City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. I now call the July 21st, 2026 regular city council meeting to order. We'll start by taking a moment to take a roll call of the council members by position number. Please say here when the city clerk calls your name.

Thank you. Council Member Al-Guluri.

Here.

Mayor Thompson.

Here.

Deputy Mayor Alderks. Here. Council Member Kerr.

Here.

Council Member Miles. Here. Council Member Dodd. Here. Council Member Alcabra. Here. All present.

Thank you. We're gonna start off with a city manager review of agenda. And in lieu of our city manager, we have our deputy city manager, Claire, here to do that tonight. And if I call you city manager at any point in time during this meeting, Kyle, forgive me if you're watching this.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Council. We have a very full agenda this evening. Tonight's agenda includes a number of items on consent, many of which relate to public works and core services of the city, including two contracts related to pedestrian safety and sidewalk improvements. AN AGREEMENT TO ADVANCE DESIGN WORK FOR OUR DECAMP FACILITY, AN ORDINANCE GRANTING RENEWAL FOR A ZAYO FRANCHISE AGREEMENT, A STATE GRANT AGREEMENT FOR THE WOOD CRUST UTILITY PROJECT, ALONG WITH APPROVING A RESOLUTION FOR THE ADDENDUM OF THE CITY MANAGER'S EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT, AND FINALLY, AN INTERLOCAL COOPERATION AGREEMENT WITH KING COUNTY FOR BOFFLE'S PARTICIPATION IN THE HOME CONSORTIUM. I DO RECOMMEND THESE ITEMS ON CONSENT FOR APPROVAL. There are three additional presentations for action on the agenda this evening, setting a public hearing date of September 8th for the Northeast one 85th street vacation request. in accordance with the 2017 Campus Master Plan. A construction contract with Northwest Construction for the Sammamish River and Juanita Creek Restoration Project. And the presentation will include a status update on the overall project. A note, this is a council priority. And then a very important moment this evening, we have the resolution authorizing the next step on the Shoreline RFA annexation, which will authorize taking it to the ballot on November 3rd. In connection to this last item, we also have appointments to the pro con committee for the RFA ballot measure. Finally, our agenda also includes two study sessions this evening with community development. Staff are seeking feedback from council on potential proposed amendment concepts to the procedural regulations located within various sections of the Bothell municipal code titles. 11, 12, and 14, and the initial draft of the multifamily tax exemption code amendments. With that, I will turn it back to you, Mayor Thompson.

Thank you very much. Next up is council approval of agenda. Are there any changes proposed to tonight's agenda? Seeing none, we'll move on to...

I actually would like to add something. All right, Council Member Dodd. You will find on our shared desk... a copy of a letter from the City of Lake Forest Park to King County Metro and they have asked us if we are interested in signing on to this. They plan to deliver it to Metro in two days, so this would be a cool thing to make a decision about tonight. Where would we throw that into the agenda, Mr. Mayor?

We could. Why don't we do this right before the study sessions? Oh, council reports and conversations?

Mayor Thompson, I was going to suggest council reports and conversations, especially if it's going to be by consensus versus a motion.

Yeah, there's not going to be a vote needed.

Okay, cool.

We'll do that.

Cool. Thank you.

And we probably don't need to take a vote because we're not adding it to the agenda. We're just going to talk about it then. Cool. Thank you. Anybody else? In that case, we will move on to public engagement opportunities. Help shape the future of downtown. Help us plan for the next 20 years of growth by attending the Downtown Sub Area Plan Open House. Learn about the draft plan, explore its recommendations, meet the project team, ask questions, and share feedback. That's Wednesday, July 22nd, 5.30 to 7.30 p.m. right here at Bothell City Hall. Opportunities for artists. We're seeking professional artists for two exciting public art opportunities that will contribute to the community's vibrant cultural landscape and enhance our public spaces. Applications are due July 31st and August 17th. Artists experienced in public art projects can learn more and apply online. Electric Vehicle Community Survey. If you have an electric vehicle or plan to have one in the next few years, we want to hear from you. Share your input with our short survey to help determine where EV chargers should go, what resources folks need to go electric, and how the city can better support EV growth in Bothell. Next up is public comment. The city has accepted public comment in writing as well as accepted sign-ups for those who wish to speak at tonight's meeting. Written comments submitted to the city clerk no later than 3 p.m. today were forwarded to all city council members and are part of the record. When the clerk calls your name, you'll have three minutes to speak. Please note that council will receive your input, but we do not engage in discussion of these topics. Staff will make note of items requiring follow-up. City clerk?

Thank you, Mayor Thompson. We received two written comments. The first one from Gith Priya. kumara guru regarding public transit improvements for route 121 and then we also received a written comment from the commercial real estate and development association regarding the mfte code update those have been forwarded to council and are part of the record i Do not have anybody who signed up to speak under public comment before 3 p.m. However, if there's anybody in the audience who wishes to do so, please step to the podium, state your name for the record, and you'll have three minutes.

Thank you very much. Good evening, Mayor and members of the Council. My name is Ryan McIrvin and I am here on behalf of the University of Washington Bothell regarding the proposed vacation of Northeast 185th Street between 108th Avenue NE and 110th Avenue NE. Tonight the Council is considering a resolution to set the public hearing date for this proposal and I appreciate the opportunity to provide some very brief context. This proposal is consistent with the City of Bothell's downtown plan, campus district regulations, and the 2017 UW Bothell and Cascadia College Campus Master Plan, which collectively envisioned this area evolving into a more walkable connection between downtown Bothell and the campus. It advances our shared goal of strengthening the link between the campus and downtown, while supporting Bothell's evolution as a vibrant college town. This corridor has changed significantly with new academic residential and campus development, resulting in increased pedestrian activity and more day-to-day connections between downtown and the campus core. As these connections continue to grow, this corridor can become a more active pedestrian-oriented gateway that brings campus and downtown together. The intent of this proposal is to better align the right-of-way with those conditions and the long-term planning vision, enhancing safety and the pedestrian experience while maintaining essential emergency access, utilities, and walking and biking connectivity. Overall, our goal here is straightforward, enhance safety, strengthen walking connections, and create a more vibrant and connected environment that supports Bothell's long-term vision for placemaking and thoughtful growth. We appreciate the council's review of this petition and look forward to the public hearing where the full record will be considered. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience who wishes to speak or anybody in the virtual audience who wishes to speak? If so, please use the raise hand function and I will panel you into the meeting. We'll give you a minute to do that. That is all I have, Mayor Thompson.

Thank you. All right, next up we have the City Manager report and presentations. City Manager.

We do not have a report this evening. The only thing I would note is this is our last council meeting until we come back in September. I think we have a September 1st date next.

I can't believe we made it here. All right, next up is council reports and conversations. Council members? Council Member Dodd?

Hey, so we have this letter on our desk and essentially the City of Lake Forest Park has authored this. They are aware of the typo in the last sentence. And City of Kenmore has signed on, other organizations, and I would like us to consider whether we could sign on to this. And Deputy City Manager, I know we might have some staff input that we could share as well.

yeah if um if we want to get into details i'll probably phone a friend and steve but what i would tell you at a high level as you all know we do have a regional leadership priority area and we do have i think the number one priority in that vision area is looking at transit and underserved areas in bothell And that work is underway right now. So our plan is actually doing that work this fall and then getting to probably early in 2027 to give you a draft plan to weigh into. So I would just say, you know, this item comes before we're able to do that work. We haven't weighed into this specific item with King County Metro directly. So that would be the background I would probably provide to you at this time. Did I?

This is Council Reports and Conversations, so I do not have to call on anybody. You can just jump right in.

So I just wanted to ask, do you recommend us signing on, Claire?

Um, what I would say is probably a little bit more nuanced because we haven't been able to a staff way into this specific item on this specific line. I would tell you my recommendation probably would be like, we are doing that analysis now to provide you a recommendation in the future. This is just an item we have not engaged with King County Metro directly on.

So understood. And I know we've been working on, um, along with Steve on this, um, here. I mean, It's kind of a nice to-do thing for our neighbors. If there are no glaring red flags, it seems kind of like a no-brainer, but I don't know what I don't know.

I'd be happy to speak to this. I have been looking forward to an opportunity to put my name and sign on to this project like this for a very long time. And I'll just share that up until 2013, the 372 was a route that we relied on or that my family relied on every day. That's how my husband finished his PhD program after we moved here. And I was mapping it out earlier today that if the proposed changes were to take place and we were to rely only on the spine of the light rail to get people to UW, there are two stations essentially that serve UW. There's the Mount Lake Station as well as the Roosevelt Station. But to get to the heart, like I just mapped to Sazalo Library, it would be a 20-minute walk from either of those stations. When The 372 as it currently operates goes right to the center of the campus. And so I very much want to see that we are not just prioritizing access to light rail through our transportation advocacy, but we're also prioritizing transportation to job centers and the UW is especially and this is especially important job center in our area not just for people who work there but also students so I think that this is very well-timed especially since these conversations are happening and I do think that part of our priority for regional leadership is not It doesn't always mean that we have to take the lead. It can mean that we are good partners and collaborate with our neighbors when they are taking the lead. And together, we end up being leaders in our community through collaborative efforts. And so I would like to see us sign on to this. Another piece that was kind of mentioned in here is how the 372 and the 522 tend to stack up on each other. I think sometimes they're... scheduled a minute apart and that has been a frustration all the way back to 2011 when we moved to the area and you know if you miss that if you miss one bus you miss both buses and you're waiting and so I'd love to see them staggered better so if they're each coming 15 minutes apart it'd be nice if they were offset from each other by about seven minutes. And so I think this letter makes that point as well, that it's important to time and maintain connections to job centers so that people who are using, you know, One of the most awesome features of our region can get there easily and accessibly. It's also a great transfer center down into other places of the city. And like I said, between light rail stations that can well serve folks who are going in that direction. So I support this and would love to hear thoughts from my colleagues.

Do we think Metro is going to do anything? Will they hear our plea? Because they have a lot on their plates, and I'm not trying to disparage King County Metro. Please don't come for me, King County Metro. But I'm just wondering if we have a prayer here.

I mean, you might get transit clear here a little bit more from my last 10 decades, but we all know resources are limited everywhere, right? And transit is facing that same thing. So I know in my previous history, you're looking at duplication of service and making sure you're not doing that. So I can't tell you whether or not it has a prayer. We haven't had the conversation with them. That's part of the staff recommendation is normally we'd like to to weigh in first and be able to give you an informed decision. So, unfortunately, I can't give you more than that at this time. It's fine. Thanks.

I think I'm pretty comfortable having, you know, the Lake Forest Park kind of take the lead on something like this. Like, that's like I don't know that I would expect you guys to spend a lot of time working or any time working on that. I do really appreciate that we have allies just across the north end of the lake that care about the same kind of things we do. they they're they're rowing in the same direction we do and and whether or not this is incredibly impactful for us is to me less of a concern than just wanting to show support to our neighbors with similar values so I'm totally comfortable signing on to this as well me too but I will give a little resident flavor to this because I did take for three years 372 to UW

every day, so I was a daily commuter back and forth. And it was nice to have, sometimes it was a minute overlap, and as bus service, Transit Claire would attest sometimes they're one minute apart, sometimes they're 20 minutes apart. But that's not the issue for me. The issue is that there was enough service that if I was a couple minutes late getting out of the house, I was actually able to get on a bus that took me to the UW versus having to wait 10 or 15, 20 minutes For the for the next one, so I feel like it's a good one and I agree with my colleagues and it's okay for Our friends in other cities to take the lead on things and I don't expect us to do much But it is actually a benefit to our residents. I think to have this service so it will be good for us to support this letter I Agree, I'm on board with signing on to the letter Obviously I was

inclined to agree bringing it forward. But I don't live anywhere near the 372 and I haven't taken it. So I appreciate both Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor Emeritus for bringing up their personal experience and I support signing the letter.

Would it be Deputy Mayors or Deputies Mayor? Probably Deputy Mayors. Yeah. I want to say Deputies Mayor just because it sounds nerdy, but I'm going to stop talking now. I think you guys have what you need. Cool. We will move on to projected agenda discussion. Does anybody have an item they would like to discuss? Seeing none, I would love to accept a motion to approve the consent agenda.

I was just going to say that I do, as I sit here looking at the Disability Pride flag flying, I'm not making a motion. I'm just saying that I'm hearkening back to the last time we did a projected agenda item and I brought the flag up and I'm just very grateful to see it flying over the city this week. this month, and it's been really just lovely to have conversations about it and to bring awareness around the one in four Americans who experience a disability. So I will miss it, but I'm glad that it will still be up for a few more days and that we were able to do it this year. So thank you, colleagues, for making that happen, and we can hopefully see it again next year. And with that, I will make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second.

I have a motion from Deputy Mayor Alderks and a second from Council Member Rodd to approve the consent agenda. Would anybody like to speak to the motion? I will just say that it always makes me happy to see the multimodal projects coming in, contracts going for that in the consent agenda. So that pleases me. City Clerk?

Thank you. Please say yes or no when I call your name. Council Member Ongulary?

Yes.

Mayor Thompson?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Alderks? Yes. Council Member Kerr? Yes. Council Member Miles? Yes. Council Member Dodd? Yes. Council Member Acabra? Yes. Passes 7-0.

Thank you. Next up is our first ordinance and resolution, establishing a public hearing date for the street vacation petition for a portion of Northeast 185th Street between 108th Avenue Northeast and 110th Avenue Northeast. Deputy City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Tonight we will be setting the public hearing date to receive information and take public comment on the proposed street vacation petition. of a portion of Northeast 185th Street at the UW Bothell Cascadia campus. We are not requiring a decision to approve the street vacation. A decision will be requested at a separate meeting after the public hearing has taken place. Peter Pearson and Boyd Benson from Public Works are here to present this item.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Peter Pearson. I'm a senior development review engineer in the Utilities and Development Services Division of the Public Works Department here at the city. And this is Lloyd Benson. Good evening. I'm here tonight to present on the request from a petitioner who you already heard from tonight to set a hearing date for a public hearing to discuss a proposed street vacation here in the city at Northeast 185th Street by the University of Washington Bothell Cascadia College campus. So let's see, first off, the city council action would be to approve a resolution establishing a City Council public hearing date of September 8th, 2026 to consider the street vacation petition submitted by the Board of Regents of the University of Washington for a portion of Northeast 185th Street between 108th Avenue Northeast and 110th Avenue Northeast. Key information here is that UW Bothell Cascadia Campus is requesting the vacation of Northeast 185th Street in accordance with the 2017 campus master plan as discussed by the representative from the university here. Number two, the street vacation request process includes setting a date for a public hearing to discuss the request and receive comment. That's as set forth in city code. And number three, a decision by city council will be requested at a separate meeting after the public hearing and hopefully by consent. Just a little information here. What is a street or right-of-way vacation? Street vacation is the termination of the public's interest slash property rights in a public right-of-way. So basically converting public-owned right-of-way to either private property or some other entity's property. It's governed by Chapter 14. 3579 of the RCW and chapter 1712 of the Bothell Municipal Code The street vacation request area is shown here on the map. This is 185th Street just Just east of Beardsley Boulevard between 108th and 110th just south of the new Husky village redevelopment and street vacation request process. Tonight, we would set the hearing date for September 8th. On September 8th, we would hold the public hearing. On October 20th, we would ask council to decide by ordinance on whether or not to approve the vacation request. And then in the fourth quarter of 2026, we would record the street vacation with King County and transfer the property.

