City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, and welcome, everyone, for being here, taking the time to engage in work of our city. Your voice matters, and we are so glad you are here. With that, city clerk, can we please do a roll call?

Yes. Thank you. Mayor Malakutti? Here. Deputy Mayor Hamilton?

Here.

Council member Barkava?

Here.

Council member Briar? Council member Briar? Okay. We see your mouth moving and we see your face.

They see it.

But we don't hear you.

We're gonna fix that on our end. Thank you. Now we can hear you. Council member Newhouse.

Here.

Thank you. Council Member Robinson. Here. Council Member Sumoduaria.

Here.

Thank you.

Council Member Sumoduverio, would you please lead us in the flag salute? Thank you. Thank you so much. We have two proclamation. The first one is Women's History Month that Councilmember Robinson will read.

Before that, I would love to invite our city manager, one of our fear fearless and amazing leader that we have to sit and receive that proclamation and tell us few words after council member Robinson reads the proclamation. Proclamation.

Thank you, mayor, and thank you for the honor of reading this. We have three strong women on the council. I'm proud to be amongst them. Whereas women's history month is a time to celebrate the vital contributions women have made society and to recognize their achievements in shaping history, culture, and progress across many fields. And whereas Women's History Month originated as Women's History Week nineteen eighty one when Congress passed a resolution establishing its observance beginning 03/07/1982 and was later expanded to the entire month of March in 1987.

And whereas women of every race, ethnicity, and background have played a pivotal role in the development, strength, and resilience of our nation, state, and local communities, often in ways history has not fully recognized. And whereas women, including women of color and immigrant women, have long been at the forefront of movements for justice and equity, leading efforts in civil rights, labor rights, suffrage, environmental advocacy, and many other causes. And whereas despite decades of progress, women and girls, particularly women of color and immigrant women, continue to face systemic inequality inequities, including disparities in wages, caregiving responsibilities, barriers to health care access, and challenges in the workforce. And whereas the city of Bellevue remains committed to equity, access, and opportunity for all as reflected in its diversity advantage plan and vision for an inclusive and thriving community. Now therefore, Island Robinson for mayor Malikutian, mayor of Washington, Mayor of I haven't I haven't said this in so long.

Mayor of the city of Bellevue, Washington, behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim March 2026 as Women's History Month in Bellevue and encourage all Bellevue residents to honor this month through programs, ceremonies, and activities that recognize and celebrate the remarkable achievements of women past, present, and future.

Thank you, councilman Robinson, Our city manager, we are here to hear your comments.

Thank you very much, council member Robinson and

the council.

Thank you for this proclamation. I am truly very honored to accept this on the behalf of the women of Bellevue. It is true that women of every background have strengthened our community often without recognition. They've done that through leadership, service, creativity, and resilience. And their contributions have shaped our civic history, our business environment, our neighborhoods, and they've also advanced equity and opportunity within this city.

This proclamation also reminds us that women and girls still face real challenges and barriers from wage gaps to caregiving burdens and unequal access to opportunity and that our work here in this city is not finished. Bellevue's vision and commitment to diversity and equity calls us to keep pushing for a community where every woman can thrive. On behalf of women who make Bellevue strong including many women who work here within the city who are colleagues, I want to thank you for this recognition and thank you for your continued commitment to inclusion and opportunity for all.

Thank you so much, and we will take picture with you and everyone else after the second proclamation. And I should acknowledge there are many, many mayors who are women in the state of Washington, and I am very proud we had our former mayor for six years, former mayor, Lynn Robinson. So and we have two council members here, three total that are women. So amazing proclamation. The second proclamation is American Red Cross Month is going to read by our Deputy Mayor Hamilton, and I would love to invite Monica Wellner, American Red Cross King County board member and volunteer to the table, and we will hear from you after he's done with reading the proclamation.

Go ahead, please. Thank

you, mayor. Whereas for more than a century, the American Red Cross has been at the forefront of helping Americans prevent, prepare for, and respond to disasters, large and small, providing critical support to families and communities in times of need. And whereas the American Red Cross depends on the generosity of the American people and the dedication of volunteers to carry out its humanitarian mission and provide relief to those affected by emergencies, and whereas in Bellevue, Washington, the American Red Cross works tirelessly through its volunteers to support the community when disasters strike, when someone needs life saving blood, or when a helping hand is needed. And whereas the Red Cross also provides vital services to members of the military, veterans, and their families and offers training in CPR, aquatic safety, and first aid to help individuals prepare for emergencies and save lives. And whereas through the disaster response, blood drives, and preparedness training, the American Red Cross of Northwest Washington helps ensure that Bellevue residents and families have support and resources when emergencies occur.

And whereas the American Red Cross helps make Bellevue safer and stronger, and the city recognizes the important work of the Red Cross and the contributions of the King County chapter in supporting the well-being of our community. Now, therefore, I, Dave Hamilton, on behalf of Moe Malakoutian, mayor of the city of Bellevue, Washington, and the city council, do hereby proclaim March 2026 as the American Red Cross month in Bellevue and encourage all residents to support the mission of the American Red Cross and recognize the volunteers and donors whose generosity helps provide hope and assistance to those in need.

Thank you, deputy mayor Monica Welner, please.

Yes. Thank you, deputy deputy mayor Hamilton. My name is Monica Welner, and I'm a board member and a volunteer with the American Red Cross in King County. And I want to thank the many American Red Cross volunteers in Bellevue. I'm also the laboratory director at Seattle Children's and in my role I oversee transfusion services at Children's.

So in my daily work I can see firsthand the life saving impact of the American Red Cross blood services. At Seattle Children's, we perform over 10,000 transfusions every year. 10,000. So thank you to our volunteers that are organizing blood drives and those of you that are donating blood and platelets. I know there's many drives in Bellevue, at the library, at Overlake, at Kaiser, so we thank you.

Blood services is of course just one component of the Red Cross mission, So thank you for responding to local disasters, home fires, floods, windstorms, teaching families skills that can save a life, standing beside our military community, and extending help and hope around the world. This Red Cross month, we thank the community of Bellevue for recognizing this ongoing support and the people that deliver on our mission. Thank you.

Thank you so much. If you're okay, we are coming down to take pictures with you. Thank you so much. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

Move to approve the agenda. Second.

It has been moved by Deputy Mayor and seconded by Councilmember Robinson. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Great. Any opposed? The motion passes. City clerk, can we go through the oral communication, please?

Thank you, Mayor. This evening, there are 13 preregistered speakers. So I don't believe we'll be able to get to all of our speakers, but we will get to as many as we can. Before I start calling names, I'll go over a few of the rules that the council has in place. So oral communications is for a period of no more than thirty minutes, and all topics must relate to City of Bellevue government.

People speaking to items on tonight's agenda will be called first, and then if time remains, people speaking to items not on tonight's agenda will be called. In both of those categories, the presiding officer has authorization to provide preference to those who have not spoken to counsel within the last sixty days or who will be speaking on items that will come in front of the counsel within the next sixty days. Each speaker is allowed up to three minutes to speak and only three speakers will be allowed to speak to any one side of a particular topic. And then one final reminder that in compliance with Washington State campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during elections, no speaker may support or oppose a candidate for election or may support or oppose a ballot measure. And so if people do start talking about those topics, you will be asked to stop.

So with that, I'll call our first speaker who's Keirste English.

Welcome. Hello.

Hello. My Okay. Name is Kirsty English. I'm a mother of three children and the founder of Trees for Livability. Here to talk with you a little bit about the 2023 urban assessment on tree canopy. So at first glance, this looks pretty good. We're at 39.3% tree canopy in Bellevue. Our goal is 40%. We're practically there. Right?

The fact is though, we're not quite there because to reach 40%, Bellevue needs to add the equivalent of 100 football fields of tree canopy, which sounds like a lot. So I looked into it and that's about a 150 acres or 15,000 mature trees. Between 2021 and 2023, we lost 7,000 mature trees. So doesn't feel like we're quite there, but remember, we have some new tools in our arsenal. In 2024, we passed new tree codes.

You guys were instrumental, some of you, in that effort. And it was a big community push toward preserving tree canopy, which is really our shared treasure, our generational wealth that we wanna pass on to the next generation. And so I'm just here to encourage council to consider consider tree canopy as you move forward with new development projects. So we see an opportunity to protect existing mature trees in residential neighborhoods to preserve and expand canopy in parks and to look at street trees. That wasn't really part of what we focused on earlier, but there's all kinds of opportunities across the city to add street trees for new builds or for remodels and that's one way to use existing space to expand canopy.

So I just like to encourage that. And for citizens in our city who wanna get involved, take a look at the new tree codes and consider, donating time to 300 trees. They're doing some awesome work planting new trees. But just remember that every tree that comes out pulls us back from our goal. It does take a long time for these trees to grow and reach maturity. So we just wanna try to encourage preserving trees where we can. So thanks for your attention to this issue.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Cord Olson.

Welcome. Howdy howdy. Good to see you all again, Council members. Thanks for letting me speak tonight. The leaders of the Bellevue Chapter of People for Climate Action really appreciate the opportunities that we've had to speak individually with each of you over the past few months.

Thanks very much for listening as we explain why and how the city must dedicate substantially more funds in the next biennium. Much more funding is needed so that staff can launch highly impactful emissions cutting programs that would take us to the 2,050 emissions target, which you all stand behind. When you look at the recently released Bellevue emissions inventory for 2024, a person can see that emissions dropped that year from where they were in 2023. You might easily conclude that our city's work toward reaching the 2,050 emissions target is starting to have significant impact. Unfortunately, though, when you dig deeper into the data, as we have done, one finds that's not the case.

Now, get me wrong. Our PCA leadership team has high confidence that Bellevue's well qualified sustainability staff could make that happen if they had the much needed funding that we've outlined and shared with you. But they didn't have that funding in 2024, so the city staff didn't have the resources to significantly impact remissions that year. When we dug into the data details, we found that most of the emissions drop in 2024 was caused by two circumstances: first, the warmer local weather caused by an El Nino and second, the increasing shift to electric vehicles. If you were to look back at your total home energy consumption for 2023 and 2024, as some of us have done, nearly everyone would find that they have used about 5% less energy in 2024.

That's because a large part of the energy we use in our homes goes towards the heating of interior space. So in the warmer winter, we use less energy and records show that the seven coolest months of 2024, the average outdoor temperature was over two degrees warmer than in 2023. So while we don't expect that the switch to electric vehicles will discontinue, we don't expect that the El Nino warm occasion will continue dropping emissions. Much work remains to be done. If you don't put $9,000,000 per year in the next biennium budget, the city can't get to its 2050 commitment.

Thank Thanks for your you. The next speaker is Deborah Doint.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Malakoushin, Deputy Mayor Hamilton, council members, city manager Carlson, and staff. My name's Deborah Deutsch, and I've lived in Newport Hills for forty five years. And I thank want to thank you for the opportunity to share with you about HOMA. I am here tonight representing the Newport Community Coalition. As a reminder, we're a large and growing group of residents from Newport Hills, Lake Heights, Greenwich Crest, and Newport Shores.

Our entire focus has been to be a positive voice in advocating for the opportunity to redevelop the Newport Hills Shopping Center. I'm sharing with each of you for one purpose, to express our gratitude and our excitement about what the future holds. There are so many of us in the community who've wanted something positive to happen at the shopping center And now, because of the new comprehensive plan and the updated land use code through HOMA, we are finally at a point where this can actually happen. Specifically, we are excited about the opportunity to have different types of housing and housing that is affordable for families and all of the people who work in our city. We are excited about having a gathering place that is walkable and has retail and coffee shops and restaurants along with open space and trees.

And we are excited about a redevelopment that will create a place that we can all be proud of. So thank you again to city staff, the planning commission, and to all of your hard work on HOMA and for your service to the city. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Michelle Hilhorst.

Welcome.

Good evening, mayor Malocushin, council members. My name is Michelle Hillhorst, and I speak to you tonight as a longtime Bellevue resident and former Chair of the Bellevue Planning Commission. I've spent many years working within Bellevue's planning framework, and I care deeply about preserving the integrity of the process that shapes our city and its unique characteristic neighborhoods. As you consider ordinance 6,907, I want to express serious concern about the use of a legislative rezone under Luca twenty point three five point zero one five, a tool historically used only for very large multi year sub area plans such as Bell Red, Eastgate and Wilburton. Those efforts involved full environmental reviews, extensive public engagement and comprehensive district wide planning.

What makes Ordinance 6,907 unprecedented is that it applies a process for legislative rezone to implement the new 2,044 comprehensive plan in HOMA in a way that could now extend to smaller embedded commercial districts. Legislative rezones have never been used to up zone neighborhood business areas, never been used immediately after a comprehensive plan update and never been used to reclassify low rise neighborhood centers. The ordinance explicitly states that legislative rezones do not require a comprehensive plan amendment, yet still declares them consistent with CPA criteria. This creates a new pathway for counsel to upzone a neighborhood business district without a CPA, without threshold review, and without the neighborhood specific protections that have long guided Bellevue's planning decisions. So I'm concerned to see Newport Hills listed in this ordinance when no rezone is being discussed or comprehensive plan amendment is under consideration.

