City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I call the Gig Harbor City Council meeting of May 26 to order and ask Assistant City Clerk Alleman to please call the roll.

Here. Here.

Here. Here. Here.

Here.

Present.

Before we begin this council meeting, we would like to recognize that we are gathered on not only the ancestral and traditional lands of the Squibosh Band of the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, but also on the side of one of the largest and longest standing historic villages of their people, the original inhabitants of the Gig Harbor area. Councilor, are there any changes to the agenda? Seeing none, tonight we are celebrating the retirement of a longtime city team member, Patty McGallion. Patty has been with the city for 28 years, and I'm going to turn it over to city administrator Katrina Knudson to tell everyone more about Patty and all the wonderful things she's done.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Council. I'd like to invite Patty and her supervisor, Paul Rice, up here as well. We'll say a few remarks, and Paul, I know, has a few remarks to say to Patty. Give Patty an opportunity to say anything that she would like to say. And then afterwards, we'll like to do a couple of photos with the Mayor and Council, with Patty and her family, and all of that. Here. Tonight we have the pleasure of recognizing someone who has spent an incredible 28 years serving the city of Gig Harbor, Patty Magalien. 28 years is a remarkable milestone. That's nearly three decades of dedication, institutional knowledge, and probably enough city process expertise to answer most questions we didn't even know that we had. Patty has been a steady and trusted presence, and what I've appreciated most is her unwavering commitment to customer service and process, making sure that every customer felt heard, helped, and that things were done the right way. And in local government, that kind of dedication makes all the difference in the job that we are doing for our community. Of course, while Patty has given so much to the city, some of her biggest moments have happened outside of these walls. I remember her celebrating coming in when your son was engaged. And then I remember when he got married. And then the arrival of one and then two granddaughters. And as much as you have done inside of these walls, I know that you are most proud of your family that sits behind us today. And I now suspect that they outrank all of us in terms of importance and probably already have. Patty, thank you for your years of service and for your care to this community. You've left a lasting mark on Gig Harbor. And while we're certainly missed your expertise, we're excited for you to begin this next chapter, one that hopefully includes less paperwork and much more granddaughter time. So please join me in thanking and congratulating Patty. You want to talk first and then we'll give her her presence?

Yeah, sure. Okay.

Now, this is just super exciting for me to be able to share no share in the celebration um i have known patty my entire career here with the city she was actually on the interview panel that hired me and i have spent the last 24 years almost with her probably spent more time with patty than any other person daylight waking hours than anyone else in my life in the last 20 years which is pretty exciting um You know how they say you kind of become like the people you spend time with. You know, if you want to be successful, you spend time with successful people. And thinking about that, the time we spent together, just I could not ask for a better person to have rub off on me even a little bit. Your professionalism, your kindness, your generosity, your loyalty, the commitment that you have to the city is incredible. more of an example than i've ever seen in anyone who i've ever worked with and it's just a real honor um there is one thing i wanted to share i was i get a lot of emails and notes and phone calls from the community um sharing how patty has you know changed their lives helped them through the process and i mean we deal with permits and construction and all kinds of things and People are always sending me little notes of how she's helped them through, what a rock star she is and how great she is. And so I was going through some of those last week, kind of thinking, well, what can I say during this time? And had a list of things, but there was one that really stood out. No, no, no. It was and I'll just be real quick. It was really timely, primarily because it came from a council member and it was sent to me the morning after a council meeting that I was actually asked to speak at about Patty. She had just received a letter. an award for outstanding service by the Washington Association of Permit Technicians. And we spent a little bit of time sharing with the council and the community about what that meant and she was able to share. The next morning I received this email Says, Paul, it was nice of you to spotlight Patty last night. Because of my non-council activities, I'm aware of what she does. The tremendous benefit she provides to your department, the city, and those with applications and permits. She's extremely well regarded by those needing answers regarding their permits, which has significant positive impacts on individual's perception of city government as a whole. It's my favorite part. It wasn't your words last night that particularly stood out, but rather those of Patty. The way she confidently took the floor to express pride in her work and love for this community is exactly what the city and any organization or business wants from their employees. Michael Perot, Gig Harbor City Council position number six. It's all you.

Thank you. Yeah, if I could have a couple minutes. Sorry, can I set these down for a second? Because I haven't known.

