City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I call the Gig Harbor City Council meeting of Monday, July 13th to order and ask City Clerk Element to call the roll.

Council Member Eckberg. Here. Council Member Martin.

Here.

Council Member Rodenberg.

Here.

Council Member Stone. Here. Council Member Tessicini.

Present.

Council Members Allman and Coronado are excused.

Thank you. Please rise and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Council, are there any changes to the agenda? Tonight, we have a very special presentation from the Waterfront Alliance and the Chamber of Commerce. They are here to present the city with the fingerprint flag that was made by the community during our July 4th celebration last week. It's really wonderful to have this commemoration of our community event from last week's celebration. And I want to thank all of the organizers and the community who came out for that. And with that, we'll go have a photo with the Alliance and the Chamber. I'll just add, it was really fun to watch all the little kids putting their fingerprints on it and even some adults and stuff. It was really a funny, fun thing to do. So I will now welcome public comment on the consent agenda. If you have a comment on the consent agenda, please come to the podium or press the raised hand button on Zoom. Seeing no one, I will close public comment on the consent agenda and open it up for a motion from council.

I move that we approve the consent agenda. Second.

It was moved by Councilmember Martin and seconded by Councilmember Rodenburg to approve the consent agenda. Please vote on your screens or vote verbally. Motion passes 5-0. For my mayor's report, I want to continue with the conversation about the flag. I want to acknowledge tonight the people of this amazing community for always showing up. In the past two weeks, we've had several events that demonstrate how much each of you care about this community. Beginning with the Pride in the Park celebration at the end of June that was filled with so much joy for everyone. And then moving to the 250th birthday of our country, we showed that we are a community that cares and welcomes everyone. And then last week, With community member support and quick turnarounds from our amazing city team, we held a watch party for the U.S. World Cup game at Scanty Brothers Park. While the match didn't end the way many of us wanted it to, we did have a wonderful night together as a community. And I especially want to thank the Chamber for their efforts on getting that ball rolling and keeping things going for us. The next evening was our first Summer Sounds concert of the season and another great showing from the community. And I just really appreciate seeing everyone out, enjoying each other's company, walking on the streets and enjoying this beautiful place where we all live. And I hope to see you all tomorrow at Summer Sounds. It was in last week's Gigabyte, but I also want to congratulate our own Katrina Knudson on her appointment to the Association of Washington City's Board of Directors. And with that, I will now turn it over to our own AWC board member and city administrator, Katrina Knudson.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Council. I have a PowerPoint, hopefully, that we'll get up here quickly. But I will just start by saying there have been a number of residents that have contacted us recently regarding fraud. Now, you can hear from Chief Federici and Lieutenant Daniels all day about the calls that they receive. However, tonight, I think it's especially important to remind everyone in this room, as well as anyone listening, that the city will never make contact with our residents and ask for personal information, such as your social security number, your bank account information, or anything like that. If you do get a call like that, what the city encourages is for you to hang up and call a city number, a verified city number, to ask if someone is seeking this information. people are impersonating our law enforcement, our court saying that they have court dues that are late. The latest one went out to a couple of residents that we know of so far where the mayor was giving them a car and they needed to provide their personal information, bank account information so that the transfer of the car from the mayor to the resident could be completed luckily one of the ones that we was they came in and actually spoke with us to make sure that this was in fact valid so It's a very serious thing. We have a lot of folks in our community, especially seniors who may not have the technological aptitude of others and may not be as cautious as some about this. And they're more vulnerable than us. They can be lonely, may not have someone to bounce these things off of. So I would just encourage you to talk to you, your family members about fraud. And if someone's asking for any personal information, particularly the city, we do not do that. We will not ask for your bank account information or your social security number ever. So thank you for helping us get that word out. Yes. Next is a little bit more happy. On Thursday of this week, the mayor, the community development director, and I will be attending the Association of Washington Businesses roundtable event in SeaTac. And it's especially important. I was just looking at some of my notes from a session, the chamber luncheon last week, where their vice president of government affairs spoke to the chamber luncheon and in Washington state over just in this year, there's been 11,000 jobs that have been lost. And you may say over millions of jobs, does that matter? The important part that they brought up is that rather than, you know, being laid off that most of these jobs are being lost due to the business closing and And so that's something that AWB is really watching is the amount of businesses that are closing and trying to figure out why that is happening. We are attending this event the council has made in its new strategic plan that you will hopefully be adopting at your next meeting. Economic development for our city as one of your high priorities. At this particular event, Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck will be there speaking about kind of how the policy decisions that have gotten Washington to where we are today. Previous Governor Locke will be there to talk about also about the past and then his suggestions moving forward. as well as former Office of Financial Management Director Marty Brown, a small business administration, just a diverse pool of people in government, surrounding government, that are really looking for how can we band together as Washington and help our economic climate for our small businesses and to keep jobs in Washington. So we look forward to this conversation and bringing any takeaways back to council and how you can get involved if you want to. A very exciting thing happening on Thursday, among other things. But if you have not yet had an opportunity to look at your study session packet for Thursday, Public Works has done a fantastic job of outlining their total capital projects that work. Hold on. All of the capital projects that are on the capital facility plan list for parks and streets. And they have created these posters. And I know you can't see them very well from here, but they will be larger and available on Thursday for you. it gives the location of the project it evaluates it against the current strategic plans goals talks about cost a lot of the other pertinent information regarding that we had heard feedback from council at a previous meeting that There was not information readily available for these projects, and so I just want to commend staff for putting these together. I think it's good for councils as well as the public to see this information as it helps guide which projects we will put into the budget for 27-28. And lastly, since the mayor stopped on something about me, I will say something about her. The mayor has been, is a finalist in the PRSA Women of Impact Awards. This is a national award. So folks were nominated from around the country and there are 42 finalists and our very own Mary Barber is one of them. She is nominated in the public affairs and government category, and it is for communicators that are positively influencing public policy through civic engagement. So she will be... And she will be traveling to Chicago in August where hopefully she'll be bringing home the award and we can celebrate her then. But thank you for your work in this arena, Mayor. And that concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you. our first business item tonight is a public works contract award for public works construction and materials testing for lift station number five basin improvements and i'm going to turn it over to senior engineer steve demmer for the staff report thank you ma'am uh good evening council great to be here tonight today uh