It suggests that tonight's action is setting a concerning precedent, one that risks breaking trust with the community and the very community that asks you to place its trust in you, to the community places trust in you. The city's own recent planning process continues to reaffirm the low rise vision for Newport Hills. The 2025 Newport area plan confirms low rise development is best suited, 2044 comprehensive plan emphasizes neighborhood scale and low rise mixed use, generally two to three stories, a maximum of four under specific NB conditions. And during last year's election cycle, four of you publicly committed at our candidate forum to not supporting more than four stories at the Newport Hills Shopping Center. Tonight, I am asking that you reconsider this ordinance or process for as a mechanism to rezone commercially community embedded properties such as NB or MU low zones, but follow the correct comprehensive plan amendment process to ensure we honor proper planning and community engagement.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Don Marsh.

Welcome. Thank you.

You should have gotten a couple pages here that have a map on it. It's just so you can follow along if you like. So good evening, Mayor Malikudian and council members. My name is Don Marsh serving as co founder and vice president of three hundred Trees, an all volunteer nonprofit organization helping to build and preserve tree canopy in Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, Sammamish and just neighborhoods throughout King County. Over the past seven years we have distributed approximately 10,000 free trees through our own tree giveaways and the municipal giveaways we enable.

Tonight I would like to comment on the tree canopy section of Bellevue's environmental stewardship report. We are encouraged by the city's programs to offer young trees to residents, as well as tree code amendments to protect existing canopy. It is evident that trees planted in parks are helping to keep our tree canopy percentage close to the city's long term goal of 40% tree canopy coverage by 2050. However, the 2023 tree canopy assessment raises concerns regarding tree canopy in the neighborhoods where we live. I have provided a graphic to show which neighborhoods are gaining canopy and which are losing it.

This graphic is based on the data table in the assessment report, but it helps us understand the shape of the challenge we face. Six neighborhoods in the Southwest part of the city lost 1% to 2% of their canopy in two years, which is a very significant and unsustainable rate of loss. Five neighborhoods in Central Bellevue lost canopy at a lower but still worrisome rate. Two neighborhoods stayed about the same, and three neighborhoods had a 1% gain. If these results were representative of long term trends, we would be very worried.

However, some of the tree loss is due infrastructure projects that won't be repeated very often, and our new tree code may begin to turn the tide. What would we recommend? Continue tree code enforcement and tree giveaways and planting trees in parks. But a robust program for planting and maintaining street trees would be very helpful to shade hot pavement in the summer, mitigate storm water in the winter, and keep trees near where people work and live so they benefit from clean air, reduced noise pollution, and the natural beauty we all enjoy. Let future generations appreciate the legacy of your service to our city by preserving what we love today and planting the canopy they will enjoy tomorrow.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Diana Leo.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Malikutian, Deputy Mayor Hamilton and fellow council members. My name is Diana Leo. I'm the VP of government affairs for the Bellevue chamber, and I'm here to testify on behalf of the plush committee. Thank you for the time and attention you've dedicated to the HOMA amendment. We value your continued leadership on housing policy and your work on the MFTE program.

We also recognize the changes that were worked out prior to the proposal coming to council as well as the openness and engagement of staff throughout the process. We look forward to the next steps in the upcoming weeks. I want to emphasize the importance of ensuring that the tools you adopt directly impact housing being built. Specifically, we continue to underscore the need for a flexible MFT to support the success of the proposed MHA. MHA introduces a significant additional cost to development and while the goal is to create more affordable housing, the reality is that without a flexible MFT supercharger, many projects that are financially feasible today will simply no longer pencil.

Right now, Bellevue is seeing strong multifamily permitting activity. That's a good thing. It reflects a regulatory environment where projects can move forward and housing is getting built. But when MHA requirements are layered onto the same projects whether through fees or on-site obligations, feasibility often breaks down. If a policy turns feasible projects into infeasible ones, it doesn't produce housing.

And in a region facing a housing shortage, that's a risk we can't afford. What we've seen from real project pro formas, the kind that actually determines whether housing gets built is that MFP enhancements make the difference. Whether through an eight year or twelve year program, these superchargers help projects reach or approach the threshold needed to move forward. That means more housing gets built and affordability goals are still achieved. This is key.

Up zones only create value of projects are actually constructed. If the financial reality shows that MHA without MFTE results in no housing, then we need to reconsider how these tools are paired. We also encourage the council to allow more flexibility and how these programs work together specifically projects that choose the fee and lieu MHA option, which should still be eligible to participate in the MFT and provide on-site affordable units. These tools are not duplicative, they are complimentary. One supports broader citywide affordability while the other ensures mixed income housing within individual developments.

Bellevue is operating in a tight housing market and this is a moment where every effective tool matters. Flexibility and feasibility are what will turn strong policy into real built outcomes. For example, Wilburton is a positive outlier and a beacon of success in Bellevue's approach. I would like to emphasize the importance of taking this approach in HOMA with a subsequent supercharger. Thank you for your leadership and your willingness to dig in the details of the housing tools. The chamber and our plush committee are eager to continue collaborating to make sure Bellevue is a vibrant, inclusive and attainable You place to

did it. Okay. Our next speaker is Martin Selig.

Welcome. Good evening. Thank you, mister mayor. Good evening, mister mayor, mayors of the camp members of the council. In spite part of my Latvian Hebrew Hungarian heritage might have been Irish, I don't know, but at one time I had a nickname of O'Mardi, believe it or not, as a kid.

I wish the council great luck of the Irish tonight in passing the Houma Ordinance and in particular the incentives, the superchargers, the creative ideas that the council and the staff can have to make sure we have plenty of HOMO and plenty of multifamily housing opportunities available to all. Thank you very much.

You.

Your next speaker is Daniel Nygard.

So Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council. So thank you for allowing me to speak on behalf of the Newport Hills coalition. I appreciate all of the time and energy that you have spent and the Planning Commission has spent on this difficult, difficult topic. I know that there are many variables to be considered. There's a lot of people that have input.

But I was so pleased at how much time and attention that the staff has taken to reach out and to get our input and our opinions on things. I felt like that they went above and beyond in many cases to make sure that we were informed and our opinions were obtained. And so as you approach sort of the final race deadline or the crossing mark today, I want to appeal to your sense of community and your sense of commitment to this process. And thank you again for your work on this project.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next speaker is John Tiscorna.

Welcome. Good evening, Council and Mayor. The reason for my presence here today is to talk about the low frequency sound emitting from the East Channel Bridge from Sound Transit. It's similar to taking a jet taking off, similar to what you hear down at Renton. The sound is traveling throughout the neighborhood at all hours. In fact, it was at three in the morning the other day when the trains were running. And it wouldn't be so bad if it was just one train car, but it's multiple train cars with multiple trains going across. So a little bit about the background. Bellevue has an ordinance between 10PM and 7AM. The agreement with Sound Transit was mitigation noise that would not exceed the ambient level.

Clearly this is not the case. So a couple possible solutions are study the sound levels and reduce them between seven and ten. Slow the trains down in mid span on the East Channel Bridge. Third is add acoustic panels to change the sound waves. So today, I'm asking for your help identifying the correct person that we can talk to about sound mitigation, enforce the quiet hours from seven a. M. Till ten p. M. And start a neighborhood outreach program with understand and address these issues. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Your next speaker is Heidi Dean. Looks like miss Dean might be joining us virtually. Miss Dean, can you hear me?

I can. Perfect.

We can hear you now. Your time begins now.

Thank you. Mary Poppins spoke of a pie crust promise, easily made, easily broken. Like a delicate, flaky pie crust, these promises appear solid at first but crumble easily under pressure. In government, that pressure comes from wealthy donors, NGOs and special interest groups and political parties. In Bellevue, pie crust promises are especially vulnerable to the pressure from commercial property owners, developers, and those who lobby on their behalf.

Here's a review of City of Bellevue's pie crust promises. 2017, council made the commitment to keep growth in the growth corridors before turning to the neighborhoods. The growth corridors are now known as the citywide or excuse me, the countywide and mixed use centers. Council member Robinson was running for reelection that year. 06/28/2023, planning commission voted to study n b and c b properties in the mixed use low rise designation at two to four stories in a comprehensive plan final EIS.

Councilmember Bargava was one of those commissioners. 07/24/2023, council affirmed Planning Commission's recommendation and directed staff to steady n b and c b properties at two to four stories in the final EIS. Council members Robinson and Newhouse took part in that unanimous vote. 07/10/2024, planning commission unanimously voted to recommend that to council that neighborhood center properties be split into mixed use low rise, which was n b and c b properties, and mixed use low mid rise are the three c b properties. Council member Bargava voted, and mayor Malakoutian was there as council, liaison.

The same night, planning commission unanimously voted to recommend requiring an annual comprehensive plan amendment when changing from one zoning designation to another versus a simple rezone. October 2004 excuse me, 2024. Council unanimously adopted the 2044 comprehensive plan update with the aforementioned plan and commission recommendations, including the future land use map with the mixed use low rise one at two to four stories and mixed use low rise two at four to six stories. Mayor Malikutian, deputy mayor Hamilton, and council members Robinson and Newnham voted. And as mentioned by Michelle, four council members sitting on the dais said they would not upzone.

The Newport Hills Shopping Center passed four stories at our our, council candidate forum, and that was council members Robinson, Newnham House, Sumatuaria, and Briar. So voting to pass HOMA for neighborhood centers turns all of these previous planning commission and council actions into pie cut crust promises. And if the residents of Bellevue can't trust you to keep your word about land use issues, then how can we trust you to make good decisions on our behalf on any topic? I ask this. How can we trust you? Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Steve Kasner.

Welcome.

Mayor Mo, council members, city staff, concerned residents of the city of Bellevue, I'm Steve Kasner, proud president of the Lake Hills Neighborhood Association. I wanna look back for one second to recognize four people that got us to this day. Mindy Garner, Jerry Hughes, Julie Ellen Horn, and Conrad Lee. For the last multiple decades, those four people have supported our neighborhood in this city in moving forward. I am here tonight because we are about to embark upon the greatest neighborhood experience in the history of the city of Bellevue with so many activities happening between our neighborhood, the city, and the council.

Starting tomorrow night, neighborhood enhancement program comes virtually to Bellevue with Teresa and council member Jared. We are the largest neighborhood in the city, 7,200 homes and we have $622,000 allocated to our neighborhood to make it the best it could be. That's only the beginning of the fun. On March 21, Evan Reed and the Keep Bellevue Beautiful comes to Sammamish High School to clean up our neighborhood. On March 25, Lake Hills will take two new staff members throughout our neighborhood which all but one council member has been on those trips that Jerry started.

March 28, Sound Transit Lightlink Route 2 opens, not directly related to Lake Hills but all of us have spent blood making that project come to fruition. Then we move into April. Communication is vital between the cities and neighborhoods. Multiple years for Earth Day, neighborhood events conflicted with the city event. The city event is the eighteenth, Saturday.

Lake Hills is going to do a neighborhood cleanup in the morning on the nineteenth followed by our neighborhood Earth Day event to make it an Earth Day weekend. Moving forward, we moved to our picnic, the largest and best picnic that I'm aware of and for the first time I've managed to make it the only event on that day so I'm not racing all over the city. Why is it the greatest? Every single one of you and most of the people over there come out and meet residents and they say I've had an opportunity to meet the people that run our city. You've asked me what makes us different.

We are a family. We do not do anything different without your consultation or the people in the city supporting us and suggesting how we might do it better. We have other things later in the year including my favorite neighborhood sub area planning after our Kennedy's forum. I'm out of time. Thank you all for all of you've done for decades for this city.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Does bring us to the tail end of our thirty minutes. So Mayor, I'll turn it back to you.

Thank you so much. Again, thank you, everyone, who took the time to share comments with us. We really appreciate your engagement. Do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I move to approve the consent calendar. Second.

It has been moved by Deputy Mayor and seconded by Council member Robinson. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye. There

is no opposed. The motion passes. We have our public hearing. Our city manager is going to introduce that.

Thank you, mayor, deputy mayor and council. The purpose of this public hearing is to solicit input on the proposed release of an existing sidewalk, utilities, lighting and landscaping easement. Lauren Matlick, our real property manager, is here, to describe the easement that's being released along the border of the subject property and the transit center grand connection. And with that, I'll hand it over to Lauren to go through description, and then it'll go back to you, mayor. Lauren?

Thank you, miss Carlson. Good evening, mayor, council members. Our staff report this evening is on our request to release a portion of a sidewalk and utility easement located at 6331 10th Avenue Northeast And 64010 8th Avenue. On February 10, council declared this easement a surplus to the city's needs and set today as the date for holding the public hearing. The purpose of tonight's hearing is to allow the public an opportunity to comment on this release.

