City Council - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat.

Heather Watland here. Tim Abrahamson present. Nathan Simp here. Ivon Van Horn. One day. One day. It's okay. Mayor Vania move for approval of the agenda. Second. Question. All those in favor? I I. Any oppose? Motion carries. Okay, we'll move right on to our first workshop item. Professional services agreement with Graham Baba architects for commercial kitchen food truck park design. Sarah,

good evening. Mayor Manny and members of city council. So tonight um I want to present to you a proposal for design services to build to design a commercial kitchen with the food truck park. Um so we've been working on this project for some time. Um the city previously identified an area in the Cascade Industrial Center as a food service uh lack of food services in the area. So, the city did a pilot project with food truck um food trucks in the corner of 172nd and Airport Boulevard and it has proven to be successful in that area. Um and during that time we applied for a grant through the departments of commerce to uh for funding to design a commercial kitchen. And with that, we got approval to also include a design for the food truck park in the area. So, we assembled a team um from our different departments and we did a call for proposals for design services and we interviewed um a lot of companies and we selected Graham Baba architects and their proposals included in the packet. and we are seeking approval to hire them to work on the design with our team of the food truck court and the commercial kitchen.

Thank you. Any questions, Heather? Do um we have funds set aside for this already? No. So funding for the actual construction is not included, but funding for the design will be taken care of by the Department of Commerce grant. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, none seen. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to our second item, resolution for wash grant, perimeter fencing improvement project, stage two, Lauren Robinson.

Good evening, Mayor Vany. Good evening, council members. Attachment B is to the resolution for a washdock grant for a perimeter fencing project stage two uh in the amount not to exceed $27,500. To apply for a washdock grant, the airport must submit a signed assurance in the form of a resolution that local matching funds are available for the proposed grant project. Airport staff applied for state funding for the this project. Um, we're requesting wash dot fund 2.5%. Uh, FAA would fund 95% and the city would be a match of 2.5%. Um, and as mentioned, that's 27,500 for our resolution. Uh, the perimeter fencing improvement project stage two was budgeted and is now estimated to cost over $1.1 million for construction and construction administration costs. I will note that the grant does not include non-eligible construction costs. Uh for example, this would be like the black coding that we're required to do with the city. That would be about under $50,000 is estimated would be that additional cost. Uh we don't have final numbers at this point though. Bids have not been received. And it also does not include the design cost as that's ineligible for this type of grant um due to the time frame of when design occurs. Airport staff um will also submit a grant application at 95% with the FA in the coming month. And staff will return to city council to request approval of a construction administration contract with Dell Engineering as well as a construction contract once bids are received. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. We have any questions? None. See, did a good job. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, looks like we'll move on to the third item, acceptance of grant funds from Washington military department state and local cyber security grant program. Brian, uh, good evening, mayor, members of council, uh, for your consideration tonight is the acceptance of a state and local cyber cyber security grant from the state of Washington military department in the amount of $100,000. Um, this will help uh purchase uh new cyber security tools to enhance and protect the city's data. Um, acceptance of this grant will trigger a budget amendment uh at the end of the year. And this is a no cost or sorry, no match grant, so no dollars needed to to uh match for this grant. So, I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you. Any questions, Tim? Yeah, Barry. So, this money that the grant money we're getting Is this going into a project we already have going or is this something that it's going to cause it more costs? No, this is this is this was identified as a new project that and this these funds will cover that cost. This these funds will cover it. Okay. Entirely. Yeah. Did you have a question?

