City Council - workshop

He's circling mental health. Oh my goodness. Okay. Jackie, are we good on your end? Better get this moving there. Okay.

Welcome back to our work meeting tonight. We'll jump back in for agenda. Thank you for your patience with the closed. We'll go to 1.1, review of this evening's agenda. Any changes?

here I keep forgetting about. It's not really an agenda, but... Probably about once a year I'll bring it up. Can we contact the post office and see if we can move the drop box from Holiday on the wrong side of the road to City Hall? I literally saw somebody pull up to that box going the opposite direction.

To drop their mail.

I just have a standing sticky note in there. We just exchanged some emails about this today. Yeah, we were talking about it.

That's funny. I know I called them. I can't remember what the answer was. I'll come back to it. It was no.

It was really painful, like it goes away and goes away or something like that. Well, they didn't want it down here for some reason. I can't remember they gave you, but we can always try again.

Would it be a bill drop or even a voting drop or any of that? Well, no, it's a big blue box.

You wouldn't put it right in front. It would be on the other side. Yeah, they were super difficult to...

We did find out that there's an, was it Springdale?

Springdale.

had Burgess Owens write a letter to the Postmaster General saying they needed to. That's where we might need to go. So I've been thinking about, because the mayor sent that to us like in June, and all of a sudden in my random thoughts I thought, oh, I wonder if that would work for that post office office.

Sometimes you've got to go above, right, over their heads.

The easy answer is no, there's nothing we can do about it. Okay, we'll work with it. Remind me we'll reach out to Congressman Owens. He'll want to get something done like that before he's done. Okay. 1.3, Council Discussion of Future Citizen Recognition. Okay. We did close it already, so let's go to administrative reports. We'll start with 3.1, Herriman History Park and Damsey House Discussion.

We don't even need this one. Jared, can you pull up that? Actually, I think I have Bryce taking this one off.

Sure.

You can click it, and then we'll switch.

Okay, yeah, let's stop at the Airman Historic Park or History Park, and then Wendy will kind of take the historic home itself kind of as a second part, so just to kind of give you context and update. Oh, where's your daughter? Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so we all know kind of the general area off of the section of Harriman Main Street that we widened a few years ago. It's a long linear area up against homes on one side and then adjacent to Harriman Main Street on the other. On the back side of the park, those homes, there is a pretty significant retaining boulder wall in between this area and those homes so the park would lay you know above kind of those homes and then adjacent to Main Street so it doesn't make oh yeah and then we have an MDA with Hidden Oaks development that this is part of the open space that was dedicated by the developer And then our contribution is building the park.

Can you talk briefly about the retaining wall and how it came into our possession?

I don't, yeah, like, maybe, may, Mayor and I were talking about it.

Just say it's the city's. That's just fine. That's fine. It's the city's.

It was going to be a slope. We decided to preserve the house, which forced it to need a flat space, so it required a wall to be built. And they rebuilt the wall. It was not, I don't believe it was paid for by the city.

And then it was given to the city to maintain and own. Essentially as part of the park. Yeah, there has been, you know, when it was first installed, there were some drainage concerns. Since then, there's been some berms and drainage channels put at the top of it, hopefully catch most of the stormwater from coming down. Now, it requires maintenance, right? And boulder walls, at least, you know, there's maintenance there to that. So yeah, we have a budget in the approved budget for this year for the park, and then an approved budget for the home as two separate budget items. But we'll talk about the park first, which is just under $2 million is what the budgeted amount is. And we're at the point of a concept design. So we've gone through and kind of identified a concept And we've held there, we haven't gone into full design with engineering and landscape architect design yet. We had that on the docket, but since this came up, we've held it there for now.

Question, when you say budgeted, does that mean allocated for funds?

Yes, so it's in the fiscal year 27 budget for this month. WE DO HAVE A COST ESTIMATE ON THE CONCEPT, WHICH IS A LITTLE BIT OVER THE BUDGET. SO AS WE WENT INTO DESIGN, WE WERE HOPING TO NAIL THAT DOWN A LITTLE BIT MORE. THERE MIGHT BE SOME THINGS WE PULL OUT, SOME THINGS WE COULD STRETCH A LITTLE BIT FURTHER, DEPENDING ON HOW WE WENT INTO DESIGN. BUT WITH THAT SAID, HERE'S THE CONCEPT DESIGN. SO AGAIN, MAINE STREET IS DOWN AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS, AND THEN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, HIDDEN OAKS, IS TO THE NORTH. or not to the north, actually up in this case, which is north for the most part. But yes, because of the budget, as we learned with Mountain Ridge Park, even just landscaping a space costs money. So with $2 million, this is about where we can get on the concept design that was taking out the restroom for now. without being able to move some things around. But we would guess if we did some value engineering, we could potentially fit the restroom back in. So the home that is there is right here, and then the park that's kind of just dead space right now would be landscaped. There would be a trail through it. It would be kind of a walkthrough idea that you kind of get this walkthrough, not so much you know, your typical park that you think of that you go and there's a bunch of amenities too, recreation, not so much that, more of just kind of a historic walkthrough. And so because of that, we don't have a very big parking lot planned. Again, this is concept and we're taking feedback tonight. But to fit within that $2 million budget, this is kind of the concept design. We were planning on bringing in some of the cabins in the area. placing them next to the house to add to that historic feel of the park there would be some landscaping over here like we're showing again this this hasn't really been designed but we were thinking of some landscape berms to kind of give some some elements to the park that it's not just flat you know open space But we would have to maintain, like I said, there's a wall here, so we'd have to maintain a good drainage channel on the back here to make sure that all the drainage from this park is caught and brought over to the road. This concept even includes recycled asphalt as the trail instead of pavement to kind of bring down our cost. It would be similar to the one that's just down the road on Dancy Boulevard. There's a Hidden Oaks trailhead for the Butterfield Trail, and that's just down the road. Similar to White Hollow as well. Yeah, similar to, yeah, they both were recycled asphalt material as the parking lot. So it is, it's, you know, trying to cover an area, again, because it's long and linear, it's hard to program much in that space. It's a little bit tough on the on what you can program in there. But this is where the concept got us to, and that was assuming that the home would be, you know, restored to a certain condition and the park would be around it.