Thank you, Mayor Barber and Council for this recognition tonight, Katrina. And of course, Paul, but if I could take a quick minute to thank my family. If you don't know them, you've certainly heard about them. I go on and on constantly, but my awesome son, Scott, his wonderful wife, Olivia, and my beautiful granddaughter, Olivia, I'm not Olivia, sorry, a little bit nervous. Maeve and Brady, which I can't wait to spend more time with, obviously. Thank you for all your support, especially Scotty. I mean, you've been here all 28 years, right? It means the world to me and I love you all so much. To my brother, Dave, many of you probably know that Dave preceded me here and actually agreed in some form to let them hire me 28 years ago when they said, were you cool with it if we hire your sister? Diane was on that email. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's okay. I can deal with it. But thank you for showing me leadership and dedication and what that can mean and what that can do. It's big and it's important. Dave and his 30 years plus, I don't even remember what the number was, but we got to work together. And that was one of the highlights of my time here at the City of Big Harbor. I think we did the Burton legacy good and I think we made our mother proud. So I'm very proud of that. I think mom raised us right. To the CD team that's here, of course Diane and Jamie who used to be with CD, our friendships mean the world to me. Michelle, you are a great worker and you work really, really hard. And I appreciate our partnership in SmartGov and you being the sounding board and my backbone to all of SmartGov crazy. And I know that you'll help my team in the interim. And then, of course, my team. I say my team because Paul may be our boss, but let's be real. Paul, David, and Kellen, I wish Kellen could have been here tonight, but family. Obligations are a bit much, but thank you for always trusting me, respecting me and treating me well. Your leadership and you're a great boss, Paul. You really, really are. The team of David, Paul, Kellen and I, I think it's kind of unmatched currently. We have a great work ethic and we trust each other. We respect each other and we support each other every day. And that's what makes us so successful. I will always, always appreciate you guys and always be here for you if you need me. I'm on speed dial or I should be. But thank you. I will really, really miss you. And I really hope that you get somebody as cool as me to fill my shoes or my office or whatever happens next. But thank you again for everything that you mean the world to me. You guys really, really do. You are the best, best team that I could hope for. So thank you. Maeve and Brittany, are you ready for pizza?

Hard to follow on that, but I'll give you your official plaque. I'm grateful recognition of Patty McGallion for 28 years of dedicated service to the residents and community of Gig Harbor. Your professionalism and unwavering commitment will leave a lasting impact on the city and those who had the privilege to work alongside you with sincere appreciation and best wishes for a happy and fulfilling retirement. And then your policy allotted $200 gift, um, Thanks to Michelle and Tiffany working on this. We know that you like to travel and also, so we're hoping you can use this gift certificate to Alaska Airlines to fly somewhere and golf or be on the beach. And thank you so much.

Thanks.

Yeah.

yeah my team i'm gonna have uh council stand up i feel like that's over here oh this is better than the two of them

Oh, this will be, this will be, this will be your child. Okay. Okay. All right.

Don't go yet. Councilmember Rodenberg has some words.

I just wanted to say that I had the pleasure of working alongside of and she got paid I didn't. But I can attest that everyone that got in contact with her really appreciated her demeanor, her competence, and she was one of the best things that ever happened up there. Thank you.

Thank you so much for everything that you've done for us, Patty. We really appreciate you. Enjoy your retirement and that gift certificate. Okay, it's pizza time, girls. Pizza time. So I now welcome public comment on the consent agenda. If you have comments about the two items on the consent agenda, please come to the podium or press the raised hand button on Zoom if you would like to comment. I will now close public comment on consent agenda items and open it up for a motion from council.

I move that we approve the consent agenda. Second.

It was moved by council member Martin and seconded by council member Rodenberg to approve the consent agenda. Please vote on your screens or vote verbally if you're unable to access your voting screen.

Aye.

Motion passes seven to zero. Okay, for my mayor's report tonight, I'd like to talk a bit about the upcoming July 4th holiday. I realize it's more than a month away, but this year our country celebrates our 250th birthday. This major milestone represents an opportunity to reflect, an opportunity to think about where we've been, what we've done, and the many good things that have happened. Leading up to the holiday, I'm going to share some videos that were created by the Washington 250 Committee, which I believe really helped to frame this event. Tiffany, hopefully. It worked so seamlessly today when we tested it. I'll tell you what, we can put the video on our Facebook page and our webpage. And we'll just move on from there. Okay. Or do you want to keep trying? Okay. It is. The video is really, really interesting because what it does, there are three videos that were created by Washington 250 and they helped to set the stage. And what this one does is it encourages you to think about what your story is and what your story is, what your family story is that helped contribute to the country and who we are today. And it made me want to share my story and hear other people's stories with each other. And I think it's something that we can do as a community and something that this community is really good at doing. So my story is pretty vanilla. My family arrived in the United States. So these stories are... As I said, pretty vanilla. They were shipbuilders in Port Townsend, fishermen in Bellingham, My great-grandfather was a police chief in Seattle, and others were involved in the radio and newspaper business in Washington and Alaska. The common thread for all of them is they were volunteers in their communities committed to improving and supporting their community. And that's the thread that carries through to today, to our generation. So I want to encourage everybody to think about your story, and as I said, share it with others, and especially young people, so they understand who they are, and their background, and so the stories live on for hundreds of years to come. And I would personally love to hear your story if you see me around town, or you can join me for coffee at Fusion Donuts. It's Wednesday from 9 to 10 30. Are you still trying to do it? Okay, should I keep going? Okay. Coming up this Saturday on the calendar is the Youth Council's Mental Wellness Gathering from 11 to 1 here at the Civic Center. I hope you'll join our youth as they talk about mental health from their perspective and learn from professionals about how we can all help each other. And here's the video.

