City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, everybody. It is 6:01 p.m. on March 16th, 2026, and I'm calling tonight's city council meeting to order. Would you all please join me in the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Uh we will proceed with some announcements and then committee reports. Uh just a little bit of a agenda review. First of all, we do have um a couple of business items on tonight's agenda um including a couple of public hearings. Now um after we get done with some announcements, there's a public comment period. That's for anything that you want to talk about that isn't on the agenda. Then after that, we will get down to the public hearing, and that's your opportunity to talk about the couple things that are on the agenda, including the ACFL plan and our um first quarter budget and capital facilities plan amendment. I will ask everybody at this point to silence all of your cell phones, including council members, uh so that we can uh get going in an uninterrupted fashion throughout the rest of the meeting. Now, if um if members of the audience signed up on the public comment signin sheet, we'll take you first at the time of public comment on the agenda. If you didn't, you can just raise your hand and we'll take you at that point. Okay. So, now we'll proceed with some announcements, which is the cue to advance the slide. Okay. Thank you. So, uh, the Anacortis Senior Activity Center has a couple of events they would like to promote coming up. First of all, there's a St. Patrick's Day lunchon tomorrow. Uh, second, there is this recreational ukulele class for beginners, and that is Fridays, April 3rd through June 12th. And then, um, a pretty important program that they offer is the aging mastery program, which starts Wednesdays, April 15th, and runs through June 3rd. All of these programs are available on the senior activity c center's website which is anacortiswah.gov556. You can see that there on the screen. So

relatively easy to get there. Uh check that website out or stop by the center for more information. The parks and recreation department is hosting the egg dash at Stovvic Park. That's from 6 p.m. to 6:01 p.m. Uh so don't be late. April 3rd. uh I will give the announcement to start and then I will disappear and so will all the eggs. So uh if you're interested in that and it doesn't really look like a lot of people in this audience are going to be dashing for eggs but you may know you may know a kid. Uh youth track and field also starts April 20th and registration is open now for that. Anacortiswah.gov490 will take you to uh all that information. Uh our uh community development block grant annual plan, which we had a public hearing on last week, has a public comment period open from March 16th through April 23rd. The next public hearing, there's a second one required, uh is on April 27th, and all the information about that plan is at anacoriswah.gov174. Uh we have been promoting every week and we're going to keep doing this until you have it burned into your memories. But if you want information on our capital projects, what's happening at 12th and commercial, what's happening on South Commercial, various other projects and uh sidewalk projects and crosswalk projects, uh and including projects like the ACFL plan. You can find those at anacordiswah.gov/projects. We've tried to get more information out onto the website in a standardized format. If you see something there that isn't quite to your liking, you want more information, feel free to reach out. we will uh help get better and more information about the things the city is doing onto our website so that you've got an authoritative place to find that information.

Little preview of the coming month. On April 6, the first council meeting of April, we will hear uh from the mayor uh the state of the city address. And then on the following week, we will hear an all department quarter 1 update uh on what all the departments are doing across the city. Um so if you're interested in either my spiel or the department head spiel, you got two meetings to choose from here. Uh and then if um you are a member of a service club or other organization that wants to hear a state of the city, a copy of the state of the city address, reach out to my office and we can get that on our calendar as well. Okay, council. I understand a couple of council committees have met in the past week or so. So, let's start with uh economic development. Who would like to make that report?

Mayor Walters. Council member Young.

Um the economic development committee um met on the 10th. Uh it was myself or council um Man Courier as well as um Councilwoman Clea McGrath. It was a um spicy meeting in a good way. Uh everything was on the table. Um we the discussion was how do we capitalized on the ideas that we have for the city to generate revenues to bring people downtown uh other people to come out. And so you know what I love about serving with Cleveland McGrath and Luke Curry is that they don't hold back. And we all are um honest good people but with big ideas and can also are willing to discuss it and then rule them out or rule them in based upon whether or not we really genuinely believe it will work for our city. In this case, we were discussing as one of the ideas um how do we capitalize on the 2 million people that come past downtown and through our city in order to get to the ferry and um so we had a wonderful discussion about it. Uh we have some strategies that we are implementing right now, stakeholders that we're reaching out to and for for input and as well as thoughts. And then um we have um a beginning game plan that we think is underutilized, a huge opportunity for our city, something that most cities wish they had but we do. And then trying to also figure out how do we promote those events that we are talking about whether it's music downtown, the waterfront or those things so those economic dollars can come back to our city. Whether that

means if even if of the 2 million people going to the San Juans, if 1% of those people are people that have businesses, jobs or opportunities that may want to be here or may decide that they want to get back on the ferry from their week wherever or two weeks wherever and come back for an event in downtown if they knew about it. And so, you know, part of that was looking at the um of where we are, the different methodologies for reaching people, whether it's um you know, geoloccating, whether it's clam digger, whether it's the Anacortis American, whether it's parks and wreck, whether it's downtown development, whether it's the chamber. I'm just saying, you know, there's a lot of places to look when you don't know um where to look to find out what's in and then if you want to come through and most times what we thought was quite interesting and I'm sure you know is the idea that although we would love for people to come and um stop in Anacortis before they go to the ferry before they decide that they're going to spend time on Lopez Orcas or one of the other islands most of the time if they're anything like me, what's happening is you're getting just in time. You're focusing on getting to the ferry and getting in that line. So part of that is what we were discussing the ins and out of that. How do we capitalize on it with minimal dollars but maximum return? So stay tuned. It should be a wonderful discussion. If you're a stakeholder in this process, look, we are already plotting to reach out and try to bring all those people to the table that matter such that once we put forward a plan of action and begin to execute it because what we're hoping to do is to begin and and hopefully see some

benefit, you know, through this summer. But, you know, our work is cut out for us for sure. But I can guarantee you that I've never been more proud to serve with um Councilman Mccurer or even Clea McGrath because you know they're bringing it to the table for sure. And so anyway, but that's the good news. And so we've got ideas that are coming to the table and we'll be reaching out to community and stakeholders for other ideas as we um flush out our approach to getting to what we want. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Young. You keep describing your committee meetings as spicy. I'm getting a little concerned what kind of economic development you're planning.

Uh, all right. Uh, finance committee, Mayor Walters, Miss Molton.

Thank you. The council finance committee met Thursday, March 12th. It's council member Hunt, council member Clea McGrath, and me as council members. And also finance director Steve Hogland was there. finance manager Rhonda Pek and finance person also um Amber Reigns. So we discussed the ERP software that we have adopted as a city. It's an update and ERP stands for enterprise resource planning to streamline and unify our key business processes and we are on track. Staff has been working hard and adopt and implementing this in chunks. So, we're on track for July 1st. Our financial modules will be implemented and then utility billing is next and that will come online January 1st, 2027. And that apparently is going really smoothly with some good tech support along the way, which is refreshing. Um, so the other thing that we that we discussed is on we discussed it briefly. It's on tonight's agenda and that's the um first quarter budget and capital facilities plan amendment. So I will leave that for that time. Thank you.

Thank you Miss Molton. Uh housing affordability and community services and planning committee. Mayor Walters also Miss Molton. Go ahead.

Thank you. Um the hacks portion of the committee met on March 10th and that's council members Courier Young and myself and we had multiple guests. We had some in person and some online from the family center community action, the housing authority and the able housing group that has been very successful and has and I think we've said this before but it bears mentioning again um with a little bit of help from the city they secured $4.5 million to develop housing here in town for adults with intellectual and um developmental disabil abilities and they already have a house that they've renovated and rellandscaped and is being occupied and they're well on their way to doing more. And currently there are 46 people 46 adults in Anacortis with with ID and we found out at that meeting that there are 75 currently um kiddos in the Anacortis school district. So, this is something that's been a need coming for a long time and this group is really knocking it out of the park in making things happen because as the care the parents and caregivers age, these adults who are very involved in their community and have jobs, we see them, we talk to them, we they're our community and we want to make sure that that they can stay here um where they're known and connected. So, it's really inspiring. um communities like po Port Townsen and others around the state have been attending their meetings virtually as well because they're doing such a good job. So also spreading these successful efforts and so other communities can learn to do the same. So that's super exciting. Um we talked a little bit about the CDBG allocations that were presented a couple of weeks ago. That's the community development block grant that we get from the federal government every year an amount of$ 105 to $110,000.

And we talked with staff um planning director Coleman and housing services um coordinator Stephanie Snyder about how those allocations were recommended. It's really difficult, especially with such a small pot of money and people suffering cuts in um funding and services across the board to try to distribute that fairly. But I believe staff does a very good job of doing that and um tries to do the best that we can for our organizations who serve our populations in need every year and have been for years. So we discussed that. That was really great. Um and that will be coming back to us as a council um after a couple of weeks. I can't remember the date, but anyway. Yeah. So we'll be voting on we'll be voting on that um not too far down the road. So that's about it. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Molton. Uh clerk will note that council member Cleveland McGrath arrived at 6:15 and we now have everybody here. Uh public works, Mayor Walters, Mr. Pantino.

Yes. The public works committee met just before this meeting at 5:00. It was myself, Council Member McDougall, Logan Lee, uh public works director, and and other staff as well. um some of the topics that we covered. Uh one of which is on our agenda tonight and that would be the contract award for the public safety building HVAC improvements. I'm not going to go into too many details because it's going to be before us in just a few minutes here. Um another very interesting item on our committee agenda was some pipe arch fixing that will be happening. Um, some of you may be aware it's like Anacortis Lore that we have this pipe arch over on Whistle Lake Road that was installed in the late '7s and it works as a blowoff to relieve pressure. Um, it's monitored at the water treatment plant and um there was a sanitary survey that was conducted. They do this every 3 years, the department of health, and they determined that there's a potential cross connection issue, which means that could be disturbed by an intrusion from such fun visitors like bugs, rodents, and other critters. Um, and so basically they are going to be installing what's called a decllorinating overflow security assembly or dosa, which is something that has a refillable decllorinator. It goes on a concrete slab, puts in a screen, it can be it can be cleaned. Um, and so there's going to be work done on that uh pipe arch which is being required by the Department of Health. Um the engineers bids were the engineers bid was at 550,000 but all of the bids I think of which we had three came in at 260,000 or less. Um so let's hope that trend continues. Uh and so that is going to be coming before us in

a couple weeks for more information and a presentation. We were also told about two grants that we are currently trying to get and we feel that we have a good shot at both. The first is um a Washington state grant called safe routes to school program and this would be for improvements along 22nd Street from J to M and um from L uh from J to M and from 22nd to the high school. Um, and that's going to involve ADA ramps. But more importantly, along that 22nd Street section, which is by like the tennis courts and everything, there's going to be a 10-foot multi- model uh path that is going to be put in. So, it's going to make things safer. Um, which is great. There, this is a $1.5 million grant should we get it. and it's a no match grant which means the city doesn't have to put any money into it which is also a trend we hope continues. Um and uh the thing about this is state grants are very different from federal grants at this time. So a lot of federal grants um you know they have their own way to evaluate. State grants really are looking for equity for people. And so that's something that we capitalized on in this grant because there'll also be ADA ramp improvements at the various intersection as well as some good new lighting um like crossing lighting put in right there by the tennis courts of where I'm sure we're all very familiar kids during T-ball or baseball season tend to be very active on that street. So that's that's good news. Um, we also are getting ready to um apply for a grant that I think council member Molton and council member um Hunt will be very excited about as our avid bicyclists. It's a bike ped

grant. Um, also a state program with no match required. And what this is is we're looking at putting in another one of those multimodal 10-foot paths on Oaks Avenue from A Avenue to Ana Copper Mine Road. And this would be on the south side of the street. Now, I know everybody thinks of that area and they think of the Gimish Channel Trail. So, I want to make sure it's very clear that the Gimish Channel Trail is still being um we're we're still going down that path. This is not looked at as a replacement or a fix. That is still a path that that the mayor is working down. Um but this could be an additional um good safe area for that part of of the road. Um this would create the the grant itself is just for a design, but getting that design would open up more opportunities from grants from TIB and other Washington programs. Um, and we are in the process of applying. So fingers crossed that we we receive that grant. Also, I know we talked about the alternative wastewater treatment plant options and on March 23rd, there will be a presentation that we saw at our public works uh committee meeting last month um that will go over all of those options. And then after that they will send out a survey to all council members where we can give our feedback. And the hope um is that we will then have a work session uh around what path we want to take forward uh for the alternative wastewater treatment plant. So thank you.