So... Bryce, I'll tell you, me and Mack are moving out today, and I think they have very good... I mean, I think this is coming up now because of the security issues. We've had a ton of public safety issues. Yes. To me, that doesn't go away with this. I don't think this goes away.

I will say we are planning on fencing the backside, right, as part of the design that would be included is fencing the backside. Now, because of the walls, there's a three-tier wall at the back. left side of the screen here so the wall would the fence would kind of follow the wall and then there would be overlapping fence but there would still be access between them because we do need to maintain the wall our Parks Department weeding and again just drainage and making sure things are clear there we couldn't a hundred percent fence off that area because of the tiered wall that we would have to maintain But there would be an intent to put a fence on the back of this, but again, there would be some access points for maintenance that technically, yeah, someone could climb down the wall if they wanted to.

How does this fit in the water-wise and conservatory?

Yeah, you can kind of see here. It's a lot of the bio-native grass, some of this you know, other material other than sod. The only sod that's shown is the light green. So right now we're showing it here and here. There's other areas. This they call out a shrub massing. I don't, you know, I'm not a landscape architect, but yeah, generally it follows our water efficient standards and just putting in kind of some sod where you might have a little bit of open space. Maybe someone could sit down or enjoy, so.

And let me also say, this does not have to be a historic park.

Yeah. Well, that's what I think I'd like to lean into the house. I think the house plays a role too in this. Whether we do the house, I think depends on.

Yeah, we can program the park to whatever we want, right? Does the trail go anywhere but to the sidewalk on Main Street?

So yeah, that's a good question. So on Danzy Boulevard and on Twisted Oaks, there's an asphalt trail actually on both of them on the opposite sides of the roads that go down to the Butterfield. So that's kind of what the trail is intending to do is that we could get over to the trail. And there's sidewalks on this side of each road that would get you down, but there's an asphalt trail. on this side as well.

So the property line actually goes further, but the church owns that parcel, that big square parcel above. So the property line is kind of where Bryce is doing that green. We just don't want to put that retaining wall in. We're waiting for the church. So we were going to kind of leave that and develop, and it would come back in a later phase.

I was just curious.

Yeah.

What goes anywhere if it's just this little circle?

We have wide right-of-ways that continue to the west.

It's just an extra piece off of Main Street that there's nothing else to do with or connecting to something bigger?

I think, like I said, the idea was a little bit of a walk-through park, not necessarily you come and sit down or play a soccer game here, right? It's more just puts you through kind of a corridor because it's more linear, like you were saying, that There's not a lot of, like we couldn't program a field space here.

Future traffic, I mean, who's going to go past this? Anybody that's going out to the canyon and all that stuff.

Do we have a projected ongoing cost?

Yes.

Just for the house or for the total park?

This is for the total park. Low ball, $32,300 per year. High cost, $41,100.

You said parking was limited, but is there any parking?

Yeah, that's what this is. So you can't really see, but there's little parking tire stops here. So that's a handicapped parking spot, and then about five or six stalls adjacent.

There's no street parking there right now.

Right, no street parking. This is a bike lane, and it's only four feet wide. Are we going to encourage parking on the street? Well, so originally when we first designed this, we had a big parking lot, more amenities, but as we toned it back to fit more of the budget, the amenities like an amphitheater and things like that that would attract a more amount were pulled out, and therefore the... parking lot was also reduced.

The council at the time thought this would be a place for school visits and buses and kids to come have picnics and learn about the history, and it's just evolved since then.

And I love having a place, right? Matt and I talked at lunch. We don't have anywhere in Harriman that we preserved our history, right? We really don't. But I do have the concerns about that house is a nightmare. Like, I get a call about it in a once a month, right? I know Parks has dealt with that. I mean, we've had to... So I worry about... But I don't want to throw away history either, so I'm torn, right? I don't know what to... But we've got a lot of history out front.

from landscaping, and Lane did a really good job with a lot of that. How much does it cost to move that? Would you be able to move that again?

That house?

The house? I don't know if you would want to. I don't know. I'm asking. What do you think I've got? I mean, that would be... We have those cabins. Right, yeah.

Is it the cabins or the community garden space?

Yes. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, those are the ones that would be placed right here.

We have one out there already.

Yeah, but the recommendation is just get rid of it.

Why is that one?

Because it's been replaced with telephone poles. So it's not even the original.

So it's the original, but they've replaced every part of it.

There is a philosophical question about whether that's still there. So on the house, just tell me if I'm jumping ahead. What's the plan for the house? Are we still in it?

We're going to go. We'll get to the house.

Slow down. We'll talk about the house.

I get your point.

I'm just saying this side of the house will kind of maybe jump to the house. Do you have more presentation left? Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah. And really, this was context of the park, where we got to where we are today. And then, like Wendy said, there's more to discuss of the house. This is just the cost estimate for the park itself. So like we said, we're a little bit over budget. Our landscape architect did kind of build in some double contingency. So we think we could make some adjustments if we did move forward with this concept design going into the full design to make it fit within our budgeted amount.

