorer program for high school students.

Also appointed to new roles in the department were:

• Corporal Hilary Mariani, a field training officer with six years of police experience.

• Corporal Jae An, a field training officer, CPR/AED instructor with eight years of police experience who also started FWPD’s Bikes for Kids program.

• Corporal Ricardo Cuellar, a SWAT team member who has served as a school resource officer, with five years of police experience.

• Corporal Eric Reyna, a field training officer, hostage negotiations team member and defensive tactics instructor with six years of police experience.

Sworn in

Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Dave Larson kicked the meeting off by ceremonially swearing in new city councilmember Paul McDaniel, who, coincidentally, is the judge’s nephew. McDaniel was unanimously appointed to serve on the Finance, Economic Development and Regional Affairs Committee; and the Parks, Recreation, Human Services and Public Safety Committee, which former councilmember Erica Norton served on before vacating her seat.

McDaniel was selected from a pool of 19 applicants, which was initially narrowed down to seven interviewees by a vote of the council. That group included Arts Commission Vice Chair Karen Brugato, Planning Commission member and school district employee Anna Patrick, Senior Advisory Commission chair Lana Bostic, Washington Fatherhood Council member and Microsoft project manager Gordon Bock, King County Community Corrections Director Saudia Abdullah, and FUSION advisory council and city planning commission member Tom Medhurst, who bowed out before his interview.

Others who applied for the position but weren’t selected by the council for the interview round were: Bengimen Reeves, Kenny Byrne, Christopher Dowllar, Christopher Lewis, Fredrick Njoroge, Jon Brookings, Lisa Phair, Matt Johnson, Philip Baker, Roger Flygare, Scott Benjamin and Tirzah Idahosa.

Also on July 5 …

• The council unanimously adopted an ordinance creating a view protection rule in the downtown area, ensuring the view of Mt. Rainier from the PAEC and Town Square area will not be disrupted by development.

• The council unanimously adopted two ordinances allowing accessory dwelling units (ADUs) within cluster subdivisions and streamlining the permitting, regulatory and financial process to install them.

• The city heard an update on the change in state law to drug possession, often referred to as the “Blake fix” after the 2021 state Supreme Court decision in State v. Blake. The new law — which makes the knowing possession of illegal drugs a crime — goes into effect on Aug. 16, according to Chief Andy Hwang. At that time, “we will begin proactively enforcing the law,” he said, including making arrests when warranted.

• The council unanimously approved a bill allowing the police department to convert one of their deputy police chief positions to a police commander, and convert two part-time records specialist positions to a second quartermaster (who oversees equipment) position.

• The council unanimously approved a bill reallocating ARPA funding originally set for the Saghalie track project and assigning it to the pending Sacajawea track project. The Saghalie project has already been completed with grant money, meaning it no longer needs ARPA funding; meanwhile, the Sacajawea track is failing and needs replacement, according to the city.

• The council unanimously approved a collective bargaining agreement with the Teamsters Local 763. The agreement covers Jan. 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2024. The contract cost jumps from $3,172,390 to $3,941,280 from 2022 to 2023, though it does also include the addition of seven Maintenance workers. The 2024 contract cost will be $4,192,992.