the Construction Contract Award for the Lift Station 5 Basin Improvements Project. So I'm going to provide a little bit of background. So Lift Station 5 is located near the Gig Harbor Bay shoreline. It's off Harborview Drive, just south of Seven Seas Brewing. The lift station itself has been in service for over 50 years, and it consists largely of original equipment that has exceeded its service life with replacement parts that are no longer available. This project proposes to remove the existing lift station and replace it with a new underground duplex pump station located approximately 105 feet west of the existing facility. The new location will help increase the lift station longevity since the lift station will no longer be subject to the future predicted king tides due to sea level rise. So the project, we went out to bid with the project May 5th, 2026. Bids were opened on May 27th of 2026. We received two bids. including one from Northwest Cascade Incorporated and another one from Western United Civil Group. However, only the bid received from North Cascade Incorporated was considered responsive. Therefore, staff supports awarding the contract to Northwest Cascade Incorporated. So tonight, staff is recommending that council approve and authorize the mayor to execute a public works construction contract with Northwest Cascades Inc. in the amount of $1,891,794. The mayor to execute a professional services contract for materials testing with construction testing laboratories or CTL in the amount of $9,400. And finally, for the city engineer to approve additional public works construction contract expenditures via a change order authority in the amount up to $200,000. So something about the change order authority, you know, typical change order authority can range anywhere from five to 10% of the total construction contract cost. However, this project has added risk due to its location in a shoreline buffer. Because of where it's located, we had to do an archeology survey, and the results of that required us to get an archeology permit with the Department of Historical Preservation. Archaeology and Historical Preservation, excuse me. So now that we have to get this permit, that means we actually need to have archaeological monitoring during excavation for the project. And there is a potential for inadvertent discovery of archaeological artifacts. Therefore, the amount of $200,000 or 11% of the total construction contract cost is appropriate for the associated level of risk. Staff will contact council via email and or study session prior to executing a substantial change order for this project. Finally, I'd like to talk about project funding. So the project has two sources of external funding. The first one is a million dollar grant through Pierce County's flood control zone district funding. And the second one is a $2.5 million low interest loan through the Department of Commerce Public Works Board. Both sources of funding are reimbursable. whereas the city must initially expense the costs for construction and then request reimbursements. Therefore, an appropriation of $512,788.35 from wastewater capital is required for project construction. Staff has already coordinated with finance on this matter and has determined that this additional budget is available for the project. And with that, that's all I have to say. And I'm happy to answer any questions regarding the project. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'll now open it to clarifying questions from council beginning with council member Rodenberg.