And we think we can make the restroom fit as well.

Yeah, we could make some changes to have the restroom. There's not one at the cemetery. Come on! Yeah, and one thing when we did for, when we built, there's not one at public works either. Do we need one?

No.

But there's not. There's no empathy. Most school kids, this is what you see.

But I don't see bus parking there either. We're going to encourage it to be legal on the street.

There's a path from a sidewalk to a sidewalk.

For five stalls.

And some grass.

It's not really a draw. It's this extra spot.

If we add a bunch of

historical plaques.

That's what I think on the trail.

The history walk.

I can see that.

We can see that.

That's something similar to what we have here.

Out front, it's just a couple little... What's the monument that's there that's missing a plaque?

Yeah, that is the original Danzy Monument that someone stole a plaque off of. You'll see them around town, especially in Old Town, that just kind of get the history of the area. Like, there's one for the Old Rock Church, and there's one for the Butterfields, and there's one... They're kind of sprinkled all over. There's one for... But that's east of the other side of the street. And we moved it over and we're going to have the plaque redone.

Okay. See, adding those features into something like that, like gathering all the plaque information and doing that, I can see that. But is this the right space?

What I would love to see is like give a call for memories. I mean, if there are people, this is important too. like let's get a call from memory, scan a QR code, be able to read someone's memory or listen to someone's memory. I think there's a lot of things that you could do to make it preserve some of the history even if we don't keep the house.

we're still getting ahead of your presentation no I mean that's about it for the for the park so I'll take it over to one the official image of the house if you'd like me to give you their sob story I'd be happy to know okay my favorite part of the Harriman history book is that there so you don't bother anybody and the the actual original house was what a little mud hut dug into the side of the hill yeah that's the historic part and then yeah there's a funny story about that as well where a cow came through the top and jane finally said i'm done with this i'm not going to have cows come into my room sorry there's some cool stories yeah story cool stories they um good old Good old Robert and Jane, he and his wife, Charlotte, came across the plains. Charlotte died in childbirth in Wyoming. He met Jane on the wagon trail, and they became friends and later got married. He had five children with Charlotte, and then he and Jane had 10. So he had 15 children in a dugout. So they built this home. It was one of the first homes outside of the fort, and that's a picture of it. Those are kind of some fun stories. These pictures are actually a little bit old because the porch has fallen off since these pictures, and we've also boarded up more of the windows. But it still represents what it looks like for the most part today.

Yeah, you're not moving that stone structure anywhere.

So you can see there the stones, that's kind of what's underneath that stucco that has been applied as renovations have occurred throughout the years. As part of the renovation, that would be re-pointed, which is where they dig out all the grout and basically re-grout, re-cement in between the stones. Replace windows. There was a lot of information in your packet about what that restoration would look like.

Honestly, it looked like they were replacing just about the whole house.

Everything. Yeah.

It's still cheaper than a new town hall. That's true.

That's a really good point.

Yeah, but this is exterior.

We need more of these. That's what's going to solve our housing problem. This is the wrong image, I'm just noticing. You had the correct image in your packet. Sorry about that. So you're looking at

Yeah, this is bid all three. So the way they did the cost assessment is there's a base and then three bid alternates, which are add-ons that you could or could not do if you so chose.

So if you did everything, it would be the budget in 2023 was $632,500. That gets you the outside. You could almost buy a house. And this was 2023. I don't know what costs have done since then on these types of items. I don't know if they've gone up or down.

Probably about 10%.

So you're probably looking at about 700.

Which is that number including all of the optional?

Yes, including all the bills.

All of them, just the optional. Okay. All right.

And there is a cost to demolish, just so we're all aware. It doesn't happen for free. There's a lot of permitting that has to happen.

I'll do the bulldozer for free.

We do know there is asbestos in the house. We had it tested when we first took ownership of it. So there is some mitigation there. It's not very much, but that will require mitigation.

Is it in the plaster and the walls on the inside? Mm-hmm. And I think one thing that I add is, yeah, this would all be a restoration of an exterior, so it wouldn't be like anyone could actually go into the home. That would require a whole other level of restoration to allow the public to actually go in the home.

So if you've been over, Draper, I think, has a cabin outside the day barn that is the same situation where you're just on the outside and then windows you can look in. It's not open to the public.

What's the... retail value of that house?

It doesn't meet any standards. The stairway, at one point it was just a ladder to the second floor. And so it's really steep. There are no rails to it. It's almost like a ladder stuck on an angle having been in it. Yeah, I don't, retail value, I think it's, I don't know if there'd be any retail value. Liability? Liability, I guess.

Yeah, it'd be condemned in any other situation probably.

And so at some point, it was remodeled pretty extensively inside. Because we toured it, Councilor Oren was really excited because there's a picture someplace of a really cool fireplace in there. But it went away at some point.

There were two fireplaces at one point, but they're both gone. They're both gone. There's the exterior chimneys.

Yeah. Inside is a simulated wood paneling, probably from the 70s.

But the plan is to sell it.

right we're not my people in right Oh see silly silly silly silly silly yeah right it wouldn't be open to the public I mean they could look in the windows but they couldn't go inside that's right if we want it if we wanted to display something inside maybe put a TV or something and play the table all week so we used to have the historical committee

It was a board-appointed committee. We no longer have that. At that time, it was thought that they needed a place and docents and all. I mean, we've just changed since 2018, right?

