City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay. All right. All right. Welcome everybody. Uh tonight is Tuesday, May 5th. Uh welcome to our city council meeting, our regular one here in city hall. We're also broadcasting via uh via Zoom and we'll have a recording available in a couple days. So, if you join me for the invocation and the pledge of allegiance, please. Dear Father, thank you for bringing us together here again tonight to do what's best for our city residents, our our community, and and to and please give us the wisdom to work together as a team, respecting each other's opinions and and perspectives so that we can work together to a a common goal. Amen.

Amen. Amen. 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. Okay, we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. I'll start with a roll call. Looks like this one should be pretty simple. Council member Daro here. Council member Severs present. Council member Ball here. Mayor Perm Dunn, happy to be here. Council Council Member Clinger here. Council member Curts here. Council member Fischer here. All right. Hey, thanks everybody. U beautiful day. We are up to agenda approval. I know we have one request for a change and then we'll go to any others.

Uh yeah, Madame Mayor, I move item 12 C be removed from tonight's agenda. Emergency management services interlocal. There will be an additional meeting and discussion. We'd like to see that finalized before we move to approve it. Perfect. And do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second by council member Severs. Those in favor, please say I. I. All right. Any oppose? Oh, no. Okay. Motion passes. 70. Any other requests for changes? Yeah. I'd like Oh, I'm sorry. Hold. We raise your hand so I can acknowledge you. I think we did have Council Member Ball first and I'll go to you, Council Member Ball. Sorry. Um, yeah. I uh would move to approve or to move um item 11, let's see, D. Okay.

And E into general business. It won't take long. Okay. So, the request, the motion is to move general business items D and E to under general business. We'll just add them in at the end. Um, do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second by council member Severs. Those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Right. Motion passes 70. Do you still have a I basically just have a procedural question. I would just like to uh compliment on F if I can when that comes up. Just I have a compliment board some information. Do we need to move that out of the agenda? Um we do have council reports before if you want to. I'll do that then. Thank you.

Perfect. Council member Curtis. Um I'd like to move um 11F to general business. Okay. Motion is to move uh general business um 11F to action items 12. Um do we have a second? Second. We have a motion by council member Kurt. Second by council member Severs. Those in favor, please say I. Any opposed? All right. Motion passes 70. Just make sure you guys get close to your mics, please. Tonight, do we have any other requested changes? All right. Not hearing any. U Madame May, I move the agenda as pres as amended. Excuse me. Second. You have a motion and a second by council member Severs. Those in favor, please say I. I.

Any opposed? Right. Motion passes 70. We have an amended agenda. All right. What that brings us up to citizen comments. Um, first of all, do we have any yet in person? No. All right. So, if you would like to make a citizen comment either now or at the end, we have the white half sheets by the door over there. If you can fill one out, get it to our shell at the end of the table. It'll make its way over to me. Um, if there's anybody online who'd like to make a citizen comment, please send a quick note. I mean, really quick to our meeting hosts to let me know so I can call on you. I do know we have no written comments today. Do we have anybody online?

Okay. And I'm not seeing any here in chambers. So we will have another option opportunity later in the meeting if there's something that comes up you'd like to comment. Okay. Um we have no appointments um announcements, proclamations, and special presentations. Staff innovation award.

So mayor, I'm going to invite Jen Camp up to the podium to make the presentation. But as she's doing that, just to remind the council, this is an item that uh we introduced a while back and on a periodic basis, we hope to bring forward these uh items for you just to highlight things that are happening within the organization that really lead to uh innovative approaches that staff comes up with uh to solve problems, improve service delivery, or add value to um anything that that we're doing as a city that helps to serve the community better. And so with that, I'll turn the floor over to Jen. All right. And I think we have Zach Sherman and Brandon Depollo online tonight. If so, could you move them so they could speak if they so choose?

Guys, we're getting we're trying to promote you to panelists. So, if you see that, please accept. 3D print.

All right. I'm going to go ahead and kick it off. Madame Mayor, members of the council, we'd like to recognize our two golf crew supervisors, Brandon Depollo and Zach Sherman. The golf course traditionally uses resin tea markers to mark the tea boxes at a cost of almost $20 per marker. Uh, keep in mind there are two T- markers at each T position. These T markers often need to be repainted and replaced over time as they weather and break down, and sometimes they simply disappear. Uh thanks to the curiosity to find a better solution and the innovative capabilities of a 3D printer, Zach and Brandon had the idea to 3D print their own custom markers. Cost for one T marker for them to make is anywhere from $250 to $3 a piece. So that's times two for each T box. The 3D printer they selected has the ability to print unattended and remotely. So they can basically set the set the print and walk away. Then they can set the print after hours and check it. um and make sure it's printing, be done with it, so they don't have to babysit it, so they can do it while they're doing their other tasks. Uh let's see. The project has led to coordination with fleet and park staff to find other ways to use 3D printing. Um one other solution was we had a push button door on the golf picker, the button broke, and they 3D printed a button to replace it. Zach and Ben's creativity and ingenuity has proven a success. We are so proud to recognize their accomplishments and their continued efforts to find better solutions to daily tasks. So, we just want to thank them. They're online. I don't know if you have any questions for them. Passed around the samples. Um, they actually have four or five different colors. I think there's a blue and a black. Um, but those are some examples. And the theme of course at Trail Head is Sasquatch.

That's great. Great. Great work. I want to know who the programming genius is of of the pair. It's it's both of them. Great. Yeah, they both kind of, you know, they're addicted to this now and they're trying to find other things they can create. I love it. No, that's great. Great work, you guys. Either one of you want to say anything?

They're like, "No, I'm staying off camera. We're just here to watch." No, thanks for being here off uh after hours. You guys uh really proud of of the work you're you're doing and um we welcome any great ideas like this. So, if I can tell a tale, I don't want to speak for Zach, but through the course of this development, St. uh Zach stopped in my office at least three times to give me updates, and he was super excited each time that they found a way to refine the design or to tweak the process to make it more efficient. So, they put a lot of effort into it, and you can see the result. You you you saw it and touched it and this is going to have a tangible improvement at the golf course. So, again, Brandon, Zach, thanks for all the effort.

Nice work. Looks good. Okay, let me get back to the agenda here. All right. Um, that's it. So, we are up to reports and inquiries. City council reports. Uh, council member Fischer, since you had commer. That's okay. So, um, couple Rich and I, we Rich is president of Rotary. My husband, you can get closer to the mic, please. Thank you.

So, Rich is president of Rotary, and we were up in Sandp Point this weekend at a at a Rotary conference. And of course, everybody asks, "Where are you from? Where are you from?" And we always say Liberty Lake. And it's so nice because people don't say, "Oh, where's that?" anymore. They know. And secondly, the second compliment we got throughout the weekend is that it's such a beautiful community. So again, kudos to to our beautiful city. And a couple things I want to share, and I'm putting on my Rotary hat here, is that Don Walker, he's a longtime resident of Liberty Lake, and he does the Hometown Hero banners that you see come up, and they're going to go up here pretty quick. Um, on Saturday, April 23rd, we're going to have the kickoff. It's the Hometown Heroes recognition ceremony. We have quite a few folks up on the banners this year, and I'm proud to say my father is one of them. Um, so we're going to really recognize our veterans and our heroes. Also, we have the Memorial Day pancake feed May 25th out at uh the park. And then Rich is Rich is a part of the Liberty Lake 25 years celebration. So, um, happy to be involved and happy to participate. So, thank you all very much. Thank you. All right. Any other council comments? Council member Severs.

Yeah. I had the opportunity um to attend an energy policy forum last week uh that was hosted by a Vista Modern Electric Greater Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce helped put this on. Wonderful, wonderful event, very informative. And we're just saying this uh for public education purposes that they highlighted some really scary potential outcomes to our current energy grid. a lot of it that's being put out that by additional needs from AI and other sources, but we're we're very lucky in uh in our area to have a lot of hydro power. Hydro power is sort of tapped out. The rivers don't flow higher ever. And so um so there's a major need to fill the fill that gap. Wind is used, solar is used, but they can only be used when the sun's shining and when the wind's blowing. So they don't work all year. of natural gas is a big uh very very important part of this. Some interesting things came about from state policies. So the some of the data that they were putting out there said we need to increase the amount of energy that we're putting into our system or electricity we're putting into our system by about 50% over the next 5 years. But in order for, this was a quote from Modern Electric's uh CEO, in order for us to put in a new substation, it takes us seven years to get through permitting with the state. So, we're being our our hands are really being tied um by state legislature and luckily they're hopefully catching up. But I just want to bring this up to talk to your state reps or just be aware of this. If we don't do this, uh, one, our residents could be facing rolling blackouts in five or six years. This is a re very real issue. Um, and, uh, and two, when our energy grid can't keep up, especially during extreme peak times around January when we get it gets the coldest around here, people can't heat their homes. That's that's a major safety risk. I'll put it that way. So,

just very informative. So, I just encourage people to um to stay informed or get informed on this issue um and talk to your state reps to try to help fix this problem. So, thank you.

Thank you. All right, Council Member Ball, I believe you're next. So last week I chaired my first meeting of the lodging tax advisory committee and um there we had a quorum where there was three of us um and quite a few people in the gallery and uh it was very nerve-wracking for me because we had more asks than we have money um so um between the three of us you know we we hammered it out and I'm sure you guys have read it and uh I just want you to know we did our very best to make it fair to everybody, but we wanted to have money left over. So um in case this turns out to be a a bad year for additional um lodging tax that we have money for next year but um uh yeah just the one gentleman David Himba was on uh um you know on virtual so it was just Shannon and I sitting up here. She's from Elac and we were both just pounding fur furiously on our calculators trying to um you know figure it out and make it fair. But um I was pretty happy. I think we did pretty good. Um when the meeting was adjourned, I thought, "Oh, a couple of them are going to come up here and hit me because I they didn't get all the money they wanted." But they were very kind and very gracious and thankful. So that's it. Super. Great. Thank you for doing that and congratulations on getting through your first one.

All right. Any other council reports? Mayor Pro Tim?

Yeah. Last Wednesday, the STA board of directors voted to put the 210 renewal onto the August ballot. This is a renewal measure to fund STA transit in our community at the same rate that it has for the past 15 years. The renewal was also voted to include a 20-year sunset clause so that the community will have a chance to renew reconsider that after 20 years. It puts a little bit of a onus on the agency to demonstrate and prove that the money is being used effectively. Um I uh voted I'm not a voting member, but I encouraged our small cities voting member to uh vote in approval of Lance Spears. He's actually the board d uh chair right now. Um in that the agency has a lot of really important federal grants uh that if there were to be a suspend or a pause of funding uh it would reflect it poorly and potentially eliminate federal grants that are currently in process. So, um I'm happy to report that the people have an ability to vote in August, uh for Sound Trans or Spokane Transit. Excuse me.

I've been spending too much time on the west side. All right. Any other council reports? Council member Kurts, this is great tonight. Mine's not necessarily a report, but um we had the town hall. Was it last week? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um seems like it was a lot long ago, but um it was really nice to see so many people there. Um I think it was our most well attended town hall. It was

it was very nice to see all the youth that were there and to hear from them. Um and I would love to hear more from you on other topics that we have coming up. Um the other thing related to youth is that there are um theater performances. TAC has Shrek going on and Ridgeline has Susicle which is quite amazing if you haven't been. Um it's a great way to support local youth um who live here with us too. So they would love to see you at the ships. Great.

