City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. I've got six o'clock on June 8th. I'm going to go ahead and call our City Council meeting to order. Would you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I note that we have one council member absent, that's Ms. Marsha Hunt.

Mayor Walters?

Mr. Fantini.

I move to excuse Ms. Hunt. Second.

We have a motion and a second to excuse the absence of Marsha Hunt. If there is no objection, we'll consider that approved. All right, we have some announcements and committee reports tonight, and I am going to attempt to share them myself. Hey, how about that? All right. First of all, an announcement from the Planning and Public Works departments. The third floor Planning and Public Works counter is transitioning to appointment only. They'll be open five days a week again, but they will, rather than taking anybody who shows up, they will ask that you make an appointment. That's all beginning July 6th. We're doing some promotion and advertising about this now, and you'll be able to make an appointment online at anacorteswa.gov slash permitting. You can also show up there at the counter, talk to the person at the window, make an appointment if the person who is at the window can't immediately answer your request. The objective here is to provide better insight into your permit or application related issue while providing more structured time for staff to actually work on processing permits. Tomorrow, June 9th, from 4 to 6 p.m. in the council chambers, we're having an open house for the Anacortes Shoreline Master Program update. This process will last all year, but this is a good opportunity to get in early and find out what's going on and how the process will work to update our SMP. I want to remind people that we've just launched this adopt a storm drain program. So you can adopt your storm drain, or in some cases, things that aren't a storm drain. Not everybody has a drain. Some people only have a ditch. And you can do that too. So go to wa.adoptadrain, with hyphens there, .org to check that out. I do quarterly at the Senior Center. There will be a conversation with the mayor on June 10. I think that's Wednesday from 1 to 2 p.m. And so you can join me there You don't have to be a senior, but we'll see you at the Senior Center for an informal conversation Bark in the park is this Saturday June 13th that starts at 10 a.m. It's at Storvik It's a great opportunity to get your doggos out there. They do need to be on a leash. However The Pride parade is coming up. We heard about that last week, June 21st. And our 4th of July parade is coming up. And again, we are asking for registration of all participants in the parade. We haven't done that in the past, but this year we want to be able to get information out to you in advance. We need your contact information. We need to know who's going to be showing up. Importantly, we are going to restrict people from throwing candy out all the way in the bike lane so that nobody gets in front of vehicles and gets run over. Council we have a couple of committee reports and then we have a presentation.

So let's start with the hacks committee acts and planning Who's doing that Mayor Walters miss Malta I attended the planning committee meeting today at 5 p.m with council members young and career and planning director John Coleman and planning manager Libby Grange and And we talked about the timeline for this year, some of the major projects the department is working on. The first being the critical areas ordinance update, which is required to be completed by the end of 2026. This is a state law, RCW, and it has to be completed within one year of the comprehensive plan update. So we'll be time with that so they'll be working on that and the shoreline master program update which is due which will be completed shortly thereafter the reason critical areas ordinance will inform some parts of the shoreline master program update, so that will be done sort of early next year. And there is lots of opportunity for public engagement, as was mentioned in the mayor's announcements, the first one being tomorrow night. But there will be public engagement opportunities and public comment periods. and that all these things will be taken on by the Planning Commission first, and then they will, and some have already, they've started already, and then those will come to Council. So just to, as a reminder, the Critical Areas Ordinance affects areas like habitat wildlife habitat geologically hazardous areas things like that there are five different categories and then the shoreline master uh... the shoreline management act was also is also a state law and the two priorities of that act are to provide public access to the shoreline and also make available shoreline for water-dependent commercial uses and that's within 200 feet of the high water mark and the shoreline management area is it's like it's a whole separate zoning area from everything from everything else in the city and it is um It has its own rules. So we need to update that every 10 years. We're a little bit late, as many cities and counties are. But a lot of work has been done, and then these will That will be done in a very good fashion. And we also talked about mayor's executive orders to streamline some permitting processes and more information on those specific things will be coming forward soon. We just got the brief overview. And I was not, I missed the housing affordability and community services meeting that was last Thursday.

Mayor Walters? Mr. Young. Could I add to what Ms. Moulton said? On the 4th, the HACS committee met, myself, Mr. Currier, and the team. And Dustin Johnson from Anacortes Family Center did a presentation about the services and the help that they do here within the city. It was great and detailed talking about social workers, how that applies to the efforts that's happening to make sure if we have issues that come up individually as well. I think if I might, that particular day, Luke Courier, our council member, they had an issue at his employment with mental illness. It was an issue and the question becomes, what do you do? Who do you call? How do you begin to address some of those issues? And so the thought was that we would brainstorm that session and try to figure out how we proceed and would recommend some bullets of what should or should not happen, who could we call. But in the discussion, though, we came to the conclusion as a committee that the best thing to do is, given that we have social workers, given that we have the Anacortes Family Center that deals with this problem on a daily basis, given we have community action that addresses this in some fashion, or any of the other stakeholders, as laypeople, we felt that they would be better to create an initial bulleted point of um... circumstances and scenarios and then what we would do as a committee is take a look at that and see if there's anything that we think is missing it should be included it may spawn new ideas about um... you know scenarios that may come up but the end goal of it is to have a resource for people to be able to know what to do. It is shocking when it happens to you. We have mental illness all around us, and sometimes when you're in crisis, you're trying to figure out, what do I do? Who do I call to get that help? So that information will be coming forward, but the committee decided that it would prefer the experts bring forward some bulleted points and then as a committee we review those and bring them forward to council and mayor and anyone else and I think that um yeah okay no that was it because you know it's we were initially talking about answers to a 911 call so all that is consistent thank you thank you Mr. Young uh port city liaison committee

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Fantini.