Well, you have a lot of that memorabilia at the old city hall.

Yes.

And so it's in the storage there.

Yeah. So what if it wasn't a park at all? What else could we do with it, the land?

That's a good question.

It was needed as open space.

So you would just landscape it as open space? Yeah, it's part of the open space requirement with the NDA for hidden oaks development. We have a really, really, it just looks like really wide right of way there. As you go to the west, it continues. So you can pass Danzy Oak. There's also a really wide right of way there that I think we just had them seed. Seed and open space.

There is a slope on that one as well, that it's mostly connecting the slope up to the road.

We do anticipate a transmission power line running up this street in the next several years when they build a new substation in Olympia. And extra wide space.

This is one of the reasons we didn't spend money to underground the utilities, because we didn't want to spend money to underground and then have the utility come through and put high power lines across.

I just think it's possibly worth the discussion. Would you want to put $2 million of parks money somewhere else in the city? That was my first question.

I just started going down that road, and like $2 million is a lot to put into a sidewalk.

The one thing that I will say, right now it is not landscaped. So you'll have a big open space that grows weeds and Anthony's crew has to come out and mow it every once in a while. We have to do some improvement. And this is mostly the cost is just landscaping it, right?

My thought is they're in between. We have to go with that level of landscaping.

Can we scale it back? Yeah, I think that is possible if...

And that looks pretty elaborate.

Yeah.

They always do a lot of trees. We can peel all that.

Yeah, we can peel it back for sure. The park strip trees were already put in with Main Street Project. We did stub some utilities just so that we wouldn't have to cut into the road. But, again, that could just be for the water meter for the irrigation, you know.

I'll say for my part, again, I would love to cut back on this a little. I think it is a lot of money, I think, for this project. It doesn't mean we couldn't come back later and add to it, right, in my opinion. We could come back later. It could be a TRCC project down the road, right? But my priorities in this area are we've got to get rid of the public safety issue. Like whatever we do, we've got to board it out. Double fences. I can't, Anthony can't get a call from me every week to go deal with this, right?

The question is do you leave the house there or do we take it out? You fold those in.

Can you get rid of the public safety issue without getting rid of the house?

It's going to be an eyesore. You double fence, that becomes an eyesore to have a bunch of fencing up there. Again, we just have to decide what's our purpose. If we're just going to fence it off and not do anything with it, I'm a resident. I'm like, what are we doing with that?

If we're going to do something with it, we do it.

Which one?

Your cost of dismantling it, the cleanup.

Anywhere, say $100,000 or less to do that. It's a lot of stone. It's heavy. There's a lot. Some of those walls are pretty thick.

Here's my thoughts. I've been super quiet. wait any longer like a lot of cities that are in our part of you know the valley with Riverton and Harriman and all that kind of stuff you know Riverton and Riverton was a city since 18 you know something right even though Harriman wasn't you know a city it still was here We don't have a spot. We don't have a kind of an old main street. We don't have very many things that connect us to our roots. You know, Harriman from, you know, the reason why Harriman was Harriman. It feels To me, it feels wrong to make this house go away. I don't know the answers of do we spend $2 million to keep the house? Probably not. But to spend $600,000, it's a lot of money. But when I think about

Why is this one more important than the others that those families have actually come to us and asked if we want to do?

Where are they?

The Danseys made, what, half a billion dollars on this and said we're not interested in it.

I get that, and it seems kind of weird. For me...

That house means nothing to the history. The others that are actually in Old Town, it's disconnected. The others in Old Town are actually more historical and more of a tie with those families.

I totally get it.

I'm a history buff walking into my house. Are there other options?

Not that we're aware that are for sale. There's a few in Old Town that are the rock construction. Real similar, yeah. The crane house we did sell to a neighbor. We surplus that property to a neighbor. That house was in extreme disrepair. There's a blacksmith shop.

there's that is again an extreme disrepair a lot of the homes if they are still put together have been restored to the point where you wouldn't even know that's kind of an issue with i guess the comparison with other towns harriman became a city in 1990 what eight nine i mean this This was the cul-de-sac, long before I call it a cul-de-sac, and where nothing was here. This was never a city. There was never a main street with shops. The one house slash storefront was the only one. There was a small general store there and different iterations. That was it. There was never this small town thing, at least that I picture in my head that I think that you're kind of referring to. that was never here there's nothing like it um everything is is our old town is old town go drive through those streets and you'll see those other rock houses that like that i told you about the history that that's what we have and it is that is cool the first the first year that i moved in like i can't remember who it was but one of the families we were in that ward and they took us on a wagon ride around to Hollywood and explained that it was awesome. But as they all move on and their kids sell off the property.

I wonder if we put some time into doing a historical tour rather than putting money into this. And maybe it's finding those key individuals or somebody heading that up to where they take that book, they take the history of the old town, and it's a driving tour.

I like that idea. I also like leaning into our history parts that we have already. If we need to move a building, could we find space at the rodeo grounds? Like somewhere, no? I mean, yeah.

You could, you just, I mean.

I'm just worried about like, or like out here, could we, like somewhere where we already gather?

We're just talking about those cabins, though.

Yeah, I was saying somewhere where we already gather, that maybe some plaques and things would get more visibility than off here at a side piece of the road, or like a driving tour or something. I just think maybe we look at what we already have and lean in there. Instead of starting something new that maybe looks a little piecemeal if we're not keeping the house.

I just saw some stuff on social media. I sent Lauren one about Coppertin and the Kennecott mine and all the historical things around there. And they've got old video footage of the cars and the main street stuff. And I don't know if we have anything like that or if somebody has that. It may pop up in social media sometime soon. I could see that becoming something to do.

