City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, residents of Everett, Washington. I would like to call to order the Everett City Council meeting of August 5th, 2026. For information on council meetings and how to participate, please visit our website at everettwa.gov slash city council. Please note, we do not allow comments of any kind of campaigning, whether or against ballot measures or candidates running for office. We also do not accept comments focused on personal matters that are unrelated to city business. For the record, Council Member Zarlingo and Weir will be attending remotely this evening. Burke, please take the role.

Mayor Franklin.

Excuse.

Council Member Bader.

Here.

Vice President Ryan. Here. Council Member Bravano.

Here.

Council Member Toohey. Here. Council Member Weir. Here. Council Member Zarlingo.

Here.

President Schwab.

Here. At this time, I'd like to ask Council Member Bader to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Which is to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all HAB-Jacques Juilland, Thank you. And this time I like to ask Councilman or to eat to lead to lead us or read the land acknowledgement HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Certainly,

The City Council wishes to acknowledge the original inhabitants of this place, the Stohopshe people and their successors, the Tulalip tribes. Since time immemorial, they have hunted, fished, gathered on, and taken care of these lands and waters. We respect their sovereignty, their right to self-determination, and honor their sacred spiritual connection with the land and water. We will strive to be honest about our past mistakes and bring about a future that includes their people, stories, and voices to form a more just and equitable society.

Thank you. So on to old business. Do I hear a motion for approval of the minutes for July 29th, 2026?

Council Member Ryan, so moved.

Second. Motion and second has been made. Clerk, please take the vote.

Council Member Bader.

Yes.

Vice President Ryan. Yes. Council Member Furbano. Yes. Council Member Toohey. Yes. Council Member Weir.

Yes.

Council Member Zerlingo.

Yes.

President Schwab.

Yes. Okay, now it's time for public comment, which includes written comment acknowledgement. Under our rules, written comments shall be considered in the same manner as oral comments. The person submitting the comment or here speaking at our podium must give their name and city of residence to make the council record. Also for those in the chambers, if we can see the dots here, it does give a little bit of warning. We got three minutes. I know we have a lot of you and really appreciate you guys being here to speak. And well, that will be, we'll get going. So Angie, who do we have?

Well, first, we do have a written comment that we received from Dottie Medaglia regarding the Everett Community Ice Rink. And that was provided to council, legal, city clerk, and administration to be part of the record. We have a few people in chambers. So if William could please come to the podium. Please state your full name, city of residence, and you have three minutes to speak. And if you could please press the button on the bottom there.

Yeah.

Thank you.

William Parent, Silver Lake. Everett, Washington. I watch the EBACs around the country and around the world. So here we go. This is... Everett's police e-bike selection and pursuit capabilities. On August 2nd, 2026, I observed two Everett police officers patrolling Clark Park on electric bicycles. Based on what I saw, one bicycle appeared to have four-inch wide fat tires, while the other was equipped with aggressive mountain bike tires designed for off-road traction. This raised questions for me regarding the department's selection on e-bikes and the operational requirements for these patrol units. I support the use of bicycles for community policing and park patrols. However, I believe taxpayers would benefit from understanding how the selected equipment meets the department's operational needs and whether alternative configurations were considered. Given these characteristics, I am interested in understanding whether these bicycles are intended primarily... For park patrols and trail access and community engagement or whether they are accepted to be used in suspect pursuit situations because I've been watching it. So, um, While I understand the police department must balance many factors when selecting equipment, I would be interested in learning whether features such as lightweight frames, quick swap batteries, extended range capabilities, and highly durable tire systems were considered during the evaluation and the procurement process. If I was designing a police e-bike for every officers, thank you for the time and consideration.

Thank you. Next, if Jane could please come to the podium. Jane. Please state your full name, city of residence. You have three minutes to speak and please press the button on there. Yes. Yeah. Thank you.

My name is Jane Zimmerman. I'm a professionally licensed engineer. I live at 1709 Virginia Avenue. Behind me in the alley was what was a transitional housing unit with incarcerated men, previously incarcerated men living there. and previously disrespecting me and taunting me because I live with mental illness. I have had an ongoing issue with them for a long time that became especially bad last year when the previous clean and sober house owner became incapacitated and his daughter started running the house. She's extraordinarily disrespectful. has has encouraged her tenants to disrespect and disobey city of everett regulations i have been in a dispute with them now i last thursday 320 at 320 in the afternoon i had been giving them verbal permission to park illegally in the alley across from my backyard access and apart from my garage I am having work done on my house. I need that space available for contractors. They don't park there during the day, but as soon as it hits five o'clock or on the weekends, they park there. I look up into the alley from my back porch to this vehicle through the gate slats on my gate of somebody who is blatantly disregarding city of Everett parking regulations. And I'm told that this is not bullying or intimidating behavior. I am a single woman, mentally ill, living in my home with men in the back who see no Why regard City of Everett regulations? Can you tell me why this doesn't make me feel unsafe in my home? And I have repeatedly tried to get the City of Everett Police Department to help me with this. Repeatedly. Today it happened again. I called the non-emergency police number, reported it. I called 911. Somebody called me back. while I was unavailable, told me to give him a call back, and it's a voice mailbox that hasn't been set up yet. How am I supposed to leave this man a message if he doesn't have a mailbox I can leave a message in? I had said I was going to come tonight and testify about transitional housing units In my backyard, there doesn't appear to be any regulation of these facilities. I witnessed construction last summer that did not appear to have permits. I've reached out to the regional supervisor of this housing program. at the state level, and he says they have no ability to control them. I say there must be some kind of vetting process. There must be some rules or regulations these people are supposed to follow. Who is monitoring them? He says he hopes that they will be respectful of the neighborhood and law-abiding citizens. I find that unacceptable in my neighborhood. I pay property taxes, I pay utility fees, and I believe my quality of life should be considered in the placement of these facilities.

Thank you. Steve, if you could please come to the podium. Please state your full name and city residence. You have three minutes to speak.