Yes, the Port City Liaison Committee met on June 2nd with representatives from the city and port. A couple of the items that we talked about, one is of course there's going to be a community open house on July 1st at the new Maritime Plaza located directly behind the WT Preston. It's going to be from 5 to 7 PM to celebrate the opening of the new Maritime Plaza. So please come check it out. There will be some local entertainment, food vendors, Rockfish Brewery, all that good stuff. Also, we had an update on the 9th Street realignment reconfiguration. They're past 60% on that, and we're hoping for shovels in the ground at some point in January. Also, we were updated there has been a leadership transition at SCOG and also a leadership transition at EDASC, but all are still very focused on bringing attention and the need there is to support business here in Anacortes, but we're looking forward to staying engaged with those two entities as they go through their leadership transition. We also talked about the north basin read capitalization work study now this is still forward moving forward uh... and they are engaging stakeholders hoping to get some more public outreach by the end of the year uh... but that they're still a long way out on this project but one thing that i thought was excellent to hear was they're planning to make sure that once it's built out itself supporting which i think is a great design for anything uh... also pier sixty one is sampling for the log pocket environmental cleanup uh... and they're looking at a price tag of almost eleven million for that the state audit of the port is complete and they received a clean audit so congrats to them We also talked a little bit about the event center. There's gonna be funding presentations for .09 funds on June 30th. I also wanted to draw attention, the project page on our city website has been updated and has a lot of great information uh... about the progress of that project the steps of that project uh... we also talked about their uh... pickleball at the port city liaison meeting uh... and there will be a meeting uh... between city and port representatives to talk about exploring some options that the port may be able to help assist us with which is is great and then finally uh... stabber marina uh... They had some, we had some great economic news, as we like to talk about, you know, growing economics here. They had a travel lift construction that they were planning to do. That was going to be done in Wisconsin, but instead they found a way to build that here at Stabart Marine here in Anacortes, and that is gonna lead to 50 jobs and 10 million bucks. And that's great, because otherwise that would have been Wisconsin, so it's good to have that here in Anacortes. Thanks to the Port and Stabit for their work on that. And that's it.

All right. Thank you. Council, do you have any other announcements, committee reports, thoughts, feelings, or emotions?

Mayor Walters.

We'll go with Ms. Cleland McGrath first.

Hey, thank you. A couple of things. Tagging off of what Council Member Young said about the challenges when it comes to our folks in crisis, You know, we did a lot of work starting in 2020. We had a ton of outpouring from the public about the fact that we needed an embedded social worker within the police department. Council Member... Well, it was Council Member Walters, and Council Member Moulton and I sat in a lot of meetings. And so what our partnership... What we realized was the best option for us was to... And made the dollar go the furthest, is to have that... three-legged response, which is the police, our community paramedic from the fire department, and then our social worker that is supported is employed through the Anacortes Family Center, which we have on our agenda for our consent agenda later today. So that's been a really good response. Not only do the police use it, I've used it when I've been out walking with kids or whatnot when I see someone who has a is having a challenging time or may need some assistance, calling that community paramedic and not necessarily even having a police officer show up with them has been a really good resource. During our discussions, which leads me into my next thing about North Star, is that our biggest challenge has always been the designated crisis responder. And so that is a person that is specifically designated to be able to assess a person who is in mental or behavioral health crisis and remove them from that situation. And that is a very specific designation. And one of our challenges has always been that there are crisis responders for the entire county. And to get a crisis responder actually to Anacortes, to the location at which this problem is happening for a potential community member is very complicated. We saw that a lot over the last quite a bit, three or four years ago, because the person in crisis is still able to move around, right? The person in crisis cannot be held against their will. So to be able to identify, get that resource across the county to Anacortes, to that person is a real challenge. So that's been an ongoing discussion of how do we make sure that we have those crisis responders available for the entire county, East County, West County, and our Mount Vernon Burlington kind of population where it's a little bit more concentrated. So our next North Star meeting for all of the council members is a week from tomorrow. And hopefully, I know it's hard to do it because it's the day after our Monday night council meeting, but it's June 16th. from six to eight. I know a lot of us try to make it. I just really encourage everyone to try to make it because they're going to be talking about Martha's Place. They're gonna be talking about the homeless housing funding process and our strategic plan. And with North Star, the county is really trying to pool funds. I think we all have different approaches. There are certain things that make sense to do countywide, and there are certain things that make sense to do community by community. But we really need all of us there so that we understand what those discussions are, what's included in those discussions so we can make responsible decisions when either the county asks us for money or we decide that we want to partner with other communities or really focus just solely within our Fidalgo Island region. So I just wanted to kind of put that out there. Hopefully you guys can all come. The other thing, on a different note, is that I was able to attend the Senior Center fundraiser, and it was fantastic. Carl Wolfswinkle, who's our director for the Senior Center, was on stage doing a great job. Brian Gere emceed the entire event, and I shout out to Mayor Walters, previous Mayor Gere, and Carl Wolfswinkle for taking the catwalk unexpectedly in quite the... quite the costume. So it was a really lovely time to support Meals on Wheels. And the creativity of our community and the enthusiasm was just fantastic. So well done to everyone who participated. Thank you.

Anything for the seniors? Mr. Pantini.

Mayor Walters, I had a similar compliment, but I just want to say if you haven't seen the picture of Mayor Walters on the runway giving his best blue steel point in the pink ensemble, you would do yourself a favor to check that out.

All right, at the risk of inviting more of that, anybody else? No, all right. Well, thank you very much. Okay, so announcements and committee reports are concluded. That brings us to item 3C, which is presentation of the Anacortes letters signed by the Anacortes Arts Festival and the Skagit Tourism Bureau. Mr. Coleman, are you going to start us off with an introduction? All right, thank you.

Good evening, Council, members of the public, Mayor, thank you. So tonight we're going to have a presentation from Meredith McLemoyle, who's representing both the Anacortes Arts Festival and the Skagitourism Bureau to talk about what we're referring to as the Anacortes Letters and the Find Every Letter program. If you're unfamiliar with the Anacortes Letters down at the Washington State Ferry last week, The port helped install, the port did all the work installing five foot tall letters that spell Anacortes and we'll show them here shortly. Meredith's gonna talk about the project and how it moved through and we wanted to celebrate everybody who participated in this project. It is quite surprising how much effort goes into some letters being installed down in a public space. There are numerous people to thank in agencies and including, well, we're gonna let Meredith cover them all. I'll stop talking and introduce Meredith.