So there's one thing I want to be really clear on. Bryce showed you the landscaping of that area for $2.1 million. Wendy talked about saving the house for $600,000. That's in addition. That's in addition. It's $2.7 million.

They have two separate line items in the budget.

If you want to do everything, it's not... If you don't do something, we do have to landscape it at some point, because we've got to maintain it, and it's got weeds, so we don't want to do that. Could we do that for a million dollars?

It would be very minimal, but yes. I mean, it would be, it would be, even like seeding that, it's a big area, like although it's not wide, it is very large. So you're looking at, I mean, like Nathan said, if you just go a little bit further west, there is some open space that was just seeded. and that is not much of an improvement of the native material. We get a lot of complaints throughout the summer on it.

And Bryce made a good point. We were meeting earlier to kind of go through everything. Hidden Oaks doesn't have a park right now. They go to Monument Park. He lives in Hidden Oaks, and he takes his kids over to Monument Park in Olympia because Hidden Oaks doesn't. They have a trail system.

Where in the center do they not have a park programmed?

or no? It's on the edge, and that's several years.

Isn't there something in there that said something about sports comp?

That could have been when we were combining that Olympia Park, but that Olympia Park went away.

Olympia and K-Park, we're going to do that, but then when we did the athletic complex, we would combine it. Yeah, they got it.

So I think that's a really important consideration.

But I'm not going to be one of my kids play on Main Street, though.

And I don't want to play around there.

I don't think it's a playground. All of the Frisbees going into the road.

It's a bigger look.

Does Ivory not have any other land that would be suitable?

We have, like I said, there's Kay Park, but it's on 7300, and it's six acres, 6.7 acres. It's out. And again, at the point this was done, when the decision was made to put a wall over staff, we have this to take care of. So it's kind of a... You can't really do anything else with this other than landscaping it somehow. I'm not...

So the land use plan, yes, you're talking the cave park. It's just a park. But then the whole, the drainage, the creek goes down through there, so it's the trail. It's all the trail that they do. So there's... Yeah, put it in, I don't know, can we go,

that one to put it in page eight of the packet so I think to show it on there that this is what we're talking about right here right yep yeah versus all that anybody ask me about a part like bringing a part there haven't had any residents say we want a part there they're more concerned than me there they don't want people dropping their home backyards yeah and that's what I understand that's what I'm sorry Because they're not going to go up there. I don't think they're going to. If they're going to go up, they're going to go to the Monument Park.

If they're going to have to go, they're going to go to Monument Park. So I keep asking, even the people that live there, do you get hikes up to walk? There's not a draw.

It's not great. If I lived there, I would probably walk in the loop. What's the...

What's that debt?

That you're just going to be spending $3 or $4 million by the time you're done. Pardon? I don't know what you said.

Yeah, about 60 to 75 feet, that's it. I can measure it real quick, actually. Accelerate that.

Not build it up, move it up. So, what my thought was to show this... Just some of the other ones that we...

Well, that's to Tara's point, right? It's like, yeah, we've got other parks that, like real parks.

I think Jackson seems to be the next one.

So this is the area we're talking about, yes? Yes. Right, so then the trail system we're saying is through the middle with these bigger, wider areas, and then this is a full park?

Yeah, it's about seven acres.

So I'm kind of with Tara. How useful is it? Like, who's going to use it? Like, what's the overall... purpose compared to putting money towards other things. I agree, Bryce, you don't want to just do native grass, and that's going to be... A nightmare to take care of. Other than just the house not being there to draw, like Teddy said, to draw people there. area for kids to do dumb things. So putting in a walkway with some animal landscaping, I think makes more sense.

Yeah, because if there's a trail path and I just want to circle the neighborhood, that's what I would do. Yeah.

Because even if we demo the house and we spend a million and a half, we're still saving a million dollars, which I think... You know, I don't know. Because I'd like to have been leaning into the other history that exists already in the city that has more significance that we could focus on. I think I'd like to try to read. The problem is we tried to do the historical committee, and nobody wants to get involved. Like, the people that are involved are gone, and they've left.

Like I said, the kids that have inherited it have sold it and are off.

I mean, I do like your point, Matt, Not now doesn't mean not now. Never. Right. Well, but once the house was gone. But if you wanted to do like a historical walk with, I'm thinking kind of like a nature walk.

But you could even leave the foundation, like we did out front with the fort. You know, you build that in the architecture or the whatever that looks like, or the concrete foundation. And here stood the dancing house. Yeah.

I like plaques and monuments and things. I'm one of those crazy people that if I see one on the highway, I'm going to pull over and read it.

What kind of pushback is that? So I will say that the main historic part of the design is the home. So if you get rid of the home, you don't have much left there unless we do the cabins. Do we still, if we take away the home, do we still want to do the cabins?

I wouldn't put any extra draw. You're going to keep cabins like this.

Either you're going to keep the home and do something with it. If you take the home away, then, like...

Do you spend the least amount of money?

I don't think you need a parking lot there. Like Teddy said, it's connecting to the neighborhood and minimal landscaping.

Leave it as open space connecting.

Do you all want... To think about it for two weeks and bring it back to the meeting? Yes, for sure. Let's just put it right back on for a work session next council.

Do we need to do any kind of public outreach?

