After 20 months, the City of Edmonds finally has a permanent police chief.

The Edmonds City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to confirm Mayor Mike Nelson’s appointment of Michelle Bennett to the job of permanent police chief.

The city’s first woman police chief, Bennett has served as acting chief since March of this year, appointed to the job by Nelson after longtime Acting Chief Jim Lawless left Edmonds for a job with the City of Marysville. Her selection comes after a several-month search coordinated by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), which conducted stakeholder interviews with members of the community and city staff, as well as surveys in the community and among police department staff.

She will officially assume the permanent job Sept. 16.

“I just want to say thanks so much for the opportunity,” Bennett told the council after the confirmation vote, which was conducted during a remote meeting Tuesday night. “This is a fantastic city with fantastic officers and city staff and community. I really look forward to working with all of you, especially in our community engagement program.”

The search was the second of two national searches, which took 19 months and cost nearly $120,000 dollars. The first search sparked a series of combative city council sessions; and led to the nomination last year of Chief Sherman Pruitt of the Sauk-Suiattle Police to be Edmonds’ top cop. But the mayor ended up rescinding the nomination, stating it was because Pruitt didn’t disclose a job application with Lake Stevens police. That led to a relaunch of the search that netted three finalists, including Bennett.

When announcing Bennett as his preferred candidate, Nelson stated that she “exemplifies the kind of leadership our department will thrive under.” The mayor wasn’t present for the council vote Tuesday night.

The council meeting marked a return to an all-remote format, a decision the council made last week due to a resurgence in COVID-19 cases. However, a group of residents gathered outside the closed council chambers to make their comments via Zoom, with some accusing councilmembers of “hiding” from the public by going back to remote meetings.

The council also spent considerable time Tuesday discussing the city’s interim landmark tree ordinance, which is set to expire on Sept. 2 and had originally had been on the agenda for the council to consider extending. However, City Attorney Jeff Taraday noted that the matter was mistakenly put on the agenda, as it needs a public hearing prior to a council vote on extending it.

The council passed the emergency six-month ordinance in March. It prohibits the removal of trees greater than 24 inches in diameter from any private property unless those trees are deemed hazardous. The idea behind the ordinance was to give the council time to work on additional, more detailed tree regulations to be included in city code — stage 2 of a two-stage process for updating the city’s tree regulations.

City Attorney Taraday stated that when the interim ordinance was first adopted, the thinking was that the city would only need six months to approve a permanent regulation. However, “we’re not even close to being able to adopt a permanent regulation governing landmark trees,” he added. Taraday suggested the council discuss ways to either “reprioritize some work in order to get some kind of a landmark tree code done in a permanent way in the next six months,” or to possibly let the ordinance expire and have the regulations come through the Edmonds Planning Board as part of its “normal course of business.”

Taraday added he is worried that without a priority change, the council could be facing “extension after extension after extension without any real progress being made, and that is not how these interim regulations are intended to be used.”

Edmonds Senior Planner Kernen Lien explained that it took 10 months for initial regulations — aimed at retaining existing trees during development on private property — to work their way through the planning board. Any discussion of a more broad tree policy that could possibly apply to all private property would “have a larger impact, a larger reach” and would require significant public engagement. “It’s going to take some more time,” Lien said.

In addition, Lien said that staff doesn’t have clear direction from council on what the next stage of the tree policy should include.

Several councilmembers expressed frustration with staff’s opinion on the matter. “I think we have been giving you clear direction,” Councilmember Diane Buckshnis said, adding she believed the city was on track to have stage 2 tree regulations completed by early October. “I’m completely perplexed about the discussion tonight,” she said.

Buckhsnis also said that there doesn’t appear to be any enforcement of the current interim ordinance, adding that “trees are going down all over.”

Councilmember Kristiana Johnson asked how much enforcement the city has done regarding illegal tree cutting. Lien replied that trees can be removed if they are deemed a nuisance, and the city will review arborists’ reports if that’s the case. “We get calls all the time when tree cutting is occurring,” and staff respond to those calls, he explained. Some of that tree cutting occurs on developments “that were vested prior to the new tree code being adopted and prior to this ordinance going into effect,” Lien said.  So far, he said, the city hasn’t issued any citations related to the landmark tree ordinance.

“I’m a little bit perplexed on this,” Councilmember Laura Johnson said, adding she recalls giving input on priorities and also noting that the emergency ordinance was supported by the city administration. “It appears to me that the message we’re receiving now is totally different from the messages we were receiving before,” she said. “I had hoped that we would be well on our way to a real plan to…do this and now I’m hearing you have no idea what we want.”

“I am so frustrated by this,” said Council President Susan Paine. “I think we lost a lot of momentum and I don’t know where it got lost. We were marching down a really great path where we could have this interim approach, we could preserve our largest trees that won’t be growing back so easily because of the climate crisis.”

At the end of the discussion, Paine said she would find time soon for council and staff to discuss next steps regarding the tree code. (The council won’t be meeting next Tuesday, Aug. 31 as it’s the fifth Tuesday of the month.)

In other business, the council:

– Heard from consultants and staff regarding possible design options for the Highway 99 Gateway signs, to be installed at the north and south ends of the Edmonds stretch of the highway as part of the planned redevelopment project there. Council heard the results of community feedback so far on sign ideas, which were obtained through an online survey and a virtual open house. Howeer, due to the low number of responses (55 participated in the survey and “nine or 10” attended the open house), councilmembers asked staff to renew outreach efforts to get additiional community feedback.

– Approved by a 5-1 vote (Councilmember K. Johnson opposed) an amendment that makes interim outdoor dining provisions on existing commercial property a permanent part of the city code.

– Delayed until late September consideration of a resolution adopting council rules of procedure.

— By Teresa Wippel