For all of human history, we have shared stories, right? Whether it is verbal or over time, more written stories, or maybe we use pictographs. Sharing stories has always been a key part of the human experience.

I think when we share our stories, we also find that there's lots of commonalities. We have fears. We make mistakes. We want safety and security. So I think as we tell those stories, it also gives us opportunity to connect with one another. And so these stories are guides to the future. They tell us something about who we are and our identity and where we came from. They're stories that transmit values. And I think that's also part of this moment of America at 250.

You can't figure out how to get from here to where you want to go unless you better more fully understand how we got to where we are today. That's why stories are important. That's why, especially in Indian country, oral histories are so powerful and are passed down millennium after millennium.

Stories are what connect people from the past to the present. Those are the stories that connect one family to another, one country to another, looking at some of their commonalities, some of their shared challenges.

Things were very, very different for someone that was born in the 30s, for example, than someone that was born in 2005, you know, that's 20 years old today. We have so much to learn intergenerationally, and that's why it's so important to share our stories and to ask and to listen to others as well.

When I found out that I was the seventh great granddaughter of William T. Hooper, who signed the Declaration of Independence, I found it was a necessity to go to my family and make sure that they also understood. We're pretty fortunate to have that history of our family, and I felt the need that it was important to make sure those around me knew that's where we came from.

My parents met in an American concentration camp. Why were they there? Because of what they were, and that was the face of the enemy, as opposed to who they were, which were American-born citizens. And if we don't share those kinds of stories, we will be left with an incomplete story of our state's history as our country's history.

I think to get people more interested in preserving their history, we need to encourage them to visit their museums. Visit the local historical societies and local museums to find their story. And if your story isn't there, advocate for your story.

We each have a story to tell. It is my hope that everybody takes the opportunity to learn their history. For Native Americans, we understand that America was built on our land. But everybody that is here now has a story. Learn your story. Did you come from Ireland? Did you come from Germany? Did you come from France or England or somewhere else? When we slow down and learn about ourselves farther back and about other people's histories, it will be a better place.

I think it's important that we all share our stories because as we've seen in our social media world, we're so isolated from each other. And it's very easy to be judgmental of each other when you don't understand where that other person is coming from. So I think by sharing with each other, by sharing our stories, it allows us to be human with each other.

These experiences will teach us that we have just far more in common than we have apart. And I think that is the message, because I think it's a message that is valuable for this country at this point to hear.

Thank you. I'm glad we could make that work. I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did when I saw it.

It's a nozzle that makes every pressure washer on the market completely unnecessary.