There we go. The property is located on Northeast 6th Street between whoops. It went twice. There we go. Slow reacting. There we go. Located on Northeast 6th Street between 108 And 1 10th Avenues, directly adjacent to the Bellevue Transit Center and Northwest of City Hall. The subject property is being developed into a two tower office building with retail on the street level. The easement shown outlined in red was reserved for benefit of Sound Transit in April 2008 and, signed to the city in September that same year. In place of the easement being released will be a public access easement for the Grand Connection.

This new easement will cover a greater surface area than the one it is replacing and allow use for both pedestrian and bicycles. This release and replacement easement are separate from and do not impact any efforts for other bicycle specific lanes, within the right of way or through this area. Following the public hearing, staff request council action on the proposed resolution authorizing the partial release of this easement. This ends our staff report, and we'll be available to answer any questions should you have them.

Thank you so much. We now open the public hearing. Do I have a motion? I move to open the public hearing. Second. It's been moved by Deputy Mayor and seconded by Councilmember Robinson. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. The motion passes.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. There are no preregistered speakers for the public hearing. So at this point, I would ask if anyone joining us in the audience tonight would like to make a comment under this public hearing. If you would, please raise your hand, and that goes for those of you online as well. Please use the raise hand function. I do not see any hands, mayor. I'll turn it back to you.

Great. Now we can close the public hearing. Do I have the motion?

I move to close the public hearing.

Second.

It's been moved by deputy mayor Hamilton and seconded by council member Robinson. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye.

I've heard all of the ayes. There is no opposed. The motion passes. Now can I have the actual motion, please? I move to adopt resolution number one zero five nine four authorizing the execution of documents necessary to release a portion of a sidewalk, utilities, lighting, and landscaping easement located at 633 110th Avenue Northeast and 640 108th Avenue, which has been declared surplus to the city's needs and is no longer required for providing continued public service.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved by deputy mayor and seconded by council mayor Robinson. Any discussion? Those in I have a question. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. So, you know, this is a Primo piece of property, Primo sidewalk area, and it goes between light rail and our transit center and our Grand Connection.

Yes.

And so we don't have I've I'm looking at what Amazon has built for that sidewalk, and you say it's open to bikes and pedestrians, but it certainly isn't like a dedicated bike route there at all. And it seems like a missed opportunity to have owned this piece of property and then to hand it over to a developer and say, no, you know, this is fine. I mean, I feel like we really should have required that they put in some more bike friendly infrastructure there rather than just asking pedestrians and bikes to share the sidewalk on a super busy segment and at least to put some paint down to say, you know, this is a shared sidewalk or something that it just feels like a missed opportunity. So I guess my question is, is there any way that we can ask for better infrastructure for bikes and peds than what is being the bare minimum, which is this wide sidewalk next to a beautiful design, architecture, and land.

Sure. A couple of things on that. There this was a at least the initial one that we were releasing tonight. That was one that was, as I mentioned, granted in 2008 as, you know, Tucson Transit transferred to us. The one that we are replacing it with, the Grand Connection easement that does allow that fit the land use code and requirements of the time when, this this building was permitted and, what their plans were.

I do I was able to con have a conversation with, a transportation planning, and I understand that they have made efforts to, work with, King County Metro to, obtain a bike lane separate of this easement. They are still, you know, ongoing, but there's nothing that is concrete moving forward on that.

Again, a missed opportunity.

I don't disagree.

I know that we didn't, in 2008, have a pet bike plan for that area. And I know when I got on the council in 2014, we didn't support very much pet bike infrastructure in Bellevue. So we've changed a lot, and it's really I'm sad that we aren't more nimble to look at an asset like this while we had it and require some kind of infrastructure that is in keeping with our comp plan and all the work that we've done. So I just wonder if we can be looking forward, city manager, at other opportunities that might come up where we might require some adherence to our goals and our comprehensive plan before it's too late.

Mayor, what I can tell you is that the transportation department staff is working very closely with the property owner, property owners on both sides here to try to achieve that connectivity here for bikes and pedestrians through that section of the Grand Connection. So while this happened a while ago, and we're living up to our commitment to release, but also retain an easement through that area. I think that retained easement allows us to continue to have conversations with the property owners about how we can best use that public access easement on that side of the street as well.

Great. All right. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for your question. Any other discussion? And I cannot see our council members online. I assume there is no questions unless they tell me something. Great. I see Councilmember Newhouse. All those in favor, aye. I haven't heard any opposed. The motion passes. Thank you so much. City manager, we have, I think, two ordinance. Do you want introduce them to us?

Thank you, mayor. Deputy mayor and council members. On February 29 at the study session that you held, council gave direction to prepare two ordinances as you mentioned. One amending the land use code to expand housing opportunities in mixed use areas that would support housing production and affordable housing. And then the second is rezoning of the mixed use areas that are currently inconsistent with the comprehensive plan future land use map.

Council also gave direction to develop the multi family tax exemption catalyst options for the HOMA areas and staff is working to return to council in May for a study session to provide the options to you and to have a conversation with you about the next steps on the MFTE program. This is a culmination of a significant process with the community and the planning commission and resulted in a recommendation to you from the planning commission. To review the homework tonight, I will welcome back Nick Whipple, our code and policy director from the development services department and Matthew Menard, our senior planner. And with that, I'll hand it over to Nick.

Great. Thank you. And good evening, mayor mayor Malakutian, deputy mayor Hamilton, members of the council. And we are excited to be here tonight to bring back the HOMA housing opportunities mixed use areas land use code amendment. For our direction this evening well, first, our agenda, we'll touch on the background, just do a quick recap for you all.

And then as noted, you all received the planning commission recommendation on February 24. There was some direction provided at that meeting, so we'll recap that and then touch on the Luca process. For direction this evening, we are looking for council action, to adopt ordinance six nine zero six. That's the land use code amendment. And then following that action, we'll be looking for direction to adopt ordinance six nine zero seven, which is the rezone ordinance. Also wanna clarify at the top, that rezone ordinance does not include a legislative rezone of Newport Hills. That zoning is staying the same. So just wanted to make sure that was clear. So I'll turn it to Matthew to walk us through the the presentation.

Thanks, Nick. We have a very brief presentation for you tonight. We'll start with the project background. This was initiated by council in 2022. It began with what we called FAR Phase one, which was an interim ordinance of control for downtown.

That was really a test bed for the future permanent regulations that you see now as HOMA. We did update the scope with council in December 2024 to anticipate some changes in the market, especially around the office market, which had cooled substantially between 2022 and 2024. This is a land use code amendment that is aimed at encouraging more housing throughout the city's mixed use areas, those mixed use areas being defined as areas that currently allow for both multifamily residential and commercial uses on a single site. It amends key zoning standards that are inhibiting housing development on those sites and creates a straightforward and consistent affordable housing program. We are proposing a mandatory housing program with HOMA, similar almost identical to what was adopted through the Wilburton Land Use Code amendments earlier in 2025.

As mentioned it does rezone parcels consistent with the comprehensive plan future land use map to make sure that there is consistency between the land use code and our comprehensive plan. It also aligns with several of the policies in the comprehensive plan, including creating more diverse housing opportunities. We are really looking to encourage a range of housing types on these parcels, anywhere from townhomes to large apartment buildings. We are trying to expand affordable housing opportunities specifically through that mandatory affordable housing program. And with all of this we are trying to encourage more vibrant, more well served neighborhoods where people can go about their daily needs within their neighborhood.

In many of these areas that are designated as neighborhood or mixed use centers, we are requiring some sort of what we're calling pedestrian oriented uses, which is going to be that ground floor retail use. That's something we heard very clearly from the community in these areas that that retail use and that day to day use was very important to their lives as we are making sure we maintain that through this land use code amendment. We did, as Nick mentioned, bring the Planning Commission recommendation to you on February 24 with a study session. We did have direction at that point to prepare the rezones and Luca for final action. There were a few changes we've made to the draft since then that we noted at that meeting and one direction from counsel at that meeting.

So we added a FAR exemption to the 3% office floor plate increase downtown. That was a miss on our end. We meant to add that in the draft, so that's been added to the draft. Council did give us direction to retain the existing step backs on Main Street between 1 Hundredth and Bellevue Way in downtown. Those have been retained through the updated draft.

There is opt in language that's been added to the ordinance. At the study session, you all did not have that ordinance to review. That ordinance has now been given to you to review. This essentially allows projects to opt in or out of HOMA if they are in the entitlement process and they're downtown. So that gives existing projects or projects in permitting some flexibility on whether they want to change their project right now or if they want to continue with the old code and maintain their permitting status.

And the rezone map has been updated. There were three parcels that are being rezoned that were excluded from that map for the study session. They are just south of Crossroads Mall area. I do want to note, as Nick noted, the NV areas, while we are changing dimensional standards and some other standards that apply to the NV areas, they are not proposed to be rezoned. So current NV parcels remain NV despite the change in dimensional standards and other standards on those parcels.

This has been a long and comprehensive process. The first draft of HOMA was released over a year ago. We've done substantial outreach to community groups, public hearings, or public information sessions, other groups, basically anyone that's asked us to have a meeting with. We've had meetings throughout the process and HOMA has been substantially updated through that public input process and through the Planning Commission process. We are on draft eight of HOMA now. We are hoping this is the final draft. We are at council action this evening. As Nick noted, there are two ordinances. They are sequential on the agenda tonight. So the first ordinance is the Luka ordinance, and the second ordinance is that rezone ordinance.

With that, Mayor, I will hand it back to you for questions.

Thank you so much. I've heard that you went to as part of your public engagement, you went to people invited you to their home, and you were talking to them in their living room. Is that true?

That is true. We were invited by the Newport Community Coalition to present in the living room. We have done that. We've presented in churches, schools. We presented at the East Gate Community Block Party, which I got quite wet at, which was outside in a rainstorm for part of it.

We presented in city hall, we've done virtual presentations as well. So we've done our best to reach out to people where they are in as many manners as possible. As part of our outreach, we also always create a website where people can find information on how to contact us and sort of updates on the project. And we do send out quite frequent newsletters that go to around 16,000 people who receive those. So we've tried to keep anyone interested as updated as they'd like to be on this project throughout the process.

Great to hear. I have one question, and then I would love to go to my colleagues to hear if there is any questions there. We have received many comments via e mail and in person, especially regarding to new Port Hills proposal. And we heard tonight, too, we have heard on the both side those with concerns about building heights, increased density, traffic, potential business displacement as well as those who believe this change are necessary for future vibrancy or perhaps we didn't even go further enough. I've heard that in Planning Commission meetings.

Can you provide a summary of what have you heard from Newport Hills stakeholders during HomaLuca process? And how, in your opinion, this HomaLuca balancing this competing interest and ensure our neighborhood remains a viable place for small businesses and also vibrant for residents?

Sure. So what we've heard throughout the process is essentially what you've heard tonight. So there are two sides to the Newport Hills discussion. We've heard from community that there are concerns over building heights, which are proposed for 45 feet unless you provide us an additional 5% affordable housing, and then you would be allowed to go up to 60 feet. We've heard concerns over traffic and parking, which are concerns we hear with most land use amendments at this point.

But we've also heard from the other side that there is a need to redevelop this area. The shopping center could support more uses, could be revitalized. We've heard from both sides that these retail areas in the center of the neighborhood are the center of the neighborhood, are very important to the residents of the neighborhood, and a sort of unanimous desire to make sure that that retail neighborhood center element has been maintained. So through HOMA in the NV districts, you do have to provide 50% of the street frontage, so your linear street frontage, as what we're calling pedestrian oriented uses. So those are going to be businesses that bring people in and out during the day, and those do have to be at back of sidewalks.

And really trying to encourage that vibrant public life and maintaining that retail element of these neighborhood centers that are so desired by the community. We've also heard substantially from the community, though not from everybody, that they recognize the need for affordable housing. So the mandatory affordable housing proposal does achieve that and also a desire to maintain grocery stores. We've also heard the need for daycare and some other desire for affordable commercial space. So we've tried to incentivize those the best we can through the land use code as well.

So we are trying to balance those competing interests. Obviously, not everyone is going to be happy with that balance, but we do think we are also very consistent with what the comp plan calls for, for that sort of low rise development typology at five storeys, maintaining that retail element, maintaining that neighborhood center element of these areas.

Thank you so much. Again, thank you, you all, for spending two years on Commission, for really investing in this land use code like everything that they do. Councilwoman Robinson, do you have any question?

No.

Council Member Sumodi Veria, do you have any question?

Actually, I do have one question.

Thank

you for the presentation, but I just have a question because I can see the I think what it could be for the infrastructure of traffic. If that does happen, is there any flexibility how we can improve and help the neighbors navigate the traffic?

I mean, infrastructure improvements are gonna be outside of the land use code generally, especially when we're talking about roadway infrastructure improvements. That's something that council would look at through capital improvement planning, through transportation funding often. Nick, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

Course of doing permitting, a project is going to have to assess what the impacts might be to traffic. And so that project level analysis is provided when they have a proposal in mind. It's not necessarily contemplated as we're looking at some of these bigger changes. But it's certainly something that they will have to address as part of the permitting process. Any upgrades, improvements, that's all born typically by the developer.

And then the information would be is it shared publicly in any Yes.