Good evening, council members. My name is Steve Ose. I live in Everett. I've lived in Everett my whole life. I take Everett very seriously. It means a lot to me. My parents grew up here. My grandparents grew up here. My kids and my grandkids. This is my town, and I want what's best for Everett. You've heard from many people over the last few months about a potential merger between Everett Transit and Community Transit. The thought process should be over. It's wrong. It should not happen, and we should be getting on with business. I've been the president of the union for our bus drivers for over 21 years, and they're coming to me. They're mentally shaken, wondering whether or not they're still going to have a job or not. It's time to put that to an end. There are plenty of reasons to say no. You can say no. Or you can say, we're going to put it up to a vote to the citizens. That's what you should do if you're not sure. Give it back to the citizens. It was wrongly taken away in the middle of the night down in Olympia by Marco Elias. He snuck it into a bill, and you can give it back to the citizens. So... You've been told some things that aren't true. You've been told that Everett Transit is not stable, not going to be able to last. That we are borrowing money from the city. I've heard that you guys have been told that. We put $2 million a year, roughly, and you have that paperwork in front of you. That's from the city. Each year, we put roughly $2 million a year into the city budget. We don't take money out. We put money in. The other packet of paperwork that you have is called 13C. That's federal. It's a federal letter. And this federal letter gives us guarantees if there's a merger or something like that happens to us that is supposed to be followed. One, if the merger happens, before it happens, when there's an ILA being negotiated, we're supposed to be involved. We, as of yet, have yet to be involved. We've asked to be involved. We've been told, no, you don't qualify to be in there because, well, nobody's lost their job. So you guys don't belong in there. We belong in there before that point, not afterwards, before. There's all kinds of questions. Read through it. Understand what the 13C is. We have drivers who have worked for the city for a long time. I've been here for, well, going on my 30th year now. And I care about Everett Transit. We do a great job. Everett and Transit and Community Transit are two different types of systems. Our system is local. Their system is regional. It's two different things.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Jan, if you could please come to the podium. Jan? Jan? Please state your full name and city of residence. So you have three minutes to speak.

Jan Moissanen, Stanwood, Lake Goodwin. And I've been driving here forever. Pretty close. Excuse me. Eight and a half hours on the road. I'm exhausted. And I'm losing my train of thought, but it's very important to us all. And as Steve said, I was the president before he was president. And so I've been around a long time for all of that. Oh, just to relate a story, I'm probably better at that. uh a guy who's dressed much the way i anticipated dressing after udub double major grad and all that kind of stuff uh was walked up to the front of my bus and said did he say thank you talking about the guy who got off on the back of the bus and uh i said yeah and he was surprised that somebody would say thank you. I'm really tired. Sorry. I better take a break. Sorry, folks.

No problem. You're welcome to come back. I'll call on you again. Is it Guadalupe? I wasn't sure if you wanted to speak now or you marked during a particular agenda. Now is okay? Okay. So please state your full name and city of residence and you have three minutes to speak.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi, good evening.

My name is Guadalupe Vazquez and I am here tonight to speak for the Casino Road community. Most casino residents live in the low-income apartments with limited parking spaces. This forced many families to depend entirely on public transit for work, school, or medical appointments. This dependency is now a crisis. Since the closure of the Fred Meyer or Evergreen Way, our neighborhood does not longer have a major grocery store nearby. And that make us depend totally on public transit just to buy food. Currently, buses are taking between 30 to 40 minutes. In Casino Road, everybody knows that experience high rates of crime. So that forced a lot of workers and mothers or families to walk and wait for 40 minutes in the dark, in the bus stops, even though when the crime is high, So while we appreciate making routes Ride 12 free, the free does not protect people in our community for the violence or if their service remains slow and unsafe. Therefore, I would like to encourage every transit and community transit to make two immediate actions. The first one, increase the frequency to reduce the wait to at least 15 minutes. And the second one is expand the zip shuttles to the Casino Road community. Bring it in here will allow residents to travel safely without waiting in the dangerous stops at the 9. So I feel like residents of Casino Road deserve the same investment, speed, and safety as the rest of Everett residents. Thank you.

Thank you. Keith, would you like to come to the podium? Please state your full name and city of residence. You have three minutes to speak.

I'm Keith Jacobson, District 3. In 2004, Everett Transit went to the citizens of Everett and asked them for a sales tax increase. We made our case, and the citizens of Everett chose to pay a higher sales tax rate at that time. They raised the rate to the 0.6% that it is now. Let's contrast that with the current proposal for community transit to annex Ever Transit and double what we pay in sales tax for transit. In 2025, Senate Bill 5801 rewrote the rules on how transit agencies merge and took away the right of the affected citizens to vote on any sales taxes that might be involved. In April of this year, it was announced that the city will seek a merger of Everett Transit with Community Transit and is currently in negotiations for such a merger. The Everett Herald quotes Mayor Franklin in a June 18 committee meeting as saying, quote, if we just said everything that we do has to go to a vote of the people, regardless of the new tools that the state has given us, we're not doing our jobs, end quote. For the record, we're not talking about everything going to a vote of the people, just those things that have traditionally gone to a vote of the people. But let's talk about that new tool Senate Bill 5801, Part 10, describes how a public transportation benefit authority area, a PTBA, may annex a municipal system that is operating within the PTBA's area by a vote of the PTA's governing board and the municipality's city council. No vote of the people required, even though this would mean a sales tax increase. And guess what? In the whole state of Washington, only Everett Transit fits that description. This legislation was written with the sole intent of making it easier for community transit to annex Everett Transit and to do that by disenfranchising Everett voters, by taking away a voting right that Everett citizens have enjoyed for decades. Whenever transit wanted a sales tax increase, we did it the right way. We went to the citizens and asked. We made our case. They said yes. This time, this time the city is going out of its way to avoid asking the citizens what they want, to avoid having a vote on the matter. Indeed, they seem to be a rush to get this thing through. the need for more resources i've heard is that it's supposed to be a long-range problem well if indeed it is a long-range problem is it really necessary to permanently get rid of an agency that has been part of ever transit for uh for over 133 years so quickly i think there's time to make the case if that's what you believe i think there is time to make that case and ask the voters if this Just vote for this merger without asking. You will have shown yourselves to be the kind of people who will run roughshod over people's voting rights to get what you want. Thank you.