Thanks, John. Mayor and council, it's my pleasure to be here tonight to represent the group that worked really hard at the letters. So we just kept calling them the letters. Everybody knows where the letters are, right? So the Find Every Letter project was a countywide art adventure led by, make sure I get this right, led by EDASC and the Skagit Tourism Bureau. So the idea came from those two organizations received a grant from the Seattle Foundation, and the goal was to showcase Skagit County in an interesting and creative way to visitors who could be here for World Cup soccer traveling the I-5 corridor. I think that any hook to get them to pull off of I-5 and explore our county was kind of the direction that the Tourism Bureau was looking at going. So I'm I was not in on those original conversations. I think John Sternlich and Kristin Kelts had probably some very interesting conversations about how to spend that money and It was distributed equally amongst the counties based on how many letters were in your city name as how it ended up being which was kind of fun and So the fabrication of the letters started at Janaki. Janaki donated a lot of time and effort and came up with a plan on what this would look like. They did all of the cutting and fabricating and John Dumas can nod his head yes or no. They felt to me like they were a fiberglass of some sort. I think it was kind of a boat-grade material that they were working on, and so this was Janaki's brainchild with John and Kristen to put together, and they did all of that work. So when we knew the letters were coming, I think the hot potato got passed amongst a number of people in the city and in the community and landed ultimately with the Economic Development Council from City Council, Economic Development Committee for City Council so they called a meeting of a lot of community collaborative partners so at that table I'll recognize everyone involved through the course of this presentation in the meeting the downtown Alliance was there at the port was there the chamber edask schedule tourism along with the council members and as it all came out it ended up coming that the Arts Festival would take the lead on putting the letters together the port helped us find a place the city stayed John and Stephanie stayed as a driver for us in the city and the Chamber of Commerce came on board to put together the landing page and the signage that is still to be put down at the location and also the location came out of that conversation. So I know that there's been some conversation about they're hard to get to, you know, just want to address that up front. Our goal in this initial installation was to try to capture the summer ferry traffic as much as we could. So not as much for me to take my kids to go take a picture, but more how many times can we see this online? So how many hits can we get of people who are traveling in the ferry and have an extra 15 minutes to take their picture? And how many images and how many places can we see Anacortes and our hashtag experience Anacortes show up? So it is an installation at the ferry terminal. The port are the ones that helped us determine that site. I know there were also council members and the city involved in that. And then that doesn't mean that it will be there forever. We had big conversations in the Economic Development Committee about what could we do if these last, and where could they be, and what kind of iconic exploration kind of fine wall though could we turn this into so they're there for the summer that was our determination and when you see them we talked about changing the o from a soccer ball because they are our letters now as long as they stand up so the art and the design of them we run a really short time frame we had six weeks from that first meeting to when the installation needed to happen So we had some brainstorms around what that would look like, and we had initially planned to do a call to artists and have eight Anacortes artisans represented. And it turns out it's a little harder to make sure you have the right size, shape, digital file format. So we decided that Jennifer Bowman has art that represents all aspects of life on Fadago Island and really was kind of a home run. So Jennifer... was tasked with coming up with what images we were gonna use and we went through those and we got them to SignDog. SignDog was a great partner in this project. Not knowing Anything, just can you wrap some letters? They're five feet tall. What's that gonna look like? So they were total troopers. The soccer ball you see there was an image that was done by the marketing team at the Antiquaries Arts Festival, and it's the soccer ball, and then the images that are there are all creative district images that you're gonna see on banners on Commercial Avenue later this month, so that was a nice little tie-in to the downtown corridor. SignDog ended up painting the edges for us and then started wrapping the letters. Then came the installation. Again, we just had some sketchy emails about you're gonna get some poles and some brackets and here you go. So John and his team went to work at installing the letters where you see them out by the port. They got that done in really quick order and we met our goals and deadlines of having the art installed. And I wanted to put the port's 100th anniversary on there to remind us all of their celebration. And then to come still, City Public Works will be installing the sign as soon as it's ready to go out there. So thank you to the Public Works for helping with that. And reminder that the port is also the property on which we're housing our letters at the moment. So thank you to them for that. And then finally, our theme is kind of find the letters and explore Anacortes. And so there you see them in all their glory. We made sure we got a good couple of pictures angle with the ferry and the mountains and the backdrop so that we can show those off. If you go to the Chamber of Commerce's social media pages, they have a video that they've put up where you can kind of drive by the letters and see all of them. So it's a fun celebration for us as a community. It really was kind of a, you know, in some crazy days, it was a joyful opportunity to be a part of. So thank you to the Economic Development Committee for letting me be a part of that. And the Tourism Bureau is... I'm grateful to all of the communities who took this crazy idea and made it happen so all the letters are installed across the county you can go to the tourism bureau's website and see where they all are and they've all done something a little bit different with their letters so it's really fun to see each of the community's uniqueness come out so thank you to everyone who is involved do you have any questions for me

Thank you for the presentation. It's really great to see all this. A special thank you as well to Jennifer Bowman, the artist, for all of these letters. Do you want to talk about the sea?

Just in case there's any questions regarding the upside-down ferry located on the sea, that has been remedied by one Mr. John Dumas himself, and so I just don't have a fresh picture of it yet, but I will update my presentation.

Perfect.

Perfect. Ms. Gianna? Yes. Ms. Gianna, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Meredith, excellent presentation. There were just a couple of things I wanted to give a little bit of a background on it, if you won't mind. Part of this whole thought idea still seeds from the formation of the Economic Development Committee for Anacortes. That's separate, necessarily, than the EDAS, which encompasses the whole island. The thought in forming this committee was to focus on Anacortes and how do we showcase our best talents to have people want to stop, want to spend money, want to come and enjoy the creative district, downtown, any of the stuff. It may even possibly bring their businesses here. And so part of that idea was when we were forming this committee and this year with the new members on it, we each needed to come up with an idea. One of the ideas that I put forward was recognizing that there were two million people passing by Anacortes. And so when we had the opportunity to come up and they said that FIFA was coming and that we were hoping along the I-5 corridor that we could extract some of those dollars that everybody believed that they were going to get. Quite honestly, I don't know how many people are going to come off the I-5, come down 20 and come to Anacortes. So our best project was to look at the two million people that absolutely go to the San Juan Islands And it became a great way for us to promote Anacortes and then secondarily to that to promote, you know, magic Skagit because, you know, we're all linked together in one way or another. The idea I love about it is that it's almost as if it's an octopus. And I think many of you have heard me mention why I love an octopus because an octopus has got one body but many tentacles. In this case, we were doing a sprint for June 1st, which was the goal. And the goal was to have these letters up. And each of the pieces of the letter, and whether that's Skagit Tourism and Christine Kelts helping to pull it together and representing all of Skagit, and then whether it was also the chamber of commerce which was really about an accordance and so what we really had to figure out what how do we have jessica we've got christian kills we've got meredith in the arts we've got of the port we've got all of these jordan downtown we had all of these pieces we needed to work with and so the economic development committee to that used it to gather all these pieces together to hash out what we were going to do, what we could do to keep focus on what we could achieve by June 1st. There are other ideas for what we would do later on, but economically, if 2 million people are going to the San Juan Islands every single year, 1% of those is what, 2,000? imagine if we were to target them to come and attend our shows to come and go to some arts festival to come and maybe even bring their dollars here so that was just one of the ideas and what i really wanted to thank each of the members and including in that is the city staff Meredith for tethering is a good word for what you did, those pieces together and stitching them. But also the port, because again, we had Christy from the port and she was coming in and we said, this is what we need. And Christy said, she'll take it back to John in the port to see what they could do. Whether it was Jessica trying to figure out how do we do the QR code so that the QR code gives things about what's happening in Anacortes. Of course, Christian Keltz and Magic Skagit wanted to make sure that the rest of Skagit wasn't left out in this process. And those were all of the stakeholders we were working with in order to make it happen. Naturally, Jennifer Bowman being the consummate artist, that she is willing to step up to the plate. Personally, I have several of her pieces in my house, but the idea was that look at all of these components that came together for Anacortes. And was it easy? No. Did we have to stay on task? Absolutely. The Economic Development Committee's function was to make sure that we were collectively pooling all of our stakeholders to make sure that we could achieve the goals that we were, and that's what we were able to accomplish. I've never been more proud of the various pieces that we have, the components that come together, sometimes differing points of view, because originally, the lettering was going to be on the waterfront and the thought well the discussion was for it to be on the waterfront meaning in downtown Anacortes but if this was a view that we were going to look at as a short term to really take a look at where we might go from here as Meredith said The best bang for the buck, particularly given the state of cities, economic condition that we are all in, the thought was let's target that 2 million people going through. And if, as Meredith said, that they're already going to be in line, if they got out of the line just for a moment while they were waiting for the ferry to come, took a picture, It really does tell a story about our city that we want. The future thought, as I've mentioned before in talking with Skagit Transit, is possibly, possibly having a dedicated way for people to walk back on the ferry once they figure out, through QR codes, what events are happening in the city. They may want to walk on and decide that they want to see a theater production. They may want to come back for something. But that they can use, which will soon hopefully be an app, that you can use the app And Skagit Transit will come and pick you up and take you to where you're going. The cost will only be nominal, but those are future things that we're looking at and how we get to go there. And that, again, will allow us to collaborate with all of our stakeholders, which we mean by that is the, you know, just the arts district and what we want. So I wanted to make sure that we thank all of those people personally as part of the committee, Luke and Christine for the work that went into it to tether everybody together. So thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Young. Others?

