City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, it is six o'clock and we will get this meeting started. It is May 26. We're here for a city council regular meeting. Thank you all for joining us. We're here live at the mill and online via zoom. Uh, and we'll be on our YouTube channel. Let's call this meeting to order and please join me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Clerk Weaver, could I have a roll call, please? Certainly.

Councilmember Donahue?

Present.

Council President Dorstad? Present. Councilmember Packard? Present. Councilmember Edwards? Present. Councilmember McManus? Present. Councilmember Shipman? Present. Council Member Araya.

I will move to excuse Council Member Shipman from tonight's meeting.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Looks like we have no guest business tonight. So we'll move to citizen comments for those folks. Can we get approval of the agenda? No. Yeah. I'm just joking. We have an agenda in front of us. We should approve it. Any comments or a motion?

Make a motion to approve the agenda as written.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Agenda is approved. Thank you, Caitlin. um so we will move into citizen comments for those folks who wish to make a comment you'll have three minutes at the podium or on zoom we will start online and see if we have anybody there who would like to make a comment anyone in our digital space if you'd like to address the council please raise your hand and i will move you in I don't see anyone. Great. Thank you. And just a reminder, we also have a public hearing tonight. The comments specific to the public hearing will happen during that order of business, item eight on our agenda. So this time is just for non-public hearing related public comments. I have one green sheet so far. I'll call Gary Petersen to the podium, please. You have three minutes.

Evening, Council. Appreciate the time tonight. My name is Gary Peter Sagan, resident of Lake Stevens. I am here hopefully in search of some direction, hopefully some answers, maybe some commentary. I'm kind of confused as to looking at our roundabouts and the gateways to our city. The roundabout down at the Costco area seems to be well-maintained, and the sign is very visible. Highway 9 and 204, The sign is very unvisible. Northbound, you can barely see the sign itself. You see the top of the sails of the ships that are in that sign. Southbound, you see a little bit more. The entire roundabout is a weed patch. Going further north on Davies and Highway 9, it's not much better. And so I guess I'm wondering, number one, who is responsible for maintenance of that? And a couple of years ago, we did have a discussion about this. Council did. And again, I'm kind of perplexed as to why the roundabout down by Costco is maintained and the other two roundabouts are not. If it's WSDOT's responsibility yet, I would ask that we contact WSDOT and ask them to fulfill their obligation. The city spent upwards of $25,000 on the entry sign at that main 204 Highway 9. And you can't see it. So it kind of comes down to civic pride a little bit. You know, we're welcoming people to our city, but yet we've got a big weed patch with a sign that's obscured. And so, again, I would ask that we contact WSDOT. Hopefully, I don't see Aaron here tonight. Hopefully, get some direction from Public Works or something. But it's in desperate need of maintenance and looks not very welcoming. Further, I would say I'd like to compliment the city in the roundabout on Vernon Road in Lundeen. There was some work done on that roundabout last weekend, I believe. Maintenance looks really good. But yet our little rock strips that are in the median are nothing but a weed-filled patch of stuff. And so I would ask that that be looked into. Civic pride is important. And I think when we welcome people to our city, the first thing they see is landscaped areas, signage, things of that sort. And quite frankly, the Highway 9 204 is a mess. And I hope we can do better. So thank you.

Thanks, Gary. All right, the next item we have on our agenda is the consent agenda. Can I get a motion?

Motion to approve the consent agenda.

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion?

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye.

Thank you. Motion passes.

That moves us to item eight, our public hearing tonight. We will be hearing about the 2025 comprehensive plan docket. Christy Schmidt will be speaking. At this time, we will go ahead and open the public hearing and I will turn the mic over to Christy. Thank you.