Yes. So all of the mixed use areas that are subject to HOMA are also subject to design review. So there's a public process notice that goes out that will hit a radius of 500 feet from the property that's being redeveloped.

Great. Thank you. And where can the neighbors, residents find out about that information? Is that

Yeah. So people should, if they're not already, subscribe to the weekly permit bulletin. That will be published every Wednesday by the department. And then if you happen to have a project that's in your neighborhood, you'll also get that notice directly to you if you're within 500 feet.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Smodir Beria. Council member Bargava.

Okay. Thank you. Just some brief comments. Maybe there's a couple of quick questions. One, I continue to believe housing and affordability are really big important issues for Bellevue. So thank you for this work. Also, thank you for the community engagement. As our mayor called out, going into individual resident homes and talking about it is is not typical. So so appreciate all the effort that the that the staff has put into this process. I also really appreciate the balance that you're trying to bring.

So those are three sort of overarching things that I think are very commendable in the approach you've taken. My two really quick questions are the proposal that we is in front of us. Is there any departure from the Planning Commission recommendations as we see it today? So if there is, just to highlight that, if there is any.

Yes. The only departure from the Planning Commission recommendation is the direction that council gave us at the study session.

Okay. So there's nothing else beyond what you just outlined in your presentation. So that is fully aligned with the Planning Commission recommendation. It's helpful. And then the incentives for local uses, is there any like maybe you talked about at a high level. What are just a couple of examples of what those would look like.

Yeah. So there is a list of FAR exempt uses, Affordable housing, grocery stores, daycares, affordable commercial space, and open space has a small exemption as well. Generally, they're a one to one FAR exemption. So for every square foot you provide a grocery store, for example, you can build another square foot somewhere else in the building or on the site. So that's the general incentive process. There is a larger incentive for affordable housing. It's a four to one FER ratio. So that's how we're looking at trying to incentivize these uses through HOMA. Those uses are specifically called out through the comprehensive plan and what we've heard through our outreach process.

Okay, got it. That's really helpful. And last comment. Absolutely. The question that around infrastructure and all of those needs that go into supporting the increased intensity. When we think about the comprehensive plan and what we studied as a larger capacity yield that we're going to increase was studied as part of the EIS process, and we are built within those umbrellas. Yes? Just want to confirm.

Yes. And we follow the SEPA process for this as well using that EIS that we produce for the comprehensive plan, and we've been determined to be within those bounds.

Okay. Appreciate it.

That's it.

Thank you so much. And I noticed your question about the Planning Commission as a new liaison. I appreciate that question. Councilmember Newhouse. Okay. Absolutely. We can hear you very well here.

Thank you. Yeah. First, just want to really thank everyone for engaging this evening. All the comments, no matter which side, the viewpoint that you might be bringing forward tonight, and it shows how much of a special community we have because, so often we see people have such care and love for their neighborhood. And I always appreciate everyone points of view on this.

I just had a couple of questions, a little bit similar to some of my colleagues already, but I just wanted to, just check on a few things that were raised during the oral communications. And I guess the first one was some of the comments raised by actually a former Planning Commissioner, Michelle Hilhorst. Is there any or is Ordinance 6,906 in conflict with either any other ordinance or process, be it the CPA criteria or given the I'm trying to find the 2024 comprehensive plan or the study that was done within Newport Hills, the 2025 Newport neighborhood area plan. Is there any inconsistency or is it in conflict with anything else at this time?

No. We fully believe that is consistent with all the planning documents. HOMA has been built off of all of the work that the Community Development Department did with the comprehensive plan. Those legislative rezones are to make the land use code fully compliant with the future land use map, at least in the mixed use areas, through that comprehensive planning process. We've been working closely with community development through the Newport community neighborhood area planning process as well. So we believe it's consistent with that. It's also consistent with some other studies we've seen in the city, such as the retail study, which also calls for the revitalization of the Newport Hills Shopping Center. So we do think it is consistent with our entire, let's say, opus of planning work that we've done throughout the city.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. And I'm, well, what we heard mainly from Newport Hills residents, you know, I'm concerned about, you know, any area of the city where, this could be in conflict. And I appreciate council member Sumiduario's comments there about the congestion, about the transportation.

I've heard a lot about this. It does concern me that, as your answer indicated to her question that, you know, it's kind of a separate discussion about transportation. You know, I I ideally that is not the case and I I think that and and and the city manager have to let me know what the tools that we could actually if if it's even possible to initiate some work on behalf of the council to the transportation, either the commission or the department itself to immediately start looking and studying these areas in which HOMA could be initiated and immediately start looking at the potential impacts so that we could get ahead of any congestion. Any thoughts on that?

I could quickly just respond. You know, as council member Barkavaugh pointed out as well, the environmental process that preceded Mhmm. PAMA did do some analysis. When I was responding to council member Sudomoriya, I was more mostly referring to the kind of level the more detailed impacts that might result from a project are going to be evaluated once that project proposal is in place. But we have done a pretty substantial amount of analysis as part of the environmental impact statement, which had a bill of over $1,000,000 for the city and consultant resources to be able to do this citywide analysis and really look at what are all the impacts, traffic, aesthetics, all the different components that SEPA, the State Environmental Policy Act, will require us to look at and evaluate.

That work was done, and the HOMA work relied on that analysis and also did additional analysis through our own SIPA checklist to fill any of the gaps that maybe weren't covered by that EIS. So it has been analyzed, but when we're thinking about specific project impacts, that's what's gonna be deferred to when those project proposals are in place.

Well, right. And that's what I'm that's what I'm speaking to. I mean, we we've done all the right steps, and I appreciate you mentioning that again about STIPA and other environmental studies, and that's an important to do. But, you know, that's that that's not going to address how we're going to alleviate potential congestion. Correct?

There part of the EIS analysis did identify where what intersections might be at risk of not meeting the level of service that we've set. And there is work in the transportation department to try and take a look at those impacts. So Right.

Identify potential risk, but it didn't offer any solutions. Correct?

I would have to, follow-up with you on that one, council member Newnham House. Typically, we do get some mitigation strategies out of that type of analysis. I don't know specifically what was identified or how those are kind of feeding into work streams, but that's a really great question, for us to maybe track through and see how that's informing some of the work that we're doing in other departments and with other boards and commissions.

Thank you. I appreciate that because I think that's an important piece of this. And as much as we could get ahead of that, I think the better off we'll be, and I think the the the the residents would certainly appreciate it, especially after, you know, potentially passing HOMA tonight that we're already thinking of the potential impacts and trying to get ahead of that impact in their neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councillor Newnhams. Councillor Breyar, if you are still here, please do you have any questions?

Yes, mayor.

Please go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you so much for the work conducted on this for the staff and then for also the residents who have just demonstrated an incredible amount of of civic engagement. I think this is what makes such a special environment that we have here in Bellevue. I wanted to say really quickly, I don't wanna be redundant, but ditto onto council member Newnham's concerns regarding traffic. You know, council member Newnhouse and I are are here in in DC currently speaking to our representatives.

And one of those things is, you know, we had investments into our traffic technology. Unfortunately, that was cut by the admin. So, we really gotta be creative in terms of, ensuring that our residents aren't frustrated, with traffic and sitting in cars and and and adding more hours to their to their daily commute. So I just wanted to refine that. And then I also wanted to ask, just to be extra clear, is the rezone consistent with the comprehensive plan? That was sort of brought up by a few residents. I just wanna make sure that we're we have a aligned understanding of that. Can you help me understand?

Yes. So we are proposing legislative rezones only for those parcels in mixed use areas where the underlying or current land use designation is not consistent with the future land use map designation. So as you can see on the map, it's relatively limited on where those rezones are. Those rezones are there because the comprehensive plan and the land use code are not consistent currently.

I see. Okay. So this would, in fact, make things more consistent with the comprehensive plan. Correct?

Correct.

Okay. Okay. And then another rather superficial question I have is 45 feet to 60 feet, I believe you had brought up to maybe it was perhaps council member Bargava's, questions. 45 feet, when I did, a quick Google search on this, is is does that translate to floors? Are you able to say, is there a direct ratio there that can be tracked Yeah. I mean in terms of building heights?

45 feet is generally gonna be four stories. 60 feet will generally be five stories, especially with that ground floor commercial element.

I see. Okay. And commercial and retail will not be taken out of this development if Houma is passed. Is that correct?

Correct. So they're going to in the Enby District, which is where Newport Hills is, for example, they will be required to provide 50% of the linear street frontage as what we're calling pedestrian oriented uses. So that's gonna be any use that sort of brings people in and out during the day. I

see. Okay. Would it be safe to say the baseline is four floors unless, of course, there's those bonuses that are added?

That would be correct.

Okay. So baseline would be four floors. Okay. Last item I had a question on is and, again, this is brought up to me by so many residents is is especially in Crossroads, local businesses are concerned. We we do I wanna just sort of extract this reassurance, if you will, that we do have strategies in place to help retain our local businesses that have served residents for decades now. Is that correct?

Yes. There are some. It's quite limited through the land use code. We've worked very closely with economic development, and they're working on some outside of the land use code, which seems to be the best way to sort of encourage that retention of businesses is going to be those financial incentives. But the land use code does provide a FAR bonus for affordable commercial space.

So we are hoping that that affordable commercial space will be able to be reoccupied by existing businesses. We've also done some small things around phasing of parking that were asked for to retain businesses. Some businesses can stay on-site while the other half of the site, for example, is being redeveloped. So I'm trying to allow the flexibility in the code to allow development to happen in stages to hopefully lessen the time between the space going away and the new space being available.

Okay. Okay. Well, it's really reassuring to hear that we're not relying on, like, empty platitudes, but we're we're finding substantial mechanisms here to ensure that small businesses can be kept here. So that's that's a great reassuring point to hear. So, ultimately, I I I've mentioned centering resident voices.

I made previous commitments on what I believe the community wanted, and I stand behind that intent to listen to residents and represent their interest above all things. But I have also been invited to many homes in Newport Hills over the past month to hear about the support for the revitalization of the shopping center and protecting small businesses in a way that sort of pencils with the current market conditions. It is a meaningful shift that I'm obligated to take seriously. So it's it's reassuring to hear that the baseline is going to be four floors, but I've heard from folks that wanna make it, like, ten, fifteen floors. Don't know if that's entirely reasonable.

But a a a law professor of mine had always mentioned to me that a good compromise is when both sides are unhappy. So I think the 45 to 60 feet does make sense. And so I I wanted to thank you again for your work. And, Mayor, I'll stop my comments there.

Thank you so much. And both Councilman Newhouse and Broyard, I appreciate you joining very late in DC. So thank you for caring about our work and your community. I appreciate your joining online. Deputy Mayor.

Great. Thank you, Mayor. Not much to add. No questions. I think my colleagues really nailed it. Of course, thank you to the two of you and to everyone who's been engaged in this project. I think the result is balanced. I think it does serve the community need and supports what I hear often from the community. So fully supportive of HOMA and ready to move forward. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much. Is there any I'm going to give opportunity to anyone else who wants to raise hand and have any last comments. Great. Can I have the first ordinance to adopt the first ordinance, please?

I move to adopt ordinance number six nine zero six relating to development in commercial and mixed use areas within the city of Bellevue.

Second.

It's been moved by deputy mayor and seconded by councilor Mayor Robinson. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Everyone said aye. The motion passes. Can I have the second ordinance motion, please?

I move to adopt ordinance number six nine zero seven relating to zoning within mixed use areas within the city.

Can I have second?

Second.

It has been moved by deputy mayor and seconded by council member Robinson. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Everyone said aye. The motion passes.

Thank you so much for your hard work. We will take just a ten minutes break because we have people from DC that we cannot make them wait any longer. So we are going to be back by 07:33. Great. We are back, and we have now two study session. And our city manager is going to introduce the first one, Sound Transit. It

is truly my pleasure to welcome Ariel Taylor, our East King County Corridor Director tonight and Alex Krieg, Deputy Executive Director of Enterprise Planning from Sound Transit. These are old colleagues of mine. It's lovely to see them here to share some very good news about the two line Cross Lake opening. In addition to work that Sound Transit's been doing called Enterprise Planning Initiative. And that is to address challenges that they are facing with, funding for the remaining projects of the Sound Transit three portfolio.

In addition, we have Andrew Singulakis, our director of transportation, and Lacey Jane Wolfe, intergovernmental policy advisor for transportation. They will follow the sound transit presentation to provide some draft guiding principles for council discussion and consideration this evening. Those will serve as a framework for communication of the city's interest to Sound Transit through that enterprise initiative planning process. And so with that, I am going to, I believe, turn it over to Ariel.

Actually, was to me. So well, thank you, City Manager Carlson, Mayor Malikutian and Dave Hamilton, Deputy Mayor. And as Diane mentioned, purpose of the study is twofold. First to talk about Sound Transit's recent activities and then second providing you with an update of the enterprise initiative and as Diane had mentioned with a reassessing Sound Transit three to close a $35,000,000,000 funding gap. City of Transportation and Intergovernmental Relations and Community Development Emile King is here in the audience as well.