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Currier.

Heartfelt thanks, Meredith. John's in the room. There's, like I mentioned, a ton of people involved. It's much easier to come up with a bunch of crazy ideas, and it's much harder to execute so quickly and so beautifully. So I think for me, and discussions we had on the committee, it was like an opportunity for the city to get behind and support some of the great organizations already working together and use this kind of as a template. This was an example of how well we can work together to focus on collaboration and supporting not only Anacortes locally, but also the county coming together. So again, huge thank you. So it turned out fantastic.

You're welcome. We're all looking forward to that work for sure.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Currier. Anyone else? Mayor Walters. Mr. Fantini.

I'll just quickly say thank you to everybody that was involved. They look so awesome and so cool out there, especially behind the sunset when the sun, oh my gosh. I'm also really excited to hear that there might be life after the World Cup because I was in, sorry for the tangent, I went to Coopville and went to their sculpture forest. And I'm like, there's so many opportunities that could be with these letters. So I'm glad to hear that. Thank you.

Mayor Walters. Ms. Kalina McGrath. Thank you. Yeah, I would just say thank you to... the downtown Anacortes Alliance Creative District, so Jordan Hay, Meredith from the Creative District and your staff, the chamber, Anacortes Chamber, so Jessica and Brianne were really involved, Skagitourism, Kristen Keltz, and I will say that when Skagitourism came and said, hey, all of you cities, Cedar Roley, Burlington, Mount Vernon, La Conner, Did anyone else, did other people get it? Did Concrete get one too? Yes. All of these cities, we're going to get the sign, and the name of our city is so long, it's five feet tall and about 40 feet long, and where are we going to put this large sign that was going to enhance our community and not be kind of a... pondering why, we were really lucky to have all of you, especially then the Port of Anacortes with Christie and John Dumas to come and say like, oh yeah, we got this figured out. We all sat around a table. We were able to come up with a solution. And all of these different organizations work so well together. I think our Economic Development Committee is pretty new. And so I wouldn't say you guys made us look good, but we just got to kind of call the meeting and say, hey, here's kind of our initial idea. And all of these members really ran with it and made it happen. I think the one last thing there was a reference to the sign that will be installed shortly. And I think Mr. Coleman's in charge of that. So thank you for taking that lead. And I believe it was designed by the chamber, Brianne and Jessica, but that's going to be kind of, that is going to be an informational sign next to these letters. So if people are, when you're waiting for a ferry, you might be two hours early and there's not a lot to do down there. So this is an opportunity to take a picture with Anacortes, hopefully post it to somebody or text it to somebody in your world. And then also there's an informational sign that further about the magic Skagit so linking giving them information about all of Skagit County are different are different neighboring cities and then also what can happen what there what is available in our downtown Anacortes because we feel like that was an option opportunity for a captive audience that wasn't going to cost us a lot of money up front since we don't have a lot of money to spend. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you, all of you, for making this happen. And the finished final product is great, and I would agree. It's exciting to think of other places it can go, maybe in the wintertime. Who knows?

I think to have a 5 foot 5 by 40 foot piece of public art of sorts for a $5,000 budget, that's not going to happen more than once, I don't think. So we're pretty lucky right now.

And one other thing I should say like I feel like sign dog as one of our business key local businesses was very Accommodating and just said sure we'll figure it out So to Brad and his staff at sign dog was that was would not be able to do it that quickly if it hadn't been for for them We are very appreciative to everybody who participated in this project and especially to Meredith for coming and making this presentation and

You're welcome. Thank you for supporting it, and we're happy to be a part of it. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right, that brings us then to public comment. I've got no one signed up in advance for public comment. Would anyone like to make a public comment at this point? No? Anybody online? Nobody online? Nobody online. Okay. All right. Well, then moving on, we will hit our consent agenda item five. There are four items on the consent agenda. Counsel, if you please.

Mayor Walters.

Ms. Cleland-McGrath.

Thank you. I would like to move forward consent agenda items A through C and pull item D. Okay.

Is that a motion to approve the consent agenda without D?

Yes.

Motion to approve the consent agenda, except for item D, with a second. No discussions allowed on the consent agenda, so if all those in favor would say aye. Aye. All those opposed say no. The ayes have it, and items 5A through C are approved. Item 5D remains. Ms. Kalina-McGrath?

Thank you. I was just going to remove it from the consent agenda because I currently serve on the AFC board, and the city as a whole is trying to be very careful about contracts when there are serving board members as council members. So I will be abstaining from voting.

Thank you, Ms. Kalina-McGrath. Is there a motion on 5D or other discussion?

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Fantini.

Move to approve 5D. Second.