Thank you. Just one moment, please. I'm asking the clerk to have me share my screen. And while we're getting this going i'd like to point out that you do have some public comments within your packet there are two public comments and then one city response letter okay it looks like i'm up and going here. Give me just a second. Okay, thank you for your patience. All right, we are rolling here. Good evening, City Council. Thank you, Christy Schmidt, Planning Manager. Tonight, I'm presenting you the carryover docket from 2025, which is for the update to the six-year and the 20-year CIP, and specifically in relation to the traffic impact fees this evening. So within your packet, you do have a staff report, and it is quite a hefty packet. There are 16 exhibits. I think that's what our clerk was referring to, what was bogging it down last week when it was being sent out. So you do have quite a few materials to review. Background on this particular proposal, we've been working on this for about 18 months. It started previous to that with the adoption of the 2024 Comprehensive Plan. The docket that's before you today is actually a carryover item from 2025. The City contracted with Transpo for a technical expertise to help us with the methodology updates and along with administrative document updates. We've been working with them for approximately a year on this. In 2025, if you recall, the City Council did adopt the concurrency portions of the code along with the traffic mitigation fee sections, and that was late last year. There are no proposed changes I'd like to point out to the actual land use map in the comprehensive plan. We did issue the 60-day notice to state, so they have been reviewing the draft documents and they have provided no comments on the drafts. In addition, notice, and we did have a meeting specifically with the master builders back in March, then held a work session with Planning Commission on the 1st of April, followed by issuing the SEPA determination around April 3rd, and then the work session before you, the City Council, on April 21st. On May 6th, we did hold the Planning Commission public hearing. You will see the letter of recommendation from the Planning Commission in your packet. That is Exhibit 11 for you. And that is a recommendation of approval. So the process and public input, what has been provided to date as far as public notice, the docket was ratified. That was over a year ago, back in January 2025 with the resolution. That notification was sent out to the state and an addendum was issued. In addition, we've provided two public notices for the planning commission, public hearing, and then also for the city council public hearing this evening. And as I referenced earlier, we have two public comments letters, one from the master builders, and then also one from Tom Hanson, who is here this evening, along with exhibit 14, which is a reply to Tom Hanson's comment letter. And that is provided from Transpo, our city's engineering consultant. So moving forward to describe the proposed amendments and the purpose of it, what we're looking at doing is updating our actual capital facility plans. The long-range plan, which addresses 20 years of capital facilities, that's the growth projection horizon. Then in addition, the six-year improvement plan. Those are both included within your packet, and we also covered those on April 21st. I would like to point out there is a substantially large document in there, which is called the city's cost basis. And that is our methodology document that we utilize in determining how our impact fees are calculated. So that's been included in your packet. And then previous meeting, you had a summary of that document. So where we are at tonight is we are taking a look in detail at these proposed amendments and the budgetary component, which is the increase in the traffic impact fee to pay for the city's capital projects. So with that, as you can see, you were mentioning the Costco site. There's the roundabout before it was actually installed with landscaping in its early phases there. I included that because it's a very good example of what traffic impact fees do and mitigation does. So the city of Lake Stevens were broken into three different zones. The blue zone there is the downtown zone, that is the TIZ-1. As I'll talk later, this is the zone that probably has the most amount of projects in it because it has the most aging infrastructure. Zones 2 and 3, they share a lot of similarities, as you can see here on the map. They have connection of Highway 9. We have 204. We have 20th. They share highways and main arterials. So in addition, do they not only share growth, they share projects and projects costs. So that's the reason why these two zones have been combined into one with one proposed fee. Thank you. As part of this process, we're looking at updating and providing a fillable form to make it easier for everyday developers, including what we call the one-offs or just mom and pop who are coming in to build a single family home. We have a worksheet that provides calculations that are included in there to turn in. And that's in lieu of when you don't need a traffic impact analysis for larger projects. Here's a picture of a cost basis analysis that was included within your packet, and it's been available online for a couple months now. And it's also available in our permitting. This describes how we calculate our impact fees and the methodology and our growth for both active and vehicle transportations and the level of service. I did include just a cover sheet of the 20 year transportation and list it is quite hefty it does include projects from every department, they are color coded in here, you can see, we have orange and orange is for parks, so you will see that in there. Oh wait, excuse me, is the park. Traffic it's traffic. Apologize, I need to remove my glasses for that. That one's traffic. So you have traffic there. That is exhibit four within your packet. So how are the rates and projects actually calculated? There's a summary within your packet by Transpo that addresses Thomas Hansen's questions. And in summary, how the impact fee is calculated is we take a look at the vehicle operations, including safety, active transportation, Complete street preservation, then we look at the existing in the projected levels of growth for both vehicle and active transportation for the level of service, you have to look at what you currently have. And then the land use component on how it's going to grow as far as residential and commercial uses. We take that level of service and there's a percentage that the project addresses for level deficiencies and we assign a percentage of PM peak vehicular growth. And this is the growth that's used from the land use map for employment and also for commercial development. And once we have the cost, we also reduce the grant funding that the city's already obtained. If we were to obtain more grant funding, that is why we come back every year later in the year with the budget cycle to take a look at the six-year CIP and make adjustments because it does account for yearly adjustments. So as an example, Public Works and Planning will be back before the council later this year in 2026 to look at an adjustment. Then we establish a base cost for the PM peak hour trips, and this is how we develop our land use generation rates. Out of the 20-year list, the city council determines what are the key projects, what's really important for the community, and what do we need to see for six-year improvement plans to address immediate deficiencies. So the six-year list is quite a bit smaller than the 20-year list, and you'll see that's table 9.1, and that's the table that is being proposed to be updated this evening also. We have 9.1 and 9.2 plus several figures, 8.14 and 8.15 also within your packet. I would like to point out, as you're aware, we've talked about this a few times, that there was a level of discrepancy that was made aware to the city last year. We took a look at it. We had our consultant even further analyze it, and this was a result in a comment from an actual development application. And we did realize that we need a correction in our level of service because there is a failure identified at the Lake Stevens Road in South Davies. We are proposing that this level of service correction occur this year with the 2026 Comprehensive Plan. And that memo is within your packet also. looking to the budgetary component which is the role of the city council we are looking in staff in relation to our 20-year cip and the six-year cip an increase to the downtown tiz this proposed because of the aging infrastructure and the level of service deficiencies this has probably the most is definitely the most significant increase it's proposing to double go from $2,700 to $5,600 for that zone to accommodate the six-year capital improvement projects. In addition, there is a small increase for TIZ's twos and threes, though that was the green and red on the sheet previously, with a $60 increase. I would like to point out in your packet tonight that staff is recommending an adjustment to the fee resolution, but to bring back that resolution to the city council at the first meeting in June, the reason being is because as you'll see further on in the agenda this evening, Director Garceau is going to piggyback on and propose some shelter increase rates, and it was recommended that we combined just one draft increase in the fee resolution and not come back with a second amendment, but to combine them together. So that is the reason that we're asking to bring it back at the next meeting. And then in addition, for community development, we're asking council to acknowledge and to implement a July 1st deadline for implementation of the traffic impact fees. The reason why we're making this request is one is to notify the development community if the increase is proposed, because this would allow them to come in early and pay their mitigation fees under the current existing rate before the increase takes effect. And so we'd like that opportunity to notify our developers who currently have permits within the queue. Move my microphone over here so I can see everyone up at the DS. So with that, it brings me to the findings and staff recommendations. As noted in the staff report, this proposal does meet the approval criteria for the comprehensive plan amendment criteria found in 1416C within our code. Also exhibit 11, the planning commission letter of recommendation to the city council to approve the comprehensive plan amendments and the figure and table updates. As part of this, staff would recommend approval of the ordinance within your packet, that's ordinance 1220 for the 2025 comprehensive plan docket with a motion to bring back resolution 2026 at the first meeting in June to implement traffic impact fees effective July 1st. And with that, I would like to open it up to the council for questions for the staff. Thank you, Christine.

questions yeah thank you christy um the letter from mbacs talks about vesting and essentially locking in rates at a certain time uh specifically i asked about that coming into a later work package what is city staff's general views on vesting And then I guess my connected to that is I'm hesitant about indefinite vesting. So what would a certain time period look like for that vesting to occur so that they could have some sort of stability over a six or 12 month or whatever period of time, but not indefinite?