And just to add to this, we're looking at possible efficiencies with respect to the September and October 20th dates, so we'll be working with the legal department to see if there are some opportunities to combine those actions. So I just wanted to add that, if that's okay.

And so city council action would be to approve a resolution establishing a city council public hearing date of September 8th 2026 to consider the street vacation petition submitted by the Board of Regents of the University of Washington for a portion of Northeast 185th Street between 108th Avenue Northeast and 110th Avenue Northeast.

Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Mayor.

I am aware that, I've been aware that this is going to be coming to us for a while. And the last time I heard it mentioned was in the context of a quasi-judicial process, just as like a heads up to council. And so could you go back to, I think one slide on the presentation where it says October 20th council decision ordinance, is that going to be a quasi-judicial hearing at that point or? I'm just wondering, like, where that factors into this process.

And our city attorneys, get into the mic. Thank you. Eileen Kiefer, Madrona Law Group. I'm your city attorney. So the September 8th hearing would be your quasi-judicial hearing. That's where you would open the hearing, take evidence, really hear about this proposal. like Mr. Benson said, this is the October 20th is sort of in flux. You guys may be ready to make a decision on September 8th. So this is just a discussion that staff are continuing to have about how that continues. You can also, I should mention too, if you open the public hearing on September 8th, if you need to, you can continue it to a later date. So for now, we just kind of want to to really set the hearing date and then the rest of the process. You'll be getting more information also from me and from staff about how the hearing will be conducted and additional procedures to follow.

Thank you for the clarification on that. I know that it's a process that doesn't come up very often and will be very new to a couple of our council members. And so staff will be here to talk us through it and make it make sense. But I did just want to know where that fit in the context of the timeline. So thank you.

Council Member Dodd.

You ready for a motion?

Yeah.

I would like to move the recommended action. Second.

I have a motion from Council Member Dodd and a second from Council Member Aldrich. Would anybody like to speak to the motion? I would like to speak to the motion. I just want to say I enjoy that the UW Bothell is talking about pedestrianization and kind of a lot of the same sort of things that we're working toward. I'm looking forward to hearing what the further improvements to that street is sort of a pedestrian zone are, and I'm excited that they're looking at making pedestrian improvements. And I will be voting yes. City Clerk?

Thank you. Please say yes or no. I want to call your name, Councilmember Onguluri.

Yes.

Mayor Thompson.

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Alderks. Yes. Council Member Curd.

Yes.

Council Member Miles. Yes. Council Member Dodd. Yes. Council Member Alcabra.

Yes.

Passes 7-0.

Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. All right. Next up, we have the Sammamish River and Wainita Creek Restoration Project Construction Contract. Deputy City Manager.

Thank you mayor tonight. We have this mammoth River and we need a creek restoration construction contract before the council Robert mccaden the capital project manager and Amanda royal the surface water program coordinator for water quality will be presenting on the construction contract for approval and will provide an update on the status of the project.

Looks like we might be having some technical difficulties here. Can we take a short break for a couple minutes while we pull that up?

Yeah, it is 628. We'll come back at 635. Thank you. All right, it is 635. I think we've got our technical difficulties ironed out. And I'm going to turn it over to staff to talk about the Sammamish River and Weyneda Creek restoration project construction contract.

Good evening, Mayor Thompson, Deputy Mayor Alderks, and council members. This presentation is in support of the Sammamish River and Weyneda Creek restoration project that is proposed for the back nine of the former Wayne Golf Course. The action that we are requesting council to approve this evening is a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Northwest Construction for construction of the Sammamish River and Way to Creek restoration project. The Sammamish River and Juanita Creek restoration project is identified as three year strategic priority number two for environmental stewardship within the city council 2040 vision document. Completion of this project will help improve the health of both Juanita Creek and the Sammamish River and create an environment in which salmon are better able to survive. As some of you may recall, this project has been many years in the making. In this slide, I'll briefly walk through the key milestones since design began and moving forward. In 2040, or sorry, excuse me, in 2024, the city is awarded grant funding for final design and construction of the project. Final design was completed in 2026, and the city also received additional grant funding for construction. The construction contract was advertised last month and we are currently in the process of awarding the construction contract to the lowest competent and qualified bidder. Pending council approval of tonight's project related agenda items, construction is scheduled to begin of September of this year. Construction will proceed by first installing TSC measures, establishing haul routes, and select channel excavation this fall, followed by a contract suspension during the winter season. Then from spring to fall of 2027, the rest of the channel excavation work, in-water work, and bridge installations will occur. Finally, in spring of 2028, the final planting work and project completion will occur. Lastly, I'd like to note that there are two council actions in support of the project that are on tonight's agenda. The first one is the construction contract, which is the topic of this presentation. And the second one is a contract amendment with our design engineer, Wolf Water Resources, for construction engineering services, which is included on this evening's consent agenda. This concludes my portion of the presentation, and I will now turn things over to Amanda Royale, who will discuss project funding and benefits.

Thanks, Robert. Good evening, everyone. Tonight I have the privilege of walking you through the funding for this project and share some of the amazing final design elements. I'm thrilled to share that the city has secured multiple awards and funding sources to complete this project. These sources are the Washington Department of Ecology, corporate sponsors through Bonneville Environmental Foundation, King County Levies, and also the City of Bothell Surface Water Utility Funds as well. These funds will cover $7.9 million, all of the construction costs for this project. Now I'd like to share more about Juanita Creek and the Sammamish River project. This presentation will cover a brief history and overview of existing site conditions, a visual rendering of what the completed project will look like, key ecological benefits, and also key water quality improvements. In the early 1900s, Lake Washington was lowered 8 to 10 feet. This also lowered the Sammamish River. Next, the Sammamish River was straightened and it was dredged. What had been a swampy marsh-like river was forever changed. This image that you're looking at was taken last summer. This shows the back nine of the former Wayne Golf Course, which is now called the Wayne Open Space. Juanita Creek and the surrounding landscape covers about 12 acres and has undergone significant changes over time. Some were logging, there was an oat and apple farm on the property, and then later development as a golf course. These activities negatively impacted the stream and surrounding landscape. For example, Juanita Creek was narrowed and straightened. This contributed to the stream with eroding banks. The golf course installed underground pipes and drainage systems to actually divert water away from the property. This drained wetlands that were on site and also further depleted the groundwater in the area. The introduction of non-native plants made it easier for invasive plants to take hold. Also a private road culvert upstream created a barrier for fish passage. This photo is a rendering of some of the future improvements planned for this area. First, I would like to bring the following to your attention. the pedestrian bridge near the Sammamish River. It will be replaced and upgraded with a 100-foot span bridge. Additionally, there's going to be a second pedestrian bridge with a 20-foot span, and it will be installed above the small drainage channels originating from the hillside. These bridges not only give Winnie the Creek the space that it needs to move, but it also will enhance the park user experience while also supporting education, outreach, and also stewardship opportunities. The final design will restore the natural stream and wetland functions of Juanita Creek. Some of these improvements will include we're going to remove all of the drainage pipe. This will replenish the groundwater and support the wetlands. The stream mouth will shift to its likely historic location. It'll be much wider and this will allow for a meandering stream It will also increase aquatic habitat and slow stormwater flows. The abandoned stream mouth will become a much larger alcove, and two smaller alcoves will be added downstream along the Sammamish River. This will create even more habitat for salmon to grow and find refuge from storms. The design also has a planting a robust riparian plant community, and also it'll correct the upstream barrier as well. I'd also like to highlight the powerful water quality benefits the design brings to Juanita Creek. The areas shown in purple are four special cleaning zones that are designed to clean and cool the surface and storm water naturally. These four cleaning zones, also called hypereic zones, act like a stream's liver. Water from the stream filters down through them, mixes with the groundwater and surrounding specialized soil, and then returns to the surface colder, cleaner, with fewer pollutants. This cutting-edge approach has already been used on two urban stream projects along Thornton Creek in Seattle. The results have been remarkable. After no Chinook salmon sightings since 2010 in Thornton Creek, similar restoration work led to the documented Chinook returning to the creek just a few years later. We expect this project will help inform future restoration efforts along the Sammamish River Corridor, Puget Sound, and beyond. The action that we are requesting council to approve is the adoption of a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Northwest Construction for construction of the Sammamish River and Juanita Creek restoration project. This concludes my presentation.

Somebody's got to have something to say about this.

Councilmember Curd. Thank you for the presentation and for coming to council to share a little bit more about the project too. Because of the committee that I sit on, the watershed committee about salmon, I hear about this project a lot because it's so important. One of the things that makes it really special in my mind is that it's the furthest downstream in our jurisdiction where a small stream enters into the Sammamish River. If you haven't heard me harp on it before, the Sammamish River is really hot. It's hard for salmon to get around because of what we've done to it over the past several generations by straightening it out, by dredging it, by making it less vegetated. It's really hard area for salmon to especially small salmon, to survive. And so this project is really helpful because it's relatively low in the system, it's downstream of some of the other areas, and so it's an early stop-off hotel spot for salmon, and they're migrating between Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish. So it's a really important and critical area for them to be able to cool off a little bit, and it'll support a lot of different salmon species as well, not just Chinook. Thank you for sharing more about the design. I'm really impressed with this team because as a restoration practitioner myself, I see designs that are kind of rammed through based on cost and feasibility, but this This design team has really gone all the way to looking at the region. What can you learn from other projects nearby? What can you do to heal the most important issues that are affecting salmon here and really be responsive to all the constraints on this property? We're trying to move people near where salmon habitat is. That's hard. That's really difficult work, and it's taken a long time to get it right. And I think that the designs are really there. So I want to commend you for sticking with it. This project is big. It's so exciting to be part of and I'm so proud that it's happening in my jurisdiction and I get to talk to all my salmon friends about it's us. We're the cool kid on the block. And I want to just also call out that it's been incredibly humbling to see how this team has shopped it to our funders too. The city and our taxpayers can't do this alone. We've benefited since the city started from having the stream and the Sammamish River dredged and straightened and turned into a waterway for people, and it's come at the expense of salmon. using funds from Department of Ecology and from the state, leveraging corporate funds. No other jurisdictions are going through that. So that's a testament to how powerful this project is, that we're getting corporations that want to be part of it and that trust the vision that our surface water team has so really kudos and I will I will make that motion and you guys can also I move to adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Northwest construction Inc for construction of the Sammamish River and we need a Creek restoration project in the amount of five million nine hundred and fifty seven thousand nine hundred and eighty seven dollars and ninety six cents second

I have a motion from Councilmember Curd and a second from Councilmember Dodd. Would anybody like to speak to the motion? Councilmember Dodd.

Thank you. Thank you for bringing this to us. There is no planet where I could speak as intelligibly as Councilmember Curd about this restoration work, but it is great to get confirmation that it is a wonderful and exciting project. what i am capable of understanding is the slide that has all of the grants that you guys received to make this work like what an amazing bit of work because we don't do environmental restoration just for bothel it is obviously part of our whole regional water network and um Now I'm going to take away Cool Salmon Hotel from this. So thank you for all the work that you put into this. It is really, really cool. So thank you. And I'm excited to be voting yes since I'm speaking to the motion.

Council Member Angulari.

Thank you, Mayor. Great presentation, a lot of information I learned. I served on one boat the last few years, not anymore now. Great work. Thank you so much for doing it for our city and for everybody, for the neighbors. Thank you.

Council Member Miles.

I just want to chime in and say thank you for this great presentation. Super excited about this. Cannot speak about salmon in any way other than I like to grill. But I am just so proud of us and a way to go to make a dollar out of 15 cents to get to about 8 million, so well done.

Deputy Mayor.

I just would love to throw my thoughts in about just how impressive the team has been in putting this together. It's a very impressive funding stack where you've brought in partners and at state, county, corporation, and public funds. I'm really excited to see how the project turns out and especially to see those riparian areas be restored and have more native vegetation there. The Wayne Open Space is a gem in our community. I think all of us at some point have been out there volunteering. in some way to plant and restore it and to bring it to a wild open space. And so it's just really fantastic to see that it's not just the work of our community, but it's really a partnership across the state to make this happen. And so it's very exciting to see it come to this point. Some of us up here were on the council when the designs were being brought to us. And so we've known that this is coming and seen the pictures, but now it's about to become real. And that's a very exciting prospect. So I'm excited to get to vote on this tonight.

I am so excited to have this back to us. Um, I don't get to say things like all my salmon friends, like council member curd does, but I'm really glad that we have him up here. Um, I also love that we get this presentation cause it's like a victory lap for all the good work that y'all have done this whole time. Like, cause we have to approve it. Like we're not going to, um, and, um, it's just, yeah, I'm, I'm so pumped for the next two years. And I also just want to like shout out like the project team, like when we were going through the design of this, like we, when we talk afterwards, I had a couple of conversations with my colleagues and like, well, they are really on it. Like this is really good work that's happening. Like, and it's really exciting for us to see that happen. Um, and I can't wait to watch this come together and for 2028 when it's all done. So, um, with that, I believe we have a motion on it. Oh, it doesn't, No, we're good. We have a motion and a second on the table, so City Clerk.

Thank you. Please say yes or no when I call your name. Council Member Ungulary?

Yes.

Mayor Thompson?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Alderks? Yes. Council Member Curd?

Yes.

Council Member Miles? Yes. Council Member Dodd? Yes. Council Member Acabra?

Yes.

Passes 7-0.

