Council approves vehicle licensing fee increase, hears Mountlake Terrace HS FIRST Robotics Competition presentation

The Mountlake Terrace City Council at its Thursday business meeting voted 5-1 to approve a vehicle licensing fee increase from $20 to $40, effective Jan. 1, 2027. Councilmember Laura Sonmore voted no, and Mayor Steve Woodard was absent from the meeting.

Deputy City Manager Carolyn Hope said the increased revenue will bring in about $315,000 a year. She said the City’s Fiscal Sustainability Taskforce had recommended the fee increase as a secondary option. The added revenue would go to the street operating fund to “supplant some of the general fund subsidy,” which is about $690,000 a year, Hope said.

The Council voted unanimously to approve an ordinance granting McLeod (Cloud) Communications a 10‑year telecommunications franchise for commercial use. Public Works Director Gary Schimek said the deal lets the company build and maintain commercial broadband infrastructure in the City’s right‑of‑way but still requires project‑specific permits, “so this is not a carte blanche.”

Robotics, Chill Out 1778

Mountlake Terrace High School’s robotics team, Chill Out 1778, briefed the Council on its recent competition achievements, STEM outreach and financial needs. Mayor Pro Tem Bryan Wahl noted the team won second place in the Pacific Northwest division and placed 16th in the world out of about 3,700 teams in 2025.

Sophomore Maya Allumada, who is the team captain and programming lead, said students get a new game project each year for the FIRST Robotics Competition and have only eight weeks to build a robot. Their 2025 robot was about 7 feet tall and weighed as much as an average adult.

According to Allumada, the nonprofit Chill Out 1778 was founded in 2006, serving about 50 students with 14 mentors from companies like Boeing and AT&T. “Our whole goal is to make sure that students are ready for the STEM workforce,” she said.

Freshman Octavius Gorun, who is in charge of fabrication, said Chill Out 1778 wants to make STEM available for everyone, adding that there is zero cost for being a team member. He said he was part of a “First Aid” project, a guidebook that helps new or struggling teams learn how to run their programs. “We’re more than just a club [or] just building robots,” he said. “We are not just made up of our peer students, but our mentors, alumni and parents that all come together to form our community.”

Sophomore Seth Thomas said that the nonprofit targets kids “who might not even know they’re into STEM yet.” The team visits elementary and middle schools, hoping that early exposure encourages students to “spread their wings in high school and beyond,” he said. 

Thomas said the Council and the public can help by spreading the word about FIRST programs to connect companies with underfunded teams and offering presentation opportunities. Being community funded ensures that membership is free, he added.

The students then ran a live robot demonstration, during which Allumada described the robot’s subsystems that allow it to shoot the “yellow fuel” (foam balls) and gather more fuel. She said the robot can shoot as far as the length of a basketball court.

The 2026 FIRST Robotics Competition game, REBUILT, challenged alliances of three robots to collect and place the yellow fuel into a central hub while navigating obstacles.

Allumada said that FIRST Robotic games are made of teams of three, focusing on scoring and collaboration rather than “battle” robots. This collaborative work drives design decisions based on a strict hierarchy of needs, wants and non‑feasible features, she said.

“We bring it to competition, we run it down, we drive it like it’s being stolen, and we hope to earn those points,” Allumada said.

In response to Councilmember Laura Sonmore’s question on cost, Allumada said it costs about $15,000 to $20,000 to build one robot, and the team is responsible for raising $80,000 each year to run the nonprofit. Registration for the competition alone costs $10,000.

“We try to reuse whatever we can. We tend to be very cost efficient with the money that we have,” Allumada said. “It’s not an understatement to say that running our team is like running a business because it really is.”

“Robotics is such an important part of the future, and what you guys are doing is incredible,” Wahl said. “Between AI, quantum computing, broadband, robotics, I mean, it’s the way in the future.”

Councilmember William Paige, Jr. suggested that the team reach out to local companies and the MLT Chamber of Commerce to host such events to meet employers.

Councilmember Erin Murray asked each team member what they learned from being in robotics.

Sophomore Kelvin Franke, who is the newest member, said he came from a smaller robotics club. “It has been amazing to see how everyone works together and the rich history of this club,” he said.

Gorun said that he enjoys watching and participating in the competition.

Allumada said she had a “shifting perspective” during the two years as a team member. Not only did she want to recruit new members like Franke, she said she wanted to bring more women into STEM. 

“Including people in STEM who normally would not enter this adventurous field has been one of the greatest joys for me at First Robotics,” she said.

Sophomore Kyle Bowder said being in robotics gave him a direction in his life. “I didn’t think about college or my career, and after joining, I figured out what I want to do,” he said. 

Thomas said that before he joined the robotics team, he didn’t think higher schoolers would be able to do this type of work. “I find it amazing how the community can come together to fund and support programs like this,” he said.