No, that's a great question. We did have a healthy discussion at the planning commission regarding this. The opinion of staff is our preference is not to vest impact fees, accordance with state law. And the reason being is if you were to vest them at a preliminary state versus a building permit or when the vesting occurs currently, what happens is often we see a delay in development. And you can see that happens with downturns in economy in particular, where let's say in 2008, we didn't see applications come through for eight, seven years, hence the state amended the state statute to allow preliminary plats up to seven years. And so we prefer not to have the vesting, which is reflective of the state law, so that way the impact fee matches up more concurrently with the time the impact's gonna take effect. If you were to vest the fee, let's say four or five years in advance before it happens, You could have inflation, additional costs. Your impact fee could have doubled, maybe decreased. It could change. But then you're stuck with a lock-in of a fee for a developer. As far as funding capital projects, I think it would not be very advantageous to lock it in. And with that, I would turn it over if Director Wright has any other additional comments on that.

I think you've covered it mainly, Christy. I would just say in practice and among most jurisdictions, case law, you don't vest fees. They are not a development regulation. And that's why it's usually been either, well, they are paid in most cases at the time of issuance of permit. There are a few exceptions in state law for deferment for things like single family homes where the financing may be more tight, but I wouldn't strongly recommend that we vest them indefinitely if the Council wanted to consider this, we can definitely bring this back as part of your 2027 work program and my recommendation would be to tie it to the concurrency. sort of certificate that we issue that would give them that vesting right during the concurrency of their project if Council wanted to to do something like that so. Thank you.

Any additional questions at this time. Okay, we will go ahead and move into the public comment section of the public hearing. I have one green sheet. So I'll call Tom Hanson to the podium first. And then if there's anybody else who'd like to make public comment during the public hearing, please fill out a green sheet behind. In the meantime, Tom, you have three minutes. Go ahead.

Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to testify here. My name is Tom Hanson. I'm a registered professional civil engineer in Washington. And before I retired, I was a public works director and or city engineer for 17 years for local jurisdictions here in the area. So I have a great deal familiarity with traffic impact fees and how it works and the staff work behind it. And from that basis is the reason I make these comments. In fact, I was the guy last November that spoke in front of the planning commission. You folks might have seen my letter later on to the council, which I think caused this latest iteration to go back through Transpo again. I have 30 years of construction management experience of public work. So I have a very good feel of the ratio of costs on projects. Now I've been out of the business for 10 years. So the costs have gone up, but the ratio of facilities with our project are probably pretty close to the same. I appreciate staff did include the list of projects I think are suspect and percentages assigned in your packet. What I am disappointed in is they did not include the email that I wrote that transmitted that list to you. That email said, these are the percentage assigned to these projects to either transportation or active pedestrian facilities, bike facilities, active transportation facilities, appears to be off given the overall project cost. And what I asked for staff to do for the six projects was to do actual estimates, an estimate of the project with the active pedestrian facilities in it and one without. that was left off, that was not included. And I still ask for that to be done. For instance, under TE-6D, which is grade road segment four, the project costs listed in your information is 8.6 million approximately. The active transportation portion of that job is either building sidewalks on both sides or maybe a multi-use path. Transpo has assigned $4.3 million of that project cost to active transportation. Now, it's been a while since I built a project, I will admit. But the last time I built urban corridors, the addition of a sidewalk or multi-use path was not half the cost of the project. It was more in the range of maybe 10%, maybe 15 of the actual total project cost. And that's what I identified in those six projects. I didn't, a lot of them, I, you know, I don't, but those were the most, the six ones in the list are the most egregious where the percentage I think is off. And if the percentage is off, The cost is off. When Transpose responded to my comments, they said, yeah, we'll follow our assumptions. They think we're good. What I'm saying, assumptions and guesses, it's not engineering. They should do a determination. They should do the cost estimates. When I last worked with Transpo, that was not their strength. They're great transportation engineers. They have a lot of expertise, but they are not good. They were not selling that they were good at cost estimating, construction management, project costing. That was not their expertise when I last worked with them. So again, I'm asking the council to remand this back to staff. to have them look at those six projects, doing estimates with and without the active transportation facilities, revise the percentages, and hence revise the traffic impact fees you're asking for. If you approve this tonight, that's your choice. I can't stop you. I won't. But it seems to me we're then promoting pretty sloppy staff work. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Do we have any further requests for public comment? All right, thank you. Following public comment, are there further questions for staff?

I have one. I guess I would just, given the public comment we just heard, I would like to invite our staff to respond about what that would take on their part, what sort of difference it might make in the impact fees, and just kind of hear any counterpoint to that they want to make.

Thank you. Just really quick to interrupt. I just found out that Councilwoman Shipman joined us a little bit late, but she is with us online. Thank you, Ryan.