Thank you Mr. Fantini. And I would note as well on that project uh that Mr. Trantini mentioned multimodal path on Oaks Avenue. Uh we did look at the segment west of Anakopper as well, but it um uh had not had the same safety performance as east of Anakopper. So that's why we settled on the the segment anopper east to A. Uh all right. Uh, one other note. Um, in 2023, the last year data was available, there were more than a thousand gun deaths in Washington. On average, one person is killed by a gun every 8 hours. Uh, firearms were the second leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1 through 17 in 2023 in the state of Washington. And firearms are used in 77% of homicides and 54% of suicides. All in, gun violence costs Washingtonians $10 billion per year, more than $1,300 per person. If you have guns at home, you have an obligation to make sure that those guns are stored safely under the law. If you don't want your guns, if you have inherited guns, if you have guns uh as a result um of an inheritance or a divorce or s any for any other reason, you can get rid of them. Uh you can call APD at their dispatch number, the non-emergency number, uh which is on your screen here, 360428-3211, and you can make an appointment to come to the police station, leave them in your car, and uh they will come out and dispose of them for you. Removal of firearms from a home that is not keeping safe storage of firearms is pretty important for any number of reasons. and

it would be beneficial to our community to take whatever measures we can to deal with guns that aren't being safely stored. So, uh we will remind uh council and the audience of this on any number of occasions going forward. It's a good practice. Please uh tell your friends and neighbors if you've got any concern about um uh any particular household that has guns, doesn't know what to do with them, voluntarily, we can take care of them for you. All right. Uh our next item of business is a couple of appointments. The first is resolution 3209 which is uh proposed council confirmation of my appointment of Jill Underwood to the planning commission council.

Uh council confirmation is uh Mr. Fantini. I move we approve the appointment of Jill Underwood. Second. I hear a motion and a second which I'm going to characterize as a motion to approve the resolution. Uh appointing uh confirming the appointment of Jill Underwood to the planning commission. Any discussion? All those in favor say I.

All those opposed say no. The eyes have it and resolution 3209 is approved. The next resolution on the agenda is 3210. Uh, in this case, we are making an appointment to the historic preservation board. That is a council appointment. Um, it's not my appointment. Um, so your action by the resolution is to affect the appointment. Mayor Walters, Miss Hunt, I move to approve resolution 3210 appointing Zach Mosner to the Historic Preservation Board through December 31, 2028.

Second. I hear a motion and a second to approve resolution 3210. Any discussion? Hearing no discussion, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor signify by saying I. All those opposed say no.

The eyes have it. And resolution 3210 is approved. Congratulations to you all. Uh our next item of business is public comment. I have two people signed up on the list for public comment, but they've indicated their topic is the forest plan. So, if you want to hold on for just a few minutes, we'll have uh the forest plan up next. Uh is there anyone who would like to comment on anything else that's not on the agenda at this point? Seeing none, and do I assume no one no one is online? All right. Uh we'll close public comment period and move on to the consent agenda. Uh, council, do I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Mayor Walters. Mr. McDougall. I move approval of consent agenda items A through C. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. Any discuss? Well, we don't allow discussion on the consent agenda. Uh, so we'll proceed to a roll call vote. Uh, Miss Franc, would you call the role? Miss Molton? Yes. Mr. McDougall, yes. Mr. Fantini, I Miss Hunt, yes. Mr. Courier, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Cleveland McGrath, yes.

Mayor, the eyes are seven, the nays are zero. Consent agenda is approved. Thank you very much. Our next item is the public hearing on the ACFL plan, and Mr. Folks from the parks department is here to present that item.

Thank you. Uh good evening, mayor, council, members of the audience. Uh this is in fact the uh public hearing on the community forest plan and uh you heard from me quite a bit a few weeks ago, so this is just a quick reminder um of where we are and where we're hoping to go. Uh force board spent some time uh updating the November 1st, 2021 plan. That is the draft that uh you have now and that you have been receiving some written comments on. Uh Greg and I have been working together to make sure all of those got to you. And if there's any questions about those, I can certainly help out with that. Um just a reminder, we started this process a couple of years ago. Uh we've had uh many comments um throughout the process. It's no secret that people feel very passionately about our community forest lands and um it's a real privilege to be able to stand in the line of of people that have helped take care of it over the years. Uh so we were uh we will continue with that tonight. You're going to hear from a variety of people with I'm guessing a variety of perspectives on uh how we might continue to to protect our forest lands. Um we uh we have been through a fairly detailed public process. Um this is uh one example of I I don't know if it was a 15page matrix we went through at one point with the forest board after the first round of comments. The the the draft you have in front of you was a second draft of the uh November 2021 plan. So the forest board went through a draft. We released that, did another round of public comments. That's how we got to the document that you're now have

and that folks are going to comment on this evening. Um, so next steps, uh, we, and I say we, the park staff, our intention is to come back here on April 20th and probably spend a fair amount of time, uh, going through a similar matrix, uh, a breakdown of of the oral comments and, um, spend some time answering questions and and doing our best. That's assuming that the public hearing is closed this evening. That's certainly up to you and the mayor. So, if the public hearing is continued, then that April 20th date could get changed. And that date was chosen um simply because your agendas are pretty full between now and then. Um we uh again on the Anacortis website, we have all kinds of things posted, years worth of comments, drafts. Um, we did I did get word from senior planner Libby Grage today that our SEPA DNS on the on the current forest plan that you're looking at, uh, there were no public comments and no appeals. So, we've been through that part of the process. And with that, I can open it up to questions, but uh, I'm sure you'd rather hear from the public than any more from me. But if you do have a question, I'm happy to answer it.

Uh just one detail on public comment. You had on the slide here that we'll take comments through tonight and then you'll generate a matrix based on the comments we've received in this latest round. I think uh we might um take comments for an additional week. Uh so maybe through through um uh through the end of the day Monday, next Monday. uh just to make sure that people have an opportunity uh to contribute beyond the end of the public hearing tonight and then um anybody certainly is welcome to contact any member of the council at any time but we will have to cut it off at some point to generate the matrix of comments. Yep.

And it will take some time to generate that. So yeah, and so watch future agendas uh to make certain that April 20th remains the date uh that we return to this item. Okay. So Mr. Young.

Yes. Uh no, I just want to elaborate a little further. I'm sure all of us on council have received emails concerning this topic. I mean the stratus and um you know at least I can speak for myself and I believe the council I've read every single one of them and I understand. So here's another opportunity to have your voice heard and uh and recognize that we are um you know doing the due diligence to make sure that we're understanding what the solutions are as well as the challenges. But I I really just wanted to comment about that we have been receiving emails and phone calls about it and that your messaging is um duly noted. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else before we get started? All right. Uh and we do have, you know, some experts here in the audience given that uh Mr. Oaks or Mr. Lunsford have been the forest managers since 1992. Um, so if you've got questions we can um that aren't answered in the public hearing format because we're not going to be doing a lot of responses here, you can always reach out to them for questions. I've got two people signed up uh on the sheet. So those people get to go first. So beginning with uh Josie Henderson, we will take our first comment and I'll open the public hearing. Now at the podium and we'll ask everybody to come to the podium for your presentation. Uh there is a series of lights. Green means go. Yellow means you've got 30 seconds left. And red means your time is up. And I will cut you off uh after the conclusion of your last nonrunon sentence. Uh when the light turns red, you've got about 3 minutes, which is our standard. You want to speak directly into the mic, and you need to begin by saying your name and

the neighborhood in which you live. So, uh Miss Henderson, come on up. And after that it will be Marlene Finley. Go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor Walters and City Council. My name is Josie Henderson. I'm the executive director for the Friends of the Anacortis Community Forest Lands and tonight I am speaking on their behalf. We have 400 members and they live in every neighborhood in Anacortis. So we have been part of this process throughout the I've been with the organization about a year and I've been to every forest advisory board meeting. have seen the process go through and I just want to say thank you to the forest board. There's been lots of public comment opportunity and engaging the I feel like they've really listened to the community and I encourage you to continue with that process. We have contributed to the plan. We actually did some um input on some of the regulations and so we were happy to provide that. We encourage you to always keep in mind even with the the budget cuts that are happening and the the pressures that you're under to fund the ACFL that it's really important. It brings in tax revenue. It's really important to our citizens. So, we want you to remember that. Um enforcement of rules. I know that there are issues around this that that's additional funding, but the truth is if we have those rules out there and there's no enforcement, they they kind of don't mean anything. And I think we all see that with the way that some of the rules are adhered to or not adhered to. We encourage you to make evidence-based decisions. There are some tough decisions that will have to be made and we just ask that you really look at the research and the science when you make those decisions. And finally, we just want to thank you for all of your dedication to the forest. This is a tremendous community resource and it's taken a village to get it going and sustain it. And just thank you for all your efforts toward that. and please continue to do that. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, next up, Marlene Finley. And then we'll take people who raise their hands in the order in which I see you.

Good evening. My name is Marlene Finley and I live in lower D. That's what we call it. Um, I'm the president of Evergreen Islands and for 49 years, our organizations work to protect the natural environments of Scadget County saltwater islands. We've been active participants throughout this plan planning process, attending the forest advisory board meetings and submitting written comments. This draft before you has some strong points. It's concise. It's well written. It's easy to read, much better than the predecessor. We're especially pleased to see the sections on citizen science and um monitoring um the baseline monitoring. We also liked seeing the clim that climate change is also meaningfully addressed. We do have some concerns. First, this plan is largely a status quo document. It lacks any assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the 2021 plan, and there's no analysis of environmental or recreational trends. Policy statements are often justified with anecdotal language rather than data and solid management decisions require quantitative measurement not impressions. Second, law enforcement and fire protection need a greater emphasis. Last year f you um you authorized approved fi five new police officers and the ACFL deserves a share of that presence. The fire protection section must be strengthened to include wild wildfire detection also a fuel reduction plan and a public alert system in case of a wildfire. Third, the plan has no budget discussion and without an honest accounting of staffing and resources. This is just a wish list. We need to know that the plan can be implemented. Fourth, natural resource management's absent from future management structure. How can we protect

these ecosystems without a dedicated ecologist or a natural resource manager? And finally, and this matters deeply to a lot of our members, the public comment public comments were not responded to in the beginning with written rationale. Um although I see reflections of the public sentiment in the revised draft, um some many people, especially those um that were advocating for wildlife and ecosystem health, felt that their voices were dismissed. We urged the city council, all of you, to please continue to to require best available science for decisionmaking, to strictly limit new structures in the forest, and to thoughtfully evaluate and respond to public comments before approving this plan. We're so lucky to have this forest. We're lucky to have this city and this community to care for it. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Uh, yes, sir. Here we go. So, my name's John M. I live up at top of the hill. You got to come to the mic first so that it gets onto the recording. Okay. Thank you.

My name's John Mihan. I live at top of the hill on 41st Street. I uh represent the motorcycle community as a member of the trails committee and I sent I had Bob Ves distribute a letter to you. I hope everybody got to have a look at it. I just wanted to come here to remind you I know it it's not a scold anacortis community forest lands right everybody has access to the forest lands the only thing I don't do in there is horseback ride I've been the uh been motorcycleycling here since 1994 I took over the job in 2000 as the representative for the motorcycle comm community and what I've seen largely is an exclusionary process and it's mostly from people that I cross paths with on the trails that are non- motorcyclists most of the motorcyclists that I engage are all very responsible very respectful and understand that it's critical that they behave very very well in the forest lands. When I'm in the forest lands and I see some of the damage that the motorcycle community inflicts upon the forest lands, I get very angry and my hands are tied. You have a wonderful staff here with the with the parks and recck department under John Lunsford. They work handin-hand with me and the other members of the trail committee on a regular basis. And I think that if you give them the leeway to imp implement policy and if you can bring forward some a way for us to enforce and perhaps control some of the access a bit more across all user groups, maybe we can keep the course forest lands as pristine and nice as they have been for at least the last 32 years that I've been using them. Thank you very much.

Let's take questions. Thank you. Thank you. Who's next? Come on up.

My name is Paul Baron. Um, my wife Angie and I live at 13266 Hart Lake Road. Um, we're directly across the road from what's called the Climbers Trail Colloquially, which is trail number 248. I'm assuming you guys are all familiar with the trail system, more or less. Um, and I'm here mostly to discuss the impacts of the use of that trail and particularly the parking area um that affect us and Linda Wood and her husband Larry whose property adjoins that trail. We've been using that trail for since there was only an official trail for a long time. Um I'm probably the single most frequent user of that trail. We live right across the road. Um my concern is that in the documents that I see, no mention is made of uh how the parking is going to be treated uh at the lower end of trail 248. Um which is one of the main accesses uh to trail 247, which is a main uh trail on the west and south side of Mount Erie. Um there it's a known issue there with traffic. There's not good parking. Uh for us, we're impacted by noise, dogs, slamming doors. Most people are considerate, but even then, there's commotion there, and it does affect us. It directly impacts us. That parking area was once used to stage a burglary at our house. That's a real serious impact for us. So, my my concern is that we're not being um invited to the party. Nobody has ever talked to us about um how that should be treated and what our concerns are and what our input might be u to manage that. Um I think the earwoods have the same issue. They're kind of feel like

they're left out even though their property immediately uh joins that uh property or the trail. Um, so we we're um big users of the ACFL um and value it. So we want to be able to contribute and I think that is concern of a lot of the community is they kind of feel left out. So, we'd like to see some more invitation for the community, especially people who live adjacent to the forest lands to be have some input and to help steer things um without feeling like they're being uh uh dictated to by by a bureaucracy, I guess, is the best word. Um, kind of on a final note, um, I see the trails that are damaged every year, year after year by motorcycle use in the forest lands on trails that are not authorized for motorcycle use. There's no enforcement up there. There's no restrictions. I'm sorry. Oh,

you're you hit your red light. Oh, okay. Well, motorcycles. But thank you. I think I think we heard that comment. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Who's next? Come on up.