Um and does sorry I kind of just skimmed it. So um did this does this grant also include all the training and additional upgrades we need training it it it provides professional services the the configuration of the system um we will have to train on it um as as well that'll just come out have to come out of our operating training budget and we haven't and oh yeah we're good you're fine with that good any other questions none seen thank you okay we'll move on to the fourth item the dark fiber lease agreement, North County Regional Fire Authority. Again, Brian,

thank you. Also for your consideration tonight is the acceptance I'm sorry, wrong one. Uh uh for your consideration is the approval of a dark fiber lease agreement with North County Regional Fire Authority for the lease of fiber in two locations in inside the city of Arlington. Uh these locations are station 46 at 137 North Mloud and station 48 at 4228 Airport Boulevard. The lease of this fiber gives uh NCF NCRFA the uh connectivity to the city of Arlington's data center and then they will connect to the Snowsh County fiber for internet and for snow 911 services. A little history behind this. Um these sites have been connected with the city or through the city and various methods fiber and other other methods prior to the merger of North County. Uh however uh this dark fiber agreement formalizes this agree arrangement. Good. Any questions? Unseen. Okay. Thank you, Brian.

Okay. We'll move on to our next item. Change order number two to American Ramp Company contract for the Jensen Pump Track Phase 2. Jim Kelly.

Thank you very much, Mayor Rainy and council members. This item come coming before you tonight is for change order number two to the American Ramp Company contract with the city of Arlington for the design construction of a pump track a two track system over at Jensen Park when now this project is sort of unique in as much that it is not costing the city any money. It is being sponsored by the Rotary and the Rotary is also um went out and solicited sponsorships by a lot of organizations uh in in the community including the Stilawamish tribe, Amazon uh and and Snowomish County as some of the large donors. When we first went to uh in entered into contract with the American Ramp Company, we did not have full project funding, but we wanted to get the design going so we could build the ramp in 2026 and have it open during the summer. Um we kept the design moving forward the whole time designing for a two two ramp system and we finally got the final uh funding for the project from the Still Guamish Tribe of Indians. We now want to modify the contract so that we can build the second ramp that we're designing. The amount of the request is to modify the cont contract for $94,436.

Thank you, Jim. Any questions, Tim? And uh that 94,000 uh price tag that was already like the original what we thought it would kind of cost and that was already pre-planned. It's not like we're asking for additional budgeted money for this. The $94,436 was in the original quotation from American Ramp Company. We pulled that out. We pulled that amount out, the construction of the smaller beginner track because we didn't have enough funding to build the whole the two tracks. Okay. So, we're just updating the project plan to add this back in. Got it. Now, now that we have additional funding. No, appreciate it. Thanks, Jim.

Great. Any other questions? None. See, thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to item six, the monthly financial report. Shelby, thank you, Mayor Vanny and council members. So, um, good evening. Good to see you. I'm going to be going over the February 2026 financial report for you tonight. Start with sales tax because I love a good tradition and we always start with that. So, let's do it again. So, uh year to date through February, compared to prior years, we're experiencing an 11% increase in sales tax. So, compared to 2025. Um but this is only two months worth of data. So, keep that in mind that just because we see these spikes after two months doesn't mean that the whole year will look like that. But um we're excited to see it. And um sales tax does make such a big portion of our general funds revenue at um what is it 27% that any increase there we're happy to see. But um we're still hoping to meet our budget revenue for the year um since we were not able to meet the full budgeted amount last year. So we're, you know, keeping track of this. But now let's talk about February specifically. So there's always a two-month lag in collections. We talked about this a little bit last month. So when we're talking about February, it's actually December sales tax revenue. And December being the holiday season, we would expect, you know, spikes in retail um sales tax. So keep that in mind when we're talking about um the rest of the February data is actually December um that was collected. So for February, the three largest tax revenue sources um the first one is retail, which made up 40% of the sales tax for the month. and um that has been experiencing an average decline of 3% per year since 2023. So