Motion and second to approve 5D, the contract modification with the Family Center for the Social Worker Agreement. Is there any discussion? If there is no discussion, I'll proceed to a vote. All right, the vote is on the motion to approve the contract modification with the Family Center for the Social Worker Agreement. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no. The ayes have it and 5D is approved. Thank you very much. Our next item is a public hearing on our updated transportation improvement program. And Mr. Lee, our Public Works Director, will present this item.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and members of the public. Tonight I bring for you our latest update to our Transportation Improvement Program for 2027 through 2032. So this is a plan that we have to update every year per state law, and it includes our six-year outlook on our future transportation plans. We basically developed the plan from the existing CFP with a few minor tweaks. Just so you guys know, this is just for the registering with the state. We're not asking for funding of these projects or any official details at this stage. This is just our future plan, and it develops a framework for funding these projects later on. So here's a map of just kind of the general area that each project is located. well dispersed throughout the city. And that's another thing that the state wants to see is that we're targeting the city in an equitable fashion that our projects aren't focused in one area. So we have about 20 capital projects and we have three annual programs. So our three annual programs, you'll recognize one of them, the annual pavement maintenance program that we do every year for 1.8 million dollars. This has always been our CFP for as long as I've been here. One change that we are looking at for our other annual program, generally we have a sidewalk program and then we also have a ADA improvements and trip hazard program and we are proposing combining those into one annual program since there's a lot of overlap between the two programs. Generally, when you're doing sidewalk extensions, you're including ADA ramps, you're fixing trip hazards. So this gives us a little bit more flexibility in some of the projects that we target and helps kind of join those two funds into one fund. And then the last program is a new one that the Public Works is proposing to consider for the future, starting in 2028. is allocating $200,000 towards improvements in the downtown commercial corridor. Sidewalks are aging. We're looking at ways to do a more permanent fix on the sidewalks to eliminate trip hazards, provide safe pedestrian access, and replace some of the street trees that are currently devastating our sidewalks and causing those trip hazards. So, and then my last slide here just has a list of all the projects, all the capital projects that were included in the TIP for this year. In your agenda packet, it was more detailed for each one of them. On the right, we're also showing, so we have the value that we're kind of tentatively placing. These are very high-level estimates for every project. And on the right side, we have kind of where we think the funding might be coming from. Some of the grants we've applied for, the projects that we're working on currently this year or hoping to work on next year, we have been budgeted some money for projects like 12th and K. And as you can see, there's a lot of unknowns as we look out at some of the projects in 2030 and beyond. Not sure how we're going to fund those yet, but as we get closer, we will figure it out. Again, that's why we are working. Part of the reason we're submitting this tip is so that it can be file with the state. It helps inform the regional transportation improvement plan, which also helps inform the state transportation improvement plan and helps make us competitive for grants. So that's all I have for the presentation tonight. I'm happy to answer any questions about any specific projects or any additional information about the improvement plan.

And Council, we're taking an incremental approach to improving our capital project planning. So this plan is based on our existing capital facilities plan. We made a couple of changes to the names and nomenclature to make it clearer what programs are, what projects are which. We will do more of an update when we do our capital facilities plan this coming budget season. And then those projects for the following year will get rolled into the actual budget. And then the TIP Next year will be a breeze based on the next capital facilities plan update. Council, you have questions?

Mayor Walters. Ms. Moulton. I have a question about two of the projects. Thank you for this. I actually really like the texture on this map, too. It's on there. It's really kind of cool looking. So one of them was the beautification of R Avenue for a million dollars. And I'm just very curious about that.

Yeah, so, I mean, basically, our recent R Avenue project, as you saw, did grassline swales, grassline median, and it's a bit of a hazard to currently maintain mowing it. The mowers have to enter and exit traffic. It's difficult to maintain the swales with the grassline conditions that they are, and so the The kind of concept there is basically to replace that whole median with something that is easier to maintain, looks better, and then we'd also redo the bioswells to also be easier to maintain with either mulch or river rock or something a little bit nicer looking. It is one of the main corridors in our town, so I think you're coming down either Commercial or R Avenue, so having a nice looking

entrance to town is is an important aspect thank you my second one i was curious about is six street from k avenue to o avenue i know that there are a lot of improvements done there not that terribly long ago so i'd like to know a little bit more about this one too

Yes, that's another one of our kind of main downtown corridors, and the idea there is to adjust the channelization. There's sections of the street. There's not a... If you drive down the road, the kind of cross-section changes and narrows down in ways, and it's not consistent throughout the whole corridor. It's kind of... It'd be part of our kind of downtown loop. If you're just coming through downtown, heading out towards the ferry or heading out towards the Glimas Island Ferry, it's a pretty frequently traveled road... And that project would have a consistent cross-section with a consistent parking shoulder and a re-channelization so that it lines up properly throughout the corridor.

Thank you. Wider sidewalk as well?

Yep.

Yeah. Because that's part of the Guimas Channel Trail as well.

Mayor Walters?

Mr. McDougall.

Thank you, Mr. Lee, for the presentation. Just a couple quick questions. On the items where there's both kind of a local funding and a grant either funded or applied, basically I'm assuming the local funding piece is like a local match. Is that pretty universally correct? Yes.

Anyone listed on there where we have applied is just because we know that there's generally a 20% match.

Generally 20%. That answered my second question. And then on the items where basically unknown currently, do you have a sense for how many of those are going to be kind of a similar scenario where it's a local match, 20%, grant, 80%? Or is it hard to say?

It's hard to say. It's dependent on the grant programs that we target, and they kind of They're not always consistent, and there's a lot out there, so it really just depends. There's more often a match than not, so there's generally, there's usually, odds are there's going to be a match for most grants programs.

Got it. Thank you.

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Currier.

I had a constituent recommend regarding our avenue beautification wildflowers. They had seen that in multiple European cities as a method to cut down on costs and keep it beautiful. So just throwing that out there at this moment.

It's a good idea that we'll definitely consider when that time comes.

Mayor Walters?

Mr. Young?

Mr. Lee, do we have a, I know that the staff are always looking for opportunities. Do we have a dedicated person to look for grants for us? Or is it that, given the tight staff we have, we go after the things we know about versus others that we may not know about?

We don't have a dedicated staff member. We have staff that are good at writing grants and looking for them, but we don't have someone who's so dedicated personally. We also use consultants occasionally to help us scour that. have been in the realm and help us identify good candidates.

