A correction was made on Aug. 12 to amount of Lynnwood’s American Rescue Plan Act funds were used to rehire city staff. 

After hours of discussion, the Lynnwood City Council voted Monday night to use a portion of the city’s federal COVID-19 relief funds to fill some vacant staff positions and purchase body cameras for police.

In response to the pandemic, Lynnwood was allocated $10.9 million through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to be paid over two years. At its Aug. 9 business meeting, the council voted to approve requests from staff to spend $202,000 to hire enough employees to return the city to pre-pandemic levels of service through 2021 and a $530,000 request to equip Lynnwood police with body cameras.

In other action taken before adjourning until September, the council also unanimously voted to delay authorizing a $100,000 request from staff to update and improve the audio/visual equipment in the Lynnwood City Council chambers used to record and stream council meetings.

The council previously discussed the proposals during its Aug. 2 work session.

When looking for ways to save costs while budgeting for 2021-22, the city reduced staff by a little more than 18 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees. With plans to fully reopen city services to pre-pandemic levels, staff proposed using some of the ARPA funds to rehire 8.2 FTE positions including a police evidence technician, court clerk, parks custodian and several part-time parks and recreation positions.

Considering each proposal individually, the council voted 6-1 to approve funding the positions through 2022 with plans to review alternatives funding sources in the future.

“I’m OK using rescue funds for 2021 and let’s assess in November-December how we’re looking for 2022,” said Council President George Hurst.

Councilmember Ruth Ross — who said she opposed using emergency funds to hire staff — was the lone dissenting vote all four times.

“We don’t spend one-time monies on ongoing programs, on ongoing people,” she said. “ARPA is not for the city to spend on the city — the plan is for the city to spend it on the community.”

Under the terms for spending the funds, Finance Director Michelle Meyer said the city is authorized to use the funds to return services offered by the city to pre-pandemic levels. According to Meyer, the returning staff would be those who provide “direct customer services.”

During the discussion, council members spoke in favor of their preferred staff rehires. Several council members supported filling the police evidence technician and court legal specialist positions. Vice President Jim Smith said he was not in favor of using ARPA funds on rehiring staff but said the two positions were needed immediately.

However, Smith said he opposed using the funds to rehire part-time staff for the parks department — which took the biggest hit to staffing reductions. With city revenues like sales tax rising, Smith asked why the city wasn’t using other funds to staff the parks department.

Meyer said though sales tax revenues were trending up, there were still a lot of uncertainties regarding the pandemic, and it would not be wise to rely on those funds. She also pointed out that the city still has other expenses, like repaying the reserve fund after using $1.2 million at the end of 2020.

“So with those different variables in mind we thought it would be a little more prudent to ask for funding out of this,” she said.

Speaking in favor of the part-time parks department staff, Director Lynn Sordel stressed the importance of hiring seasonal workers for Lynnwood’s recreation and senior centers and the Meadowdale Playfields. Without the proposed 5.2 FTE, Sordel said the city would not be able to offer programs to the community that also generate revenues.

“These positions are essential to doing that, to generating those revenues and to restoring services to our community,” he said.

The council unanimously voted Monday to spend $530,000 on purchasing body cameras for police officers. Of that, $400,000 will be used to cover the cost of the equipment, installation services and offsite digital records storage. The additional $130,000 would be used to hire another clerk for the police department who would handle the extra records requests.

“The purpose of the legislation was to enhance transparency and public trust,” Meyer said.

Staff initially proposed spending $480,000 on the police-worn body cameras, but. Meyer added that some of the cost could be offset by $160,000 the city received from the state to cover costs for law-enforcement programs. Under recently passed state legislation, cities can receive approximately $4 per capita.

Lynnwood previously ran a police body camera pilot program in 2016. Since that time, the department has been aiming to fully implement the program.

“One of the tenets of our core value of community is ‘cultivating positive interactions by fostering trust,’” said Lynnwood Police Cmdr. Sean Doty via email Thursday. “So anything we can be doing to enhance trust and increase transparency is a worthwhile endeavor.”

Doty said the department hopes to have the equipment and infrastructure in place by this fall, but due to backlogs for equipment the actual date of implementation may be later.

In other business, the city adopted a resolution declaring a Friendship City relationship between Lynnwood and Chilpancingo de los Bravo, Mexico.

The council also approved multiple confirmations and appointments to city commissions and boards including:

-Rebecca Samy, Planning Commission
-Lu Jiang, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission
-Wally Webster, Public Facilities District Board

The council will reconvene on Sept. 7 for a work session.

–By Cody Sexton