Thank you. June, if you could please come to the podium. Please state your full name and city residence. You have three minutes to speak.

Thank you. My name is June. I'm a resident of District 3. Just wanted to state that consolidation would be a great benefit to the community. It would provide double the service within two years as opposed to just 25% more service in 20 years by 2045. That's one to... That's about four years after light rail comes to Everett. So I personally would like to have more bus services well before I turned 30. And that'd be great. Thank you.

Thank you. And Jen, I'd like to invite you back to the podium if you'd like. No pressure. Okay. Okay, so the last person we have here wishes to wait oh no actually no rock you want to come up now right. And please state your full name and city residents, you have three minutes to speak yeah.

And i'm speaking as an organization.

You requested five minutes granted it's okay.

My name is Brock Howell, and I'm speaking here as the executive director of the Snohomish County Transportation Coalition, SNOWTRACK for short. We were founded in 1999 by the directors of Ever Transit, Community Transit, Ever Public Works, Snohomish County Human Services, and other nonprofits. SNOWTRACK aims to accomplish two tasks. One, to ensure existing providers' services are well-coordinated, increasing the efficiency and quality of service among them. And two, ensure no person, no matter their age, ability, or income, is left behind. Based on the agency's studies, consolidation has the potential to vastly improve transit service. Given the opportunity before us, I believe we must take it. I don't say this without some hesitation. First, both agencies are founders of SnowTrack and their leaders are effectively my bosses, so that is awkward. Second, Ever Transit has been an incredible partner to Snow Track and Stations Unidos. The agency's commitment to the community is evidenced by their quick response to the closure of Fred Meyer in South Everett and its service during the World Cup and other community events. Third, Ever Transit is a very well-run organization. The agency almost always has balanced books with its enterprise account and is a net positive for paying the city's administrative and technology services for the agency. yet before the council is an opportunity to have a genuinely metropolitan level of service one that ever transit and its current configuration will be unable to deliver for this reason the council must give consolidation its most serious commitment According to the 2021 Rethink Transit study, consolidation results in an increase in the number of bus stops in Everett with at least 15-minute frequency at peak hours in 2036, from 225 with the current sales tax to 593. This frequency is freedom. The number one reason someone chooses one mode over another is how fast it takes to get from A to B. For transit, the biggest time issue is the wait time. Many of Everett's routes are currently at 40-minute headways. That means if someone were to randomly walk out their front door and go to a bus stop, on average, they'd wait there for 20 minutes. Study after study shows that when headways reach 15 minutes, ridership booms. It's no surprise that Everett's number one and two lines for ridership is the 7 route and the Swift Blue line, which run at 15-minute headways. When more routes are running at 10 to 15 minute headways, transit agencies can also straighten out their circuitous routes and utilize a grid of transit routes. End to end, the routes are shorter and faster and people can easily transfer to where they need to go. Some have asked, why not the 0.9 sales tax? The rethink study shows that the benefits are exponential 15 minute frequency at 124 stops from the point six to point nine sales tax is the jump it's another 244 stops at that frequency by going up to point to 1.2. Job access is also exponential, increasing from those gaps 4,800 jobs on the first step and 17,700 on the second step. While the study is a starting point for future service planning, community transit will need to undergo this work through an update to its long-range plan. For this reason, I do encourage a strong ILA framework, one set Two overarching goals, build a transit network that is supportive of the metropolitan city where people can live and work in this city as opposed to live outside the city or work outside the city. And two, maximize ridership, seek to maximize ridership. This means working towards implementing the frequencies outlined in the Rethink study and using those frequencies to untangle the knot of transit service that we have. longer term at sorry ever transits disabled and older riders do love their pair transit service today is excellent service Community transit is committing to continuing the same service to all pair transit writers emphasis on current writers longer term. Community transit zip could be a better solution as one of the potential solutions moving forward. I'm generally not a fan of microtransit in urbanized areas like the city of Everett. However, for people with disabilities and older adults, it could be a vastly superior service in terms of easier to enter 15 minutes to schedule a trip rather than 24 or 48 hours. Third, build in accountability. Obviously, we need to see on the board. There's other opportunities, including making sure that the representation is by geography of the county rather than by city size, and by adding two more seats that represent transit riders themselves under new state legislation that was bipartisan.

Finally, thank you. Okay, you got your five extra minutes.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you very much.

That concludes our public comments. Okay.

All right. Thank you very much. Now it's time for council comments, and we'll begin with Council Member Bader.

Thanks, Council President. Just two things. One, National Night Out last night. I went to a couple of neighborhoods, gatherings for that. Thanks to our city staff, police and fire notably, who were there. Much appreciated. They were great gatherings, and thanks to all the volunteers in the neighborhoods who put those together. um it's uh connected to that not well a little bit connected to that because it was happening same place in my neighborhood where councilmember weir also was oh where'd she go anyway um the um uh over garfield park uh the new play area they're open it looks fabulous thanks to our parks department their contractors for uh their work on that and getting that open it was uh mobbed with kids uh both uh monday night and last night and uh look forward to seeing many more summer days uh with that happening as well so thanks uh for that good good info and of course the confluence there with national night out of garfield park was a serendipitous one as well so thank you that's all i have to report thank you councilman thank you uh thank you so much to all of our speakers tonight i appreciate you joining um excellent comments too very uh insightful and um love all the statistics as well so thank you for joining

On Monday, I attended the Everett Station District Alliance's unveiling of art on the utility boxes down near the station. Everett Station District Alliance is now, they're expanding their services in their geographic area to include over by Casino Road. So they're now called Stations Unidos. So they did the official unveiling of their new name. So if you hear Stations Unidos, it's the expansion of Everett Station District Alliance. So congratulations to them. Yesterday I also attended four different neighborhood night out events from Port Gardner at Kiwanis Park, Lowell Park, Valley View at the Commons and the Zion Church in South Forest Park neighborhood and all of the events were very well attended and they were all um, bigger than they were last year too, which I was excited to see and encouraged to see it. I don't even, I don't think Valley Valley views had a neighborhood night out event as long as I've been on council. So I'm really excited for the new leadership and the expansion to engage neighbors down there. I did want to share that, um, Beverly park Pinehurst neighborhood in lieu of neighborhood night out, they are hosting a, um, An ice cream event on Thursday at three o'clock, which coincides with the ribbon cutting for the skate dot park that's opening at Lyons. So I encourage neighbors to join and celebrate the exciting stuff going on in Pinehurst Beverly Park. Thanks.