Thank you, Council Member. Yes, I would like to address that question. We do take all public comments seriously, as we have previously and with this recent round of comments from Mr. Hansen. We did on his recent submittal, we did take a look at that and the cost for each project and the breakdown of it. went back to Public Works defined because they did the cost calculations, verified them with Transpo with Public Works. They agreed and noted that the cost estimate proportion was correct. So I honestly have no further information that I can provide for that unless we mandate something back to Public Works to redo another cost estimate for those particular projects. And that would be staff's comment in that Transpo did provide a methodology and breakdown percentage in the exhibit. I think that's exhibit 14 that validates that.

Thank you, Christine. Any further questions for staff? Ryan, did that answer your question?

I mean, I think so. I'll be honest here. I'll just put myself out there. I've reached the limit of my subject matter expertise in this area. And so I'm relying heavily on staff and the comments we just heard from people far more experienced than myself. If staff feels that they have done their due diligence and that they're confident in their numbers and they've verified them with public works, I'm not really in a position to tell them they haven't and what they could do better. And so, yeah, if Christie and the other staff members are happy with it, then I think that answers my question.

Thank you. Can I add a question, comment? The project costs are typically estimates. And when you go to an RFP for construction, that is likely to change somewhat, right? Correct?

That is correct.

And then each project, has a line item for each element typically, correct?

Yes, that is correct.

Thank you.

All right, any further questions?

Any further comments from staff?

No further comment. Thank you.

And at this point, we will close the public hearing and looking for further discussion or a motion from council.

Is it appropriate to ask fellow council members their thoughts on vesting and if it's warranted to bring that back for further conversation? I would like to see it come back just to understand more about the pros and cons, the potential impact to the city by doing it, et cetera. Again, I'm not interested in indefinite vesting, but I appreciate the commentary, right? If I'm going to do a project, I'd like to know those costs up front and be able to plan for them. within some level of reasonableness. And so I'm okay with that approach within, again, I don't know what the right answer is, 12 months, 18 months, whatever we think is... a realistic amount of time for a project to go from start to finish, uh, giving some grace, but not indefinite, right? Seven years is way too long in my view. And so what does that look like for us to do something intermediate that gives stability, uh, but still, well, stability, both to the builders and those doing projects and also to the city.

I thank you for that for the question. I think that the conversation around fee vesting is I think it's multi-layered. So I think it does make sense for us to continue to talk about that. I like the idea of potentially workshopping that towards the end of this year and bringing it back as part of the 2027 comprehensive plan docket with an opportunity for all of us to understand the complexities and some staff recommendations about different possibilities about how we may move forward. I agree. I think it would be good to understand the different options and the pros and cons, it doesn't feel like we have the time now to absorb all of that information and have that, have that conversation with this process. But I think if we ensure that it's part of our retreat this fall, and then with a, with a plan to have it on the docket for next year, that's how I would like to proceed. That makes sense. Council member Donahue had his hand raised.

Oh, just I think Council Member Jorstad addressed it. I was just going to double check with Christy on timelines for this and whether we could fit it into this process. But I agree that it's probably better left for the 2027 process.

Thank you, Ryan.

Does that give you the direction that you're looking for?

It sure does. Thank you, Council. Thank you.

I'm going to go ahead and make a motion to continue to open this up for further discussion. I'll move to approve ordinance number 1220 amending the 2025 Lake Stevens comprehensive plan, including the associated traffic impact fees, impact fee cost basis and traffic impacts fees documents.

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Further discussion?

I just, the increase in the impact fees for zone one, I think that's really important to highlight that we're increasing those fees just because that's, you know, our industrial zone and there's going to be, you know, hopefully some commercial stuff going on. And I think that that being the older part of town, it's definitely justified to have that increase in those fees. And so I appreciate the staff doing all that hard work and bringing that back to us. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Edwards. Any further discussion?

Am I understanding that the draft resolution is regarding the fees? This is not what we're, is that for next time? Can you?

We were first. Yeah. So we're first doing, I mean, make sure I understand your question. We're doing the first motion to approve ordinance 1220. And then we'll have a second motion to bring back resolution 202,606. regarding implementing the traffic fees. Okay. Did that... It's on your staff report on the front page. Let's see, page... Gotcha.

Okay. Just one more comment. I mean... It is easy for me or others to look at this and say, okay, this is a fee that we are imposing on developers, right? Big bad developers is the mantra within Lake Stevens. I mean, in reality, this is a tax. It's a tax on all of us. If we want to build a home, if we want to buy a home, if we want to start a business. It is a tax. And so I don't want to lose sight of that. It's non-trivial. I know people who have chosen not to pursue certain things because of some of these fees and the taxes. And so admittedly, I don't know the answer on how to do it any differently. And so I've got to trust staff here a lot on some of this. But I just want to, again, point out this is a tax and it's not easy for everybody to bear.

I think we have to be careful with our language because it's not a tax. It is a fee. And it does get passed along. It does increase costs for folks that are doing business in Lake Stevens, purchasing houses in Lake Stevens. It's not just a fee for the developers. Is that right?

That's fine.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I just want to make sure.

I'm using the word tax very generally.

Okay. Tax.

Any further comments or discussion? All right. I'll call for the vote. All those in favor in passing ordinance number 1220, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. We have a second motion in the staff report to bring back resolution 202606. Actually, I'll just make the motion. I move that we direct staff to bring back resolution 2026-06 at our first meeting in June, amending resolution 202602 to implement the traffic impact fees effective July 1, 2026.

I'll second that motion.

We have a motion and a second. Discussion? Hearing no discussion, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Motion passes. That concludes item number 8A, our public hearing. We'll move into action items. And I will turn it over to Deputy Clerk Weaver to talk about voting representatives for the 2026 AWC Annual Conference.