Speak in this. Yes. And feel free to adjust your microphone uh so that you can speak directly into it.

Okay. I'm not a public speaker. I'm not used to this. Okay. My name is Linda Airwood. My husband Larry and I live at 13223 Hart Lake Road. My house and property is alongside of trail number 248 and two trail 247 runs along the back of our property also. I live in the county. My understanding is that the ACFL is planning to enhance the parking area for trail number 247 and 248 at the bottom of my driveway. The city's the city the city's owned property is only 30 yards wide on each on which the trail fits. As I've been told, we already have people parking halfway in our driveway a lot of the time. Dogs off leashes running on out onto our property and down our driveway. At times, loud noise by inconsiderate people late at night since the time was extended until 10:30 at night and overnight as well. Yesterday morning, Sunday morning, before 6:00 a.m., I was awakened by lights coming through our windows of our house by people down at the bottom of our driveway and at the bottom of the of trail number 248 from wearing large bright lights on their heads, which I called 911 non-emergency asking what was going on, thinking maybe somebody had gone off the road on the other side like we've had several times. or maybe rescuers needing access of our

driveway, which we've helped them out many times when somebody's gotten hurt on the mountain. I believe enhancing the parking area not only would impact us, but also the wildlife and the beauty of the forest lands. Hardly ever does the city come to patrol this area because we are about 300 yards outside of the city jurisdiction. I find it very sad that we are not or have not ever been informed about the trail parking or changes of 248 except after the fact by the Anacortis American paper or this time by one of our very few neighbors that we that live out. We only have three neighbors on Hart Lake Road before you get to Lake Area Grocery Store from the city. From the sign, it says you're in the county now. So, I just wanted to let you know of my concerns and uh I mean, we're always there to help. I mean, we've had, as I said, the ambulance, fire trucks, everything up there when needed. So, we don't have a problem with that. I mean, who would? So,

perfect timing. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anyone else? Come on up. I was not Oh, excuse me. My My name is Ala McCartney. I'm in the Island View area. Um, if I'm not in the forest at least four or five days a week, don't even talk to me. So, I'm I'm all over the place. People know that. I know you do, Carolyn and Andy. Um, what I'm really concerned about, and I'm really glad that somebody spoke for the motorists and motorcycles. Uh, excuse me, Mayor Walters and,

uh, Mr. Young. No, would you just get a little bit closer to the microphone so I can hear you? Could you take your time off now? Okay. Uh, hi. And just be sure to look this direction. It's very directional. Yeah.

Um, my main points are signage, signage, signage. That's going to solve a lot of problems for the motorcycles. What I see is up in the 300 zone, um, there are some nice big signs that point the way for the motorcycles. But if you come the other way, zero. There's no signs whatsoever on the 302. None. Zero. Zippity natada. There's no signs coming from the other direction on 300. I hope you're hearing this, Bob. And um I think it's all about the signs. Also, at Whistle Lake parking lot, Hart Lake parking lot, there was no signage about the season. The season for motorized vehicles. nothing. So, I see guys up there all the time and they just zoom right by me, practically run me over while I'm up there on the trails for peace and quiet. They tear up the trails, especially in the 300 zone. And uh I don't appreciate that very much, but I really think, you know, besides, I saw cameras there at Little Roundtop at one point and I appreciated that. But I think better signage would really, really solve a lot of problems and it won't cost much. So that's my comments for tonight. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. All right, who's next? Come on up. Is that good? A little higher. Hi. Uh my name is Josh Gates. I live on West Fourth over by Little Cranberry. Um, I'm here to actually I'm pretty happy with the plan as is and I encourage you to pass it. I mean, again, I've heard some pretty great ideas too that could be incorporated, but overall, uh, I just want to thank the forest advisory board and the parks department for all the hard work they've done because it's pretty good as is. And, uh, here's my credentials to say why I think that. Um, I'm very invested in the ACFL. For the past 25 years, I've been a very active user. I have literally thousands of hours and miles in the forest. I'm the president of the local mountain bike advocacy group. So, the Fedo Trail Riders and we help um the city organize a lot of maintenance crews, either big groups or small groups. So, we have hundreds probably thousand some hours of just maintenance time in the trails, you know, just doing our part. Um serving where we can. I'm also a mountain bike coach with high school and middle school. Um, so there we're teaching uh proper bike handling skills, trail etiquette, uh making the kids fix the trails alongside us, um, and just uh continue to be good users of the forest land. So I bike, I hike, and I run paddle board on lakes. I have tons of interactions with people on the forest lands because we have a lot of great people. Not uh I would say the majority are positive interactions. Um some of course are always not going to be. Um but we have a fantastic trail and

forest is very well taken care of by all user groups and uh all people love it equally and this plan works well for them as a whole as a community because this is not a single user group area. It's a community of users again and conservation super important. I agree. But just as important is a continued opportunity for responsible recreation use by all user groups. Um, and I think the forest advisory board did a great job of allowing through those uh few years of process and special meetings to continue to have public input. Um, they just made sure that um, as far as what I because I went most of those meetings too and if anybody here has uh, you know, every month there's a meeting with the force advisory council where you can come and make your opinions known and so if you there's great opportunity there for that. So always open and incorporated I think what was needed for this plan. So really I think in its current state with maybe a few tweaks I think it's a very viable auction option until the next round. So for this section I think it's good. Thank you.

Thank you. Who's next? All right. Mr. Wetcher, I didn't actually call on you, but why don't you come on up? I beg your pardon.

Brian Wetcher, uh, Forest Park Lane. Uh, first of all, I would like to thank, um, from the bottom of my heart, the efforts that staff and the forest board members and the community put into this uh, document that you have in front of you. I believe the the important word in this is community and that's what it says in the plan Anacortis community forest lands plan. The community participated in this and helped to create this. I'm overwhelmed with the amount of input and uh interest that we have in the forest lands uh over all the years. It's been a long time coming to this, but I believe the community has adopted the forest lands as the the jewel of the city. I believe it that we can show from a plan that's well organized and uh well executed as well as well supported financially that we will be able to bring in dollars to this city with the use of the forest lands but also preserve the forest lands. I commend the document that you have in front of you uh for its formatting and its organization. It's been a long time coming that we have a document in front of us that is a 21st century document and I would also commend the flexibility of this document. You'll hear a lot of comments coming forward. Some of them may be good, some of them may be offthe-wall, but you have the ability with this document to incorporate what the community desires in the protection of the forest lands. This is this is our primary jewel here, our conservation um our our debt to this forest lands is immense. if you look at the financial

gain that the city has had from this jewel that we have. So, I commend this document to you going forward as a flexible document that could be updated over the years. Another five years from now, I hope that we'll still have the same structure. Although it may not be the same content, I think you'll find that this is a document we can go forward with into the 21st century. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wer. Who's next? Anybody else? I'm going to close the public hearing. Okay. Uh, seeing no other volunteers, anybody online? No. All right. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing. Um, a couple of notes for those of you interested in the ACFL. Uh we will be moving to annex the several parcels of the ACFL that we added to the urban growth area last year. That'll be happen over the next couple of months. That doesn't result in a change of use. It just means we can apply our laws inside those uh parcels. Um several people noted uh a need for enforcement of the rules and we have been um adding to some of our ordinances in the last couple of years and we're preparing to bring another ordinance after adoption of the plan that will give some additional teeth uh to be able to enforce the rules that are in the plan. I think council has insisted on and we fully intend to have a summertime uh police presence this year. Uh we already do have security cameras in some of the parking lots. Um, and we'll uh go from there in terms of expanding the ability to enforce the rules in the ACFL. There is a lot that we can do with emergency preparedness, including wildfire response, and some of that requires funding we don't have at the moment, but you will see a a significant emphasis on emergency preparedness citywide, and that'll include the ACFL in the coming months. Um, so I think that there's some some things to look forward to that uh are not necessarily related directly to the plan. We will now take your comments on the plan and those that you provide over the next week, add them to the matrix and we'll bring that forward to city council uh next month uh for review and city council determination on how to

proceed. Thank you all. We are now moving into the public hearing that I know that you all are actually here for and that is the first quarter budget and capital facilities plan amendments and uh that will be Mr. Hogland our city finance director who will introduce that item. Uh thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, members of the audience. Uh so this is our second time back with these budget amendment ordinances. Um two weeks ago, we talked about this briefly. Um just as a quick recap, the capital facilities plan amendment is required to be done in conjunction with the operating budget amendment. Um so we have both of those here before you tonight. We did open the public comment period, public comment and budget hearing notice two weeks ago that ran for two weeks. We did not receive any uh any comments on the CFP amendment. Um but that advertisement now has concluded. So, I'm happy to um answer any questions that you may have before we open the public hearing or we can go from there.

Do you want to provide a a little overview at least of the CFP edits? Certainly. um in the budget ordinance that's listed on the left side of the screen here. This is the budget ordinance, but it also includes the uh amendments to the CFP. These get incorporated into the operating budget. So, I wanted to point out all of these items from where the line appears in the matrix down to the bottom of that matrix. Those are all uh CFP amendments. So uh the these top portion these top three projects consists of four different crosswalk projects. Two of these contracts have um have already been let and then this third one the 32nd street and store crossing is um still to come still to be put out to bid. Um there's a couple of grants involved with that. The total REIT for those four crosswalk projects REIT is real estate excise tax. Those are the local funds that would be used towards those projects. Total is 238,000. Fire station remodel, fire station one remodel, total of 312,000 it's being requested. 67,000 of that is local REIT. The rest of that is in impact fees. And then the remaining item in fund 501, this is in the operating budget only. The CFP is not affected by this. This is adding an additional repair line to the uh the fleet the err equipment rental fund. Uh the our fleet department uh is get is requesting an additional um repairs line item uh to reflect the

additional work we're doing inhouse now with our new insurance that has a larger higher um deductible. Thank you. Copay was the only thing coming to mind. Um, so with that, Mr. Mayor. All right. Uh, thank you. Uh, if council has questions, I'll take them now. Otherwise, I'll open the public hearing. All right. I'll go ahead and open the public hearing. We'll now take uh public comments from any member of the public on uh the capital facilities plan or the related budget amendment. Don't everybody get up at once. Okay. Uh,

Mayor Walters, there is a hand raised online. Oh, perfect. Um, can you make that uh happen? We'll take the the online caller. Caller, you wanted to say Hello. Can you hear me now? Yes. Go ahead.

Okay, I'll start. This will be really quick. My name is Tarno Hana. I live on West Fourth Street. Um, name of the neighborhood is we call it Rock Bottom. People call it Gimma's View. It's the West the West Streets. I wanted to thank uh both staff at the city uh for amending the CFP here. It looks like we're really focused on high value, high impact investments, focusing on those uh rewards that can come out of pedestrian improvements here in the city. I think this is a great strategy when we're looking at, you know, difficulty in in a funding environment. I just wanted to say I really appreciate uh the time and energy that went into making these changes. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Nobody else online. All right, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing at this point. Uh, councel, how would you like to uh take these two items? Mayor Walters, Miss Hunt,

may I comment on the fund 105 items? So, we as council have approved two of those contracts already that are listed on ordinance 5023, and we will very likely approve the final one because we have great grant funding for that project. We're all in favor of that. Um, all those projects serve the transportation goals of pedestrian and bicycle safety, which we're all in favor of. Um, I am typically a pedestrian and bicyclist exclusively. So, I I'm in favor of those, but none of those happen to get into the 2026 budget, nor in the 2026 year of the 2026 2031 CFP. in order to avoid budget creep and potential re shortfall for other things that are going to come up this year. Um I advocate removing $200,000 from the 2026 budget for line item 1057205956163. And you're not supposed to remember what that is. Um which is the money we have in the budget to fund sidewalks and bikeways improvements. Um, and we'll let these projects that we've already approved use those funds. That's my suggestion. Um, then we can proceed with them with having very little net effect on the budget. That would also entail removing $200,000 from the 2026 2031 CFP for the annual sidewalks and bio waste program. Mr. McDougall pointed out when we talked about this two weeks ago that grants get awarded even since we developed the 2026 CFP. Um, and we may have more grants come our way. Our staff has been super successful with getting grants. We heard about that from public works committee

tonight. Some of those do require matches and I'd really like to make sure that we have RE funding available for matching if we need to. So, I intend to move to make that amendment to the to these ordinances, but I'd like to hear what other council members have to say. Mayor Walters.

Thank you, Mr. Fantini. I totally agree and kind of had that same thought process as I was reviewing everything that's in the CFP that would be funded by REIT and because uh what Miss Hunt is talking about are things that we do every year missing it this year. I mean we're it'd be great to do it but with the budget restraints that we're having I think this is a a really good move pivot if you will to make. totally support it. Thank you, Mayor Walters. Miss Molton,

I agree with Miss Hunt and Mr. Fantini that I feel that the $200,000 from the sidewalk program fits here for pedestrian safety. So, I would be in favor of that as well. We know that REIT is shrinking and this is a to me a really good way to preserve some of that for other needs while still using money dedicated towards sidewalk projects for these pedestrian safety projects. May Walters, Mr. young.