All right, next up we have a resolution authorizing a ballot measure for the November 3rd, 2026 general election proposing annexation of the Bothell Fire Department into the Shoreline Fire Department Regional Fire Authority. Deputy City Manager. I would have talked slower if I would have like seen you getting up to come to the table.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council. Quan and I are here this evening for a high-level presentation on the next step in advancing to a potential regional fire authority. Deanna Gregory, our legal counsel on the RFA matter, is also available online. There is no new information tonight. I will go through a few slides to provide the overview of the process to date, and then Quan will touch on the proposed regional fire plan major negotiation items as previously discussed. At the end, we will conclude with next steps. Again, the action before you this evening is a resolution authorizing a ballot measure to be submitted to voters within Bothell for consideration at the November 3rd, 2026 general election, proposing the annexation of the Bothell Fire Department into the Shoreline Fire Department Regional Fire Authority and approving the amended RFA plan incorporating such annexation. As you know, Bothell has been evaluating regionalization of fire and emergency medical services for quite some time. As our community grows and changes our calls for service are more frequent and more complex. We've taken several actions over the last few years to study options and plan for ways we can continue to maintain or improve services. We started a fire services study in 2023 and then in 2024 entered into an ILA for executive level fire services. In fall of 2024 we continued joint fleet maintenance and in 2025 we aligned our collective bargaining and administration timekeeping programs. After seeing success in these areas, council began to more fully consider an RFA annexation. Again, this is a slide that you have seen many times now that shares the council milestones from the last few months as we've advanced in the conversation on regional fire authority annexation. In March 2026, we held the study session to understand the current arrangement of our Bothell fire services and explore the council's interest in potentially joining a regional fire authority. In May, as we progressed in the conversation, we held a joint meeting with the RFA and the city council to jointly discuss the potential annexation. On June 9th, the council adopted the resolution to send a request to the RFA asking for annexation into the authority and authorized staff to solicit for the PROCON committee members. In June, city staff began to work with the RFA to develop an amendment to the RFA plan on incorporating Bothell into the RFA. On July 7th, we held the public hearing on proposed annexation, and then on July 10th, the RFA Board adopted the regional plan. Tonight is an important milestone, as we have before you, the adopted plan, approval of the ballot language, and the pro-con committees. Again, the city manager has gone over this slide previously, but as a recap about regionalization, call volumes are high and increasingly EMS driven. A regional model allows dynamic deployment across jurisdictions, improving reliability when multiple calls stack up, something a single city system can struggle with unless it stacks for peak conditions. Existing regional infrastructure is already mature. Many aspects of public safety already rely on a regional infrastructure, including for Bothell. Both our 911 dispatch administered through NORCOM 911, as well as the Regional Crisis Response Agency covering the jurisdictions currently making up shoreline RFA boundaries. in addition to Bothell and Kirkland are successful examples. As Council may also recall, in conducting a scan of both King and Snohomish counties, not only is fire regionalization a national norm, it is more common in our region than ever before. With eight cities, as you can see on the map, providing standalone service, and 12 partnering with another agency, 38 are members of an RFA or regional fire district. Additionally, financial pressures are alleviated by tools available to RFAs that cities do not have, including fire benefit charges and ability to spread costs efficiently across a larger population of residents. This also impacts service levels by having a broader range of staffing and resources to deploy. maintaining or improving response times, providing depth of services, including advanced life support, and supporting employee growth for paramedics, specialized training, and leadership growth opportunities. Now I will hand it over to Quan to review the proposed regional fire plan with you this evening.

Thank you, Claire. And I would like to go over some high-level important points about what has been adopted in the Shoreline RFA. As Claire mentioned, the RFA Board adopted this already a couple of weeks ago. And I also want to give a shout out to Chief Cowan, who has spent really numerous hours and some late night hours working on the plan and negotiating in good faith with the city. So I just want to give special recognition to Chief Cowan. So a couple highlights, and again, as you recall, we have been focusing on really three main issues. The governance, the finances, and how does this plan go into work? So talk about the effective day. If approved by the voters, the effective day of Bothell joining the RFA would be March 1st, 2027. Why do we want to have this done? Because this will give us a larger window between November election and day one for preparation. Believe me, there are going to be a lot of details that will be needed in order to work out because Our fire department is a major operation and again recognizing their good work. It will be labor intensive in working out the details. The next one is really governance. We agreed that the composition of the board will be nine members, three from Shoreline, three from North Shore, and three from the elected council members in Bothell. And the last area, and not the least, is finances. It's not the only reason why we want to join the RFA, but it is, again, an important consideration. So in the plan, the RFA Property Tax Collection Authority will begin on January 1st, 2028. And the reason behind that is we would pass the deadline to submit our 2027 property rate to King County and Snohomish County. So this will give us time to assess what we need in terms of our budget. and also to collect the new assessment value. In the meantime, both the ROFA and Bothell will be collecting at the same rate as we have done. Again, we are limited by the 1% growth on the property levy. And then finally, in the plan, the levy rates of the RFA, we have committed to a 45 cents per $1,000 assessed value plus a fire benefit charge. We cannot show you the amount of fire benefit charge because, again, in preparation for the 2028 budget, the RFA will consider all the cost increases and then adjust their rate. But the process will be transparent, and the Bartholomew City Council, if the voters approve this, will have a say on the board. More details in terms of the finances, transfer of assets. Five departments has a lot of asset inventory. So by the agreement, we will transfer all the assets and resources associated with fire services to the RFA except the two new fire stations, station 42 and 45. We will not be transferring the titles until 2040. That's when the levied the bond would expire. So we will commit again on behalf of the Bothell residents. We'll be paying the bonds and we will retire that in 2040 and by then we will transfer the title. The lease agreement will be worked out between the RFA and Bothell during next year's timeframe. So asset replacement, that means vehicles and fire trucks, fire apparatus, and we have agreed that 105,000 will be transferred to help the RFA on their asset replacement plan within 30 days of the effective day of March 1st, 2027, and then $505,000 no later than April 1st, 2028. The next one is all the accrued vacation and sick leaves. So Barthol has agreed to reimburse the RFA all the retirement cash out. If a firefighter under the current plan decides to separate from service prior to December 31, 2028, Barthol will pick up the tab. So we will hold the RFA harmless. And lastly, the left one, retirement. So both will retain responsibility because of the left requirements. So we will retain them. So what you don't see here is transfer of any reserve fund. So because by agreement, both Shoreline RFA and Barthel has come to the conclusion that Barthel will, because of our financial situation, we will not be able to afford transferring any reserve fund at this time. So I'm more than happy to answer questions after the last couple slides. And getting back to you, Claire.

Thank you, Quan. Yes, we just have one slide left, and that is next steps. And as you can see, we are nearing the finish line. A few quick notes. The next item before you this evening will be appointing the PROCON committee members. And then after this evening, the city clerk will file the necessary documents with King County. Then King County will file the ballot measure and work with the PROCON committees. The language will then appear on the November 3rd ballot for Bothell residents to determine whether the Regional Fire Authority annexation is successful. And with that, again, the action before you this evening is adoption of a resolution authorizing a ballot measure for the annexation of the Bothell Fire Department into the Shoreline Fire Department Regional Fire Authority and approving the amended RFA plan incorporating such annexation. And with that, I will turn it back to you, Mayor. And Quan, Deanna, and I are here if you have any questions.

All right, Council. Council Member Alcabra. I'm still working on it.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you. As the city manager said previously, and depending on who you talk to, this conversation has been going on for a couple of years or a couple of decades. So I'm glad that we are finally putting it up for the voters to decide on this. There's a reason why corporations merge. It's because for operational financial efficiencies as well as which is the most important thing for me, is improved service delivery, right? We've been focused on financial and operational efficiencies a lot. We've been talking about how service will also improve, but can we, one last time, yourself or maybe the Chief, talk about how service will also improve for our residents?

Thank you, council member. So I would go back to just the example there on slide, what are we? Slide five, I think it is. And what I would share with you is just the regionalization aspect again. As we can see from the map, this is a common theme. I was talking about this years ago when I was back in Michigan. And you can do more when you have regionalization, when you have multiple jurisdictions coming together. So I think that is one of the biggest signs about this. If we want to get into more specific details about fire services, I don't know if we want to have the chief speak. But again, I would highlight for you the regional services that we already have that we've been working through with NORCOM and 911. I would also highlight the Regional Crisis Response Agency with regionalization as well. I think we might have a slide that we have presented previously too that gets into more about responses over in the data that we have. So we could harken back to that slide as well. I just don't have it before me right now that gives you specific numbers over time and what we've seen grow. But we have seen call times grow or calls around the region. And as growth happens, we're going to continue to see that more and more. So I think it's being able to keep up with that trend, being able to keep up with the response times. Our community benefits right now from good response times, and we don't want to see that dwindle over time.

So if I may add a little bit. So this is really forecasting into the future and not just right now. So our population obviously is growing and we have seen a deficit in the southeast corner of our surface area. on borderline with Kirkland. So there is a need for a third fire station, whether we stay or join the RFA. So in our analysis, if we join the RFA, the cost will be spread over in a larger jurisdiction. In that sense, service will improve because they can maximize the fire apparatus as well as firefighters covering those areas. So it's a more efficient use of resources. And the cost will be lower because, again, if the voters approved the RFA, the cost of the new fire station as well as staffing of the fire station will be shared.

Yeah, thank you. That's a good explanation. And I think we have talked about cost and how distribution of cost across now the one region called the shoreline RFA is a good thing. I think from the other perspective, you know, how when Steve Jobs once introduced the iPhone or iPods back in the day, it's like 3,000 songs on this device. It's not 200 gigabytes or one megabyte at the time or whatever. It's something that people will understand and resonate with. That's what I was asking. I know service calls have been increasing. How have we been responding to them? And then how is this going to improve? I'm sure it will improve. I just want color commentary about it, not necessarily detailed data, because we'll get that, I'm sure, in the future once we get the reports. That's what I was requesting.

Yeah, and I think the major point is what Quan had said. I think we have good response times now, but it's as we see the growth happen over time, if we remain the same, obviously those resources are going to a bigger span, and so we will start to probably see over time response times decline, whereas with the regional approach, you've got more resources even though you have more space.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

So the levy rate of RFA, 45 cents per thousand, so this would affect approximately in 2028, if I understand the need to approve on that. How much do we, I know we do a general fund collection right now, how much do we collect at this moment? Is there a

there a similar number some number that we collect currently on the general fund yeah so good question uh so we are different than the rfa so this is a rfa number and not ours so we collect general fund not just for the fire department we collect for on behalf of all the general fund departments police fire internal services parks so we have a different rate than the rfa rfa will just covered fire services. So their rates of 45 cents per 1,000 assessed value would be the new, at least the proposed rate in the plan for 2028. Okay.

So if all goes well, again, It's not that I'm talking just because I have a house. I'm just talking about every resident in Bothell. If somebody has a million dollar house, an average, I'm just saying, Would they be paying additional $450 based on this?

By just pure math, if you have a million-dollar house, yeah, times 45 cents, that's $450 a year or about $38 a month. But that's just for the ROFA. the Bothell levy, the general levy, would be affected. So we have looked at our fire services budget. Right now it's approximately 22% of the general fund. So if we If these fire services is now part of the RFA, we will look at, in our budget process for the 2028 rate, how do we lower the burden for the residential owners as well as the commercial owners.

How much approximately do you anticipate it will go down approximately? Just taking this example, will it go down by... like 10 cents per thousand approximately, because these questions might come from the residents, okay? We are going and... So do we know approximately how much we are going to? I'm trying to see what goes up, what goes down, net effect for a homeowner.

Yeah, that's a great question. We have done two scenarios, but at the same time, those are assumed based on 2026 assessed value. So in 2028, the assessed value will be different. So the rate, even though it may go higher or lower, it will be

different calculation so I can't tell you right now without looking at the 2028 assess value although I'm not talking about I'm talking about at least a baseline of current current appraisal value I mean things will go up and down I'm not talking about that if we are implementing this this is a 45 cents per thousand irrespective of what it we home value a million dollar home can be a five hundred thousand or a $1.5 million. Just because we can only go with what we have, we cannot talk about what we do not have. I'm just trying to see based on what we have the numbers right now, can we at least estimate, okay, we are going to increase for a million dollar home, we are going to increase $450. we may probably going to reduce by 10 cents, 20 cents, so that a homeowner is expecting a net $350. If we are reducing 10 cents, we are increasing 45 cents, the net impact for a homeowner, again, things will change. I'm not saying we are setting it up and we are improving everything right now. Just a ballpark figure so that we have an idea.

So in 2026, again, the general levy collect for everybody, not just for fire department. Our general levy is about 78 cents per 1,000 assessed value. So the number will be, again, if you ask for an approximate number, it will be lower than 78 cents per 1,000. But by how much, I cannot tell you because we are still adjusting the budget. The 22% is kind of a benchmark. But I think we will be able to lower that. But by how much, I cannot tell you at this point.

And maybe question to you, our chief. Can it be even higher than 45 cents later when the board decides? Can it be, or is it the cap right now, 45 cents?

The board, again, in the 27 budget process for the 28, our three council members rep will be able to be part of that decision process. Because again, their calculation is different because besides the levy, they also charge a fire benefit charge. Bothell resident has never gotten a fire benefit charge. So you have to also consider that as part of the calculation. So, but there is no cap. It can be higher or lower.

Again, it's up to the board. You can amend. I understand. But right now we are anticipating. I'm glad that I see a number here. Yeah. So, I mean, at least that is a number we are approximately anticipating based on current valuations, our current budget, what they have. That's what I'm anticipating, but it can be higher or lower. Correct. Okay. When was the last time for both residents we have levied more than 20 cents per thousand? Do we know, as a city staff, when was the last time we levied more than 20 cents? I usually see 5 cents, 10 cents on the ballots, but looking at 45 cents, I'm just asking, when was the last time we...

Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, sorry, but we are not putting a rate in the ballot. So this is for the plan, just an estimation. So we are not asking the voters to vote on a rate.

That's what I thought. No, the question I'm asking is, when was the last time we levied from the Bothell City like a... like we approved something like this, and then we were able to, like, we are also thinking for parts levy, right? I don't know what is the parts levy. We are still thinking. I do not know whether it's 10 cents or 20 cents. We don't know. We are still thinking.

Point of information, Council Member Ongulary, I just wanted to jump in because a lot of these rates are things that either we will set as a council, like if we change our general levy collection, or that the RFA will set in their authority. And I don't know that our staff can it's not appropriate for them to estimate that amount because they do not have the statutory authority to set these rates. They would be guessing what we will do as actions, and that's not normally something we ask our staff to do.

And the other thing I would say is, I think it was the last meeting that we talked about this. We got a lot of the details on those finances, and we are going to essentially, between now and the levy, decide what we're going to do, and we will have the opportunity to communicate that to the public. And so we're going to have all of these conversations, and we're going to get all of the data, all the information, because we know that the fiscal part of this is super important to our voters. So that's absolutely work that we're planning on doing.

So the last question, maybe I missed it. Can I see the language? What is the language we are approving today? Okay, so this is the language that every resident will look at it on their ballot.

No, we're going to. So we're going to appoint members to a pro committee next. And that committee is going to draft what is on the ballot measure. This is adopting the resolution saying, yes, we're going to submit a ballot measure. This is not what people are going to see in their voter penalty statement. I mean, unless the committee copies and pastes this, which I don't think they will.

If I may, we're going to support an explanatory statement that's been written by the bond council, and along with that, we'll have the statements written by pro-con committees that will appear in the ballot measure.

And just to add on a little bit, at page 235 of the packet, that is where council will find the proposed ballot language that if council passes the resolution, that would appear on people's ballots.

Thank you. I mean, I just want to make sure, yeah, full disclosure, I don't mind $450 and, you know, I'm just trying to understand as we are all going through this process, that's all. I just want to let you all know how this is going to play out for a resident if they come back, if they ask us, hey, what's happened? How did you do it? I didn't know what I'm approving or... Because a lot of times, sometimes we say devil is in the details. So I'm trying to say my apologies. I just wanted to make sure that that is the intention. That's all. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

I'd also like to make a point of information to answer one of Councilmember Ungulary's questions around levy rates. And so I just looked up the public safety levy and the sidewalk levy. And the public safety levy on the website shows it was 44 cents per thousand, and the safe streets and sidewalks is 50 cents per thousand. So it's right in the middle of other levy rates that the voters have approved. And so it is significant, you know, like none of those levy rates come close to what you estimated or said that you had seen before. So like it is, you know, 44 cents, 45 cents, 50 cents. It's all kind of in the same range.