Good evening, Council. I have some housekeeping for you tonight. So the Association of Washington Cities has their annual conference in June. And part of our role in their annual meeting is to be able to vote on their board and who's going to sort of sit in those positions. So we have the option of sending up to three delegates or identifying those voting members. And in your council procedures, it sort of lays out how that will happen. Just to let you know, this is only for 2026. They can change year to year, depending on who's attending. And let's say no one was attending. You can also go and be a voting delegate virtually. So we do have the bonus of three of you that are going to be going, Council Member McManus, Council Member Araya, and Council President Jorstad. So I just wanted to let this body decide who would like to be those voting delegates so I can send that information to AWC.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Yep. My first thought is, since there are three of us going and we need three voting delegates, that it would make sense for the three members attending to be the voting members. But I'm certainly open to further discussion or different ideas.

I would agree with that. I agree as well.

I support that. Me too. All right. I guess that's what we're doing. Do you need a, um, you need a motion? Yes.

Let's let's do a motion per your procedures.

All right. Um, I move that the three voting delegates for this year's association of Washington city's annual conference are the three attending, uh, council members, uh, myself, council member, George said, council member, Ariah and council member McManus. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Motion passes. Thank you. Great. We'll move on to discussion items. Our first item for discussion is new park fees and the fee resolution 2026-06. I will turn it over to Director Garceau.

Thank you. Sarah Garceau, Parks and Recreation Director. Council, I have on discussion item some new park fees that were included with the packet. There are specifically five of them. I want to completely clarify these are not fee increases. They are new items that were identified by staff for facilities that are not currently being rented to the public. All of our shelters, especially on the weekends, are completely booked for the next several months. And as we were looking for revenue generating ideas, it came to our attention that there are two parks, each with two shelters that aren't currently available for rent. and that we didn't have basketball courts added to our fee schedule, but we did have pickleball courts. And so we wanted to list this as opportunities for the public. We know often when people are planning their trips to the park, especially for family gatherings or birthday parties, people want to guarantee that they're going to have a location to put their cake or their presents or whatever food and knickknacks that they bring along. So the five that we're proposing are two at Oak Hill. This is a north and a south shelter. And two shelters at Frontier Heights, again labeled north and south. These would each just be all-day rentals. We wouldn't split them into morning and afternoon. We would just do a flat $60 fee for these. They are smaller shelters, especially when compared to the other ones that are available for rent currently. And then the basketball courts would be $25 an hour, which is comparable to the pickleball courts that are for rent. All of these are listed on page 16. of the fee resolution that is attached in the other agenda item. I didn't wanna attach that whole packet for you a second time as it is a complete duplicate. So you might have to flip back to see those. You will see several items crossed off and just relocated for organization. I wanted to make sure all of the facilities were listed with facilities for clarification and it was time to break off the all day versus part day rentals instead of having one line item to address that for clarification. Just to show you where these are at this is Oak Hill Park there's one located closer to the playground and one located closer to the basketball court, you do see that they're smaller these specific shelters at Oak Hill only have one table under each of them. And then Frontier Heights, of course, this is closed right now for construction, but we'll be reopening here in a couple of months with the upgraded synthetic turf field, as well as our pickleball courts. These also are smaller shelters. They do have a little bit more surface room inside of them. One is close to the basketball court, and then one is a little bit closer to the entry about equal distance to the playground themselves. And we have four different basketball courts that are full-sized courts within our system. I photoed the one of Caballero and Oak Hill here for your reference. And that concludes my presentation.

Happy to take any questions or open up for discussion. Thank you, Sarah. Just for clarification, I think this has been brought up before, but I want to make sure I'm clear. Tasha and I want to go play basketball and we get to the basketball court and it's empty. We can still play basketball. And if someone comes up and says, Hey, here's my paperwork. I have this basketball court reserved for the next hour. Then we would need to leave at that point because they've reserved the court. Does that. Is that accurate?

Correct. Or ask if they need an extra player, of course, in that situation. All of our picnic shelters do have a posting board showing that the reservation is there. We post a full week in advance and we're working on getting a small posting board for the basketball locations and the pickleball courts will have them as well.

Great.

And yes, 100% open for free use whenever there is not a reservation.

Is there something on the Parks and Rec website that, like, if I'm planning to take my kids to go play basketball and I'm not going to drive there first?

So, like, where you can look and see, you know, not necessarily who reserved it, but just which spots are open.

Absolutely. I imagine it's going to be less frequent. frequent that the basketball court is reserved. The pickleball courts may become quite frequent. Of the pickleball courts, we're only allowing reservations on two of the four courts, meaning two will always be available when you show up to that location. The pickleball courts will be the only Frontier Heights will be the only location with pickleball courts that we own. Of course, there are some at our wonderful school district as well. And specifically for shelters, that's where you're going to run into the issue with reservations quite a bit more. To answer your question based on that, we do have our Civic Rec software that you can get on and see if it's available or reserved. Unfortunately, it's not a great user interface and sometimes can take a little training. If anybody's interested, we're always happy to walk you through it. We're still working with the company to see if there's a better way to integrate it into a live calendar that could go on our website. It's just not very pretty at the moment. Thank you. You're welcome.

Quick question. How was the $60 determined? I guess, is it instead of 50 or 75, I noticed most of them are 250 to 25. Is this with the annual pass or were you tying it to something or similar things?

It's a combination of staff time as well as the amenity available. So maintenance, things like restaining the picnic table. If there's electric available, for instance, there's not electricity at the four new shelters going in where there is electricity at North Cove or Lundin Park.

But mainly staff time. Council Member Donahue had his hand up. Council Member Donahue.