Um I'm also in agreement, you know, but what I really appreciate above all in this discussion was how um this Miss Hunt brought it up because this was a bit new for me and I appreciate how she described the utility of having the money, the long-term benefit that comes to the city from being able to leverage this money. We all know that um you know like any other city we are having to make um some tough choices and those tough choices are sometimes on things that we care about but simply put we don't have the revenue and if we were already talking about how we can leverage these dollars for additional dollars. So, I appreciate that and so, you know, thank you for bringing it up the way you are and hearing the input from um, you know, my fellow council members. And so, you know, um I really think it's it's prudent and a great way to ensure as best as we can that we have the resources necessary for these projects, but also at the same time the resources necessary to leverage this opportunity for others. And so, I'm very much in support of it and thank you for bringing it up the way that you did.

Thank you, Mr. Young. Anyone else? Uh, Mayor Walders, Minister Cle McGrath,

I think this really comes down comes down to the fact that we have finite amount of REIT money available and these projects do satisfy the need for improvements when it comes to pedestrian safety. Um but it also doesn't stop us from um monitoring how read is coming in for the next for the year. Um I think this is a great example of the fact that we are going to start doing some of our study sessions. We're going to have a uh first quarter update from all of our from all of our directors um in April. And this is really to me um as someone who feels this is probably a good move is that it allows us to be really clear um with the public and with staff that we have to be very careful with the dollars we have. We know there are a lot of department all of the departments were asked to make some major reductions in their budget for 2026 to the point that there's some question if it's feasible to stay within those budgets without having to ask for more money. So that re those REIT dollars are important to preserve um and monitor as we have things um come up in the future. So um I think this makes sense. uh and and but with the with the need to monitor and make sure that our dollars go as far as possible um and and preserve the the goals we're trying to achieve. Um so thank you.

Thank you, Miss Ken McGrath. And I would just uh add on to that that it's not exclusively about being careful with the money because that does imply if you were less careful that we might get into the situation that we're in. Uh but it's actually that as council members have pointed out there just isn't enough to go around uh no matter how careful we are with it. So hard choices have to be made and council has suggested some hard choices here. Mayor Walters. Miss Hunt.

Sorry. Was there another council member comment? I move to adopt ordinance 5023 with an amendment to reduce the rate transfers in from account 10572039700 0 by $200,000 from $238,292 to 38,292. And to add a line item showing a deduct of $200,000 from expense line item 105.720.595.61.63. 63 second. All right, we have a motion and a motion and a second to adopt ordinance 5023 with a deduct from line 1057203970 of $200,000 leaving 38,292 remaining and also add a deduct from line 1057205956163. three of $200,000. Miss Hunt, did I get that right?

Absolutely. You're welcome. Uh now, council, you will need uh if you were to adopt the CFP, you will need to adopt the CFP at the same time as the budget. Uh we can take that um after this. Uh statute says conccommatantly. But uh is there any discussion on the proposed motion on the floor? Uh, Mr. Hogland, does that uh make sense to you? Do you have any uh commentary at this point?

No, that all makes sense. I think the only question I have is if um you would want to want us to make those edits and bring it back next Monday or um just trust us to make those edits and then approve conditionally tonight. Well, council uh suggested we're going to approve it tonight. So, unless unless we all vote no, uh it sounds like we'll we'll be making that happen today. Uh all right. If there's no discussion, we'll go ahead and take a vote on this ordinance. It will be a roll call vote. Mr. Franc, please call the role. Mr. McDougall, yes. Mr. Fantini,

I. Miss Hunt, yes. Mr. Courier, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Clea McGrath, yes. Miss Molton, yes. Mayor, the eyes are seven, the naysay are zero. The eyes have it. That ordinance 5023 is approved. Now 5024. Council, Mayor Walters, Miss Hunt, I move to approve ordinance 5024 with an amendment to add a fifth line item to delete $200,000 in 2026 of REIT for the annual sidewalks and bikeways program.

Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second to adopt ordinance 5024 with one addition from what's been presented. That's a new section five to delete $200,000 from the CFP in 2026 from the annual sidewalks sidewalks and bikeways program. Is there any discussion on that? Hearing none, we'll proceed to a roll call vote on the ordinance as proposed to be amended. Mr. Mr. Fran could take the role. Mr. Fantini, I. Miss Hunt, I. Mr. Courier, I. Mr. Young, yes.

Miss Cleveland McGrath, yes. Miss Molton, yes. Mr. McDougall, yes. Mayor, the eyes are seven, the n's are zero.

The eyes have it. And that ordinance as modified is adopted. All right. We'll move on now to other business. We have first up a contract award for public safety building HVAC improvements. And we are we are going to talk to the public works department about the fact that they put improvements in the title of all of their projects. This looks very much different than my version.

You can press uh you press F5 on the keyboard if you want. There we go. And Mr. Ludman will present this item.

Good evening, council, mayor, and members of the audience. Tonight, I have a contract we're asking for for the public safety building HVAC replacement. uh it's for engineering and scope of that system and we've had some issues in the last year um getting this system bid out for replacement and we'll go over that here. So just a little background um public safety facilities opened in 2000. 43 people work out of there including the court and records staff as well. It's also our city's emergency operations center and due to safety and security there's no windows that open for ventilation. So this last year, the fire department, police department with no um AC. It's been a little hot and toasty in there. So system was put in originally in 2000 and the failure started about 2024. They no longer make the components we need due to EPA regulations. I believe there's also some ecology regulations as well. We haded this in the CFP for 2025 replacement and we ran into complications with vendors not being able to purchase the goods or design a system that would work. Uh we actually went out to bid twice, cancelled the bid the first time and then the second time we actually had to cancel sorry cancel the posting the first time. The second time we actually canceled the bids because we weren't confident that we were getting a system that would actually meet the regulations. So we are here today. We have Hargus Engineering to actually scope a system for us to engineer it to work with the rules and regulations to develop a system that can be retrofitted into our current system because it's in the attic of the police station. You can actually get to it to replace the system. So we're confident they're going to be able to provide drawings and specs for the potential bidder to um scope the system that we need. You can see here the the red box

represents the outdoor part of the system and the green box is in the attic of the police station. Both are quite a bit distance between them and lots of moving parts to get it from point A to point B. This is the outdoor system. It's about the size of a small car. And this is the indoor system. I should had a person standing next to that, but that box is about the size of a minivan. And the only way to get that out of there would be to remove the entire roof of the second floor of the police station. So our hopes are to um be able to design a system that can be retrofit inside of that. But there's a lot of uh the EPA rules and um UL list UL listing has to be done because the new systems are flammable unlike the old systems. Unfortunately, this is the only attic access is the ship's ladder to go up in in a side of a closet. So, there's not going to be any big components that can come in and out of there. And after that, we have just we're asking recommendation to replace that. And if you have any questions, I have Brandon Cross with me, our facility supervisor, who's happy to ask answer any technical questions as well.

All right. Thank you, councel. Looks like a fun project. Yeah. No walters. Mr. Young.

Now, you know, again, I I wanted to take this moment to again thank Mr. Ludman and uh the team for the work you guys do to one not only save money for us, being very practical about what we can and cannot do, how best we can use those dollars, and you know, um looking at ways that we can mitigate costs. You know, everything seems to be going up. You you know, gas went up. I don't know if it's went up in the hour we've been here, but you know, but the point is that we're all feeling it and then trying to look at as um as public servants, how do we best use those dollars that we get from you? And in this case, um, what I appreciated and didn't want to miss another opportunity to say thank you is because I know that when you come forward with things, I know I believe in my heart, you've done your homework and you've done what you've looked at every way possible that you can think of and Lord knows it's better than what I could think of about it to try to figure out how we use those dollars, minimize those costs, and get the most out of it. So, thank you. And unless there's anything else that anybody else want to say about this, is that Miss

Mayor Walters? Yeah, I see your glasses. You put your glasses on, so I knew that. Uh, uh, Miss Molton is not is not yet recognized. Okay. Okay. Mr. Young is completed. Okay. Now, I will recognize Miss Molton. Go ahead. Thank you. So, just to clarify, um, this was a project that went out to bid previously and it ended up being sort of a can of worms is my understanding.

Yeah, we we ended up canceling the bid because we weren't confident that the bid was going to actually meet the standards and specs required by the new laws because it's kind of one of the first projects these companies were coming across and we had different vendors telling us different things. It made us really uncomfortable that we weren't going to get the product we actually needed. So that's why we pulled back and decided to get someone to actually engineer us the solution.

I really appreciate knowing that and thank you for the presentation with the photos and the PowerPoint to bring it all home to us how complicated it really is. Um and so since this contract is for design only, it's a little bit less than $55,000 and design and engineering. So do we have a sense of

It's a great question. We I don't think we have a good sense of the overall cost. I think we had about $160,000 in last year's CFP for this project. It's probably more than double that now the new laws have taken effect and then with the engineering cost included. So, crossing our fingers for continuation of low bids we've been seeing across public works. Yes. Okay. We will we'll keep our fingers crossed. Um but it does sound like it could be

Yeah. double what we initially expected or or more. And then just speaking of hard choices, then just to underscore that that we'll need to figure out where this money is going to come from because absolutely this is an absolutely necessary project that we need to figure out how to get done. That's not acceptable to not do it. Um, so I um would move that we authorize the mayor to sign contract 25187 FAC00001 with Hargus Engineers in the amount of $54,475 to perform the design of the public safety building HVAC improvements project. Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve the contract as presented. Any discussion? Yeah, Mayor Walters. Miss Colleen McGrath.

Thank you. So, first of all, being on public safety committee, I did not realize that they did that the police department did not have an HVAC system functioning for the entire summer of 2025 because it's a secure building. They can there are no windows that open. So, this is one of those situations that there's no kind of easy fix or band-aid that can get us through. Um so my the other comment I want to make is um one do we have other buildings that are going to have a this similar design and problem? And my other and then also um it's 1990 I should know this but have we already replaced the roof? Is there a point at which taking the roof off could be more cost-effective than trying to retrofit it up that small the way it's being proposed?

I I don't think it'd be cost effective to remove the roof to replace the system if they can retrofit what we have there currently. That'd be much more cost effective. And how old is Do we know how old the roof is? It's original 2000. Okay. Oh, 2000 or 1990? 2000. 2000. Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion? Okay, we have a motion and a second. If there's no other discussion, I will call for a vote. Hearing none, all those in favor to approve the contract award say I. I.

All those opposed say no. The eyes have it and the contract award is approved. Thank you, Mr.

and uh good luck. All right. Our next item is a presentation on our downtown streetscapes project. Our planning director, Mr. Coleman, will introduce this item and then we will hear from our consultants. Good evening, council, members of many, many members of the public that are here for this extremely important topic. My name is John Coleman. I'm the director of the planning, community, and economic development department. And a little background on this story, uh, this project is the city hired a consultant to look at our downtown streetscapes, which is our downtown environment, our our streets, our sidewalks, our building frontages, our crosswalks, like everything that uh that that people interact with when they're in their downtown environment. Uh so with the eye to make recommendations on how we can improve our downtown streetscapes to improve uh tourist experience, economic development and all the things that make cities wonderful and uh places where people want to be. Uh so for the past many months uh the first 40 feet our consultant has been working with the community. We've had two open houses and many many many stakeholder meetings with building owners uh just uh organizations downtown uh business owners downtown interested uh organizations in the downtown area. and they've been crafting ideas that we could possibly implement as a city that will help uh improve our downtown uh streetscape and all the good things that come along with that. So today uh Jason Graph of First 40T is going to be presenting some of their

ideas. Uh I'd like to just also point out these are uh at this point these are ideas uh they'll be ask the consultant will be asking for council feedback on you know taking your temperature on some of these ideas like some of the big concepts there's it's something con the council is going to be supporting or is are we down the wrong track and then maybe also some uh for some of the ideas maybe um some priority lists based on you how much things might cost in and availability and impact on the community. Basically trying to figure out a best bang for the buck in the long run. And then uh so they're going to be giving that presentation today. We will also be having uh public uh opportunity for public to comment on this. So um presumably after the presentation from first 40 ft and some discussion from council. Uh so that's how we're going to go through this tonight. I also want to remind people like these ideas that were are being presented. These are not things that are necessarily going to happen. We still need to figure out uh funding and uh all of those good things before they they happen and we're still taking public input on the the ideas. So nothing is happening yet. You can see we have a lot of people here. There are definitely concerns about some of the ideas. So keep that in mind. And uh with that I will uh present uh introduce Jason Graph with first 40 feet to take it from here.

Great. All right. Thank you, John. Thank you, John. And uh in in a moment, we'll turn it over to Jason. Council, I'd ask that you hold your comments until Jason invites them after the conclusion of his presentation and uh or at any appropriate time along the way when he invites those comments. and then we'll have comments from uh the public after that.