Thank you. Council Member Bono. No comment, no report. Thank you. Council Member Tuohy.

Yeah, just a couple things. I too was attended at the Kiwanis Park for Port Gardner Bay Neighborhood Association and was so impressed with all the people that were there. We had Everett Transit had their table in the library, Snohomish County Emergency Management, Compass Health, the YMCA. We also had our COET team was there and police force were there and anyway, I just wanted to thank, call out Andrea Tucker. I know she had a lot to do with that. Maybe not all, but she had a lot to do with that. So anyway, it was a great, a great event. And then this afternoon we had our, um, community safe health and safety committee meeting. Uh, we had, uh, a general Jim chambers from weld, which, um, is, uh, peer-driven re-entry services for incarcerated folks. And they are currently working in King County. They're hoping to move up to Snohomish County. They provide recovery housing, life skills, behavioral health support, employment pathways, and that also will enable people to move out of the survival mode once they do leave incarceration and take responsibilities for their future. So he had a some really great stories and was very fascinating to hear the programs that they're doing. So that was great. That's all I have.

Thank you. Council Mayor Weir.

Hello. I don't know how good my bandwidth is. Can you guys hear me okay? Okay, great. So I'm currently in Leavenworth attending the Association of Washington City's Municipal Budgeting Workshop. We finished our first day today and I look forward to sharing some of the information with my fellow council members. It's been pretty exciting to hear just some new perspectives on you know, just sharing information, engagement, and the budgeting process. And the smoke over here is no joke, so I apologize. I'm already feeling a little froggy because of the smoke in the air. But I, as Councilmember Bader said, I was at the Riverside National Night Out.

Okay. Well. One, two, three. Councillor, where are you still with us? Right? Okay. How about we put you on hold and we'll go to council members our lingo.

Yes, I'd like to thank our callers tonight in particular people who brought up issues that are coming before us like the potential trend, different perspectives there. And I am glad to have that in advance of the kinds of future discussions and eventual decisions we'll have on this. And then I'd like to second Council Member Ryan's comments about the Lions Park Escape Dot that's been in the works for a while. Some of us were using some council-directed funds to help on that. And I'm particularly thankful for that. It's a wonderful park, but it's had some problems with undesirable youth activity. And I think the Escape Dot is a great way to improve use of that park and fulfill our obligation to give our known people something to do and a way to get together in person and do their recreation. Looking forward, if I can, I'll be making that dedication tomorrow. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Weir, did you have anything more to add?

I'll save the rest of the comments until next week in person. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, and I, too, went out last night. The National Night Out was amazing. I managed to get four events, the View Ridge neighborhood, Harborview, Seahurst, the Crown Drive neighborhood, and the Boulevard Bluffs neighborhood. And as echo to all you said, everything was well attended. I know there was a lot of people that put it together. Thanks for the city staff. the Office of Neighborhoods, the Police Department, the Volunteer Police Group. I also saw the library out of Booth, which was very nice. And they had activities for kids. The Fire Department made their rounds and also the Fire Department Association. It wasn't done in our district, but they brought their slide, inflatable slide. Did anyone see that? Oh, yeah. What neighborhood was that? I don't know.

It was at Lowell and it was very popular.

Super cool. Yeah. Um, anyway, so I, if those of you are watching and having a tenure, um, local neighborhood event, I would really encourage it. I know I met a lot of new faces. A lot of people are moving into communities, our communities, and I got a lot of positive feedback from our newer neighbors. They really thought this was a great opportunity. Didn't have it in other cities. So, uh, we should be proud of our town for having this type of activity. So, and participation. Okay, we'll move to administration. Jennifer, do you have something for us?

Just briefly, Mayor is sorry that she couldn't be here tonight, but she wanted me to make sure that we thank our Everett voters who turned out for the item that we had on the ballot for the primary yesterday. And I just thought I would note, you know, for the historical record, that it was a very successful and high amount of yeses to renew the EMS levy and get it back to the sort of the level it had been at when it was last renewed. And it is, in fact, the highest level of support for any Everett ballot measure in about a quarter century. So... was good to see the support for for that needed services city. So that's it. Thanks.

Thank you. Our city attorney.

No, no comments and no executive session tonight. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you very much. Right. Moving on to our consent items. We have to do I hear a motion a second.

Council member Ryan moves all two consent agenda items.

Second the motion. Okay. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, clerk, please take the roll.

Council member Bader. Yes. Vice President Ryan. Yes. Council member Brabano. Yes. Council member Tuohy. Yes. Council member Weir. Yes. Council members Arlingo.

Yes.

President Schwab.