Well, I think this would be a good time. You could ask your constituents what they think during that time. The reality is whenever you have a whole building, somebody is going to say, why should you take it down? They probably don't understand the dollar values. We have another historic building right now. We're told the owner is thinking it's condemned. They've condemned it, the historic church, right? 1925. That's a pretty interesting building. If that organization is thinking it's too expensive to fix, I have no idea what's wrong. We're trying to get a conversation with them to find out what exactly is going on with that building.

I would love to save it with that price tag. I just can't. On this? No, on the church.

No, on the fancy for $700,000. $600,000. Especially since you're not using it.

I mean, it would be like one of those little ones at Lagoon or other historic parks. You'd look in and see a vignette. You'd set up a little table. I think that's still going to happen. Kids breaking the window.

I still think that's going to happen.

We have a lot of issues with kids breaking in now. It's locked, it's fenced, and they're still... What's our enforcement cost?

We're hitting it once a week? No, we're up there every day now. Because we've had so many problems with it over the summer. It's got a recurring property check every day.

and they can impound a bunch of e-bikes. Can we make that our satellite office?

Mobile it? What's the number, again, if we take that area and just, I don't even want to say landscape it, but do something with it to where it's maintainable for the least amount of money?

I think one and a half. I bet you're one and a quarter, one and a half.

Yeah, because if indeed, I mean, there's, decent sized power poles going through the property right now and if they're going to increase that to high voltage, I mean it's just, it's so narrow.

It makes you walk faster when you hear the buzz.

Yeah, it's true. It's true. It just doesn't make, if the house is going to not be there, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to spend any more money on it, in my opinion, than it would take to maintain it.

There are some other interesting options you could, if you didn't want to maintain the house and you didn't want to maintain the historic element of property. We can look into some other options. Some other cities are putting in RC car tracks, the remote control racing tracks. Maybe that could be an interesting option. It's right by Main Street. Like I said, we could look at support situations.

And in that case, I know the concern is you're putting... people right next to Main Street, but we could fence the back of the sidewalk, right, so you kind of keep it contained.

There could be another dog park.

We've been so focused on being able to store it.

Let's do this today, then. Are we all kind of, I know you've been back, are we okay moving forward saying the dandy home goes away and let's look at other options? Let's just say, I mean, maybe it's the other option we start coming back with down the road. Instead of saying whether, it's not like we're all on the same page now for the moment. I know it's not. It's hesitantly, right, but I think I think we're all in place.

So we'll work on some old...

I don't know if you need to bring it back in two weeks. We'll work on some alternative options.

Is everybody okay with that?

I don't want to be speaking for everybody. Is everybody okay with that?

I am, but I'm curious. Does that mean you would start right away to get a demolition bid?

That would be my recommendation.

And how fast does something like that move? Well, the house will probably be here.

Then you'll do a couple days for the abatement of the asbestos.

Do you have to go out to bid? We'll put it out to bid.

I mean, the actual work probably is a week, but you've got all of our processes.

Like three months?

You'll have to get a permit from the county. Because of the asbestos.

And the division of air quality.

So it's a couple of months. And I would say let's plan some messaging. Because I think people are going to see it and they're going to wonder. I think we talk about messaging about how we're going to support other historic sites around the city. Because we will, right? I think that's a goal. I think we'd all like to see that.

And the security issues is huge.

And the cost we have.

I mean, you've got kids going in there with asbestos ability. They don't know.

Well, we caught three kids there one day who are learning how to break. They had burglary tools and a bunch of crowbars. They're learning how to break and enter on our house. And we'd already kicked them out once. This was last summer, I think. These are people we've kicked out once and come in, and they're back there. So it's hard to keep them out.

I think some of that messaging also includes that the family was not interested in it. And so...

They always put it out to them if they want it. Yeah.

I mean...

I agree. If they didn't want it, yeah.

So I think it's like, those are some of the highlights, and then maybe there's some... Right. Is it, if it's not true, let's not say it, but is that true? I don't know, but I would like to... My recollection was at the time...

Because I love Sherry. She was really big on this. And I said, how much is this going to cost? Right? The Danzys are real appreciative that they're doing this. Well, literally, they wanted half a billion dollars on that land deal. And they were not interested. We asked and they were not interested. You always ask again.

I know Ivory was not interested. They were ready to vote with it.

I mean, I want the messaging to be honest, but I'd want it to be complete as well. It's not on a whim. It's because we have to be good stewards.

I would imagine Ivory wasn't interested because, or Danzy's wasn't interested because it was sold the property to Ivory with the house on it. So it became Ivory's property and the plan was always to slope it and get rid of that.

Does Ivory have any right to that land, or they've deeded it over to us now for right-of-way? It's open space. So it's still Ivory's.

It's ours, but it's part of their MDA's open space, so it's supposed to be... There is a historic memorial park.

They didn't get 100% open space credit for the stuff along the way. I can see that, too.

It's fiscal responsibility. It's part of it. The cost benefit analysis. I think we have some direction. We can bring some stuff back to you. We'll keep you up to date.

I'll put together a demolition plan.

We'll give you one more off-ramp before that to show you what it's going to cost.

And I think that we see, I think that, I know. Where if I'd be fine? But then I think it's like, we see if the public safety issue goes away, and then if not, I think sometimes, you know, that'll be fine.

Parks are always a public safety issue. What's that? Parks are always a public safety issue.

Right. Yeah, you invite people to come there and tell them dumb things. Yep. Not all of them, but just enough, right?

Okay. Thank you, everybody. Okay. We'll go to 3.2, discussion of the city's... Why do we put these on the same agenda? Discussion of the city's secondary water system and future plan adjusting.