Jason, go ahead. Thank you, Ryan. Um mayor, um can you all see this image pretty clearly? It says city of Anacortis downtown streetscapes plan. Just give me a yes if we can we can see the presentation. If you could move your mic maybe a little bit closer to your mouth. Okay. Yeah, that's a little bit louder for us. Thank you.

Okay, perfect. I'll try to keep it there. Um well, thank you everyone for having us. This has been an exciting project. It's been an effort really between the city and the downtown accordis. Um the parks department has played a key role in helping direct some of the ideas here as well as uh the port. We've had some recent conversations with businesses at Fifth and Seventh and those have also helped craft some of the recommendations that we want to bring forward to you tonight. So, generally what I'm sharing are kind of the the big ideas that came out of the engagement process and a series of recommendation recommended actions that we would like to pursue. And this is an opportunity to sort of test where the council might sit on some of the direction of the plan and some of the elements that are incorporated in it. So, let me get going with the presentation. You know, our project really is focused on commercial avenue. um how do we create how do we um continue to enliven that as kind of the center of the community looking at not only the streetscape and opportunities to increase the safety and comfort of being on commercial avenue but also things that we can do to um continue to enliven the edges the great historic buildings and adjacent character. We've been asked to look at managing the street uh looking at some of the issues of access and providing some opportunities to provide future enforcement and direction of the streetscape itself. And we've also learned a lot about the things that are happening just off and outside of Commercial Avenue that's bringing a lot of people in the downtown. That's the farmers market, the new port redevelopment. Cosland Park serves as a great destination as well as the library. And there's really all these component parts feed into what is the experience of being downtown. So while we're focused on commercial avenue, we also have our our eye on those things

that that bring people into the downtown and also connect into areas like Fidalgo Bay and Guimis Ferry. These all contribute to the experience of downtown. And so we're going to kind of reach out to those edges as well as we look at the corridor itself. We began the project in August 2025. We've had a community workshop uh back in October to identify um issues and opportunities and values. We came back with a series of concepts in January and those have been um presented through surveys online and I'll share some of that information with you. Our engagement has been fairly robust. We meet bi-weekly with um the city staff and the downtown accordis. And you can see here a number of events we have scheduled throughout the process. The focus groups that we've been reaching out to are also listed here. So I mentioned the port, the Samish Council is a re recent meeting that we had, creative arts district has been our partner and so on. So you can get a breath of sort of who we've tapped into. I think I should add Anacortis High School was um a great touch point um early in the process too to understand what attracts younger people into the downtown. So, we've been trying to reach out not only along the street, but out out into the edges of the community to learn as much as we can. We've been focused on sort of three main things. And the why early on was identifying the challenges and opportunities around Commercial Avenue and things that are awesome, things that can be improved, but also how how does the community see itself and the downtown. And so, we learned a lot about what um is valued in the community. And then we took that information to establish kind of a vision and guiding principles. We've explored a number of ideas around Commercial Avenue about important connections to other downtown destinations close by to Commercial Avenue and then looking at even a cross

town connection a great walk connection between Rotary Park and Kowanas Park. And that has then brought us to a point where we can re recommend some actions that support some of those big ideas. And so we we'll be giving you the full breath of all that in a 20-minute presentation here. You know, the vision really gets into just the heart of what it is to be in Anacortis. And part of it is nature, part of it is people, part of it is history, and part of it is this this strength of the maritime community, this waterfront life. And so that really is a driver for Commercial Avenue in itself. Great walkable environment. It's where your local culture really shines. It's the great businesses. It's the strong partnerships um with the parks department and with opportunities to engage whether it's a heart of Anacortis or others. It's a working downtown. And all these together really piece together the identity for downtown. And we want to focus and and harness and protect sort of those historic components of your great Main Street along Commercial Avenue, but also linked to the natural surroundings and think about arts and design as an important component of um potential enhancements to Commercial Avenue and adjacent streets, building off some of the great art that really is instituted in your downtown, such as as the mural program, which is really stunning. We're also um the guiding principles are about being connected. It's a great street to walk up and down, but it should also be a easy five-minute walk and bike from the neighborhoods nearby. So, keeping commercial avenue is connected with auto walk and bike is also a priority. And in the end, how do we strengthen commercial avenue as the heart of the community? Some of the things we learned are public gathering is is an important value that the community would like to see on Commercial Avenue. You know, expanding

the opportunities for gathering in the downtown. It was a big part of what we heard from the community. And there's opportunities to do that in the streetscape and maybe some additional areas. And then thinking about how important it is to have the waterfront as a place that's also adjacent to um Commercial Avenue is important and the close-end neighborhoods. This plan is really driven by the partnerships that help make it happen and the the downtown Anacortis Alliance, the city, the port parks, creative arts district, chamber of commerce, all these players are going to continue to play an important role as well as the businesses and the property owners who are investing and putting their lifeblood onto the street. And so those are all extremely valuable groups that coming together gives us an opportunity to look at things that can be enhanced over time. The primary con the preliminary concepts I'm going to share with you which I call the big ideas are really focused on three things. Strengthening commercial avenue is the heart. Improving connections to some of these key destinations that you see on the map here. And really thinking about supporting an enhanced downtown experience. So, not just commercial avenue, but connections to the waterfront, connections to Fidalgo Bay and the great parks that surround the downtown. What we found as we focus on commercial avenue is that folks were were dialed into from an opportunities and constraints perspective, thinking about making the walkability of downtown really kind of a primary aspect and thinking about curb extensions and increasing the visibility of pedestrians crossing the street, creating that additional space. um at intersections was an important consideration. And so we looked at Commercial Avenue in particular, instituting curb extensions at each of the intersections between 10th and third, adding elements um such as additional striping, additional striping for bikes,

for instance, in the roadway to enhance um that component of the streetscape. And in general, looking for opportunities to slow traffic speeds a bit. So the curb extensions play a role in that. We also explore the idea of a traffic circle. These also tend to slow traffic down at intersections. These are small circles. This is not a roundabout by any means, but more of a neighborhood scale that you might see. And so those ideas translated into some basic forms for the intersections here. looking at not a capital infrastructure improvement, but more of a demonstration project through paint on the ground to establish these um intersection enhancements and working with the DAA and the creative arts district and a local community to implement um some of these additional measures. We were told early on that this is not a capital infrastructure project that this is really a tactical opportunity to explore some ideas and then over time work those in to um future funding for for projects down the road. But this is really testing a variety of different opportunities in the downtown. Another piece we're focused on is the furnishings within the streetscape itself. And you have just some wonderful existing what we'll call a kit of parts. The trash cans are are really amazing. Lighting is in the street. The parkletits have played a role, albeit a bit of a um a lovehate relationship. Uh but nonetheless, that that's played a role in the street as well as your bike racks. And the idea is, can we develop um maybe a more robust kit of parts that adds additional seating opportunities as um kind of a a a toolkit of amenities that you can add in over time to enliven and the experience of being on the sidewalks and looking at color and variability of certain types of

furnishings that might be a kit of parts that the DAA and the city could look to partner and building this repertoire of furnishings that can be implemented on the streetscape or potentially in curb extensions and other locations. Lighting is another aspect of downtown that's um really exciting. Um, it's an opportunity to work not only with, for instance, the chamber or DA who do lighting for the holiday season, but also thinking about embedding this into nighttime and yearround um, embellishments up and down the street. And this is partnerships that likely could be with businesses and property owners, as well as with potentially the city and and partners such as DAA and others. But we know lighting contributes a lot to downtown. We've learned quite a bit about the streetscape itself and the desire to keep an open path up and down the street. There's there's competition for space in the sidewalks today. And this image is pretty representative of what we see. And so the plan will look to instill some management practices um and enforcement of the rightway to make sure we're keeping a good open path up and down the sidewalk. And we know there's instances where there's um some impediments and so we want to identify those. City staff have already been working on that, identifying where those exist and try to create a framework where we can keep good good clear path up and down the sidewalk. Policy around outdoor seating with alcohol is another opportunity to maybe remove some of the barriers that um exist today into the future. not not requiring people or businesses to use the railings is something we want to bring to the plan. Another element is of the physical streetscape is also thinking about activation and how can the experience of downtown be an opportunity for you to

tell the story of the port or the marina or the the Samish tribe the first peoples of of Anacortis and bring that in a way that's interactive with the community. So this is something we learned from the high school students that that this idea of gaming using QR codes and embedding stories or embedding wayfinding and gaming to the streetscape is something that we might consider. And this is something that we floated um with the community and this got a lot of support and in particular the Samos tribe too who are um doing um a lot of wayfinding and interpretive signage for some of some of their public spaces and they saw this as a potential opportunity. So we're bringing this forward as a recommendation as well. We're also um it's important that we think about the edges as much as we're thinking about the streetscape itself. And so we looked at a a few of the buildings along the street to say, "Hey, what what are some additional embellishments that these buildings could take on to really add to the quality so that you're building this wow factor up and down the street?" And these can be small storefront improvements that could be considered over time. Right now, the DAA has some funding to help with storefront improvements. We heard from the community that that is a valuable tool for um improving storefronts. And maybe that's an opportunity over time for the city to also uh consider contributing to a storefront improvement program. The idea being that we can build in incentives to do some awesome things like maybe adding paint to a wall or over time expanding things like opening up transoms and creating that uh enliven storefront that we're seeing up and down the street. The next aspect as aspect is parking and we did quite a bit of analysis looking at trying to add additional parking on side streets. Um but because of the

narrow curb to curb getting angled parking on both sides, we weren't able to do that cost-effectively without removing some sidewalk. But there is an opportunity potentially through one-way street networks because that requires a narrower ride ofway because you only have one lane of cars coming down to be able to do angled parking on both sides, but that is going to require additional traffic study. Um so at this time the the recommendation would be to pursue that there. We also looked at angled parking on uh commercial avenue on one side of the street and I think that takes away a bit from the bike lanes that you've already memorialized that active transportation and so that would negatively impact um some of those bike facilities. We could still share bikes with the roadway, but the recommendation was to to stay with the parking configuration on Commercial Avenue today. What might be an opportunity and hasn't been explored is having a central public parking space. So, we looked at the pit done at 10th and commercial as a potential opportunity to potentially add parking in that location and just laying out that lot. Again, that would be an acquisition from the city or a partnership with that property owner, but it may be an opportunity to add quite a bit of additional parking um in one location. We then explored public gathering as a key component and we're really excited about the Marina Plaza which is coming on board. So that coordinated effort between the port uh to bring in that new event center to realign 9inth uh and Market Street. At the same time, the parks department is expanding the maritime plaza. And we know this is going to be a great sort of centrid of activity in the downtown and connecting that back or identifying other opportunities for public plaza places we

explored. So the heart of Anacortis is one location that um we'd like to look at additional programming of that park space. For instance, the fifth street plaza is a concept that was explored in the rightway and we'll look at at what that concept entailed. We looked at an opportunity for a street plaza in the ride ofway at 7th as well and portion of the pit plaza through discussions with businesses both meetings around Fifth Street and meetings around 7th Street. The seventh street plaza recommendation is not moving forward. Um but we'll share with you some of the information about Fifth Street and what might be a recommendation moving forward. The idea is that we can be tactical and use portions of the rideway potentially for public gathering space. So these images give you a representation of some things that other communities have done to create that central gathering space. People say, "Well, why would why would you have that?" It's such a great element to meeting friends and family in downtown. It's a great opportunity to sit with your kids and take a break. We've heard that it's a great place for husbands to park themselves while others are shopping and it keeps them in downtown longer. So public plazas and gathering do play an important role in keeping customers downtown and bringing people back to the community. This we just wanted to earmark again that the Marina Plaza project is going to be a great addition to downtown and they're already looking to create some of those great public spaces at the waterfront. One idea was to look at a potential plaza for a portion of the roadway. This would close the roadway for traffic. um and remove some parking to put a plaza on Fifth Street itself. And so this image looked at the existing street. This is between Commercial Avenue and and O Street um along Fifth.