Yes. Okay, moving on to proposed action items. We have three... Three action item, proposed action items, and they're all second reading. They've all been written in the record. Council Bill, item number three, Council Bill 2607-39. Are there any questions or comments from Council? Okay, seeing none, how about item number four, Council Bill 2607-40? Okay, seeing none, any questions on item number five, Council Bill 2607-41? Dave Kuntz, Okay, seeing none all threes are this is their second reading and there'll be third and final reading August 12 2026. Dave Kuntz, All right, last thing on our agenda is a briefing. Dave Kuntz, The possibilities of merging everett transit with Community transit and Jennifer you like to start her off.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, Yes, I'm going to just turn things over sort of right away to executive director Bob Leonard, who has our opening with the first couple slides and then we have the community transit CEO Rick Ilken fritz with us to do the rest for tag team, the presentation. Okay, so thank you for see

Good evening, Council members. Tonight's presentation will provide an update on the ongoing discussions and negotiations between the City of Everett and Community Transit regarding a potential interlocal agreement that would annex the city into the PTBA. Tonight, we are fortunate to have Rick Ilgenfred, CEO of Community Transit, here with us. And later in the presentation, as Jennifer pointed out, Rick will provide valuable perspective and provide more detail about significant aspects of the consolidation. Over the past several years, the City of Everett and Community Transit have engaged in thoughtful discussions and negotiations to explore how a more connected and efficient regional transit system could better serve our growing community. This initiative began with a recognition that the region's transit needs are evolving, driven by population growth, economic development, and the impending arrival of light rail. Central to this process have been two major efforts, Rethink Transit and More Transit Together. These initiatives provided the foundation for evaluating how consolidation could enhance service, improve operational efficiency, and provide greater access to funding. Through Rethink Transit, Everett examined its transit system and identified opportunities for improvement and innovation. More Transit Together expanded this vision, focusing on regional collaboration and the potential benefits of a unified approach. Throughout this process Community transit has been an exemplary partner demonstrating openness transparency and a shared commitment to finding solutions that benefit both agencies and the broader community. Their collaborative spirit has helped lay the groundwork for a potential interlocal agreement that would outline how a unified transit system could operate, including service integration funding mechanisms and operational frameworks. As we continue to work together, our focus remains on creating a transit system that is responsive to the needs of Everett residents, supports regional mobility, and positions our community for future growth and success. With this foundation in place, our attention turns to the three priorities that will define the path ahead as the interlocal agreement takes shape. People, financial, and service. These areas are not only central to the agreement itself, but they also represent the fundamental considerations that will determine how the transition unfolds, how resources are allocated, and how the needs of our community are met. Each priority carries its own set of complexities, challenges, and opportunities, and together they form the foundation upon which the future of transit in Everett will be built. The decisions made in these areas will influence everything from operational stability and fiscal responsibility to the experience of those who work within and rely upon our transit system. And now I'd like to turn the presentation over to Rick, who will now guide us through a closer examination of these priorities.

Great, thank you. Can you hear me okay? Not really?

All right, we'll do this one.

