City Council - Regular Meeting

This fourth meeting of the Bellevue City Council. Good evening and welcome. Thank you for being here and for participating in the work of the city. Before we get to our agenda, I want to start by noting that over the weekend in Spokane, three fires forced 65,000 people to evacuate and more than 700 homes were destroyed. We are heartbroken for those who have lost so much, many only able to escape with the clothes they wore and whatever was in their car at the time. The scale of loss is immense and our thoughts are with every Washingtonian facing the trauma and displacement and uncertainty. That said, no lives were lost and that is a testament to emergency responders and protocols for evacuation. And in the face of this tragedy, I think we are all inspired by the resilience and compassion that define communities in our state. We have seen neighbors, first responders, and volunteers come together to offer shelter, food, and more. If there is one other thing we should all take away today, remember that we are still early in the summer and conditions are likely to get worse. Please be vigilant and very careful with any spark or flame and follow the statewide burn ban in effect. We are witnessing the incredible scale of damage and destruction that can be caused by these fires. You are a part of protecting our communities. Be safe and smart. Thank you. Additionally as you can see we are missing some folks on the dais this evening. The mayor is unable to join us in person However, we can see that he is here with us online and I'll be chairing this evening's meeting given that he is remote Finally council member Bhargava will not be in attendance at tonight's meeting and I'd ask if there's a motion to excuse him Second Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The motion carries. Thank you. Okay. Moving on. City Clerk, if you would call the roll. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Malekitian. Deputy Mayor Hamilton.

Here.

Council Member Breyer.

Here.

Council Member Newenhouse. Here. Council Member Robinson. Here. Council Member Sumidoria. Here. Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Robinson, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

Yes, please stand if you're able.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we have three proclamations tonight. I want to welcome Billy Allen from our CARES team to the desk, please. And then we have, who's reading that one? Oh, you do? Oh, I think we maybe kind of got those. All right, well, here we go. So International Overdose Awareness Day, I will read this one. Whereas International Overdose Awareness Day is recognized globally on August 31st as an opportunity to remember those we have lost to overdose, support those left behind, and take action to prevent further loss of life. And whereas drug overdoses continue to impact families, neighborhoods, and communities across Washington State, including right here in Bellevue, where fentanyl and other synthetic opioids have sharply increased the risk of unintentional overdose, And whereas the stigma associated with substance use disorders prevents too many people from seeking the help they need and perpetuates silence, isolation, and shame among individuals, families, and survivors, and whereas harm reduction strategies, including access to naloxone, overdose education, and supportive services are critical tools in saving lives and providing pathways to treatment and recovery, and whereas local organizations, first responders, healthcare workers, and peer recovery specialists play a vital role in addressing the overdose crisis with compassion, urgency, and care, and whereas the City of Bellevue is committed to promoting public health, equity, and the safety of all residents, especially our most vulnerable, and stands with communities working to prevent overdoses and support healing, Now, therefore, I, Dave Hamilton, on behalf of Mo Malakoutian, Mayor of the City of Bellevue, Washington, and the City Council, do hereby proclaim August 31st, 2026 as an International Overdose Awareness Day in Bellevue and encourage all residents to help raise awareness, reduce stigma, and support evidence-based solutions that prevent overdose and save lives.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Hamilton and council members. On behalf of Bellevue Fire Cares, thank you for this proclamation recognizing International Overdose Awareness Day. Overdose is a critical public health crisis and not a moral failure. By naming this issue publicly, the city helps eliminate the heavy stigma surrounding addiction. To anyone currently struggling, please know you are not alone and life-saving help is always available by calling or texting 988. Thank you.

Thank you. If you would stick around, we would love to have you up for a picture afterwards. So thank you. I would like to invite Katoya Raquel Palmer to the desk and ask Council Member Breyer to read the Black Business Month Proclamation.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Whereas August is recognized nationally as Black Business Month, a time to celebrate the innovation, entrepreneurship, and lasting contributions of Black-owned businesses that strengthen communities and expand economic opportunities, and whereas Black-owned businesses play an important role in Bellevue's dynamic economy, creating jobs, enriching the city's cultural fabric, and contributing to the innovation and entrepreneurship that help our community thrive, and whereas Bellevue is strengthened by the diversity of its residents, businesses, and entrepreneurs, and the city is committed to fostering an environment where every founder can succeed, contribute, and grow, and whereas while many black entrepreneurs continue to face barriers to capital, professional networks, and visibility, they continue to demonstrate resilience, creativity, and leadership in building successful businesses and creating opportunities for others. and whereas organizations and initiatives throughout Bellevue, including local chambers, economic development programs, and community partners, are working to support Black-owned businesses through access to funding, technical assistance, mentorship, and visibility, and whereas Black Business Month is an opportunity for residents, businesses, and organizations to recognize the achievements of Black entrepreneurs by shopping, dining, investing, mentoring, and building relationships that support Black-owned businesses throughout the year. Now, therefore, I, Noreen Breyer, on behalf of Mo Malakoutian, Mayor of the City of Bellevue, Washington, and the City Council, do hereby proclaim August 2026 as Black Business Month in Bellevue, Washington, and encourage all residents to celebrate. the contributions of Black-owned businesses, participate in community events, including Golden Hour Unboxed on August 23rd, and support Black entrepreneurs whose innovation, leadership, and resilience help Bellevue remain a welcoming, vibrant, and prosperous community for all. Thank you.

Mayor Lowell, Deputy Mayor Hamilton, and members of the Council, thank you. What an honor. And thank you for a proclamation so thoughtfully written. I do feel seen. To be honest, when I began organizing this event, my own community worried for me. I heard it more than once. They weren't sure Bellevue would show up for a black initiative like Golden Hour. That's not what is happening. I am a business owner. I serve on three boards across this community. Bellevue has welcomed me with wide open arms and made room for me at table after table. I want every black business owner building in this city to feel that because every entrepreneur deserves that kind of welcome. Golden Hour Unboxed happens August 23rd at the beautiful Bellevue Botanical Garden. It's free because of the city's cross-cultural center without walls grant, excuse me. And thank you to the partners who leaned in, the Bellevue Library, Symmetra, Flash Forward, Sophia Way, and the Bellevue Chamber, Eastside For All, and Primo's Restaurant. Their support is making the event possible as well. The support has humbled me and we are building. Deputy Mayor Hamilton, my personal thanks to you. This proclamation began with your introductions. Bellevue, thank you. Happy Black Business Month. You are all welcome. And we are just getting started.

Thank you. If you would, too, just hang out with us. We'd love to get a picture with you. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to ask Tulika Dugar to come to the desk, and Council Member Newenhaus is going to read the India Day Proclamation. Welcome. Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Whereas the city of Bellevue recognizes the historical significance of India's Independence Day, commemorating August 15, 1947, when the Republic of India achieved independence through a long and courageous struggle for freedom, bringing an end to more than two centuries of British colonial rule. And whereas India's journey from colonial rule to the world's largest democracy continues to inspire people around the globe, with the nation making significant contributions in science, technology, entrepreneurship, healthcare, education, and space exploration while strengthening its role as a global leader and an economic partner. And whereas Bellevue is proud to be home to a vibrant and growing Indian American community whose members enrich the city's civic life, economy, and cultural landscape as entrepreneurs, innovators, educators, healthcare providers, professionals, engineers, artists, public servants, and community leaders. And whereas Indian Americans in Bellevue represent a rich diversity of cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions including Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain, Buddhist, Jewish, and Zoroastrian communities, reflecting a shared commitment to inclusion, mutual respect, and civic engagement. And whereas the shared values of democracy, innovation, and opportunity strengthen the enduring relationship between the United States and India, while deepening the connections between the City of Bellevue and its Indian American residents. Now, therefore, I, Jared Newenhouse, on behalf of Mayor Mo Malekutian and the City of Bellevue, Washington, and the City Council, do hereby proclaim August 15, 2026 as India Day in Bellevue, Washington, and we encourage everyone, all residents, to recognize and celebrate the rich cultural heritage, the rich history, and ongoing contributions of Indian Americans in our city and in our nation. Thank you.

Thank you so much. That was so thoughtfully written, Council Member Noonhouse. I'm just a little bit emotional. Thank you, Mayor Malakoutian, Deputy Mayor Hamilton, and members of the whole Council of Bellevue. I work and live in Bellevue with my beautiful family of four and a dog. Accepting this proclamation on behalf of the community means that we are a part of the whole pie. This means we are moving toward a cultural trend where I'm not afraid to wear the bindi and my kurta, which is known at one time to look like a fancy dress competition. This proclamation can definitely help us when we think about belonging because we were never sure if we are or if we ever would be a part of a culture when we came here as immigrants. We never knew that our kids would see that inclusivity truly exists in the city of Bellevue. I don't feel afraid of learning and embracing other cultures because I am included. Making new friends, learning a new dish is now so cool. Thank you. IACS will be participating in the Bellevue International Festival. We are so excited to be there and in the upcoming welcoming events as well with our outreach team, outreach activities. We pride in our heritage and bring cultural performances for all as well. In closing, I'd like to mention that truly being secular, embracing all religions, beliefs, race, gender, and orientation to be the truest example of one love. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

All right. We'll get a picture.

Thank you.

Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? Any discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed Okay, the motion passes. Thank you. All right, we can move on to oral communications and city clerk Do we have anyone signed up to speak tonight?

There are five pre-registered speakers on So I'll start off by saying that the Council does appreciate members of the public engaging and contributing their perspectives in tonight's meeting and supports everyone's right to express themselves. I want to say that comments shared during oral communications are those of the commenters and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Council or the City. So I'll go a few of the rules before I start calling names. And the total time for oral communications is for a period of not more than 30 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. The presiding officer in both of those categories is authorized to give preference to those who have not spoken to Council within the last 60 days, or who will be speaking on topics that will come in front of the Council within the next 60 days. Each speaker is allowed to speak up to three minutes, and only three speakers are allowed to speak to any one side of a particular topic. And 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 ballot measure or may support or oppose a candidate for election. And that includes one's own campaign. People beginning to talk on those topics will be asked to stop. So with that, I'll call our first speaker who is Parker Dawson.

My name is Parker Dawson. I'm here speaking on behalf of Lime on item 10C this evening. I will keep it brief. I truly am here tonight to say thank you all for your months and years of diligent work as elected officials and as servants to the public. It is because of this work that Bellevue is adding yet another option, another way to make this city full of abundant, affordable, and sustainable means of transportation. And while we are incredibly excited to be launching our service next week on August 10th and to be celebrating with all of you later this month, I do truly look forward to continuing that work, continuing that partnership to keep improving this transit network for months and years ahead. So thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Maria Hui.

Good evening Deputy Mayor Hamilton and Council Members. My name is Maria Lau Huey. I'm a former chair of the Belleville Arts Commission, a co-founder of the Bellwether Art District Community Alliance, and I work professionally in affordable housing development with Habitat for Humanity. Today, I'm here to support item 10A, the city's development agreement with Bridge Housing and the proposed modifications because the requested changes are directly tied to delivering the public benefits, Bellevue and Vision for the Kelly site. This development agreement isn't simply about adding housing. It is about aligning the development standards with what the site is intended to become, a transit-oriented neighborhood that combines affordable housing, affordable art space, and an active public room. For many years, we have talked about supporting artists not only through programming and public art, but by creating places where artists can afford to live, create, exhibit their work, and engage with the community. These goals are reflected in the city's own policy and implementation plans. Many of the requested modifications support that vision. They allow art space, maker spaces, galleries, and residential amenities to activate the ground level, rather than requiring traditional commercial uses. The reduced parking requirement is also appropriate for this location. This project sits adjacent to the Bell Red Light Rail Station. If there's any place in Bellevue where we should prioritize housing, art, and people over additional parking, this is it. These are not requests for flexibility for flexibility's sake. They are targeted modifications that make it possible to deliver affordable housing, artists and public gathering spaces in a vibrant neighborhood. I encourage you to support proposed development agreement modifications so this project can move forward consistent with Belleville's vision for the Bellwether Art District. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Mary Jane Jagosinski, who's joining us online. Ms. Jagosinski, can you hear me? Ms. Jagosinski, can you hear me?