This is near next to Gerardelli and uh Scott Milo Gallery. Um the idea here is that you can create a create a space through a portion of the block then as a gathering spot. Um, we've talked to the Fifth Street businesses. There's a strong concern about parking loss from Scott Milo and several businesses who require that. The parkletits on Commercial Avenue are taking up a lot of space on that northwest corner of Commercial Avenue and so that limited parking is is a huge concern. There was some conversation of looking at the plaza potentially on the other side of Commercial Avenue. In any case, the Fifth Street group that came together said they would like to explore this idea possibly at a smaller footprint and to only do this seasonally. So for maybe a month and a half or two month period to actually test its its worthiness, but there has been some continued desire to explore that idea. shifting the heart of Anacortis. Part of the concept here is can we make the park a little more amendable to feel like a park, adding a sign, maybe opening up the the fence in the middle of the block to allow folks to use that as a public space when there aren't programmed events. And we know that the programmed events are are really important and those would continue. But this is a way to add some additional oomph and draw to this space that's so close to Commercial Avenue. And the parking lot behind this may be an area where you know expanded events could occur knowing that Fourth Street does have to maintain through access for for truck movement. But the idea of using heart of Anacortis and potentially the parking lot as additional um programming and gathering space is something that we'd we'd like to put as a recommendation in the plan. And then this is a long-term play thinking if the city were to purchase the the pit lot

for instance, a portion of that possibly could be carved out for public gathering space and that would really be a placeholder either for parking or for future development down the road. So these are the kind of sites that can be strategic so to speak um if there is you know the capacity and ability for some acquisition um that may be out of the cards but we brought it to the table for consideration. The next piece is the downtown loop and trying to find ways where we can expand the work that's happening on Commercial Avenue in terms of furnishings and enlages and really focus that effort on 9inth 7th M and R is these really connect some great destinations in the downtown the depot the future market and so the idea is over time embellish these streetscapes with some additional signage over time lighting. Um, in the interim, it could be curb extensions painted on the ground, but there's an idea of how do we extend the quality of the commercial avenue environment down to the side streets and connect into some of these great destinations really close to Commercial Avenue. And finally, the cross town connection begins to memorialize something you have on a map today, which was a cross town connection that utilized part of sixth, part of fourth. And this was an idea of of maybe keeping it down at sixth and trying to work through a design concept that builds on the work that you're already doing near the Gimus Ferry, but keeping Sixth Street as that that alignment and work toward walk and bike improvements that would connect Kuanas Park to Rotary Park. And then also we want to look at Tommy Thompson Trail and how that might be extended north um up to that sixth street connection and through the port redevelopment area. We're really focused on this idea of a five-minute walk and a five-minute bike ride is is a real

thing. And folks who who are really interested in doing that see safety is is kind of the main driver. And I think Tommy Thompson Trail really embodies that. And you look at the groups down in the south end of town near the skate park and even further north up toward 14th and near the port just how much the community desires that type of facility. And so extending that further north and looking for opportunities to create those types of facilities is a real opportunity potentially as a part of this plan at least to explore those ideas. So this is some of the improvements you're doing on Sixth Street today. Wide sidewalk uh raised intersections so people crossing the street are are are level with the sidewalk. That's an idea that could continue down toward the commercial area of downtown. And then the Tommy Thompson Trail, we know the port is going to extend that trail through a portion of their frontage and they're going to use the diagonal, which is the the um the heavy truck route that that moves through the port property today. And we were curious about could maybe consider keeping that trail along Q Street up to uh 9inth and then maybe along our street toward the public market connecting all these great destinations on this awesome walk bike trail. This is going to take additional conversation, but we've had some initial contacts with the port who are going to look at the size of sidewalks in the district to see if they could accommodate the 10 or 12 feet that is necessary for the trail. And then additional coordination would need to look at how might this Tommy Thompson trail thread along the east side of our street for instance up to six street connection. So, it's also important to know you as decision makers what we've heard from the community and who we reached out to. And we had in our last

um the big ideas which I've shown you here, we had an online survey for that. We had a community workshop um in January. We had about 65 people at that event. We've had over, you know, 725 people weigh in on on the online survey. And I think generally we're seeing, you know, maybe more support for these elements at the in-person meeting. And I'll give you sort of a breakdown of what sort of consensus was, where the community was divided, and some of the um issues we've been trying to resolve through additional conversations with folks. But the big one is, you know, the vision for a more vibrant downtown resonates. This idea of a great walkable commercial avenue is important to everyone as well as strengthening commercial avenue not just the street but the edges and creating that full complement of the first 40 ft up and the first 40 ft out that the streetscape improvements lighting in particular got a lot of support. Activation through potential wayfinding and gaming got a lot of support and there was generally pretty good support for public gathering spaces. where the community were divided was this idea of putting a traffic circle in the middle of Commercial Avenue. Um any removal or reduction of parking is a very large it's a heavy concern for a number of folks um on the street. There was some question about bike lane expansion. You see that here. Um and closing streets to cars. The businesses, as I mentioned, were divided on the street plazas and our conversations with Seventh Street, Keystone Building, and Island Cafe. It was just paramount that there be parking there. They didn't see the benefit of a plaza at that location. But at Fifth Street, we're seeing some willingness to work together knowing that Scott Milo and some additional businesses there have some parking concerns. how we can minimize that will be a a primary

driving point, but it is a discussion that I think can continue on. So, we've then focused those big ideas into six potential actions around streetscape enhancements, streetscape management, you see parking strategy, public gathering, the loop, and so on. For the streetscape enhancements, we're recommending doing a demonstration project. So painting out the curb extensions at some key intersections. It could be the entire corridor or it may, you know, winnow down to four or five blocks maybe in the heart of the district. So we'll we'll work through that. Um identifying future furnish street furnishings that could be purchased as sort of standard elements that can be used on the streetscape. The DAA um is willing to take on that effort to help define what what those KDA parts are. and then then purchase those over time as they can. Um the downtown kiosk program is something that can evolve. So we'd like to keep that on the table. Lighting is another opportunity and the DAA has sort of taken on the role from the chamber and and they're looking to extend conversations with businesses and property owners to see how lighting might expand um through a variety of different partners. The other is public restroom planning. This came up a lot in terms of getting the restroom up and running at the chamber, but also looking at things like an opportunity for potentially the port and lou or other things that could be uh implemented over time park that restrooms are really important need in the downtown. The next is streetscape management and I mentioned that the city is doing a lot um in that realm to identify where there's issues and certain so we want to bring up kind of a management strategy uh enforcement for the streetscape that also includes the parklets. There's been some work to monitor the number of those that aren't being used. The

recommendation will be to move those off the street. And we're also going to recommend um probably a permitting program for the parkletits to to embed that in as a part of the process and a way to help manage um those over time. The storefront improvement program, we'd love to continue that or if the city is able to over time find some funds that can go into a storefront improvement program, we'd like to give some recommendations around that. And then uh a future wayfinding and signage plan is going to be important especially as the port redevelopment happens to build that continuity of access in the district. The parking strategy is the recommendation is to look at um a two-way traffic study to determine the capacity to pull that off and then to potentially um stripe additional parking on those streets where one way might be applicable. Um, the other is if if the city's in a position to do this to look for opportunities for land acquisition for for public parking, knowing that that's probably a clearly a long-term strategy in the public gathering and activation realm. Um, a street plaza demonstration project at Fifth Street is something that we would like to bring forward as a part of the plan if if it's feasible. even the pit as a project where a private owner could potentially work with the city or a partner to do temporary use of that site for an activity. We've done this in Vancouver, Washington where uh an old parking lot was turned into a bike garden so kids come into a safe fenced area and can learn how to ride bikes. Um and so that may be a part of the recommendations as well as the um looking for opportunities to expand the use of Anacortis heart of Anacortis event space and exploring the opportunity for downtown activation and storytelling on the street.

The downtown loop again that could be a part of an intersection enhancement, a demonstration project. So, paint on the ground on some of those streets at 9inth and seventh over time. Looking to the creative arts district and other partners to continue the mural program because these loop streets are great location to continue to incorporate art into the public rideway. So, that's that's in the plan. and then expanding the street furnishings and lighting over time as a budget allows to acquire additional seating that could be located on the street or potentially in curb extensions. Um we'd like to explore that. And finally, the cross town connection, which is looking at is there an opportunity through the active transportation plan to memorialize Sixth Street as that important walk connection so that over time improvements to that can really embed in this great walk corridor between Kuanas Park and Rotary? And then finally, is there an opportunity through continued conversation with the port and the parks department and public works about threading the needle of Tom Thompson and maybe expanding that great connection from 9inth Street North up to sixth past the the um public market, the port and other properties. So, I'll I'll pause with that. I think that's that's the end of the presentation. And I wanted to open it up for question and discussion with council and and really get your sense of what you're hearing, priorities that you might think are important. And with that, I'll I'll pause and give it to council. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Graph. Uh council, do you have questions or comments at this point? Or um if not, we'll hear from the public, but we will return to you. Yeah. Mr. Young.

Uh, thank you, Mayor Walters. Um, again, great presentation. I'm looking forward to learning more and as things flush out. I'm excited about the possibilities for downtown and how we're going to be able to continue to work. Again, I'm always looking for how we also um make sure that ADA is accessible and uh that for me in everything is um crucially important where we can and how much we can. So that'll be one of the additional things I'll be looking for. Thank you. Great, Mayor Walters.

Mr. Fantini. Um yes. Thank you very much, Mr. for this presentation and thank you to all of the stakeholders, many of which um are here tonight. Um clearly there has been a lot of communication and uh interaction with our community uh to come out with something like this. I have a question um probably maybe more for the mayor. Um, did I understand that because this is a lot of information to digest um, as we're trying to decide what we are interested in and what we're moving forward with are or what we would consider. Are we supposed to kind of have that all tonight?

Uh, is this more I I won't I won't hold you to that, but I do think the expectation was that um, you provide some some feedback tonight. Okay. Um, with that being said, I have a little bit of feedback then. Uh, first I love adding all the vibrancy down there. The couple of concerns um that I have um are one when looking at adding like all of the paint and all of the um installations for lack of a better term. Um what's maintenance look like on that kind of stuff and who would be

performing it? That's a great question. We we will be giving a recommendation for that process. So, right now it looks like the downtown Anacortis Alliance with the Creative Arts District would take the lead on helping to implement the curb extension demonstration project, gathering volunteers, and we haven't worked out the funding yet. These these tend to be in the you know 10 to 20 to 30,000 range but we'll also in in instill in the plan recommendations for whose role it is for maintenance and that could be coordination with public works and and DAA. So we do intend to put some responsibility determine roles into um the recommendations that would be included as like an appendix to this plan. So it would get information on how to implement the initial demonstration, but then who are the partners and what responsibility and roles do they take over time to maintain it. These thing these things tend to have like a 2-year life cycle before they really need to start getting either updated or improved or removed if that if you know that's the preference. Part of this is just being able to test whether these ideas are working. And so we'll we'll work to try and put together a plan for just that as you mentioned maintenance and and oversight over time.

Sure. And I think my questions would have looked way different if this was a couple years ago. Um but you know uh the other the other thing that I just kind of have a question or that that makes me a little um nervous. Another element is talking about I love the idea for the plazas the gathering space. I think that is phenomenal. But actually what makes me a little nervous about it is if it's seasonal or temporary because I I I feel like there was a time when maybe the parklets were supposed to be seasonal andor temporary and that has not really been the case. So I'm just that also makes me just a little bit nervous. Sure.

Thank you, Mr. Pini. I don't actually think that there was any time when anyone articulated that the parklets would be seasonal. Um cuz they appeared during CO. So actually they were characterized mostly by a very much a lack of planning associated with what was going to happen with them as as did most things in the the heat of the COVID moment. Mr. Courier.

Yeah, Mr. Graph. On that point too, I'm really curious if you have data or examples about parkletits because I've heard a lot of mixed reviews on that. Um, and if there's a better way to approach that. I know you mentioned permitting. Is that just based on being reactive to what we currently have and just pe or do you have case studies of where parklets can be enhanced in a way that it really does add value or is there is it mixed reviews? I'm just curious. I've heard a lot of feedback both ways.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean this is the third rail conversation in Anacortis and you know each community is different in how they respond to these. What we've we found is that other communities that have kept it for an extended period of time do have a process for management for permitting for number of parkletits that are allowed on the street turnover of parklets that aren't being used. And it, you know, it really feels like that type of management structure is really important to to introduce here. Some of the things we've seen are, you know, the number of parkletits that we see side by side, for instance, um, between fifth and fourth. Some communities mandate that you can only do two per block or four per block. So, I think these are these are issues to be resolved locally, but but but certainly there are really good um examples of enforcement and regulation and permitting that we can share and I think ultimately that will need to get crafted locally. That makes sense. I guess my question though is as you're looking at other cities, are parklets a big part of the downtown vibrancy as you're trying to f create more space with extending curbs and um doing a lot of other things, but do you find that that do you have examples of cities where parklets are a huge plus and are there other places where I I just I just want more on that? I guess we reacted during co it really helped it helped businesses out

and um we haven't done anything with it. So I think I'd be looking for outside data or thoughts on that.

Yeah. Um I would I can't say for sure how how your community relates with with others. Um you know this idea of public gathering space or parkletits I think is a fair discussion. I think there's it's important to have a balance of of parklets and public spaces that are available to the public. So those tend to be really important in downtown districts where the parklets are aren't necessarily for restaurants, but this idea of outdoor seating is is is open to all. And so I think finding that balance is an important thing to do here. So to your point, the the parklets have certainly were response to CO um and they seem to be in less um how do I say um they don't seem to be as ubiquitous as maybe some portions of what we're seeing here on Commercial Avenue. So we're seeing a lot of use of some of the parkletits here. other communities kind of manage that the quantity a different way. I don't think you all have had a chance to fully do that yet. So, um they are not a driving strategy for creating public space in downtown. They tend to work really best when they cater to food and beverage type establishments. And so, that's that's generally where we're seeing seeing it used. And I think that's pretty representative of what we see here as well. I probably didn't answer your question, but I'm trying to get closer to it.