How's that? Better. Thank you. It's great to see you all tonight. Thank you, Jennifer and Bob. I've got a few slides here to walk through. I want to emphasize or reemphasize something Bob said. This is a reflection of a joint effort between our two organizations to plan a path forward that addresses the key issues that have been identified and lands us in a workable end state that enables us to really deliver the value proposition here. So the first tentpole issue here is people. And that really speaks to the importance of the transition, potential transition of employees if this were to take effect. um i would point out uh on this slide here kind of a summary of the work we've been doing and the issues we've been focused on first and foremost i want to point out there are strong state and federal legal rules that apply in this in this situation and we are committed to observing those complying with those and making sure we are acting in good faith and that includes 13c protections for everett employees I want to talk for a minute about the Everett workforce. I've had an opportunity to meet with employees a couple of times, and I've led with a statement of respect and admiration for the work that Everett Transit does in this community. and the incredible asset that that accumulation of talent represents to this city and to the region. We at Community Transit, if this consolidation goes forward, have a vested interest in trying to persuade as many Everett Transit employees as we can to join in this consolidation. We at Community Transit stand to learn from Everett Transit employees. about the character of this community, about the interests and needs of the customers that they serve every day, about the rhythms of the neighborhoods and the routes and the grid that they serve. So it's an amazing learning opportunity for us to be able to collaborate with that group of employees and That will be an incredibly high priority for us if this goes forward. I say that because while there are state and federal laws that apply here, we would want to enjoy a partnership with those Everett Transit employees, even if there weren't. It's part of our value structure and the opportunity to learn is so valuable. The labor transition process and the way we would make sure that we're honoring the needs and the situations each of the Everett Transit employees enjoys today is by honoring the existing collective bargaining agreement that is in place. um the during the transition process that would be the case we would make sure that everybody is kept whole financially and with respect to benefits and in that first year excuse me in that first year or more during the transition period everett transit employees wouldn't see any change they'd come to work wearing the same uniform they would perform the same work they would have the same benefits and ideally the customers would see no change And that's because we would continue to run the operation the way it is run today. There are transition issues to work through and they're sort of reflected in that fourth bullet. Community transit has a robust culture around collective bargaining. We have a very collaborative relationship with our unions, but they're a little bit different. Both organizations have ATU locals representing drivers and other employees. The city of Everett has AFSCME. On our side, we have the International Association of Machinists who represent our maintenance personnel and our supervisors. So it's a little bit different organizationally. And so during the transition process, we would have to work through those issues with respect to each organization. I mentioned the Everett Transit employee meetings that we had over the last couple of weeks. There's been great participation. There's been a lot of questions and, as you might imagine, a lot of feelings. And I've tried to approach those from the standpoint of introducing the employees to who we are as an organization, if this goes forward, what they can expect from us, and to answer folks' questions as we've gone forward. Next slide is an example of a kind of a preliminary agreement we brought forward to try to walk the talk on respecting people and caring for their interests as we go forward in this, and that's in the area of paratransit service. So we've been able to make the commitment that no, excuse me, no customer currently using the service would see any change in how they use that service today. And no employee performing that service today would see any change in their work either. So that's just an example. When I talk about keeping people whole through the transition, this is one of the things we're talking about. The second pillar of this agreement is a financial transaction. The city of Everett has made a great investment in infrastructure to provide transit service. You have a great fleet, facilities, parts, some key properties that are hubs for the operation. And so we've gone through a process to develop a valuation of those assets. If the agreement goes forward, those assets would transfer to community transit so that we could sustain service and have a base to grow from in the future. We've identified working with the federal transit administration and the Washington state department of transportation, our funding partners, an approach to valuing the assets and, uh, compensating the city for the share of its local investment in those assets and transferring the responsibility for the state and federal investments from the city to community transit so they remain whole as well. So we're following all the applicable rules and regulations in that regard and are working through those processes with those two partners. On the third side of this is the service component, and that's really the value proposition. And this is where I start to get excited because we have an opportunity to really envision something bigger together than exists today as we operate separately and adjacently. the planning sort of framework and baseline that Bob referenced in his remarks, the Everett transit long range plan, the rethink study that preceded that, excuse me, The more transit together plan that we did together based on the rethink transit plan all serve as a baseline for us to start from. As we think about what the network could look like in the city and county wide in the future. The characteristics of the service that we would improve and be able to improve almost immediately are listed here. And they reflect and track very closely what we've done and other parts of the county to get ready for the Linwood link light rail segment to open a couple of years ago. So first and foremost is frequency and span of service. Frequency really is king in transit. The more frequent you can make a route or a network, the more likely it is people will use it because the more convenient it becomes. And we've seen that throughout South County in the last couple of years. Span of service, equally important. Some folks go outside the city or down to Seattle for evening events. Some people work off peak hours. The ability to get home at night is critical to encouraging somebody to become a regular user of transit. And so that's one of the things we could focus on almost immediately, taking service at all the way to the end of our service day, which is midnight every day. Reducing transfers, that's the big one as well. We have lots of trips that could be served by transit today that probably aren't being served because we force transfers between our two properties at Everett Station and throughout the north-south axis of the city. Being able to create one seat rides that cross jurisdictional boundaries is a huge difference maker for folks who want to use transit but can't today because it takes too long or it's too inconvenient. I have this sort of conceptual trip in my mind that isn't really served very well today. And that's if you're a... A resident of a city like Lake Stevens or Snohomish and you work down at the Navy Yard or the port, it's very difficult to use transit to get to and from your job because you have to transfer one, two, sometimes three times, depending on where you're coming from. And it makes that trip eat up too much of your day. We have an opportunity to create one-seat rides through origins and destinations like that as part of this network. Regional connections, I'll show you the map of our service territory in a minute that shows how we're serving the light rail stations and how that's different than what we did before. Microtransits been mentioned earlier in comments. That's a experimental service we're piloting in four cities around the county. And it's something that we would look at planning within the city of Everett as part of our planning approach that I'll talk about in a minute. and of course underserved, excuse me, underserved areas. When we developed the More Transit Together plan, we looked at the Everett transit grid, we increased frequency and span, We extended CT routes through the city. We looked for gaps in that network and then added service in those gaps to make sure we were covering all the underserved areas. That's an opportunity that is in front of us as well. So all of this rests on a very robust community engagement program we would go forward with to consult with your constituents, your stakeholders. the other cities outside of Everett, to build a new network based on a robust foundation of community input. So those are sort of the three pillars of the agreement that are coming together. I'll switch gears for a brief moment as I did with going to the next slide with the employee meetings earlier to just give you a glance at community transit, what our system looks like today and the communities we're serving today. That's probably a little bit hard to read up on that screen, but I hope you've got a copy in front of you. The map on the right side of that slide shows our network. The bold green, orange, and blue colors are our bus rapid transit network. Those three routes are our highest performing routes in our system. They provide all day service at 10 minute headways, and they are easily outstripping bus rapid transit ridership from pre-pandemic levels. So that's been the biggest improvement we've seen since the opening of the orange line and the opening of light rail. The yellow lines on that map are the new express routes that we introduced from various cities around the county to light rail stations. So we've got express routes now from North County to Linwood, from Mukilteo Ferry to Linwood, from Edmonds to Mount Lake Terrace, the light rail station. And if you look in the lower right corner, our latest route is a new express, the 908, that connects the cities of Snohomish and Monroe to the light rail station in downtown Bellevue. So it's going on all around the county, and there's an opportunity to fill in that map in the middle there with future service. And then the blue routes are showing our network connections, and that's where we focused on increasing frequency and span when we rebuilt our network prior to the 2024 light rail opening. The next slide is just a quick community transit at a glance by the numbers. You've heard about our services. Our strategic plan, our five-year strategic plan is focused on attracting and retaining customers and strengthening the employee experience. And we do that by implementing and managing agency-wide continuous improvement programs so that our improvement initiatives are based directly on the feedback we get from our customers and our employees. By the numbers, we had 9.6 million boardings last year in 2025. That reflected double-digit ridership growth as a percentage in 24 and 25. And we're positioned this year to grow at 12% again. So we'll take our annual boardings over 10 million this year. At least we're forecasted to grow. We have about 1,200 employees at this point. That puts us at about six or seven on the list of top 10 employers in the city of Everett. About 26% of our employees are Everett residents. So we are of Everett. We also have a lot of employees from surrounding cities. We are serving, as I said earlier, a territory of 1,300 square miles. Our annual operating budget is shown there, over $200 million, and our capital budget as well. We continuously invest in keeping our infrastructure in a state of good repair and at industry standard. Our fleet's shown there as well, 250 heavy transit coaches, 75 paratransit vehicles, over 300 vanpool vehicles. So it's a big fleet, and it keeps us all very busy. There have been some questions and some feedback around our approach to security, so I thought I'd just flash this picture up on the screen. We employ a multi-layered approach to providing safety and security within our system that involves every part of our operating system. cohort. Our coach operators and our supervisors, shown the gentleman on the right and in the middle in the red, are our eyes and ears out there in the system. And they're constantly watching and communicating what's going on. They are supported by our service ambassadors, our embedded social worker. our transit security officers, and finally on the far left, our transit police unit, which is provided by the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office. The transit security officer cohort is a new investment we started post pandemic. We're up to 45 officers now, and they patrol the system in pairs throughout the BRT network and elsewhere at our major transit facilities. And they also man a 20 hour a day, seven day a week security operations center. So we can dispatch service from a central location. I'm going to wrap up with a little bit more of a snapshot of how we'll approach the planning work that I described earlier. This is a map showing the travel shed outside Everett with Everett in the middle. We're contemplating a two-phased approach. We will start with the city of Everett, the adjacent cities. and the critical destinations on the outside of the city and look at developing, taking the more transit together plan from a few years ago, updating it and proposing a new improved map based on public feedback that would primarily focus in connections in this area. We are looking at integrating not only travel sheds, travel markets based on origin and destination data, but also integrating our modes of service. And the next slide shows you a glance at that. When I say an integrated network plan, I'm talking about communities being integrated with each other, but also our product lines being integrated in a way that leverages the strengths of each to improve system performance overall. So on the left, you see the bus. We have different sizes and shapes of buses that can scale to the markets they're serving. And on the right, you see a zip vehicle where we're contemplating using that to provide first and last mile access to the bus routes and to serve trips at the micro level that the bus can't serve. So we're trying to leverage the performance of each to improve system performance overall. The last slide I have is just a timeline for the service planning. Again, if this agreement goes forward, this is what we proposed to develop a new network plan over the course of the next year. We would hit the ground running early next year, take this through three rounds of public engagement, starting by gathering concepts, proposing a draft network plan, and then socializing a final plan and bringing that to the new board of directors by the end of next year. targeting March of 2028 for beginning implementation. So I know that's a lot to report this evening. Thank you for listening and be happy to answer any questions you have. I think at this point, I'll flip it back over to Jennifer.

