Mayor Dana Ralph will deliver her 2026 State of the City address Thursday, March 19 at the new $47 million Kent East Hill Operations Center.
Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. program at the Operations Center, which sits at 12607 SE 248th Street, just east of 124th Avenue SE and south of 248th across from Clark Lake Park.
“This year marked the substantial completion of the Kent East Hill Operations Center or KEHOC, a $47 million investment that consolidates critical maintenance operations into a modern, efficient and sustainable facility designed to serve Kent for the next 30 years and beyond,” Ralph said in a recent video message about city accomplishments in 2025.
During her State of the City address, Ralph typically recaps 2025 accomplishments and talks about current and future projects. She has held the past several addresses at Kent-Meridian High School’s Performing Arts Center, but picked the Operations Center for this year’s event.
The center is expected to open this spring, according to a Feb. 10 email from city of Kent communications staff. City leaders broke ground on the project in spring 2024 and are hitting the expected completion date of early 2026.
The 83,000-square-foot building went up on about 10 of the 22 acres the city owns. It will house a portion of the Kent Police Department operations, both with staffing and evidence storage; the Parks Department’s East Hill crew; and most of the Public Works Department. The site will include 427 parking spaces, with 25 electric vehicle charging stations, according to staff reports to council.
The city still will use its current operations facility in the Valley at Russell Road and South 240th Street, but staff had years ago outgrown that 16,636-square-foot structure built in 1968. About 150 employees use the facility and that number increases to more than 200 employees with seasonal jobs.
Ralph will deliver her State of the City address entering the first year of her third four-year term after voters reelected her in November 2025 when she ran unopposed.
Ralph is on her way to becoming one of the four longest-serving mayors in the city’s 135-year history. She will reach the 12-year mark by the end of this term in 2029.
That would tie her with Jim White Sr. and Suzette Cooke for the second-longest mayoral terms in city history. Isabel Hogan, who served 16 years from 1969 to 1985, has the longest tenure, according to city records. White served from 1994 to 2005 and Cooke from 2006 to 2017. Neither one ran for a fourth term.
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