I'm unmuted. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Honorable Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council members and staff, I'll be brief. I'm Mary Jane Jakaczynski. I'm Senior Vice President of Development at Bridge Housing. I'm here in support of the study session that you're conducting today on 10A for the Belgrade Arts. We appreciate the the fact that you are considering a development agreement. Your staff has worked collaboratively and very well with us in presenting the materials that you'll be able to consider tonight. Noah Rosen, our Director of Development, is there in person. I'll be attending virtually. Again, I won't take any more time, but appreciate your consideration of this tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, and good segue, Noah Rosen.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, City Council Members. Thank you for your time tonight. My name is Noah Rosen, Director of Development for Bridge Housing, speaking in support of item 10A. With over 40 years of experience building affordable housing, Bridge is truly a pioneer. Bridge's mission is one that resonates with me. I don't know word for word, but it's something like we improve our residents' lives starting but not ending with affordable housing. And I think that really speaks to what we're trying to do here in Bellevue. We're just now completing construction of 234 new affordable homes just up the road from here at the Briar, our new building that's opening on 120th. That project, I'm proud to say, is ahead of schedule and under budget and will welcome its first residents this fall. We're excited to build on that success with our Bell Red Arts project with you, the city staff, and our partners. I was getting pretty excited writing my notes for this little speech today because the project really does include a remarkable mix of benefits for just one building. It includes 170 new affordable homes for the city. All of those will be directly adjacent to light rail, providing local and regional transit connections. All of those homes will have a preference for artists, providing a stable future for the creative and cultural community in the city. Half of those homes will include two and three bedrooms, suitable size for families. And approximately 20 of those homes will be set aside for individuals with developmental disabilities. And on top of that, the ground floor will house a 4000 square foot art space for the Bell Red Arts District. You heard about that from Maria. It's really a dream project. I can't find fault with it myself, although I am a bit biased. So I just want to encourage you to continue to support this project. Thank you for your time tonight and consideration. I also want to extend a true thank you to the city staff of Bellevue for all the time they've put in to get us here tonight. We certainly don't take their time and their work for granted. They're a pleasure to work with, and we're looking forward to building something great in Bellevue. Thank you.

Thank you. The final speaker on our list is Alex Zimmerman.

Ha? Hi. My best friend. I'm Alex Zimmerman, president of Stand Up America. I live in Bellevue for 40 years. What has happened now, today, is very interesting. You know what this means? Good for Indian, good for black, probably very good for white. So I will bring a little bit statistic, because without statistic, you cannot understand. So we make from Bellevue right now number one fascist city in America, implantation. First plantation for 200 years, what is include 120,000. Jungle slave, yeah. Explain to 65 Indian, 45,000 Chinese, all come. Most of all, they come for... Working visa. You understand what it's meaning? I'm very happy. So Trump, a few months ago, last year, stopped working visa.

Yeah, Mr. Zimmerman, this has to do with council business. That's why you're here. So if you can speak to that, please continue. If not, please don't continue.

You're absolutely right. That's exactly what I was talking about, to council business. Yeah, exactly. Because what you did is your job. Mayor Robinson did this for the last seven years. Mohammed did this, you too. We have right now situation what is absurd, what is don't have analogy in America. It's all in Belleville. You understand? So what's happened now? We have only 30,000 white in zero black community.

City business, sir. Please stick to city business. This is a city business.

Please move along. Come to your point. Exactly. Absolutely. This is very serious business. This plantation is take job from people, most of them white people. Trump talk about this before and stopping this right now.

So far you have not talked about anything that's with city business. So I'm going to give you one warning.

Why I mean city business? I'm talking about city business.

I'm not hearing it, sir. No, what is mean city business? I don't understand. That's for you to interpret. It's the same rules for everybody, Mr. Zimmerman. Exactly. Just follow the rules. That's all you need to do.

People who come with working visa, you know what it means. So white people don't have job right now.

Yes.

It's not about immigration. It's about business.

Mr. Zimmerman, that's your second warning. If you can get to the point and find a way to talk about city business, then please do so.

I'm talking about city business. It's a genocide. We have 30,000 white in the black community. Why? I live here for 40 years. It's a city business. It's a genocide. Because I'm a Jew, it's good to me. It look to me like a Holocaust, too. You take job from American. It's very serious. Trump talking about this.

That's your final warning. Mr. Zimmerman, you're done. Good night.

Why you mean done?

I'm talking about business. Someone would please give Mr. Zimmerman a little help getting out.

Okay, no problemo. No problemo. This not a business? So what is business? This is a business.

Thank you. That is the end of our pre-registered list. We do still have a few minutes of oral communications left. So I'd make a call out if there's anyone in the audience who would like to make a comment to council, please raise your hand. That goes for those online as well. I do see a couple of hands in council chambers. I do need to make a note that we have had three speakers in support of item 10A, which is the bridge housing item. So we cannot hear any more in support of that item. IF YOUR TOPICS ARE DIFFERENT THAN THAT, SIR, IF YOU WANT TO COME FORWARD. I SAW YOUR HAND FIRST. IF YOU CAN IDENTIFY YOURSELF. YES, SO LONG AS YOUR TOPIC IS NOT IN SUPPORT OF 10A, YES. SO IF YOU CAN COME TO THE TABLE AND JUST IDENTIFY YOURSELF BY NAME BEFORE YOU START SPEAKING.

Welcome.

Respected everyone in the hall, my name is Nagesh Chakranaguli. I'm from Lake Hills. As cities grow in population, infrastructure, and amenities, they become expensive to live in, and hence courts and ordinances must evolve to ensure that the quality of life is appropriately scaled for residents. We cannot afford to live with the legacy courts unsuitable for modern day city life. Our city is a perfect example for that need. We are here to propose against hen houses and roosters in our neighborhoods and updating the city courts and ordinances to improve our quality of life. This is a continuation of something my neighbor presented last week. Noise disruption, pest attraction, property devaluation and damage, and public health risks are the most compelling reasons against allowing hen houses and roosters in city residential areas. While backyard chicken keeping has grown in popularity, Dense urban environments amplify the negative externalities of livestock management. Powdery-related problems can be categorized into these primary areas of concern. Number one is severe noise pollution. Pre-down disruptions, roosters naturally grow shrill and loud at the crack of as early as like 4 a.m., DISRUPTING SLEEP SCHEDULES IN HIGH-DENSITY NEIGHBORHOODS, LEADING TO DAYLONG HEADACHES FOR NEIGHBORS AND MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES THAT WE CAN ATTEST TO. ALL DAY NOISE. CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, ROOSTERS CROW ALL DAY LONG. DISRUPT STUDENTS' STUDIES, THEY CANNOT FOCUS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEIR HOMEWORK AND PROJECTS ARE DUE. HAND NOISE, THEY MAKE SIGNIFICANT NOISE, PARTICULARLY WHEN THEY'RE IN THE PROCESS OF MAKING EGGS WITH ROOSTERS AND THEN ANNOUNCING, WHEN ANNOUNCING THAT THEY HAVE LAID THEIR EGGS. PROXIMITY ISSUES IN CITIES, HOUSES ARE BUILT FEET APART RATHER THAN ACRES APART, YOU KNOW, HAD THE LEGACY COURTS associated with them, meaning a neighbor's window is often directly adjacent to the coop. Disease transmission, chicken carry and zoonotic diseases, salmonella, campylobacter and so on. Avian influenza, high density of backyard flocks can increase the risk of bird flu outbreaks. Odors, you know what it is. Waste disposal, our garbage infrastructure is not prepared to handle that. Pest and predator attraction, rodent infestation, spilled feed and grain scratch naturally attract mice and pests, rats. Urban wildlife, you know, that's a food chain. Flies and insects, that's the most important problem for us. You know, they sit on our food. SOFA, EVERYTHING, AND THEN THEY CARRY GERMS. THEY ARE BORN AND BROUGHT UP IN THE POOP. AND PROPERTY VALUES AND COMMUNITY ENFORCEMENT IS A BIG CHALLENGE. I'M GOING TO STOP HERE AND LET MY NEIGHBOR CONTINUE.

HI, MY NAME IS AND I'M JUST CONTINUING ON FROM My speaking last week, I ran out of time. And so my proposal to challenge the code regarding Fowl are that the land, whoever wants to get land, a rooster, especially, or hens, there's an inspection on their property for the placement of buildings and for actually owning a pet, finding out the purpose of the ownership. Do they just want eggs? Are they interested in breeding? the plans for the pets. So going through the, I think there should be for fowl pet permit and licenses. I think that there should be closer watch on like a building proposal and hen housing. inspection permit to make sure the person who wants to buy the rooster or have the hens is abiding with the city code. For example, my neighbor has her hen house one foot from my fence, and it's supposed to be 15 feet from all fence lines, to make sure that the housing or the building is humane for the pets. a plan for keeping the property and the housing for the animals clean so that it's not attracting rats, bobcats, raccoons that were living in their house, and other creatures like rats for safety and health purposes. Within a dense population where housing is closer together, like single-family homes, Most HOAs just prohibit roosters altogether. But in places where there's no HOA, my first thought is that it should be illegal to have a rooster, at least, with large properties or farmland. maybe not so many things that you need to do to monitor that. There's a lot more details that I've come up with or ideas, and I realize there is an amendment process to codes and also a planning commission, and so we do plan to contact them as well. But we wanted to come and speak one more time, plant the seeds for change, and get back to you after we start learning more about the process. So thank you for listening. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Thank you. I did not see any additional hands, but I'll do one final. Go ahead and come forward, Ms. Cobb.

I'm Julie Copp, 164th place, Northeast 30th. And I'm calling, number one, about tree cutting permits. You always talk about keeping the canopy open. Let's have a big canopy. Let's have a promotion for canopies. I had 1 house across the street, get a permit and within a week. They cut 33 mature for trees down and the reason was she wanted her child to be able to play in the front yard, which is gravel and it's. Close to the road, which isn't appropriate when I spoke with her, they had a permit. She said, well, we really didn't want that. We just wanted the trees removed. So, when you talk about, and then next door. I called the city and they removed 2 mature for trees. They also finally got a permit and. They just didn't want it to hit their house. They weren't even that close to their house, but some branches fell on the roof when we had that storm. No damage, but it fell on the roof. So you have the permit. And last week, they were talking about having AI and it's going really fast. We're getting the permits through quickly. And I'm thinking, well, maybe the permits are going too quickly, because I can't imagine Bellevue really wanting to remove tall, mature fir trees. And one neighbor said, well, gee, that child will only be two and will use the yard maybe another five years. And that tree has been here for hundreds of years. So we're getting rid of our canopy for a two-year-old to play in the yard for maybe three years. I mean, I'm not sure this AI permitting, whether it's for housing, Apartments commercial, it sounds like it's going too fast. When I called about the permit, they went. Oh, yeah, we have a group that comes out and they assess it. Well, then, when we got reading about it, it said they may come out and assess it. And then when they finish, they may come out and check that they did what they're supposed to do. I. Okay, I'm concerned about that. I'm also concerned about the fire hazard with these high mixed housings where I now have 12 new homes and a dead end street. How are those 24 houses now going to get 2 cars? 48 cars now down a road that's dead in. I have a concern and so I was hoping that. We'd have a discussion about fire, because I have no idea how every street to Lake Sammamish is gonna get out safely.

Thank you for your comments. I think that was the end. I did not see any additional hands. Deputy Mayor, I'll turn it back to you.

Great. Thank you. I appreciate most all of the comments made tonight, and where appropriate, we'll be following up. So thank you all. With that, City Manager, I understand you have a short report for us this evening.

Yes, thank you. Deputy mayor, mayor and council members. Um, first I'd like to add my thoughts and concerns for the communities across Washington who are facing direct wildfire impacts. Um, as we can see today, um, here in our region, uh, we're starting to experience some of the smoke from those fires and we want the community to know that in, um, in the interest of health and safety for both our staff and the community, we did cancel a few events this evening. unfortunately our national night out event and movies in the park at downtown park so i want to thank thank the staff from our police department and our fire department our parks department for all the work that they put in to organize the events and hopefully we will have another movies in the park scheduled we do have one in crossroads coming up And hopefully the air quality will be better. But we want the community to know that we will be assessing this daily. And so they should watch out for announcements from us in case that we do need to reschedule them or cancel them. And those will be on our website. I also asked our Fire Chief Tate to join this evening at the table. to give some additional information about how Bellevue Fire Department is assisting in some of the currently impacted communities across the region, in fact. So with that, Chief Tate.