Yeah, I thought there might have been one more slide on here that I had. Kind of next steps and the process that we're working through. So this is governed by a tool that's really similar to a city annexation, like the one we're researching to the kind of south and east of us. So it has an ILA as part of it and then an ordinance that makes it take effect. So we're in this month of August and we're still negotiating the specifics of that document. We do have a public listening session. I don't know if we've officially advertised it yet, but I guess we'll start that tonight. Um, August 18th, uh, at the Walter E hall golf course, the, like the meeting room space that they have there. Um, five 30 to seven. Uh, so that'll be a good chance for folks to give, uh, still early input while we're still continuing to, to draft and work through the details. And then that would lead us into kind of another opportunity for the public to review the ILA that we've drafted with the idea that a final action would take place towards the end of October. As like your main, the main action, there is a public hearing that's required. So that would be in that kind of mid October timeframe, second reading that that's the idea. um yeah i think that's what i had for this next step slide and then i think we have just questions if you have questions from council councilman better i'll jump in thanks president um

Rick, I don't know if I have so many questions for you as much as I'd like at some point here in the near future, a briefing for council on, I know we need a new maintenance operations base. How does that affect our future finances, our future need for tax revenue for Ever Transit and what kind of service that would provide? Yeah. Just want to express my concern that no matter which path we take, nine-tenths merger, that I'm concerned that voters would go for nine-tenths, to be honest with you, in this tax environment. In fact, given all the comments I hear on social media, I'm equally worried that if we put in front of voters the opportunity to go back down to three-tenths, they might take that. So anyhow, just some concern there. Um, so, uh, so obviously, you know, what, if we follow our own path, what service does this, what kind of service does Evertrans look like, whether it's six tenths or nine tenths? going forward. I know I've seen, I think, the transit plan at TAC, but I just can't recall the details. I'm sure many of my colleagues haven't heard that, so I think it'd be good to have that briefing. Rick, one question for you. You talked about ridership since the pandemic. I assume a lot of the ridership come back because you've added one or two additional BRT lines. What's ridership been like coming back on the local service since the pandemic?

So we have fundamentally changed our network in the last two and a half years. For 40 plus years, we focused on the peak market. We picked up folks and gathered them up in the morning and took them to Seattle, University of Washington, other destinations in King County, brought them back, redistributed them in the evening. And that was the business model. And you could count on it like clockwork Monday through Friday. The pandemic changed all that. It changed the way people work. It changed the way people use transit. That combined with light rail coming to Linwood gave us an opportunity to really rethink our network. So we pretty much pulled all of our service out of King County. That was about 30% of our service hours. And we reinvested it in a new BRT line, which is the orange line. Those express routes I described. and increasing frequency and span on all of our local routes. So we've seen pretty good ridership. We've seen very good ridership on the BRT system, and we've seen significant ridership growth on weekends. And we've seen customers respond to increased frequency and span of service on weekends. Um, a number of our local routes, um, are doing quite well where they're feeding either the BRT system or the light rail system. Um, candidly, we've seen ridership fall off in our commuter market and those express routes, uh, you know, to the light rail stations don't perform as well as their predecessors did that went downtown. Um, we attribute that in part to introducing the transfer, um, at Linwood and also to all the free parking that town sound transit has provided at those light rail stations. So we're encouraged by how customers have responded to the increases in frequency. And I think the, you know, being on a track for a third consecutive year of double digit growth is a hint that we're onto something. So we're going to, we're going to keep at it.

Gotcha.

I think I'd just ask one final question, not necessarily to Rick or Bob or anybody in particular, but, you know, obviously it's been pointed out that we're unique in the state and having our own municipal transit agency and would just be curious if there's any information out there from Are peer cities from Federal Way, Vancouver, Spokane Valley, Renton, Kent, Auburn, who are similarly sized but don't have their own transit network, is their leadership or their constituents thinking or have a feeling that it was a bad idea to consolidate or not have control of their own transit? So again, not necessarily a question to you, Rick. I don't assume you or Bob or anybody here has that. It has that answer, but I think that's a relevant question for when I hear constituents talk about the importance of local control. You know, in cities our size that don't have local control, what has been the reaction or the posture of their constituents in the city leadership? So anyhow, just a general question I'll leave on the table there. Thank you.

Dave Kuntz, um yeah and I just want to comment just a clarification of someone might be watching Councilman beta was talking about point nine versus point six today as part of our long range plan without consolidation or merger so customer to.

Yeah, thanks for the update tonight. I do have my biggest concern is how it's going to work with the personnel. And I know you've talked about a transition time frame and I don't know how long that transition time you're thinking is going to take. So my question would be, so what happens then? I know that our employees at ET, I believe, make more per hour. Their wage scale is higher. So that's something that needs to be considered on both sides. But what happens to our wages? And then also a big thing is the seniority, which is important. How do you layer that in with two different groups with seniority? And I know that's between you and the people that are working on the Everett side, but those are just a couple of issues that are important to me. And then the paratransit you talk about, people today will be able to continue using it, but what about other people that may need it? Is it extended to them during this transition period?