Oh, gosh. Sorry. So moving on, this is the beginning of a really busy summer with lots of activities for everyone throughout town. And I want to encourage everybody to remember to support our local businesses and also to welcome visitors to our fabulous fishing village. In fact, I'm really proud that Gig Harbor was recently mentioned as one of the most welcoming cities in America by Travel and Leisure magazine. This comes alongside our being one of the top 10 Pacific Coast downtown destinations, according to the World Atlas. The visitors these stories help generate are important because the money they spend supports our economy and helps pay for city services. I hope you'll join me and our amazing community at the Maritime Gig Fest, June 5th and 6th. This kind of event doesn't happen without volunteers. So if you can help, please contact the chamber. The parade starts at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning and winds through downtown. There are activities throughout the weekend, including some great music. Sunday is the Wheels on the Water Car Show and the Blessing of the Fleet in the afternoon. June is also Pride Month, commemorating the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 and celebrating LGBTQ plus culture, rights, and history. This is an opportunity to support everyone in our community and show the world how welcoming Good Harbor is. There will be activities throughout the month culminating in Pride in the Park at Scanty Brothers Park on June 27th. Later in the month of June, Juneteenth marks the day Union soldiers arrived in Texas to announce the freedom of the last enslaved people. It's a federal holiday and yet another opportunity to remember to treat everyone in our society equally. June is also a transition month for many young people in our community as they graduate from various schools, from kindergarten all the way up through colleges. Congratulations to all who have worked so hard and good luck on your next adventure. I hope everyone enjoys all these activities, your own activities, and I want to thank all of the organizers of the myriad events that are happening. And with that, I will now turn it over to the city administrator for her report.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening again, Council. Two updates for you tonight. Besides my usual plug, please feel free to peruse the department updates located in the Council packet. One of the items that was highlighted in the department update was a meeting that the city recently had with Rainier Property Group and a potential developer, a village at Harbor Hill, elevated. Elevated is a Washington company that has constructed similar-sized developments around the Puget Sound area. We met with Rainier and Elevated a week and a half ago to go over two potential site plans that they have envisioned for the village at Harbor Hill, both of which include a retail component as well as multifamily housing. Both of these options will require a development agreement amendment from the council. That's why I'm telling you tonight that this will be coming forward to you at some point soon. Director Baker and Director Langholm are working with Rainier as well as Elevated to come up with what that schedule and the particulars regarding the development agreement would be. So please stay tuned for that, but know that it is coming. They do have financing for the project, which is really good in the current climate. So it seems that they would like to start the permitting process this year and potentially be under construction in 2027 at the village. And I know that this is something that's been very important to you all, in particular, as the council has prioritized economic development, as well as diverse housing stock within the city, which this project would complete or work toward both of those strategic items. And I'm happy to talk with council members individually about that offline here. The second item I wanted to brief you on is that the city will be moving forward through council to move from RMSA from our risk management service to the Washington City's Insurance Authority. We know that council discussed this and provided direction to us late last year. However, we did one last due diligence with RMSA to ensure that they could not meet or get closer to the WCIA rate that is offered to the city for risk management. And in the process of that WCIA actually reduced their rate from the previous quote that we received. So we will be in the transition from RMSA to WCIA saving over $200,000 a year. So wanted to let you all know that that is in the process of moving forward. And it's really exciting and proud of the executive team that has worked alongside us with this transition. And with that, Mayor, concludes my report.

Thank you. So we have two business items tonight. The first business item is a professional services contract with Parametrix for 7601 Soundview Drive and the Stormwater Park Feasibility Study. I will now turn it over to NPDES Coordinator Michael Abood for the staff report.

Very nice, Mayor. That was good doing the acronym. Let me pull up my... I have a little slideshow here for you. Yeah, it's great to be with you tonight, Council. The last time I was here talking to you about this was last year. There are some new faces since then. So just to introduce myself, I'm Michael Abood, the Stormwater Permit Coordinator. NPDES is the name of the permit that fall that falls within that so that's where that comes from but i'm here to talk about a stormwater park feasibility study that council directed us to move forward with and i just have a few slides to help bring context to it but we do have a contract that we've put together with parametrics to to do this project and we're asking for your authorization to sign that So really, this project is trying to tackle two problems at the same time. One is obviously the pollution in the harbor. You can see right here, this is data from the Department of Ecology that red is not good, as you can probably imagine. They take samples of various water bodies, and this is some of the problems that we have in the harbor as far as water quality. Metals, polychlorinated biphenyls. pH is nutrients. These are all bad things for aquatic life in the harbor. So we want to do whatever we can to reduce those kinds of things. And the main culprit from that is stormwater. Problem two is the 7601 Soundview Drive property that the city owns. We need to figure out what we're going to do with that. I know that you've had conversations recently about the property and especially the future of the single-family house that's there, and you have ideas of what to use that for. So this... project is kind of designed to tackle those problems at the same time. It gives us grant money to explore the possibility of retrofitting Soundview Drive runoff to treat it for that pollution, but also give us some money to pay for visioning of the space and do some community outreach for what are the possibilities. So as you can see here, this is kind of the storm infrastructure that runs down. And I think my computer just died. But that's okay. So there's a storm line that runs down SoundView, and the idea is to pull runoff from SoundView onto the property, treat it in some way before it discharges back into the harbor. The end deliverable of this is a preferred design concept plan. This is grant funded, so we can't get too far into designing anything, but just kind of basic sketch of what this space could be used for. And there is no obligation to construct as part of the grant. If I could get my slides back up, I could show you a breakdown of the, yeah, that's probably unlikely to happen. And Tiffany, I did email it to you. Yeah, so the project is $125,000. $110,000 is the grant. amount that we were given by the Puget Sound National Estuary Program. And then the rest is from city utility funds to pay for the land survey as well as management reserve for the project. Those have to be through the city so we can get the grant funding the majority of the project because otherwise we would be doing earth disturbing activities and ecology has all these other requirements associated with that. So to maximize our use of the grant, we had to pay for that portion of it. And I think we have a chart here to kind of break it down.