Thank you. Good evening Mayor Malacuti and Deputy Mayor Hamilton and honorable council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly with an update tonight on the wildfires and thank you for your comments at the start of council. Every year we plan ahead to assist our neighbors during wildland fire season. We utilize a balanced and measured approach that ensures the surface to the community in Bellevue here is unaffected while also providing support to our regional partners in need. Currently, we have 45 members with red card certifications, which is additional wild and firefighting training and our brush rate is in Spokane right now working with 3 firefighters. We have another firefighter at the paradise fire in Northeast Oregon and yet another in Ferry County, Washington. We are also standing by with 2 reserve fire engines with 3 firefighters each ready to go for the next formal request. I communicated with the Spokane Fire Chief yesterday and we connected their department with charitable resources through our Bellevue Fire Foundation to bring food to the crews and the evacuees out there. During this time of year, the dry weather and the wind create a very significant risk for fire. And I'd like to provide some actionable steps that people can take to protect their homes from wildfires. First off, removing vegetation from the roof gutters and around the home. There's a recommendation to install 8 inch metal mesh at all ventilation openings, except laundry and plumbing vents, including under decks and crawl spaces to avoid large embers traveling into those spaces. There's a recommendation that you trim your branches 10 feet away from your structures and nothing flammable within 5 feet of your homes. Using rock mulch or bare dirt instead of bark or rubber chips and then also keeping plants watered healthy and green will help reduce the risk in the homes. The Bellevue Fire Department has educators that can provide presentations for groups on various risks, including wildland fires, and they can also come out and do home assessments. And I'd like to just provide the access for that. If you go to the City of Bellevue website and search community risk reduction, There is a link on the side for outreach and presentation requests, and you can fill out a form to request either a presentation or a home assessment underneath residents and communities in that same section. There is a wildland tool kit that has a sign up for emergency alerts as well as many other tips to protect your home. I want to personally thank the City Council for providing support for the resources and training that allow us to protect this community and provide assistance to our regional partners. We are deeply grateful for the Bellevue Fire Foundation, the Bruce McCaw Foundation, Amazon, and the many other generous donors that helped us acquire the brush rig that's working hard in Spokane right now. Diane Carlson's support for this fire department is also to be noted. She spent the better part of a year in the early mornings visiting the fire stations and visiting all of our crews to better understand the challenges faced by our firefighters. Her support is felt by all my staff. I'm very proud of the firefighters who are out there on the front lines and those who stayed behind to cover their shifts. Our hearts go out to all those facing these dangers right now. We stand ready to support however we can. Thank you.

Thank you, that concludes the report.

Okay, great, thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar? I move to approve the consent calendar.

Second.

Any discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, the consent calendar is approved. We'll move on to the first study session item and ask the city manager to introduce it.

Mayor, council members, our first study session item is on the bridge housing project or the Bell Red TOD. Recently, the city offered up two of the city owned properties for affordable housing development. And tonight we're providing an update on the Bell Red TOD property that will provide, as you heard, a significant amount of new affordable housing, as well as space for community arts partners and artists. So to give you an update on the development agreement proposal, we have Jake Hesselgeser, Acting Director of Development Services, Leticia Walgren, Housing and Special Projects Manager, and Bianca Siegel, Office of Housing Director from the City Manager's Office.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Jake.

City Manager Carlson, good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council Members. It's great to be with you this evening to introduce this public-private partnership development agreement for the Bell Red Arts Project. Tonight, we are asking council to consider directing staff to enter into a development agreement negotiation process with Bridge Housing for the Bell Red Arts transit-oriented development site and to prepare the DA for a public hearing at a future meeting. The agenda this evening will include a little bit of project background. We'll talk a little bit about the process overview and what goes into a development agreement. And then we'll cover the specific development regulation modifications, which are in your packet this evening in the attachment, and also the public benefits that the project's seeking to deliver. And then we'll end with next steps in the schedule. With that, I will turn it over to Bianca for some project background.

Thank you. Good evening. So this site is located at 130th and spring right across from the light rail station there. This is city owned property. It was formerly an auto body shop and was purchased several years ago for interim parking and other transportation related needs. It has been made available for development for affordable housing and is a key piece of helping us to meet our affordable housing production goals. This site as well as one other city-owned site were advertised for development partners last spring. This is a 100% affordable housing project with a significant arts component as well. Last summer, after a careful review process, the selection team selected Bridge Housing for this development opportunity. And we've been working with them ever since. Two months ago now, you approved on your consent calendar a pre-development agreement that sets the general terms and expectations for the development, as well as the draft ground lease for this project, as the city will retain ownership of the property and lease it to Bridge for the development project.

Great stepping into a little bit of the process and context setting for what goes into a development agreement. I know the council knows this, but for the viewing public as well, a development agreement is really a voluntary legally binding contract between the city and either a property owner developer. It's broadly authorized under Washington state law, and it establishes the development regulations and standards specific to a project. COUNCIL DOES HAVE THE AUTHORIZING APPROVAL AND THE DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT WOULD RUN WITH THE LAND MEANING IN PERPETUITY IF THAT LAND WERE SOLD AND REALLY THE PURPOSE IS TO PROVIDE REGULATORY CERTAINTY FOR DEVELOPERS AND DOES ALLOW THE CITY TO SECURE PUBLIC BENEFITS BEYOND WHAT WOULD BE NORMALLY ALLOWED UNDERNEATH THE LAND USE CODE OR THE DEVELOPMENT REGULATIONS. THIS NEW PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP OR P3DA PROCESS HERE WAS ESTABLISHED BY THE COUNCIL EARLIER THIS YEAR WHEN YOU ALL ADOPTED A LAND USE CODE AMENDMENT DOES ALLOW FOR GREATER ZONING AND DEVELOPMENT FLEXIBILITY WHEN THE CITY HAS PROPERTY OWNERSHIP OR PROVIDES SIGNIFICANT FUNDING FOR A PROJECT AND THEN IT DOES SUPPORT DELIVERING KEY CITY POLICY PRIORITIES IN THIS CASE AFFORDABLE HOUSING BUT OTHERS COULD INCLUDE SUSTAINABILITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. In terms of roles and responsibilities, the development services director and the department are really the lead negotiators when it comes to a development agreement, taking guidance from the Council along the way. We would also be responsible for all the subsequent permit review. The office of housing in this case is representing the city as the property owner. So really the intermediary between development services and bridge housing, the developer. Bridges the developer and would be responsible for subsequent permit applications. And then again, city councils, the authorizing body, and would have the final decision making authority when it comes to the development agreement. In terms of decision criteria, when it comes to actually approving that development agreement, the land use code specifies a few conditions. The 1st, and foremost that it is authorized underneath the land use code. In this case, it is also that the development agreement must comply with all applicable requirements of the land use code and city code, except is modified underneath the development agreement. It must be consistent with the vision, goals, and policies of the comp plan, and then it would result in a development that includes public benefits beyond what would be provided without the development agreement. So to talk about modifications and the public benefits of this specific request, I'll turn it over to Leticia.

Thank you. So this slide here represents the public benefits that we're exchanging for the proposed modifications. So the big picture items are going to be affordable housing, transit oriented development, and artist focused community space. So all three of these public benefits track back to the comprehensive plan, the affordable housing strategy, and the diversity ADVANTAGE PLAN. AND THEN THE NEXT SLIDE WILL CONNECT THE PUBLIC BENEFITS TO THE REQUESTED MODIFICATIONS. SO ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE SCREEN YOU'LL SEE THE REQUESTED MODIFICATIONS WHICH ARE A NUMBER OF MODIFICATIONS THAT WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO NEST UNDER FOUR CATEGORIES THERE ON YOUR LEFT. And on the right side of the page, we have the directly connected public benefits. So the first category is dimensional requirements, and this essentially will govern or determine how much space a structure takes on a site or how a building is sized or massed. And so the highest impact dimensional requirement modifications are for height and increased floor area ratio, or FAR. And those are anticipated to allow 60 additional units over what the code would allow under a strict application of the code. And then another benefit to the modification of dimensional requirements would be larger floor plates. And so we are really looking for more family sized units. That was identified as a need within the affordable housing strategy. Also identified as a need in the affordable housing strategy are units for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And just really quickly, I want to correct some information that's in the agenda. I think the agenda says 40 units, but it's actually 24. I think that was a typo. The next category is building and site design. And so the modifications requested here really are mostly related to the pedestrian realm. And so they would offer design flexibility that would activate the ground floor use as kind of a gateway to the Bell Red Arch District. by providing public gathering spaces and supporting arts visibility, which is also a comprehensive plan priority. The next modification is commercial parking reduction. And so the parking reduction would be roughly about a 75% reduction to what is the prescriptive requirement in the code. And that would really lend itself to the increased housing density near transit and a reduced overall project cost, which we would anticipate to contribute to the long-term feasibility of the affordable housing. LASTLY IS THE ALLOWED GROUND FLOOR USES. THIS IS NOT AMENDING THE CURRENTLY ALLOWED GROUND FLOOR USES WHICH ARE USES SUCH AS RETAIL, PERSONAL SERVICES, OFFICE SPACE. THIS WOULD JUST BE IN ADDITION TO THE EXISTING LIST WHICH WOULD BE ADDING ARTS AND PLACEMAKER SPACES TO THE ALLOWED GROUND FLOOR USES. SO EACH MODIFICATION IS ANTICIPATED TO DIRECTLY DELIVER A PUBLIC BENEFIT.

great so i'll conclude us here with next steps and a bit of the schedule uh just kind of rewinding back to 2025 that request for qualifications and the selection of a development partner council did take action on approval of the ground lease and pre-development agreement back in june we did receive a formal sipa application with the request for this development agreement and notice that application on june 29th we are here tonight in front of you for initiation We would anticipate issuance of the SEPA threshold determination sometime in August. I believe we're targeting around August 19th. And then that would allow us to come back for a public hearing and adoption if council would consider to direct us to do that right after the council break. And then we would move into entitlement permitting likely in quarter four after this. And with that, we are here asking that council consider directing staff to enter into a development agreement negotiation process with Bridge Housing for the Bell Red Arts COD site and prepare the DA for a public hearing at a future meeting. And with that, I'll turn it back to you, Deputy Mayor.

Great. Thank you, Bianca, Jake, Leticia. I appreciate the presentation. I think this is an exciting project and thrilled to see us considering it. And I'm really confident under your leadership in the direction of Bridge Housing, who certainly has a long proven track record. of producing and managing affordable housing projects. And with that, let's go around the dais. Council Member Sumida Wiria.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Congratulations. This is our first project with this type of partnership, right? So I think setting the ground and the framework is so important to know how to showcase the public benefit. Thank you for the hard work. Also, thank you, Bianca, for responding to my question so fast. Thank you so much. I felt this is just special because it's a transit-oriented project also that's focused on the 30 to 60 AMI. That's an area that's strongly needed. So thank you for making sure that's the, because Bianca actually explained to me it's 60%, and then they split between 50% 30 that that is so i think diverse and also flexible for the community especially i'm grateful for the artists now they can actually focus on creating beautiful things for this world which we desperately need at no cost for them so they can focus on the important things um i don't have any questions as because they answered all my questions already thank you awesome moving along council member breyer thank you deputy mayor

I'll start with the fact that I remember arguing with my parents about pursuing the arts and they told me the arts were just a hobby and I'll never be able to find a place to live. And I just feel so vindicated because I could be like, actually, the city of Bellevue is doing everything to create affordable housing and attract artists. So thank you so much for the work that you're doing. I appreciate that there's public benefits. I think it was slide 13. You don't have to go back, but it said in particular some of the conditions were public space dedicated to community building. The end goal of this, I understand, is going to be the units created in affordable homes. If we can incorporate a courtyard design, that would be awesome. If not, totally fine. Regardless of how the design is being manifested, I am just very excited and very supportive. So thank you. And I'll hand it back to you, Deputy Mayor.

Okay, very good. Council Member Robinson.

That sounded like a radio show. I'm so happy with this. This is everything I love. It's about the people. It's about art. It's about affordable housing. It's about small business. I'm really pleased. Plus, I love a good DA. I love getting... good outcomes for all the permitting that we do. I just want to give kudos to Maria Huey who spoke at public comment. You know, I often brag about our community and what an educated and gifted community we have in Bellevue and people who really care and get involved. And here we have somebody who is the former chair of the Bellevue Arts Commission She's a founder of a design and architecture consulting agency. She's co-founder and chair of the Bellred Arts District Community Alliance, and she's director of housing for Habitat for Humanity of Snohomish County. I mean, what an amazing... background to be participating in making this happen. And so I'm just so gratified to have Maria and other community members working with youth staff doing such a good job to bring a project like this to fruition. So I'm really excited to see this happen. And I hope it comes in sooner than later, maybe as fast as the briars coming in because we're working so well with everybody. So thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Newenhouse. Thank you so much, Deputy Mayor. Yeah, exciting opportunity. Just got a couple of questions, but, you know, this is something that... is just perfect for the Bell Reds Arts District. And my first question is just about, obviously it's not exclusively for artists, but how are we gonna track that, what is developed will meet artists' needs, whatever that might be. I know we talked about this a little bit during our briefing, Could you speak to a little bit in terms of what the requirements might be, what special steps we're taking to attract artists to this area beyond the fact that it is affordable housing? But I think there'll be some special requirements there. So can you speak to that a little bit?

bit of language about this in the pre-development agreement that that came to the council previously and that talks sort of lays out an array of options but that could include things like more durable finishes in the units looking at you know ceiling heights that sort of thing the homes would not be reserved exclusively for for us as you mentioned but but certainly we would also anticipate through the lease up process and through partnership with the arts organization that we would definitely be getting the word out to local artists to drive interest in the building. But yeah, we expect that it'll be a really vibrant community.

How do we do that, get the word out?

Sure. We'd work with Bridge and their organization in the lease-up process. Certainly, we can try to use city resources to communications to get the word out as well. But as the developer, they would be primarily responsible for that, and we can join in.