The difference between our two systems is that both agencies provide paratransit to folks with disabilities. But in Everett, if you're over 65, you get to sign up for paratransit as well. That's beyond the federal requirements and CT has it just sort of sticking to the federal requirements. So the agreement that we've made that Rick spoke to is that all those folks that are in that group of you don't have to document a disability. It can just be over 65 and sign up for paratransit. You're in the system. They're going to keep you on their rolls as it will. And you can still call up, you know, and schedule your paratransit ride for the next day for whatever you need it for moving forward. Um, I think that maybe you speak to the moving forward part.

Um, okay. We're going to grandfather the grandparents. Um, So moving forward, we will apply the eligibility requirement countywide that we apply today, which conforms to the federal requirements. So the service is intended under the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide folks with disabilities transportation. And that's been our practice, and that's industry standard. So we'd stick with that countywide. We would keep Everett grandfathered in the way it is today.

Okay, and then, well, I better hurry up and sign up. No, I'm just teasing. Okay, so then, but my question though, how long do you project the transition timeframe to be for the employees?

Well, we're still working through the details, but roughly a year plus. And that's why it's important to reemphasize our commitment to honoring the existing CBA. um we're we're both union employers so we're both creatures of collective bargaining and and we would bargain in good faith for a successor contract to follow and um you know i i know that we have two different collective bargaining agreements uh between community transit and everett transit and in some respects the everett Craig Vaughn, Contract is more generous in some respects, ours is more generous and over time, we would seek to align those. Craig Vaughn, One thing I forgot to mention in my presentation was that we do have a meeting scheduled with both the locals and the at you international. Craig Vaughn, Later this month and we'll be talking through our approach to how we'll do that and we'll be actually seeking the input of the international to help us navigate that. You know, my incentive as a transit agency leader is to provide good quality service on the street. And that means having motivated and well compensated and cared for employees who are prepared to do an excellent job. So that means I want to get a good contract right now and I want to get a good successor contract when the time comes so that people are motivated to come to work and provide that important public service.

One other question. So on the CT board of directors, would there be, I don't know how the makeup is or how they're invited to be on the board, would there be representation from Everett, I assume? And do you know how many that would be or what that might look like?

See, I will answer. CT has like a weird Byzantine method of identifying kind of caucuses of small and medium and larger size cities. At the end of the day, it has to be based on the kind of population so that folks are represented equally at the whole agency. And if you look at just the numbers, Everett would merit a full seat on the board. But a lawyer would give you a different answer. But the numbers show that we would have a seat on the board. And I would say that's kind of a critical ask that the mayor has made, that we would have a seat there.

I would just add to that that the process is prescribed in state law. So there's an RCW for PTBAs that would trigger if the annexation was approved within 90 days we would have to convene the jurisdictions of the county to go through that process to reallocate the seats and they do that to ensure proportional representation our practice has been to have city size categories large medium and small plus the county gets two seats so in this instance we invite all the jurisdictions together each jurisdiction sends a person and They caucus until they sort it out. It's not quite like picking a pope, but it's similar.

Okay. No smoke. I will add the Byzantine nature is set by state law, not by community transit, I suppose.

Thank you. Those are my questions.

Okay. Thank you. Councilman Burbano.

If we are to proceed with this, will it be possible to have a side-to-side comparison between the old contract and the new contract for the union workers, just to make sure that the new contract is the same or better than the old contract?

Well, we're always very transparent about that, and so sure.

Thank you. Council Member Zarlingo.

Well, yeah, as Council Member Toohey talked about, I guess the lawyers and regulatory officials and now maybe an engineer's perspective on this. I tried to do a couple of real back of the envelope calculations, and it looked like in the merger by population, it would be something like 17%, and there's a current, I think, 10-member CT board. So a rough approximation might justify two seats, or expanding the board to, say, 12 people, and two seats out of 12 would be much closer to actual proportional representation. But again, those are my numbers that are not, I don't know this well enough to have any confidence in that. And also, I recognize there are other regulations that will control this. But I did want us all to have a better sense of our scale and size relative to this population to do the annexation. And hopefully, the future will get that out there.

Any other questions? Council Member Ryan.

Thank you, I had similar questions and thoughts as Council member better so just wanted to kind of reiterate them it's probably not a tonight discussion, but I guess it's one and a half questions here. When at what point in the process will counsel be seeing what the financial impact is going to be to the city and what does what does that body of work look like.

Um, the financial part of the aisle, it will be in the ILA. And I think it's our intent that, um, the decision about how to expand new one-time. revenues that have come from this change in our transit service, that we would have that available at the same time. It wouldn't be in the ILA because it would be a city decision about what action to take.

And that would include ongoing cost savings to the city and long-term financial gains or losses as the result? Yeah.

Um, we we would can dig into all of that.

Yeah, great. And then, um, I guess another, um, I guess future point of clarification I'd love to see is that It feels like the decisions being presented as an all or nothing, like merge, don't merge, but I feel like it is more of a spectrum of options. And Brock talked about it a little bit of like what happens at each of those increases for sales tax. And so I guess I'd love to see more of what that spectrum could look like of options for residents. I have a huge problem with sales tax in general. And I have concerns about placing a vote that would increase sales tax and I know that eventually we'll have to go up to the point nine anyways. So I'm would like to know if there's a possibility of a phased in approach or a phased in plan, especially if you know there is going to be a ramp up. before the implementation of new routes and new services and whatnot, could that also mean a ramp up of a sales tax increase as well? So my biggest concern is about the sales tax increase. So if there's any way to provide rebates to low-income households or just alleviate the disproportionate impact of the regressive nature of sales tax on the residents of Everett, it'd be good information to have moving forward. Thanks.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for the presentation. Really appreciate your input. And I don't see any more questions. Is there any more you'd like to add? Okay. Well, thank you very much. And for this body and for our audience, we have no further business. So meetings adjourned.