Scroll down.

Yeah, six. Yeah, so that's the breakdown of where the money was coming from. As a portion of the 15,000 coming from the city, I have applied for the Lou Windsor grant, which is a local small grants for environmental projects. So waiting to hear back from that one. So yeah, the next steps are to sign the contract. We can kick off with the consultant and do our pre-design preparation work. And I'm especially excited to get the community outreach started so that we can get ideas from various organizations and stakeholders on what this project should shake out to be. So if you have any clarifying questions, happy to answer them.

Thank you, I know that Council Member Ekberg has his hand up to ask a question. I know they're not showing up. Okay, thank you.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Council member Eckler. Thank you for Mr. Woodford report. I had two questions. The first is on that community outreach. When I read the council member memo at the top, it said that the study will gather input from the community for the public use of the property. when I read the parametrics report that was attached to it, it says parametric will support the city's lead role in collecting input to build a community driven vision for the Soundy Forest Stormwater Park. So yeah, doing the public.

Yeah, so the city will be mostly in charge of that. So really the idea of the contract is that they will be collecting the data that the city staff gets in order to inform the design. So what we find in a lot of these contracts um contracts is that the consultant winds up having to get the city staff involved in identifying all the stakeholders anyway uh setting things up so we didn't see any value in including them doing the actual outreach because we'd probably end up doing most of the work anyway. So their portion would be more supporting being there at the activities, for instance, if we were to do like a in-person open house, for example, that's there for paramedics to attend and help support the city in doing that. But the city would be the primary outreach task.

Correct. Okay. And then the other question, the idea, I understand it has a highly technical aspect that I'm sure we need some support behind it. And is the idea of the outreach to go out and see if there's support for this idea? Or is the idea of the outreach to go out to the community and say, we have this property what should we do with it? That's a much more open question that requires, I think, a different approach than the first one.

Yeah, so the grant was designed to increase capacity for cities to look into this idea of stormwater parks. They were finding a lot of cities like the idea of a stormwater park, where you have a treatment device of some sort or detention of stormwater of some sort, coupled with... public use of a property. So cities were interested in that, but they didn't have the money to explore it. So this grant was designed to give cities the chance to explore it. And so that's what the community outreach is for. Mostly the public use aspect of it rather than the stormwater uh technical part of piece of the project so it would be gathering ideas for what would you like to see done with the property what would you like to see um in that area all right thank you okay i did get my list of speakers up so councilmember martin

Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. Question is the house going to be part of this or not? Or we don't know as of yet.

We've asked parametrics to give us two options, one with the house and one without. So it's going to take it into consideration. But again, we're going to be bringing these options to council for direction on. on what to do with it.

Thank you. And then the second question is or maybe just a recommendation is to really highlight that this is a feasibility study and it's not a done deal. As we were just talking or listening to the video up there that social media sometimes has a mind of its own and people start thinking that this is a done deal, this is what's going to happen and we've already had a couple community members speak when we were first initiating this conversation. Just really trying to strengthen that, that it's a feasibility and it's not a done deal would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

Council Member Rodenberg. Thank you for the report. I'm certainly in favor of cleaning up the bay, but I'm curious about what percent of the city's untreated stormwater will this part treat?

I can't give you a percentage. Can you guess? I couldn't even guess. I mean, it's a difficult question to answer in general because stormwater is very variable. You know, it depends on time, volume, a rain event, and where it's falling. What I can say is that ecology has directed us through our stormwater permits to... install stormwater retrofits in existing development areas, we are required to manage at least two acres of area every permit cycle, which is about every five years. So this essentially does that for us if we were, it's about four acres of just the right of way, let alone the runoff coming from lawns and roofs and the other development hard surfaces that are there, but at least for the roadway, it's about four acres.

Is there any estimate at all at how much this may cost? Well, we haven't done- The entire park.

Well, we haven't done the feasibility study, so we don't know what sort of being what a facility, we would choose to put there for it can be very variable on the cost of whether or not we're doing. you know, a bunch of rain gardens versus like a concrete filter system. Those can be very expensive or, you know, not as expensive depending on what you choose. And I think Jeff has some more input on that.

Well, I'll just enhance what Michael has said. This feasibility study will provide answers to these questions. And so I just ask for some time to get through the feasibility study, and we'll be able to provide those answers. We'll make certain touch points with city council members. If you're still not seeing those answers, that's the time to inquire more. But we hope to be able to answer those types of questions. I can tell you that it's a very small percentage of the total. You can imagine our city. you know, so what seven square miles, six square miles. So two acres is a very small percentage of that total area. But as Michael said, we are required for our permit to do this, to treat it. And we see the opportunity as available land, some funding to look at options and then look at alternatives, whether it's here or somewhere else.