Thank you. So probably... Again, we don't have a magic wand. Probably that point of information is great. Probably we might reduce by 30 cents. If we are collecting, if we are not collecting for our fire, for Bothell fire, we might be able to reduce because that's what we are currently collecting. Is that right, Deputy Mayor? Is that what we are collecting for our fire?

On the public safety levy that was voted in 2018?

Yes. So this decision doesn't affect the public safety levy because the voters have approved that levy and that will go to the end of it. But as a council, we will decide what we want to do with our general levy now that we're not going to have to use it to pay fire anymore. And I've already said my piece on what I think about that. So I'm not going to repeat myself yet. But that those are conversations we are planning to have that we haven't had yet. And we absolutely will.

And I would also like to take my turn for comments and questions. Thank you. I do appreciate just the level of attention to detail that you have brought to us and the broad overview, kind of bringing all of the work of the last several years together. This is a momentous occasion. It has, for those who have been asking about this for two decades, it's finally coming to the point where we can approve to put it on the ballot. And so I'm just grateful for all of the preparation and work that went into preparing the ballot language and that there is a bond committee who's preparing the explanatory statement. And I also just want to do a shout out for the fire service study page on the website where all of this information can be found, including frequently asked questions. And it's just... really is a testament to the staff who have tried to make this a very transparent process and put all of the information in a place, you know, there's nothing more hidden than something on the public record, but it is all on the public record. It is on its own page on the, on the city website. Um, so, you know, fire service study page and, and there's annual reports and there, you know, there's information about the levy. Um, and so I, I'm even seeing that it's been updated as recently as the 17th. So when our, um, when our agenda came out last week. So it is up to date and it contains the information that we want to make sure that the public can have. And really these presentations are a summary and overview of what all of this work looks like. So just appreciate all of that. And I don't have any questions around what was presented to us tonight. I think that we've had a good conversation about it. So thanks.

Councilmember Dodd.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Claire and Quan. I don't know if I want to call you deputy city manager, acting city manager, so Claire. But I just really want to shout out your efforts, the efforts of our other staff, our fire chief, and just getting through this process and taking two organizations that have shared goals but different ways of operating, different ways of administrating is really difficult to put it very simply. So I really appreciate all the dedication that's gone into this and the ways that our concerns of a city, that the RFA's concerns as their district have been addressed and that we've got an agreement that everybody, well at least the ten and seven of us are comfortable moving forward with. And I'm excited that this will go to a vote. I think I trend more on the this has been discussed for decades side of that. It's something that I was hearing about. I'm going to hit four years on council in October. And before even that started, it was a topic. So I really appreciate that we're at the point where we can hear from our residents and see how they feel. So thank you very much.

Did Amanda just take credit for this moving forward? I would do no such thing.

Thanks be to Amanda.

I'd like to move the recommended action.

Okay, give me a second. Okay. I am really excited that we're here, not just so we can stop talking about it. I know Chief Cowan's probably really excited to stop talking about this and get back to just dealing with one board that you have to work with. And it's been years, and I... I have not always been a big cheerleader for it because I just didn't know if it was the right thing to do. And this is one of those decisions that when we make this, when we put this out, like it can't be walked back. And that has a lot of consequence to me. So I, um, I'm only happy to move this forward because I am convinced that this is the right thing to do. Um, and, um, it kind of gets to what council, uh, council member Acaba was going at earlier. The big thing for me isn't, um, does it make it better now? It's the ability to get where we need to go because we know that south of the river, our response times are lower. And we know that we rely to a bigger degree that I think anybody's comfortable with on our friends in Kenmore for mutual aid. And asking the city of Bothell to do that on its own when we still have 14 years or something left on bonds for other stations is just a big ask. And we probably need to do something before then. And being able to join forces with the RFA and, you know, our neighbors in Kenmore have the exact same need, an exact same situation. And if we have something where we can handle both of those, well, now it starts to make a lot more sense. And it seems really difficult to ask our voters to try to solve that independently of an RFA when they're still solving the last problem we asked them to fix that, honestly, we didn't go far enough with. And and but that's where we're at now. So, so to me, I think, you know, this is how we get where we know we need to go. Like this is a, this is a future based decision. Um, and, um, yeah, um, I think this is where I think it's the right thing to do. I don't know what I'm going to say next, so I should probably stop talking. Um, but I think, um, I would love to accept a motion council over Dodd.

I'd like to move the recommended action.

Second. I have a motion from Council Member Dodd and a second from Council Member Curd to adopt a resolution authorizing a ballot measure to be submitted to voters within Bothell for consideration at the November 3rd, 2026 general election, proposing the annexation of the Bothell Fire Department into the Shoreline Fire Department Regional Fire Authority and approving the amended RFA plan incorporating such annexation. Would anybody like to speak to the motion?

Thank you. I did want to add, inspired by things that other council members have said, whenever you take over a job that someone else has held, whether it's a city council or a finance manager or a deputy city manager or a fire chief, I'm just picking on people in the you're going to inherit the decisions they made. And I think it is very easy to be like, ah, man, like, um, Mr. Mayor, you mentioned, you know, we replaced two of our three fire stations in our 2018 levy. None of us were seated up here. Um, but now it feels like, oh man, if only we had done all three, right. And we, we weren't part of those decisions, but now that we are part of one of these decisions that somebody is going to inherit, um, I just wanted to be clear that when we talk about needing to get comfortable with it, needing to get to where we can support it. Part of that is because I would love for the next person in this seat to not be like, Amanda. So I really appreciate that we had the time to get comfortable with it. And we are working on a ballot measure that we can get behind because that is important. We don't want to send half done things to our voters and residents. So just again, more appreciation and a little bit of explanation. Thanks.

And also to be clear, you only know what you know. And I don't know what we knew back when this happened. And like looking with the benefit of hindsight, like we should have done more, but I don't know what we know then. So if you're watching this and you were on the city council in 2018, man, get a hobby. But also like I didn't want that to seem like a naked criticism because it wasn't. Council Member Angulari.

Thank you very much, Quan and city staff. A lot of work you guys put in. I'm hoping for the best. Thank you very much for everything you guys did until now. Thank you.

All right, city clerk.

Thank you. Please say yes, sir, and I want to call your name. Council Member Ongulary?

Yes.

Mayor Thompson?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Alderks? Yes. Council Member Kirk?

Yes.

Council Member Miles? Yes. Councilmember Dodd, yes. Councilmember Alcabra, yes. Passes 7-0.

Thank you very much, and thank you very much. All right. Next up, we're probably going to have the same people at the table because our next agenda bill is the PROCON committee appointments for Proposition No. 1, annexation into the Shoreline Regional Fire Authority for the November 3, 2026 general election. Deputy City Manager.

And I think with that, I'm passing it on to the clerk, Laura.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. Tonight, you're asked to appoint members to the pro-con committees for the RFA to write statements for inclusion in the voter pamphlet for the November 3rd general election. Staff advertised for interested pro-con committee members from June 19th to July 10th. Two letters of interest were received in support of the ballot measure. Staff did not receive any letters of support or on the con side. So we will notify county when they, and they will use their voter rolls to reach out to see if anyone's interested in issuing a con statement. Tonight, council is asked to appoint Wesley Wang and Brendan Keith to the pro committee to prepare a written statement in support of the ballot measure. Once appointed, I will notify the candidates in King County who will work with the candidates to have their statement included in the voters pamphlet. It is important to note that while both names will appear in the pamphlet, the committee members may have as many, any number of people assist them in writing their statement. And with that, I am happy to answer any questions.

Council Member Dodd.

Thank you. Tangentially, will Fire District 10's measure have different pro-con committee members? It's a fully separate deal. Is that correct? Because they're not part of our measure. They're running their own. Is that accurate?

They'll have different. Okay. Yes. Thank you. And I will say, just to clarify, because we are in two counties, so this might be confusing to folks, but because we are in two counties, I will submit the paperwork to King County. They're our primary county. They will work with Snow County to make sure that the explanatory statement and all the paperwork, along with the post statement, is in their Snow County's ballot pamphlet as well.

All right, well, I'm not seeing any lights go on. And we can have three people?

You can have three people if you have a third that you want to- But only three people? Up to three people.

Okay, fantastic. I don't know either of the two applicants and the information that they gave us didn't have a whole lot of detail. I kind of feel like one of us should be on that committee because we have written pamphlet statements before and these are our constituents. We're going to be asking to do this. So I would love to have representation from one of us on there as well. And I would be happy to do that, but I am not married to that.

I would, I would happily second that nomination of the mayor to, uh, to serve on the pro con or on the pro committee.

I support to Mason. Thank you very much.

And I understand what I'm doing when you say I'm willing to do something. So yes.

Oh, I was just going to say, I fully support your dreams and I think you're going to be great.

I therefore co-sign with my colleagues.

Are you guys sure you don't want another thing to do? Um, um, Yeah, I feel like if we're going out and we're asking our voters, I want to have some input into how that is phrased and how that goes out to the community. And we've all had to write ballot statements before.

Anyway, Council Member Dodd? I'm assuming we need a motion, Clerk. Okay, I got a nod. So I move that we appoint Mason Thompson, Wesley Wang, and Brandon Keith to the pro committee for Proposition 1. I second.

I have a motion from Councilmember Dodd and a second from Councilmember Aguilera. Would anybody like to speak to the motion? Seeing none, City Clerk.

Thank you. Please say yes or no when I call your name. Councilmember Aguilera?

Yes.

Mayor Thompson?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Alders? Yes. Councilmember Curd? Yes. Councilmember Miles? Yes. Councilmember Dodd? Yes. Councilmember Alcabra?

Yes.

Passes 7-0.