All right. Anybody else? Since we've got almost everybody today. No. All right. Um I'll jump in real quick to my mayor's report. Um I'm going to start off. I don't know if anybody has seen the article in this this uh month's splash. The Ridgeline dance team um won the 3A state championship this year. This is only the third year of the program. I won't read the article to you. It was very well done. Um but congratulations to the girls. Um I just found this out when the paper came out or else I would have tried to have some of them here. Maybe we'll try um um at the not here for the next meeting. Maybe I'd like to recognize them somehow if we can get some of them to come. So that was really exciting news. Ridgeline's been doing well in in those type of things and and their sports and and just all around. So really glad to see them uh excelling in their first, you know, four years in existence. Um farmers market. So um we've had some more signups. So thank you. um since a lot of you are new to the market or you know um it has been almost you know um been all through the winter. So just always give a quick recap of kind of how everything goes over there and um who's kind of responsible for what. So a we've got the uh the signup sheet um online um you've probably seen it. We have two slots in the morning shift from 9 to 9 to 11 and then two spots from for the 11 to 1. we really have room for um two of us, you know, whoever of the of the eight of us here. Um a usually a CEC member and then there's usually there's usually room for like an invited guest, whether it's um you know, the library, friends of the library talking about the sore or or whatever, but there is a sign up for that because though the tent looks fairly big, it gets crowded when there's four or even four or more people there and people come in and they're looking at the maps and um so we just don't like to get it too crowded. Uh, so if you can sign up for that, even if it's two hours at a time, my intention was to be there the first two weeks, but I'm going to be out of town those the first weekend. So,

just in in general, when you get there, um, the tent will be set up. Um, Jen's crew knows knows where everything goes. It will have a black and yellow tote with everything in it, two tables, and some chairs. Um, I can I'll email everybody. It's kind of like a sketch of kind of how it's been set up in the past. There are table stretchy tablecloths now in the bins, so we don't have to worry about them blowing away. There's a couple different sizes, so you may have to trial and error some of them because we've have some different sized tables. There should be um some um some display things so we can put in some of the the handouts that we have. Visit Spokane Guides. I think we have the new one. So, I'll make sure before opening day that the bin has all the current information in it. So, I usually fill it with, you know, handouts. this um the visit Spokane guide. Um there's biking information. There's stuff on the library. There's all all kinds of handouts there. Um we also um will have usually some laminated um posters that we will u hang up. There's should be tape and pens and all that stuff in in that tote um for upcoming movies and events and things like that. And as the summer goes along, there will be more things. Um usually there's things, you know, about um summer camps and other local things going on. um try to leave one half of the tent to the CEC or whoever our other guest is. And uh so I said when you get there, tent will be up, the tables will be there, the tote will be there. It's your your job to set up and then at the whoever's there at the end to take everything down, put it back in the bin. The crew will come back. They will put the tables away, the chairs away, they'll take down the tent and store it as as we usually do. For those of you setting up, it's really great to maybe get there about 8:30 because people start showing up. And I've been still setting up at like quarter after 9 because people come in and they start talking and, you know, so I can't set up with, you know, in 30 minutes usually because there's people

stopping by, which is great. Um, but if you if you you could come a little bit early and if it's slow on the on the last shift, most of the time we're starting to close up about4 to 1. Um, just kind of use your gut feel. We're all adults. We can figure that we can figure that out. But I'll make sure the bin is updated. Um Jen, I just have to make sure I know where it is. I'm not quite sure where it is right now. Uh and then we'll just make sure everything is in there every week. So I will be there the third week, but if you can go in, put your name down for a couple weeks. You don't have to look out the whole summer, but we do like to have have at least one of us there each shift um at a minimum. And if you're signed up and you can't make it, um, if you can look at the list and I hope we all have each other's cell phone numbers. If not, if we can get that list back out, maybe it's good to send it out anyway. Um, so we all know how to get in touch with each other to let somebody know. And I'm usually around Saturday morning, so if I'm not signed up, some wants to call me, I can always slap on a hat and come over. So I'll send out more information, but I just want to get that out there for everybody because I know in the past, you know, people have shown up and they well, who's responsible for what. So, I figured I'd just cover it tonight. Um, uh, the gsi legislative update was last week. Um, it was interesting. We had, um, four of our legislators up there. Suzanne Schmidt, who is, um, not returning as she's running for county commissioner. Um, Tim Tim Arms.

Yes. Um, he's retiring. And then we also had, uh, a new, um, representative, um, Hunter Ael from, uh, I think the seventh. He was this was his first stint um in the in the repres as as a representative and um Senator Richelli was there as well. It was interesting. I try to go to this every year but on I'll be honest and yeah I know this will be out there for the public but I didn't really see a whole lot of new information from the meeting. We got a little bit of their perspective on what comes next but um I'm hoping for more meat and potatoes next year when they do it to be honest. So, we'll all be with several of us have discussed that and so we'll be feeding that back to GSI. Um, tomorrow morning I take off for WACA for a day. Um, the AWC mayor as CEO meeting is tomorrow at noon and the SRTC uh monthly board meeting is coming up next week and I have not looked out much further than that. So, I will turn this over to Mark for his report.

Thank you, Mayor. um in terms of council and the guests that we have joining us both in the chamber and online. Uh just a few reminders to bring to your attention. Uh it is and I think Shane is going to pull up a a handy guide for us to go by. It is public service recognition uh week. This is something that comes about every year in May or this the first week in May. Uh, and so we're in it now. And I just wanted to use it as an opportunity to remind everyone as especially we're into spring getting into summer, we're having uh our community events rev back up. Uh, obviously our golf course maintenance and park maintenance and street maintenance and all our all of our maintenance activities are ongoing. And when you see folks out, especially um working on the street or in the ride ofway or in public spaces, those aren't the easiest uh tasks uh to perform. As we were all reminded uh of today and are reminded often, um these folks are putting everything on the line to make sure that the community not only is aesthetically pleasing, but in the police department's uh from the police department's perspective, making sure that the community is safe and that we're responding to calls and all of those kinds of things. So, just another opportunity to tell all of the people that come to work on a daily basis and make uh Liberty Lake a great community, thank you uh both individually and as a unit. And then also to point out for anyone who just heard what I said and said, I want to be part of that. Uh we have three current openings. Um, and so if you're interested in joining the team at the city of Liberty Lake, I encourage you to get on to our website, navigate it to our uh careers page and check out the current uh job openings that are there and if anything interests you, consider applying. Um, moving on, the mayor mentioned the farmers market. Um, sorry, I skipped the public safety awards. The public safety awards are

upcoming on May 14th. That is, uh, Thursday of next week. And this is an annual event that gives the community an opportunity to specifically look at uh public safety organizations and the good work that they're doing. And that takes place over at the Center Place Event Center in Spokane Valley hosted by the Greater Valley uh Greater Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce. And so, uh registration is still open. If you're interested in checking that out, um I would encourage you to um register for that. If you need help doing that, uh, Cody Melnick or Rochelle can help get you set up. Um, farmers market, mayor mentioned that. I'm not going to spend too much time other than to say it kicks back off on Saturday, May 16th, and we all look forward to getting out there and spending time at that uh, event. It's a great um, way to get out and spend time interacting with neighbors every year. May is also National Wildlife uh, awareness month. And so we've talked a lot about disaster preparedness and hazard mitigation. Want to point out the opportunity to uh plug into a specific com uh conversation about wildlife and forestry safety. Uh there's a fair that is specifically designed to cover those topics on Saturday, May 16th up at the fire station number 41 in Deer Park starting at 10:00 a.m. This is just really um a a a group of folks that represent different fire districts, the conservation district, uh different um woodland and uh fire safety organizations to give you essentially tips about how to protect your home, how to protect uh other assets in the community. And so going along with National Wildlife Awareness Month, this is uh something that is open to the public. And if you're interested in that, uh, we would encourage you to consider attending. And then a little bit downstream, and I wanted to point

this out. It's still quite a ways away, uh, the Association of Washington City's annual conference. It's in Spokane this year. I know uh, many of you have already registered, and I just wanted to point out that this is coming up because if you would like to attend, you can register for the whole conference. You can also register for single day uh, portions of it. So, if you have a scheduling conflict that pre uh prevents you from going to the whole thing, consider maybe going to one of the days um and we can help get you registered uh if you want to do that. Before I move on to the reports, are there any questions about any of those items?

Just a quick note on the conference for those of you working um toward your AWC um certificate of municipal leadership, that does get you 10 um credits toward that. I know some of you are in the process, some some already have it. Um, some are very very close, but they did change uh over the last couple years. I'm on I'm on the education committee now, so this was news to me that they did change a couple years ago. Um, the number of credits you need in each area of study, it doesn't take anything away from those of us who have earned it, but those who are close may go in and see that they have, say, more than the 30 credits needed for the um for the first level of certification, but all of those categories have not been met yet. Um, a lot of those should be able to be fulfilled by doing one or one or however many required classes through their um, their virtual learning.

Good point. Um, because that's important especially if you're pursuing that. Any other questions about these before we move on? All right. So, I want to update you on the results dashboard. Um, I emailed this out to you uh, a while ago. This is something that we've uh, started uh, we update this quarterly. This is the essentially the return on investment portion um of our uh priority based budgeting and strategic plan. And so Shane, if you go to the next page, we're not going to go through the whole thing here. I just wanted to kind of show you an example of what this thing looks like. So if you want to know what am I going to see if I go on to the website and click on the results dashboard. So you get a sense of uh from a program byprogram perspective. Um and a program is essentially a set of service services that we deliver. Um you get a sense of what the budget is uh for not only the current year but the previous year um the number of FTEEs that are specifically allocated to support that uh program and then some results and and metrics. And you can see here on the street maintenance side and I've chosen that for a reason that I'll let you know in just a minute. Uh you see some of these things that we've been talking about as we've briefed you on the pavement master plan and the 20-year capital facilities plan. We're using this condition index. The pavement condition index is going to become a key metric for us over time so that in an aggregate way we can essentially measure the condition of the streets in the city. And you see in 2025 it sits there at 77. And so that's a key one to look at because what we're going to be able to do is see how the things that we do on an annual basis affect that number. You remember as it goes up that's good. As it goes down that's bad. Um and moving on uh another way to express that result which is that the condition of the streets meets the established standard as we look at the amount of

investment that we're putting into our streets network uh each year both in terms of routine maintenance and in terms of capital improvements and you see that for both 24 and 25. This is a metric that is recorded at the end of the year. So you won't see 26 show up until the end of 26. Some of the numbers we report at the beginning of the year like survey results. So you'll see a 26 number. Now uh the other thing that I wanted to point out is the metric that uh reflects the number of uh essentially requests we get for service relating to street repairs or maintenance of the street. And you can see that uh over the last five quarters um we had a dip and then a resurgence there in the number per quarter that we get. And then the important thing to notice is over there on the right in 98% of those cases we're handling those requests within the service level agreement that we've set which is essentially 48 hours. The reason that I wanted to point that out is because right now on an on in an ongoing way with our street maintenance program, we have some chip sealing that's happening out on Broadway. And some of you may have seen the post that the public works department made on social media about that. And another uh sort of regular comment that we've been seeing and that I want to address is that in the upcoming weeks you will see some cold patching repairs done along Molar uh specifically between Mission and and Country Vista to handle some of those uh potholes that have occurred there. Um, and so if you're looking for the best way to tell us about items that you're seeing out in the community that you want to us you want us to look at and repair, make a request is the best way to do that. Like I said, we have we we've set it a standard for ourselves of addressing those items in 48 hours. And you can see

that we're handling those 98% of the time within that. Now, I want to qualify that if it require if it's something that requires a major repair, the major repair portion of it may take longer than 48 hours. If it's an immediate fix, we're going to do that. Um, but just uh understand that that's that's a um that's a condition of this. We we don't necessarily make major repairs on site, but we put them into a work order and we get back to them. Um, any questions about the results dashboard? Currently, we have most of our most and more aligned programs represented. The plan is to have all of our most and more aligned programs represented this year so that we can give the community a sense of what they're getting for the investment that they put into these uh programs through the budget. Any questions about that? Seeing none, uh Shane, if you'll back up to the uh report, I'll go to the last item, and that's just to give you a quick update on the safe and healthy Spokane process. Just as a reminder, uh the task force, the safe and healthy Spokane task force, uh was put together essentially uh to develop this regional vision um and implementation plan to address uh sort of the ongoing challenges of mental health, criminal justice, emergency response, and public safety across Spokane County. So, the task force has met multiple times. Um they put together advisory committees. I uh was able to sit on one of the advisory committees. We've completed our work. And so what that means is the task force is going to meet again to consider all of the recommendations that the various advisory committees have settled on on May 7th, the day after tomorrow, to adopt those into a formal set of recommendations that will then go out to all of the communities. So in fairly short order after that. So, I would expect probably in the second or third

week of May, we're going to get a schedule of the task force going out and briefing uh elected bodies across the county as to what these recommendations are and what their next steps are. So, u we will get that scheduled when we know what that is and when the task force will be in front of this council to provide the briefing. But I wanted to give you kind of a preliminary update to know that that's coming and those are scheduled to occur throughout the county between now and say the first week in June. So it'll be fairly quick. Any questions about that one? All right. So, mayor, that concludes my report. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks.