I totally get that. I mean, again, small cities in particular have a more difficult time trying to not only do the work that they're assigned to do with limited resources and limited staff, but also at the same time with the expectation to be able to go out and find other grants. I just don't see that as a winning strategy. I think it's much more of a maintenance strategy. And I think that part of this that the mayor and I have talked about before in the primary air is to try to look to see if there are other opportunities as well, because I think that for those opportunities that we are aware of, we capitalize on it. You know, but at the end of the day, we still each have a large job to do in just A rational mind cannot expect to be able to stay up on all of the opportunities. Opportunities are diminishing, but the cost effectiveness of it would seem to be an investment we should look a little deeper at trying to figure out how can we do a little bit more to go after those pieces and things that are there.

And council in the public works space, public works has been using, in the transportation space, public works has been using Transpo Group to identify a series of grants. They've applied for five, six of them there. And another one that we did get, but then lost due to some federal cuts. So my sense is that we're actually doing pretty well finding grants in the transportation space right now. But the point is well taken for other areas.

I don't doubt that there's programs out there that we're missing, but I do feel we do a pretty good job knowing what's coming through. There's a SCOG, the Skagit County Council of Governments, we meet with them once a month, and we usually have a pretty good sense of most of the major programs coming through.

Yeah, but in no way am I suggesting. I watch you guys work. I'm paying close attention to the effort that you put in to save money, be very resourceful, and I applaud that. Again, my single point was and is that there are billions and billions of dollars out there. I just think competitively it would serve us to try to find a way to be able to flush out a couple more. Thank you.

Mayor Walters. Mr. Fantini. First, I want to say, when we're in a much better budget position, I would definitely be interested in hearing more about getting a potential grant writer, not only for freeing up staff time, but also, I know Oak Harbor has employed a grant writer for a couple years now, and we have seen I've watched and seen some pretty significant improvements through that. However, I do think our staff is doing a phenomenal job with that, but any support we can give them would be good. A couple of questions that I have. As I was going through the TIP, the Transportation Improvement Plan, for those that hate acronyms, One thing that it brought to mind, and I don't need this tonight, but when talking about the pavement maintenance fund, I remember in one of the earlier council meetings, there was kind of a table that we were shown that shows how much has been collected, how much has been spent each year, that kind of thing. We've had a lot of changes and shifting directions based on the... you know, what's been happening in the world and other places. I would love at some point to see that table again. It doesn't have to be tonight, but just I've kind of lost track of where we are with that as far as the spending and all of that. So just something. The other question, or the question that I have pertains specifically to Kansas Avenue. I know everybody has heard me talk about this a lot, but I am the Ward 3 representative. I think that we have seen probably the last three public works directors have the distinct would have to shift this project five or 10 years out. So it's been shifting for what I feel like has been the better part of a couple decades now. And through that time, our staff has done an incredible job trying to maintain the roads through there, but it's still a major problem. When I look at the project as it's written, it talks about we're gonna open up uh... we're gonna open up kansas avenue and we're going to address safety issues and we're going to address sidewalks and all of that from uh... oaks to west fourth and then we're gonna evaluate if any changes should happen past west fourth uh... i hear concerns from neighbors past west fourth all the time that there are safety concerns so one of the things that i'm really hoping is that before we start construction to open up that major collector road to increase the traffic all the way up Kansas that we do the evaluation first prior to opening up Kansas. I understand we might not be able to do all the construction at one time, but I think it's really important that we looked at not shifting the issues. With that being said, I certainly don't want to hold it up at all. because there has been you know it's more than just a kansas avenue problem it's also a uh the streets that go the other direction problem because all of the um all of the streets that go i think north south are are wider and so they're meant to be to have traffic the streets that go east west are not and so I just really want to keep beating the drum for that project, but also making sure that we're looking at the full scope. Because what I would hate to have happen is for us to take really good care of those first two blocks and then create a whole other issue for the four blocks in between. So just wanted to put that out there.

Do you want to pause there for a second? Yes, please. Certainly the project has expanded in scope since it was initially conceived. Mr. Lee, do you want to talk about your current thinking with respect to this project?

Yeah, well, yeah, so when we scoped it out a year or so ago, I mean, we did almost, we were looking at it almost exactly how you said, included in the scope to design the improvements from second to third, and then third, fourth, that corridor. Part of the additional scope would be to evaluate safety concerns at 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th, I believe. But the remaining ones, because we knew as soon as that corridor was open that the traffic volume was going to increase significantly through that corridor. And so there was minor improvements that we could do at those other intersections that would be part of that initial project. And then once that's open, federally reclassified as a collector, we could continue to go after grants for improving the major corridor. My personal grant vision would be that we, with approval from everyone up here, that we would take that corridor and it would become a major corridor through that area and we'd be doing the improvements all the way up the hill.

I appreciate that we're taking that approach. Thank you very much. Last one, because there's one more Ward 3 project on here. I just wanted to, I didn't see it initially in the capital plan, but I really like the fact that we are going to do some tree trimming around Pennsylvania and Anna Copper, because there is definitely some issues up there. So I'm glad we're going to be addressing those, even if we're addressing them in 2030. So thank you.

One last thing I want to add about Kansas is we are currently looking into ways to skirt the rule of the federal classification of the roadway in order to get grants. So we're currently working on trying to get it classified in a way that we can then get grant funding for this initial phase. But it's a little tricky. But we are trying to approach this project in different ways to accelerate the timeline. Because I know it's a project that's well wanted through the community.

Myself, as well as many constituents, really thank you for your effort on that. Seriously.

And the Kansas project may end up being more than just a street project, but also a stormwater project and other utilities. Council, any other questions before I go to the public hearing?

Mr. Walters, I mean Mayor Walters.

Mr. Young.

Just one follow-up question. I know this is a bit outside of that, but I think it's within the purview of what we're discussing. There was, I think, Some discussion about the roundabout at the south end of commercial and trimming the trees just a little bit and I think that because it's along the you know 20 that we have to get certain permissions to either remove or could we trim I mean have I know you've got your hands full, and I want to say that right up front. I know you do. Has there been any movement toward that? Even if we can't remove them, can we trim them in certain ways to allow for a greater viewpoint of that wonderful piece of art?

We have parks working on that project rather than public works, and they are continuing to plan to remove some of the evergreen trees.

I hear you, and I appreciate that.

Because they think that pruning wouldn't look very good.

Okay. All right. Thank you. On state routes, we always like to communicate with WSDOT, but there is some jurisdictional work that the city can do unilaterally, but it's always good to be good neighbors with WSDOT. Thank you.

Council, if there are no other questions, this is labeled as a public hearing. We will now solicit public comment through opening the public hearing. And I see a taker right here in the second row. Come on up. State your name for the record and the neighborhood in which you live. And yes, adjust the microphone. You have three minutes. Go ahead.