All right, and with that, we have two study sessions after this, but we are going to take a 14-minute break. It's 7.36. We're going to come back at 7.50. I'll talk slow. Welcome back. We have a couple council members that are rolling in late, so I was joking that I'll talk slow, but I can only do that for about two words. We have a couple study sessions tonight. Our first one is on procedural code updates. Deputy City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Tonight's study session will be presented by Katie Posler, Senior Planner, along with Deputy Director Christian Geitz, and they are going to provide for us an overview of the proposed procedural code amendments to Bothell Municipal Code Titles 11, 12, and 14, and staff are seeking City Council feedback to refine the proposed amendments before moving forward. With that, I will hand it over to Katie.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. My name is Katie Posler, and I'm here to present the procedural code updates which affect Botham Municipal Code Titles 11, 12, and 14. There is no action required of you tonight. Council will hold a study session and provide feedback on proposed amendments to the procedural regulations. And before we get into each specific amendment, I just wanted to give some background on the project. The procedural codes are really the behind the scenes framework of the development review process. They establish how applications are submitted, how public notice is done, how they're reviewed by staff, when public hearings occur. And the final decision. So while they're generally unseen by council, they're used by staff on a day-to-day basis and are the foundation of how applications are administered. Throughout the past year, staff has taken a look at these codes and found some areas for improvement. Our goals or objectives with these proposed amendments are to improve clarity and consistency, simplify permit review procedures, remove outdated and duplicative provisions, and align the code with current practices and state law. Throughout the presentation, we'll put each amendment into one of three categories, on the left being the least significant, and on the right being the most significant. The first change type is housekeeping, and these are minor administrative changes, and there's four slides that fall into this category. Next is refinement changes, and these are improvements to existing procedures while maintaining the original policy intent, and there are four slides on this. And then the final category is policy changes. And these are changes to the rules or decision making process. And there are two items in this category. And these are kind of the two big ticket items. And before we get into it, I have 12 slides of content. So just to prepare you for what's coming. So the first topic is the project permit framework. And this is in code section 11.04. And this is a refinement change. So in the current code, some permit types are either outdated or assigned to the wrong review process. And in the proposed code, we would remove the unused type 4B permit category. So this is a column that's not used. There's not any land use actions listed under this column. So we're proposing to remove it since we don't need it. The next is moving site-specific rezones from a type 5 to a type 4a. And we'll get into the meat of that a little bit later, but this is just describing the action of moving it to a different column. Next is adding public agency and utility exceptions and standalone SEPA reviews to the Type 2 permit action. And just for clarity, Type 2 is an administrative decision, but it does include public notice. And staff is already operating with standalone SEPAs under Type 2, so this is just codifying that and putting it into the code. Then public agency and utility exceptions are very similar to something else in the code called the reasonable use exceptions. What those are is they both are asking for relief from critical area regulations. So if a property was like pretty much consumed by a wetlander stream, both of these items, public agency utility exceptions and reasonable use exceptions ask for relief. The only difference really is who is asking for it. So reasonable use exceptions is typically a private property owner and public agency and utility exceptions are typically a public agency or utility company. So that's why we felt they should both be categorized as type two based on how similar they are. So the results of this is that it improves consistency and transparency and makes the permit process easier to understand. Next up, the topic is public hearings. And this change type is policy. And this is also in 1104 of the code. So under the current code, planning commission and city council both hold a public hearing for legislative actions. So things like a comprehensive plan amendment, a code amendment, or area-wide rezones. And in the proposed code, we are proposing to meet state law, which requires only one public hearing. And our proposal would be that planning commission holds the required public hearing, but city council still remains the final decision maker at a regular public meeting. And we've also worked in language that city council can hold an additional or a second public hearing if warranted. And honestly, there might be situations where that would come up, like with a periodic comprehensive plan amendment, like the one that was done in 2024. That was a really big deal and had development regulations. Those were overhauled as well. And even the tree code that is coming up, trees are obviously a big topic and that might warrant two public hearings. But the results would be that this would align with state law and improve the efficiency and predictability of the process. And when we brought this to Planning Commission, they did express some concern with removing that second public hearing, but also expressed support of trying to make the process more efficient. and they asked us to do a little research. So we did that and if you take a look at the screen, this is the public hearing participation averages for projects that were heard in 2024 and 2025. So the first table is typical legislative or policy actions. So like removing the parking minimums or the critical area ordinance update. At Planning Commission, there were an average of 2.64 public comments and 2.18 at City Council. Then if you look at the bottom table, this is for those larger comprehensive plan amendments that we obviously got a lot more comments. There were almost 24 average public comments and almost 43 written comments for those types of amendments. That's why we have that proposed provision in the code to allow that flexibility. I'm just to go over some of the public engagement opportunities that occur throughout these processes would be, there are many checkpoints throughout this process to get to city council approval for these legislative actions. So there's typically one to two planning commission study sessions. Then there's typically one to two city council study sessions. Then there is a public hearing at planning commission. Then there's a public hearing at City Council. And then there is typically the adoption at City Council. So that results in typically six to seven touch points or pit stops along this road. And even for this project that I'm presenting, we have done study sessions at Planning Commission in February and May. We're going to do another one in September. We're obviously having the study session at Council right now. And then we'll do the public hearing in September for Planning Commission. And then in October, there would be the public meeting for, I'm sorry, public hearing for city council and then final adoption. So just to kind of explain all those different checkpoints and what we're proposing to do is remove the second required public hearing with city council and put that required public hearing at the planning commission stage. So there are a lot of ways to engage throughout the process for citizens. During the process they can email comments to staff, they can submit written comments on the website, they can call or meet with staff, and they can also speak at the public hearing, which in the proposed code would be at Planning Commission, or even during the general public comment period during any Planning Commission or City Council meeting. And just to recap kind of our goal with this one is to align with state law to make the legislative process efficient and then to maintain meaningful public comment opportunities. The next topic is permit processing, and this change type is a housekeeping change. In the current code, applicants have 180 days to respond to correction requests or review comments, and in the proposed code, we would reduce that down to 90 days, but also allow extensions when justified by established criteria, and that was a suggestion from Planning Commission. The results are that this aligns with regional practice and encourages timely permit review. It maintains flexibility for complex projects. And when we took a look back at if projects were meeting this 90 days, most of them were, so that's why we felt comfortable with this change. The next topic is administrative appeals, and this is located in 1112 and 1114 of the code, and this is a housekeeping change. So in the current code, Type 2 appeal procedures are split across multiple code sections, and there are also some outdated references, like I mentioned, that Type 4b process that we're getting rid of. In the proposed code, we would consolidate Type 2 appeals into Chapter 1114, just so they're in one spot. So we'd be removing duplicative and obsolete provisions, and the result would be that there would be a single location for administrative appeal procedures, and it would be easier to navigate and administer. Next up is the amendment process, and this is in 1118, and this is a refinement change. In the current code, different amendments typically follow different recommendation paths before they actually get to city council. So for example, some amendments go from the advisory body to planning commission to city council, and other ones go from the advisory body straight to city council and skip planning commission. So our proposal is to standardize this process so that all of them make the pit stop at Planning Commission for a consolidated recommendation before going to City Council. And the two code amendments that this affect are shoreline management and landmark preservation. So it just creates a consistent and predictable review process. The next topic is public notice. This is 1119 of the code, and the change type is refinement. So in the current code, there is some outdated information on the public notice signs, and there's also optional noticing standards. And really in code, there shouldn't be an optional provision, it should be a requirement of who does it, when they do it, and how they're supposed to accomplish it. So in the proposed code, we're updating the public notice sign details to have the correct contact information, and we're also removing those optional noticing methods. They're a little outdated and the required noticing methods cover mailing, posting, legal ads, and all those types of things. And the results are that this improves readability and streamlines the code. The next topic is multifamily density phasing. And this change type is a refinement and it's in 12.14 of the code. And in the current code, there are no requirements to ensure density is achieved throughout a phased construction. So an example would be if a project had a minimum density of 100 units and they were proposing to put 60 units in an apartment product and 40 in a townhouse product. So what we're adding to the code is to limit a certificate of occupancy so that no more than 50% of the units in the lower density phase can receive a final CFO until the higher density phase is completed. So what that does is it ensures that minimum density requirements are achieved, which is a major part of the code update that was done in 2024. So just make sure that is accomplished. The next topic is site plan review, and this is a housekeeping change. And in the current code, there is some inconsistency with the critical area ordinance, as well as some outdated information. And in the proposed code, we're clarifying the applicability section. So I believe in the last year or two, we added the unit lot subdivision option to the code, and that falls under the subdivision procedures and isn't a site plan review. So this is just clarifying that that's exempt from this section. We're also making sure that the site plan review is consistent with the critical area standards. So in the critical area ordinance, it talks about showing critical areas within 300 feet of a property. So we're just making sure that that's passed along to the site plan review and that's shown on the site plan. And then we're also removing references to parking stalls because as you know, we did remove parking minimums. So what this does is it ensures there's consistency with other code sections. Next up is Rezones and this is the second policy change. So in the current code, site-specific and area-wide rezones both follow the same process. They go to Planning Commission for a recommendation and then City Council for a final decision. And just to kind of explain the difference, site-specific rezones are typically one parcel or a couple of parcels, and they're typically submitted by an applicant. And area-wide rezones are legislative actions, and they're typically initiated by the city, and they affect the entire city or a very large portion of the city. So in the proposed code, we're moving site-specific free zones to type 4A, which would go to the hearing examiner in an open record public hearing, and then city council for a closed record decision. And we would keep area wide as type 5, which it is today, which goes to planning commission and then city council. And we would provide separate criteria for these two different processes. And really this is based on a legal difference between site rezones and area-wide rezones. So site-specific rezones are considered quasi-judicial and area-wide are considered legislative. So hearing examiners are really trained to handle quasi-judicial decisions, meaning comparing it to what the existing code says, whereas city council and planning commission should really be focusing on creating the rules that are in the code. So that's kind of the difference between those two, and hearing examiners are really trained to conduct that type of review. The result is that it's a more direct and predictable process, and it also better aligns with the comprehensive plan. The last item is public agency and utility exceptions, which we touched on a little bit earlier. And this is a housekeeping change. So in the current code, public agency and utility exceptions have to go to the hearing examiner for approval, which is a public hearing. So we're proposing to reclassify that as a type two application, which is an administrative decision that still requires public notice. So the director or designee would make this decision. And the reason being that reasonable use exceptions which are very similar but just requested by a private property owner are already a type 2 decision and have been for a long time. So that's why we're trying to align these two different projects. So it removes an unnecessary hearing and streamlines that process. So in terms of next steps, we're looking forward to getting your feedback tonight. And in September, we're going to Planning Commission for a study session and public hearing. And then in October, we'll be going back to you for a public hearing and ordinance adoption. So again, no action is required tonight. We're just trying to get your feedback on these proposed amendments. And we do have some discussion questions if that helps prompt with the discussion. The first one is if council is open to opportunities to streamline development review procedures where it seems appropriate. And then the second item is, are there any additional procedural updates that the council would like staff to investigate further?

Thanks for bringing these forward. Wow, there's a lot. Our code is messy. I haven't... listen to any planning commission discussions or deliberations on these. So I'm kind of approaching this from a blank slate. So a couple of them that you've been reading, I have more questions about. One is on the public hearing process changes. I agree that sometimes opening a public hearing and then closing it because there's nobody who comes to give public testimony at City Council because everybody's already done it at Planning Commission. But when would we decide as a council to hold a public hearing on an item that might warrant such a thing? Would that be Any old meeting where we say what's on our proposed agenda topics?

We could say hey, I think this topic that we have a study session on might warrant Or is there a process check I think at a study session maybe one of the initial ones would probably be a good time to discuss if it would warrant a public hearing at City Council as well

And I'll add to that. I think staff figured for those larger projects like the comp plan or the tree code, we recognize there likely will be comments all the way up until the end. And so as part of our scoping and our engagement plan, we would likely be identifying, here's what we're planning on doing. So you would know up ahead of time, we're planning on doing this public hearing. If nobody comments along the way and it's a really, sort of a very flat item, we can decide to not do it. But that was our intention is we would identify it initially with those larger ones where we just plan on that type of engagement, that level of engagement and opportunity. One more meeting for comments to be heard. We'd love to get those comments earlier through that list that Katie laid out of the multiple touches throughout any code update process or policy update process.

but that would be that's our initial thought but then yes if study session one you thought I think we should have a public hearing on this that's we're happy to go to go and arrange that so if someone comes to give comment during the three minutes that they have at the beginning of the meeting of one of our meetings on a topic that's on our agenda that's just a study session we wouldn't incorporate that comment as

public as a record in in the public hearing there it wouldn't be part of a public hearing right so we would direct them we'd say well it's sorry it's too late for your comment to be on record or how would we address that any comment we receive whether it's via email phone call that that is input that guides us along the way through any journey down a code update or a policy update project so it'll it'll make its way into our record it's not within the official public hearing event, we would likely connect with that individual and make sure they knew, here's when we're planning on having the public hearing with Planning Commission. If it was creating enough interest from others, then we would probably recommend having that second or the optional public hearing with council as well. All right.

I don't love the looseness of that because it just means one of us has to think this might be big or staff might have to think that and I and it just I don't know I think I'm a much more defined process person I wonder if it's a big enough topic that staff is holding some kind of open house on it that we then have the second public hearing at Council I also wanted to ask You said state law only requires one. Does it require the one at Planning Commission? Or is that the one you guys chose because for the smaller issues, that's where we get more comments?

Yeah, state law doesn't specify. I think we were just thinking that would be a good time to collect the comments to then move them to council. Okay.

I'm still digesting it a little bit. But yeah, I don't like the looseness of we could have a second one if we ask for it because I feel like we can't always predict what will strike a chord with people. as we're working on it early.

I do like the idea of of complying with the one required public hearing and I think I lean more towards earlier in the process than later because a lot of times you know all of the work has been done the plan is ready to be adopted and that's when people are jumping in with like I want to engage people earlier in the process so that they can shape the process instead of come along and try to squash a process. And I guess that means And I think it's important for that to come to city council, if that makes sense. And I don't know if we can have it that way. I know that definitely hasn't been how we've done it in the past. It's always been, you know, the entire process is done. Like we're just wrapping up kind of like odds and ends and getting it together for final vote. And that's when we're inviting the public in. And as a member of the public, I've seen it feel very disingenuous of like, well, now you're, are you asking for a sign off from the community or are you asking for feedback from the community? And we're always hearing from folks Like, I didn't know about this. I didn't know this was going on, even if it might have been six, eight, nine month, two-year process, right? And I think that some of those concerns and experiences can't... There's always going to be people who are like, well, I didn't hear about it. And it's like, yes. It's always interesting how people kind of plug into the process along the way. But those are some of the thoughts that I have in terms of problems that I'd want to be solving for with this. and what the intentions of these public hearings are. I think we need to ask ourselves, is it for feedback and shaping and refining the proposals, or is it for public sign-off or public, if we just want public to say, no, don't do that. And, and how we then message that. So I guess I would put that to my colleagues of like, what are we hoping to accomplish with the public hearings? What is the law's intended purpose of a public hearing? Even when it says one is required, like what are, you know, like kind of big picture, what are we hoping to get out of those public hearings when we hear from the public?

And are we waiting for the planning commission to provide an advisory recommendation based on what they know and what they've heard? Or are we asking them to do our job by interfacing with the public? That's my question, too. I'd rather that the public come talk to us, their elected representatives, than our appointed representatives. busy, like detail people to the, the reason why I loved planning commission, um, was because I liked getting information on a topic and learning about it, learning the staff perspective, using my own, um, experiences to inform decisions and then making a recommendation. I. To be honest, asking an advisory board or commission to take the heat of possibly a political determination without having it go through council first is... less, uh, less exciting for someone to raise their hand and say, yeah, I want to be, I want my name to, you know, be associated with a decision that I actually can't make. Um, and for my reputation to be on the line too. So I actually think, yeah, after hearing what you were saying, um, deputy mayor, I think I'd rather have the public hearing be counsel rather than like under no circumstances would, if we only have one, I don't want it to be.

at the level of planning commission i'd rather have it be us because we're the ones who can take the heat we're the ones who can actually develop relationship with a constituency and go from there too so i thought i'd add that the other thing that i would point out is that um even when we had really controversial topics and you know we saw in like the comp plan like a whole bunch of people came and talked to us and nobody went to the planning commission anyway because the community knows where the decision lies. Like they understand who they elected and they understand who they need to speak to. And I would just say that within the like structure of a public hearing, like that's not the only time that the community is going to come talk to us about something like, you know, most of these, we have a study session, we have a public hearing, then we have another vote scheduled and even if there's not a public hearing scheduled even if there's nothing on the agenda about that subject for that meeting if people care they show up and they tell us about it so like there's there's still i think myriad opportunities for the community to give input i think this just removes a bluntly just an unnecessary procedural step and i also really like the point of like don't yell at the Planning Commission. That's not where the decision lies. We run for office and we ask for this. Come yell at us if you need to yell at someone.

I definitely agree with that. And I think the main thing that I'd love to see with public hearings is that they're just a little bit earlier it does feel like it's at the end of our study session process. And while there's opportunity for people to give feedback throughout the life cycle of a project and doing that work, public hearing makes it sound like that's when you should do it. And it's often weighing in on the final product, not shaping the decision. And so I think some way to make it more clear when we're shaping it versus like having it right at the end, I think gives people the impression that we're going to stop and reevaluate if you come in and hate it right at the end. And that disrespect sometimes the years of work that come before that, but it also, it creates contention with our constituents. in a way that if we just made that whole process a little more clear and didn't make it sound like the public hearing at the end was the big thing, like it would just, we would have a shared understanding of what's happening. So I think getting that formal feedback earlier on, but I also agree with my colleagues that I think we should take on hearing people and making sure they feel heard and yeah, don't yell at the planning commission. I like that. That's a good summation.

I would just like to say is that folks should just feel free to come to the boss and be able to talk to folks because that's what we're here. We're all elected officials. I think we've all said that. But knowing that they have a voice and it's okay to talk, pro, con, whatever. and then letting them have a voice sooner. I think we all want to have a voice, and being the caboose is always the worst thing in the world. I see this in my day job where I'm the caboose, and I despise it in my job, and I actively work to change that with my peers and my leadership. So as an elected official, I'd like people not to feel like they're the caboose, if that makes sense.

So based on what I'm hearing from my colleagues, is it possible and does it align with law to do a public hearing after a study session and before it's brought back with refinements for like a proposal or a resolution?

The standard practice has been to kind of follow the course of action that we typically do. But yes, as long as you're completing that public hearing, as long as you're completing your 60-day Department of Commerce notice, as long as you're going through the SEPA process and you're checking those requirements, unless you're up against a state mandated deadline to adopt something, You don't have to adopt it right after. If public comment at a public hearing were enough to warrant, well, we should, instead of our next step being come back with an ordinance, it would be we'll come back for another study session to go through this if that's necessary.

I feel like, I mean, we do a public hearing because we have to do a public hearing. We have to do a public hearing before we do the vote. But what if instead of promoting the public hearing as the way to get engaged, what if we were like, hey, council is having a study session on this issue on this day. What if that was part of our social media strategy? Come tell us what you think at the study session. Like, because, like, if we hear a bunch of comment before the study session, then we can take that into consideration when we are having these conversations. Like, oh, that thing was interesting. Let's talk about that. Let's answer that. And then people might be able to kind of feel more heard in terms of their ideas being fleshed out. And, like, we have to do a study session because the state says we have a public hearing because the state says we have to do. a public hearing, but what I'm hearing is like not necessarily like the public hearing being the important thing, but like the public being heard. So maybe it's just a strategy of trying to, you know, push people to come and comment like tonight when we have a study session. And there were three people watching on YouTube when I just checked a few minutes ago. I don't know how many are on there now. So I would just say maybe instead of like a process change or like try to have a public, like a second public hearing, maybe we just try to change our communication strategy so we can, you know, get people involved a little sooner.

I think that's a good idea. I think we could change our communication strategy. I do not know what it is or how to make it better because hopefully we can get people to the table and feel like it's okay to speak and that they want to speak. With regard to YouTube one of those viewers is probably my child and our dog.