Okay. Sir, from the agenda bill, I think it says the net cost of the city after grant would be $15,000. Is that it?

Or this feasibility study? Yes.

Okay. I'll have some comments later. That's all the questions I have.

Thank you. Council Member Tessicini.

yeah it was just piggybacking on lee's question was like and so that got answered saying that the feasibility study will probably capture the percentages that would be you know held by this You know, whatever does get built down there. I was also wondering, would it also possibly include what doesn't? I mean, because looking at Soundview Drive, would the feasibility study also maybe just capture how much runoff happens prior to getting down all the way down the hill? Or is it just strictly looking at... Because if you look at Soundview, you got a lot of slope going down towards the water almost all the way from the start of Soundview all the way down to the bottom of Soundview. My hunch is that not all the water flows strictly down the street or off the storm drains that are there. Is there any... City Council Chambers, desire, or is it worthwhile to look at how much flows off sound, you know from the sound of you use that D mark down to the water, you know what i'm saying kind of thing. That being very clear.

Well, not all of Soundview Drive goes to the same outfall. There are a couple of places where it kind of veers off into more of the narrows part of the Puget Sound rather than the harbor part. This would be capturing more of the northern part of Soundview towards the bottom before it outfalls into the actual harbor. It happens to be the same outfall that we're doing a CIP project for as part of the Homeport project. We're fixing the outfall there. That's where the water that this is intending to treat will end up.

Yeah. And I'll just further enhance that to say, I mean, as Michael was saying, we have a long sound view, multiple basins, multiple areas that discharge into different places along the shoreline. So we're just looking at one basin within the sound view drive corridor. So it's again, the requirement is two acres. Some of you dive quarter, many, many acres, and we're trying to parse it out into small little areas at once.

Yeah. And it will be the whatever treatment is proposed will be sized for the area that it's going to be, you know, the runoff that's going to it. It's not going to be a giant facility taking care of like a small area. It's going to be appropriately sized for that.

Council Member Coronado.

Thank you for the presentation. Two questions. Does this fall inside the shoreline master area? And then second question is, does this qualify for any sort of mitigation for in-water mitigation or remediation or anything like that?

I wouldn't think so. I mean, it is just a feasibility at this point.

We're required by the permit to do this work. It's not being considered as mitigation. The outfall project at Soundview Drive is mitigation for the home port, but stormwater treatment is not. We don't have a project that will identify stormwater treatment as mitigation. It could be in the future, but we're not doing the project now. So we could, after the feasibility study, if the direction is to actually proceed with treatment at the site, we could use that for future capital project mitigation. But I'd have to say it's not intended to at this point, but we'll wait and see. And then, I'm sorry, the property is just a small portion of the property is at the very edge, and it's more in the northern portion of the property. It's in the Shoreline Master Program area.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other clarifying questions from Council? I'm not seeing additional hands raised. So I will now open public comment on this agenda item. If you're in the audience and wish to speak, please come to the podium now. And if you are on Zoom, please press the raised hand button. And I will now close public comment and open it up for council deliberation and action.

So I vote to go forward with the feasibility study.

We need a motion before we do anything.

Deliberation? I've got my mic on.

Here we go again. It's not coming up. OK. Council Member Rodenberg.

So we don't know how much it's going to cost, but we will after the feasibility study. And we don't know how much it'll treat until after the feasibility study. It seems to me that $125,000, if it wasn't for our net cost is only going to be $15,000, I'd really oppose this. And the reason is it's a very comprehensive feasibility study. I think a smaller one could have been done to the point where we could at least know what we're going to get when we're done before the city would spend any of its own $125,000, $125,000. Yeah. So I'm going to vote in favor of this, and I am, but it just seems in the future we ought to take a smaller step till we really know what the cost versus the benefit is before we throw any money at something, a large amount of money. So that's my comments.

Council Member Coronado.

I think we're very fortunate. Sorry.

Jeff.

I just wanted to follow up from Council Member Rodenberg's comment. As a clarification, yes, we have a grant. The total cost is $125,000. $15,000 is what the city is looking to put forth. That $15,000 is... Also, if we are successful with the Lou Windsor grant, that's $3,000 less, so we're talking $12,000. And that $12,000 cost, if we're successful with the Lou Windsor grant, will be able to be used for the site regardless of the feasibility study. That will take a survey, land survey. Yeah, correct. So that land survey will be used regardless of what happens with the feasibility study. So it's not a lost cost. It's something that we can keep and use in the future. So just to clarify that, the only money that we could walk away from this project after the feasibility study is complete and say, well, we didn't get anything from it, is the paper of the study itself. If the city council decides to go in another direction, we didn't spend a dime on something that we can't use in the future.