I'm curious on a job this size, we essentially only got one bid. We got one that wasn't responsive. That's correct. So in that case, do we ever go out to see if there's anybody else want to bid? Or it just seems like it's almost sole sourced. What was the reason they were unresponsive?

They didn't fulfill the requirements of the required documents that were needed for the bid.

So- I'm curious, in this kind of a case, do we ever go out to see if there's somebody else who wants to bid?

We certainly could. But for this particular project, since it already has been delayed with the cultural resources requirements, going out to bid again would significantly delay the project timeline. And even if we do go out to bid again, there's a risk that we might not get any bids at all. So we were willing to not take that risk for this project.

Thank you.

Sure.

Council Member Martin.

Yeah. On the $200,000 budgeted for change orders, substantial i love the word but it's not on the calculator or in an excel spreadsheet so what are you talking about as far as substantial not wanting to delay but i'm just thinking about is there a process that we have that we get to a certain threshold that goes through finance and or the city administrator so we can expeditiously do things but everyone's kind of dotting the i's and crossing the t's if you will

I don't believe there's a formal process, because usually change order authority is dedicated to the city engineer. But if there's a certain amount that you had in mind, we can shoot you an email before we authorize that amount. And then I see council saying whether or not they want us to come to a study session before we authorize the change order authority. So maybe, I don't know, $15,000, or what are you thinking?

You know, I'm not saying 10 or 15. I'm thinking about what the mayor has authority, which is what, 50,000? Am I right or is it 30? I can't remember.

I believe the mayor has the authority up to a hundred thousand dollars. And on a previous project, that is what we had said that if the change order was approaching that, that we would notify council, continue with the change order, but notify you that it was happening. Okay.

And I think that's great. Just trying to get some more rigor around that. So it's very transparent to everybody.

Absolutely.

Not that we, we trust you emphatically, but it's just good to do. Sure.

Sure. Thank you. Any other clarifying questions? I'm not seeing hands raised. Great. Then I will open public comment on this agenda item. If you are in the audience and wish to speak or on Zoom, if you could raise your hand if you're on Zoom or there's no one in the audience. So I'm not seeing anybody raising hands. So I will close public comment and open it up to a motion from council.

So I move that we approve and authorize the following related to the city's lift station number five basin improvements project. Mayor to execute a public works construction contract with Northwest Cascade incorporated in the amount of $1,891,794. two the mayor to execute a professional services contract for materials testing with construction testing laboratories incorporated in the amount of nine thousand four hundred dollars and lastly the city engineer to approve additional public works construction contract change order authority expenditures up to two hundred thousand dollars seconded thank you it was moved by council member martin and seconded by council member stone if you could please vote on your screens