All right. Planning Commission. Welcome, Abby.

Good evening, council. I think Shane is pulling up my presentation. So, we'll wait for him to get that up. Awesome. It's great to see you all tonight. Uh, for those who may be watching on Zoom and don't know me yet, my name is Abby Sprag and I'm here on behalf of the planning commission to present a brief overview of the 2026 through 2046 comprehensive plan that we have been very busy working on. Being the newest member, I suppose they decided to do a trial by fire, but I'm here and Amy's in the audience to answer questions. And I also saw Tom back there. Let's let's jump right into it. Can we go to the next slide, please? I first wanted to walk you all through the general topics of the proposed plan and give you an overview uh of what's inside each of these topics. Let's start with uh cultural and historical resources. This element focuses on Liberty Lakes history, the identifying and evaluating of historical sites as well as acknowledging cultural resources within city limits. Next, we have climate and natural resources. This element focuses on adapting to climate impacts, shoreline and storm management. Though we don't have shoreline, we do have flood zones. uh as well as carbon reduction goals which is going to be important later in my presentation. Next, there is urban design which focuses on establishing goals and policies that will guide pattern of development and redevelopment throughout the city. Next up, housing and community services, which focuses on affordable housing strategies, housing supply and variety,

uh and general community services such as transportation and shelter. Next is land use. This element details um zoning regulations, future land patterns and community character and feel. Then there is transportation. This element details how Liberty Lake will develop, manage and maintain its multiodal transportation system to support future growth, enhance connectivity, ensure and ensure safe, efficient travel for both residents and visitors alike. Uh next we have utilities, public facilities and services. This addresses the future need for electrical, natural gas and telecommunication lines as well as reliable water and sewer, energy efficiency, and the modernization of overall infrastructure. Next, economic development. This element overviews career and employment growth, local business uh support, and economic vitality. Parks and recreation. This details uh Liberty Lakes plan for accessible parks as well as leisure facilities for residents. And last but definitely not least, our comprehensive or our capital facilities plan which focuses on public infrastructure investments, long-term planning, and the funding of essential services. This is almost identical to what we have in our current plan uh besides a combining of a couple elements. uh those being uh community and human services with housing to create housing and community services and then utilities with essential public facilities to create utilities, public facilities and services. Our current plan has 14 elements and our proposed plan has 12. Does anyone have any questions about the large aspects of the plan before moving

forward? All right, next slide. All right, we are now going to shift focus onto the biggest changes and the biggest additions from the previous plan. Let's begin with the biggest changes. As the slide shows, state laws and mandates have driven many of our discussions and revisions the past few months and not just for housing, though that is a very large one. We also under underwent an effort to update our master plans within transportation. These include both uh the sidewalk and pavement master plans. Overall, the transportation element of our current plan is eight pages. Uh but in our new draft, it is over 40 pages long. Uh this is due to mostly due to the inclusion of maps and visuals. Lastly, staff in the planning commission worked hard to make language over overall more accessible and focused with less legal ease where possible. We did this uh with the goal that every citizen will have easy access uh when they read. The structure of each element was also reworked uh by putting the applicable goals and policy related to each in the actual element instead instead of having a whole chapter dedicated to that at the beginning. Does anyone have any questions about the biggest changes from the previous plan? All right, next slide. This one seems really simple and the slide is a little sad uh but it is not a small addition. The biggest addition from the previous plan also comes from new state laws and mandates and falls within our climate and natural resource chapter. This addition is coming directly from new growth management act revision uh a new growth management act revision and requirement that we need to

follow in regards to greenhouse gas emissions and planning. Um any questions on this? All right, next slide. I know that was a quick overview and if there are any citizens watching online that want to know more, please come visit a planning commission meeting. we'd be happy to give you more details. Um, the planning commission is proud of the work that we have done on this plan and we want to thank uh all the staff that have worked very hard with us on it. Um, thank you for your time tonight and if there are no other questions that is the end of my presentation. Anybody? Mark has one.

Abby, when is your next planning commission meeting if somebody does want to come and join it? Uh May 13th at 4 pm. Perfect. Thank you, Mark. Mayor Pro Tim, uh when will the revised comprehensive plan be available to the council for consideration? May. May 19th. Great. Um and then we as a city then submit that for uh consideration by an authority. Is it commerce or agent? Yeah, it needs I know it definitely needs to go to SRTC. We're reviewing Milwoods for the first time next week. Yeah,

great. Um, I just am grateful for the work of the planning commission. In my opinion, our comp plan is at the base of all of the statutes and codes that the city presents. Uh, we hopefully can look to every one of the ordinances and resolutions we produce and point to something within the comp plan which is being lived out in that action. So, it's important stuff and thanks y Thanks for thanks for all the hard work everybody. Okay. All right. Okay. Next up, workshop discussions. Next up is the 2026 parks, recreation, open space, and trails plan. Hi, Jen. Hello again. You've got a nice handout here at your desk.

Yes. I was just going to point that out. So, wait. Well, Shane, well, it's my presentation. Uh, my printed or we had these printed and gave you each a copy of the executive summary. This is a highle version of the 379 page parks plan document. I didn't didn't want to print 379 booklets. Um within that I did print a page that does come out of that 375 379 page document that kind of enlightens some detail on level of service. Oh no, wait. This I left that one out. This is the capital improvement project table. So, um, the table in my slide wasn't wasn't super informative. So, I thought that this was worthy of, uh, printing out so that you could have it to refer to when I hit that slide. So, um, this is, I guess, to what Abby was talking about. This is a portion of the comprehensive plan, the parks and uh, recreation, open space, and trails um, exe executive summary. Next slide, please. So this is just the two slides that show the amount of time. This started clearback last year um about this time and um we just wrapped up in early April. So it was a year-long process. Next slide please. Was broken up into two phases. The first the last slide was phase one. This slide is phase two. Uh the last meeting and final meeting to address everything was April 6th with the Parks and Arts Commission where they reviewed everything and voted to send it forward to council for their consideration. Next slide please. So during the process um we re-evaluated the vision and it was mission and vision but we ended up settling on a vision and values. um we had a shorter statement and those on the parks and arts commission felt like they wanted a

longer more lengthy detailed um description and so we have two one that's quick and easy and one that really details uh the priorities that the commission believes in and that the city can back. Next slide please. So these also are all in the executive summary document that you have in front of you. I'm not going to spend too much time on these. Um, if you do want more detail, there is a lot more detail on each of these slides and these I'll call them elements of the parks plan that you can look into. Um, the parks plan is online. It also, I believe, was uh uploaded to your packet for your review. So, we'll just kind of hit these. I'm going to focus on the last three slides. Next slide, please. Uh, it focus focused on what our current inventory is. The last time we had a parks plan update was 2015. So, it had been quite a few years and a lot of things have changed since then. So, it was definitely time to update our parks plan with the inventory. Next slide, please. Same with facilities and amenities. We've added on so much since then um that that is a fairly significant update. Next slide, please. Public outreach and engagement. We had a lot of engagement uh through this process that started last summer went into late fall um and then into early this year. It was everything from surveys online to uh interacting at community events to farmers market to popup events at the grocery store. We they went to Liberated Launch Academy. a lot a really really good variety of in-house in town on-site events to get opinions and responses to questions. Next slide please. Um through this they identified through

the community engagement uh some priorities aquatic facilities. We heard that more than anything the desire for aquatic uh facilities how important our trails and connectivity are. Um, playgrounds and family amenities, dinner parks really matter. They make a difference. Um, and of course for staff, from staff's perspective, maintaining everything is our number one priority. Maintain it. Maintain it. Maintain it. So, um, those are fairly important keys to this element. Next slide, please. So, this is where I'm going to focus on the the last slides. Um, this ties into the level of service. uh we reassessed and regrouped and currently um we have a a a strong level of service as far as uh acres per per resident. Um however in 20 years uh we incorporated the CIP into this which is also this print out right here that you see. In 20 years the one category that will be unmet is our community parks. Um and community parks are our large parks. That's Orchard Park, Town Square Park, Rocky Hill Park. So there will need to be some consideration uh to do something to add more acreage in this in the um in the event of a community park- sized situation. And I do believe that is in the CIP as well. I think it's on our if you look at this page, it's on the back page under long-term maintenance and aspirational projects, you'll see um a community park added in there. And that's like that's at the 12 year mark out to 20 years. Next slide please. Uh element goals and objectives. This slide is really similar to the last one. Next slide please. The CIP identifies uh basically from one to the the parks plan identifies it as 1

to 6, 6 to 12 and 12 to 20 years out. Um that's what this table is. Um it's very interesting. It's maybe something to have on hand when we go through budget season. Um it can help support some of the budgeting items that we may come to you with as staff um through the budgeting process this next fall. Next slide, please. Okay. So, when I first started this process, I hadn't done this before. Um this was a new pro a new um a new environment for me to be in. And I kept saying, why are we doing this? Well, it's a requirement. It's part of the comprehensive plan. Okay, sure. What we I I can buy that. But as I went through it and I learned that um it updates the current inventory. It identifies gaps that we have that we as staff know we have, but it's never really been put out there and labeled. And so this this tidies it all up, brings all the data in, compiles it, and says, "Oh, you have a gap here, or you need this there, or the community is avidly supportive of this back here." Um, and then I think the the greatest part of it has been the community engagement opportunities. We don't always get to see a lot of direct engagement and feedback from people talking about our parks. As staff, especially as park staff, what we hear is either a concern that something isn't mowed right or watered right or painted right or we hear, you know, a need for a swing or we have, you know, we don't we don't get to really engage beyond that level of of conversation. There was a lot of that in this document and it was all recorded in that 379 pages. So if you want some evening reading, you can go through to see what our residents think about our parks. And there there are some very informing comments that really enlighten this whole plan and will help support our budget process as

we come to you this fall. Next slide, please. So then what are next steps? Um next steps. Oh, and go back a slide, please. The one thing I meant to point out was um one of the other reasons we need this is for RCO grants. RCO is the recreation conservation office in Olympia. It's a state agency that is allotted a set amount of funding every year and every two years they go through a grant funding process. Rocky Hill is an RCO grant-f funed park. Pavilion Park is a grant-f funed park. Orchard Park is not. We did not qualify for that. Town Square was attempted uh way back in the day. Uh they attempted to do a qualify for a grant there and we were unsuccessful. It is a highly competitive process. Um usually there are about 60 communities that apply for this grant every two years and I think that's about where they're at right now. So we're going starting the process now with the application. Um we can't apply for a grant if our parks plan is out of date. It has to be compliant and it has to be updated every six years. So, we are compliant now. We are able to apply for RCO grants. Um, there aren't, believe it or not, a lot of grant opportunities out there for parks. I was I thought there would be a ton and there are not. RCO is the big one um in Washington state to fund playgrounds, parks, anything to do with development or acquisition. Um, so next slide, please. Um the final review I said was April 6th. Parks and arts did vote to support this to bring to you for consideration. Um next steps city council I'm this is the the update. If you have questions feel free to ask. Uh what I would what I would say is the first street read ordinance is on the agenda this evening and the plan is to bring the second read back on May 19th which will give you

time between now and that time to kind of review the document you know come up with any questions you might have um not have it be rushed and then uh it will eventually be integrated uh within the comprehensive plan. Next slide. So, uh, the second part of next steps, um, we hadn't really anticipated looking into an RCO grant and there are many reasons for that that are unimportant now, but with all of this happening and we we asked SCJ Alliance to heavily focus on the Pavilion Park playground renovation. Um, that playground is in desperate need of repair and we have an opportunity to make it better. Um, ever since I've been here, I've heard we need swings, we need more amenities, we need something for the tots because that play structure is only for the 5 to 12s. It's not for the two to fives. Lots of changes should happen, need to happen. The community has voiced their opinions in the plan that they want that to happen. And currently we have budgeted in the CIP just a replacement like in kind to replace the existing play structure to the tune of about $250 to $300,000. So we have that option to do that. It is budgeted already in the CIP for next year. However, the question comes that do we apply for an RCO grant? They have matching grants up to $500,000. Um, do we renovate the playground while we're there? It's a 20 to 30year last. It's not something that we're going to have to replace anytime soon. Do we do it right? We've heard the community speak again that they want a a better playground, more opportunities, more amenities. We have an opportunity to tie the history of the park and the history

of pavilion, the history of the lake into a playground, make it really just the heartbeat of that park. So, as we kind of got further and closing out the parks plan process, I started investigating the RCO grant process and bounced it off Mark and we decided why, you know, why not give it a try? So, I've begun the process. Um, next steps will be they need to have the updated parks plan, which they have, and they have it certified and ready to go, which is already done. They need to have an application by staff which I filled out and clicked submit on April 30th. Um the next steps are technical review which is a 12minute presentation to them which will happen next Tuesday at 9:20. Um and it's a test run to go through your presentation with them. They critique you. The other step that has to happen is they require uh an application by resolution. It's called an RCO grant application by resolution that I need to bring forth to you. So my goal is in a perfect world the second read ordinance would happen next May May 19th and then following that would be the resolution for the RCO grant application. And all that does is shows that the council is aware of what's happening with staff that we are trying to pursue this grant and that you support it. So, even though I've begun the process, it it hasn't I haven't formally I won't formally do the last um grant presentation until August, the end of August. So, um highly competitive. I don't know if we would get it, but we have a heck of a presentation ready to go. So, um next slide. That's it in a big nutshell. Do you have any questions? Um, Jen, did I understand that letters of recommendation are compelling

regarding the RCO application? Yes, and we have several. Yes. Tell a little bit more about who can or who should participate in presenting a letter of recommendation.