Yeah, so really quick, I'm assuming that the fees on this would mitigate some of this issue, but I've seen facilities in the past where there kind of becomes this battle to be the first one in to make a reservation. One, do we expect any issues with kind of serial reservations, somebody always getting in front of the line? And if two, do we have any process in place just to make sure that reservations aren't being monopolized?

No commercial business can occur in the parks without a permit. So specifically with pickleball rules, for instance, we're very clear on that because it has a high potential for that. It would be abnormal for a single resident to have multiple reservations, say every day at 10 a.m. at the basketball court. They'd be more likely to show up and use it. But we do have our rules in place with the Lake Stevens Municipal Code to ensure that any actual business activity does require a license. and they would contact our department for that. If for some reason we were to see all of a sudden the basketball courts were reserved 10 hours a day, seven days a week, we would definitely revisit how often they should be reserved and would be able to put those reserves in place.

Okay, perfect. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any further questions for Director Garceau? Sarah, is your plan then to bring this back as an ordinance or as a resolution?

Yeah, the fee resolution with both the traffic impact fees as well as these park fees would be coming at the next meeting on the consent agenda. Great. We don't have to discuss it unless anybody has any other questions between now and then. Feel free to email our call.

All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And the next discussion item is the upcoming council agenda review. Caitlin. All right, I'm up again.

Let me just share my screen really quick. So this is our handy-dandy clerk's schedule that we have for the next couple meetings. We wanted to just continue to brief you on what's coming up. We have a fairly full meeting coming up on the 2nd, and again, that's the first day of our Awesome Farmers Market, so we do have a plan in place for parking. We'll have signage up, and that way you and staff and the public that would like to attend the meeting are able to do that. For this meeting, we have the school district coming in to present from the CTE program. We have some items to discuss. So we have Winterfest ornaments. We have a few consent agenda items, the Lake Stevens Road Club Agreement, a CJTC wellness grant. And then again, the fees resolution that Sarah was just speaking about. And we have one item from Stormwater that also is going to be on this, a cost sharing agreement with, I think that's Department of Natural Resources. And then looking at the ninth, that is high school graduation night, which I know impacts several people. So we were looking to cancel that meeting so that people could be with their families and celebrate that awesome event. And looking forward to the 10th, that was going to be our special meeting that was decided for the mayor's vacancy interviews. We did have vouchers down there just as a very quick consent item if finance needs to get some bills paid and some things done. So that was the only thing we were going to add into that meeting. And then obviously an executive session with potential actions. So if decisions are going to be made that evening, there's opportunity for that. um looking down to the 16th we have a couple items there and that's a workshop um so we have a market street mural uh the arts and parks foundation will be coming in we also have a 30-minute training for labor relations which will be great and then a critical areas update And we do go over this every Monday with Council President Dorstad and Council Vice President Kim Shipman is on as well. If you guys have items you'd like to reach out to them or comments back to us, just please let us know. We just like to keep you informed.

Thanks, Caitlin. Any questions?

Oh, Council Member Donahue has his hand up.

Yes, I just wanted to go back to beating my drum about e-bikes. I see they are out in force now that the weather has turned. So I would just request that we maybe try and get that on an agenda at some point here in the near future.

Thanks, Brian. I do think that's in our, we have a parking lot list of things to bring in when we have all the information necessary. I will make sure at our next agenda planning meeting to just double check with chief about timing for that.

Perfect. Thank you.

You're welcome.

And I can confirm that is in our parking lot. Okay. Great. Excellent. Moving into city department reports. Caitlin, again, is on the agenda along with, is Gene online? He is online. Oh, great. Okay. To talk about our EASC-DC fly-in recap.

You guys are getting a lot of the deputy clerk this evening. Okay, so we wanted to come back and report to council about the incredible advocacy trip that we had the week of May 4th, a delegation comprised of council member Edwards, council member McManus, council member Jorstad, City Administrator Jean Brazel, our Public Works Director Aaron Halverson and myself went to Washington, D.C. to join the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County. We also had some earlier meetings within the week that were just specific to Lake Stevens' needs and wants and to be able to advocate for that one-on-one. And as you can see in your packet, the individuals and groups that we met with included the National League of Cities, the United States Department of Transportation, the Governor Ferguson's Federal Office, which was a wonderful add this year. It's the first time we've been there. Representative Susan DelBene, Senator Maria Cantwell, and Senator Patty Murray. And we have our projects included in the packet as well as our white papers, which is kind of our document that we bring with us for these meetings and the projects that we're highlighting this year. It shows you details about the project as well as the asks that we're kind of going through. And that included the US2 trestle. We're always talking about the trestle and how important it is to our community. The 79th Avenue, Southeast and 24th Street, Southeast Extension, which is over by Cavalero to create some better access. Access point there, Bayview Trail extension, 20th Street Northeast and Main Street improvements, 36th Street bridge replacement, and the Hartford Stream restoration. And so in your packet, you'll see not only the white papers in that list, you'll also see some recap from each of the meetings, different grant programs that they mentioned, different funding ways to get things funded, sort of hints and tips, other organizations they wanted to connect us to. We took all of our notes back and then we compile that and staff utilizes that throughout the year and further to try and get traction on these projects. So we just wanted to come back and update the council and the public on what we were up to.

Thank you, Caitlin. Jean, do you have anything to add?

I don't, other than we have received some response on funding for the sewer stub and planned lift station that runs down to Machias Road. That was another grant application that we submitted that was not on our white paper list, but it was a grant application we submitted and it's moved to the second step of the funding process. So hopefully it makes it all the way through when we get funding for that project.

Great, thank you, Gene. Anything anyone else would like to add?