Thank you, motion passes five to zero. Our second business item tonight is Resolution 1363, Adopting a Unified Regional Approach to Homelessness, Resolution and Intent. And before I turn it over to Housing Health and Human Services Manager, Shea Smiley for the staff report, I do wanna make a comment on this item. This has, as a lot of you know from the study session been quite a... large lift for us getting to this point in the unified regional approach. H3 manager Smiley is a leader in the staff group for this project and I also serve on the elected leader group. The project is coordinated by Pierce County and we have spent about two years or more, depending on which group you're talking about, working together with other jurisdictions to figure out a way to begin solving the homelessness crisis in our county. after learning and listening to each other i believe we've created a program that will help move the needle and improve the work that all pierce county cities are doing in this critical area we are working together toward the same end goal which is dignity and help for those who need it and i look forward to your support of this program and i will now turn it over to housing health and human services manager shay smiley

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Council. Thank you for having me here tonight. What a great introduction. I'll try not to repeat most of that. On June 11th, Pierce County Chair Hitchen, Pierce County Policy Analyst Mary Connolly and myself presented to Council about the Pierce County Unified Regional Approach to Homelessness at a study session. Without repeating that entire presentation, I'm going to highlight some of the things from that presentation. The idea of a URA was born out of the suggestion put forth in the 2022 Comprehensive Plan to End Homelessness. April 2024 was the inaugural meeting of the URA. There were 13 jurisdictions present, including myself, to represent the city of Gig Harbor. From that inaugural meeting up until this point, Mayor Barber and I have been very active participants in the URA. The mayor serves as a member of the elected leadership group, and I participate in the staff planning group. After two years of attending and actively engaging in numerous meetings that consisted of collaboration, tough conversations, and idea sharing with jurisdictions across the county, there's been a strong consensus on the URA design. One of the first steps of the design is jurisdiction signing on to the resolution of intent, which was included in tonight's packet. The resolution of intent does not commit to any fiscal contribution at this time. And in fact, the commitments that are laid out in section three of the resolution of intent are either practices we are already doing and have in place here in the harbor or in the progress of implementing. Signing on to the resolution of intent is a formal commitment that Gig Harbor will continue to work collaboratively across the county and that our practices will align in a unified way to help substantially reduce homelessness so that it is rare, brief, and non-reoccurring. Staff recommends council authorize Mayor Barber to sign the resolution of intent for the Pierce County Unified Regional Approach to Homelessness.

Thank you, I will now open it to any clarifying questions from Council.

And I am not seeing any.

All right, and then I will now open public comment for this agenda item, if you are on zoom and wish to speak about this item, please press the raised hand button now. And not seeing anyone, I will close the public comment and open it up for council deliberation and action. It was moved, or Council Member Stone, sorry.

Thank you, Mayor. Jumping ahead. We'll get there. Just wanted to say thank you to the Mayor and Shea and all the folks that have been so engaged in these conversations. We have a really lovely, vibrant community, and we also know that there are people really in need of this unified approach. I'm really proud of our county. for being able to step up. I wholeheartedly believe it is our duty as public servants to be able to provide this type of collaboration and coordination to meet people where they're at. And so it would be my honor to move to authorize the mayor to sign the resolution of intent for Pierce County Unified Regional Approach to Homelessness.

Second. Second.

It was moved by council member stone and seconded by council member Rodenberg to authorize the mayor, to sign the resolution of intent for the Pierce County regional unified regional approach to homelessness. If you could please vote on your screen and the motion passes five to zero. Well done, Ms. Smiley. So we are now to the public comment on non-agenda items section of tonight's meeting. So I now welcome public comment for comments on non-agenda items. If you have anything you would like to say tonight, please press the raised hand button on Zoom. And not seeing anyone, I will now close public comment on non-agenda items. Are there any reports from council tonight? I'm not seeing any. Everybody wants to get out in the sun. So there is a list of upcoming meetings attached to the agenda. And I do want to point out, we have one more meeting in July and then we do only have one meeting in August. So I just want to remind the community of that while we're here tonight. So with that, is there a motion to adjourn? I move that we adjourn. Seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you, counsel.