So, we uh sent emails out uh to various groups and received letters of recommendation from the the Kuanis, the hub, uh the parks and arts commission and the Spokane County Parks and Recck Director. I think there was one more. Um, and so those are uh basically the goal is to tell a very compelling story in this presentation and I firmly believe we can do that. Um, this park has a huge story to tell. So, I think with that and the the people who we received letters from who who operate out of that park and partake in that park with their events, um I think those those letters are going to be very powerful. Um and I have a I have a really good teacher who's helping me get through this grant process. I'm learning a lot. Um and she is all for getting those letters put in there. So, we have one slide that just shows all the letters on the on the slide and we can I can I'll speak to those letters of support and how powerful um that park is to this community. So,

is it too late to get more if I can get one by tomorrow morning? I'm I'm going to upload. Well, I was saying, have you talked to Greenstone Foundation? Yes, I did. I got one from Joe Frank. Thank you. Okay. Yes. All right. And I was wondering if you needed one from any of our state reps that can make a call potentially. I mean I we I could hold off uploading until Friday. Okay. Let me make I'm on the road in the morning so I'll make a couple calls. If you can shoot me what you might need in Yeah, I have a template.

Oh, perfect. Shoot it over to me and I'll get it out. No guarantees, but I'll try. I will do that. And the the really cool part about Joe Frank and Greenstone, um we have this kiosk that the parks and arts commission is going to be installing at Pavilion Park and it shows the history of the park and where everything came from and why. And there's a little block of information on there that says Greenstone developers were imple implementing um the installation of the park back in 1996. and they are they did all of the construction at no cost to to help get this park built.

And so I thought that's the perfect story right there. And I'm going to point that out that they are still very supportive of that park because they were instrumental in building that park, literally building that park. So nice. Yeah. Anything to to help add to that power of that presentation? And I think I saw Council Member Fischer's hand. Um, I was just just noticing on your annual visits you've got over 533,000. How do you count that? So the that data came from Placer AI. It did. And I don't understand it. That's a Mel thing and a Mark thing. So it's software that somehow tallies

it it basically allows us to get um representations of foot traffic to certain locations and uh that's where we got the data. Oh yeah. And it's only I think it starts just a couple years ago. It's dated I think on there only the past couple years because it just came into play. We don't have the history beyond a couple of years, but we'll continue to build that and it's it is a very popular park. Yeah. Oh yeah. Great. Council member Paul, what was our what does it stand for again? RC recreation recreation conservation office. Okay. And it's state

state agency. Okay. Um, so I do have some questions because I did read through quite a bit of it. Um, full development of of Town Park Square. Um, so are you talking about making the entire parcel a park? Because there's that 4.55 acres. It's not part of, you know, if what we're talking about is if it were turned into a park, the whole thing, then, you know, the acreage would be would contribute to our level of service numbers.

We don't know what that's going to be. It could it could end up being, you know, half of that empty space could be a park space, a quarter of it could be park space. We don't know what that's going to be. We're just trying to anticipate if that whole space were to be turned into a park, then that's where the the acreage would fit into the level of service that's required for buildout. Yeah. Okay. And then on the ball fields, um, where's the concession? I looked at that map. I've never seen a concession there. It me it mentions concession. It does on the ball fields. Yeah. That's a typo. Okay. And then um individual sports was mentioned too like creating more individual sports for programming. Yeah.

Yeah. What were you thinking? Well, we're it's the it's the internal programming that that Muel is working on. Anything that he can he's he's for example looking at developing a taught um taught soccer program. That's an in-house staffled program. Oh, okay. Um and let's see. Okay. And also there's it it seemed to be it echoed a lot about there's no senior or teen programs. Yeah. Is there was we heard a desire for that. Yes. Muel has thoughts and thoughts and grand plans. Yeah. Yes.

And then also throughout this whole thing though I was just it shocking to me but it sure sounds like people want a pool. Yeah. That over and over again. And um the third one on here, playground um shade structures. I think that's very important because if you're at Orchard Park, I have my grandson there doing the water thing and it's boiling outside. You're just standing there boiling. Yeah, we did hear that um people love the addition of the shade structure up at Rocky Hill and that we need one at Pavilion and we need one at Orchard. Yeah. Okay. So, those were just some of my observations, but Yeah.

Yeah. I thought, "Oh my god, this thing's long and it's getting close to, you know, but yeah, in incredible report." Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Anybody else? Council member Curts. Um, first I'm excited that you're excited about the park and that you move from like the idea of like what are we doing with this to the whole the whole planets and I'm excited about the opportunity of the grant and everything and

um I hope it goes well. Um I'm also excited we have more time to read through it because I read through it but it there was so much information I was like, I want to read this again because I I was frantically scribbling notes and um noticed the part about the pool too and that was we've heard that before. Um so we need to align some things with that um if that's what the community is asking for and see what we can do um which was on another document that we had at our desk. Um, I had a question though on um, it was in here and it was in another map too, but it was on page four. And I don't know if this is for you, Jen, or for for Amy. Um, but there's a there's a spot here and I it's it's an open space, but it looks like it's where like the landfill is, the old landfill. Uh, Legacy Ridge um, in in between the Legacy West and Legacy Ridge. And I have questions about like what makes it an open space because we it's fenced off. Nobody can use I mean I see it's open. Um but it's not hard. It's open space and I think we we had that discussion and Mr. Sberg can help me weigh in.

We had a joint meeting the parks and arts commission had a joint meeting with the planning commission and these discussions happened. Um, I'll describe it in the best way I can without butchering it, but open space, it's public space, even though it's in a private development. So, there was some back and forth on whether that should be considered or not. Um, we all ended up agreeing it should be considered. Is does that answer your question? Well, I'm I want to make sure we're talking about the right spot because I'm talking about the spot that has like the methane pipes coming out. Like, nobody can go there. It's not just that it's it's not it's like the county's space. And I'm I'm hoping I'm not reading the map. The the old super fund. It's just on site.

I I I have to research that. I I don't Yeah. Where is I don't even know what it is, right? What the green blob on the the shoe? It I mean I feel like it used to Is it grass? It's sort of wild grass. I mean it could be it could be considered an open space if it's you know do people let their dogs run up the golf methane gas. that that could be something that we want to re-evaluate. Would you agree? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

That is that is actually And then there's like Yeah. There's a I think the part that you're talking about that's like Parkside Park is usable and I I hear you saying but like the I don't think the super fun in my opinion. I haven't been up there. I didn't even know that was up there. She's kind of fun. You said it needed openly spaced. Yeah. So, page 53 of the larger report in our packet shows the difference between the like army green and the the brownish maroon. Oh, it does. So, it doesn't show but one says but one says the the green the the army green is it says open space and that's the that's the spot that I was talking about. Well, then it should probably not be on there. So, we'll deduct that square footage off the level of service number.

Maybe it'll help somewhere else though, right? Yeah. I know. I've had people ask me if we can turn that into a dog park. Council um we get back to you, Council Member Ball. We've got a couple people who haven't spoken. Council member Pling or anything. No. Council member Daryl. Council member Sears. Nope. Okay. Council member Ball, you're back on. So then, okay. So, this little blob just below what looks like a boot, that's fair game. that could be used as a park. But the boot is the super fun. I don't know. Talk about a boot. It does look like a boot. Yeah, but is it just going to be like that forever? Is there a way to That's a EP. I mean, that's the qu Yeah. I don't know. I I haven't seen that, so I don't I don't I'm not familiar with the site.

It wouldn't be on our in our lifetime would be my guess. Okay. Okay. All right. Any other questions? See any? Thanks. Great work. Thank you. Thanks, Jen. Sidewalk master plan.

Good evening everyone. Waiting for Shane to pull up the the presentation. So you guys, some on the council may remember that we brought this topic up um in October of last year and we had our first workshop where we kind of presented the problem. Um Sue, our code enforcement person, worked diligently on a white paper that kind of outlined some of the impacts and some of the issues that are happening. Um since then, we worked with our consultant and we worked with a stakeholder group of community members and other interested parties and staff to develop the report that was included in your packet. Um so now I will let Sharifa with SCJ Alliance kind of outline the work that we've done so far and then we'll um work into what we are asking from you tonight.

Great. Welcome. Thank you. Can you all see my screen? Yes.

All right. Perfect. So, we'll be talking about the sidewalk master plan today. Uh the presentation will be broken down into the scope and milestones that we've covered so far. Then we'll go into the existing conditions of sidewalks in the city. We'll talk about the exercise of identifying repair criteria. And based on that those criteria, we created a prioritization matrix. So we'll walk you uh briefly through that exercise. Then we're going to go into the repair responsibility and funding approaches which we are seeking your input and feedback on. And I believe um Kyle Dixon and Ben Turner from the city are around to support with those slides. and then we'll wrap up with um identifying if we need any additional broader community engagement beyond the engagement that we've done with our stakeholders. So with that we can dive right in. Um the items that we tried to cover with our work on the sidewalk master plan since last fall till now is first to identify what are the concerns regarding master the the sidewalks in the city and then what are the desired outcomes and based on those we developed a set of criteria to aid us with the prioritization process because there is sidewalk distress all across the city and the city was trying to figure out how to best identify areas for higher higher priority to go and fix sidewalks as opposed to others in a way that is measurable based on data and equitable. Um so to achieve that we ended up reviewing a large set of data to identify these priority areas and based on those we also looked at strategies for potential repair approaches and also strategies for potential funding approaches for the city to go and address all those sidewalk repairs that

are needed. And then lastly, we're going to be, as I mentioned, talking about potential uh larger community engagement to incorporate that feedback into the master plan report. In terms of the uh sidewalk master plan milestones, we started in the fall doing some research and building up our case, our data, and then we had our first focus group kickoff meeting back in December. So we had our group of stakeholders that we've worked with throughout this process. The first kickoff meeting, we introduced everything to them. We introduced the plan and its objectives and what we were trying to do. Then we had a second and third focus group meeting in January and February where we discussed the um potential uh prioritization criteria and we worked with the focus group to identify which criteria take uh higher priority versus others and developed a tool for the city to have as a continuous tool that they can use in the future every time they want to reassess the sidewalk conditions in the We took all that information along with the repair and funding approaches that we looked into and compiled everything into a report that we finalized just last month. And this is where we're at today. So, we're presenting this report to you all, hopefully seeking your feedback and again talking about the potential for future community engagement. So, that's a summary of all the work that we've done so far. I'll go into the sidewalk conditions right now in the city. So, the city prepared this map uh that identifies the sidewalk condition or assesses sidewalk conditions in the city back in 2025. So, they created what's called a sidewalk condition index that goes through the sidewalk conditions from excellent to uh

having serious uh conditions. So you can see a lot of the older parts of the city, which is not surprising, have more of the red and orange and yellow colors as opposed to the other parts of the city where you have the green colors. And I want to focus that this uh slide focuses on public sidewalks in the city. And the reason that a lot of the sidewalks in the older parts of the city have more distress is because a lot of the sidewalk damage in the city of Liberty Lake is due to mature trees and tree roots busting up the sidewalk panels. So it's not surprising to see that kind of pattern of where you see the highest level of distress. Generally the city broke down the levels of distress into three levels. You have minor, moderate, and severe levels of distress. Minor minor distress can typically be ground down. So like say if one panel is slightly higher than the other, you can grind it down. The city has its own internal grind program. But once the displacement becomes more than 2 in, that's not a grinding uh down condition anymore. Then you need more severe interventions. And even with the grinding down of sidewalk panels, you can potentially grind them once, grind them a couple times, but at that point more than that, there is an underlying condition that's causing this displacement. So this is just a temporary fix for these um issues. You also had the moderate uh sidewalk conditions or sidewalk distress points where you have some cracks that can be sealed and then you have severe conditions. Severe conditions or distress points usually entail needing to replace that sidewalk panel altogether.

