"If you really want to receive joy and happiness, then serve others with all your heart. Lift their burden, and your own burden will be lighter."
- Ezra Taft Benson -
 While I sadly wasn't able to attend due to a scheduling conflict, I was so happy to see photos of the Wednesday afternoon celebration at Divine Court Apartments, downtown Auburn's newest resident!
As many of you will likely recall, Divine Court was built on top of the ruins of the Heritage Building, which tragically burned the day after Christmas in 2017. The entire building was so damaged it needed to be demolished and at the time, we at the City of Auburn had no way of knowing what would be next for that site.
 Fortunately for us, MS Real Estate remained dedicated to the downtown core and quickly decided to rebuild! What followed was a complicated process of acquiring the proper permits, escalating material costs and undergoing City of Auburn and Valley Regional Fire Authority inspections. As of Wednesday, the doors are officially open. I want to give a major shout out to city staff in our Community Development and Legal departments, especially Jeff Tate, Jason Krum and Josh Arndt. This project has been yeas in the making and I appreciate everyone’s commitment to working together to get it finished.
 Divine Court already has several tenants, with more surely on the way!
 Peter Cotton Trail came to a close Monday evening, three days after thousands of you explored City of Auburn parks in search of adorable hidden bunnies. Huge kudos to our staff bunny hiders across Parks and to Ashley Gain and Kristy Pachciarz for their work in coordinating this annual event!
Parks shared that 1,047 of you submitted a scorecard, and I’m certain that many, many more of you likely looked without submitting for one of our incredible prizes.
Parks also shared an amazing list of comments from those who submitted their scorecards, and I'd like to share a some of my favorites (there are over 500 submissions!).
"I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS EVENT. 1ST YEAR TRYING AND WE WILL CONTINUE THE TRADITION. WE WENT TO 12 PARKS THINKING WE HAD TO FIND BUNNIES AT EVERY PARK. IT WAS A BLAST."
"This was my daughter's very 1st Easter hunt. She absolutely loved it. Thank you so much city of Auburn."
"Always a ton of fun, this year we brought my sister along to enjoy the beautiful sunny day. We saw tons of squirrels throughout the day, and a Bald Eagle in a tree at Isaac Evans Park. These type of events are what make living in Auburn special."
 "Great way to learn about the different parks in Auburn especially for newcomers to the area like myself. I hope this is an annual event. I have a great time with my family searching for the bunnies."
"I found this experience to be a good opportunity to bond with my family and we had a lot of fun while searching for the bunnies!"
"Loved taking my daughter around to explore and search for bunnies! Fun way to see the community, easy directions to follow. Thanks for putting together!"
"We went to three parks today that we'd never been to before. Thanks for putting this event on!"
"Took me and the kids an hour to complete. I was shocked how much they loved it and they had to take a break after with all the running to see who could find them faster. Everyone had a blast from my 4year old to my 14year old. I love this event. We will continue it as long as it is offered."
"This was so fun! We took our two year old daughter and she had a blast finding bunny rabbits! Thank you for putting this on!"
 "We visited Isaac Evans, Dykstra, Les Gove, Game Farm, and Sunset Park. This event was so much fun. I loved going to all the parks and my favorite park is Isaac Evan Park. I love the ziplines."
"it was fun and really held the greatness of spring and Easter and the parks were really nice. thanks. It's really nice that it's free and in all I really want this to happen next year and if I had to rate it I would rate it a 10/10 or 5 stars. (: P.S. I hope you like my little comment and i am a kid! (: 'hop,hop!'"
"WE LOVED SEARCHING FOR THE BUNNIES AND THAT THEY WERE NOT EASY TO FIND."
"Wow, so fun!! We just moved here and loved this creative and seasonal community activity! It was great to get out and explore some new parks nearby. Thank you so much!"
"This was so much fun! Thank you guys for hosting this! My friends and I started at a park and walked found about an hour down the White River Trail trying to spot all the bunnies and having so much fun!"
"We had a great time, me and my two grandsons. They found all the bunnies at the first two parks, and then we couldn't stop, so we visited two more parks. Our favorite extra park was the Lewis Lake nature park, where we saw ducks and a real live bunny!"
In the latest episode of That's So Auburn! the team decided we should turn the tables -- literally -- and rather than me interviewing folks from around the community, what if we invited our Director of Administration Dana Hinman to interview me instead? And so, we did just that!
I'll be honest, it was a little strange at first having someone else host and call the shots, but I think it was a fun episode where I had the opportunity to talk more about things a little more personal to me -- like my love for cooking and racing. And of course, my dedication to this community as mayor, a job that wasn't always my dream. But 10 years in, I can't imagine doing anything else.
 On Friday morning I had so much fun visiting Ms. Hatch’s 2nd grade class at Willow Crest Elementary School. The students have been learning about government – at all levels, and I was there to talk about local government. It was the day before Spring Break, and the kids were filled with energy (don’t you wish we could somehow have them share that with us?).
We sat on the floor, and the questions started coming! “Have you met President Biden?” Yes. “Have you been to the White House?” Yes. “Do you live in the White House?” No, I live in a gray house. “Do you pick the City Council?” Not specifically, the voters do that, and I am a voter. “What’s your favorite fruit?” Apples, cantaloupe, watermelon, and strawberries. The questions kept coming, and we also talked about the Final Four for both men’s and women’s basketball, as well as soccer and baseball. Lots of Mariners fans in the classroom! One young man told me that girls can’t play soccer, so we had a little debate over that! All too soon it was time to go, but it sure made my day spending time with them.
Any time I get to spend even a few minutes with Auburn's youngest residents is time well spent! Thank you Willow Crest and the Auburn School District for the invite!
Construction is officially underway on the new Sound Transit parking garage that will be built on the old Mel's Lumber lot, located at 1st Street NW and A Street NW. Most of the parking was utilized by City of Auburn employees, who have now been temporarily relocated to the existing Auburn Station Parking Garage.
This new garage will add 550 parking stalls to downtown Auburn for commuters on Sound Transit's Sounder train and is part of a promise made to voters in 2008 when they approved the ST2 ballot measure to address growing ridership.
I'm excited to see the final garage when it's set to finish construction sometime in 2026 or 2027 -- especially as ridership on the Sounder train and King County Metro buses continues to rise post COVID.
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