I Will add that I will add that one of the strategies I've tried to use with my newsletter is telling people when there are study sessions and with an invitation of like come learn with us like come come find out what you know, the information is that we're considering and And because they're really valuable experiences to be able to just like dig into the information, get a solid presentation from staff and really just have the topic framed and set up in a way that we can engage as a community. And I know that over time we have been talking about, you know, sometimes some of the admins at Bothell community will do a preview of the agenda. Um, that on the, on, like, if that were a routine on the, the bottle, like city of bottle page that admins of groups could share into groups and get the word out that way, I think that would be really meaningful. Um, especially if we were to highlight it as, you know, a study session and then. And I want to make more work for you guys. But if those discussion questions that you're posing to us are included in that study session, like announce, you know, in that agenda and say, like, these are the questions that are being asked of the community, not just of the council, because it's not ultimately just us who's who's being asked to weigh in and understand this information and say something about it. So I'm wondering if that might be possible. And I'm going to look to our acting city manager to say, is that something that communications could consider?

yeah i think so i think right it's getting the word out um and i think we always try to do that but i think we can always improve on how we do that and when we do that um i had been given the eye over there to eileen but i know she doesn't have a mic um just on the legalities of when you have to have a public hearing and so i i would invite her to come over if she's got anything specific i i think it's more of a figuring out, depending on the topic at hand, that right moment when you want public input and need it. The concern about not having it at the end would be that you've got a policy that you're ready to adopt, and then they don't have that moment, of course, to weigh in there at the end when you have a fully-fledged adopted plan. So I'm going to pivot to Eileen here to talk about more of the legalities, I think.

Thanks, and yeah, this has been I think you guys are hitting the nail on the head of Timing and timing is tricky, right? Because if you have your public hearing too early, then you may have an allegation of well This really wasn't a meaningful opportunity to be heard because this is a procedural due process protection under the law They may say well I had a chance to weigh in on this, but you changed everything, and I didn't get a public hearing, you know, close to when you were final. So I kind of, I understand where counsel's coming from with being concerned of, well, we're asking people to weigh in at the very last moment, but if you do it too early, then you can have kind of the flip side of... I weighed in, but what you're adopting isn't what I weighed in on at all. So I just want to put that out there as you guys are stewing on all of this.

And thank you for sharing the mic. I appreciate it, CD Steph.

Deputy Mayor, I want to ask you, when you put out public hearings in your newsletter, do people ever come back to you and ask you questions about that? I'm just curious if you had a feedback loop.

Not on public hearings, no. Yeah, like sometimes a study session item I'll hear back.

I want to touch on a couple of other things that you brought up in the presentation too, and I'll just list them off and then if other people have different ones or want to refine some of the things, that's fine too. You mentioned the phasing requirements and only granting 50% occupancy for the first phase of a multifamily development. And I'm thinking about incremental developers who have an idea of a big multifamily project on their site, but it's taking them a while to get there or they have a plan to start with a triplex. and then move on to a small apartment unit. We're seeing projects in Lower Maywood and downtown that build phases and they're small development. They're not like, maybe other projects where I see this being applicable in areas like that are large-scale redevelopment of big properties where they are multifamily projects, but they're like thousands of units, hundreds of units, if not thousands of units. I don't want to penalize small developers for not having the financial resources to push a whole project together when they're trying to do an incremental approach to development and starting like the next, what's the next thing that they can do with their property and leveraging the resources that small developers have at their disposal rather than larger institutional developers that can a 50% occupancy limit might make them move faster at getting our minimum densities. So I just want a little bit more nuance there than just across the board, you can't get your full occupancy until you've met the minimum densities. There's got to be some some in between there for more incremental developers. The 90-day extension. So I used to be a geotech. And sometimes it takes a lot longer to put a report together for corrections responses than 90 days. Like, you got to get a drill rig out there. They got to. It's the holidays. They're like, oh, there's so many different things that can extend a project in 90 days or three months. It's like pretty short timeline. And so while we haven't seen maybe a whole lot of responses that have taken longer than 90 days, I do want to be flexible for, like, make sure that they're working towards a response before we cut them off. 180 days is pretty standard across our neighboring jurisdictions, so I just want to make sure that there's either parity or that we're not imposing a deadline just to cut off projects that are working towards a solution on their comments. The final one is Hearing Examiner. Site reasons. So thanks to the city clerk for publishing those really dry documents, talking about what the hearing examiner has done in the last quarter, because I actually read them. And some of them, I'm like, ooh. If that came quasi-judicially, I think I might not have the same opinion as the hearing examiner. And I was thinking about one in particular that happened this spring. And so I don't want to just defer all judgment to the hearing examiner when that's giving up our authority to interpret the laws that we made. And so there's also some nuance here, and I want to make sure that we have a clear process for developers, but there's also some times where I don't want to see that authority. that's part of the like way that we have an influence on our land use is that we develop the rules and then we can also help interpret them and so that's a valuable feedback loop and mechanism that we have and i don't want to just wipe that by saying defer to the hearing examiner in all cases for site reasons so i'd like to learn more about it i'd like to learn what the issues were a little bit on that and maybe we can take that offline if there's questions that require a more legal nuance.

I'm just impressed that you deeply read these dry documents as you characterize them. They're not that long.

Could I clarify one quick thing? Just on the hearing examiner taking on a site-specific rezone, it would be a, they're the hearing examiner's decision would be the final recommendation that goes to city council. So city council still makes the final decision because it has to be an ordinance because it would be changing the zoning. So what would come before this body would be an assessment similar to what staff would have produced, but it would have gone through another filter so that you'd see here's what the, here's what staff recommended based on what the applicant proposed. the hearing examiner runs it through the criteria, provides the final recommendation for council to consider, and it's your final vote to change the zoning via ordinance. So you're still making the decision as council on a site-specific rezone. It's taking one of the steps, putting it through a very fine filter of the criteria before it gets to you. So you have a little bit more to work with than, not to say just a staff recommendation, but it's some added review.

I see. In that case, I don't really have a problem with that if we don't cede that authority. But there are times where the hearing examiner decisions are kind of like, well, that wasn't actually the intent of the legislation that we, the land use legislation that we passed. And so I'm kind of like, what is the, what is the process that we have to be a check and balance on the hearing examiner or are they just like the judicial process and we don't have any, like it's very confusing to me what the hearing examiner's limits of their authority are and what we do to influence how they do their job. So I guess maybe I need to... roll back and maybe ask some more specific questions on specific issues rather than applying what I think I know to these code amendments, which sounds like they're pretty procedural, so that's fine.

And to your point, there are other, it's not judicial when the hearing examiner examines something, but there are other times when a judge is intended to consider what the legislative body was intending with legislation. So it would be good to get, I'm going to just look at Eileen, but it would be good to get kind of a grounding, I think in how that would, that concept is applied with the hearing examiner. Does he look at our intent or just the direct word of the law? And like, even, the last round of hearing examiner reports that we got, um, the hearing examiner had called out a code update that he saw might be necessary to like meet our intent or to make something better. And I don't know that I fully understand how we get from his recommendation to actually evaluating that as a possibility. Like who reads those reports and says, Oh, we should look at that or, are we supposed to forward it to you guys? You know what I mean?

Like, and that's, that's for staff to put it on our, our list of amendments to come back to you. And ultimately any criteria that the hearing examiner makes a decision on through a type three. So if this is as an example, a type three would never come to city council. Um, the decision would not, um, if you're not, an agreement with how the decision was made or how the criteria may be written, that's where amendment, doing a legislative amendment to that code section, that's how that work would take place.

I was going to talk about, one of the things you had mentioned was landmarks and shorelines items. Formally go to the Planning Commission before the council and I'm wondering so those are those Types of things are in two different boats right now shorelines joke So we don't have a shorelines board. We chose not to reappoint one So how would that work in practice without a shorelines board I

I think the change we're proposing is just making sure it goes through Planning Commission. I'd have to look at that text to see the advisory body.

And it's sort of a when we have to reenact or reanimate the Shoreline Board when the Shoreline Master Program is updated in a few years, in two years. So anticipating... their work. They're just in hibernation or they're just on pause until we need them again and then we'll bring them back.

I enjoyed the conversation about the hearing examiner discussion. I wrote down that quasi-judicial decisions feel like they should have a quasi-judicial process instead of a legislative process, so that seemed reasonable to me. You asked another question, is the Council open to opportunities to streamline development review procedures where appropriate? And I think you know my answer. is yes, very much so. We know that a lot of our code is legacy code that was built by people who were trying to prevent things from happening a lot of the time. And any vestige of that that we find, we need to do our job. We need to make sure the development meets the standards that we have. But if there's things we can do to lower the burden that don't impact our ability to make sure we can do our job, yes, I would like to do those things. And Council Member Curd brought up the 90-day could be challenging under some circumstances. Is there a provision for an extension at staff discretion? And my next question is, if there's a provision for an extension at staff direction or discretion, does that just mean that everybody gets that? So you might as well just make it 180 or...

So to that point, there is an extension allowed and there are criteria for that. So proving that they've been working on the project and working with staff. And that was a suggestion from Planning Commission as well.

Okay. I would be comfortable with going by 90 days as long as that were the case. Just I don't want to get into a situation where somebody has something outside of their control that's pushed them outside of 90 days. You know, if somebody sits on it for 85 days and now it's an emergency, that's different.

And right now, the code does not have any ability to extend. So if somebody hits that 180 days on day 181, you're done. You have to reapply. There's no exceptions, no justifications. It doesn't matter what was going on with anyone working on the project, recognizing that the vast majority are able to respond. They apply knowing that we're going to turn around our first review within our two weeks, three weeks, five weeks, whatever it might be. And we want them to... turn right back around and keep these projects active and moving and heading forward.

Is the example of the giant drill not being available one where someone could ask for an extension?

That is a perfect example of when an extension would be requested, and we would just take in an email from the geotech saying, hey, it's going to be two weeks, 10 weeks, three months before we can get out there, which means the report won't be ready until X date. Then we would just set that date for when we anticipate the responsive materials to come in. And that's one of those unknowns, right? Someone's already applied, so hopefully the site exploration work has happened, but this would be something that might need additional study or additional analysis that nobody could foresee based on the conditions when they applied.

Well, is it correct to kind of look at that as like right now it's 180 days, no extensions. We're looking at moving to 90 days, but if stuff is happening and it's not, we'll work with you on it if you communicate with us.

Okay.

I'm really glad to hear that you are considering an extension process where one previously didn't exist. I do like the idea of 90 days and then being able to ask for extensions if needed. I think you covered it pretty well. If most permit applicants are able to respond within 90 days and that seems to be working, then let's do that. Because one of the things that we hear from the community is that the permitting process is taking too long and that it's dragging out, right? And I also want to make sure that while we can we can shorten it by making this a requirement that puts it on the person applying and that doesn't necessarily speak to The city's response time and so is there a like reciprocal?

Requirement for the city to respond within a certain amount of time Absolutely, the city's required to complete the entire review for some permits within either 90 days or hundred days or a hundred and seventy if it requires a hearing so we have to to fit all of that within that time frame uh... to complete our reviews under under fifty two ninety under those standards

Great. Yeah. And I think that reciprocity is just really important, right? It's respecting, it's both sides respecting each other's time and making sure that things are moving forward so that we're not losing opportunities to, you know, create value in our community, you know, that benefits the applicant and the community as well. So thank you.

I hate to be this person, but I'm going to be this person. I'm looking at time. It's 843, and we have one more study session. Are we close to wrapping up, or do we have any other thoughts that we need to talk about?

I was giving it a few minutes in case somebody else had something more to talk about and was planning on moving on shortly after that.

I think my priority tonight was to be able to hear discussion and contribute and talk about the policy that you're referencing. The refinements all seemed good. And housekeeping made sense. So I'm glad that we had a chance to talk about the policy pieces tonight.

All right. And with that, I think we're good. Christian, are you guys both staying up here for the next one? I'm staying. Okay. Perfect. Enjoy the rest of your evening. All right. Next up, we have a study session for our multifamily tax exemption code update. Deputy City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. As we've discussed previously, Bothell has an unused tool to create more housing supply in the city, and staff are proposing modification to the MFT program to kickstart the construction of more housing units, including affordable units in the city. And we have Senior Planner Ray Sosa with us here to kick it off, and he will be joined by Deputy Director Christian Goetz. I learned that I am saying it wrong, so I apologize, Christian.

That's OK. And I'm going to do a quick intro. My name's been called many, many things. You'd be surprised. Final item tonight before before recess. We have a focus presentation for you this evening just to just to kind of do a quick brief history recap to start. So the current MFTE code we adopted in 2021. Since then, we've had no participation. So as part of and we see other cities have seen participation in their MFTE codes. So as part of the continued housing work that Ray has been working on, that Jacqueline has been working on and others in the department, we wanted to begin exploring. And we came to you initially at the beginning of May on the 12th. to talk about some potential updates, got some initial input, and tonight we've got some conceptual draft code to kind of talk through some policy questions and see if we're on the right track to see if we can tweak this thing to a way that'll work for the city to see it complement the other work that we're doing. With that, I'll hand it over to Ray.