Yeah, I want to get Caitlin's camera because we all look so thin. If I can borrow that for Christmas.

It was an incredible experience to see behind the scenes how a small trip of a few of us can go and make a huge impact on our community. And I really enjoyed hearing and learning more about all of the projects that we have on our to-do list and how we can work with the federal authorities to be able to procure funds for our projects that we need. I have to say, overall, the trip was amazing. I learned so much. And as a new council member, I just soaked it all up. So I just I am very grateful for the opportunity to go. And for those who went with us, it was it was really great. It is kind of depressing to have them tell us, don't expect to get anything regarding this from this administration because it's not a priority for them. So that was a little a little disappointing. depressing, but overall, I think we all did really great work there and, and spoke up for what we need for our community and our citizens. And it was just, it was really, really a great opportunity.

Thank you. Councilman Edwards. I just to piggyback on that too. I think it was a, it was kind of a whirlwind. I think we were there 72 hours. I think a couple of folks stayed an extra day, but it was pretty fast and furious and, and it was great to have the, not just the in-person conversation but the really the different lens that all of us brought to those conversations so to have you know to have somebody speak to um we were talking about the 79th avenue and 24th street southeast extension near caballero and to talk about you know as a parent um councilwoman edwards talked about what that's That experience is like just having one road in and out of the school and counselor mcmanus talking about from a kind of a first responder perspective what what sort of safety concerns that brings up. We all just were able to bring those you know different viewpoints and then we had staff that brought different levels of expertise, I think it really helped. drive those conversations home and elevate them to a different level than you could if you're just sending something in the mail or sending an email to someone. So those personal relationships are super important.

One other thing that stood out to me is that those people that we went and visited, they know Lake Stevens. They know Lake Stevens because Lake Stevens shows up every year and goes in there and talks about what we need. And not only do they show up, but we show up in force. And so they see us and they say this city means business. They are here. They are knocking on our doors. And I think that says a lot about about our city and and, you know, the people that we have here on council and behind the scenes here. in public works and parks and everything. And so it was just, it was really impressive to see the response from those, those aides and offices when they're like, Oh, Lake Stevens, we remember you. So that was, that was really great too. And I want to point that out as well. So, you know, if you, As a citizen sitting behind here going, why do we need six people to go to DC? This is why, because it makes an impact. And if the six of us going to DC can get us a half a million dollars in funds for one of our projects, I think that's well worth it. So I just wanted to throw that input out there as well.

It was interesting, you know, Gene and I got to stay for the ESC meetings, which were kind of a rinse and repeat of the two days that we had there, as fast as they were. But we did get to see the same people. We got to kind of reiterate our standpoints in a few of them and got to bring some of our projects up in the meetings. And that's where I think we learned that while we will not get a big, beautiful trail, we might be able to get pedestrian bridge if we framed it in a different bucket of money. So it was very interesting to go through all that. Very worthwhile. Thank you.

Thanks for having this on the agenda, the opportunity to provide feedback to the citizens about our trip and why we did it and what we hope, the good things we hope to come from it. Appreciate it and appreciate your support with the trip as well, Caitlin. Thank you.

Spot on, Caitlin. Great job.

All right. We are going to move into council business and we haven't done council business for a while. So it'll be good to hear from everyone tonight. Why don't we start online and Councilwoman Shipman, we haven't heard much from you tonight. Do you have anything you'd like to say for council business this evening?

No, other than hi from sunny Arizona. No, I don't have anything to add tonight other than great meeting. And I wanted to thank everyone who went to DC this year. I wasn't able to attend and it sounds like you guys got a lot done.

Thank you so much. Council Member Donahue.

Yes, so the one main item I had was to talk about the planning Commission meeting where we went over the traffic impact fees and the comprehensive plan update, but now we thoroughly handled that this evening, thank you christy. The other big thing I will mention out of planning commission is unfortunately we lost one of our newer planning commissioners. They had to step down for personal reasons. So we are once again looking for someone to fill that vacant seat. So if anyone out there is interested or you know someone who might be interested, please direct them to the city where they can look at applying.

Great, thank you so much. And then maybe let's start at the end and then we'll work our way this way with Councilman Packard.

Yeah, so this morning I had the opportunity to participate on the panel discussion for US2 Coalition for the Trestle. That panel included Representative Lowe, Senator Marco Leas from... uh, Mukilteo area, uh, Mayor Franklin from Everett, and then, uh, individual from Everett Public Works, and then, um, another individual from Washington, or WSDOT. So it was a good conversation, ultimately, just around how do we get stuff going, where do we get the funding from, what kind of, uh, coordination needs to happen between the county, between the state, between the federal levels to make stuff happen. One of the points I raised was making sure that we are very proactive as a city and as individual legislators to engage our community on this topic, because most people aren't going to the WSDOT website to see when they're going to update something about the trestle, but we're all Many of us are heavily impacted by that trestle and could be impacted by, you know, decisions that they make down the road. So what would it mean for us to do a town hall, say, here in this room and invite citizens from Monroe, citizens and legislators from Monroe, Granite Falls, Snohomish, Marysville, et cetera, to have a regional conversation here to engage as many people as possible and make sure people can provide input where appropriate and be aware of what's going on.

Great. Thank you very much. Glad you were able to attend that meeting. Councilwoman Edwards.

Yeah, so I really just wanted to talk about that DC trip and make sure that that is like everybody knows about what how that went down because it was amazing. On another note, I do just want to comment on the construction over at the new elementary number eight. I drive past that every single day and I have to tell you, they have a street sweeper out there cleaning up the roads, every single morning. Um, I living just, you know, very close proximity to that project. Um, I've been really impressed with the professionalism of the people who are at that job site. I mean, they keep their stuff clean, they're respectful, they drive by and they wave. Like it's, it's just, it's been really great to see that, um, have minimal impact on our community while they're doing that build. So I just wanted to mention that. Thank you.

