Multiple items on the Poulsbo City Council’s consent agenda were approved by the council during its Nov. 6 meeting.
Among the agenda items was the disposal of surplus government goods. The Poulsbo Finance Department created a list of items deemed surplus by other city departments. These items are described as “general use” items, such as excess office supplies, and are circulated by staff for review of need and transferred to other departments.
Many of these items may be sold on public auction, donated if unable to sell or thrown away if they are no longer of any use or value.
Some of the most interesting items in this list were six handguns previously in use by the Poulsbo Police Department. Four Glock 22s, a Heckler & Koch .40 caliber handgun and a Heckler & Koch .45 caliber. None of these items were up for public sale, but they were traded to a firearms dealer as part of a purchase of new firearms for police officers.
According to Police Chief Dan Schoonmaker, these trade-ins are standard practice for some departments when service weapons begin to show signs of wear.
Another item of note on the consent agenda for the City of Poulsbo, also related to the Poulsbo Police Department: the 2020 Amendment to Agreement with Kitsap County for the incarceration of city prisoners.
Kitsap County and the City of Poulsbo have an agreement that criminals arrested in Poulsbo will be jailed at the Kitsap County jail due to the City of Poulsbo not having its own facility. Poulsbo has a similar agreement with the city of Forks.
This latest agreement with Kitsap County was renewed and is effective from Jan. 1 2020 to Dec. 31, 2020.
This renewal also comes with amendments to sections and subsections of the original agreement. One of these amendments include a change in the cost to house prisoners, during 2019 the cost to house prisoners in Kitsap County jail was around $98 per inmate for a 24 hour period, the cost is now $115.79, an 18.4 percent increase.
According to Schoonmaker, these costs go up each year as it becomes more and more expensive to house and transport inmates.
Finally, another interesting piece on the agenda was the agreement between the City of Poulsbo and the Crown Castle GT Company to continue a lease agreement for a cell tower on 4th Avenue.
The city has updated its agreement with Crown Castle GT Company LLC to continue its facilities lease for telecommunications at the site of the water tower on 4th Ave.
The lease has an initial term of five years beginning Jan. 1 2020 and will be entitled to six additional five-year renewal terms, meaning the lease could last the next 35 years.
The annual rent for the property is $22,133.86 with annual CPI (Consumer Price Index) inflators. Meaning this will bring in over $20,000 to the city annually over the next five years.
The city will also receive a $20,000 one-time grant fee to defray the city’s legal and administrative costs.
This agreement was reviewed and approved by the city attorney, Elana Zana over the course of several months.