Thank you for that clarification.

And just to follow up with what Jeff is saying, I don't think I made this point very well. The original amount of the grant was $100,000. We negotiated $110,000 in recognition that when the city takes the land survey activities of the project out of the grant tasks, that significantly reduces the paperwork that the city has to do for the grant project. So we took out the land survey, but we pay for it and we boosted that up to 110,000. So that's, that's where that came from.

Council Member Coronado.

Yeah, I appreciate, you know, staff looking into the matter and moving forward with, you know, grant funding opportunities to, you know, help our water quality. You know, I think that's the map show that's a glaring issue there in the Bay. And so I think this is a good step forward. And on that note, I would like to move to approve and authorize the mayor to execute professional service contract with parametrics and amount not to exceed $125,000.

Is there a second? I second. It was moved by Council Member Coronado and seconded by Council Member Martin to approve the Professional Services Contract with Parametrics. Please vote on your screens or vote verbally if you are unable to access your screen.

Aye.

Motion passes 7-0. Thank you, Council. Our second business item tonight is a public hearing on Ordinance 1561, approving the Artina Lane non-user statute right-of-way vacation. I will turn it over to Public Works Director Jeff Langhelm for the staff report.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Council. Yes, Jeff Langhound, Public Works Director for the City, here to request approval of an ordinance for vacation. So the City, at the April 27th City Council meeting, approved Resolution 1359. That set the public hearing for tonight associated with this ordinance for requesting vacation. Okay. The public hearing will consider a request from the property owner of 3613 Artina Lane to vacate a portion of the Milton Avenue right-of-way. As we discussed at the April 27th city council meeting, this vacation request comes from the state's non-user statute to vacate a portion of Milton Avenue right-of-way. I won't go into all the details of what a non-user statute vacation request is. We did talk about that at April 27th, but just roughly the city municipal code and state law must give back the adjacent property from a to the adjacent property owner any right-of-way that is not being used by the city for roadway purposes. The owner will just need to request that right-of-way be vacated, pay a processing fee and the cost of the land survey. So that's all they need to pay. The property is along what was originally called Columbia Street. I'm going to share my screen real quick and these images probably look familiar. There we go. So the highlighted property in magenta, or sorry, in teal, that is the address of the property owner. The Milton Avenue is just to the east, to the right. And that was originally from the platting that occurred in the Artina Lane plat. I'll zoom in. If you look at the legal description, it actually describes this. Lots... 26, 27, and 28 of block 10. And this roadway to the east in the original plat is Columbia Street. So essentially, the property owner requested this vacation. They provided this survey. I apologize for the confusing orientation, but north is up on this drawing. And you can see the area hatched on the east side of the property is the requested area to be vacated. It is a little bit of an odd-shaped request because the city does still operate a hammerhead turnaround at the south end of Milton Avenue in this location, which is kind of shown here. here uh on the north east corner of the property so the city still needs to operate that hammerhead turnaround so we are using that for roadway purposes and so we're not giving up that right-of-way but the rest of the right-of-way and the hatch pattern to the south is being vacated so um Tonight, staff just requests that the public hearing be held and then city council would consider the ordinance that was provided as part of tonight's council packet. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Council, are there any clarifying questions? And since the machine doesn't seem to be working, I'm going to ask. Oh, Council Member Coronado.

Yes. Can you go back to the map where it shows the... vacations?

Yes. The survey map?

Yeah.

You bet.

Most of my question is, it looks like there's previous vacations given to the property owners. And I guess I'm just curious as to why it's been incremental and not all at once given the application fees and

Sure. That was the property owner's request. They only requested a portion at a time. And so we followed. And it was two separate streets. But yeah, they only requested it two separate times. So this Hall Street, as part of the non-user statute vacation request, you can only request half of the right-of-way. The right-of-way was 60 feet here. And so the... parcel to the south, that parcel could only request 30 feet out to center line of right-of-way. And then the same thing on the north side, they can only request 30 feet to the south of their property. So piecemeal.

Thank you.

Any other questions? I am not seeing any, so I will now open the public hearing for this agenda item. If you're in the audience and wish to speak, please come to the podium now. If you are on Zoom, please press the raised hand button. I am not seeing anyone, so I will now close the public hearing and open it up for council deliberation and action on this item. Does anybody wish to make a motion? Council Member Martin.

I move to adopt Ordinance 1561, approving the vacation of a portion of the existing Milton Avenue right-of-way.

Second.