So, the city summarized all the distress points from the assessment done in 2025, and they found almost 8,000 points of sidewalk distress around the city. About 70% of that is considered minor. So, you know, maybe we have a little time to address it. Uh, but about 10% of that is severe and needs to be addressed. again mostly through panel replacement altogether and this can add up definitely uh with time and you can see this map here that was also prepared by the city that highlights all those distress points. So the green is for your minor distress, yellow is for your moderate dist distress and red is for your severe distress. You might it might not look like there are 8,000 points on this map, but if you zoom in, it's just because it's at a larger city scale that you can't see a lot of the overlapping uh dots on this map. So, we were brought in with this information. The city did all this background work. So, we came in and wanted to look at how can you start preparing some repair criteria to help the city prioritize and identify which areas to address first. So, we looked at a lot of examples from the state and also from around the country of how other cities address their sidewalks uh and their sidewalk master plan. and we identified five buckets or five categories of rating criteria that we wanted to look into and review in our evaluation process. So we have safety, equity, proximity, connectivity, and costbenefit criteria. So these are the five criteria categories. Each category had a bunch of items within it. So I I'm not going to walk through all of them. You have those in

the report in your agenda packet. But for example, the safety criteria takes into account the severity of the distress on the sidewalk or the speed limit on the adjacent street. Uh or has there been recorded uh injuries in the past? Equity criteria. You talk about how much of the local population in this particular area are children or how many are seniors or do you have manufactured housing where people are more likely to be using the sidewalk or walking to a bus stop? Proximity criteria focuses on the proximity of that sidewalk segment to areas with high pedestrian activities like schools, parks, uh public facilities, trails, etc. And then we have connectivity criteria. This is the connectivity within the sidewalk network itself. So, does the sidewalk close a gap that you have in your current sidewalk sidewalk network or does it extend a sidewalk into an area that doesn't currently have sidewalks? Sometimes you only have sidewalk on one side of the street but not the other. So, this is the the area where we're looking at the connectivity of the sidewalk network itself. And then lastly, cost benefit analysis. This is a process where the city can go into a deeper level of analysis as opposed to just reviewing data points and looking at specific areas. Like sometimes an area has has a um high benefit because of its proximity to certain areas and potentially a low level of severity. But because of the high benefit and the low cost, it becomes more prioritized because it's an easier fix that will provide a lot of benefit for the local community. So these are the criteria that we brought into um our analysis process to start identifying which areas we want to focus on first. And I have a series of map that I'll just walk

through real quick. Um, as you saw this map earlier, um, what we did with this map is that we took each color of the specific dots and we looked at which areas have, for example, a lot of severe distress points and this is what you see here in this map. So, you have a couple areas that immediately stand out to you where you have a higher concentration of severe distress. And then we did the same for moderate distress and the same for uh minor distress points throughout the city. We also mapped all the existing ADA ramps that are available for um sidewalks in the city. We looked at all the missing sidewalk gaps. So, and we made sure to identify them between public sidewalks that are that the city is responsible for and then private sidewalks that the city is not responsible for. So you have all this maroon color is areas where you have missing sidewalks and then the green is private sidewalks, blue is public sidewalks. We also looked at all the areas where you've had uh pedestrian injuries reported in the past 10 years. We also looked at the speed limits for the full street network in in the city because again this could impact how important it is for you to have a safe and reliable sidewalk. the faster the traffic is on the adjacent street. We looked at proximity to senior housing, proximity to parks, and we analyzed walksheds, etc. from all those different locations like schools and other things that fed into our proximity criteria. So, this is a sample of all the maps and the data points that we took into consideration when we did our analysis. And what we did is that we created this matrix that you see on this screen where we asked our stakeholder group to start comparing each criteria against all the other criteria

that we're evaluating. It's just like is this more important or is this less important than that. So they went through this exercise comparing each one and at the end of the day we have a list of scores for each of the criteria. So each set of criteria received a a score. So the ones that received the score of less than seven, they would get a weight of one point. The ones that got a score between seven and nine, they would get a weight of two points. And then the ones that got a score of more than nine, they get a weight of three points. This way we have our priority areas between like high priority that are over the nine, moderate priority that are in the middle between seven and nine and then lower priority which are less which got a score of lesser than seven. So when we looked at the results of the items looking all the at all the criteria here uh and the feedback that we got from the focus group these are the results that we got. So you can see here the score that we got for certain criteria and then the weight. So the greens are getting a weight of three in our final uh score sheet and then the ones that have have the yellow got two points of a weight and then less than seven got one point. And one thing for us to do just to make sure that we're not missing anything. Sometimes stakeholders are not aware of certain items that for example city staff are aware of them because of their um work experience and because of the practicality and awareness of how things are typically done within the city. We did the same exercise with city staff independently just to compare how that lines up against what the stakeholders gave us. So everything that you see here with an arrow, a green arrow or a yellow arrow,

those are ones that the focus group identified as high priority. And you can see there's for the most part they're lined up with what the city staff also identified as higher priority. Potentially the one outlier is proximity to ADA ramps as um stakeholder identified it as higher priority than city staff did. But at the end of the day, our scoring results were taken based on what the stakeholder group provided us with. We just wanted to get the city staff uh review just for a gauge check. Um so as I mentioned, we broke down the criteria into high priority, moderate priority, and low priority criteria as you see those in the screen. And then just to take it to the next level for a usable tool for the city, we prepared a scoring sheet. So with the scoring sheet, you have each criteria and we broke them down back into those categories that we have. So we have safety, proximity, equity, connectivity, and economic criteria or costbenefit criteria. And then with each one of those, we have the specific criteria and its weight and potentially a qualifier. So, for example, when we're looking at the degree of sidewalk distress, and I know it's very small on this slide, but you have the same scoring sheet in in the report in your agenda packets, um, if it's minor, it gets slightly a lower score than if it's a severe distress point. So it's some we added some qualifiers or multipliers for uh the weight that each one's received. So we took this sheet and applied it to all the distress points that we looked at that map with all the dots and created a new map using the same dots but now applying different coloration to them

based on how many scores or like what's the density of the scoring that they got for each specific point. So the redder uh the dots are, it means they got a higher score on that distress scoring sheet. So this way we can have uh this tool that can help the city look at areas to prioritize as they're trying to look at repairing certain streets or certain sidewalk segments in bulk because you have the economy of scale and all of that. So instead of trying to target each panel at a time, it's better for the city to target them per zone or each zone or sidewalk segment or several sidewalk segments at a time. So this was the result of our prioritization uh exercise that we did with our engagement with our stakeholder group. And with that, are there any questions about that or should we move on to the sidewalk repair? question.

No, I don't see any.

Okay. All right. So before I um pass it over to Ben, the important reason for why we need to figure out approaches for the city to start addressing sidewalk repairs is that settlements for uh or claims for sidewalk injuries have increased significantly. So, the Washington City's Insurance Authority has reported that they have increased by 84% recently. And we have a couple of examples here that you can see on the screen from the city of Spokane where in 2024 there was a settlement for $100,000. In 2021 there was a settlement for $200,000. Many cities are dealing with these types of settlements. So, it becomes a liability for the city of Liberty Lake. So even though in Liberty Lake the burden on fixing the sidewalk, the financial burden and the actual fixing burden of that falls on the adjacent or abuing property owner, the city is still reliable for injuries that take place. So the city is responsible for maintaining a safe sidewalk network even if the abiding property owners are the ones responsible for repairing the sidewalks. So, with that, I think we can get into the potential repair responsibility approaches that we're looking at, and I'll pass it on to Ben.

Real quick, I do I do have a quick question. Um, the missing sidewalk slide, is there any I don't know which there were no numbers, so I don't know which one it was. I'm sorry. No worries. I'll get back to it. I had a question on that. Yeah. Um, yes. So, and I'm looking at Ben a little bit on this. So, I'm seeing missing sidewalks in many of our private communities. Yeah, they were I think they were included on this map, but obviously if they're on a private street, which say Legacy Ridge for example, um that would not be the responsibility.

Okay. I don't know if there's maybe we need to turn those at a different color going forward to distinguish them because that's um so I see the stuff along Broadway just north of uh Meadowwood Golf Course. Um yeah, mostly residential areas for the most part and then we've got some gaps in the kind of the tech campus area, right? But I'm looking at the mostly the residential ones. They're they're missing. Yes. But they're not they're on private streets. Yeah, we can definitely update this map. Thanks. Yeah, because we don't show like legacy roots for example in any other map. So that's that's a good catch. No. Yeah. Yeah. And all the stuff around the the gated communities around the golf courses as well. Quite a few there around Meadowwood and Liberty Lake. Thanks.

Great. We got all the way back. Sorry about that. you raise. Oh, and and while you're doing that, bus stop, is that like STA bus stop or is that also school bus stops? I believe it's just STA bus. That's what I was thinking, but I wanted to make sure. Thanks.

All right. Thanks for So, we basically as part a lot of this research came from Sue, so kudos to her. She did most of the leg work on this. Um, so she looked at a lot of other cities and how they they accomplish this or struggle with this uh in particular. And so we're going to just kind of go through those three options. Uh, property owner, a partnership between the property owner and the city, and then just the city. So, next slide, please. So, property owner, I mean, that's really the status quo. That's what we're doing now. And Sharifa talked about a little bit on the the previous slide about lawsuits. Um, and I think this is something that this is a, you know, community engagement item. I would argue a lot of property owners in the city don't realize that it is their responsibility for both their sidewalks as well as their street trees. And I've had I had that conversation with a gentleman this week. I'm just letting him know, hey, by the way, um, so I think that's something that we need to let people know. They don't I I would guess most people don't realize it is their responsibility to take care of this. Um, so this this one it it really obviously we put some pros and cons here. Uh, for the city, uh, besides the lawsuit part, you know, this is, you know, it's we don't really aren't required to do anything. Obviously, we've voluntarily implemented the grinding program, which is a very small part of our budget, so we just eat that out of our streets fund right now. U, but if that moves forward, and it's really just on a volunteer basis, people call in and say, "Hey, I I'd like to get my sidewalk grinded." And we schedule it with a contractor. So that's kind of a possible model for the the city option, but just want to make sure everybody's aware of that. But uh a lot of the cons and we've heard it from citizens I think even sitting here uh or standing here at this um lectturn. I mean there's it's a very expensive endeavor um for a single um so we a sidewalk panel replacement we've heard somewhere between three and $5,000 because if you're going as a single you know homeowner to a

contractor there's an opportunity cost that they include in that. Um, so for smaller jobs, they're a lot more expensive than if we were to bundle things, similar to what we do with the grinding program. Uh, so that's really, I think, the hardest part about this is is the overall cost. And I know Kyle will go into that, um, a little bit after me. U, but, uh, it's just it's an ownorous thing for a homeowner, especially if you're not a handy one. Um, and we also we have some, you know, we could have some issues with quality and things like that. Obviously, if you do a sidewalk repair, you're required to get a permit. City would inspect it. Um, but there are there are some I mean the biggest con is the cost and that's something that we've got to we've got to talk about more. Uh, the next so the city version um really I mean there's a couple ways we could do this. We could do it similar to the grinding program where we kind of manage an economy of scale you know project list um you know we've got over 8,000 distresses. A lot of those don't need to be addressed anytime soon, but there's a significant number that we need to either take care of immediately or within the near future over the next few years, roughly 25%. Uh, so we could do it with either via contractor where we would need to, you know, manage all that by a city and then, you know, work, but we do get those economies of scale. We've got, you know, we could do 20 in the, you know, on Maxwell Avenue. You know, that's probably the worst sidewalks in the city. If you look at the map, it's the only one that's got like dark red. So, I don't recall if any of you live in that neighborhood, but you probably know what I'm talking about if you do. Um, but that that's really, you know, that we're looking at as a city. We can do it with a contractor or we can look at it in house. Obviously, there's a startup cost with that. Um, I have some crew that have that ability to do that work now, but we also have to do all these other things like fix potholes and do things like that. Uh, concrete is a little bit different window than asphalt. So, there are times throughout the year that we could focus on this, but this would more than likely require additional staffing and probably additional equipment. Um, I