Councilmember Kyoko Matsumoto Wright said she was glad to see that being on the robotics team also teaches finance. “I’ve heard about the robotics thing for so many years, [and] I finally got to see. Thank you,” she said.

FIRST Robotics Mentor Steve Winckler, who is an AT&T executive, told My MLT News that this year, Chill Out 1778 was among the top 10% in the world, ranking 332nd place. 

“It was an amazing fourth-best year in our team’s 20-year history,” he said. “The team is especially proud of this year after we graduated 16 seniors in 2025 (more than a third of the team) to post those results, while also bringing home an award for our team’s imagery and graphic design.”

New Pavilion staff welcomed

The Council recognized two new Recreation Pavilion staff members: facilities supervisor Eric Johnson and aquatics supervisor Bridget Verhe.

Johnson told the Council he was born and raised in Mountlake Terrace, grew up “in a little house down on 242nd Street Southwest” and left the City in 2002 to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard. After his enlistment, he started a career in facility maintenance and facilities management with the National Park Service.

“I’m very happy to start the next phase of my career as a facility management professional helping to maintain and improve some of the very same facilities that were fundamental to my childhood,” Johnson said.

Verhe said she has been going to the Pavilion since 1975. After working in various city work — including Shoreline and Monterras — and working for the American Red Cross, she said it “just feels totally normal to just head back home” in Mountlake Terrace.

“So very excited to be back and serving this community again,” Verhe said.

Proclamations and public comments

During public comments, Mountlake Terrace resident Cory Cross said the City’s $2.6 million Pedestrian Plaza is a “backwards priority,” arguing it does little for actual walkers while nearby sidewalks remain hazardous and commercial space is lacking near the transit center.“It feels like it’s made for people who don’t ride transit to feel good about something while they drive by it in their car,” he said.

Cross urged the Council to approve the higher Transportation Benefit District vehicle license fee but redirect more funding from pavement preservation to pedestrian safety. He said that the streets are not safe for his child to walk home from Terrace Park Elementary because of speeding vehicles.

“It doesn’t cost anything to let people walk from place to place,” Cross said. “The only expense is to try and protect people from being killed, and this expense is caused by vehicles, not by walking.”

He noted that Policy TR 1.3 of the City’s Comprehensive Plan supports safer routes to school by designating recommended walking routes.

“You don’t have to devote the funding to protecting people from cars because I’m asking you to; you can do it because you said you would,” Cross said.

Also regarding traffic safety, Mountlake Terrace resident Barbara (who did not give her last name) described a four-car crash outside her home at 230th Street Southwest and 55th Avenue West caused by a drunk driver at 5 a.m. 

“That was upsetting,” she said.

She also said a school bus was going about 60 mph through the intersection and called for speed-display signs or camera enforcement to slow traffic in her neighborhood.

The City Council also made three proclamations: Pride Month, Juneteenth and Gun Violence Prevention Day.

Edmonds Pride Director Rowan Soiset accepted the proclamation of Pride Month from Councilmember Sam Doyle.

“We’re at a pivotal point in our collective history where we have the choice to keep moving forwards towards joy, acceptance and community, or plunge ourselves backwards into darkness,” Soiset said.

Pride Month recognizes its start with the June 28, 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City, which sparked six days of protests and clashes with law enforcement. The June observance recognizes the first Pride march held in New York in June 1970 to commemorate that uprising.

“I am honored to serve as your openly queer councilmember,” Doyle said.

Before the meeting, Doyle, city staff and residents participated in the Pride flag-raising ceremony.

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Access Project Founder Wally Webster accepted the Juneteenth proclamation from Councilmember Erin Murray. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned they were free – more than two years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Webster said as an African American raised under the Jim Crow era in southern Alabama, Juneteenth “teaches us freedom announced is not always freedom received, justice written into law is not always justice lived, and equality promised is not always equality experience.”

He said that Juneteenth is not just African American history but American history, he added. “It is part of the story of who this nation is, the painful parts, the proud parts and the unfinished parts. That is why the proclamation of the City of Mountlake Terrace carries matters,” Webster said.

Several Mountlake Terrace residents accepted the Gun Violence Prevention Day proclamation from Councilmember William Paige, Jr. Resident Jan Engelhart said that firearms are now the leading cause of death for children in the U.S.

According to a 2026 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 4,455 children and teens died from firearm-related injuries in 2023, with the rate increasing by nearly 4% from 2020 through 2023, surpassing car accidents – even though car accidents have also increased since 2020.

“Wear Orange Weekend, the first weekend in June every year, is dedicated to honoring the lives of people in the United States affected by gun violence and elevating the voices of those demanding an end to this preventable public health crisis,” Engelhart said.