We developed principles to respond to the enterprise initiative and we do not know yet what cuts are going to be proposed as Sound Transit Board is meeting later this week. And we will seek direction for the council to approve the guiding principles which will be the basis for submitting a letter to Sound Transit after we know what those proposal is. And we're likely to be back here sometime in April. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ariel.

Hello. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the Bellevue City Council. It's so good to be here today. Thank you so much for that introduction, Diane. It was great. We are so delighted to be here to talk about not only the Cross Lake connection, but where Sound Transit's going next with our Sound Transit three and Enterprise Initiative. So I'm going to start off the presentation here, but before I do, I want to take a moment to acknowledge one of the public comments that you all received today about some noise complaints in the Ennetai neighborhood regarding our light rail guideway. We hear that. We have been hearing this from that community.

And actually, Andrea Burnett, who's right behind me from Sound Transit, is actually out there engaging with the community and is here to provide any resources for community members that still may be in the audience, we're happy to make sure that Andrea is connected with that constituent of yours. So just to close the loop on that one. I'm going to go ahead and kick us off. Here we go. What are we going to cover today? Hey, guess what? We're going to talk about a train crossing a floating bridge. This is a pretty big deal. I'm going to just say a few words about that upfront, and then I'll pass it over to my colleague Alex, who will introduce himself here in the second half presentation. There we go.

Okay. So super high level. Who are we? Who is Sound Transit? We are a voter approved, high capacity transit agency that is tasked with delivering high capacity transit to the three county regions.

So this is Pierce, King and Snohomish Counties. These are the incorporated areas or the urban growth boundary areas of these three counties. We operate link light rail service, we operate sounder commuter rail and we also will be operating Sound Transit Express or excuse me, we operate Sound Transit Express bus service and we will also be operating Stride Bus Rapid Transit which will be coming online in the next set of capital projects which we'll talk about later. So I'm not going to bury the lead. March 28, I hope everyone listening and everyone here in the room saves the date for March 28.

It's going to be a massive day for this region, not just here in East King County, but literally all over the region. We are, for the first time, crossing Lake Washington with Link Light Rail. Trains are out there right now in testing. I'm sure you've seen them. Mr.

Hamilton, thank you so much for joining us for the date unveil we had just a few weeks back about announcing this very exciting milestone for the region. So a little bit about the I remember being here two years ago, about this time, giving a presentation to the Bellevue City Council on the first initial segment of the two line that opened in 2024. At the time, Mayor Robinson, I remember you asking me some very detailed questions about ridership and what we were going to expect. I will just take one moment to note that if you were here with us in 2024 right here at Bellevue Downtown Station, we had 35,000 people join us for the opening day that light rail extension. We are expecting quite a few more to join us for the Cross Lake celebration on the twenty eighth.

So just a little bit of a preview for what's to come. The second phase of the two line opened to Downtown Redmond last year. That was two additional stations into Downtown Redmond of the two line. And then, of course, the final segment of the two line, which will cross Lake Washington, connecting Mercer Island and the standalone Judkins Park Station in the city of Seattle to the rest of the light rail network. All right. This was one of those photos we took when we announced the opening day of the Cross Connection. Deputy Mayor Hamilton, I think you're in here. There you are. Over on the right hand side. We had lots of folks across the East Side come and join us that day.

In fact, Lacey Jane, sitting here to my right, was also there. But you can definitely make out a whole bunch of the East Side stakeholders here, Linda Hoffner from the Spring District, Barb Wilson from Microsoft. Lots of folks came out to celebrate with us on this very cold January day. And as you can maybe see right in the background, you can actually see downtown Bellevue right there in the background. That was purposeful for this date announcement and this press conference.

We wanted to make sure that the photos of this announcement were capturing the Eastside community and Lake Washington. I will also just note that we are currently testing. As I mentioned earlier, we've got trains going across the floating bridge right now. People are sending me pictures of it all the time. I'm like, please continue to drive. Please put down your phone. Testing is going extremely well for how complicated this project was and is. Testing is great. I will say I have been out on the train, I have been out on the bridge. You would never know these tracks were so complicated to build.

We are building the first fixed light rail system on a floating structure in the history of the world. We wanted to make sure we got this right. Yes, that took a few more years to do. But guess what? It's up, it's running and we can't wait to welcome people on the twenty eighth. So what can you expect? On March 28, we will have a ribbon cutting celebration. Ribbon cutting will be at the Judkins Park Station. I know, mister mayor, you and I had a little bit of a conversation about this. Hey.

This is an East Side project. Why is this at Judkins Park Station? Sound Transit picked this ribbon cutting location because of the very big open space that is directly adjacent to this particular station. It can accommodate this 35,000 plus group that we expect on opening day. We want to make sure we've got the space for people to access.

I will also point out, especially Councilmember Robinson, I know you are a bike user. We are encouraging folks to take bicycles, walk, take transit, or take one of our shuttles to this opening day celebration at Judkins Park Station for the ribbon cutting because there is no parking. So we will have a bike valet offered by Cascade Bike Club. We will have shuttles leaving from the South Bellevue Station from about 7AM to 10AM. We'll be running, so there'll be a Sound Transit shuttle bringing folks from that South Bellevue Park And Ride back over to the Judkins Park Station.

Once we cut the ribbon, the line will be open and folks can take it wherever they would like to go, maybe back to their car at South Bellevue. But please, if you are planning to come, plan to take an alternative mode of transportation to this event. I will just note too that we will have other community centered celebrations across the system, which I'll talk about next. We have a lot of station activations on March 28, including Judkins Park Station, which I just mentioned. We will have a celebration at Mercer Island Station where we're actually expecting 90 community organizations to be joining with the Mercer Island Chamber of Commerce.

They're at Mercer Island Station. We will have station activations at both connection points for this cross link connection, both at Chinatown International District Station as well as South Bellevue Station where we'll have Sound Transit sponsored events happening there. Big thank you to Bellevue Fire Department for offering a fire truck for a touch a truck event at the South Bellevue Station, a very fun kids' activity, trying to encourage folks to get out there and do some fun activities. We will also have the Bellevue Downtown Association will be taking over the Bellevue Downtown Station and doing some station activations there in partnership with Amazon. We will also be partnering with Wright Runstad at the Spring District Station.

I believe Linda Hoffner is bringing in a petting zoo, as well as some other merchants there at the Spring District Station. BellRed Station will be activated by BellRed Arts District, as well as Microsoft will be handing out coffee and cookies at the DOAT Cafe at the Redmond Technology Station. And lastly, before I run out of breath, we will also have activations from the Seattle Orcas, the cricket team at Marymore Village Station. They will have some players and some other fun activities out at Marymore Village Station. Now, these are just the stations that are really I think part of the new extension.

We will also have the Seattle Symphony playing at Symphony Station in Downtown Seattle. We'll have Snow Co Libraries with a kids book fair at the Lynnwood City Station. So we are planning on this being a regional day of celebration no matter where you're getting on the system. Alright. Here's just a few photos of what you can expect on opening day.

If you were with us in 2024, you'd probably see Carrie Pravitz's face up there on the window cling. But we are doing these similar types of marketing. Oh my gosh, what am I going to call these? Images for opening day where we'll have the ribbon, we'll have the plexiglass number two, we'll have the window clings. We really want to make this a welcoming environment for anyone who may be joining us on opening day. Alright. I spoke a lot about the Cross Lake connection and that's what's coming at us immediately. And Alex Krieg now is gonna talk about, well, what is coming next for Sound Transit and some of the things you may be hearing in the news?

Thank you, Ariel. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Alex Krieg. I work at Sound Transit.

Here to talk to you about the enterprise initiative, which is Sound Transit's effort to maximize the delivery of ST three mobility benefits within available financial capacity, an effort we are approaching comprehensively considering planning, transit operations, finance in addition to our capital program. Through this work effort, the board will adopt an updated ST3 system plan, which will necessarily include a balanced and affordable long range finance plan that provides a high degree of confidence that we can deliver on ST3 commitments. The consequence of not acting will be an unaffordable finance plan and ST three program. But fortunately, the agency and our board of directors have various tools and resources to respond to our current challenges. And I'll describe some of these in coming slides.

So while we formally launched the enterprise initiative, with the Sound Transit Board of Directors retreat in May, we were seeing certain leading indicators suggesting affordability challenges before that. This included updated cost data for the West Seattle Link Extension project from late twenty twenty four, which the Board responded to by directing staff to develop a cost savings work plan that expanded across all projects and planning. Another leading indicator related to system resiliency and some of the challenges the agency has faced following this period of rapid light rail system expansion to ensure we can deliver safe and reliable service. We'd also seen a couple of rounds of lower sales tax and revenue projections which partially reflected general economic uncertainty, but also included post COVID factors that are important considerations for all transit agencies as we adapted to change mobility patterns and preferences in the aftermath of the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Such that these indicators speak to the range of factors contributing to our overall cost pressures, they also informed our need to take an agency wide approach.

So in August, were able to initially quantify the scale of our affordability challenges, which were subsequently refined in our fall update of the agency's long range financial plan. In short, the agency must identify $34,500,000,000 in cost savings and new funding to deliver the full ST3 program or approximately 25% in new resources beyond existing financial capacity. This figure represents cost growth in the capital program and specifically the incorporation of updated cost data on eight projects in the ST3 program as well as cost risk for transit operations related to potential new investments to improve system resiliency and the increasing costs for new light rail vehicles necessary to deliver the ST3 program. However, between the August Board meeting and our fall update of the long range financial plan, we did see an improved revenue forecast of approximately $2,000,000,000 and we also incorporated some minor changes to financial planning assumptions that added another 2,000,000,000 in financial capacity. And it's important to realize and emphasize that the agency's long range financial plan projects almost $150,000,000,000 in financial capacity with more than $50,000,000,000 of that towards ST3 projects that are not yet baselined.

There's another dimension of the problem that is different than that $34,500,000,000 figure. Like other agencies delivering large infrastructure programs, we plan to issue debt backed by our local revenue streams to finance the ST3 program. And we use certain metrics for assessing program affordability that are tied to our ability to finance the capital program in particular. So the graph on this slide illustrates that affordability challenge over time. The blue area under the dash line represents expenditures that are affordable within projected revenues.

The orange area represents the expenditures above that affordable capacity in any given year. And you can see that the challenge that we're facing really presents itself starting in the mid 2030s when heavy civil construction is occurring on several of our light rail mega projects simultaneously. And then that dark blue area represents the impact of those $2,000,000,000 in financial enhancements that I just mentioned. So you can see that that functionally extends capacity in time, but the continued growth in projected expenditures means we still hit a debt ceiling a year or two later. And so the challenge that we face isn't simply a matter of cutting projects and services or adding funding to quote unquote balance the budget.

While cost savings across both the capital and operations programs at Sound Transit will be critical to how we solve this problem, we also must think about the amount we spend in any given year of the program and the tools and opportunities that will increase our capacity throughout time so we can deliver as much of ST3 as possible. We believe thinking about the different dimensions of the affordability challenge can also enable us to think creatively about how to solve it. And so the board has been really actively engaged trying to solve this challenge in front of us. In November, they held another retreat to review a work plan to deliver on the enterprise initiative. The direction from that retreat was to develop plausible affordable scenarios or approaches for an updated ST3 system plan.

We'll do so by building off of elements within each of the four work streams within the enterprise initiative, which I'll describe in a moment. And finally, we are being wide ranging in our approach opportunities that save costs, save time or expand financial capacity. We also anticipate some of these opportunities will require additional time to analyze and consider or may require with engagement with or action by others to fully realize commenting, reflecting on the recently concluded state legislative session as one example. So our charge right now and in fact tomorrow at the next border treat down in Tacoma is to review plausible affordable scenarios or approaches. And so I just want to touch on the general rules we are following to develop these scenarios and which are listed on this slide.

So as a starting point, the purpose of the exercise is not to say, here are three or four or five scenarios, pick one. It is instead to identify the very real trade offs and policy choices that the Board will face. We'll also focus on components that have a meaningful impact on easing our affordability challenges while emphasizing simplicity and service to highlighting those policy trade offs. And finally, we'll leverage the work that teams across Sound Transit have been doing whether that is cost savings developing cost savings opportunities in our capital program or completing feasibility studies around system resiliency in transit operations. Ultimately, we expect a hybrid that combines elements from different scenarios or approaches.

So this slide is just a simple process graphic for how we are getting from the last board retreat in November to the next retreat tomorrow morning and to bring back these plausible affordable scenarios. We defined an approach for scenario development through the 2025. In January, we focused on developing different building blocks for these scenarios, which enabled us to begin developing some initial approaches that have been informed by Board engagement we conducted in March sorry, in February. And then finally having these scenarios for the Board tomorrow morning. And then I just want to spend a little bit more time on the component pieces of these scenarios which we will build up from the different work streams that make up the enterprise initiative and which are shown on this slide.