Do we want to continue talking about... So, yeah, secondary water infrastructure planning. We'll go through, we'll kind of review some of the history, how we got here, and then the council direction the staff received in 2023 has kind of brought us where we are today. And then Trevor's put together some information about what it might look like moving forward based on the council direction that we've received. As we go through tonight, we would like to have, you know, toward the end of this, throughout, get some feedback from the council so we kind of know what we're moving in the right direction. We want to stay kind of status quo. If you have some additional information that you would like us to gather and bring back, or if you have already kind of determined some modifications to our status quo. So maybe throughout this, we would like for a little direction. And if it's status quo, that's fine, too. background so in 2004 the city adopted an ordinance that required the installation of a secondary infrastructure for all new developments and at that time there was a plan to take it through citywide implementation so areas of The council determined at that time that it was not financially feasible to expand it throughout the entire city, but to continue with the new development and fill dry pipes. And then requirement for secondary throughout Olympia and then following that in October of 23 with some additional information and requests from developers basically took it out of where we are currently today. Some of the alternatives that were considered at that time, I know it's a little confusing, option one scenario two, this information was multiple meetings that we brought back to the council in 2023. So option one scenario two was basically plan for new development to install secondary except for Olympia. Then we brought back scenario three, which was remove it from Olympia and South Hills development. And then scenario four was proceed with just the master plan development and don't require secondary in any of the new developments but to fill dry pipes. And then this last scenario was basically don't require secondary new development nor pursue filling all the existing dry pipes. So those were the scenarios and options. There were costs to all of those. So scenario four is what was selected, which was don't require new development and to try and fill the dry pipes throughout the city. And you can see the cost of those scenarios. Scenario four is highlighted. With each of those scenarios, as you remove the requirement for secondary, you can see the culinary costs increased because our master plan always anticipated having secondary. So a lot of those demands that would have been served by the secondary system now would fall to the culinary system. And so you can see as secondary is removed, the culinary costs increase. Scenario four was determined at that time to kind of be the middle ground to where we would I guess serve the dry pipes of the areas where people might be, you know, expecting it. And so, and the culinary costs kind of offset the secondary, and so it was kind of the middle ground. And you can see the areas, all the dark, bolded black lines are the lines and infrastructure that was removed with Scenario 4 from the long-term master plan, the new development. And then the colored infrastructure there is what it would take to serve the dry pipes. now this is out of our master plan it's conceptual it's basically drawn a straight line from one point to another just saying this is how we would get water here but as we design it obviously we follow roads and those things so this is somewhat conceptual this is a current snapshot of where we are today You can see the dark purple lines are lines that are charged or areas that have access to secondary. The light purple lines are the areas that have installed infrastructure but are currently dry pipes. And what that means is they just don't have a source to them yet. to those areas and that's what this map so you kind of see it that table is a little bit small currently we have 4,830 total connections and that is including areas with access and areas without access and you kind of see the breakdown there there's just shy of 3,000 connections with access and of those access not all of them have installed meters and are actively using it and you can see there's approximately 1,700 active meters in the system using secondary and then there's about 1,100 access with no meters so that's kind of a breakdown of where we are currently if you have any questions go back

Do you get calls from people saying, why don't I have access to secondary water?

We get calls all the time. Especially spring, summer, when they're starting up their landscapes. So yeah, we get calls often on why don't I have secondary. And if they're in areas that don't currently have dry pipes, that's a fairly easy answer. The reason the council decided in 2012 not to go there is at that time, to service all the areas without, it was over $60 million in 2012. So that was a financial decision the council made. We should only go $60 million today. So I turn it over to Trevor. Thanks, Justin.

Okay. Today and going forward, I just want to talk about, I guess make three observations about kind of where the current direction has, the trajectory it's put us on. One piece, bonding. So we have done our capital planning, using the assumption that we want to go with that scenario for which is to charge the dry pipes that puts us as far as our water bonding in these two different bonding situations where you can see in that first bond about 42% of it's for secondary water in the second one it's 90% of that nearly 14 million And so, in total, we're looking at about $28 million worth of the future bonds for water being for secondary, about 60% or so. Second thing that I wanted to touch on is, you know, under the... Under the current direction, today we estimate the total cost to deliver a thousand gallons of secondary water to be somewhere around $2.17 per KGal. That's where we see it today. Based on projections and definitely increases in debt service, increases in our system size, we see that cost going to somewhere about $570 a KG in about 10 years. That's with pursuing all of those things. Correct.

That's a scenario four.

Yes, but those adding those two bonds. Right. So you'll, well, yes, I just want to note that this line here does not necessarily represent an actual cost per year. It's not a cash outflow, but it is 2% of the system value being set aside for replacement of the system as we go through time. So that was the second thing. First thing, the bond amounts. The second, the total cost. For context though, just to, and it's mentioned in the staff report, in ten years you know we've talked about rate increases for culinary and so under assumptions of moving the culinary cost up by six and a half percent for the next three years and then three percent a year after that we see that our culinary tiers, I wonder if I put this chart in here. No, I didn't. It's in the staff report. I apologize for not putting it on the screen. But essentially, that 5.69, again, sorry, Garrett, that 5.69 for per kegel for secondary would be somewhere between tier three and tier four pricing for culinary in 10 years. And so what does that really mean? Well, that means that the cost to deliver secondary in 10 years, we anticipate being higher than the cost to deliver culinary.

So quick question. Go. The connections that are dry right now, yet to be charged, were, was it like $1,500? $2,000. Like $1,900. Right there. One more. So 1955. Okay. So I'm just making an assumption that the $28,079,700 has zero to do with... paying for any type of maintenance, and that is just the cost to get the dry lines. So that's capital cost. And I divide that by $19.55. We're looking at $14,300 per connection to make it happen. Am I making a correct assumption?

