City of Wenatchee Sets its Legislative Agenda for 2020

The Wenatchee City Council recently approved the city's legislative priorities for 2020.

Executive Services Director Allison Williams said Wenatchee must continue to work on finding incentives in Olympia to promote housing development.

"Housing is our number one priority." Williams explained, "One of the things that we need to do is educating legislators on how the low income and moderate income programs work here. It's much more difficult to make things work here because of our median wage and cost of construction."

Williams also stated that one thing they'd like to see from Olympia is legislation requiring basic training for law enforcement within two months of employment.

"We are in a hiring phase and we need to get our newly hired officers into the academy." added Williams, "Access to the academy is critical. We have some recommendations within our priorities about increasing the number of classes and access to those classes within date of hire."

Staff also identified transportation as well as the Parkside Place behavioral health facility as items where they would also like help from Olympia.