I mean, it helps get closer to it, right? Because I think it it should be explored uh more closely. The other couple questions really quickly. One um I think looking I think looking at the viability of like the lighting, I like the lighting fixtures across the street, things like that, but with the heavy winds and things like that. I mean, it's a big financial investment. I think lighting could be huge in a positive way, but I think there'd be things we need to look at. Is that something that would we could we could actually handle here given the elements? And then the last thought I had too was regarding signage. I mean, there's so much inconsistency in our city with signage and it's not a beautiful city when it comes to having some sort of great signage consistency. Um thoughts on that as you're trying to look at downtown and creating a feel and look and do you think a lot of that would come from the city creating a new signage policy or what have what have you seen as being successful and based on what you're seeing here in Anacortis? What would your thoughts be?

Yeah, I mean it really gets into creating a a a wayfinding and signage plan specific to the downtown district. I do think the signage that you're using today is something that you can build off of um and not have to start from from scratch, but for instance, would you use and continue to use that signage, let's say, to also promote, you know, bike routes? I think there's an opportunity to do that as well, especially if Sixth Street becomes kind of an important connection. Getting people to utilize the loop by that directional signage that gets them to Cosland Park or to the library and back to the waterfront. Those are additions that I think could build off the existing um signage that you're using today. Parking is is a challenge. You don't there's kind of limited public parking areas, but if those are to expand, incorporating that into the signage is important as well. So, I do think you have something to build off of and versus sort of starting from scratch. some issues that you'll have as you get closer to wash facilities for instance, they have signage types that can be contradictory maybe to what you're trying to do. But for this core area between 10th and third, I think absolutely build on on the signage that you have, but expand that information in terms of where you add additional signs, locating people to the destinations where you want them to go, such as the marina and parks and other places. So, I think I think it's a good start and it doesn't have to be uh a massive effort. I think you work with with what's what's working well now and just expand a bit.

Mayor Walters, Miss Molton,

thank you. So, we've heard a lot about curb extensions and we have one version of those on Q Avenue and I find them to be dangerous. They are actual curbs. They narrow the lanes sufficiently for people riding bikes to feel endangered by cars rather than safer because they're slowing down because they don't always that being set aside for the moment. Um I was in East Sound on Orcus last week and they have several raised intersections. So, they were very gradual ramps on each of the four entrances to the intersection. Slight enough to slow you down, but not enough to cause damage to your car. And the way they were marked, they were they were stamped with different colors, so the crosswalk part was really clear versus the middle of the intersection part. And they I feel that anecdotally they slow people down. They raise pedestrians up to the level of the sidewalk and there's a general feeling of safety and awareness. They have signs that say raised intersection ahead, not a million of them like um some places. And so I think that that's one idea. I I also do wonder about I like those mini traffic circles. I don't know about downtown and then turning taking away the separate bike lanes and having bikes with sherros which I'm not a fan of with cars. Um I think that could I'm not sure. I think that bears further discussion. I also think that with the bike lanes as they

are now that those have slowed traffic down, cars down also anecdotally. So, I think that that I think that bears more discussion for sure, but I'm not opposed to intersection changes. I'm just not strictly a fan of curb extensions. Walters, Mr. Mr. Yeah.

Uh yes, just as a quick um add, I am given where we are budgetarywise, given where we are trying to think our way through how we improve the things that we have and do the things that we need to do now, you know, versus just when we may have more resources to come in, which no one seems to really know what that is. I I'm a big fan of using paint. Paint for me right now is one way that we can begin to address some of the problems and begin to uh um sort of visually enhance the things that we're hoping to do downtown. I know and have utter confidence that once the decision about what we want, how we want to get it, how we want to display, you know, it'll be the best that we can do at the time. But I do believe that given how coste effective using paint and paint colors while we work out the other pieces, I think it's an asset force and allows us to move forward now, you know, and begin the look see as I like to call it and do the due diligence we need to find out whether or not it is working for us and anything that we may want to add or take away. I so I'm I'm just really voicing my support for paint, you know, at this point as we work through other pieces because right now the way our city seems to be developing from my eyes is that we have South Commercial that's also trying to move forward. We've got Buckton's, you know, doing comedy. We've got other things that we've talked about for a while. But even on that part of it, we've got um you know uh uh our things

that we want to do there in the um development that's coming along the North Basin, let alone if MJB ever really gets going. That was kind of a little smart um tweak of hope. uh but connecting those things and visually connecting it such that we can use it as it continues to grow and enhance is the thing that I think we can do now and do it relatively cheaply as we move this project forward. So, I'm a huge advocate of paint in this thing that gives a visual delineation not only for those that are walking, biking, and also for um vehicles.

Thank you, Mayor Walters. Mr. McDougall,

I'm glad I went after Mr. Young because actually I second paint. Um it actually has me wondering if there's a like an Eltech grant possibility there for a program of some sort. Um, I also wanted to highlight like I really like lighting as well and the the elements are certainly a concern. I know that uh if you reference Denver's Lmer Square, it's gorgeous and Denver has blizzards. I'm not sure exactly, you know, what they do during the heavy weather, but uh uh it's really well done. There's also a couple streets in Amsterdam similarly like lighting and you know, weather like us. So, those items seem like relatively like low sort of capital intensive um potentially like decent uh bang for the buck.

Thank you, Mr. McDougall. Mayor Walters, Miss Ken McGrath,

thank you. Uh so, I want to say first of all the this project and presentation. I appreciate it. I think there is also maybe a paper copy or PDF which is helpful for the public to be able to look through. Um, I think this is a great menu of options. Um, it's inspiring and creative and it does kind focus on kind of a high level of our downtown core and connectivity. Um, I think though that we have to be cognizant of the fact that these are business owners and property owners and each section of a block has a different personality and different needs and different clients. So, while the while this menu of options is fantastic, it's really going to fall on the DA and neighboring businesses and the chamber and the city to engage with the the owners. I I look at some of these slides and I say, "Oh my gosh, I I know who owns that building and I don't know if they are comfortable having them called out and, you know, critiqued." But I also do know that sometimes we just need a little um encouragement and um um excitement for this. Your building is really cool, your business is really cool. We can take it to the next level. Could we try to do that? Um when it comes to shutting down streets, even temporarily, I'm a I'm I'm nervous about that. I'm or I'm hesitant to do so at this point. I think we still have a lot of sidewalks that are underutilized. Um we and I would say that the um they're underutilized and we have some plaza spaces that could be utilized more. I would like to go through and

kind of even on the fifth street there those are some deep sidewalks on those side streets to kind of um more creatively utilize. Um, I think lighting is a super big thing. I think it pulls your eye down and makes you move move down the street and and get excited about things. That signage I agree with. I know that when we were going through the comp plan in 2019, there was a lot of concern about over over um over over kind of requiring signage to be done in a a format that doesn't allow people to be kind of independent. And we wanted to there was a push back at least at that time to not try to theme out our community, right? We didn't want to be the next Winthrop. We wanted people to be able to businesses to be able to kind of create their own space and and have the flexibility. We're not trying to necessarily be like a themed out town. No, things change and maybe we've realized that that is finding some theme and some uh string of uh that pulls through our community. Absolutely. Um what other things I would totally agree we installed those park the parkletits um and have not followed up on them at a committee level over the the last number of years on planning committee. We discussed trying to put to paper what our guidelines and expectations are having some kind of nominal yearly fee so that at least if we not to discourage someone from h from a business from having one but if the business isn't utilizing it let's remove it and it kind of gives you a date on a calendar to make that decision. Um because I do think there's a lot of there's a number of parklets that are really well used. Um yes, more in the summer than the winter, but I was sitting down in

February having ice cream next to the yarn shop and walked in and picked out some yarn and my children had no idea I knew how to um actually uh do any kind of uh huh

knitting. So I they got to watch me and I pulled out all my knitting needles. I was like, "Yes, I haven't done this because I have children now." Anyway, so I there's there's that kind of interaction that happens on those parkletits. Um I think that we need to new do some refinement and expectations and maybe not need as many as we have currently. Um so that that definitely I think is a really good project moving forward. Um angled parking we've talked about. I think there's been some studies done or some preliminary work done um over the years for side streets and I that to me is a more coste effective measure to explore before we start thinking about taking parcels that could be used in other ways and making them parking lots. Um and then I think that's about it. Oh, my last thing is uh I was just curious if there was any discussion on 9inth Street activation. I know that we've talked about it, but I don't know if I saw much of it in this plan. So, if there's any comments on that,

Mr. Graph. Yeah, the downtown loop itself is 7th and 9inth. Those are the key streets. So, R, 7th, 9th, and M. And I can go back to that. This illustration gives you a sense of that. Um so yes, 9inth is an important connection we know with the Marina Plaza and it links to the library and of course the Anacortis Museum um down at M Street. These are you know these are great assets in and close to downtown. They attract people um into the downtown just like Commercial Avenue does. So linking those together seemed really important.

I I guess do we take it a step further and how do we actually link them? What does that night street look like?

Yes, the idea is to I'm going to see if I can go back a few images here. And the idea is the embellishments that we're looking to do on Commercial Avenue, i.e. curb extensions, um murals on on walls, um adding lighting over time. that some of those same improvements um could be focused on this these loop streets as well. And that's really an indicator to visitors that wow these are important streets and they're sort of carrots that attract them and bring them you know down to these locations because you're doing sort of the sim similar quality on commercial avenue as some of these side streets that that that being the idea. So wayfinding could be a part of that. This image here just begins to elude at how some of those improvements could that are that were planning for commercial avenue or might be planned for commercial avenue would extend down these other streets.

So thank you miss Thank you Jason. I the the one thing the final thing I would add is that I think paint is great and we should totally do paint and it's every two years but I do think there is value in a more substantial permanent projects such as um you know when I'm in Wachi there is the avenue of art art um that rotates I think the creative district is probably working on something such as that really having pedestals that are dedicated that allow for public art whether it be permanent or in rotation. We've got amazing artists. I think a good example um is in front of Burton's that has a piece by I'm forgetting who it is. It's the owl. Is it Paragan? Um you know that is a really incredible piece. There's another piece uh by Watermark. Um doing things in the short term is good, but also having some of those anchors I think would be really important. Um, and then just kind of as you drive by to be able to want to stop and actually walk by it and appreciate it on a more intimate level, um, is something that I think I would like to see move forward. Thank you, Miss Ken McGrath. Uh, with respect to the parklets, I'd point out that in my conversations with the restaurants on the west side of the street, they've indicated that they really want and need those parklets. Full service restaurants are a significant sales tax generator for us. and in large part maybe are big part of the reason people come downtown. Um do you want to pause here council and hear from the public? We come back uh after that. I would also remind um everyone that uh the report that is generated here is not to be a plan that is to be adopted by council. Council won't be asked to I mean I guess you can do what you want but you will not be asked to adopt the plan. It's it's not

going to have that level of specificity for you. Um but the consultants will build it out based on the feedback um that council provides. Okay. Uh let's let's go to public comment at this point. We'll take uh first comment here. Right. Yeah. And then did I see another? Yeah. Okay. Uh you can uh be on deck. Okay. Okay.

Good evening, Mayor Council members. I think there's so much to take into consideration whether it's reasonable or expensive. Um, in regards to the paint, I think that's great as long as it's maintained. And um as far as opening up the streets towards the library and the museum, maybe some a paint line from downtown in a certain color that to the museum and to the library and the park, something like that instead of a lot of signage. Signage just kind of gets I don't know maintenance and whatever. But I thought the paint line, you know, follow the yellow brick road or whatever, something like that. And I love the idea of the lighting downtown.

But um during the the parklets aren't used. I mean, I I think they're great and I use them, but they're great during the warm, dry months. Now they're just kind of haunted places where sidewalk people just the people on the sidewalk kind of move aside and chat inside, but they're not utilized a lot. But um they're great and getting some revenue from the businesses that have them there. That's fine. But the yellow the painting of the roads or the pathway down the street, you know, street to the museum and in different locations, I think would be a great idea to do. Thank you. Thank you. Pat Gardner for the record.

Could you state your name? I'm Jordan Haye. I'm the executive director of the downtown Anacortis Alliance and I live in a neighborhood that I believe is called Village Park. Thank you. You have three minutes.