Teresa Baker, Old Town. I just have a question about the K Avenue intersection improvements. First it says 286,000, and then it's 2,500,000, and I didn't think anything was happening at K Avenue except for maybe a light for crossing.

Okay, thank you for your question. We'll answer questions at the end. Any other comments? At this point, anybody online? Oh, wait, come on up. And you're in the back, you're on deck.

Ron Johnson, I'm on- Would you adjust your mic a little bit? Okay, Ron Johnson, I'm on Oaks Avenue, Ward 3. My question is, I like this format, Of all the bullet points, I'd like more information on some of the specific projects, like what planning has been done so far. Is there any additional information other than this little project name to describe what's going on? Thank you.

Thank you. All right, come on up.

Hi, Dave Duff, West 3rd Street. TJ and I were discussing the Kansas Avenue project earlier this afternoon. Yeah, I get it. I hear the concerns about the potential safety problems that might develop as a result of the Kansas Avenue project and the need to take a comprehensive approach to those. But we currently have safety issues on West Third Street, on Hartford, and all the other streets that are being used as a de facto feeder to the neighborhoods up the hill. Don't want to see that those theoretical concerns are given a higher priority than the very real concerns we currently have. on West 3rd, that residential street was never meant to be a feeder collector uh... and uh... we have so many driveway cuts there that uh... it's only a matter of time before something serious occurs there so uh... with that in mind uh... you know i get it uh... there's a budget crunch right now i see that the uh... kansas avenue project uh... in any case has been pushed out to twenty nine So we have, in theory, about three years to wait for that. In that interim period, could we look at applying some Band-Aids to our safety situation on West 3rd? Some sort of low-budget traffic calming features, perhaps? Don't want to say what those could be. I'm not the authority on that type of thing. Mr. Lee, Logan, and I have had some conversations about this, too. We think that there must be something that could be done there, whether it's speed bumps or additional stop signs or additional enforcement. I'm not sure what the mix of those Band-Aids could be, but I think we need to pay some attention to that before something bad does occur. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Come on up.

I'm Clara Duff, and I'm Dave's wife, so of course I have to add a few points. First of all, I wanted to thank the gentleman there for mentioning the fact that this has the Kansas Ave, the Kansas Ave, thank you, sorry, the Kansas Ave completion has been an item, as far as we know, in public discussion with community members like us giving input ever since at least 1994. So we're talking a very long time. Secondly, about the driveway cuts, I just wanted to specify, which you have on the handout that Dave gave you, that the comparison that we're talking about, and yes, we do need to talk about safety issues for the proposal. The proposal is going to bring in four driveway cuts into that. all the Rockridge people that are now zipping past us in what I think is popularly known as the Hartford weave, we're right on the Hartford weave. We see this hourly. Currently, the Hartford weave route is 44 driveway cuts. And if we're talking about safety, then let's see if we can reduce those 44 households that are living in stress, in fear, in It's not uncommon for us to hear brakes squealing because the traffic didn't see this thing coming out into traffic. Dogs being knocked into the air. These are things that we deal with in our Hartford weave in traffic that doesn't belong there. It has not belonged there for decades. And now it's being extended to 2029 for that traffic that doesn't belong there to keep coming past and endangering our safety. 44 households versus four. So please keep those figures in mind. Thank you. Oh, and by the way, there are four of us in the back there. We would have had more people from our area, but I guess we just got informed about it this afternoon. So thanks for listening.

Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone online? No one online, no one else in the audience here. Council, if there's no objection, I'll close the public hearing. Hearing none, the public hearing is closed. Mr. Lee, could you answer a couple of questions for us? First of all, what is the insane plan for K Avenue and 12th Street?

Yes, so on 12th and K, we received grant funding for just the initial design and planning phase, and that's what we are currently, we're currently at the very early stages working on consultant selection right now. The actual part of that planning phase is to determine what we're going to do to address the, so 12th and K is one of our only failing intersections. Something should be done about it, and so we received the grant to do something about it. What that is is unclear at this time. It could be something rather small, restricting left turns, something like that, up to a roundabout or a new traffic signal. The end goal is a little unclear at this point, but we wanted to leave in kind of an allocation in case it went in that direction and that was the ultimate design choice that we went with. So to be determined what exactly is going to happen at that intersection.

And we have money for design but not construction.

Yeah, we haven't received a grant for construction until, depending on how the planning phase goes, we'll determine, we'll go after grant money for whatever the actual design of the construction ends up being.

And can you point to where more information, more detail on each of these projects is located can be found?

Yeah, so the projects that we are working on, they get project pages as they kind of become a real project. The information for all these projects, for the actual TIP projects, a high level summary is available. In tonight's agenda packet, I think that tomorrow I will work on getting that packet uploaded to our website in some form so that it can easily be found. But the best place to find it right now that I know of is in tonight's agenda packet. Each project will have a page with a description, a justification, and some more information about potential funding.

And then council will have another crack at this when we do the capital facilities plan, as I mentioned earlier, later on this year.

Mayor Walters?

Mr. Fantini.

Would that be the process during the capital facilities plan where if we wanted to look at other projects or some projects that we might think are missing, that that would be the time to?

That is a time. Okay. Thank you. Not necessarily the only time.

Thank you.

And with respect to Kansas, is it true, first of all, that we basically have no local money programmed for 2027 other than for match for the various projects?

Are you talking about for Kansas specifically?

Well, no, for all the projects on the list here for 2027. Yes, the outlook for 2027 is very light.

It's all grant dependent, and we don't have a lot of grants that are for sure.

Which I think is the reason we're not doing more to pursue Kansas next year. But the alternative of traffic calming measures that we could be pursuing in the interim, do you have any insight into what those might be or whether they require funding from council in the form of a TIP project?

I don't want to rattle off any crazy ideas right now, but it's definitely something that we could look into at potential. Traffic calming for low to little or low amounts of money is difficult, but I will personally look into it as soon as I can of ways to implement something.

And we could return to that maybe in the capital facilities plan update this fall? Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Hopefully I didn't miss any of the questions that we got just now. Council, do you have any other questions?

Mayor Walters?

Ms. Moulton?

Just a quick one about item number 11. When you add the numbers of 2027 through 2032, that 2027 amount isn't in the total. And I noticed on our packet there was more of that where the 2027 numbers weren't in the six-year total. But it looks like this has been updated since then.

And that is why we are getting new software.

Okay. I didn't want to spend time on this really, but I just wanted to mention that currently only number 11 isn't the actual total in that line.

in that row. It looks like there's some math there. I just updated this table right before this presentation, so I see that some stuff slipped by.

Yeah, that's the only thing I see. But anyway, thank you. I appreciate it.