although we're kind of in line with where we were for retail sales tax last year, we're not seeing an overall increase in retail sales tax for the whole um year. And so that's uh part of the problem when it makes up such a big portion of sales tax. So and then um so yeah, we didn't see the huge increases in retail sales tax like we were hoping. I think a lot nationwide they were projecting um that but we didn't experience that for December. So then the next category is services which makes up 27% of February's total and um this category has shown consistent growth which is great with an average um increase of 15% over last year and this has been a steady increase since 2023. So we're seeing 15% increase in services each year. And then the third biggest category is construction sales tax, which is 20% of the monthly total. And we've talked a lot about this each month, too, but this one is experiencing a 40% increase compared to February of 2025 with some large construction projects um within the city limits. And um this is an improvement since the last time we really experienced any um increases um was back to 2022 where we experienced a lot of construction sales tax with the last Amazon facility that came in. So increases in construction sales tax is a good sign. Um but once again construction sales tax is not reliable. So what we do um since it's kind of like a one time that we're getting it for that project, we put it into onetime costs. And so we actually move when we see a um a spike in construction sales tax, we move money to our capital funding so we can you know uh pay for big bigger projects or we move into the art fund so that we can um provide more um art in the community. And so this is not something that we can rely on all the time. We'd rather see increases in retail or in services um for the if we're looking for reliable consistent sales tax. So keep that in

mind. And then um yeah, so sales tax overall um good increase there, but we're hoping to see construction continue um but we will watch it carefully. Then the next category is utility tax. We also talked about this quite a bit um last month and uh we were kind of worried because January was not a good month for a utility tax um but has rebounded in February which is a good sign. Uh so we received 407,000 which is quite a bit more than our typical monthly average of 341,000. Um and last month all revenues were down 24%. So um balancing this out with February's data, we're now only down 1% year to date. So that's good. It really rebounded and we're hoping to um meet our budget by the end of the year. Uh keep in mind utilities fluctuate all the time. So you got it's based on con um consumer usage and so you've got you know all kinds of factors like the weather. So um natural gas was down in January and February because we haven't had as of a winter as we usually do and we continue to see drops in cable television um with less consumers in that area. But all the other utilities were up as in um February which is great and um helped boost us back from uh a low in January. And then all other general fund revenues, we have um earned 13% of our annual budget. Uh which is approximately $200,000 higher than this time of last year. So that's 3.3 million compared to 3.3 million in 2025. So that's encouraging. But then on the expense side, um we have spent 14% of our budget year to date. And this is about um 3% of where we should be. Um so we are down in that category. Um but this is 2% more than in 2025. So we got to watch out because we don't want expenses to grow um to increase higher than our revenues. And with a lot of the inflationary

pressure, that's what continues to happen. And so whenever um you look at the bottom line every month, you want to see that our revenues are higher than our expenses. And right now they're kind of outpacing each other. So we'll continue to look for um cost reduction strategies and um leadership's going to continue to talk about that to make sure And then some of the other revenues I just want to highlight um for this month is um motor vehicle fuel tax. Um so this funds a lot of our uh street program and street maintenance. This is up 17% compared to uh for year to date through February um compared to 2025. And um as most of you know, the nationwide gas prices are increasing, which you would think would mean more sales or um more motor vehicle um tax, but also we're um the taxes continue to increase. We're actually going to have another tax on fuel starting July 1 of 2026. So, we're watching to make sure that this does not end up meaning that we're outpricing our customers and they can't, you know, go on trips and um spend money on fuel. And so we're going to watch this to make sure that it doesn't um start adding up and eventually then um motor vehicle tax will decrease. So hoping we'll stay in line with our budget for this category because it's an important one that funds streets but um watching to see what will happen there. And then water, sewer, and storm, which we call all of our utility funds, um, which, um, are seeing stable increases, but also we increase the rates of our utilities by the CPI of the area each year, but they're also seeing usage increases as of right now, and so they're all um, doing well.

That's all I have for February. Any questions? Michelle, I feel like um that there were some plans made for on the expense side of it. Um so even with all of that, we're we're still um being challenged.