Okay. But the city, and I'm assuming tapping the Bell Red Arts District, they could get the word out as well, right? That's right. Okay, great. If I read the memo correctly, it states that bridge must secure the financing and finalize the affordability levels before the ground lease is signed. So what specific enforcement mechanisms does the city have to If Bridge cannot deliver the targeted, what is it, the 140, 172 affordable units, and then it's 24 units, right? You mentioned that was a correction of the persons with disabilities, not 40. So what mechanisms do we have if things go sideways?

Sure. Do you want to talk about the DA rule? OK, I'll start. So there are a number of places. One is the DA itself. I'll let Jake and Leticia address that more specifically. And then through the funding, we anticipate the project will apply for city funding sources as well as other county, state sources. And so there are conditions that are typically attached to that funding for certain levels of affordability. or certain unit types as well. So there are actually multiple locations where there's oversight and control of what the project will deliver. That also includes the ground lease, which sets the broad terms for the project as well, and then the DA itself.

And then the development agreement would set the conditions for the project in terms of the flexibility and development regulations and those public benefits. Would also subsequently recorded covenants against the property, which would run with the property. And then through our permit entitlement permit review process, we would be ensuring that the project is delivering that. And then all the way through the construction permitting phase.

So if there is any last minute shifts or change of direction, what is the mechanism for bridge to alert the city of Bellevue?

in terms of changes to the development proposal or the development agreement per se?

The development agreement, I guess.

The development agreement does allow for a revision process. We've been very deliberate in trying to work preliminarily with Bridge Housing to really get the conditions out there on the table initially and then receive feedback from you all here tonight. So we're feeling pretty good about the conditions that we've put together with them so far and moving forward.

Okay, great. That was the only other question I had then. Thank you so much. Excited to move this project forward.

Thank you. Mayor Malik.

I am also very excited about this project. We are making Bellevue more affordable for folks. So very exciting. Thank you. Uh, yes, the whole department, beyond coverage, housing and everyone. Uh, I have just kind of maybe a follow up on councilman your house question. Uh, we are, uh, giving all of these kind of, um. Design and land use flexibility. Uh, right now. But, for example, the minimum affordable units is not finalized. I think it mentioned from 140 to 172 or 24 units, at least 24 units kind of for people with disabilities. Uh, so not even the project goes sideways that maybe that was a councilman you and has asked, but can you walk us through on how the development agreement? Uh, we'll tie that code for flexibility to the public benefits that are actually delivered. And what would happen if those benefits are reduced by a lot later in the process?

So maybe I'll start and then I'll ask maybe Bianca and Leticia to chime in a little bit here. Essentially, as I was explaining previously, Mayor, the development agreement would outline the conditions and development regulations specific to the project. So in effect, it then becomes the code that we are essentially enforcing to ensure that those public benefits are actually realized. So the things that you see before you in the agenda memo here tonight provide kind of that high level of what's in the development agreement in terms of the number of units, affordability level, so on and so forth. We would bring back that development agreement for the public hearing so you can see all the details of that drafted agreement before you would take final action on that. But essentially it does become the code. So just like the code that we enforce on any permit application through development permitting and review and inspection processes, this DA would become that kind of legally binding document that we would adhere to.

So you come back with more accurate final product that we sign.

Yep. We would bring back the development agreement in full that would include the modifications that you see in your attachment today and what you've seen in the agenda memo and all the legalese from the attorneys in terms of the final agreement before you would take action on that.

Yep. Thank you so much.

Great, thank you. Okay, yeah, I mean, I really like this project and I think what's contemplated here is the perfect use of surplus land. Advancing the city's affordable housing goals and supporting the vision of the Bell Red Arts District are critically important goals for the city and this project helps us achieve both. There are no more important projects than those that support the creation of family size units, so I'm especially pleased to see them focused on with this project. And considering the critical need for family size units and housing generally in the city, I hope we do everything possible to help move the project through the entitlement and design phases and into construction as soon as possible. just in that regard, I'm just curious what are some ways that we can speed up the process so bridge can break ground even sooner.

I'll start. So we do feel like we're adequately staffed. We're always looking at what's coming through the pipeline for affordable housing projects, 100% affordable housing projects. We do kind of go the extra mile by providing expedited permitting, which The council initiated through the next right work for affordable housing. So we provide dedicated project management on those projects led by Leticia's team. We've had good success in those project delivery schedules in the past, and we would expect the same for this one. So that's one way that we would do it. And I know the Office of Housing will be working in partnership with us to ensure that we're making milestones and hitting those along the way.

Okay, great. I mean, obviously we're in a big hurry, so please do all you can and let us know whenever there is anything we can do to help speed things up. I do think having the city's A team, Development Services, the Office of Housing, Jake and Bianca, Leticia, working with one of our premier affordable housing suppliers and managers certainly gives me a lot of confidence. Again, I think this is just really an amazing project and one that the city can really be proud of. i think the list of public benefits that come with the project are amazing certainly as i mentioned the family size units the 24 units supporting folks with disabilities dedicated arts and cultural space public open space all within close proximity to light rail i think really amazing and obviously this council has a critical role in the process and i'm equally confident that we're ready to do our part So completely in favor of moving the DA forward and supportive of the development modifications that have been requested. On that note, if there are any additional modifications that would add more units to the project, I think we should consider them so long as they don't slow down the project generally. So thrilled to support it. And with that, I'd appreciate a motion.

Negotiations with bridge housing for the Bell Ridge Arts transit oriented development site and prepared the development agreement for a public hearing at a future meeting second Any discussion?

Can I just add one more thing? I remember was remiss and not commending bridge housing for being such a good partner Really have a good history with them and excited to do this project.

So Okay, all those in favor say aye aye Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries. We are at 7.12.

Do we want to do a break now or go for another one?

Okay, with that, we will take a break and be back here in 10 minutes at 7.22. Thank you. Our back and city manager, please, if you would, with our next study session item.

Thank you Mayor, Deputy Mayor, City Council. Tonight the second study session is on the utility connection charges and improvements to those. The utility department in their ongoing effort to improve and update the city's structures for utility rates and charges are bringing you tonight a recommended improvement from the Environmental Services Commission to propose some changes to the utility connection charges. They're joined by the chair of the Environmental Services Commission, Ken Wan. And then from the department, we have the director, Lucy Liu, Matt Hobson, fiscal manager, Dwight Smith, development review manager. Oh, that's it. That's from the department. So with that, I will hand it over to Lucy.

Thank you, Ms. Carlson. Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council members. Tonight, we are bringing recommendations for utility connection charge improvements for your consideration. And as Diane mentioned, these recommendations are part of the city's ongoing efforts to update our utility charges to address affordability, improve customer equity, and to make our charges easier to understand. Tonight we are seeking your direction to simplify and update, excuse me, to simplify and update how we determine and collect utility connection fees. We have heard from our customers that there are some challenges with how we currently determine and collect utility connection fees, and the Environmental Services Commission have studied these challenges and developed some policy recommendations to address them. with your guidance. We will bring back legislation to implement the Commission's recommendations we are presenting tonight as part of the upcoming biennial budget process. So here is our agenda tonight. We will first review the principles that guide our work and provide some background on our utility connection fees. Next, we will review what we have heard from the community and some of the challenges with how we currently administer our connection fees. Then we will review the three changes the Environmental Services Commission is recommending, how each recommendation addresses the specific pain points raised to us from the community, and the fiscal impact if all three proposed changes were to be approved. Chair Wan will then share the Commission's recommendation and what they learned through the briefing staff provided to the Commission. And then finally, we will review the timeline and the next steps to implement the recommendations if you direct us to proceed. Before we get into the background on our connection fees, let's talk about the goals that guide our work in this area. First is supporting affordability, which you will see represented by the piggy bank icon during our presentation tonight. As we consider changes to the connection fees, we want to be thoughtful about how those changes affect customers that want to connect to the city's utility systems, especially those who may already be feeling cost pressures. Second is transparency, which you will see represented by the paper icon on the upcoming slides. Our connection fees calculation methodology should be clear and transparent so that customers can easily see what they are paying for based on the demand that they are placing on the city's water, sewer, and stormwater systems. And third is fairness and equity, which you will see represented by the balance scale icon. A key goal is to ensure the properties that are connecting to the city's utility systems are paying their fair share of system cost. It is also important to note that the proposed changes have the same goal for cost recovery as our existing methodology. The key differences are centered around the timing of when those fees are collected and how they are computed for individual new connections. The proposed changes that you will see tonight are consistent with industry best practices and common practice amongst utilities in our region. Public utilities like Bellevue Utilities evaluate their connection charges from time to time to ensure that they keep up with change in the type of local development as well as with industry best practices. Given that Bellevue's existing connection fee structure was established in the mid 1990s, the city has an opportunity to right-size the utility connection charges based on the development that we are seeing today and what we are anticipating in the future. And so next Dwight will provide an overview of our connection fees that we have today.

Thank you, Lucy. To aid our discussion tonight, I want to provide a brief overview of the two utility charges that we are discussing. First is the Capital Recovery Charge, or CRC. This is a buy-in fee that helps new customers pay their share of an existing utility system. Think of it this way. If a new 50-unit apartment building is constructed, the water and sewer system must be built large enough to serve all 50 units from day one. even if only 10 units are occupied at first. The larger system capacity must be built up front, and the capital recovery charge is how each new existing property pays for its share of the pre-built capacity. Second is a direct facility connection charge, or DFCC. This charge helps recover the cost of utility expansion projects, such as extending a sewer line for new developments that directly benefit from those improvements. While Bellevue's utility system has continued to evolve, these connection charges have not been updated since the 1990s. When the city was still rapidly expanding and acquiring utility systems, industry best practice is to regularly review both how these charges are calculated and the costs they recover. Today, Bellevue is largely built out, and development patterns have changed. This makes it the right time to update the connection charge methodology. So it better reflects today's development and addresses community feedback. Next community feedback has been a priority in developing the proposed changes. We are recommending tonight. These recommendations are a direct result of what we've heard from the development community and utility customers about. the complexity, timing, and affordability of today's utility connection charges. These recommendations are a direct result of what we've heard. As part of community outreach, we held a listening session in April with Bellevue's development committee to gather feedback on the proposed updates. Following that discussion, we prepared and shared an engagement report summarizing what we heard. Since then, the community has been able to review the proposed changes online and continue asking questions, providing feedback through an online form. Furthermore, our customer service team regularly hears from residents who are paying unexpected connection charges. This direct resident response helped identify many of the issues we're discussing today. Based on this feedback, we're proposing these changes that will simplify how capital recovery charges are calculated and when they're collected, as well as address the challenges with recovering the cost of utility expansion projects that directly benefit new connections. And next, Matt will review the proposed changes.