did include this in the 20-year CFP, uh, more on the material side, the CFP, you know, but not the labor side. So, that that figure that was included in the 20-year CFP, I recall it's about $70,000 a year. You know, we could probably tackle 50 of these a year with that number. That doesn't include labor and equipment and all those other things. So there is a a cost if the city were to take this on and Kyle will go into that further with options if if council decided to choose that. But uh that is that is another option that we could uh undertake as well. And then the third option is really the the the ma the mixed one kind of in the middle and uh it's really you know there's a couple of different ways you can do it. There's cost share programs. There's, you know, city takes care of it and then Bill's the property owner, which I I've, as far as all the research that Sue and staff have done, that doesn't a lot of these programs have kind of mixed results. It's really a volunteer basis versus like a statutory. Um, so and it and it could possibly create some uncomfortable situations. I guess that's bottom line. So this would be if we were to eliminate uh one of these three courses of action, you know, I think we're all in agreement that this one would be the one that we would eliminate just because it's diff it still requires the same amount of management as a cityrun program, but you have a lot of other things that you have to work with. And like I said, it's voluntary for the most part. It wouldn't necessarily move the needle a whole lot um based on some of the um research that Sue's done where other municipalities have tried this option. Um but uh so that's the partnership and I think that's that my bad.

Yeah, that covers the um repair approaches. So I don't know if you all have any thoughts or ideas on preferences. What we've heard from the focus group from the stakeholder group is a strong push towards a city-led program just because the status quo as Ben mentioned is not really effective at the moment. So maybe a a strong campaign for raising awareness about the responsibility, but what we've heard from the focus group is a strong push for a city-led program.

So before I turn it over to Kyle, are there any other questions on the options? Excellent. Sharifa Ben, thank you. So, um, as we kind of touched on at the last meeting of the 20-year capital facilities plan, we have a fair amount of these master planning activities all happening at the same time. And what you're going to see is is a lot of overlapping opportunity on the on the revenue side or the execution side from the city to to pull some levers to be able to fund this if it is indeed a city-led program. Um we can run through some of these options. Uh next slide, please. We we we're all aware of the transportation benefit district. We have one right now. uh we levy the council councilmanic limit of.1% uh for our current street operations and so the statutory limit is.3% and so there could be a concerted effort as a potential funding approach to take this to the voters to indicate we recognize a a deficiency with our with our sidewalk condition. Um, we can upon approval of the voters raise anywhere between $800 upwards of $1.6 million a year uh to that statutory maximum there uh to cover the cost of this and then essentially the city takes it over. Uh we have a dedicated revenue stream. Uh we'll get into a couple of options uh in a couple of slides that uh that has um that's been the avenue some other cities have taken. And so, um, I I think we're all relatively aware of this and so, um, we we've touched on this for for some some other items as well. This is certainly an option, um, for for the city to

consider to place before the voters to, um, identify a targeted revenue stream for sidewalks. So, next slide, please. Uh, we touched on this a little bit at the last meeting as well. Local improvement districts rep uh, they they present a kind of unique option to fund sidewalk improvements. So, uh, lids dedic are are kind of they're preferential funding sources in certain circumstances for utility improvements, for street improvements, and certainly for sidewalk uh, improvements. And, uh, the onus is shifted a little bit. It it breaks it out, but it gives the opportunity to neighborhoods to kind of take ownership of their own sidewalks if they choose to do so and essentially petition the city to develop a district. And so essentially what happens there is uh there's a condition assessment. Uh there is a total cost of construction that is developed. Um and so that is put forward for um the legislative body to consider um forming a district. How that gets funded is that then the property owners within that specific call it neighborhood um there's an there's an assessment placed on the property tax and they share in the cost of that construction to that specific neighborhood. And so there are a couple of um interesting uh I guess campaigns. Uh Mary'sville is one, Paul'sBow is another where essentially it's a advertise it's it's advertised on their website and it's a it's almost like a brochure of hey neighborhood leaders if you've noticed that your sidewalks have deteriorated um and you want to kind of raise awareness amongst your neighborhood or your community within a community. uh

you can petition your city uh to form a lit and so it's 51% of the property owners can petition that and then that gets placed before the council to essentially um take it from there and there's there's several steps involved and it's not it's not a quick process but it is a process by which you can get direct community feedback on I guess the the urgency of the need and so Um so yeah, PSBow and um Mary'sville have done that and so and it's on their website and and it's it's this interesting advertising mechanism uh whereby they kind of give ownership of the ability to levy uh attacks on themselves uh towards the betterment of their uh it's not just sidewalks but street trees uh street improvements, street lights is another big one that they've targeted. And so, so this is an interesting one. It is not a quick fix by any means and it is reliant on neighborhoods to come forward to recognize the need. Um, but it's it's it's another interesting one for us to undoubtedly be aware of. Yeah, go ahead. When the revenue comes. So, I'm just I'm envisioning a project where we got to rip out all the sidewalks and this is going to cost let's just make up a number called $100,000. Yeah. Are is it a onetime assessment on all the neighbors all all the neighbors for $100,000? Is it sort of financed over time or

It is a it's a mix of both. So, you have the opportunity as a property owner within this lid to pay your one-time assessment and be done with it. There's also the the balance of that. Whatever isn't paid up front is issued via bond and then that gets repaid over anywhere between a 10 and 20 year cycle. Excellent. And so those that don't want to pay up front will then have that annual assessment. Thank you. So that's why you can see it gets quickly it could get pretty ownorous on the on the execution of it but it does happen. So go ahead.

So in other words um keeping the numbers even say of 100 people and you know that you're considering for this lid. So 51 of those people you have to have you know half plus one 50% plus one have to agree to this. Yep. In order to form the lid. Correct. And uh and it's not just let's just say let's take Rocky Hill for for example. It doesn't necessarily have to be the whole of Rocky Hill.

I mean it can it can be almost the I don't think the RCW confines how narrowly construed it can be. I mean, you get diminishing returns pretty quick if you're looking at five houses. And so, I don't think that's ever been done, but um but as a community as a whole isn't really defined in terms of forming a lid. Yeah. I'm recalling, you know, back from my real estate days that if there was a lid on the title that when the individual went to sell their house that it have to be paid off. Is that still the same or

I am I'm not sure of that. I I I I know it has to be I it would have to be declared and so I I I would imagine that between um you know the the declaration of that could probably be negotiated but I I I'm haven't gotten that granular with the with the adjudication of those. I think it would run work similar as if there was a if there was an assessment with from your HOA. Yeah, I ran into that when I had my condo. there was an assessment on the unit that hadn't been paid and that was paid out of the closing cost by the seller. Be sure that's how it works. So,

so yeah, regardless, an an interesting revenue mechanism that we haven't really um kind of interfaced with all that much. And so, um, next slide, please. So, we we've gone through this before. Uh, so this is another way just like the transportation benefit district does for sales tax. uh we can gauge voter sentiment uh via property tax. And so this would be a city-wide measure that the city would take on. Um the city is um responsible for uh maintaining and repairing all of the sidewalks. And so this would be a citywide assessment on all of the property within the city uh to carry out that effort. And so we we went through this. I I won't regurgitate all of this, but it's a 60% voter approval, all of those things to um to implement a voter approved uh tax levy. Next slide, please. Other sources, of course, we're always going to mention grants. Grants are the lowhanging fruit. If there's ever an opportunity for us uh to to secure local, state, or federal funding uh for sidewalk improvement activity, we will absolutely do that. That'll be first and foremost. We've talked about utility tax. Utility tax is a um there's a broad range of potential uses for that and it's it's a revenue stream we don't currently um receive. Uh council manic bonds. So if you'll recall back um with trailhead, trailhead was a council manic bond. You're you're using existing revenues to pay down a note. Um we don't obviously currently have an existing revenue stream for sidewalks. So we would have to evaluate other potential existing revenue streams. And that leads into kind of this last piece of we this this level of service that that we can um consider where um I if we have to reduce levels of service elsewhere to fund this that's obviously another potential outcome. There are some cities

that use storm water and aquifer protection funds for sidewalk improvement. That is a potential outcome. I it's it's a loose kind of connection that you can make. um but other cities do it and so it's not unprecedented that uh we could potentially look at storm water and aquifer protection revenue uh for um for potential replacement of silos. So uh so a couple of things. So Sue helped us out with um really like evaluating what other cities do and how it works. And so, um, as we mentioned kind of at the first part, so Yelm does something similar to our TBD sales tax or they have a dedicated funding, uh, stream through the road and street construction fund, which is what would be something similar for us with the TBD sales tax where, um, the city the city handles that, but we have additional revenue to um to carry out uh, that construction and repair and maintenance through the TBD sales tax. Um both has the the citywide uh excess levy that 50 cents per $1,000 of assessed value. So that's voter approved. And so th those voters essentially through their vote told the city that this was a high enough priority to to pass that measure. That's how they fund uh their sidewalk improvements. Uh then Shoreline does uh a version of a TBD. And so they have I I think the population base to support a car tab. I don't know that we do. I I think a car tab of $20 would generate about $150 to $200,000 a year uh for the city. And so that's not enough to carry out a sidewalk replacement program. But again, it's it's just another example of where other cities have tackled this issue and have um found uh appropriate revenue streams to to tackle sidewalk

improvements. So, um, with that, um, I'll stand for questions, but, um, I believe that was, uh, was everything. Council member Carts, um, when you're talking about the TBD, would it be using the current TBD and adding the 2% or could it be adding a new TBD? Um, so, so my original assessment would be adding to the TBD. Um I suppose there is potential to ha add an overlapping TBD. I will look into that. Okay.

Um just for I guess opportunity. There's um obviously the I think the the the quick response to that is yes. If that's an option we need to look into it. Um but I'm not sure if there's a max on overlapping TPDS. So I will look into that as well. We have the one for streets and then if there was a different one for sidewalks, I guess it' be my question. Absolutely. My other question is, can you remind us of the if if we were to replace all the sidewalks today, how much money are we looking at? Uh, we talked about that a little bit a couple days ago. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars. All the sidewalks or just the high priority ones? Just the high priority ones. Okay. Yeah.

Because I the number that I have sticking in my head was like $24 million to replace every today. Right. Okay. And so was the million was that for the just the high distressed the just the damaged one. Yeah. Right. So anybody else regarding the local improvement district um uh trying to envision asking well I'm looking for initiative. Yeah. Uh homeowners per se banding together to present and prepare. Um I'm wondering if the city could maybe make suggestions regarding the potential boundaries of such districts. Yeah.

Um at least give a framework for local residents within those then to consider and to operationalize.

Certainly. Yeah. So, so there could be some outreach on the part of the city to um to target the high distressed areas and maybe deliver some sort of um opportunity to help them create the petition to consider it. Um and then we can go from there. So, so one of the so the 51% is the petition. There is also a um as we kind of navigate that process um the the property owners also have an escape hatch and so there they can file a counter petition and if 60% file a county petition and the lid is dead and so there's checks and balances kind of through that process and so we can absolutely navigate um help them navigate that potential outcome.

Okay, hold on before we go back around. We've already heard from you guys. Anybody anything from council member Langler? Go ahead. Um, I was wondering, do we have a plan for uh, citizen education around their responsibility for sidewalk maintenance and the pair? I mean, I didn't really consider that until I was reading through this. I'm like, I'm kind of glad I'm on a street on our side that doesn't have sidewalk. Now, before I'd been looking at it and going, why don't we have a sidewalk? Um, so yeah, I think education would be really

Yeah, certainly. So the city can consider putting together some sort of uh I guess awareness um campaign um and push it out. I the the short answer is yes, we could do something like that. I'm not sure exactly what that would look like. I just think that that would work well in concert with, you know, discussing these, what are they, lids for, you know, the areas so that at first knew, you know, the advantages because they're responsible for them and if they're in one of the high distressed areas, why that might be good if they had together and have that as a shared cost instead of, you know, maybe approaching it another way. Sure.

