Warden swears in council member and updates 2025 budget

WARDEN — The Warden City Council completed one oath of office, discussed voter turnout and updated its 2025 budget at its regular council meeting Tuesday. The council decided to cancel the next meeting, which would be Dec. 23. The council will return for its regularly scheduled meeting Jan. 6, 2026.

Election

To begin the meeting, council member Agapito “Speedy” Gonzalez completed his oath of office. Gonzalez ran unopposed for seat two of the council, receiving 150 votes. There were four write-in votes. Gonzalez had been appointed to his role in February 2025.

Following, the council discussed the voter turnout for the recent election. In Warden, there are 881 registered voters and 185 of those voted for Warden city races. Warden had a 21% voter turnout. The county as a whole saw a voter turnout of 30.5%.

Police update

Warden Police Chief Jeff Gann said the department had a busier month in November than in October. The department handled 91 case reports, including welfare checks, nuisance complaints, traffic collisions, domestic violence calls, burglaries, thefts, assaults, stolen vehicles and a sexual assault. Investigations resulted in three felony arrests, five misdemeanor arrests and a handful of arrests on outstanding warrants.

Gann said there was a large police presence in the city on Monday. The Grant County Sheriff’s Office had received a tip that a suspect who was wanted for an October assault and several warrants was hiding in Warden. GCSO partnered with Warden PD to handle the case, which became a several-hour stand-off with the subject.

“Finally, we were able to get him into custody with no incident,” Gann said. “Another bad guy off the streets.”

Budget update

The council unanimously approved a budget update for the 2025 fiscal year. There were a couple of items that were not projected when the initial budget was passed, which the city wanted to add to the budget to ensure transparency.

“We have discussed this in our budget workshops before, but there are a number of things we have done throughout the year that we want to make clear in our budget that we have (done) this year,” City Administrator Kriss Schuler said. “We are putting additional things in the budget. We have the funds for these, but we are just making it clear and transparent in our budget.”

In the General Fund, there were additional costs for the police chief hiring and a bonus. This amounted to around $45,000. The city also had to pay interim chief fees to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office and the Moses Lake Police Department, totaling $20,000.

The city also received $20,000 from the Department of Commerce to update Warden’s growth management plan.

Lastly, a police vehicle was damaged by a suspect who stole the car. According to Schuler, this is related to the incident in October 2024, where 21-year-old Rita Gabriella Lozano, of Moses Lake, stole a local resident’s vehicle, which had an infant in the back seat. Lozano was stopped in the stolen vehicle; the infant was not injured and returned to family members. She was handcuffed and placed in the back of a Warden Police vehicle.

According to GCSO Public Information Officer Kyle Foreman, she crawled from the back seat to the front seat of the patrol car and drove the WPD vehicle while still handcuffed. Two GCSO deputies used their vehicles to pin the stolen police car, resulting in damage to the patrol vehicle.

The $18,500 cost was covered by the Washington Cities Insurance Authority.

Gonzalez asked if there was any impact on the city’s insurance rates from the accident.

“Not that I am aware of,” Schuler said. “It’s pretty minor compared to everything else that is insured at the same time by the city.”