Yeah. Um especially if our expenses start to outpace more than what we had thought. And so we really got to watch um our revenues and our expenses because we want to make sure that all our project end up coming true. But we have um we had a plan for reductions in 2025 and continuing in 2026 and uh when we have our retreat coming up next what those reduction strategies were and maybe some other ones that we can do um for the future. Um but yeah, continue to monitor those. Some things we um were able to achieve the savings right away. Other ones took a little bit longer, you know, was like a a year approach to kind of implement them. And so that'll be ongoing. Yeah, we did make we did make reductions for this year, but th this is alarming. We are watching it really closely. But again, we're only a couple of months into this on this report. So, you kind of have to, you know, view the data, you know, cautiously. And we don't want to overreact, but we're we also don't want to underreact. So

also working on the 10-year projections and re um forming those or re-evaluating them as we go. And so we'll also continue to do that as as things change and then as we need um so we have kind of numbers in mind of what do we need to hit for reductions for the next couple of years. Thank you. Any other questions? Tim. Yeah. Just a point. You have here on the upcoming council agenda items that the council retreats on April 17th. Is it on the 24th? Yeah, I think that's an old date. And I'm sorry about that. Want to make sure we get that updated for Thank you for noticing that.

Great. Any other questions? Okay. None seen. Thank you, Shelby. Thank you. Paul, do you have any reports or anything? I just want to bring up one item and that is we got an extra Monday this month, so there's no council meeting next week. Uh however, we are having a community engagement night here. So if you please, you're welcome to join us. Uh we're inviting the community to come in and talk to the different departments and ask questions of the directors. So 5 to 7. Like I said, you're very welcome to join us.

Yeah. Okay. Um my report I've got myself and Heather we attended this weekend the memorial os memorial slide that was as always very good good it was smaller this year because they're trying to stretch it out to like once every 5 to 10 years or whatever it is but this one was just family and friends and stuff but it was it was really good. It was really good. And actually, I think we got to see some of their artwork with this with the statue and stuff that put the shadow up towards the mountain at the exact time that happened. And be this is the first time it's really been nice weather where that was actually visible. So, it was cool to see that part of it. That's all I had. Is any council members with reports or comments? Nathan,

I had the opportunity to go to the Arlington Home and Garden Show, which was at the Boys and Girls Club, and got to see um different local businesses that I actually haven't seen either at a street fair or at a farmers market uh because it's a different venue. It's just a different area. Uh but they did not get rained out this year. Last year was a little tricky. There's it still cold this year, but they got to at least enjoy a little bit of sunshine and got to um also see that there's even younger people that were introduced to how to plant things. There were classes on first-time home buyers, um, things about how to take care of your home and gardens and lots of freebies and just a lot of great ways to network or connect with local businesses that um, you may not see and really want to wander into. like if you're a window replacement service, usually you don't walk on a, you know, side of a street in town and see it, but they come to you at this event. And so, it was great to to look into that. I also got to see the pop-up shop. Apparently, I'm at the pop-up shop every week. Um, but it is something our city has in place um to help young entrepreneurs or those who are starting their businesses or have an idea of what they want to do. and it gives them a a little bit of a kickstart or a trial uh trial run. So, um it's very important that we use th those resources wisely. So, that's pretty much uh what we had this week. So,

great. Thank you. Any others? Okay. And just to ask the question, do we have anybody for public comment in this crowd? Okay. None seen. Okay. Review of the consent agenda. Yeah, six is info. I was going to say, Rob, um, I'm good with one through five. I want Shelby to come back. No, I'm just kidding. Does that mean I can look for other stuff? You got too weak. So,

yeah. Yes. Yes. Paul, it means you can look for other stuff. Yeah. So that's so that's what you guys want is the one through five or is that joke? Are you joking? No, I'm good with one through five. Everybody else. Okay. One through five. Find some more work. I will. Okay. I think that's it. We're ready to convene. A motion to adjurnn. Second. Whoa. Scott question. All those in favor? I. Any oppose? None heard. We're adjourned.