Um, we haven't heard from council members Fisher or Darl. Anything from either one of you? No. Um, I guess just for the lids, um, it sounds like other places are doing lids for sidewalks, but just administratively, how difficult is it to, uh, do multiple lids at the same time or, you know, that sort of

um, so it Yeah. So, it it depends on the size and scope. Um some lids can take a full two years to implement and so the there's a time factor in that um just because of the the implementation and the execution. There's a unsurprisingly there's an overwhelming amount of opportunities for citizen engagement and that just takes time and so um so so yeah certainly that what was the I'm sorry I missed the next part of your question. Oh, just I'm just if it would be priority based or we're doing all of all the trying for all the lids at the same time or you know that sort of.

So yeah, we could potentially run concurrent lids. I mean they they can be ownorous um kind of in the throws of the public review and the public outreach portion of it. Um but it's um it's it's certainly an option if the residents tell us that that's something that they're interested in based on the outreach that we can provide. Thanks. All right. Back uh Council Member Ball and then Council Member Severs. So on um back to what when Ben was talking, do all of these different approaches require um extra staff,

the repair approaches. Well, Ben's coming up. So I I would say unless we decide to do in-house city you know run that we wouldn't necessarily need more staff because if we did it it's in-house you definitely we would need more but other than that it's really managing the program and so that's something we could probably take on with our existing labor force but that would require partnership models. Right. Right. Right. Right. you gota you're going to have to have some willing partners in really all the codes right and I don't support that so we would have to have additional staff that unless we went through like the contractor route we'd still have to manage that contractor

right which because we we do a lot of that already um but yeah okay okay um Kyle um so the TBD and um utility tax I mean do these all have to available for the voters or just the TBD and the property tax levy?

Yeah, TBD as it's currently constructed and we'll I'll I'll bring back some clarity on um the potential for overlapping um TBD jurisdictions as council member Kurts alluded to earlier. So yeah, the the voter approved levy, the the utility tax is a council manic decision. And so that is a um that's a that's a revenue that can be applied to um it can be applied to sidewalks, it can be applied to roads, it can be applied to parks, it can be applied to PD, it can be applied to library. So it's a it's a it's a flexible revenue source.

Okay. Oh. Oh, are you

I was just so when when do we need to figure out I mean do I want to see this happen these sidewalks get fixed sooner than later because you know I've talked about them before um have worried about people getting hurt and us getting sued. So when would you need to have a decision on how we want to fund this? So, if I can interject on on that question, I I think what we're asking uh for you or from you tonight is to help us better understand uh the next step and the recommendation that staff would make at this point would be is there enough interest uh from among the council to uh take a uh a group of options and get a broader public engagement effort started so you can hear from the from the public. Um, and we're talking specifically about the call it the ASIS model or the cityowned and operated model. I think we've we've certainly on the staff side and the um in the working group side have concluded that the partnership is just not viable.

Right. And so, is the council interested in getting public engagement and feedback on uh those two models, which could include a a public education and should include a public education arm to inform people what the current uh situation is and what their responsibilities currently are. And then uh some feedback with respect to threshold of investment, not necessarily preferred method um but threshold of investment to ensure that sidewalks throughout the community are kept in a state of repair that that meets a level of service that we've all said is desirable. And so that is really the ask is is there enough interest among the council for us to take that next next step and do a formal public engagement process so that we can get that information and bring it back to you to start making decisions about specific uh mechanisms going forward.

Is there anybody opposed to that? No. No. I think it's an excellent idea. Yeah. Hold on. Okay. I think we were still on Linda's question then we had council member. So what would that look like though? like getting the CEC involved or another town hall or what

potentially certainly getting the CEC involved. Um but potentially there could be a town hall style conversation about it, but there would be um other opportunities similar to what Jen described as we were going through the uh parks master planning process of getting engagement in different spots. Um, but all designed to get feedback from the community as to which of these two options is preferable. And if the cityowned and operated option is the most preferable, how much are you willing to pay over what you're currently paying uh to to make that happen? Okay. We had council member Severs next.

Uh, do is is there a current proposal for cost per year out of the city or or are we not there yet? And I'd really like to just kind of go back to what Mark's talking about. Doesn't sound like we're there yet. We need to do the engagement first. I think we can swag some of those things, but I don't know that we have those numbers sitting here. Is No, that's okay. That's okay. I just say uh I like where you're going, Mark. Let's get this is a very big project and a very big decision. And um I think we need to get some city some citizen engagement going.

Council member Curts, you were next. I think my question is along the same lines as Linda, like if we do have sidewalks that need to be repaired now that are in severe and I I don't want to wait not do that and have somebody trip and fall and hurt themselves while we're engaging the community. Like I feel like the community engagement part is there's parallel processes. I think two things need to happen. We need to start working on the sidewalks that are in severe um disrepair and engage on what to do about the rest of it. Um, but I would like to have an idea of how to put this forward in the budget and that's coming up. And so I guess when we're talking about community engagement, how long are we talking about?

Um, certainly not long enough that would um affect our ability to bring something forward during the budget process. Um, but I I hesitate to say a fixed amount of time. it would need to be long enough for us to accomplish what we need to accomplish and and understand that or or have a comfort level with the amount of feedback that we get. Um, but I don't think it necessarily needs to be something that we would worry would bleed into the budget development.

Do you think we'd have um I guess I'd like to know and make a decision about which path we're going in the budgeting process. I guess that's what I'm saying. if we're going to do a tax, if we're going to do um homeowners are going to pay for it themselves, whatever path we're going to go, I would like to know that as we're in the budgeting season so that we can budget for these for next year, how whichever method is going to be used without knowing the specific techniques that we would put together, I would say with a high degree of comfort that we could accomplish that in 60 days. Okay. Thank you. Anybody council member Clinger.

Um, yeah, I just want to, you know, kind of remind everybody the kind of, uh, feedback that we had post tree removal from, uh, the community and stuff. And that's also an indicator of why we need the level of engagement so they're fully aware and and can give us our the input that that's going to drive how effective this is. Okay, hold on. We've heard from both of you twice. Just want to go back around. Mayor Pro Tim, anything? Council member Daryl, council member Fischer. Okay. Um, council member Ball.

Oh, um, yeah, I um I I agree with uh Council Member Clingler's um the need for, you know, community engagement, but I also am concerned about well, particularly on Maxwell and Melvin, you know, some of the where the reds are. I mean, if somebody gets hurt this summer and we get sued, you know, it's not going to be a good thing. So, yeah, getting after some of these really bad ones, I mean, really bad, I think it would be a good idea. So I would say that right now uh before we have an actual directive from the council to take one uh path or another, we would follow our standard process, which would be to uh utilize code enforcement to address any current sidewalk that is out of um compliance or that needs to be addressed. And so Sue is actively and our other community development staff is actively pursuing those uh issues as they come up. But I I don't know that I don't know that there's another mechanism to take at this point.

I see. Go ahead. S if they don't do it, the only penalty is a a civil infraction. There's nothing to make them do in the current code. Right. Which is part of which is part of the challenge. Yeah, I know. And that's disturbing, you know. So yeah. Okay.

Well, and this is also something we can't a we're not going to put push pause in what our current methods and and options are. We ran into that years and years ago with the with the um donation policy. Um we're not going to repeat that. So we're going to continue with what what our current policies are and how we're handling it while we we go through this. We are not going to put pause on that. We also can't rush this. you know, we've got the public engagement, but we also I mean, this is only a piece of funding that the we have to cons you guys have to consider as a whole over the next 20, you know, six years and 20 years that the finance committee is going to going to tackle. So, I think we need to, you know, eat the elephant one bite at a time, but um keeping an eye on the timeline at the same in in the same vein. Um, Council Member Severs, I think you're next. Oh, at the risk of repeating what everybody said, I appreciate what you're saying, uh, Mark about code enforcement, I think it's an opportunity for to launch some citizen education at the exact same time. And I have question for our city attorney through some additional code enforcement education methods. Does that at least help shelter some liability from

It's I would say yes, but it's it's going to be a case by case basis. Where is the location? What were the facts of the circumstances of an accident that may have happened? Um, is it property that was to be maintained by the property owner? And there's going to be multiple factors that come into each situation. So, it's hard to have a overarching position on on on each um circumstance that may occur. Sure. Fair enough. I got to think though if if it's a sidewalk directly in front of somebody's house, it's very clearly their responsibility to do it. the city saying you're supposed to do this, you're liable, FYI, if somebody gets hurt, then it's hard for the city to get sued and say we told them to fix it. It was very clear on them. At least it's got to shelter us a little bit. Sure.

And of course, the goal is for nobody to get hurt, but education, code enforcement, and let's get moving on with citizen engagement. Yeah. Anybody else before we go back around? We're hitting like the round five. Okay. Go ahead, council member V. So Sue, if I may ask, when you talk to do you actually knock on their door? Okay. And do you tell them? Oh,

just so our our audience can hear you. Thanks. Yeah, sorry to make you come up to the podium, but when you talk to them and say, you know, your sidewalk is like a big tripping hazard and someone could get hurt, you know, so on and so forth, do they how I mean, do they understand the seriousness of it or are they Yeah, most people are shocked to know it's their responsibility as well as the street trees are their responsibility. And in some of these neighborhoods with the bad sidewalks, they're the street trees are also dying. Like all the ash trees along Melbourne and Maxwell, those are dying. So, it's going to be a street tree and a sidewalk. So, they're probably floored. And and some people, you know, I run into,

they just don't have the ability to to pay $3,000 or $5,000. Yeah. And then there's more to take the tree out, too. Yeah. So, it's a challenge. But again, the way the code is currently written, there's nothing to force them to do it. So, okay. Thank you. I mean, I bug people. I just keep after them until they do what I want them to do or what I we need them to do per the code. But it's a lot of just talking to people and keeping after them to to get it fixed. We can't find them or Oh, no. I I just want to say persistence. What? Yeah. Yeah. find them or it's a it's a a civil infraction. Yeah, it's a fine.

Okay. But if they're already not don't have the money to fix the sidewalk and you find them. Well, take take that take that fine and credit credit that toward their their pass. Is everybody okay with moving ahead with the engagement as Mark? Okay. Super. All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks Sharie. I appreciate it. Is there anything else you have? No, I think we covered it. All right. Thank you. Unless Amy has anything else that she wants to cover, but that's that's what I have today. She's shaking her head. So, have a great night. Thank you. Thank you all. Great. All right, we're up to what's left of our consent agenda.

Uh, Madame Mayor, I move general business items A, B, C, and G. Second. We have a motion and a second by council member Severs. Those in favor of approving general business consent agenda items A, B, C, and G, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes 70. Okay, we're up to general business. Uh, Madame Mayor, I move general business 12A Greenstone event sponsorship form in the amount of 900. Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Mayor PM and a second by council member Severs. Any um any comments? Obviously, um I know we like to put these in um action items. Um, you know, great shout out to Greenstone who's always been a great partner in supporting our events. Really glad that um they're they're throwing in their in in their checkbook again. Um they usually do for most everything we do. So big big thank you to them. Anybody else? Those in favor of approving the um donation from Greenstone for $900, please say I. Any opposed? Motion passes 70. Next. Uh, Madame Mayor, I move general business item 12B, uh, donation approval, Precision German Garage in the amount 550.

Second. Okay, we have a second by, um, Council Member Fischer. Um, for those of you who don't know Precision German Garage, uh, I saw them for the first time on my way to Adorable Flowers the other day. Um, they're down near Snowy Eater Brewery. Um, and great to see some of our newer businesses stepping up and helping out. So, if you have a German car, check them out. I don't anymore. So, uh, any other comments or questions? Right. Those in favor of approving the, um, donation from precision German garage, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes 70. Madame Mayor, I move general business item 12D, code of eth ethics complaint, uh, adopt recommended disposition of the hearing examiner.