Thank you, Director Goetz. So for tonight, no action is required. We are here tonight to just seek feedback on council on the initial conceptual code that we have that I'll be presenting through our presentation tonight. As I go through my presentation, I have a few discussion questions that I'd like you to keep in mind. I'll repeat these questions at the end of the presentation as well, and you can reference them in your packet. So I kind of want to step back a little bit and kind of talk a little bit about the purpose of what the MFT program is and why we're looking to introduce some refinements to it. We want to create a community that's for all ages and all wages, and the MFT program represents one tool out of many of our toolbox that we have to create and spur the creation of more housing in our community, including dedicated affordable housing. This tool has been used and represents an opportunity to really refine it and sharpen it so that we can add it to our repertoire for other tools. You heard me come talk about our voluntary affordable housing code, our existing mandatory inclusionary zoning overlays in downtown. And our middle housing where we introduced some of the affordable stipulation to that. So, this is just another tool out of many of our toolbox. And so, we really want to, as I've mentioned, refine it and make sure that it's effective so that we can spur the housing that we need in our community. And so, As Deputy Director Goetz said, we came a few months ago to kind of introduce the program and what our intentions were to updating it. Since then, we held two focus groups with the members of the development community to get a better sense of their perspective on why they're not using the code, how they're using the code in other jurisdictions. neighboring jurisdictions to learn a little more about what we can incorporate from that. We also send this to our partners at ARCH to get their perspective as well. And so that feedback has been instrumental to shaping the code that I'll be presenting on later in just a bit. And after tonight, we're hoping we'll be returning to update that code in the rest of the summer and then return in the fall, hopefully for adoption by the end of this year. And so I want to stress that what we're proposing here tonight is just a concept of a code. We are not proposing any action in terms of adopting this, so much as we just want to introduce some concepts here for discussion. And so going a little bit line by line, the column to the Far left shows just what our existing code currently has, and then in the center shows what we're proposing. We, right now, in certain parts of the town, parts of the city, we have certain areas where we only have required 10% of the units to be set aside if they want to use the M&T program. We're proposing to standardize that across the city, so it'd be 20% for any part of the city. Same with the AMIs, the Area Median Income. We have a layered approach to that, where some units are required to be as affordable as 40 percent and others are more general 70 percent. We like to streamline that so there's only one option, so that's at 70 percent. Same with our parking requirements. Right now, we currently do require parking for MT units, but to align it with the rest of our citywide requirements, we're proposing to eliminate that requirement. We're also proposing to eliminate our 80-year tax exemption program, as it's not well utilized in other jurisdictions. and instead introduce a 20-year tax assumption, which we are required to as part of the upcoming state changes in 2020. We'll also be looking to introduce an option to extend the tax assumption. Right now, the tax assumption only lasts for the duration of 8 or 12 years. We're looking to, as we eliminate the eight-year exemption and introduce the 20-year, we'll introduce the exemption for those who use the 12-year program for an additional eight years so that it matches the 20-year that we're looking to introduce. And in duration of affordability right now, our units that are provided through this program are required to be affordable for life. We're looking to make the duration of the affordability last the tax assumption. That is one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we heard from the development community as that tends to make or break projects because of the financial implications of how long the duration is given. And so, as I mentioned, we have an attachment in your packets that compares our changes to some of the other jurisdictions across our member cities and arch. And one that's not member city, but it's seen a lot of success with the MOT program, which is Shoreline as well. semi-neighboring jurisdiction. I do want to stress that there is not a science to the MFTE. Every jurisdiction has factors that work in favor or against them and even within jurisdictions there are factors that work or for and against the MFTE program based on existing and proposed mass transit infrastructure capacity and just excuse me, a market demand. And so, as we were proposing these changes, we try to come up with an approach that's balanced and it's alignment with our jurisdiction, knowing that, you know, we just don't have the same infrastructure as other jurisdictions, mostly referring to the light rail, but also referring to some of them just market demands. Can I give a foreshadow a little bit of this conversation here? Some of these we're considering as we look to update the program. It's just a fiscal impact. We know that MFT is a, as the name says, tax assumption. We'll be looking at what that cumulative cost could be as projects are taking advantage of it. growth targets, as well as I mentioned, it is a good policy in other jurisdictions that does transfer housing production. It's something we want to keep in mind. And then utilization reporting and any future amendments, we're going to, whether we make any significant changes to the program or not, we'll be tracking developers that participate in that program, how many units are created, and just overall program outcomes, and using those to make any future adjustments as we need it. as we need, especially in light of market conditions that are outside our jurisdiction's control, but have a big influence on how we move forward with development. And so next steps, as I mentioned, we want to create a code that reflects the council's priority for housing and reflects the feedback that we received from ARCH and from the members of the development community. We want to come back after tonight, we want to come back in the fall for a hopeful adoption by the end of this year. And as I mentioned, whatever outcome we have of the code, whatever code gets adopted in shape or form, we intend to track the usage and how many names are created and use that to continue to refine the program. And as I mentioned, no action is required tonight. And here are the discussion questions that I'd like to start the conversation with.

I'll start. I don't think I do agree with the AMI and duration. The duration piece seems very different than, so I opened up the packet and I'm on page 401 to that comparison chart. Super helpful comparison chart. Thank you very much for including it. If you haven't already heard that feedback, I did pass it on. And I'm just saying it publicly because, yes, it's very helpful. But also, yeah, it does give us a chance to compare other jurisdictions, including Shoreline, who has, like, they have been doing amazing on their MFTE. And I think a lot of that has to do with transit-oriented development that's taking place there. And so when we compare ourselves to Shoreline, we are not comparing apples to apples. They are very different in a number of ways and have opportunities for access to transportation and public transit that we just don't and won't for a very long time. So I am keeping that in mind, but I guess the duration, you know, Issaquah, Kenmore, Kirkland, Redmond and Shoreline and Woodinville all have life on there and I'm wondering, like, what is the legal definition of life? It's a joke. Eileen, I don't think you have.

There is a sort of definition. It's the life of the project. And so, you know, if unfortunately the project burns down in 20 years, then it's gone. That was the life. But typically, most units tend to last at least 100 years. I live in a neighborhood where I have apartment buildings from 1901. That's a reverse quakes and whatnot. And so I imagine modern construction will probably last just as long and not longer.

One could hope. And so I think I would like to be more like our neighbors, because even Bellevue with 12 as the lower limit, their upper limit is still 99, which is about 100, or hopefully encompassing that meaning of the life of the building. And so that's where I think that we should align more with our neighboring cities. And then... 70% seems like a very middle kind of target from what we're seeing between our neighboring cities. But I do like that there, I think I prefer the range of other cities too. So could we consider the 50 to 80%? and know that 70 is in the middle of that. And then the last thing is I was really glad to see that some of our neighboring jurisdictions and nearby cities have an ownership option. So let's see, Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, Redmond, and Woodinville have an ownership option. I'd like to see us include that as well. And I will leave that to my colleagues to weigh in on.

I don't have to wait until the end. So I'm going to go now. big picture, kind of like I said, the last go around, like I want to use this as a tool to maximize development that we get out of it. Like, and I want to like, so I, I think I, I don't know if I understood you quite right, but I do not think that we should go beyond the tax exemption period for the requirement, unless it's required by state law. Like I think the 50 year one is required by state law. Um, I have gotten some feedback on parts of this that we are going beyond the state requirement on things like percentage of units, that 50-year requirement, percentage AMI required. But when I read the packet, it says we're doing what state law tells us we have to. So I am wondering, are there bills that have been passed that we're in the period where we need to adopt it by a certain time but not yet? And we are adopting some provisions of bills that have already been passed because we're doing this work right now?

Yes, so HP 1491 requires that the 20-year this the TOD bill that requires the 20-year duration with at least 50-year affordability requirements. We have to adopt that because we have TOD sites, BRT sites, 13 of them around the city planned by 2029, December 31st of 2029. So we will have to do that code by then. Right now, we don't have to do any MFT if we don't want to. But if we do, we just have to make sure it does align with the minimum requirements of state state law.

Could we update our MFTE now without that 50-year requirement and then update that in a few years when it become when we have to?

I think we have to look into what the duration requirements would be in the if we have a current yeah if we if we implement a current 20-year program we'd have to look into what the RCW requires and we can circle back on that.

Thank you. I would like to know that. Big picture and what I really want to know with all of the specific questions that I would have is because I want to see this program well utilized. I don't want to go beyond what we're required to do for it, really. Can you tell me in here, where we're going beyond what the state requires of us. Like, where are we being a little bit more aggressive and potentially making it, I mean, it's a, you know, on one end, if the property gets built, we get a little bit more something out of it, but on the other end, the property might not get built. So, like, where are we going beyond what the state tells us we need to?

So one of those being the AMI requirements, the state only requires 80% for any units that are in the TOD areas. And given some of the conversations we had with ARCH, they have pointed out that the units that are currently at 80% in other jurisdictions are actually very close to market rate, if not at market rate. And again, that's just a Right now, this is a point of snapshot, just given the current economic conditions and current job situation in the Puget Sound, to put it lightly. That can drastically change in five, ten years, and that's kind of hard to predict. And so, our just feedback has been that we look at maybe AMIs that are lower, because those are going to be more predictable in terms of occupancy. The units that are 80% are not as occupied right now, because it's just not worth for an individual to go through all the process of submitting the paperwork, getting income qualification, when the market rate is so close to that, at that point you might as well just rent a regular unit. But units that are cheap, that are less AMI, or I guess more affordable, the tenants are more likely to stay, and those units are more likely to be occupied. So that's a conversation that ARCH has brought up to us, and it's something we're considering.

Is, I mean, I know that Seattle built a ton of like CDUs and micro units over the last five or 10 years. And I know that they've had that issue down there. Are we seeing units on the east side at 80% AMI go empty?

According to Arch, some of those units are in Bellevue, yes, are sitting empty. And from my anecdotal evidence just going on Zillow and looking, I do see that a unit 80% is only $100 less than a market rate unit. And they're both available.

Totally. And I guess, I mean, what I think when you say that is, and you kind of mentioned it, like in 10 years, it's still going to be 80% AMI. And the real estate market may have changed by then, and it's still going to be that guarantee. and it makes it more likely that a project gets built. So, I would prefer that we do it at 80 percent than we do it at 70 percent, because again, I'm looking at this not just as a tool to provide affordable housing, but also a tool to help make it more viable to get more housing built, which makes housing more affordable for everybody that pays market rate rent compared to what it would be if that project didn't get built. The, can we make the 12 and the 20-year renewable? legally?

We'll need to circle back on the 20-year program. I need to do a little more digging on that one. The 12-year, yes, that is renewable. And I've seen jurisdictions offer different renewal dates on that one. Okay. So that's something I also need to circle back and figure out if there's a reason for that or if that's just a jurisdiction consent.

Okay. Is there, and I guess I should not just stop at that 70%, are there any other ways in which we're going beyond what the state requires us to do.

As I mentioned, we're looking to do this now, but it wouldn't be up to 2029 where we're required to do this. And this is only for rentals, I should specify that. The state also says only for rentals, and we're only proposing for rentals. If council wanted us to look into ownership options for this, we can also do that. We wouldn't be required to by the state, but that is something we can, as a jurisdiction, we have power to do that.

In terms of what we're required to do, I am all for doing things we're not required to do that add flexibility, but not that add a mandated cost. I would like to add flexibility. We got a comment earlier today that suggested looking at 10% at 60% AMI instead of 20% at 80% AMI. Is that legal to do?

Yes, and that's kind of what our code actually is right now. We do have sections where we do say 5% must be at 40% AMI, and the other 5% must be at this AMI. Some of the feedback we heard from the development community was that that's actually kind of confusing for them, and they'd rather have just one category altogether. So this effort was really kind of cleaning that up and streamlining it. But if we hear feedback that we should probably have more tiers, that is something we can keep our existing tiers and just update them.

Or maybe add one other tier. So there's just like two and it's like, I mean, if you start mixing AMIs, I feel like that gets a lot more confusing, but that's what we have. But if, but if it's like, you know, 20 at 80% or 10% at 60%, like that's, that seems, seems like a developer shouldn't be too confused by that. But, um, I am not a developer. Um, the, um, let's see, I asked about renewable, um, Yeah, you know, affordable housing is a really big problem. And what a lot of people talk about when they say affordable housing is just the rent is too high at market rate. So, like, I want to use this program to create affordable units and to create as many as we can, but and also as many market rate units as we can. So for me, the benefit of this isn't only in the reduced AMI for the RENT RESTRICTED UNITS BUT IT'S ALSO THE MAKING SURE THAT WE GET THE UNITS THAT WOULD OTHERWISE BE BUILT. SO THAT IS MY FEEDBACK. I AM ALL FOR FLEXIBILITY IN TERMS OF OPTIONS AND WAYS TO GET IT BUT I DON'T WANT TO ADD MORE COST BURDEN WHEN IT'S ALREADY HARD TO GET PROJECTS FEASIBLE THAN WE NEED TO RIGHT NOW.

I do like the 70%. I agree that 80% is very close to market rate. Where I don't see us making enough progress is two and three bedroom units. I would love more encouragement for those. I think micro units have a place, and I think near campus, and there are other spots in the city that they make sense, but we get a lot of one bedrooms and studios at a low market rate that matches 80%. I would like to see more family size units. I don't know if we can have different tiers that encourage like for different bedroom amounts or whatever, but that's what I feel like we're not really getting from the market too.

Yeah, that's a really great observation. So that chart that I provided on the packet, I simplified it because some series have even more granular distinction based on bedroom size as you brought up. So Redmond has program where two and three bedrooms are at a deeper AMI discount because they know those are for families, whereas the one bedrooms are more aligned with market rate because they are predicting that those are going to be mostly single occupants in the workforce, whereas two or three bedrooms are more for family size. And so, we could go even further in having that specification as well if that is something that Council wants. As I mentioned, the RFR was to kind of streamline the code and keep it clean, but as I mentioned, jurisdictions can be granular about this if we want to.

I would love to, without making it so complicated that people don't use it. I do think like two tiers shouldn't be that complicated, especially because we have a great department that our developers can ask questions of. Um, but yeah, I micro units at 80% just doesn't feel like where we're struggling. Like we've seen the downtown building has lowered the, average like household income required to live in downtown Bothell so I feel like that's not the big problem area I am kind of confused about like the life of the tax exemption versus the duration of the affordability I don't like is there ever a scenario where you would have a 20-year tax exemption but the units only have to be affordable for 12 years that seems short change okay so I think as long as it's never shorter I like the mayor's idea that they should match but I guess I'll poke at that a little bit more on my own when we come back another time I yeah I would like to just see different options whatever we can do and I'm not saying write something from scratch that then doesn't work and we have to revisit it in a few years because I know that's part of where we got here but If another city has figured out how to help generate affordable family size units, I think that's really important, especially as we've planned in this last comp plan to grow across the city rather than along our transit corridors. And that means putting more family units in neighborhoods and stuff like that. So whatever we can do to encourage that would be really great. Thank you.

This is a very interesting topic. So I just want to put on some X daytime day job type hat and product management and understand what problem are we trying to solve.

I can go back to the diagram of our tools, right? So these are all tools that we're using to create more housing in our community, including affordable housing. And so MFT is just one of those tools. And it might not be the right tool for all the kind of housing we want to create. So we have our mandatory inclusionary zoning. We have our volunteer affordable housing code. We're potentially looking into social housing as one of our objectives for the housing action plan. If MFT is not the right tool for family-sized housing, that means we can look at other tools. But we're just looking at our tools and sharpening them so that we have the best toolbox and community.

I will answer that. My take is we adopted an MFTE that hasn't been utilized because we asked for so much that it made it not feasible to build things. And so we're getting nothing. We're not getting market rate housing. Like we have a, you know, even if micro units at 80% AMI aren't that discounted from what they would be, we have somebody that's wanted to build micro units and they own the lot and our MFTE has made it so it's not feasible for them to build. So we're getting none of those units at any percent AMI. And I would like to have a lot of micro units right next to the college. So for me, it's we over indexed on asking for things that don't work. And I want to fix that so we can get more stuff built.

This is good. Thank you. So because the other question, as you were talking, I completely agree we need to have any type of housing, not just micro. affordable, you know, less than 80% AMI. The layer that we have to also, if I remember our comp plan housing table, we have 80% or less is around 80% need of the home, right? We've over-indexed on the higher-end housing than the more affordable housing. Would this tool help make a dent in that, on those goals that we have? Because we're gonna come up on a reporting time, you know, in five years. It took a couple more years to go.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this will help us get the, it's within that 51 to 80% band. So we will accommodate those wherever we kind of land in this realm. Because we're doing fine on everything 81% and above. We're seeing plenty of units being proposed or conceptually proposed, which we hope will eventually become units. but it's how to get those 51 to 80, and then the really hard work comes that we're still waiting for that bucket of money to fall from the state sky. From the sky, yeah. Where we do the 0 to 30s.