I do also want to point out that The infrastructure that we have planned in that next 10 years, that $28 million, is not only to provide for the dry pipes. That infrastructure is also needed to serve the existing residents to the level of service. Because we're missing storage. We went to the pump station, some of you, yesterday at Black Ridge. Right now, that's pumping directly into the system as we talked about. There's no storage in Zone 4. So... if we continue to get more connections, if some of those people that are actively not using the app access choose to. then we're going to overwhelm to the system where we actually don't need to put storage in. We need to install the water tank. So the $28 million isn't just to serve the dry pipes. It's also to provide the level of service to the existing customers appropriately. So just in context, it's not just to serve the dry pipes.

But it's to serve the dry pipes, and it's to serve the consequences But we wouldn't need those costs if the dry pipes weren't filled.

So there would still be a need. There's still some need to appropriately provide the level of service to the existing customers.

Okay.

Because not everybody's taking advantage of their secondary department.

Because I think, so I was just asking Trevor on Saturday, the 4830 plus or minus a couple hundred would be if everything is built, all the colors are built, that's who could access it. So that's your total maximum users who could do it, say 5,000. So that's when you're looking at those costs in 2036, you might have 5,000 homes. That would mean the other 15,000 to 20,000 homes will never have access. But they all get to pay for the 5,000 that happen.

Question on usage. What are we seeing through those meters? How many thousands of gallons?

So it's fairly comparable to culinary, comparable. It is a little bit higher. In the summer months, culinary average is somewhere around 40,000 gallons for a culinary user. Secondary is... we made less than five percent higher so as on an average now you do have some people that use a lot more but yeah it's fairly comparable because we are metering secondary it has conservation tiers as well similar to culinary so

We're not seeing what other similar cities have seen in the past where it's unmetered and they just... Is the adoption rate to grab the meters just a slow process, or is that your staff going out and knocking doors and putting them in? How does that work?

So if someone requests, so if they have access to secondary, they call into the city and request a meter. We go out and we do an inspection to make sure they don't have a cross-connection between their secondary and culinary system, and then we install the meter. So it's a fairly simple process as far as getting them here. Now, in some yards it's difficult to make vacuums in the secondary if they're already landscaped.

From a macro, just 40,000 foot view, when I look at the costs, when I look at the percentages of the residents that are serviced by it, and then I add in how we're going to view water moving forward with whatever conservation efforts or whatever pressures are put on us through Mother Nature or the state coming and saying, this is what you can use water for. I have a feeling that as time goes by, We are going to look at water as water. We're not going to look at water as this is culinary water, this is secondary water. We're going to say water is water. And decisions are going to be made at a higher level than us as to what can be done with that water, which then begs the question, do I want to spend more money on a system if somebody's going to redefine what water is for us. Am I making sense? Okay. All right.

Well, and I had the same question. Is it going to come back to bite us if we don't invest in it? Are we going to wish we would?

The answer could be yes and no. Right. It depends. Trevor was saying it depends earlier today. So to some extent, There's existing dry pipes there and there are some residents that expect it because they have it or are anticipating that they will get it in sometime and somebody paid to install that infrastructure.

Is there any agreement that we are in right now that says that we will fill this dry secondary light pipe? contractually obligated to do it.

I don't know if there's a written agreement, but there's, like I said, an anticipation. Sure.

There's also contractors that outlay the cost to put that in, two city requirements.

I think the three of us have sat through a few iterations of this, is that the only kind of risk to saying we're not going to do it at all ever is that we've required contractors to put money on the ground, right? And therefore homeowners are paid to have those dry pipes there with the expectation someday they'll be there. Now, when I moved into my home, I had the same question we called the city, and they said, we don't know if there will ever be water. but the pipes are there, they're dry, you don't have it.

But the water we also provide to them might cost more than what culinary water would cost.

I'm going to try to kind of cut through the layers of this and say I think that, I think there's maybe a modification that we can go to. I never think that it's always one answer or the other. For me, for this council, much like the council 2012, With the increases that we've put in just to adequately maintain our culinary system, right, that was never priced into it, that's what I had thought that we had decided on after Bo and Collins did that study was, yep, we need to start charging more over a period of time because we're going to need replacement costs. built into our rate structure. And then there was a secondary built onto it. My understanding was that we said, yep, we need to do part one, but part two, the secondary, we're not going to say yes or no. We're going to do 2012 and say, not right now.

So I guess my other question is about what we think in the future is, what if we fill the pipes and then we're limited on water? We need that irrigation water for culinary water and have to pull it back. Is that a possibility at all?

I think that's more what you would go with. Yeah, I think that is a possibility in the future.

Because I'd hate to put all the money in if we're going to need to fix it. Well, you had it, but now we need it for culinary.

As far as conservation goes, I'm with Matt. Conserving a drop of water is conserving a drop of water. In fact, the opposite mentality exists with people. Where it's secondary, I can use more of it.

That's not as big of a deal.

Well, yeah, but it also takes a strain off the culinary.

Correct me, Justin, if I'm wrong, that we would have to invest more in our culinary system than we would ever invest in our secondary system.

Over time, we'd have to invest in the culinary system. I don't know, Trevor, can you go back? You go back to those, you'll see it right there, it's... You kind of see it incrementally, the culinary costs incrementally go up as the secondary costs go down. About $30 million when you drop it. So... Okay, $20 million now. So there is an...