Great, thanks Dwight. So I'm gonna review those three changes. First, let's take a look at the direct facility connection charge. As a reminder, these charges recover the cost of localized utility expansion projects that are constructed by the city and that directly benefit a limited number of new connections. One of the key concerns that we heard from the development community was that the current approach can create affordability challenges for those seeking to connect. Because these are localized charges, the project costs are often spread over relatively few property owners, as few as three or four, which can result in a charge in excess of $100,000 per connection. We've seen property owners choose to stay on septic rather than pay this charge. And when that happens, the city is unable to recover the cost of these projects in a timely manner. And those properties may also be limited in future development potential. Since 1976, the city has recovered about $22 million of the $42 million invested in these types of projects, leaving the remaining costs to be unrecovered. So our proposal tonight is to eliminate direct facility connection charges and instead recover the cost of these new connections through the capital recovery charge. This would spread the cost across all new connections which results in a relatively small increase to the capital recovery charge, while also eliminating this large upfront cost for these local communities. So as an example, TODAY A NEW SINGLE FAMILY HOME IN ONE OF THESE AREAS THAT WOULD BE PART OF A SEWER EXTENSION PROJECT WOULD PAY ABOUT $130,000 IN A DIRECT FACILITY CONNECTION CHARGE AND THAT'S IN ADDITION TO ABOUT $7,000 IN CAPITAL RECOVERY CHARGES. UNDER THE PROPOSED APPROACH the direct facility connection charge would be eliminated and the combined capital recovery charge would increase by about $200 for all new connections. There was general support for this change as it's expected to encourage development, support future utility expansion projects and improve affordability for new connections. It also allows the city to expedite cost recovery while continuing to align with the policy that growth pays for its equitable share of the system. Now let's look at the second recommendation. And this is aimed at simplifying our capital recovery charge calculation to make it easier for and make it easier, more predictable and easier to understand. As a quick recall, capital recovery charges are a buy-in charge and required to assess the equitable share of the system based on the additional demand that each new connection places on the system. The concern we heard from the community was that the current capital recovery charge is difficult to understand and difficult to predict. Developers told us they value a simpler, more transparent approach that provides greater certainty earlier on in the planning process. Today, water and sewer capital recovery charges are calculated based on a factor known as single family residential equivalence, which takes into account the number of dwelling units or the number of fixtures, which means sinks and toilets and whatnot. While this is a rational basis for the charge, it can be complicated to understand and to administer. The costs that are calculated from this method can increase with no limit to the maximum charge, which negatively affects some of our multifamily housing properties. Our proposal is to simplify this calculation and base it on the size of the water meter. This is also an accurate way to calculate water and sewer connection fees because it is based on the demand that each connection places on the system and provides a transparent and equitable cost structure very early on in the planning process for development. This method is also used, it's a common practice amongst all of our regional peer utilities, and it's the same method used by Cascade Water Alliance to assess their regional capital facility charges. The proposed approach would make connection charges more predictable while also preserving that equity. On the next slide, I'll provide some examples of the before and after impacts. For these examples, we're using 2,026 fee levels. And as Lucy mentioned, it's important to note the cost recovery goal is the same overall for these two approaches. The key difference between the current and proposed methodologies is the calculation for specific connections. Some connections would pay more under the proposed approach, while others would pay less. Looking at the first row, we expect that the proposed connection fees for the majority of new connections, those for single family residential customers, will generally be on par with the current charge. For the second example, we're using a health care clinic as an example of a commercial connection. For this example, it would result in an increase in the connection charge. And while this example shows an increase, it's important to note that the city has such a wide variety of commercial connections in the city. This is not meant to be a typical impact. It's meant more to provide one example of a wide variable impact to commercial connections. The third example is a mid-sized multifamily complex, and the fee impact would be similar to what we currently charge for that connection. And then finally, the last example is for a large multifamily complex. We anticipate for these examples to see the most pronounced change with this proposal. These properties currently pay a connection charge that scales up based on the number of dwelling units. And as a result, if we were to base it instead on the size of the meter, in this example, the charge would be 72% lower. The final proposed change addresses feedback we've heard from customers and from some of the development community, and it relates to the timing and the transparency of the connection charge. Bellevue has a regionally unique practice of assessing the connection charge as part of a customer's utility bill over a 10-year period. This appears as an unexpected additional cost for many of our customers. given that it has nothing to do with the usage of their services. And then sometimes the person paying this charge is a tenant. They don't even own the property. And so it comes as a surprise to them and they have very little control over affecting that charge. Customers often have a negative perception of this practice because they either perceive it as something that they're paying for twice or something that should have been paid for as part of the development of the property. As of June, we have about 1,000 accounts that are currently in their midst of the 10-year cycle repaying this charge, and about three out of every four are single-family residential customers. We're proposing to shift the timing of when we collect the charge from being collected as part of the utility bill over 10 years to being paid for at the time of permit issuance, which is consistent with how all other development fees are paid by developers. This creates greater transparency to the customer as they will have more financing options, for example, to include it in the cost of their mortgage. Now, in situations where the entity developing the property and the person occupying the property are not the same, this does change who is responsible for paying the fee. If the change is approved by council, we would continue to explore administrative procedures that provide some flexible options for developers to pay it either at permit issuance or some other stage in the permitting process. So next slide. Let's just talk briefly about the fiscal impacts. We anticipate that the fiscal impact of these proposed changes will be managed within available resources. They will not have an adverse impact on utility rates. The city's utility system is generally built out at this point, so new utility connections are far less common than they were decades ago. And the use of connection charges revenue is limited. We can only use it for reimbursement of capital projects. So it cannot be used to pay for operating costs like wholesale water supply costs to Cascade Water Alliance or for sewer treatment costs to King County. Because of this limited use and because we don't have that many new connections in Bellevue relative to in the past, utility connection charges represent a relatively small revenue source for capital projects. As a comparison, capital charge revenue last year was about $5 million. By comparison, we collected over $200 million in utility rate revenue. So the best way to characterize the fiscal impact of the proposed changes is that they will likely improve the timing of when the projects are constructed by the city and when the equitable share of those project costs are reimbursed by new connections. So to summarize, we're proposing three changes to the connection charges. First, to discontinue the use of development facility direct facility connection charges and instead incorporate those costs into the capital recovery charge structure. Second, proposing to update the water and sewer capital recovery charge methodology so that it is based on water meter size. And third, we're proposing to move the collection of the capital recovery charge away from the utility bill and to be collected at the time of permit issuance. With that said, I'll turn it over to Lucy to wrap things up.

Thank you, Matt. I'd like to just take a moment and thank the Environmental Services Commission for their work on this important topic. The Commission's role is to bring community perspective and thoughtful analysis to complex utility policy decisions. And they have done exactly that through their review of the utility connection charges. Chair Wan and the Commission has spent significant time evaluating opportunities to improve affordability, transparency, and equity while ensuring that we continue to recover the costs associated with serving new connections. With that, I'll turn it over to Chair Hwang to share the Commission's perspective and recommendation developed through the review and discussion with staff.

Thank you Lucy and a good evening council members after 2 meetings where the commission received detailed briefings from staff review the current connection charge structure and discussed opportunities for him to improve transparency, affordability and equity. The environmental services commission is unanimously recommending these changes to council. First, the Commission recommends discontinuing the future use of the DFCCs and recover utility expansion project costs, including the unrecovered cost portion of existing DFCCs into the city's water, sewer, and storm and surface water capital recovery charges. This would simplify the connection charge structure and make it easier for customers in the development community to understand how costs are recovered. Second, the Commission recommends replacing the current single family equivalent methodology used to calculate water and sewer capital recovery charges with a meter capacity equivalent approach. This methodology more directly reflects the capacity and demand associated with a new connection and creates a more consistent and equitable way to assess the charges. And finally, the commission recommends changing when capital recovery charges are collected by moving it from the current utility billing process to a 1 time charge assessed at permit issuance. This change would improve transparency by making the cost known earlier in the development process and align the CRC collection with other development related fees. Collectively, these recommendations support a simpler, more transparent, and more equitable connection charge system while maintaining the principle that growth pays for growth. The Commission appreciates the work staff have done to evaluate these options and engage with utility customers and the development community. And we look forward to the Council's consideration of these recommendations.

Thank you, Chair Wan. So the timeline showing here reflects the implementation approach if the proposed changes are approved. The January 2027 effective date will provide the time that is needed to prepare our systems, our processes, as well as communications to ensure a smooth transition. With your direction, between now and the end of the year, staff will focus on public awareness with both utility customers as well as the development community, update our administrative procedures and prepare our customer service and our permitting teams to support implementation if adopted in November. So in closing, staff is seeking Council direction to prepare an ordinance implementing the Environmental Services Commission's recommendations to amend the Bellevue City Code and update the utility connection charge structure. If directed to proceed, staff will complete the operational preparation and community communications that are needed for implementation as part of the upcoming budget process. We appreciate the commission's work and the community's feedback that helped shape these recommendations. And that concludes our presentation. I'll turn it back over to you, Deputy Mayor.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Wong, Lucy, Matt, Dwight. I appreciate the presentation. In line with current trends, this effort strikes me as another example of city streamlining processes that increase transparency, efficiency, and equity. Certainly anxious to hear from my colleagues, and we'll start with Councilmember Newenhouse.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Yeah, just I think incredible effort by utilities, by the Environmental Services Commission. In fact, I'm not sure there's ever been a year in which the Environmental Services Commission has done so much to advance transparency, to advance affordability and fairness. So I'm just incredibly proud of this commission for all the work that you have done here with the great guidance and great reporting and data collecting and just overall incredible job by staff. And I don't say that lightly just because I think we're in a time where we need this more than ever, you know, when affordability is top of mind. And not only did we address, you know, for ratepayers last time, now we're looking at making it more fair for developers especially, and especially for multifamily development, which As a council, it's so incredibly important right now as we want to encourage that and encourage more housing and affordable housing, et cetera. The vast difference in those connection fees for those larger buildings and more units, that could be the difference between a unit that's affordable or not affordable. So, along with, you know, the fact that it's going to be more predictable as well, which was a big driver for this too, so that they could understand how that fee was coming about, I think is really important. But, you know, I think when you start with those kind of, you know, That guide or, I don't know, framework would probably be the best way to describe it in terms of looking at the affordability, the transparency, the fairness, and then looking at it through that equitable lens has really just brought us to a really great place. I've heard great things about the outreach, not only to residents, but then also to the development community as well. And then I know you're going to go back out for additional outreach after this. I had a question about that. How does that look different than the first time? Now you're going to go back out a second time. Are we talking to the same folks in addition to additional developers and additional residents. Talk to me a little bit about how that looks and how that's different to ensure that we're gonna be reaching the greatest number of folks and making sure that the recommendations and the guidelines going forward, we're hitting the mark. And speaking of guidelines, the other piece of this that we shouldn't forget too is that we're getting more in line with best practices and more in line with what our regional peers are doing as well. And I think that says a lot to this work as well. But I'll let you go ahead and answer that question.

So the outreach that we have done to date with the development community is really to, we did a listening session. We went back to them and reviewed the three proposals that we are recommending to provide additional opportunities to provide additional feedback to help us form these recommendations. We will move from that if Council direct us to proceed. What we will do is we will then reach back out to the development community via the Bellevue Development Community and we will find other ways to reach the broader development community just so that there's awareness that this change is coming so that there are no surprises as we prepare to make this change at the beginning of the year in 27. for our customers. We have been hearing from them for many years as far as the challenges that they have shared. And so that was something that we have been listening along the way. What we will do in terms of public awareness is to actually then reach out to them through a variety of ways to get the word out that we are making this change so that it is just to inform them that this change is coming. And then there's some good news that that's coming, and that is that the new connections, or they will no longer be paying the connection charges on their utility bill for the new connections that will be happening beginning in 2027. So we're switching from input to inform the recommendation to just make sure that there's good awareness to prepare for the change that is coming. For the development community, we will look at options to see about what flexibility we can look at. First two things, to gauge how much interest for flexibility of collecting the capital recovery charge at permit issuance versus at another time during the permit process to gauge the level of interest to determine if flexibility is needed and how we might be able to address that.

Fantastic. Yeah, no surprises is always a great thing. But I also think repetition is also really important in this case. Not everybody always gravitates to what's happening in their utilities department or changes with that when they get a mailer or they see something. So I think, you know, multiple... instances where we can share these changes and how it's going to benefit parties across the board, I think is going to be really, really, really helpful. So I can't say enough good things about this. Again, at the right time where it aligns with our goals and it aligns with hopefully making an impact in terms of affordability in our community as well. So thank you all for your great work and especially the commission. Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Thank you for making this simplified because we know that a simplified process always making the goal more focused to helping the community. And I'm really grateful for the chair to spending time and making it so efficient just in two meetings. Thank you. That's amazing. I just have a few clarified questions. I sent you a long list of questions. I'm very nerd about these things. You don't have to come back to all of them. But there is two questions I just kind of want to clarify because we are making a motion tonight. One of them is about, I think it's on slide, let's see. It's on slide nine. Can you help me to kind of understand? Because when I'm looking, I love that the single family and the multifamily, they're staying pretty close to range. And the multifamily is becoming more affordable to connection because it's lower, significant lower. But for health care clinics, I think it's probably the same area as a restaurant, a dental office, similar kind of small footprint businesses that have a lot of plumbing and then very small, thin margins to start up, right? So if we're increasing 2.53% of the connection, like how can you kind of help me to like, how are they going to be educated on like the price change? And how can I plan ahead about affordability of actually like starting a business?

So as part of our outreach, what we will do is get information on the new methodology. And so that should hopefully then give the information that is needed for the new connections that are coming beginning in 2027. A part of what we're hoping to also provide some education on is to INFORMATION TO HELP NEW INFORMATION TO HELP NEW INFORMATION TO HELP NEW CONNECTIONS TO MAKE SURE THAT CONNECTIONS TO MAKE SURE THAT CONNECTIONS TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY'RE RIGHT SIZING THEIR THEY'RE RIGHT SIZING THEIR THEY'RE RIGHT SIZING THEIR METERS AS WELL. METERS AS WELL. METERS AS WELL. AND SO THAT ALSO WILL HELP YOU. AND SO THAT ALSO WILL HELP YOU. AND SO THAT ALSO WILL HELP YOU. WE'RE HOPING THAT THESE CHANGES WE'RE HOPING THAT THESE CHANGES WE'RE HOPING THAT THESE CHANGES WILL ALSO INCENTIVIZE SOME WILL ALSO INCENTIVIZE SOME WILL ALSO INCENTIVIZE SOME DEVELOPERS IN LOOKING INTO MORE DEVELOPERS IN LOOKING INTO MORE DEVELOP appliances, fixtures, which will also help with affordability. So that we will be mindful of that in the awareness outreach that we are going to be doing for the remainder of the years to get that information out there.

Thank you. And is there room to work with the small business concierge services? And so when the group is helping somebody to plan a business in Bellevue, they can actually have a full picture, like, you know, since this is the process we're going to make and how it's going to become different. Because I think the last thing I would want is when people want to start a business, they evaluate the cost, the initial cost. And then that, when they compare with other cities, it scares them away. And I think having the small business concierge, having a full picture of them, what's the long-term benefit, would be really helpful. Make sure that we stay attractive and also always welcoming for businesses like that.

be happy to see how we can make sure we get the information out to small businesses.