These are the elements that we can really modify, expand, contract and when combined with other work stream elements will form ultimately an updated system plan for board consideration. So for policy and planning, this includes policy changes whether by the Sound Transit Board or other authorities that save costs, accelerate project delivery or expand financial capacity. This will also include alternative service designs and assumptions for all modes, but especially light rail. These updated assumptions will also tie into the capital delivery and transit operations work streams. For capital delivery, these will reflect various arrangements that incorporate cost savings opportunities across discrete capital projects, potential project phasing or resequencing, examining how specific project and regional asset costs are shared and the potential for deferring certain project investments.

For transit operations, this will include a range of potential resiliency investments like upgrading our current signal technology and adding infrastructure to the existing Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel as well as how projections for overall operating and maintenance costs change as a result of different service assumptions and given the size, shape and schedule of our capital program. And for finance, this will include updated financial planning assumptions including our federal grant strategy, which will also be informed by the size, shape and timing of capital investments as well as looking at policy changes and any modifications to available revenue authority as well as the potential for third party funding opportunities. And so this is my final slide it lists out some of the emerging policy questions, implications and considerations we're starting to see through this scenario development activity and in advance of tomorrow's retreat. I won't go through these in detail and this isn't intended to be an exhaustive list. Our objective in reviewing this is simply to share some of the topics and to set expectations of what we expect Board members to engage in as they review and engage in these scenarios.

A fundamental point to make is that the voter approved plans financial policies require that we have an affordable plan at the system level while ensuring that each sub area is also affordable. Indeed a central tension in this exercise is balancing the delivery of a regional high capacity transit system against the varied and various sub area priorities in the face of the agency's affordability challenges. An important note is that our initial attempt at developing capital program focus scenarios will focus on this system wide affordability question and acknowledge that some of the levers in other work stream categories will help address affordability at the sub area level. And so, some of the policy considerations system wide include questions of relative modal priority between Link and Sounder and ST Express and other investments like parking investments as well as within these different categories. We also expect Board reaction and engagement on the policy implications of project readiness, how costs are allocated and shared and how Board policies and the broader policy environment provide opportunities to deliver as much as ST3 as possible.

At the sub area level and I know I'm in East King County talking to the City of Bellevue, sub area equity is still guiding and foundational policy for sound transit. This really is a function of proportionality and about financial capacity relative to the tax base of each sub area. So this does occasionally raise big questions about what can each sub area afford to do given that the size of their tax base. And so the notion that projects and investments made in sub areas are proportional to the benefits received by that sub area will inevitably be constrained by the revenues a sub area can generate. As such, we have heard through the Board in their committees and at the full Board that information about sub area priorities is really important, recognizing the need to incorporate these in an eventual update to the ST3 system plan while being mindful of overall plan composition, the effects on system performance and of each sub areas financial capacity.

Finally, we expect questions and discussion about sub areas specific trade offs, particularly related to the level of investment of remaining ST3 projects in the different approaches we're putting together for board consideration. And so I will conclude here by inviting feedback questions or discussions or I'm not actually sure if I'm passing it off to.

I'm going to add one more thing before we pass it over to Lacey Jane, is I would just be remiss if we did not point out some of the current ST3 investments that are happening over here in East King County that are not affected by this enterprise initiative. The STRIDE Bus Rapid Transit program that we are building on I-four 05, two lines between Linwood and Burien with both terminates here in Downtown Bellevue are not affected by this enterprise initiative. Those projects are in construction and well on their way to delivery starting in 2028.

Thank you, Ariel. My name is Lacey Jane Wolfe, and I'm an intergovernmental policy adviser supporting the transportation department at the city of Bellevue. Tonight, staff is requesting that did not work. Tonight, staff is requesting direction from council to prepare a letter to Sound Transit board members based on the Bellevue guiding principles for the enterprise initiative, which is included as attachment a in your packet. I want to note tonight that as Andrew mentioned earlier, this would be the first of likely multiple opportunities for Bellevue to weigh in on our priorities for the enterprise initiative.

So it's likely that we will be back in front of you again as the discussion continues and as more information is made available. So Alex did a great job of briefing you on the enterprise initiative. I want to underscore just a few points about that. Then I'll provide a reminder about the South Issaquah the South Kirkland to Issaquah light rail project. And finally, I'll walk you through the draft guiding principles recommended by staff.

So I want to reiterate Alex's comments that by June, the Sound Transit Board plans to make decisions about certain ST3 projects. It's just one of many avenues, as Alex explained, that Sound Transit is investigating potential cost saving avenues, but it's important especially for us because certain ST3 projects may be delayed or reduced in scope. And we don't yet know what the affordable options are. As Alex mentioned, those are going to be provided to the Sound Transit Board at a retreat tomorrow morning. Bellevue staff does anticipate that potential delays and reductions in scope will be on the table.

Fortunately, as Ariel mentioned, the two Line and Stride Bus Rapid Transit are not impacted by the enterprise initiative. The only capital project in Bellevue that may be impacted is the South Kirkland to Issaquah Link project. So let's just refresh ourselves on what that project is planned to include. As a reminder, this project will build a new at grade station adjacent to Eastgate Park And Ride and an elevated station at Richards Road in Factoria in addition to the South Kirkland and Central Issaquah stations. Sound Transit three included a provisional station at Lakemont, provisional meaning it's unfunded, additional funding will be needed before that station can be built.

This part project is planned to add a net seven thirty stalls in South Kirkland and Issaquah and no new parking is planned for the Bellevue stations. And finally, just a note that the project is currently planned to be delivered in the 2041 to 2044 timeframe. So because this project is facing potential delays or reductions in scope, Transportation, community development and intergovernmental relations staff jointly developed a set of guiding principles that would enable staff to provide feedback to the Sound Transit Board as options are considered and discussed. These guiding principles are based on Bellevue's comprehensive plan, transit master plan and the five letters that Bellevue City Council sent to the Sound Transit Board during development of the Sound Transit three plan. Staff is seeking counsel's feedback on these draft guiding principles.

And in total, we have six recommendations. I was so glad to hear what Alex had to say about sub area equity because staff recommends this as Bellevue's overarching number one priority to maintain the sub area equity policy. As a reminder, Sound Transit's district is divided into five sub areas shown here. And as Alex said, the Sound Transit subarea equity policy says that, for example, revenue generated in East King subarea will be proportionate to the revenue spent on projects that benefit this subarea. The EastLink project was built primarily with East King sub area revenue, for example.

During the ST3 development phase, Bellevue didn't take a position on whether the four lines should be light rail or bus rapid transit. And mode choice may come up again as sound transit identifies affordable options. Bellevue staff recommend remaining open at this time regarding whether the project is built as light rail or bus rapid transit as more information is shared and the discussion continues. The third recommendation is that sound transit should minimize delay to projects. We all know projects don't get less expensive when they're delayed, they only get more expensive.

In terms of stations, Bellevue staff recommends supporting implementing both Richards Road and Eastgate stations simultaneously. During the Sound Transit three development phase, Bellevue supported stream parking and staff recommend maintaining that position. Finally, staff recommend continuing to support Sound Transit's regional express bus service, which are of course those routes that begin with the number five. Route 556, for example, connects Bellevue to the U District, Route 560 connects Bellevue to South King County and 566 connects Bellevue to South Redmond. So this concludes Bellevue's staff recommendations.

So once again, staff is seeking your direction to prepare a letter to the Sound Transit Board based on Bellevue guiding principles for the enterprise initiative, and we would love to take your feedback.

Thank you so much. Such a dense and great presentation. You covered a lot in thirty four minutes. I want to thank first, Ariel and Alex. Thanks for being here.

And of course, Lacey Jen, Andrew, Emil, Genesee, Katie and every other staff in Sound Transit or City of Bellevue for their amazing work on this and the presentation. I also wanted to share your excitement about the March 28, the opening of the two line, amazing historic moment that we can connect Bellevue to the whole entire region. So we are very, very excited about that. It represent years of planning and investment that this body, the city staff and all of our stakeholder has done. Andrea, thank you for being here, and thank you for getting back to John Tiscornia.

I assume you can get their e mail about the sounds. I'm so happy that you are addressing that. And I know the official opening is held in Seattle because they expect the crowd of 35,000. And we all know that every fourth of July, we host 65,000 plus here in Bellevue. And I think we can handle some parkings for 35,000 person train party here in Bellevue, maybe next time.

But now let's go through questions. First, I think how we want to do this is we go around the room, the dais and Councilor Briar via Zoom and ask any questions we have, any clarifying questions. And after we finish the round of questioning, then we go and express our opinion about the guiding principle after the questioning phase is done. And then we can have the motion. In that note, anyone has a question?

Go ahead, Councilman Ibarghava. I

truly agree. Complex topic, great succinct presentation. Thank you so much. Really appreciate all the work that's gone into that. I only have a more sort of, let's call it, fundamental question on the affordability challenge. 35,000,000,000 is a lot of money, and I appreciate that this can happen over time through various inputs, etcetera. And you also sort of put together a year by year outlay of the gap, etcetera. My question is, what do you think are the primary inputs to the gap? And then how do we have confidence that, that gap isn't going to increase on an ongoing basis? I guess those are more not specific, but more structural questions.

Yeah. So the main driver of our affordability challenge is cost growth on our capital program. The board in late twenty twenty four was acting to select the project to be built for the West Seattle Link extension. So that was kind of the end of the environmental phase for that project. That is a typical moment in which we do update project costs.

So that there is some understanding of what it will take to deliver the project to be built that the board selects. In late twenty twenty four, we were seeing that post COVID inflationary period really catch up to our program through that West Seattle Link Extension project. We're not unique in facing cost growth and delivery of large infrastructure investments. And what that precipitated was the board both directing staff at Sound Transit to find cost savings and what leadership in our capital delivery department did was take a proactive step to update the cost estimates on all of our projects and development recognizing that likely what we were seeing in West Seattle was what we would be seeing in projects like Ballard, Everett Link, like Tacoma Dome, like the two infill stations that are in our program. And then what we also did was once we started to see those trends applied that to the South Kirkland to Issaquah project as well.

Understanding that even though we aren't actively developing that, the trends in the broader infrastructure delivery environment would likely manifest there as well. And so part of the maybe sticker shock is the fact that we do have a large capital program, the trends that we are not alone in seeing, we decided to be proactive and not wait until those other projects reached a milestone in which they would be updating their cost estimates but instead wanted to be proactive and then wanted to be transparent because this the objective of the agency is to deliver these investments. This is a big challenge but it doesn't mean we therefore can't do it. It just means we're gonna have to do it differently and yeah, so.

I will add just one other quick thing to Alex, excuse me, Alex's comments is this is a national trend, right? Transit is not the only agency facing these challenges on massive capital makeup project infrastructure. The other thing I was just going to note is the reason it's called the Enterprise Initiative is that we are literally taking a no stone unturned approach to this. We want to look at not only our capital program and the efficiencies in there, but how can we set ourselves up operationally in the long term to also bring some of these costs down. So it's really a bottoms up approach that we're taking.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Thank you, council member Bargava. Any other question in the room before I go to council member Biyar? Yeah. Council member Robinson.

I just wanted to ask, you know, that's a huge numbers, what we're talking about. That budget is a beast. And I appreciate thinking outside of the box and looking at every opportunity to make this work because obviously we're growing, we continue to develop, we see development happening outside Issaquah further east, and I can see a future where we're going to need light rail servicing those homes as well and businesses. So I guess my question is, if we compromise and focus on BRT, which actually would be to Bellevue's benefit, how do we keep the promise of light rail going east?

It's a good question that I don't know that I have a great answer for. I think this is really the hard choices and trade offs the board of directors is gonna have to face because the four line is an example of we haven't really started any kind of project development activity. So it is a is a line on a map quote unquote. There's more room to maneuver than the West Seattle project where we do have a record of decision. We have spent a good amount of money to develop that project in that way. There are there are approaches and options. You know, I

think

the certainly seeing Lacey Jane's presentation which suggests BRT in place of light rail. We've certainly heard from the city of Issaquah and Mayor Mullet about the utility of just getting Issaquah connected into the system. That could also be a cheaper approach. But ultimately until the board, certainly the East King Delegation of the board and their constituents including their jurisdictional constituents engage in and really what are some of those preferences and priorities. It's hard to say.

And I think there certainly are things like BRT convertible light rail where you sort of make investments in the right of way and the alignment. But I don't think we're there quite yet. Think with something like the four line project, even just getting started will help understand what is that range of possibility. And so, it's probably an unsatisfying answer, but I'll stop there.

We'll just add just one quick bar there. Alex said just getting started would help. When when we say that it's just a line on a map right now, it is literally voter approved. That is how much design has gone into the South Kirkland to Issaquah extension. It was what was approved by the voters in 2016.

The, way Sound Transit had programmed that line was that in 2016, we got the voter approval. We started with some projects, and we were phasing projects. We would rotate our planning staff to other projects as that planning work got done on the West Seattle extension or the Everett extension. So the plan to start that planning work for the South Kirkland Issaquah or the 4 line was actually not start until the late 2020s. So that is where the project development timeline really kicks off.

Starting that work in identifying where we could see cost savings or mode shift or the promises to get to Issaquah would happen during that project development and planning work that we would kick off in the next couple of years.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Robinson. Any question? Any question? Great. Councilmember Briard, do you have any questions?