Um good evening, mayor and council members. I want to say thank you. The work that you're doing now to invest in downtown Anacortis matters not just for businesses but for the entire community. Downtown is our shared living room. It's where visitors form their first opinions, where locals gather and where small businesses build their livelihoods. Um the willingness for this whole government organization um to plan for the future is something that our community notices and appreciates. So, thank you. Um what's exciting for me about this plan is that it's not abstract. It's practical. Um, it shows how relatively modest, well sequenced investments in sidewalks, crossings, plazas, and public spaces can make our downtown more welcoming, safer to walk, and more economically vibrant. Um, from the perspective of the downtown Anacortis Alliance, we see every day how small improvements add up. A planter, a bench, a business or a building that paints the their siding, um, a mural. Each of these things changes how people experience a place. And my hope is that we work together with the city and the planning department and public works to make a roadmap that lets us do that intentionally and in a consistent way. Um, and at a scale that can really move the needle for our local economy. Um, we also want to let you know that we are ready to be a partner in making this real. Um, we can help communicate. We can help do community fundraising for pieces that we need. Um, we can mobilize volunteers and work with businesses to make sure that this actually happens. progress and steadily. So, um, once again, I just wanted to thank you for your leadership and for continuing to push this forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? My name is Meredith Mackoy. I am the executive director of the Anacortis Arts Festival and the administrator of the Anacortis Creative District. I live in the Rosewind neighborhood and I'm sure none of you know where that is. I just on behalf of the Anacourse Creative District, I want to say that we've walked alongside Jordan and the downtown alliance and all of this work and with first 40 ft. It's really important for our downtown business owners to be successful. I think it's important for our residents to find that downtown is a culturally vibrant place to be and we're really excited to partner and walk alongside the council and downtown Alliance through this work and you can count on the Anacourse Creative District to look for money to bring paint brushes and to do the heavy lift and as that we've picked through some of these projects. So, thank you for putting this forward and we're super excited to do this work.

Thank you. Uh applause is prohibited uh during this portion of the council meeting as are theme songs when people come to the podium. Uh who's who's next? Come on up. Hello. Um, my name is Ursula Edelman and I live up on D Avenue. Um, I just wanted to speak for some of the youth of this town, um, who don't always have money to spend on a coffee shop or a game or whatever. Um, so I really appreciate you guys carving out spaces downtown that are third spaces that don't require funds. Um, and I wanted to speak on behalf of the the plazas and those seating options because it's it's hard to invite teens downtown when there aren't free spaces for them to just exist. So, thank you for all your hard work on this plan. I just want to speak in support of that.

Thank you. Uh good evening, mayor, council. Uh thanks for having this presentation today. I'm Alan Rhodess. I uh live 4105 Mitchell Drive, the Stitwood neighborhood. I also own the Rockfish Grill and Aquarters Brewery. Um the plans that we saw tonight talk about the space between 10th and 3rd Street. And currently the truck route just bisects that at 4th. Uh I believe the truck route should be moved from fourth to third a third street so that um um we can continue the downtown all the way into the boundary of the port in the city. So um I think that's imperative to to uh create the plan work for everyone downtown. Thank you.

Thank you. Come on up.

Hello everybody. Um, my name is Tom Freeland. Uh, might get a little bit closer. Uh,

okay. My name is Tom Freeland. I own the Keystone building downtown. Um, and and we have about 34 offices and businesses in the building. Um, so parking is really important. All the clients that come to visit them, um, from from health insurance to to facials to massages to yoga, you name it, we got everything. So, um, and everybody talks about bathroom. I I get asked 10 times a day. And I know the city's not doing very well, uh, moneywise. Um, but the the bathrooms are that's my biggest thing. And if people are going to come down to to gather, where are they going to go? Where are they going to park? Isn't that going to create more parking? And isn't that going to need more bathrooms? So, it's it just takes a little bit of thought. So, once, you know, once things are settled, then maybe people can kind of think this through a little bit. Um, but I'm all for Katherine for people to have a good time, but um, strategically on Seventh Street where we are, um, Island Cafe said that they'd go out of business 100%. Um, we would lose a lot of tenants, you know, and our values would probably go down on the on the building. Um, you know, so it affects us and and it's great ideas, but how is it going to affect all the businesses? and we didn't even get talked about it until just recently. Didn't know anything about what's going on. So, it's not that people are finding out from the actual businesses of how they're doing and what how the idea it's all good ideas, but reality is um it's it's a fine line between not making it and making it. So things like this, the more help that people can come in town, we want people

to come in town, visitors who was brings us money. We we we also contribute to the sales tax. We we do tons of business. We've been there 21 years with our big stores. So the bead store, Elizabeth's Cottage by the Sea, Shabby French Market, we got all of our businesses in there. So the the visitors that come to town are the ones that bring the big money. And it's great that the locals come out and walk their dogs and their kids and bike around. That's awesome. Love to see it. I bring my grandkids down, too. But they're not the ones bringing us in the money. So, just kind of think of it as a business as well as a as a public thing. But anyways, that's all my All right.

Thank you.

Come on up. Hi there. I'm Kathy Kyle. I own Scott Milo Gallery for the last 31 years on the corner of Fifth and Commercial. And as much as I love the gathering of people, you know, accessibility to the business is huge for me. Uh we also have customers that bring in and out art all the time, big pieces. Right now we have very limited parking with all the parkletits. Um we also have, you know, 13 tenants upstairs in the building that have people trying to come and go. We have three businesses on the bottom floor with the restaurant and the gallery and the attorney's office. And having that street blocked off that not only do we lose parking, but accessibility, visibility, you know, I don't know how they'll really find us kind of amongst all the stuff. So anyway, I just wanted to say love people downtown. I promote people downtown. Um, I think a plaza there would be terrible. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Come on up.

Again, I'm Josh Gates, 3808 West 4th. I didn't come for this portion of the meeting, but uh it happens to be that I'm the open streets organizer director. So, I think this coincides very well with that as far as working together for maybe a time that we could experiment something during that because we can promote that, we promote that, city helps promote that. So, if there's any way that we can think about um just brainstorming what we might want to try temporarily there, I know I've talked with Rick too with um just the restaurant over there on Fifth and just what we could do on fourth and so yeah, just be thinking about that because that'd be a great place to integrate it into open streets. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. at the far back of the room. Farther than the last row and then the woman in the last row. You're on deck. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for all your work on this and your attention to this. Um, I've been involved most recently with the the meetings downtown and I love the idea of a community gathering place, but I'm also very fearful because of the parking and all the things that Kathy talked about as far as affecting her business. So, I would, you know, I I think our business, we're open to a short-term kind of play around with it some summertime if that would work, but we also would like you to look at the option of the other side of commercial if that side of his street might have a little more space in the summer to do an experimental um gathering place just as options. Um

my partner at work said, you know, we have the city parking lot. We have giant um semi-truckss that come and go. Um it'd be very close to our parking lot. So, we're concerned about that. We're totally in favor of community gathering place. We would have fun with the other restaurants and you know, so it's just that how do we balance it and how do we take care of the community and take care of our businesses. So, thank you for everything. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh Laura Gear. Um there there is also on Fifth Street uh some 3,000 square ft of uh city-owned property on the north side of the street that we could look at that uh is off the street. Um okay, back here back row here. Come on up. My name is Elizabeth Freeland. I also own the Freeland Keystone building downtown. One of my main issues that I had with closing street downs, and it doesn't matter if it's Seventh or Fifth, is how emergency vehicles will get through because the fire department, if you were to close Seventh Street, would have to come up commercial over to either R or O back over. And with the streets being partially closed, I'm not sure if the fire engines could reach the buildings and the winds that we have could just blow fire all the way downtown and affect every building. So, it's seems like it's a safety issue. That's all I had to say.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, Mayor Walters. Thank you, members of the public. We'll turn it back over to council. Mr. Fantini,

sorry. I wanted to get in on the paint party. Um I I do like the idea of some paint. Um I'm curious if it was brought up at all. I have seen and I cannot think of the cities now but in two cities, one in Seattle, um where they have explored using paint that only appears when it rains and it makes it kind of interesting for people during the winter time to go out and find these various paint areas that maybe have messages or pictures. So, I'm just curious if that's been thought of in the paint at all because I think that would be kind of interesting. I also do appreciate the approach um of kind of testing some of these ideas. I know it was mentioned in the presentation before we go all in on something being able to test it whether it be one corner. Um I just I like I like that a lot, but I do also to Miss Cleon McGrath's point think I don't think there's going to be one thing that we do that is going to work for every block necessarily. There are a lot of very embedded um personalities, not people personalities, but personalities of the well those two, but people but personalities of each individual block. And I do think it's it's really worth testing things out and keeping the business owners engaged in what we're doing.

Thank you. And I think testing was definitely part of the MMO here. Yeah. uh incremental, slow, experimental. Yeah, Mr. Courier,

I think the one thing that I can think of that was presented that would kind of work for everybody potentially would be lighting if there was a good lighting strategy down that that kind of highlighted the downtown corridor there. Um, you know, like the way you're talking about it, Bruce, I feel like I I feel like there's cities that have done that really effectively and we do have a lot of dark gray times and we want to drive people downtown, locals and tourists. I, you know, during the off season and that's something that doesn't affect parking and things like that, but that may be one place we could start and then paint. Mayor W.

Thank you, Miss Molton. Um, so one of the things we haven't touched on is the heart of Anacortis. I do really like that idea of having an opening in that fence. It is city property. It is a park, but it doesn't feel like it. And that is a good gathering space, I think, a place for people to eat lunches, a place for youth to go. There's a I can't think of of what the parking situation is around the corner, but um I think that would I think that would be great and easy and inexpensive. Also, I've had a couple of people mention the way that we have the benches now, say in front of Burton's and in front of Beayshore, they're facing the street. So, you sit there and a car pulls up right next to you. And so it would be as easy as turning those around to face the sidewalk and sort of activate those spaces more so you're talking to people that are walking by. I do really like the idea of the the planters and the different kinds of seating where those could go. I think those could be really cool. I get nervous about the maintenance of the planters and the flowers, but the DAA has done a really good job of that and has also activated, you know, spaces like between the post office and did the planting there and Elanete, um, that little place with that art piece there. So, um, things have been done that have been improvements and I I think that there are more that we can do that aren't that expensive and don't have to be permanent. Maybe we could do some of those little seating things and maybe move. I don't know. Anyway, so I think that there's a lot to explore here. I really appreciate the work that's gone into this plan by the community and the consultants. And I I would also underscore um to please continue to reach out to the business owners because they're the ones that that know how everything affects them on the ground every day and in turn the rest of us. So So thanks to everyone who

participated in this and will continue to participate. It means a lot to our community. May Walters, Mr. Y,

just as a quick addition, I don't know why, you know, sometimes when you listen to other people talk, it spurs ideas, you know, and uh so I'm one of those people that as other people talk, it's sort of, oh, I didn't think about that, but what wow, I like that. Um, one of the things that came to mind that I had a discussion with, there are I know we were talking about art and pieces throughout the city. That's one of the most beautiful things about our town and and it's so interesting that the people that come to visit always tend to comment on the art that we have throughout the town. So, that's such a beautiful thing. one friend that just went to uh I think it was Banebridge Island or Vashan and and to see I think the 12th of the Trolls or whatever, you know, and and and it was surprising and I didn't know anything about them, but she was telling me all of the people that really go to see those things. So, I'm just saying that there's a dirt in the plethora of ideas for um continuing to attract people to our town in beautifification as well. So, I won't belabor that point.

Thank you. Thank you. Uh Mr. Coleman, Mr. Graph, is it your intent to uh generate a new draft by what date? I guess if council members have additional feedback that they want to provide after this meeting, uh, how late is too late for them to get that to you?

I think over the next couple of weeks, we're we want to take what we've heard today to to sort of maybe reorient the list. We're hearing some things that seem to be achievable and it'd be nice to sort of get in order of priority. And then we want to work with the city and DAA and the partners to really understand who's going to take on key roles, if that makes sense. We want to sort of get our ducks aligned so that people that we're assigning responsibility are fully accepting of that and then we can sort of tailor management strategies and things. So, I think at least for the next couple of weeks, we we'd love to gather additional feedback if you need that, if you need additional information, and I think we can work up a schedule and get that back to you in terms of when when the next iteration of the document would be ready and then at what time we might want to bring it back to you all. I know we're sort of fasttracked here at the end, but what we found is there are a lot of additional conversations that need to be had and those be became really important I think here in the last couple of weeks and I think we need to make sure that we're continuing those conversations and we're building a high level of comfort because the last thing we want here is for folks to be exhausted and and not happy. So couple of weeks hopefully that's good for you all to continue to add information and we're still in an iterative process. So we'll be coming back with basically another sort of review draft final if that makes sense. So there'll be another opportunity to weigh in on the recommendations and and sort of priorities. We'd ultimately like to put it to a timeline. Um so if we can you know like a 5-year time frame assemble these projects that's part of the effort as well. One last point is we want to be able to get a cost estimate for the interim projects and or purchase

of a few streetscape furnishings so that we have a number and you all have a number of what it might cost for an intersection and then if you multiply that by two or five or 10 that can give us a sense of what some of the initial costs might be down the road for early implementation. I know DAA has a little bit of funds, but that'll be helpful too in terms of the priority if we know how much things cost. We're running cost estimate with our sub consultant. So, that's going to take a couple weeks for that as well.

All right. Thank you. Uh then I will encourage council to get us comments um by next week. Uh two weeks could be too much time. uh in two weeks council will be talking about sewage treatment plants and that's where their mind will have gone. So uh uh so if by especially by next week if you can uh get your comments to uh John Coleman uh members of the public can also reach out to Mr. Coleman with additional ideas that uh you come up with over the next uh couple of weeks or so. Um, I would point out that of the diagrams that you saw on the plan here that showed parking, none of that was back in angle parking. You're you're welcome. Uh, all right. If there is anything else, I'll take it now. Otherwise, that concludes our agenda and we are adjourned. Thank you.