Thank you. And my last question is, let's see. I think my next question is more about the option of paying upfront for the lump sum in the beginning or paying over 10 years. Did I get it wrong? Because right now, you're paying overtime for 10 years for the lump sum. How, when we're doing the public awareness, how can we communicate effectively with the people who are already paying for the lump sum or their neighbors or their future planning thinking about? How can we share the differences, the benefit of paying the lump sum? Because I'm just thinking off my head, what if somebody don't have the lump sum to pay? And then versus pay your credit card overtime, right? So it's like a I think it's the balance of figuring out what is feasible to do. How can we share that with the community?

Sure. So right now, the new connections are paying over a 10-year period. For connections beginning next year, under these changes, they will no longer have that surprise charge on their utility bills. So that's the good news. the fee will be paid up front. We certainly will be getting information out on what that allows them to do is actually it allows the developer or the property owner to actually look at that as a capital cost and so that avails them to financing options. through their mortgage is one example, but that having, we've heard that having that cost upfront will actually facilitate more financing options that could be available to them. So we will make sure to get the information out on that.

Oh, that's great. I love that the developers are thinking ahead of that. Thank you so much for everything.

Council Member Robinson.

Thank you, Vice City Mayor. So this looks great. I really appreciate the thoughtful work on this. And Chair Wan, thank you for your and the commission's work as well. I just had one question. Have we run this by, actually, I guess, two questions. Have we run it by the master builders to get their opinion on this?

So master builders association are part of the Bellevue development committee as well. And so they were present in the hearing.

Perfect. And then how does this impact developments like the horse farm? Can you, do you know off the top of your head?

The horse farm.

Because they're the development on, I think it's 140th and right across from the golf course.

Are you referring to a situation where So the recommendations that we are presenting tonight only applies to investments that are paid by the city, so infrastructure that is paid by the city, by city projects. If you're referring to situations where private development does an extension that benefits properties beyond their own property. We have a latecomers tool that is still a tool, but this does not apply to latecomers. That is still a good tool in situations where private development makes that investment. It allows them to recoup a portion of that cost. Okay.

Thank you, Lucy. That was exactly what I was asking. Appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Councilmember Breyer.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I'll keep my comments brief and just begin with extending my gratitude. Conducting this complex and cross-functional collaborative work is not easy. And moreover, building predictable, scalable, and reproducible systems is not, I wouldn't say it's native to government, but I think we here in Bellevue are set aside regionally and are beating even national standards because of the work that you're conducting. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Mayor Malakoutian.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I also wanted to echo my colleagues and show my appreciation to the Commission, to the Chair, to the Lucy and all of the staff. Great work. I have one quick question. If you are looking at the slide nine, that is comparing the second proposal change between current and proposed for some examples, single family, multifamily. Do we have the same slide, but we can see all of the three changes and see what would happen between current and proposed for some of the examples that you have there?

We don't have a slide prepared, but I invite Matt to maybe speak to that.

Yes, we can certainly provide the combined effect of all three of those changes. What you're seeing on screen right now, I would say, are the impacts of recommending the second improvement, which is assessing based on the size of the meter and assessing it up front at permit issuance. That's what you're seeing in proposed. The first recommendation of consolidating the direct facility connection charges into the capital recovery charge, that is not shown here. At a high level, that would increase the first row number by about $200. but we can certainly follow up with the exact incremental increases with including the first recommendation in those numbers.

The third proposal, does that change anything between proposed and current for these examples?

Not for this example, no.

There is no change for these examples for the third proposal?

Correct. What we've tried to do here with this table is provide as much of an apples to apples comparison. And so the current water and sewer CRC column is the if someone were to pay the current proposal fee up front, that's what it would be. And so we're trying to create the best apples to apples comparison with those two columns.

But yeah, I understand this is just CRC versus CRC based on the second proposal. I think it would be great if we have a big table that shows all of the payment that people are paying between current, not just for CRC, for everything, and proposed, and then see all of the three proposal impact in one table. I think that would be great. I also would like to... I'm not really understand how much of the differences comes from moving to this meter-based method that we are seeing instead of the previous method, and how much of that comes from adding the remaining of that DFCC cost into the whole system-wide charge again no need to answer i just i'm not following the math here i can follow up with you all later but that table that shows all of the impact for all of the cost not just the crc but also everything else would be great to have thank you

Okay, great. Thank you. I'm just going to echo some of the comments that were already made and just appreciate you taking a complicated and acronym-rich subject and distilling it down, making it understandable. I appreciate your email from last week as well. just kind of setting up the discussion tonight. So I really do think this is kind of just a textbook approach in helping the council to work through something that's kind of complicated and at least for me, gets even more complicated when there's a lot of acronyms to consider. So great work. Thank you. And with that, I'd appreciate a motion.

I move to direct staff to prepare an ordinance to implement the commission's recommendations to amend Bellevue City Code chapters 24.02, 24.04, and 24.06 to improve affordability, increase transparency, and preserve equity in the city's connection charges for water, sewer, and storm, and surface water utilities as part of the upcoming biennial budget process.

Second.

Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries. So, all right, good. With that, I think we can move on. Thank you so much again. We can move on to our next study session item, and City Manager, if you would.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor, Mayor, and Council. The third study session is providing an update on our micromobility program. As the city evolves to expand our multimodal travel options, introducing new choices for people to get around the city without a car and to be able to connect to the light rail and bus system is certainly important. Adding shared bikes and scooters and gliders to make that last mile connection is one of those new ways of doing that. transportation department is here this evening to give you an update on a new partnership with lime that will start soon and what we wanted to do this evening is to give council and the community a look at what to expect with the new program what the rules will be WITHIN THE CITY, HOW THE DEPARTMENT IS ADDRESSING SAFETY AND ALSO HOW THEY'LL MONITOR AND ASSESS THE PERFORMANCE AND ALSO WHERE TO GET MORE INFORMATION, HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS AND HOW TO PROVIDE FEEDBACK TO THE CITY ON THE PROGRAM. SO WITH THAT, I'D LIKE TO WELCOME CHRIS LONG OUR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF MOBILITY OPERATIONS AND JEREMY CHIN OUR TRAFFIC ENGINEERING MANAGER TO GIVE THE PRESENTATION. CHRIS?

Thank you for having us here today to talk about this new program. So as noted, today's presentation is information only. In the presentation today, we'll cover kind of the background of how we got here today, what program launch will look like, including how geofencing and corrals will be used to manage devices, what some of our system performance criteria will be, and how we continue communication with the public on the program. So just a little bit of history on where we've been with micro mobility. Back in 2018, the city launched its first micro mobility through a bike share program. At that time, it was with Lime. We launched about 200 bikes, mostly pedal bikes and some e-bikes in the city. That program continued into 2020 and was in the process of being refreshed and a new permit conditions issued when COVID hit and suddenly everyone was home and no one was riding and all the bikes were pulled out of Bellevue. During that time, the industry really shifted away from bikes into e-scooters. But in shared micro mobility continued to be identified as part of our planning for the future, and this included in 2024 as the comprehensive plan was being updated, a existing policy was updated to note that the support of establishment and operation of a shared micro ability service in Bellevue. This was also noted in the most recent update to sustainable Bellevue plan as a means to. improve our sustainability and air quality through supporting electric mobility like shared bikes and scooters. In order to bring micromobility back, our code needed to be updated to make e-scooters a viable option in Bellevue. At council directions, transportation staff worked with the community and the Transportation Commission to update that code and brought that back to council about a year ago to present those changes. In that study session, it outlined the steps to get to where we are today. One of those steps was to create an interdepartmental team at the leadership level to determine what the requirements of our shared micro mobility program would be. And that's what's reflected in the contract that was ultimately signed with Lime. The Lime, we did do a new RFQ process to select another vendor. Lime was selected again as the program lead. This has been a long journey to get to where we are today, but the timing is good because the technology that's now available with these devices has really changed the safety and access and data that we can compile to learn about how the system's being used. So we're very excited to be bringing this and to have that technology with us to be able to better manage this program. So with that, I'm going to pass it to Jeremy, who will talk about some of those details.

All right. So we've begun educating the public on the code update regarding where one can write an e-scooter. And we just want to quickly touch on that here. Electric scooters, including those in the shared micro mobility program, can ride on city roads, bike lanes, paved trails, and shared use paths. They cannot ride on unpaved trails of natural service. They can, however, ride on East Trail. Sidewalk riding is allowed when there is no safe alternative, such as marked bike facility or a roadway with a posted speed limit of 20 miles per hour. And for comparison, we've also shown e-bikes on the right-hand column. So the Lime app has a pre-chip planner, if you aren't aware. It's a feature where you can input your destination in the app, tell Lime where you're going, and it'll partner with your phone's default map, so Google Maps, Apple Maps, for example. And that program will help tell you where the best place to ride is that has potential protected bike lanes or other appropriate bicycle paths. So that's one feature in the line map that will help riders with riding in the appropriate place on the roadway. Next, I'm going to touch on what the program launch will actually look like. So launch date of Monday, August 10th has been chosen. The shared program, the shared micro mobility program will be a citywide free floating dockless system as seen around neighboring cities. The program launch will be citywide, meaning users can ride around the city freely. There will be initial deployment of 500 devices, as shown here, 350 e-scooters, 50 e-bikes, and 100 gliders, also known as seated scooters. As you probably know, around the region, e-scooters are by far the most used device. Devices from Lime will be their latest models with built-in safety monitoring technologies, which we will touch on later. Just in comparison, the city of Seattle has over 15,000 devices potentially on any given day, while our neighbor, the city of Redmond, has around 400 devices. In 2018, we created parking corrals around the city, you may have seen them, for the Lime bike pilot, which we refreshed and added a handful more in preparation for the launch. I'll touch on this on the next slide. So there are approximately 45 corrals in place for the launch on August 10th. Most are in urban areas, as you can imagine, downtown, Crossroads, Victoria, Spring District, Wilberton. So Lime works directly with Sound Transit in King County, for example, on device parking at transit stations. The map shown here are just locations in the downtown, just to give people a taste of what it's like. the distribution is and the pictures on the right are what they physically look like. They're roughly six by 10 rectangles and can fit typically around 10 devices, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on which devices are parked in there. Parking and ending your ride in a corral is not required, although Lime incentivizes parking in corrals by providing a discount to users on their next ride. After the program launch, we will monitor the device usage before adding more corrals in strategic locations around the city, including your neighborhoods with high use. As we build enough corrals in the downtown, for example, we may be able to enforce a mandatory parking zone for downtown devices. So mandatory parking zone is an area where a user cannot end a ride without parking in a corral, which we also touch on next. For those who aren't familiar with the term geofencing, geofence is a location-based technology that draws virtual boundaries around a real world geographic location using GPS. When a device, in this instance, crosses one of these geofences, a preset action is triggered. So there are five types of geofences in Lime's shared micro mobility program, and it's shown inside their app. So service zone is the rideable area within the city. No parking zones prevent riders from parking. An example would be washed out overpasses in Bellevue or Bellevue Parks. No operating zones slow riders to full stops to prevent entering and parking. Examples in Bellevue would be next to light rail tracks, lake shores, schools, mechanical gardens, golf courses, and some parks. Low-speed zones reduces riders' speed to prevent conflict with pedestrians. Examples in Bellevue would be in and around senior living centers and facilities, most city parks, the Grand Connection, and other areas of high mixing zones with pedestrians. In this case, devices are typically lower to around eight miles per hour. A mandatory parking zone, as we touched on previously, prevents riders from parking outside of a designated parking area. An example of that in the city may be at transit centers. For private property geofence requests, Lime will coordinate directly. They're actively talking to property owners such as transit agencies, Bellevue College, and the malls, for example. And for geofences at transit stations, Lime will coordinate directly and have been actively working with Sound Transit and King County for the launch. These are just some examples of geofence maps for the launch. These can be updated basically on the fly by city staff and push the line to update in the app within the same day. These maps themselves are pretty dynamic and they will change frequently as we get geofence requests. You'll notice in general on the left-hand side, the no operating zones include lakeshores, schools, downtown park mercer slew botanical garden and various golf courses and you'll notice in general on the right the low speed zones include the senior living facilities uh old bellevue and the grand connection corridor and i'll make it a little hard to see The shared micro ability devices will be monitored primarily through a third party platform called Ride Report. And this platform is owned by INRIX, a local company, local data company. So we have this platform and city staff have began to use it to manage these devices. So this platform itself will take information from Lyme and it will push data from Lyme and it will allow the city to see the devices in real time so we can see where the devices are parked or where they end up. This includes heat maps where devices frequently travel. This photo is just of the city of Seattle's heat map from ride reports. Ours will look quite similar when we become active. The platform allows us to see if a device is improperly parked. Like if it's in no operating zone, we can see that and it will get a ping as well. Why I'm telling us there is a device improperly located. This platform allows us to create geo fences. We just talked about and push those changes to line directly in the app. This platform will also allow us to create and manage invoices for line. The success of the micro mobility program will be based on many factors, including the usage of the devices, the vehicles, trips reduced, safety, and these key performance indicators listed here. So a single KPI or meeting all the KPIs does not necessarily tell the entire story of a successful program. A cross-departmental oversight team will review the program data annually to evaluate performance and safety of the program. And just to quickly point out just one key performance indicator as an example is the parking compliance. That looks for the percentage of verified parking notices or complaints resolved within the applicable response time after Lime receives a notice. So example would be if there's a device parked incorrectly in a no parking zone, for example, we would notify Lime and they would have two hours to respond and move that device. And the benchmark for that is 85% or higher, meaning they should be hitting that 85% of the time within that two hours. One of the keys for a successful program will be safety for both the riders and the general public. Lime provides rider education within the app itself, including a ride-safe value campaign. Both Lime and the city have been tabling at various events prior to this launch to promote rider safety and will continue after the launch. In terms of device maintenance, there are daily infield inspections of devices by Lime. Lime technology can detect if a device is not upright and will ping the Lime team to correct it. Customers and the general public can reach out to Lime 24-7 on phone, email, or text. There should be a sticker on every device with that contact information for Lime. In terms of safety reporting, Lime will provide a quarterly report of crashes to the city. And lastly, in terms of real time safety, lime has equipped their fleet with lime vision technology. It's a camera built in into the front of their devices, which is analyzing sidewalk writing behavior. It reminds writers to stay off the sidewalk were restricted. The technology has the ability to slow writers, slow devices in areas with high pedestrians or sidewalk writing is safer. If bicycle facility exists, the app can notify users to use these facilities instead. And lastly, as last slide, I just want to touch on the communication plan to date. We have launched the website with safety information and how to contact both Lime for operational needs and how to contact the city with program and program questions and concerns. We have a dedicated micro mobility email and a web form that will come directly to our micro mobility team. As noted earlier, we have a target of 810 launch, which is next week. The launch will be the release of all the Lime devices. A formal launch event has been scheduled for August 21st. City staff, Lime staff will be present, and we're inviting transportation partners to the event. It will take place at the Meadow and is open to the public. addition to news releases and social media posts the city and lime have events lined up post-launch table provides safety information helmet distributions and much more and just to conclude we do plan to come back to council with a report back after the new year on the status of the program and with that we're ready for questions