No, mayor. Just comments.

Great. So we keep the comments. I have some questions, and then we go through the comments. And please feel free to say that's not in the scope that you can answer. It is the Board, and we can just move on. In the materials that you sent to us, the sound transient, they were talking about scenarios are being built around Board defined principles and policy trade offs. Great words. Do we have a specific framework will the Board use to decide which ST3 projects are delayed, reduced or changed?

Kind of. I guess what I would say is the board has adopted a set of principles to guide the work of the enterprise initiative. There are four of them. It includes advancing regional connectivity. So this is about completing the spine, serving PSRC designated regional growth centers that kind of thing.

The second is supporting future growth. So kind of tied to that, but also thinking about where is growth happening in the district, in the region and where our investments at in terms of supporting that growth. The third is around prioritizing the passenger experience. A lot of that is around easy connections. The fact that there are multiple transit operators in the region and we're part of that.

We need to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Shout out King County Metro. And then the final is protect public investments with fiscal integrity. And so that really is around being good stewards of public dollars, public resources. And then finally because ST three is a voter approved plan, we do have a set of defined performance characteristics and objectives that the plan is trying to achieve that serve as a bit of the foundation in terms of that original commitment in 2016 to the voters who approved it.

So that really serves those four principles and that kind of a voter approved plan are the basis for I think how the board will be making their considerations and ultimately their decision to update that ST three system plan.

Thank you for the answer. And I just feel compassion because it's really hard to make those trade off and decision that each projects are going to be delayed or reduced or changed based on these four. Like we cannot say from Issaquah to Bellevue, is it no? Is it yes, light rail? Is it yes, other method by just Issaquah? Maybe they can. They are more senior than me. So we leave that to them. Is the South Kirkland to Issaquah project being evaluated only for delay and scope reduction? Or is a no build option also on the table?

Because I think Slide 26 that Lacey mentioned, it was just delay and scope reduction. Is a no build also part of the equation?

So we aren't in the information we're gonna bring to the board tomorrow morning. And this is where you know how it is, don't wanna get in front of your board of directors or your city council. I would say we're not actually bringing forward options at this point that include delay. Know, the board has I think experienced a lot of and internalized this notion of delay is time

More cost.

Time is money. And you know, so there are going to be options that for various different projects presume that the delivery, the construction of that project is not affordable in our current horizon with our current resources. But I know having talked to board members over the past several weeks that everyone's objective is to deliver all of ST 3. It is in recognition though of the fact that $34,500,000,000 are real constraints in terms of how we can finance the delivery of the program will mean that as we have done in the past following ST2 and the Great Recession effectively had to distinguish between what can we afford to do with resources available versus what we can afford to advance to a certain milestone without. I would say in the approaches that we share for the South Kirkland Dissequoire project it's really the range of potential outcomes.

Not to say pick one again, but to say the trade offs are around the amount of program in terms of how much we estimate it will cost versus the amount of revenue and how much we project we'll have in this plan horizon.

So I've heard there is no, the no build is not an option. That's what I've heard.

I don't we are again bringing forward a bunch of iterations to provoke a policy discussion for the policy makers. To make decisions. Right. And there there will be other projects shown as also deferred, meaning we can't afford to do it with available resources. So I don't know how to answer. Yeah.

No, you did a great job.

I will just say our board will be making this Staff is in kind of an awkward spot here, where we have been asked to produce these plausible, affordable scenarios or approaches. When these are daylighted to our board of directors tomorrow, they are not going to be, here's option A, here's option B, here's option C, option D, whatever. They're not going to be a, you have to pick one of these, right? The effort that we're putting into these as staff is to show the board the magnitude of the problem, and as Alex said, the trade offs that they're going to have to take a look at. So the last thing we want to do is to defer a project.

Right? That is the ultimately last thing. It's the last thing the board wants to do because they have to answer their constituency. So you are gonna see a range of options for all of the light rail projects inside s t three.

And I think you are absolutely both of you right. I think we need to make some hard decision, but we need to make those decision and we should move forward. Based on what you just said, do you have any are you going to provide any metrics to them? Or do they have any metrics that they can do some comparison between light trail and BRT?

Not at this point for for example, the South Kirkland Dissequoire project. We are going to show how these different sort of illustrative approaches or scenarios perform against criteria we've derived from the principles that I described. And that will be shared tomorrow. It it is I guess I would say I will be sharing it with some ambivalence because anytime you show these things as how they perform it it does suggest like well one of these is better than the others. And that's really not our objective tomorrow, objective is there are going to be choices around the amount of light rail investment versus the other kinds of investment in ST3.

The trade offs between advancing projects that are moving forward versus those that haven't yet started project development. The challenge of trying to ensure that all sub areas are getting some investment. But the issues that that will raise not just with sub area equity but in terms of what that might mean for projects that are further along. None of these will be easy. And I suspect as I said to the board, or at least the executive committee, I feel pretty confident that everyone will not like one of these approaches.

I think the concern is how we protect in practice the the two maybe competing priorities, the system wide affordability against sub area priorities. And great, I think now we can that's my all of my questions. Thank you so much for answering them as best as you could. I start with my remarks about the guiding principle, and then I wanted to go through my colleagues. Definitely, sub area equity, as you mentioned, remains our top priority in city of Bellevue.

It is not just for the Bellevue, it is shared interest among all East Side cities. Waters approved ST3 with sub area equity in place, and the commitment is very, very important part of how Sound Transit has maintained public trust over time. I think people on Eastside, we need to know when we pay into the system, the sub area will see a fair return and real mobility benefits. And again, this is not just Bellevue issue. I just wanted to emphasize that this is across entire Eastside.

Each city has different needs and opportunities. Just as the needs of Belgrade is different from Newport Hills, I think the priorities in Redmond, Renton, Kirkland, Issaquah will not all look like the same. Protecting sub area equity gives all of our Issaic City the flexibility to pursue the transit solution that best fit their specific communities while still standing together as a region. Deputy Mayor Hamilton.

Great. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. Lacey, Jane and Andrew and Ariel and Alex, welcome to East King County sub area.

I

really appreciate all the great work you're all doing. And like everyone, I'm really excited to know that folks will be able to start making the Cross Lake connection in just over two weeks. That is truly amazing. I know our Bellevue team has been closely coordinating with the Sound Transit team for many years. The collaboration has resulted in a system that will bring much needed transit service to Bellevue and to our Eastside neighbors.

We're in a unique situation in which we're going to actually be able to build thriving, vibrant, sustainable transit oriented neighborhoods. This is certainly true for Bellevue, but it is just as true for all of our East County neighbors. While Bellevue certainly has critical unmet transit needs that must be provided for, the way for our needs to be met in a meaningful, impactful way is for the entire East King County sub area to continue to be treated as the priority that it is. So much time, effort and expense has gone into our collective effort to get us to the point we're at now with our transit and light rail system. We have asked our communities to believe in the vision of light rail on the East Side and to invest in that vision.

We owe it to our community members to deliver on our promises and to make good on their investments. There is no way for us to revisit the sub area equity policy and honor our commitments to our community, our workers and our businesses at the same time. We asked folks to sacrifice, to invest and to patiently wait for light rail to deliver a critically needed transportation option. Eastside voters said yes to Sound Transit three because in part, the sub area equity policy is in place. Maintaining the policy is so important to retain voter trust in Sound Transit.

It's critical that residents paying into the system understand where those contributions are going and that those residents can see how they benefit from the taxes and fees. There is no revisiting, there's no rethinking, and there's no going back on our commitment to sub area equity. As they say, that train has left the station. When we do our own sub area planning here in Bellevue, we ask our neighbors what they wanna see for their neighborhood. We keep them at the center of the process, but we never forget that each neighborhood is a part of the whole city.

Each neighborhood deserves care and attention and investment, and each has a responsibility to support and further the goals of the whole city. I see the sound transit system much the same way. Each sub area has an obligation, and I've seen the commitment, to support the entire system. In turn, Sound Transit has an obligation to each sub area to deliver on its promise. As far as the draft guiding principles, I think the ones that we have for the enterprise initiative and Attachment A provides a good basis for staff to prepare a letter that will restate our strong commitment to sound transit generally and convey our thoughts and expectations with regard to sub area equity to the Sound Transit Board.

Sub area equity should be Bellevue's top priority, and we should state that very clearly. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you so much, deputy mayor. Council member Somalia Beria. Any remarks?

Yes. Of course. Thank you. I'm so excited about March 28. The whole day is blocked off. Yes. And I will take every station there is. I'll take you around. Please, please do. Take all of

us around.

Yes. Well you so much. Thank you. And I love the excitement when you're doing the presentation. It makes me so excited.

It's been a long time coming.

Yes. Thank you. Thank thank you for all your hard work. I think with the presentation, I think it was so thorough. I didn't have any questions.

It was amazing. And I think that I believe that I remain open to both light rail and also the bus rapid transition option at this, I think time of uncertainty, the economy and cost of build is really beneficial for us being I think flexible and then also great communication for all the regional collaborations going to help us to get that goal someday, we will. And one thing that I will say that Light Rail is just such a strong catalyst for transit oriented development. So for me, I think that's great for affordable housing, workforce development and I think that's also a great vital tool that's going to really encourage our regional collaboration for the economic growth together as a region, not just Bellevue by ourselves, but every city around us together. And the one thing also I want to make it out, I think this build of the Lake to Lake and to make it happen is going to really make a huge difference about the environmental goals that we're trying to achieve, both achievable and also sustainable in the very near future.

So I'm really grateful for this. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Councilwoman Robinson.

So in the 1970, my dad was one of the engineers on the Trans Bay tube in San Francisco. So for BART, so I've always been a transit fan. And it's amazing how just the promise of light rail in Bellevue has transformed our city. It really has. You look around at these new big buildings, and that's really because of you and the work that we have done together to bring light rail to our city and through our city.

So thank you for that, and thank you, I'm really grateful that we have been able to fulfill the goals and we'll, you know, on the twenty eighth really do that. Yeah. So that's that's exciting. But 35,000,000,000 is a is a big gap and council or deputy mayor Hamilton, I figured out that if we just charge a mission fee of a million dollars per person that comes to this opening, we'll fill that gap. So I solved it for you.

There we go. But, you know, I I know we need to look at every possibility here, and BRT is not a bad option for Bellevue. And in fact, I would love to see if you do that, that it goes right into the South Bellevue Station. And maybe we can get more stops along Bellevue Way. So there's potential for a win for Bellevue with that. But certainly looking into the future, love to see light rail throughout. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Robinson. Council member Brouillard.

Thank you, mayor. I just wanna say it's near midnight here in DC. I've been up since 4AM, but I'm wide awake because of my love for public transit, and I refuse to miss this part. I I remember spending my summers as a young girl in in Stockholm or in Oslo in Norway navigating the trains as a young kid, and it gave me such a rush of adventure and independence that I will I will never forget. So thank you so much for the incredible work that you are all conducting.

Just wanted to say ditto on sub area equity. I think this is quite logical, straightforward. I think it's a great guiding principle. For the second contention about staff's recommendation about remaining open for the buses versus the train. Selfishly, I love trains so much, and so I would wanna push for that as much as possible. I I understand it may not be cost effective and may result in delays. So I understand, wanting to perhaps opt in for, the bus option instead. So I support that, recommendation as well. I have no further comments and just wanted to say thank you again.

Thank you.

And thank you for staying awake for your love for public transportation. We really appreciate all every effort you do for the city of Bellevue. Councilman Bargavo.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. I've lived in Bellevue for now fourteen years. And almost all of those fourteen years, five times a week, barring a few years of the pandemic, I made my way across to Seattle, so spending countless hours in a car. And so, if there's anyone who's, excited about what you just said about the twenty eighth, it's me.

And, I wish it had happened fourteen years ago, and I would have saved, may have more hair today, so it's possible. But that's very, very exciting. I'm also sort of going back to the position on sub air equity, I would just say plus one. I think that is really, really important and for us a very, very strong priority. I think the deputy mayor said it very eloquently, so I'm not gonna say anymore, but just stress that.

And I do want to say that Bellevue really understands the importance of transit oriented development. You know, our city has a proven track record of making investments that are supportive of DOD. And we've invested, for example, $300,000,000 in the bed Bell Red Street District, constructing 10 miles of new roadway to support what we're trying to do. So it's really we're we're very serious about this. And as a member of the Regional Transit Committee, I know that Sound Transit's regional bus service is just so important.

The regional bus service complements the King County's local service and rapid ride. So these are really important components from Bellevue's perspective. And I would actually support including some emphasis on that in your guiding principles as well. But overall, I think my other thoughts were captured by my peers. Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. If there is no other comments, can we please have the motion to direct staff to prepare a letter of Bellevue guiding principle?

I move to direct staff to prepare a letter to Sound Transit board members based on Bellevue guiding principles for the enterprise initiative. Second.

