Matt Brown

🎬 Mayor's Minute | April 2026

Here's what came out of our last council meeting:
🚗 2026 Cruise dates are approved — mark your calendars! They are posted earlier in another post.

🏗️ Authorized a SIED Board application to support the Hogback West Yakima development project.

🏊 Approved $230,000 to reopen Lions Pool and Franklin Pool. Pushing to get Lions Pool open by April 15th, and hopeful for Franklin Pool this summer. We're hiring lifeguards -- link in comments!

🚫 We adopted an emergency six-month moratorium on new halfway houses and secure community transition facilities -- through October 6th.

Here's why this matters: The State of Washington is actively seeking to place secure community transition facilities in local jurisdictions under RCW 71.09. These are residential facilities for civilly committed sexually violent predators who are being conditionally released into the community. Our current municipal code has no specific definitions or land use regulations for these facilities. This moratorium gives us time to get the right regulations in place before the State forces our hand.
The council passed it unanimously, taking effect immediately. A public hearing is scheduled for May 12th -- we want to hear from Yakima residents.

That's your Mayor's Minute. My door is open. 🇺🇸

I have a new video setup I'm working on for Mayor's minute going forward, I hope to have it launched here soon. Since my video equipment crashed and burned, that is coming soon!

Big news!

City reserves and private funding will get Yakima pools back open A private campaign has raised more than $120,000 to reopen Lions Pool. The Yakima City Council authorized up to $230,000 in reserve funding to keep the pool open for at