Great. Jeremy, Chris, thank you. I'm glad to see us moving forward with the shared micromobility program. I've seen them in other cities and they generally work very well. We've been talking a lot about transportation investments as we focus on the upcoming budget and have highlighted how we can maximize the value of our limited resources by investing in improving our connections to existing transportation infrastructure. And our shared micromobility program helps us do that by enhancing residents, workers, and visitors' last mile connections to appointments, shopping, jobs, and fun. And the micromobility devices will help folks move around now and will support new residents, visitors, and workers that we know are headed our way in the future. I have a few comments I want to make, but I will hold off and hear from my colleagues, starting with the mayor.

Addressing first mile and last mile are very, very important to encourage folks to use public transportation and light rail. We just expanded bellhop recently. With the help of Amazon, visit Bellevue city of Bellevue and sound transit and. This line is also going to. Help us to do that the same thing that they'll have expansion doing connecting people with and help them with the last mile and. Fair smile. I just have a two quick question. I think slide 11 had several metrics that you were showing to us. And I love that. And then for one of them, you said maybe, I think it was parking compliance. You said there is a 85% kind of target. So I have two questions about this. Are all of them has a baseline and targets that we need to get to? And what happened if we don't meet those targets? Are we asking line to change something or are we what are so all of them has targets? Yes or no? And then what are the corrective actions if some of them we don't hit those targets?

Yeah, all of them do have benchmarks. We studied other cities' contracts and what they have as benchmarks and metrics as well. So these are pretty industry standard. So if they don't meet them, that's a great question. We'd probably have to have conversations with Lime directly on why they aren't meeting them and what ways we can improve. This would probably happen sooner than quarterly if we're starting to see that some of these metrics are sliding or they're far away. We probably should have these conversations early. And again, not meeting every metric is a successful program. This is just one piece of many, safety being probably one of the highest priorities. But yeah, Lyme is very well aware that we have these metrics, and they will do their best to hit them, and we will work with them to get to those.

There are certain metrics that if they don't meet, there are fines that we can also levy against them, and that's built into the contract.

Okay, thank you. Again, it would be awesome if we have a plan for if they don't hit targets, what our plan is. But let me maybe ask my next question, and I think that's maybe one of my kind of concern is, so what level of parking, like noncompliance, or what level of the people blocked sidewalk and they are causing issues? or repeated problems at some of the location that we will see there are some issues. How are we fixing them? How fast we are fixing them? And how quickly Lyme is required to respond when basically some of we are seeing repeated issues?

Well, one element that will help with the parking is they have another new feature with their app that's called Capture. And when a rider finishes their ride, they're required to take a picture of where they've parked their device. If the device is not parked appropriately, they will get a notification immediately that they need to reposition that device. In some cases, if it's in a mandatory parking zone, they won't be able to end their trip. They'll have to get it repositioned into that zone. In other cases, if it is not in a mandatory parking zone, they will be able to end their trip. But if they see repeat behavior like this from a user, they can eventually get to where they can terminate a user's account. So the but they've seen a lot of improvement in parking just with having the app. I believe they said that over two thirds of people who are reminded of that they need to reposition it do actually reposition their device. So that's one of the ways that we're looking to to improve the management And then the if we're seeing if there are locations where we are consistently seeing problems with devices being left that are not parked appropriately, that's where we can go towards a mandatory parking configuration or work more closely with Lime on targeting their their routine checks in the in town to those areas that we do get to the right report will show us where devices are being left. So that's a way for us to track that as well.

Thank you for the response and I think I'm going to end on this note that, uh, the, the agenda and your slides are all great and says that we are going to. We are going to monitor parking compliance and line response time. But I think what I didn't see, and I'm sure you have, I didn't see the standards, the thresholds, what are the response requirements are. So I think if we all have that and make that available for people, I think it shows that we have done all of our due diligence. And not only we are monitoring, not only we have targets, but we know the standards, the thresholds, the consequence, the response time, and all of them, response requirements, and all of them are there. But thank you so much. Very excited and cannot wait for the opening. Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Breyer.

Thank you so much for this incredible work. I too am excited alongside all of my colleagues that have spoken. For the safety KPI, safety as a term is a bit vague. I just wanted to understand what specifically is being measured. For instance, the number of accidents or what were, I think you had mentioned that all of these contentions have benchmarks that we're measuring against. I just wanted to get some further information on that if it is available.

So we will be tracking crash information as best we can. Lime will be providing us quarterly reports on anything they get reported. If they get a notification from a writer that a crash was potentially due to an imperfection in our infrastructure, they will notify us of that immediately so that we can get out and mitigate those issues. We also are coordinating with our fire department because some of the if it if a crash doesn't involve a vehicle, it doesn't go through our typical crash reporting that happened that we get through that police submit to wash dot and we download that data from them. So fire will be providing that information to us and we'll be. looking at trends there as well to make sure we are accounting for any crashes that occur with these in our goal to reach zero serious and fatal injury crashes in the city.

I see. If WSDOT is not providing that data, or it's not a part of the funnel that goes through WSDOT and FIRE is providing that data instead, are the two ultimately going to be reconciled?

We would do that ourselves. I see. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. WSDOT, I don't believe WSDOT would ingest that additional data.

Okay. Okay. So we're doing it in-house. That's good. Okay. And then the other question I had is I know that there are some portions that were blocked out on the geofencing of the scooters, and that includes the downtown park, according to the map that I saw. I'm forgetting which slide it was, but just wanted a quick yes or no on that.

Correct.

Okay. So Bellevue Downtown Park will be...

Geofenced out. Excellent. No riding zone.

Okay. I think this makes sense. All right. I'm excited. Thank you so much for the incredible work that you've conducted. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Yes.

Council Member Sumida, where are you?

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I am excited, even though I'm very scared to get on a scooter. I'm not going to lie. I'm different from the mayor. Actually, on one trip, he was trying to, I was like, no, I'm not getting a scooter no matter what, because I am scared. And I, last time I rode a bike, I almost killed myself. So I think for me, even though I'm really excited about the transit, the last mile and first mile, I do think there's a lot of I think it's going to take a lot of convincing for me to understand the safety side of it. So sharing the data would be super helpful. So plus one to Council Member Bryant and also the Mayor about showing the KPI and then also like being, I think understanding what the baseline is because I believe City of Bellevue have higher standards of safety. So we want to make sure we are the leading partner showing to the community region we really care about this. So we make each effort. very thoughtful and well-studied. So I really appreciate seeing the baseline as well. And there's about safety part, right? Is helmets required to wearing?

So our city code has helmets addressed in two different places. When the motorized foot scooter code was updated last year, we aligned our helmet requirements with the state, which is they are not required, but they are encouraged. Our city code for a long time has had in its bike code the requirement for bicycle riders to have helmets. So we the the encouraging of the helmet is definitely something that Lime does is important to them. So they do the helmet giveaways. They mentioned they've already given away fifteen hundred helmets in Bellevue. Is that right? right so and then they are uh they also have a feature where they call it the helmet selfie and so if you when you start your ride it will ask you are you wearing a helmet you show that you have a helmet on and you get a discount on your ride so that's uh those are the the mechanisms that we're we're starting with to to try to encourage that use

I like that. I have a helmet. Hopefully I can wear that helmet on the scooter at the same time. I'll be brave enough one day. And then I sent you a few questions to clarify because it's just information. But I did have one last question about, I think, Old Main Street. So when you define narrow street and there's a lot of pedestrian, is that Old Main? Is the low speed or no parking zone for this?

So it will be a low-speed zone. Yeah.

OK. And I guess my question about how do you define, because when there's incentive versus penalty, try to track this, right? Does LIME have information about sharing which way of regulating is more attractive, incentive versus penalty?

For users or for them?

For keeping our community safe.

Yeah. I don't have an answer to that one. I'd have to check in with Lime to see what they found in other communities. So we'd have to look back at that one.

Yeah, let me know. And I would love to know the data just because there's one part I think the presentation talk about, you know, parking within the corral zone is not required, but incentivized if you park within it. Right. So I'm just wondering, it's I mean, from the psychology behind it, which one's more effective?

I see.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a there's an interesting. Yeah, it's a good question. So the I think the debate with the mandatory parking is also goes to the functionality of the system in that we do the lime has studied. their markets all around the country to see what a good distribution of corrals is to get to where you can make it mandatory parking. It does change the first last mile connection a little bit, but if they are convenient enough that you're still really reducing the last 50 feet of your trip, say, with the corrals. So I think the idea is Using that incentive and showing people where the preferred parking is, they can they can route to that in their trip and then kind of measure and see what the results are and to decide, do we need to go a little further and make this and that could even be what starting out with just adding more corrals and seeing if that's enough to start to improve the distribution and the parking any parking concerns that we get.

so but uh the the mandatory versus encouraging through incentives uh we'll have to i'll follow up with them on that i think that's great and again i'm still very excited even though i'm scared but i think but the big difference would be when when you find a really great partner have the data to support so make our work more successful in the beginning that's a great partnership thank you so much councilmember robinson

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. So I love using Lime in Seattle and other cities. And the thing I really like about it, I mean, I'm all for that last mile and for multimodal Transportation, the thing I like about in Seattle is it tells me where the preferred route is, where the protected lanes are. And so if I'm going north-south, I got a choice of at least two routes. Or if I'm going east-west, I have at least two in downtown that I know about that I've used. And so I feel safer doing it. When you came to us whenever it was, earlier in the year or last year, and suggested making this code change, I know I'm just one council member, but I said I wouldn't be comfortable with it unless we finished our ped bike infrastructure. And we have not done that. So this kind of brings out the mother bear in me. It makes me really nervous because not only do we not have complete infrastructure, we don't even have preferred routes. So when I look at my maps and I say I'm going to ride my bike from here to my house, it tells me to go down 4th. And it's like, who would ride their bike down 4th? That's a terrible idea. Really, you should do 2nd or Main Street. Main Street has a great bike path. So how are we going to be directing people to take safe routes as opposed to choosing 8th or 4th? Right.