Councilman McManus.

So I got to attend the US2 Trust meeting this morning at seven o'clock today after a major holiday. That was a lot of fun. I just wanted to give Nate a shout out. He did a great job representing the city and the county in general at this dais. He did a great job speaking to the need. It was interesting to hear The progress and somewhat lack of progress on it, right? It's been an issue we've all talked about for years, and it doesn't look like it's going to be remedied anytime soon, but there is a lot of forward progress being made. And I think it is still on the number two biggest project outside the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River. So we're kind of waiting for that to be resolved to get moving on the trestle. Also went with Council Member Moriah to the Memorial Day Proclamation. That was very interesting to see that and watch that whole process with the Navy just on the Friday before Memorial Day. Utility Commission coming up tomorrow, but have been doing each of the sewer district commissions voiced the opinions of some of the downtown business being upset with how long the project's taking and the disruptions to downtown businesses. So I shared that with them and yeah, it was pretty busy couple of weeks, so.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Council Member Arai. I'll mention a couple of things. One, Puget Sound Regional Council's General Assembly is this Thursday in Seattle. The main agenda item is adoption of the Regional Transportation Plan. They've had a very extensive public outreach, and it's worth checking out. Great tools for mobility, for planning. So that'll be a great thing. Another item, Snowtrack is an awesome organization. It's a coalition of community leaders, transit agencies, paratransit providers. Hot off the press, they just put together a map that gathers all of the information on providers, including people with disabilities, fixed route, paratransit services, TAP, all of the different providers that you need to now go and kind of gather them all in one resource. So check out their website. And they printed about quite a few of these. So if any community you know, organization or the senior center would need these. SnowTrack has them in both English and Spanish. Another item is FIFA is coming this June. There's six games in Seattle. Lots of transit options from Everett Station, from Lenoir Transit Center. If you're staying local in Everett, there is a fan zone at the Everett Marina at Boxcar Park. There's free shuttles available on those watch party days. And there's a flyer. I left some over there. But look for that. Great stuff. That's all I have.

Thank you so much. Bye. I've had some really great conversations with Clerk Chellan and Deputy Clerk Weaver and Administrator Brazel around an issue that I had brought to their attention a couple months ago, and I wanted to bring it up to council and maybe have as a discussion item at a future meeting. One of the things I feel like has been missing with our city council is just an opportunity to highlight the issues sort of the uniqueness of our community, different things happening in our community, and invite that into council in some form or another. And I don't know the answer. I think there are a lot of different ways that it can be done. I've attended council members and council meetings in other cities and I've been really impressed by some of the ways they bring student groups in and give them three minutes at the podium to talk about what they're doing or community, if there are community events, making sure that there's space for those representatives to come in. And so just would like to kind of plant a seed and talk more about how we might ensure that there is, this is something, this is, council meetings are watched by folks here and on YouTube. And it's a great opportunity to highlight some of the great things happening in our community, invited them in here. And so just want to kind of talk more about what that might look like. I also wanted to share in my, when I wear my other hat as a county employee, we get a monthly sort of, monthly email that talks about the, the event, not really events, the, the, the different things happening that month, what month it is, what it commemorates, what different things are highlighted that month. And I have May's in front of me. It's kind of, it's a little bit long because this, it would be for all of May at this point, but my thought was I could also have this. And for each council meeting read like the upcoming for the upcoming week, what things are being celebrated or commemorated. So I'm going to read May's just to give you a taste of what it is. And then that can be part of our conversation is that that's something that would be interesting to bring in to our council business. So for this month, May is mental health awareness month, a time to focus on our mental wellbeing and our communities and individuals and It's Older Americans Month, focusing on recognizing contributions to and promoting well-being. It's Asian American and Pacific Islander Month to celebrate cultural traditions and presence in our communities. And it's Jewish American Heritage Month to celebrate history and contributions to our society. May 1st was Vesek, which is Buddha Day, celebrates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha. May 5th was the National Day of Awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, raising awareness of violence against Indigenous women and girls. May 5th was also Cinco de Mayo, Mexican heritage celebration honoring victory over the French empire. May 16th was Veterans Armed Forces Day, honoring the men and women who serve in our military. May 17th was LGBTQ plus international day against homophobia, transphobia, and transphobia, raising awareness of discrimination. May 21st was Global Accessibility Awareness Day, promoting digital accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities. May 21st was World Day for Cultural Diversity for dialogue and development, and UN Sanctioned Day to promote cultural diversity and peace. May 25th, of course, was Memorial Day, honoring those who died while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. And then May 29th, is the Ascension of Baha'i Ullah, commemorating the passing of the founder of the Baha'i faith. And May 30th will be World MS Day, raising awareness and understanding about multiple sclerosis. So just wanted to share that, wanted to plant that seed and hopefully have a discussion moving forward about how we recognize what's happening in our community. So thank you. We now move into executive session.

So we have executive sessions scheduled for this evening.

It's a confidential session of the council. We will be having a discussion to evaluate the qualifications of a candidate to appointment to elective office. There is no action expected to follow this evening. How long do we think executive session?

We're looking at 15 minutes. So let's say we clear the room and come back around 726.

Let's say 730. 730. Yeah. Okay. We'll let you know if we're done earlier. Yeah.

And again, no action to follow. And this is executive session per RCW 4230110. And as you said, it's to discuss qualifications of a candidate for appointment. going to extend the executive session 30 more minutes to eight o'clock again, with no action to follow.