Councilmembers Stonecipher And Murphy Now Call For Approval Of Everett COPS Grant

Wednesday night (Sep 2nd) the Everett City Council will take a moment before their scheduled 2021 budget workshop to reconsider accepting a $6 million dollar grant to add up to 16 more officers.

Just a week ago Brenda Stonecipher and Scott Murphy wrote a letter to the community explaining their opposition to the grant. Today the two signed the following email to Everett City Council President Judy Tuohy asking for the item to be brought back for a vote.

Good morning Council President Tuohy:

Over the past few days, CM Stonecipher and I have acquired new and additional information which had not been presented last week when we were briefed on the Department of Justice COPS Grant. Based on this updated information, we request that the COPS grant be added to our agenda for Action at tomorrow’s City Council meeting.

We want to acknowledge and thank Chief Templeman for his leadership in pursuing additional information from the DOJ following last weeks’ Council meeting. This includes the potential for up to a three year extension, if needed and also the potential for the City to hire additional police officers on a “one for one” basis, where we could alternate in our hiring between filling existing vacancies and adding officers designated as COPS officers.

It is unfortunate that more detailed information was not presented last week for the Council to be in a position to be able to take action with the councilmembers in attendance at that meeting. However, having taken an additional week to review and discuss the particulars of the grant and by exploring the possibility of greater flexibility with the DOJ Administrator of the COPS Grant program , we believe that the City of Everett is actually much better off now based on the potential for greater flexibility. This additional flexibility would reduce the City’s overall financial burden over the next five years while still adding resources.

We continue to believe that the City would benefit from an operational assessment of the Police department to ensure that our staffing models and workload distribution is appropriate based on how our City has evolved and grown over the past decade. We understand that the Administration is open to conducting such a review within the next year.

We recommend Council approval of the application in order to meet the COPS office grant deadline of September 8th.

Please add this item to our agenda and have this posted to the City’s website to ensure transparency with our public who may be looking online for information about tomorrow’s meeting.

cc: City Council, Mayor Franklin, Deputy Mayor Harper and Chief Templeman

Regards,

Brenda Stonecipher Scott Murphy

Chair, Council Public Safety Committee Chair, Council Budget Committee

We asked Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin for her reaction and received the following comment via email.

“I appreciate the Council’s thoughtful deliberation on this important matter.”

Editor’s Note: The City Council will meet virtually Wednesday night at 6:30 PM.

You can call in to listen to the council meeting at 425.616.3920, Conference ID: 724 887 726#

You can provide your comments in writing before the meeting via email at council@everettwa.gov.

You can see the meeting on Comcast Channel 21 and Ziply Channel 29 or on Everett TV on the City’s website.