Police investigating after Puyallup planning official reports disturbing threats
Update: Puyallup City Council members Lauren Adler and Julie Door sent a statement to The News Tribune Saturday night that condemned the threats.
“As members of the Puyallup City Council, we want to speak clearly and without hesitation — the reported racial slurs, threats of sexual violence, and other hateful attacks directed at one of our community members in response to their work on Puyallup’s Comprehensive Plan are abhorrent and unacceptable,” the statement said. “What was reported in the Tacoma News Tribune today is reflective of targeted, racist intimidation and it will not be tolerated in our city.”
The statement goes on to say: “No one should face threats or intimidation for serving their community. We must call this behavior what it is — racism and political violence — and reject it outright. We call on our community to stand up, speak out against hate, support those who have been targeted, and commit to engaging with each other respectfully, even in disagreement. Puyallup is better than this — and we must prove it.”
Initial story: Puyallup police are investigating disturbing threats made to the head of the city’s Planning Commission amid controversy over updates to the city’s comprehensive plan.
The letter Chair Kenya Jones-Lowell received, shared with The News Tribune, includes explicit death threats, the threat of sexual violence and racial slurs, among other obscenities.
Puyallup Police spokesperson Capt. Kevin Gill confirmed to The News Tribune on Friday that the threats were reported on June 9.
“We take these types of cases very seriously and give them the attention they deserve, and as soon as I can tell you more, I certainly will,” Gill said.
He declined to confirm the nature of the threats, citing the ongoing investigation, but said the department increased security at City Hall following the report.
“We did have some extra officers present there for a while,” he said.
Asked if investigators have any suspects, Gill said they are “looking at possibilities.”
Jones-Lowell, who is Black, agreed to speak with The News Tribune on Friday about the threats she received. She emphasized that she was speaking in her personal capacity, not on behalf of the city or in her role on the commission.
She said she first received a series of unusual text messages starting in late May that tried to get her to confirm her address. On June 6, she found a threatening letter in her mailbox, which she said video showed was hand-delivered.
“The comp plan will pass and end all of you,” part of the letter reads.
It goes on to say that “we will make Puyallup great again,” that “Black lives do not matter here,” and it describes ways that Jones-Lowell could be killed.
“It was incredibly violent and specific and just invasive in a lot of ways,” she said.
Jones-Lowell said she also received two threatening robocalls, including one the day after the City Council voted on the comprehensive plan.
She left Puyallup for several weeks last month, she said, extending a family trip in response to the threats. She missed the last Planning Commission meeting, she said, because she decided with her family that she shouldn’t return until after the plan passed.
“It’s terrifying,” she said. “We’ve really changed our routines a lot, I think. We’re just hyperaware. It’s very, very stressful.”
Controversy over Puyallup’s comprehensive plan
The Planning Commission worked on the comprehensive plan for more than a year before presenting its recommendations to the council. Jones-Lowell was the vice chair of the commission for much of that time, then became the chair, presiding over the commission’s meetings. The earliest she remembers discussing the plan was in fall 2023, and she said the commission presented the plan to the council in December 2024.
The council reviewed the Planning Commission’s recommendations and made changes to the commission’s plan that drew criticism from residents, including that the council’s removal of language about equity failed to respect the city’s diversity and could expose the city to legal risk due to state requirements.
The council voted 4-3 to pass the comprehensive plan with the controversial changes at the council’s July 22 meeting. Opponents argue the council’s changes will make Puyallup less inclusive and possibly lead the city to run afoul of state law. Many residents spoke against the changes ahead of the vote.
Changes that got the most attention from opponents at the July 22 meeting were proposed by Mayor Jim Kastama, according to the city’s website. Among other things, one change replaced the word “equity” with “equality” in many sections, The News Tribune reported. Another involved language that the city will follow federal executive orders, including when they’re at odds with state law.
Kastama spoke about the changes at the July 22 meeting. He said in part that “race-neutral terminology aligns with both Washington state law and the U.S. Constitution.”
Kastama, Deputy Mayor Dennis King, and council members Dean Johnson and Renne Gilliam voted to approve the plan with the changes. Council members Lauren Adler, Julie Door and Ned Witting voted against it.
The News Tribune was not immediately able to reach Kastama for comment late Friday about the investigation into the threats reported by Jones-Lowell.
Asked about her views on the changes, Jones-Lowell said in a text message Friday that she does “not speak publicly on specific recommendations outside of the recommendation given by the dais,” and that she has “never issued a minority report against any planning commission recommendation.”
She said that her “recommendations on all comprehensive plan matters are consistent with the recommendations provided to the City Council” by the commission.
‘I really believe in local government.’
Jones-Lowell has lived in Puyallup for about eight years.
“The ability to come into a community and feel like you can be a part of it and that there is a place for you here, and then to just feel so incredibly unwelcome, that is hard,” she said. “Harder than I expected it to be.”
The 35-year-old designer works on master plans for tribal communities, large gaming organizations and on large hospitality developments, she said. She estimates the projects she’s worked on across the world, including in Washington state, amount to nearly $1.2 billion in development.
To her knowledge, she is the first Black chair of the city’s Planning Commission. The City Council appointed her to the commission in the spring of 2022. Commissioners are unpaid volunteers.
“I really believe in local government, and I just think that the communities in which people live should reflect who they are as a community, and you can’t really do that without input,” she said.
.jpg "FullSizeR(2).jpg")
The commission put a great deal of work into the comprehensive plan in recent years, she said, which she describes as a 20-year vision for Puyallup.
“It’s sort of like a wish list for how we wish to see our city,” she said.
Jones-Lowell said she cares deeply about the city, and that she loves being on the planning commission. Her firm doesn’t work in Puyallup, she said, and it’s fun to be on the other side of things as a regular citizen.
“There are a lot of people who chose to live in Puyallup and are deeply invested in what it looks like moving forward,” she said.
Jones-Lowell said she’s particularly impressed by how hard the city’s planning team worked on outreach to residents during the comprehensive plan process. They were out in-person at many, many events, she said.
“Every community doesn’t get that,” she said. “I think that that really is something to be proud of.”
Her hope, she said, is for the city to move forward together to address the needs of the average person who lives in Puyallup
“If there aren’t people who are going to stand up and talk about things from a variety of different places and backgrounds, then it all just sort of looks one way,” she said. “I just don’t see how I could not try and serve, because who else is going to do it? If you can just go around sort of scaring people? At some point someone has to say: ‘no.’”
News Tribune archives contributed to this report.
This story was originally published August 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