Second. Okay, we have a second from council member Severs. Any, we went through this last week. Um, this was what was asked to be brought back. Is there any further comments or questions on this item? Council member Kurt, I just need to recuse myself from the Oh, yes. Thank you. I forgot about that. All right. Any other comments, questions? All right. Those in favor of approving the code of ethics um complaints uh and adopt the recommended disposition of the hearing examiner. Please say I. I. Any opposed? All right. And we have council curts abstaining for conflict of interest. And so we have motion passes 6. Thank you.

Um madame mayor, I move formerly 11D, now we'll call it 12E Orchard Park Tennis court resurfacing. Second. We have a second from Council Member Severs. Um Council Member Ball. Um so Jan, I have a question about this because just, you know, how old is this? I mean, I see these cracks. It looks like an earthquake. Five years. Five years ago was the last time we resurfaced it. And that's the life expectancy of the quartz. Five years. Oh, it is. Yeah. We do a mom rotation every five years. Oh, cuz I thought maybe this contractor just did a crappy job. No, that's normal. Really? Multi-use. Oh, it looks horrible. So, okay.

Okay. Okay. Any other questions? Yikes. All right. Those in favor of approving the Orchard Park tennis court resurfacing, please say I. Any opposed? Motion passes 70. Madame Mayor, I move formerly uh general business 11E Greenstone Foundation Spokane Symphony 3-year agreement uh Spokane Symphony. Second. We have a second by Council Member Severs. Any questions? I just want to recognize the continuing partnership with the Green Sound Foundation and what an epic and important part uh the Spokane Symphony is to um Labor Day weekend in Liberty Lake.

Absolutely. Council member V. Okay, so me again. Hi, Jen. I know I have asked about this before, but I still don't quite understand. So, Greenstone apparently is the sponsor of this. Yeah. Yeah. Essentially, they're the ones who actually organize the contract and do the contract negotiations with the symphony. The city does not want to be in the business of negotiating a contract with the symphony. So, they help us by doing that. Okay. So, but in the end, we end up paying for it. Correct. So, why are they the sponsor? It does not make sense.

They're they're sort of the the liaison between the city and the symphony. Well, yeah, but I think, you know, he who has money should be also, but the city doesn't want to be in the business of negotiating contracts with the symphony, preferably. So, are you asking specifically, Linda, about Greenstone being named as the sponsor or just their involvement? Being the sponsor when we're the ones putting up the money? Well, they're they're the ones historically who have been I mean, it used to be the Friends of Pavilion Park who and it's Yeah. Right. And they agreed to take it carry it after Friends of Pavilion Park disintegrated. Um, but

it's truly a partnership. It's not that Greenstone sponsors the symphony. It's a partnership between the city and the Greenstone Foundation to bring the symphony to the city of Liberty Lake. This has gone on for over 20 years. So, um, I can greenstone what they do. You guys know cross talk and we need to raise our hands. I was talking I but we had council member Mayor Prom had his hand up before you did. That's why I have hands raised so I can call in order. Mayor Prom.

Um I was just going to observe that um Greenstone's contribution specifically is in relationships and in um I'm going to say talent acquisition. Uh this is actually something that um we just don't have staff that really have a background and a performance in. And um I sincerely appreciate what they bring to this in terms of that ability. Uh in that I'm proud and happy to refer to them as a sponsor in what they contribute. Yeah, Council Member Fischer.

Um I agree. Thank you so much. Uh Mayor Prom, uh Greenstone's an outstanding contribution to this city. This city is Greenstone and they do beautiful work. We've been beautiful partners for 20 plus 25 plus years and I 100% support them and although the city pays for it, it's a beautiful partnership and this city wouldn't be Liberty Lake without Greenstone. Period. Great. Council member Klinger, we don't pay for their liazing between the No. No.

Yeah. I I have to echo. I mean, I just I don't think that Liberty League's name needs to be top building in this situation when they're providing such a great service and we already don't want to be in the business of contracting for this service. So yeah, and Greenstone is and continues to make, you know, wonderful contributions. Okay. Anybody else before we get back to Council Member Ball? Council member Darrow, anything. Okay. Council member Ball. So I would just like to um comment on what you just said, Arlene. Greenstone is not the city. The people are the people who live. We are not doing this. Okay.

Okay. We need to these need meetings need to be respectful. That's Why was it being respectful? I'm gonna I'm going to stop this. Okay. There's no cross talk. This is this is not a discussion between council members. It's about a topic and we're not going to get into those kind of comments. All right. Is there any other comments on this topic? All right. Those in favor of approving the Greenstone uh three the three-year agreement with the Greenstone Foundation, please say I. I. Any opposed? Nay. Okay. Motion passes 61. All right. Uh Madame Mayor, I move forward item general business 11F, approve funding recommendations from the uh lodging tax advisory committee for 2026.

Second. Motion is second by council member Severs. Uh okay. I think we have council member Fischer first, then council member Kirks.

Um I just want to give recognition to Mandy Drosenheler. She's the I think I've sp her name wrong. I apologize. She's the manager of Washington Trust Bank and she's been doing this for many, many years. And you know, it does take a village and Rotary and the community of Liberty Lake. Uh Rich and I did the Spokane spoke spokes event. Rich, what do we do? The Spokane spoke event bike swap. Thank you. And we were representing Liberty Lake and Rotary. And it was just amazing how many people, especially the kids, absolutely come to town for this race. So, if there's one event in Liberty Lake that brings a lot of people and put heads and beds for our motel to hotel tax, this is it.

So, I just want to thank everyone for this. It's a great opportunity. Great. Council member Curts. Um, so my question was on one of the specific applications and so I I I'm guessing my question might be for Linda as the person. Um, and then maybe for somebody else, but I'm not sure who. So my specific question was on um the visit Spokane proposal. Um, and the amount of funding requested I and I'm trying to scroll back through. I think it the amount of funding requested was 76,000 and I think the amount uh offered was 58 if I remember right. Um, 57 57. Thank you. Yeah.

Um my my question is it seems like the what they are proposing to do for this is what we pay for or what they've said that we pay for and given to us and what we pay them every year the video promotions and stuff. Are you my person? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So there so there are two separate revenue streams. So the TPA is fund 117 in our budget. That's a $2 nightly um fee. Um and so that's towards the larger regional effort of which Liberty Lake is included, but it's also city of Spokane um probably Sheni, Airway Heights, uh Medical Lake and and Milwood. Um Spokane Valley does not participate in that I don't believe um but um so so we are included in that larger effort with that revenue source. Um this one is that separate this is obviously the 2% um charge on nightly rates. So this is a separate bucket of money that they are doing a targeted tourism campaign for uh the Liberty Lake Farmers Market and a couple of other things.

I think the line item in the grid is a little misleading. You need to look at the actually application to get a little bit more detail on what they're doing because it looks like in in the grid that it's just for around the farmers market, but there's more to it than that, right? That helps. Well, and I I think as I was looking at the application itself and the marketing um and that it was specific to um one project, but the Zephr Lodge, am I there? Go ahead, Kyle. Yeah. So, that was that was a portion of it, but the the larger ask was for um parted funds towards a photo and video collection for the Liberty Lake Farmers Market and the Zepper Lodge.

Okay. So, I missed the part about the farmers market. That's my Okay. Sure. All right. Yeah. And they're and they're also still doing some targeted things with our local businesses as well. And they share that collateral. Visit Spokane didn't always do that, but but they are whatever they produce, they actually giving to the businesses themselves. And the way I read it, which appears to be wrong, was that it was going to be they're asking for this money, $57,000 to do just one project. And so that was my beef. Okay. Great. Great. Great question. Sure. Great question. Anybody else on this one? All right. Those in favor of approving the funding recommendations from the lodging tax advisory committee, please say I. I.

Any opposed? Passes seven. And it's really good to finally have more applications than money. I mean, I hate to have to reduce it, but I know we've been struggling in the past for applicants. So, this is a sign of the times. This is great. And as we have more hotels coming on board, it'll just increase that increase that funding. All right. I think that's all action items. That's it. Yep. Okay. Just want to make sure I had missed anything. All right, we're up to council comments. Anything additional council member Clangler?

I just wanted to um and I think everybody um knows this already, but we can have, you know, strong statements and opinions, but one of the things that we agreed to as a council is that we would initially assume good intent. Um, and I think that, um, if we remind ourselves of that and we have that as our governing principle, um, then we won't, you know, go arai. So, thank you. I just want to throw that back out. Better put than I did.

Thank you. All right. Any other council comments? All right. Uh, quick note, I will not be here at the next regular meeting. I'll be in DC for my day job. So, Mayor Pro Tim will be running that meeting. U, we don't have any public hearings or appeals. We have no resolutions. We do have a first read ordinance for the parks, recreation, open space, and shows plan. Michelle, it's your turn.

Thank you, mayor. Ordinance 219A, an ordinance of the city of Liberty Lake, Washington repealing ordinance 219 updating the park, recreation, open space, and trails plan. All right. So, as our first read, we'll have a again, as Jen said, you'll have some time between now and the next meeting to do some more deep dive into um the material and then we will have the second read at the next meeting. We have no emergency ordinances. Next up is our introduction of upcoming meeting agenda items. We've got your your spreadsheet on your desk. Um we have the special meeting on May 12th um next week for the governance manual. got the review draft of the comprehensive plan as well as the public safety um sales tax ballot measure for and against committees and then as you as we know we'll have the second read ordinance come back on on the parks and open space. So, um, we have a couple things scheduled after that and then we, um, as I said at the last meeting, we're soon going to get into budget season. So, um, but please, please don't let summer go too fast. Everybody,

I know started over here. All right. Um, so, oh, sorry. Go ahead, Council Member Kurt. Uh my question for uh two questions. One is for next week with the governance manual. Um I'm assuming that Mark's going to remind us of what we need to be prepared to talk about and read before next week.

Yes, we will get some information out to you. And just as a verbal reminder here, um the list that we initially started working through was only a portion of um the manual. So once we get through those last remaining I think it's three chapters we'll have the other chapters which just on their face were not huge changes to begin with number one or introduction of new content. So those should go fairly routinely I would expect although we welcome all the discussion that could be had but yes we will get you some information and then um when can we get social media on that

127 um I let's get the governance manual so we can figure out exactly what that looks like and then I can give you a better idea. of what that will look like overall. Thank you. Could we put on like TBD somewhere? Sure. Would that be all right? Page two. I'm not reading well today. That's okay. There it is. Perfect.

All right. Um, next up we have citizen comments. Um, we do have one in chambers. If there's anybody left in chambers who'd like to make a citizen comment, have these little half sheets to fill out. Please introduce yourself. Let us know if you are live in the city limits. In the meantime, before we get started, um, if there's anybody online who'd like to make a citizen comment, please shoot a note to our meeting host. A reminder, time limits, three minutes. Um, comments only. If we need to follow up with you, we have your We have your email. We can do that. Oh,

amble it. I am a a citizen of Liberty Lake and I'm also part of the Friends of the Library. Coming up, we have our two big fundraisers. We are like the booster club for the library. That's how everybody goes. We're the booster club. And so we uh have our big fundraiser book sale coming up June 19th and the 20th. If you come on the 19th, get you're going to and you come when we first open, you'll be taking the line around the library because it's a it's a biggie. But we also piggyback with the kowanas and their uh um the yard sale. The yard sale.

Yes. because they come into town for the yard sale. So we, you know, they see us and they go, "Oh, yeah, books." And then July 15th is the suare, the summer suare. And this year, thanks to the hotel tax, we're going to have a big tent. So there's lots of shade. There'll be more tables and people won't have to play musical chairs when they get up and get their food. So thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Is there anybody online? Okay. All right. So, we have no more citizen comments. We do have an executive session. Uh her RCW42.30.1101 I double I whatever.

Um with regards to potential litigation, there will be no decisions made in executive session. About how much time do we need, Mark? How much time? Sean, do you think 15 or 20? Let's go with um do 15. Let's go with 15 minutes. Let's try 15.

Then so we will plan on so let's give a couple minutes for transition. We be back at 8:40 um and um we will adjourn at that point. If we have to extend we will let you know. Um but there will be no decisions. So no need to stick around unless you really want to. Thanks everybody. We'll we'll meet in the in the conference room in about three minutes. The mayor has requested five more minutes. The mayor has requested an additional five minutes. That's cool.

Hi everybody. We are back from executive session. Sorry for the couple of extensions. There were no decisions made and there's no further business before the council. So we are adjourning at 8:50. Have a great night.