You can grow trees in the backyard, no? Yeah. Here in the courtyard, no? So this is good, because if the tool is trying to solve a problem, because we also know one of the problems is if you start going lower and lower affordability, it becomes less and less feasible to pencil out, right? So that means we have to, this tool may or may not be the solution to the less than, call it 70%, as you put it, AMI, right? So maybe if our target, we can target that range of housing, which I like the idea of taking out 40 to 70 because nobody's gonna build the 40%, everybody's gonna go and do the 70, and they haven't even done 70%, so maybe we need to go a little higher than that and target that band of housing with this tool. So that will solve that particular problem, right?

Yeah, and one of the things we anticipate is with the You know, there's a factor of just the space on a site to fit the units. So we anticipate utilization of the voluntary affordable housing code. So to throw a bunch of numbers out here, that requires 10% of your units to be built at 65% AMI, which is better than anything we've been talking about here. If somebody wanted to utilize MFTE, the 10% that they use to get the additional height to fit the number of units on site. Those are going to be for the, the longterm affordability, the remaining 10% under whatever the MFTE program ends up with is, is the gets us to that 20%. Um, so they, they work really well together. So you'd end up with really just 10% of the units. If, if nobody followed the voluntary, um, they're likely going to run out of space. So they'll need that height. They'll want that incentive there. So we anticipated working hand-in-hand with the voluntary code that was created that you passed back, what was that, December? It seems like a lifetime ago. It's all blending in together, yeah. So that as one of these tools here that Ray's talking about, we have that. We're working on this to sharpen this tool. see how they can work together yes you could have somebody just propose a straight multifamily project just doing the MFT they didn't need any additional bonus height but we're kind of anticipating though you they'll need that height to fit the the project in the space

So as long as we're starting to narrow down our target units that we're going after, it's just a mindset thing. So that's a good thing. And I like the idea of we passed something, we counsel, passed something in the past, it's not working, we're going to change it and make it a little based on feedback that we've gotten from the development community. as well because they're the ones who are going to build the housing, whether, you know, some folks like it or not. We need those folks to build our homes, you know. So it'll be good to incorporate that feedback into this and see and run a test. How long do you think we need? How long do you think you need before you can start seeing is it working or is it not working? Is, like, five projects good enough? Or is, like, do you need to see 25 or 50 or 100, you know? And how long? By when?

So the state requires each jurisdiction that has an MFD program to do an annual report. And so we'll have to be doing that anyways, and we already have to do that now. And so as we do that annually, we'll start seeing trends, and then we'll start figuring out the cadence of how often we should be refining the program. Again, given economic conditions in the 2020s have been very volatile, more than probably the last decade altogether. It's hard to predict what that economy will continue to look like, and so I can't give you a number off the top of my head, but with the annual reporting from Commerce, we feel that's a good start in terms of just figuring out the utilization of any program that we have, whether we update the program or we don't.

I like the idea that Christian mentioned also. It's good to mention that here's the menu of options and here's the combos that will work well together to produce, you know, versus each one of those in a silo by itself. So that's a good thing to also help us think about also in the future. So here's the menu of things and combo one, combo two, you know, $1.99, $2.99. Get fries with that.

I like that. I also think that we could do a better job advertising to possible developers and to the community how to leverage the multifamily tax exemption program. So the city of Everett has a whole web page. and it's very, despite being a city web page, it's intuitive, it walks you through who are you and what is your purpose on this website and it's really helpful as like a communication tool. And so I would say that not only is MFTE, it has to always be updated in response to economic conditions because a project is gonna pencil at a different Dave Kuntz, Am I at any given time, based on their funding and their their blend of funding it's also. Dave Kuntz, A matter of how well we can advertise that we have the program to it is an incentive exemption but it's an incentive to get affordability and so it's kind of incumbent on us to advertise. that we offer it. So I would hope that once we settle on numbers, that it corresponds with some communication and outreach. And whether that looks like a website or a one pager or something that can be provided to the community to help show that this is something that they can use, I think that would be really helpful. But I agree with the things that have been said about the numbers.

Just to close out on that, we did hear from Planning Commission on the interest to make sure that developers of all sizes were made aware, dispelling the complexity for smaller builders, so it could potentially be used on a 8, 10, 12-unit building. And part of the work that Ray's going to be continuing through the Housing Action Plan implementation will be just this monitoring, maintaining, tweaking, learning from others as we go, so.

Everett even has a property list for tenants that has the affordable units listed. It's really nicely broken down. I really like that suggestion. I would love to see us being able to do something like that too.

Council Member Kerr, did you have an opinion on 70% versus 80%?

I wasn't thinking about it until we got the public comment. And now I'm thinking if we're seeing 80% in other nearby jurisdictions be empty or not leveraged, I'm kind of wondering if we try with 70% and then tweak later. Or we need to see some response before we open it up. more. And there is a cost associated with MFTE, right? And so that's one of the things that we're not talking about here is what is the cost to the community to run the MFTE program. And that's something that we do have a duty to make sure that we're achieving our bands. And so I'm kind of leaning more towards the 70.

Are 70 and 80% in different bands for our commerce targets or are they in the same band?

They are in different bands. And I do want to address two things. One being that the 80% units being vacant is a very recent phenomenon, just given current job conditions and outflow of population here in the region. And then two, we do partner with ARCH to have a list of all the MFT units in our jurisdictions. That's publicly available on the website. Obviously, we don't have any units to advertise at the moment, but they do have all that information, and they do put in an easy-to-use chart, and they even have a tool now that shows you what units you qualify for based on your income, that you can type your income, and it tells you exactly which units you qualify for, and the content information, everything. So on that tenant side, we will be partnering with ARCH for outreach and communication. On the developer side, we do hear you about the advertising the program. As we continue to build up both mandatory and voluntary affordable housing code, we will streamline our website to have all that in one option. That's what our communications team is working on right now.

I do want what comes back to us to be based on what's working in other cities, knowing that we might be, you know, a Red Delicious when they're a Honeycrisp, but Honeycrisp is light rail. But I just, I don't want it to be based on any one group's feedback. I want it to be based on what's working. because that's really where the proof is. So that's, I want us to listen to our developer community, but it can't be exactly what they ask for, it has to be what's working.

I would also just say the same thing about Arch. Like if they say we've seen this happening, I would ask for numbers and details because I'm, oh mom, I'm the only one here that was here when we had this conversation the last time. Now I feel old. we did what we did last time specifically because arch recommended that like they said they hadn't seen a difference in uptake between some of the decisions we made um that it turns out block the housing from getting done so i am i love arch for what they do and i am hesitant to take their recommendations on planning because when we had this exact same discussion six years ago um We got advice from them that turned out to be wrong. So I like if they say something like that, could you ask them for data, please? Because I want to make like I know we have a building that's sitting over here that we've had a developer say you just like control C, control V shorelines, MFTE, and I will build a bunch of micro units that. that ran out at about 80% AMI at market rate. And those would be phenomenal for us to have, and we don't have them. So I just want to make sure that what we do is based on data, not vibes.

I will say, yes, there are a ton of one bedroom and studios with a ton of deep discounts right now in Bothell. I'm not convinced that's what we're short on. Um, the other thing I agree with what you said about arch. And I think that I would look to your department, to take what works for Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond and buckle it up. I think that that's not where Arch is going to be successful. I think that's where you guys are going to be successful.

I will also say that I don't want to pit one type of housing against another. Like if somebody wants to build micro units, great. If somebody wants to build three bedroom units, great. Like I think we should have those and I think our developer community should have the option to build those and our MFT should work for all of those sizes, but I don't want to not have an MFTE that works for small units just because we think we have enough.

I agree with that, but I would challenge that MFTE costs us in a way that other incentives don't. So is it worth incentivizing what we are not short on? I think that that's the trade-off we have to examine.

I don't want to make the same mistakes we made last time trying to get something that's too good and ending up with something that doesn't work again for another five or six years. And I would over 10% AMI like I don't want to chance it because I've had this conversation before and I made the same decision basically that you're proposing this go around probably on a little bit different scale and it didn't work out. So maybe I'm once bitten, twice shy. I just... I would, if we have a bunch of homes that are built or if we have, I mean, how many are we gonna get over the next five years? If we have a few buildings and inside of those buildings, there's a handful of units that are empty because 80% MI is something they can get at market rate, I would much rather have that happen than those buildings not get built.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had some public comment?

Or like a crystal ball. Because if we knew the future, we wouldn't know what to do.

I think it comes down to this. This is an economically driven calculation, and economics change all the time. So when we get this back as a policy, I'm going to be looking for when will it next be assessed. And having a regular check-in rather than like, oh, it's not working. when we get angry public comments saying your MFT is broken and that's what prompts us to fix it and work on it that's not that's not sustainable so I'd love to see us revisit this on a regular cadence and have that be part of the policy that comes back with these code updates

If we are going from 80 to 70, because you mentioned that like we could do, it's legal for us to do 10 at 60 or, you know, 20% at 80. Can we do 15% at 70?

Yeah, that's something we can look into. We can definitely do.

I mean, I would like to, if we are going to require a deeper level of affordability than we're required, I would like to require fewer units. Just because, again, I want to make sure that they get built. Because if those micro units that ran out in market rate at 80% AMI, and we get 50 of those for people to move into at 80% AMI, that's a huge win that isn't measured in terms of like percentage AMI or affordability. So like I would, if we're gonna ask for more on the percentage AMI, I would like to ask for less on the number of units.

We're reviewing this, oh, We are reporting on this every year, are we? But can we review this every year also when the report comes out?

Absolutely. The reports that we submit to Commerce are all public, and we can definitely give you a preview of that before we submit anything to Commerce.

Because we can have a conversation like this at that time, and maybe ask, like, we did this, and then a year from now, okay, how did it work? Did it achieve some goal that we want to achieve? And then we revise.

Yeah, the Council wants to set an agenda. That's only something we can be prepared for.

Yeah, because I don't think we're going to have more than maybe one or half of one council member being like, it's time for the report to commerce. So if you can just put it in our faces, I think that'd be great.

I would love to have a conversation in the future about like the units that are getting built and the projects that are going in and like what we've learned from those projects that are going in rather than another year of, well, nothing got built. Maybe we should do it again when we know what works elsewhere. And like, so I want, next conversation to come with learnings to come with like here's here's what we've experienced here's what people say that have like actually built housing through the program here are the results we're seeing here are the rental rates for the units in them like i would like to know more because we have experience with something that's actually working by the time it comes back to us again because i would like to not have a third mfte conversation and still nothing getting built

To be fair to the first conversation, we experienced a global pandemic that really changed our supply chain.

But a lot of stuff's gotten built since then. And stuff's gotten built since then elsewhere. And I understand that Shoreline got a bunch of light rail stations. So no matter what happened, they were going to get a lot more apartment buildings built than we are right next to there. But things are getting built elsewhere. And things would have been getting built here if we would have made different decisions six years ago. And I wish I could go back six years ago and make different decisions. And I just, I don't, I want to control what we can control. And we can't control a global pandemic and we can't control supply chains. But what we can control is making sure that we give an MFTE policy that gives it the best chance of success. And by success, I mean people using it to build projects.

It's fine. We'll come back. We'll have another conversation about this. And a year from now, we'll have another conversation to discuss it. I mean, I don't have a problem with revisiting even within a year.

I mean, and you could be right. All the projects could get built at 70%. I just don't know.

No, and I just don't have a crystal ball. I can tell that you're frustrated that we're having to talk about it again and we haven't had projects. estimates and decisions were made in a completely different environment. Even though things got built, much less got built, and it is now much more expensive to build things. That's the point. It's not just the policy that failed. There was a lot.

And since things are a lot more expensive to build now, I'm really hesitant to add more costs than we need.

And also, the things we need are the things we should incentivize. I think we're all on the same page about trying to get the most out of it. We're just refining where we can do that.

Yeah, I mean, I see that. And I mean, my take is that getting the most out of it is going to happen if we tune it toward getting the most projects built. Because if we get more projects built, then the number of affordable units that we get go up. And like, if we want to do 7%, 70% at 15%, like, and we can utilize that to get more projects actually built, we're going to see a whole lot more affordable units and market rate units. Rented so I would just like to see us if we're gonna ask for more in one phase We should ask for less correspondingly in another phase And I foresee council member miles wanting us to be done No, not at all I was just thinking it's chicken and egg and six of one half a dozen of another and

to your point you want a crystal ball we do not have a crystal ball you have to do the best this that you can do and make the best decision with the information that you have six years ago six years ago global pandemic changed the world in a way that we'll probably never maybe see again in our lifetimes i know we're doing the best we can with what we have right so just make a decision and we move forward.

The lesson I'm learning from this is Mason and Amanda should have had a phone call before this meeting.

No, it was a good discussion. It was a good volley serve.

Well, and I think, I think what we're hearing is we tried something that didn't work. And so we are iterating and we're trying to figure out what is that next iteration to see what could work. And I think it's worthwhile to be persistent, to not give up and, and to just make changes until we see what we want. Like, you know, create the change that we want to see and just continue working towards that. And so I'm grateful to staff for continuing to refine and suggest and make recommendations so that we can try something new and see if we get different results. So I'm hoping this time around we get different results.

Maybe we'll get lucky, like somebody else. Who knows? Something will fall into our laps. Could be the micro units, could be family units. Who knows? Could be something else.

Would it be difficult, and you guys probably go, oh, no, when I say that, because we haven't really had a consensus around kind of what direction we want you guys to go with this tonight. Would it be okay, because I'm sure that we're all going to leave this conversation and we're going to think about it and we're going to see what kind of feedback we get if people go out to the study session and we're going to talk about it. Would it be okay for you to bring back a couple different options? Here are some things we could do. So when we have this discussion the next time around, the discussion will be kind of teed up and framed and people that want to give us feedback will say here are the ramifications of the things that you're talking about with like actual concrete options.

Definitely. We can definitely do that. What we presented tonight was kind of we learned that direction of here's option A. We can come back in the next time with here's option A and here's option B and perhaps option C that combines elements of option A and B.

Well, if you do that, we're going to take option C. That's how that conversation works.

Given in mind that there are state requirements that we do have to implement, and we want to definitely be moving in that direction anyways, and so you will see some things that will just not change no matter what. Totally. But from the discussion we heard tonight, there are definitely many things that we can start proposing. And another point I want to bring up really quick is that ARCH is looking at the data to kind of help make the case about the 80% AMIs, given, again, snapshot in time, but the decisions, the feedback they're giving us are based on the data that they have. And so I just want to point that out, that they're not just saying it for ideological reasons. It's coming from the data they're seeing.

And we're in a cycle right now where more people are getting laid off than getting hired, and all the macroeconomic factors are pointing toward rents getting cheaper right now. And we have been in phases like that in the past, and we will have phases like we've had in the past and the future, where people are hiring and rents are going up, and the context will be different then. So it's a snapshot in time. if we could have some of a like, here are the things that we heard in the conversation from council in the study session, and like here are a couple different options, like that would be, I think, teeing us up to have a better conversation when it's time to make a decision.

Try my best. Yeah.

I think we call Magic A-Ball now Claude, right? Isn't that the thing? Ask the Magic A-Ball.

Ask again later.

Yeah. All right. Are we good? All right. We're adjourned.

Praise the council. Thank you.

Thank you.