Yeah, that's a great question. The that is interesting that it tells you to take forth. I did. I have done some testing of that as well to see what routes are there. And I think that's something that we would need to if we find out about. Issues like this is to we can submit tickets to Google Maps and Apple Maps. We do that regularly when we do speed limit changes or turn restrictions. And so that that is a way that we can address that particular issue. We are continuing to work on our network, and it's that balance of we have existing writers today. We have the need to understand where the demand is, and this is going to be a tool that will help with that. We will see people filling those gaps with writing on the sidewalk. And we hope that that can be done safely and they have the tools to help manage that. But with that change, we will be able to help us identify additional priority routes that we need to consider. Because we do have our targets through the Mobility Implementation Plan. And we are we have project right now that is under construction near Maiden Bower Bay Park. We have new connections being built to East Trail and the mountains of Sound Greenway construction is happening. So there's a lot going on and it's but it is going to take more time to get to where there is a fully complete network and. But we will learn a lot from this system in using that ridership, filling the gaps with sidewalks, and then eventually getting to where we can find what the next best alternate route would be that would have bike facilities.

Well, if we could focus on preferred routes, because that will be faster than building the infrastructure. I know a lot of volunteers who would love to help you choose two north, south, and two east-west routes in downtown. So I would really love to see that. Let's see. Really happy to know not allowed in parks. I don't think you should allow it on any unpaved surface except East Trail. So I think about like that little path on 12th, the unpaved part versus the wider sidewalk. So I'd like to encourage that. I know you're talking with Kemper Development on... how they want to treat it on their sidewalks. Just as somebody who's walking down there, I'd sure like it to be a walk only or a mandatory low speed. Yes to mandatory parking zones. That sounds like a good idea to me. Really surprised we're not allowing them on the Grand Connection. I thought that was a multimodal.

We are allowing it's a low speed zone.

Oh, perfect. Okay. I thought you said no. Okay. Seven. Eight. Okay. I think that was it. Thank you. Thank you.

Council Member Newenhouse.

Thank you.

You know... Part of the, we haven't talked about yet, is that Line was a great partner when they did a pilot back, what year was that? 2018. 2018, right. I remember numerous council members actually on that first day and getting on there. But that was exclusively bikes, if I recall, at that point. But they were a good partner. There were a lot of concerns in terms of bikes being left in inappropriate places all around the city and And to Lime's credit, I think they were very responsive. They alleviated a lot of concerns and a lot of the fears that folks had and concerns really didn't come to fruition. So hopefully we can see a repeat of that once again. However, we are talking about a different beast this time around. Like when I look at the, so 500 units, 350 dedicated to scooters, only 50 to bikes. Is that just due to popularity or are there other considerations that went into in terms of the number of, it was bike scooters and then what was the third one? The seated scooters. The seated scooters or the, yeah, okay.

It's popularity. People want to ride the scooters. That's what Lime has shared with us. That's what we've seen in a lot of other jurisdictions. Okay. We may see that change over time, but that's where we'll start. We did have some minimums with each device built into the contract, I believe. We'll be interested to see what it looks like in Bellevue.

Yeah, for sure. I'm going to agree with the mayor talking about the metrics and the KPIs. I think you've identified the right ones. However, kind of that threshold concerns me. It feels like really squishy to me. And I think you might follow up with some more specifics. But I want to make sure that there are some consequences Um, and I want to know exactly when those consequences, um, kick in. Um, you know, for, for me, just we're monitoring it is not, is not good enough. Um, because inevitably we will get some folks that will not park in the right place or, um, the reconfiguring of, of bikes or scooters on a nightly basis or, or daily basis will not happen quick enough. Um, So, you know, I really want to know when those consequences are going to kick in, regardless if it's a rider or it's Lyme or whoever it is. And I want to make sure that we're holding them accountable. The corrals, I notice that the city is putting in place the corrals, correct? That's not line, that's us? That's us. Okay, okay. And then also I noticed in the memo, you know, a lot of different additional fees. So there's the yearly, there's the per ride, there's the per device, there's the fines that you mentioned that could kick in as well. So what's the projected annual revenue into the city and are we going to get you know, our costs covered that we're, you know, that we're putting in place to make this a successful launch. So can you talk to me about that a little bit?

Yeah. So the revenue is highly dependent on the number of trips that a device takes. So we, as you mentioned, we do have an annual fee that they pay and then a per device fee. So every day they count up the, devices are in the city, and there's a cost or a fee associated with that. But then it's how many times do those devices get used? So we did projections based on trying to recover most of our costs, which is the corrals and just staff time and managing and monitoring with Lime and tracking the data was based on the cost that we know are relatively fixed in that initial fee that they pay annually and the per device fee. The trip fee will help us build more corrals and continue to make that system more sustainable. Our estimated

uh revenue is we do anticipate we'll cover all our costs with with what we collect so but it could be anywhere from a hundred thousand a year to two hundred thousand a year depending on what the ridership is okay okay um going back to the uh comment about within two hours if a complaint comes in first of all how is a complaint how is that logged is it through the app or it sounds like it's coming to the city and then we notified lime how can you explain how that works exactly

Yeah, they could be multiple ways. If it comes through the app, it comes directly through the microbody email or comes through the web form. It could come through, I don't know, just in the field.

But if it comes through the LIME app, do we see it?

If it goes directly through the LIME app, no, it will go directly to LIME, and they will have to respond to that.

But how does that impact the data collection that we're doing? Will LIME then share that with us? We can, yeah, we can ask.

So, yes, we'll get a report. Yeah, that one's a tricky one, because if it goes straight to Lyme, we do have we we will we'll get a we'll get a notification of that that there's been a mitigation. So we're and then what we'll be tracking. in addition to what we will track with the complaints that we get to. We do have two ways of, in addition to comments coming directly to Lime or coming into the city, there is a comment form on our website. Someone could enter it in through the MyBellevue app, but that does start a clock on... for us to know that they're responding. And we can see if a device gets mitigated through the app or through ride report.

Well, give me more comfort if we can get to a place where we're going to get like daily reports from Lyme or weekly reports, whatever cadence we need in order to track that, in order to correct anything that we might notice because, you know, Well, it'll be interesting to see. I don't want to make or be presumptuous that it'll all come through the app, but probably a fair amount will. But I'm also concerned with that two-hour time frame. For example, some of our small businesses You know, maybe a whole bunch of kids were out using that scooters, and then they decided to park them all right in front of Belden Cafe, and I want to get in on Sunday morning to get my mocha. And all these scooters are there, and we put it on the small business owner to move all those scooters away so they can get in. This actually turned into a little cottage industry, like down in San Diego, where businesses were started, where they would collect the scooters before the actual operator could, and then they would hold the scooters ransom, and then they would only give them back once they paid that ransom. Now, that's an extreme example, but that was happening throughout the San Diego at some time and the business owners were getting so frustrated about constantly having to to move scooters out of their doorway so that people could could could get in so two hours sounds good but I think when you're opening up for business and there's people wanting to get in right away um You know, that's a concern. So that would be something that I'll be asking come, like, the first of the year, how we're tracking there and how many businesses could be or have been impacted. Last question. So given the documented, I think, e-scooter injuries nationwide, and that data is relevant, readily available, the safety performance thresholds that Lime has to meet, or I would hope that would try and meet, and any consequences, I mean, to a certain degree, it's hard to hold Lime accountable to that. They're going to encourage helmet use, but the fact of the matter is that no one does, or very few people do. even though we're going to encourage the giveaway of free helmets, but rarely do people carry around their helmet and have that at the ready. I don't know if you can speak to that anymore, but when you see the dramatic increase in those, especially head injuries with those scooters, because people have never used them before, but they look like a lot of fun, or they may have had a couple of cocktails, and they decide, let's get on the scooter tonight. What more can we do to help Lime to encourage, either encourage helmet use or encourage just proper use, I guess, of the scooter? Now, they're the experts. I've been doing this for a very long time, but I know it's a tricky one. But, you know, when you look at the number of scooters as well, you know, those are the ones not using the helmets. But if you're riding a bike, you do, but it's only 50. So...

It's, yeah, it's a good question. We have been, we're part of a regional group now that meets to talk about what they're learning with the operation of scooters in their communities as well, because it's not just Bellevue, or it's not just Redmond and Seattle, they're in Shoreline, Woodinville, Bothell, and Spokane. So there's quite a few locations around that are, they're all looking to do the same thing. They're not all necessarily Lyme customers. So it is a, you know, as you've seen in the reports, you know, it is a concern and it's that It's one that we aren't taking lightly. We want to know that data. And if there's dramatic changes that we need to make because we're seeing the trends going the wrong direction, look at our helmet use. That's something that we can come back with. So I think that's our helmet required code. And then figure out what does that look like? How do we... Does it suddenly become enforced? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that's going to be a tricky one going forward. But I'm glad it's top of mind. So... But excited about it. I'm excited that Lime's the partner once again here. I have a lot of confidence in them, especially with partnering with our great staff. That's going to be a successful launch and a well-needed one to solve all the last mile, first mile issues that were already discussed. So I'm excited that they'll be back in our city, and I'm excited to use Lime in my own city and not in another one. So thank you. Thank you.

Okay, great. Really appreciate the conversation and especially surrounding KPIs and how we circle back on those. So just want to add my support to that. So I know, you know, other municipalities close by have shared micro mobility devices. Just kind of curious if you could talk briefly about how we're approaching our shared micro mobility program and how it's different. going to be different here than in Seattle, Redmond, Woodinville.

Probably the biggest was we required the latest technology on our devices. So every device that's delivered to Bellevue will have the Lime Vision technology. Now, we just talked to Lime today, and they are rapidly upgrading their fleet in this region as well. So in Seattle, now that I know about this technology, I've been looking every time I see a device go by, and That I would say vast majority of their scooters already have it. This is on all the devices, though, not just scooters. So that's that's probably the biggest 1 that that is the difference here. And we have we do because we know of the. THE CONCERNS AROUND PARKING AND OUR URBAN CORE BEING A LITTLE DIFFERENT THAN OTHERS THAT WE DEFINITELY BUILT OUR CRITERIA IN THE INCENTIVES AND THE PENALTIES TO ENCOURAGE PROPER PARKING AND PROPER MITIGATION AS WE'VE TALKED ABOUT. SO I THINK THOSE ARE SOME OF THE BIG DIFFERENCES THAT WE HOPE TO SEE HERE. And we hope that Bellevue then becomes the model for other mid-sized cities around the country.

Okay. We've talked about tools that we're going to use to manage and evaluate the micromobility program performance and the opportunities that community members are going to have to provide feedback and for us to make some adjustments if and when needed. And as has already been mentioned, Lime's going to be working directly with with community members. Their contact information is on the devices. It's on our website. So community members can contact them directly when they see issues, which I think is great, but also could create a gap in our knowledge of what's going on on our streets. I think we've heard a little bit of that kind of talked about tonight. So I just want to encourage staff to stay connected with neighborhood groups and community members. and users of the system in those areas to ensure we're enabling a functional citywide service with consistently well-managed parking especially. Then too, it was mentioned that folks can contact them directly, but can also contact us through the My Bellevue app. So I think that's going to be really helpful. And I share Councilmember Newenhouse's confidence in our program. I think it's going to work better here because just on the basis that it's managed by our transportation department. So I think that's really helpful. I think you've been thoughtful in creating a deployment approach that responds to expected concerns around clutter and safety, both for riders and people interacting with them on our streets. And then to the data collection program, I think we'll continue to focus on that and the performance criteria so that we can, again, kind of help mitigate some concerns around clutter. I'm curious to know when you think you might be back just to kind of report on initial performance of the program.

Yeah, really at any time, but we were thinking probably six months out, give us some time for the program to normalize. And we'll hopefully get some really good ridership data before we get into the rainy season and then kind of see how the weather starts to change that and have data for both.

Okay. So then also, too, there is, you know, we talk about some incentives, some things that can be required, that Lime can kind of turn some incentives into requirements. And I'm just kind of curious, you know, what those might be. We've heard about parking, but what are maybe some other incentives that they could turn into requirements if needed?

Oh, for... So probably the next thing that we'll see is with the ridership related to sidewalks. So with the LimeVision tool, when we first launch, it's learning what the sidewalk network looks like. It's creating an AI model or using AI to create a model of our sidewalk network. And then over time it will be able to tell the writer we can slow writers down when they're on sidewalks or we could tell them you're on a sidewalk and you actually have a bike lane that's adjacent or this is a 20 mile per hour street when you're in a neighborhood. And so there's no reason to be on the sidewalk. This is a safe alternative. And so those are the the the some of the directions that we hope we will we see coming down the road. So

okay i mean i can certainly understand kind of the dynamic between incentive and mandatory but i just really hope that we keep a focus on that and if some of the incentives aren't working then we look uh to increase requirements um but with that i'm i'm satisfied the that the demand and the need is certainly there i think the planning has been extensive and i'm confident that the program will be closely monitored and adjustments made quickly when warranted. So it's important we get it right, and I'm confident we will. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, we're almost there. So after tonight's meeting, the council will be on recess for the month of August. So we look forward to being back here in September and having the community return with us. And though it is the mayor's birthday tonight, he did request that we not make a point of it. So out of respect for the mayor, I will not say anything about it. We will not say that. Exactly. And with that, we are adjourned. So thank you.