It was moved by Council Member Martin and seconded by Council Member Ekberg to approve the Ordinance 1561. Please vote on your screen or vote verbally if you're unable to access your screen. I motion passes seven to zero. Thank you, Council. We have no staff reports tonight. And I want to now welcome public comment on non agenda items. If you're in the room and would like to speak, please come to the podium at this time. If you're on zoom, please press the raised hand button. I'm not seeing anyone, so I will now close public comment on non-agenda items. Are there any reports from council tonight? Council Member Coronado.

Thank you, Mayor. Last Thursday, I joined the Puget Sound Regional Council. Let me pull up my... One moment, please.

Let me grab my notes.

where we discussed the redesignation of the manufacturing and industrial centers throughout the Puget Sound area. We reviewed the certification plans and made a recommendation to the executive board for adoption of those changes. We also were brief, provided a discussion on the homelessness needs and shelter needs, not only in our region, but throughout the United States, where I had some interesting examples given from Houston, Washington, DC, and LA. And then the last discussion item we had was the Vision 2050. Just kind of going forward, what was gleaned from the certification process and what cities are looking at moving forward for the next update down the road at Vision 2060 as that comes along. And then that same evening was the Pierce County Regional Council meeting where we had discussion on where we were given a presentation from Jason Gauthier, on the South Sound Housing Affordability Partnership and the projects they're working on. There was an initial project out in Fredrickson that he gave an example of that seemed pretty nice. And then council member Jannie Hitchens gave a presentation on the unified regional approach to homelessness and the progress they're making. And then the last discussion item we had was the Pierce County Regional Council budget. As a municipality, we support the Pierce County Regional Council as do the other municipalities. And so with a cumulative budget of $25,000, which was typically spent on security for through hosting the in-person meetings. And now that they're strictly on Zoom, there's a surplus of that money, aside from, I think, the $1,000 they use for, I forget what it was. But so they were looking at options for that surplus. And one of the options brought up was maybe that could be the, kind of get the ADU funding joint adus uh started with that surplus money and maybe maintaining it as that money goes forward and i think that's all i got yes that is there's any questions i'm happy to answer or you're interested in the slides i'm also happy to answer oh uh the general assembly is this week as well if i nearly missed the registration i wouldn't if anybody else is joining i'd be happy to carpool And there's a webinar they're hosting on housing. I think it's the end of next month, but let me double check on the date on that. It's June 26th from 10 o'clock to 1130. It's a webinar on local approaches to housing and supportive services. So that could be a very informational one to attend or watch afterwards. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Rodenberg. Thank you.

Last Thursday, I attended the South Sound Military and Communities Partnership. It was a breakfast meeting. There was about 150 people there. I was joined by the city's H3 manager, Chase Smiley. The rest of the room included a cross-section of regional leadership, state legislators, Pierce County Council members, tribal representatives, and military command staff. One reminder that framed the entire discussion is that about 70% of Joint Base Lewis-McChord service members live off base, which means their quality of life, their housing, transportation, childcare, behavioral health, and economic opportunity depends almost entirely on the surrounding communities, and that includes Gig Harbor. Several leaders provided updates, including the Nisqually tribal council member, Chris Olin, Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland, Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello, Colonel John Berger of this 62nd Airlift Wing, and Lieutenant General Matthew McFarland. Their message was consistent. The health of our region and the readiness of JBLM are deeply interconnected. The purpose of the breakfast was to walk the elected officials through SSMCP's 2026-27 work plan. While the plan is broad, three priorities stood out to me. Managing federal grants to strengthen military installation resiliency. This includes implementing the defense community transportation corridor study and advancing the regional grid resilience project, both of which directly affect mobility, emergency preparedness, and long-term infrastructural reliability. Second thing that stood out to me was supporting military quality of life initiatives. SSMPC is expanding and exploring ways to help military spouse workforce through pipelines, through community partnerships. And they highlighted ongoing challenges around food insecurity and behavioral health issues. These are areas where local governments can play a meaningful role. The third item that stood out was pursuing funding for I-5 and other critical transportations, including Route 16 here in Gate Harbor. Improving these routes is essential, not only for regional commuters, but also for national defense readiness. The message was clear. Transportation bottlenecks around JBLM remain one of the most significant strategic vulnerabilities in the Pacific Northwest. Overall, the breakfast underscored how closely tied our city is to the broader defense community. the work SSMPC is doing and the partnerships they're building will continue to shape regional planning, infrastructure, investment, and human service priorities for years to come. I look forward to the city's continued association with the SSMPC. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm not seeing any other hands raised just since it has been finicky. So there is a list of upcoming meetings that's attached to the agenda you can pick up in the back of the room or is available online. And with that, is there a motion to adjourn?

Move to adjourn.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Meeting adjourned. Thank you, everyone.