It has been moved by deputy mayor and seconded by council member Robinson. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye. There

is no opposed. The motion passes. Thank you so much. I think you guys all want me to push through to the next SRE session, but that's not correct. We are going to take a ten minutes break. Sorry. Thank you for giving us another ten minute break. We have our last study session. City manager, would you please introduce that to us?

Yes. Thank you, mayor, deputy mayor and council members. Tonight, staff is presenting a proposal to create a land use code amendment to establish a development agreement pathway, specifically for projects that are public private partnerships where the city is involved. This will allow for greater zoning and development flexibility to help us advance our policy priorities where the city is a major funder or we control the property. So to describe the process and also the request of counsel this evening, we have our very hard working Nick Whipple, Code and Policy Director back again.

He's joined by Charlie Engel, senior planner and development services. And then also Edward Butterfield, who's our public private partnership manager in the community development department. And with that, I'll turn it over to Nick.

Great. And good evening again. Happy to hang in here with you all. So we are here tonight seeking direction from counsel, to enter a finding of necessity and for counsel to process this land use code amendment and then direct us to schedule the public hearing on this code amendment. So for our agenda, we wanna cover just briefly what is a development agreement, then we'll jump into the details of the proposed private or public private partnership land use code amendment.

We'll touch briefly on our outreach approach and schedule and then end with the the ask for direction. So to start first with what is a development agreement. So this is a voluntary contract that the city can choose to enter with a property owner or developer of a site. They are authorized under state law in the local project review act, and what it would provide is some ability for council to get into some negotiation on sites and projects that are being redeveloped. So it would establish oftentimes different development regulations that would apply, different standards, different kind of conditions that apply to a specific project.

This is something that is processed by the city council. You ultimately would be approving that contract, and then it would guide the development. So it'll run with the land. So the purpose of it is typically to provide some of that certainty for developers. Everything would be negotiated with that contract, and it would ultimately control whatever happens with that site in the future.

And it does allow the city to secure some public benefits. So, typically, you would see a development agreement used when there's a lot of public benefit to be gained on the other side. In part, because it's a pretty onerous process, it involves direct council involvement on project level review, and it kinda pulls you away from your typical position of setting high level policy and a code framework that can work for most projects. So when we think about how to deploy this tool, we really wanna make sure that there's a clear public benefit to be gained, given the amount of, effort it takes to kinda move through this type of process. So Charlie will walk us through the current, development agreement pathways in the code and then some of the details of the proposed code.

Great. Thank you, Nick. So on this slide, we wanted to highlight some of the existing development agreement pathways that are in the code now. One of the more familiar cases is in the Bell Red Spring District. That was a 2009 development agreement that was really intended to catalyze redevelopment in that area, and that's shown on the bottom photo of the slide there.

There are also some possibilities for development agreements when constructing pedestrian bridges downtown or when pro proposing flexible amenity, which would be a different amenity or unique amenity other than what's listed in the amenity incentive system now that would improve downtown livability. In East Main, the flexible amenity system is also available through a development agreement. And then for projects near transit that provide additional affordable housing above the minimum requirement, In those cases, there's a development agreement pathway as well. In Wilburton, we see a development agreement pathway for projects in the Grand Connection. And then there are also a few for citywide development agreements such as when citing homeless services uses.

And the kind of key theme throughout all of these is that there's a specific policy priority that comes out of them or they're used to develop infrastructure like the Grand Connection. So those were the existing pathways in the code now that will continue to retain. And as far as the proposed new pathway with this Luka would be to establish a new development agreement pathway for public private partnerships. So this includes when the city owns the land or is a major funder of a project. So those are the two arms that would be new for this project.

And Nick touched on it a bit. It's really narrowly scoped with these two options to be an effective tool when it's really intentional. Like you said, it has to be reviewed by council and it's a project level agreement, so there's a lot of time and resources impacted there. So it's not always the most efficient way to secure public benefits, but carefully constructed, it can be effective for delivery of those key policy priorities for things like affordable housing, sustainability, and economic development. With that, I will pass it over to Edward to talk more about the applicability and use cases.

Yeah. So we really have two exciting opportunities coming up that we built this policy around. The first one is we would authorize it when city owns or controls the property as we do in the Bell Red neighborhood. Excuse me. And this would be where 10% of the project costs are greater the city's contributing to that where there's a 5,000,000 or more in city funding. And the other one would also be in the Wilverton neighborhood where that would be an affordable housing development.

Great.

So in addition to the two new pathways for city owned and city funded development, this Luca aims to also consolidate some of those existing provisions that we looked at in Bell Red, downtown Wilburton. They're currently scattered across the code. And so moving them into one chapter where they can be easily found and used, just to kinda streamline the process. In addition, this look also will define, when the p three d a is authorized. So kind of what Edward touched on when it's city funded development, that threshold, that's all outlined in the code very clearly along with application and some middle requirements, what the council direction to initiate and negotiate the DA, what that process looks like, and how to review.

And it also includes evaluation framework for these agreements and if the agreement needed to be modified, what that procedure might be. So in general to give an idea of what this process would look like getting the DA through council, we anticipate that it would generally be around three touches. The first one to be initiate the DA and scope the changes and get a good idea of what the development flexibilities are the city looking to give and also in exchange what the provided public benefit would be. So really sourcing out the details there, and at that point, council could decide whether or not they'd like to enter in a negotiation to continue with the DA. Assuming if yes, the second touch would be a sub study session to look deeper into the details of the development agreement, go over any modifications as necessary, and also direct staff to schedule the public hearing, which brings you to the third touch, which would be to hold the public hearing and take action on the development agreement.

And while it's maybe anticipated to generally be three touches, of course, you could always schedule additional study sessions in between initiation and action as needed to work out the details. With that, it brings us to our outreach and schedule. We are, of course, doing a process for noticing requirements, which includes notice in the weekly permit bulletin. We also launched the project web page earlier this month, which includes background information on the project and staff contact information for comments and questions. And since this is mostly kind of an internal tool with the city owned and or city funded development agreement pathway, We took the time to coordinate with internal departments such as economic development, the office of housing, and the city attorney's office to make sure that this project is workable for future projects that are on the horizon so that they have the ability to advance key policies that council has prioritized.

So tonight, we're looking at the schedule. We're doing the study session, looking forward to a public hearing hopefully in April. And then once silica is adopted, the p three d a path will be available. And with that, we're looking for direction from council to retain processing and direct staff to schedule the public hearing. Thank you.

No. Thank you. Thank you so much. Charlie, Nick, thank you for being here the whole full time. And Edouard, thank you so much. Thank you to Rebecca and the whole team. I'd love to learn new acronyms, P3, Public Private Partnership, DA, Development Agreement. But yes, let's go around the room and see if you have any question. Councilor Bargava, Sartre Vuitto, do you have any comment, question?

No. I really appreciate this as a tool to try and get you know it's like you said, the key here is the balance between the increased engagement and oversight required and balancing out with the increased public benefit. I also like that you have sort of narrowly defined this for now because I think this can be a springboard for more opportunities potentially over time when we have a broader set of, you know, opportunities to consider where this may be more applicable, but we do already have established swim lanes, and I like that as well. The only question I have, maybe this is more educational for me and, you know, no specific concerns with your timeline and the layout that you put foot put forth, Is the definition of the public benefit, is that purely a council driven assessment? Or is there how do we get more input on the validation on the adequacy of the public benefit?

Yeah. I can start and then would welcome Edward Yeah. To jump in as well as our p three manager of the city. Typically, so what staff has been doing in preparation of bringing this Luca for to you all is thinking about those public benefits that could be realized in the projects. And we understand kind of some of the policy areas that the council is really wanting to pursue, those being economic development, affordable housing, and sustainability.

And so part of the negotiation process is the applicant, which will usually be the city, since this is city owned or city funded, will show all the areas that we're departing or proposing to depart from the code, which all has a a value kind of associated with it. If you want an extra 100 feet of building height, for example, that's going to be valuable. And so then that's when we begin to assess what might we ask for in exchange for that public, that benefit being afforded to the developer, that benefit being, relaxing some of the development standards or providing more, value to their project. And so, yeah, we've done some work to identify at least an initial list of benefits. Those would typically be brought forward with counsel as part of the proposal as well.

Get confirmation from you all. Is this the right kind of benefits to be pursuing as part of the agreement? And then we'll begin that negotiation process, which you all would authorize the development services director to negotiate. Yeah.

Go ahead.

Yeah. And I think in addition, we'd we'd ensure that the city's financial commitment risk and overall participation matches those public benefits.

Got it. Well, just one quick follow-up on that. Like, there established, let's call them protocols for the other frameworks, protocols for the other DAs that you have, the other parts that you've established, where you can say, here's how we are evaluating the magnitude as well as the prioritization of our strategic sort of thrust on where the benefit and what kind of benefit it should be. Is it more generalizable, something that we can use more scalably across?

So it really depends in the areas that we're authorizing DAs. So for example, in East Main, the priority that was identified by counsel during that code development process was we want more affordable housing than the baseline code would authorize. And in exchange, we'll give additional FAR up to 5.3 FAR, which is, I think, more than a one FAR increase, and up to 400 feet in building height, which is about, I think, about a 100 to a 120 feet of building height to be gained. And so those were the benefits that we would be pursuing as part of that. And, of course, the council would have at their discretion to target other items that might be emerging.

And other areas were way less defined in terms of what we wanna prioritize.

Okay. So I I guess the only suggestion based on what you said I I would have is because this is city owned properties and we have the opportunity to be more nimble in this process, potentially in the evaluation and setting up what public benefit would mean, is that we could use this as an opportunity for us to have a more well defined framework that we can apply to more privately owned properties where the negotiation becomes more equitable and predictable as well over time. I know it's site specific, and I know there are those elements in place here. But I think it's a great opportunity to try and do that. I say that because it gives us more confidence that the trade offs will stay somewhat consistent and aligned with the strategic priorities.

What you're doing for sustainability versus affordability versus something else. I appreciate that.

Thank you.

You, Councilor Borgawa. Councilor Rasmoduverdi.

Thank you for the presentation. I just have I see on Slide six, there's a list of, I think almost like benefits of that. Can you share with me like a few of like the short term benefits and also like long term benefits having this agreement in place? Like this type of framework

to Yeah. I think the short term would be the advancement of the Bell Red sites. And then I think long term it would be really creating a tool for the city to be more creative on implementing its policies and and plans. I think that long term, it allows us a staff to go out and maybe do mixed use development with city city services or roadways or public open spaces that maybe we can acquire the land, but it could be part of a larger development. So I think that there would be a lot of long term applications to this also.

Okay. What about is there any downside?

I think the downside is ensuring that we're matching the public benefit to what we're developers gaining from this. And that will always be something we need to be stewards of.

Okay. Thank you. That's all my question. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Councilman Robinson?

Council Member Sumandu Wiria asked all my questions. So no, it was good. And I appreciate the answers. I love a good DA. I've seen really good thoughtful development with these, and it's nimble, and it gives you the opportunity to respond to emerging needs of city. So council member Sumida Doria kind of asked this, but I'll be a little more specific. Is there an example of an area that you haven't mentioned that we could use this on? Do you have anything in the pipeline?

The city site. So the city owns Metro site.

Right, right.

That's an example where a DA could really apply, be used for the redevelopment of that site.

Okay. Yeah, right outside.

Right outside our window.

Okay. Thinking about delivering Grand Connection in that area as well. Anytime you're trying to pull off complex infrastructure or really expensive kind of public benefits, this is a really helpful tool to be able to make sure that you're providing some benefit to the developer in acknowledgment that this is gonna be complex to pull off.

Does it ultimately decrease the price of the project, would you say?

I think it would actually increase the price because it would bring more certainty to the developer.

It increases, you say?

I I'm sorry. Let me reverse that. It would decrease the price by increasing the certainty to the developer.

That's exactly

it. So in a case like this would be integrating the development with a grand connection and that would give us more ability to be flexible on the land use code to achieve that.

Yeah, That's great. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor Hamilton.

No questions or comments. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much. Like Councillor Robinson, I really liked this kind of development agreement, especially when we are doing a very complex project on publicly owned or even maybe we can do some catalyst development. And I really appreciate you guys are making this more clear and more transparent. Two suggestion I have. One is maybe expanding on what Councilman Bargava mentioned.

How we are going to evaluate public benefits being offered are proportional to the flexibility being granted. And I think that's a really is a great equation to be solved, so I leave it to you all as how you're going to do that. But also, I think we should not all of these agreements, they are going to customize the development standard. We really need to be transparent with our public to tell them what benefits they are getting and what all of those customized development standards will be in a very transparent and understandable to our public. Beside that, thank you so much, we need a motion.

I move to enter a binding of necessity for the council to process this, Luca, and direct staff to schedule the public hearing.

Second.

It has been moved by deputy mayor and seconded by council member Robinson. Any discussion? All those in favor, aye. Aye. There is no opposed. The motion passes. We do have two thank you so much. We do have two written reports. One is about update on the great neighborhoods program, Eastgate and Factorio. And the other one is sustainable Bellevue plan implementation update. Please, for sure, read that. On that note, we can adjourn the meeting. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much.