Council, any other questions or discussion? All right, we have held a public hearing, advertised and held a public hearing, closed public hearing. Would you like to adopt, modify, delay the tip?

Mayor Walters? Mr. Fantini. What is the requirement to approve this plan?

Voting to adopt this plan tonight would be ideal. We have to adopt it by July 1st. So if there are changes or revisions and you'd like us to bring it back next week, we can. But after that, the timeline gets a little tight.

Okay. Thank you.

And I think ideally in the future the TIP will receive maybe no changes from the capital facilities plan that you would have adopted a few months before.

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Fantini.

It doesn't seem like we, since we don't have a lot of local funds available to really move anything around in this at this time, I do struggle a little bit with the fact that, is this one of those things where we should leave it open one more week, we should close it, but I think because we have the restriction of the finances against us and we do have other opportunities to come back and make changes to these type of plans, I move for this evening that we proceed and I motion to approve the plan. I should read the motion. I motion to approve as presented. Second.

Motion and a second to approve Resolution 3221, adopting the 2027 through 2032 TIP program update. Any further discussion on that item? Hearing none, we'll call for the vote. The vote is on the motion to approve Resolution 3221, adopting the TIP update. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no. The ayes have it, and the motion and the resolution is approved. Thank you, council. Our next item is also street related, Ordinance 5031, updating the complete streets code. Mr. Lee.

Good evening. Tonight is the second read of our update to Chapter 12.60 for our Complete Streets ordinance. And so just as a reminder, last week we presented to you kind of the overview of our major revision to the Complete Streets portion of the code. Complete Streets are streets designed for every user, not just vehicles, which are considered incomplete streets. And this is the same slides that we saw last weekend, just refreshing. We went over why we updated them and one of the big reasons was to make us more competitive for grants, specifically TIB grants. So some of the key updates and the major update that we brought last week, just expanded and clarified definitions and added implementation guidance the complete street standards, and we established a formal exception criteria of when we wouldn't use the complete streets. And we just did more clarification and further improvements to align it with just current industry standards to align with other cities better. Lastly, since our last meeting, we added a few more small tweaks, as you saw in your agenda packet. There, so we, slight formatting changes, and then we changed, we revised some of the words, removed the words shall, and replaced it with will, designee got removed, we added some definitions, added a new requirements section, and added a subsection referencing how any complete streets exceptions will be documented, that was from feedback from council last week, and then we added shorelines into a portion of the code, That's all I got. In your packet is the new ordinance to adopt complete streets.

Council, do you have any questions? Mayor Walters? Mr. Fantini?

Yes. So I just wanted to be sure that I'm clear that this does represent, this applies for all development.

Yes, I misspoke last week, but generally development.

Should have sent you that one in advance. That's my fault, not yours. Question for you to my, so as we now go forward, are we going to be applying these standards to projects that are currently in the pipeline, or will this be for only new development going forward?

I mean, it'll apply to new development going forward, but I think it's important to note Per our current street standards and frontage improvement standards, most developments generally follow. There's not going to be a significant change. Our engineering standards and our street design standards generally follow and meet a majority of complete streets. There also aren't a lot of developments in that are currently constructing streets that we don't have any major short plots or long plots coming through where they're gonna be built constructing streets So there's it won't affect any current or be any major changes to current development practices Okay And I did appreciate the clarifying language around exceptions that was added.

So thank you for that. I

Council, this item has an asterisk, so I'll ask for any comments from the public at this point. I see no one in the room. Anybody online? Nobody online? All right. Council, do you have any other comments, questions, or motions?

Mayor Walters.

Ms. Moulton.

I move we adopt ordinance 5031 updating AMC chapter 12.60 complete streets.

Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the ordinance as presented.

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Fantini.

Sorry, I have one more question. On the exception framework that's in 1260.050, the documentation requirement says that determinations must be kept in the project or permit file. And again, I'm just asking this for transparency and making sure, hoping that we don't have to make a lot of exceptions. Is there any requirement for the council to be notified when exceptions are granted? Or is that just solely the city engineer? Not that we would have a say, but do we get notified of exceptions?

There's no requirement.

Yeah, there's no requirement.

But if you're approving a construction project, you'll know.

Yeah.

Council, any other discussion? Mr. Fantini threw me off there. Did we already have a motion and a second to approve? Okay. Then hearing no discussion, we'll proceed to a vote. Okay. Mr. Franciak, would you please call the roll?

Ms. Cleland-McGrath?

Yes.

Ms. Moulton? Yes. Mr. McDougall? Yes. Mr. Fantini?

Yes.

Mr. Currier? Aye. Mr. Young?

Yes.

Mayor, the ayes are six, the nays are zero. The ayes have it, and the motion is approved. Thank you, council. Thank you, Mr. Lee. Our next two items will be presented by Ms. Moyle, our HR director.

All right. Good evening, Mayor, Council, and members of the audience. I am here to present Resolution 3219, AWC Employee Benefit Trust Employer Master Participation Agreement Update, as well as Resolution 3220, Amended and Restated NAWVIA Welfare Benefit Plan. So to provide a little bit of background, the Cities Benefit Trust that we use is the Association of Washington Cities. Frequently we call that AWC. What that does is it pulls resources from participating cities to provide employee benefits, and those benefits include health, dental, vision, life insurance, and employee assistance programs. Updates today are strictly just to maintain current and compliant employee benefit documents. Then we have Navia, that's our administrator for employee flexible spending accounts, that's FSAs. The city currently has two healthcare FSAs and one dependent care FSA. Again, this is updates to required notices and disclosures. For Resolution 3219, why the update? Specifically, AWC reached out to us directly and they said that they would like us to update our employee enrollment counts. This is because we are preparing for electronic benefits enrollment. So right now, our employees use paper, to do all of our enrollment forms. Right now we would like to take it online. So in order to do that, we're going to clarify employer contribution levels by FTE status, which reflects our current contribution practices. So there's no differences to the contribution. We're just going to reflect that online. Key points here are full-time employees is .75 to 1.0 full-time equivalent. Part-time employee is a .50 to .74 full-time equivalent. And this is administrative update only for online enrollment build out. No changes to benefit offerings, employee eligibility, or plan design. FOR RESOLUTION 3220, WHY THE UPDATE? THE PLAN DOCUMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN UPDATED SINCE 2016. AGAIN, THIS IS NAVIA REACHING OUT TO US SAYING HEY, WE NEED TO GET CURRENT. THIS IS TO ENSURE COMPLIANCE WITH CURRENT FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS. WE ARE REQUIRED TO DISTRIBUTE SUMMARY PLAN DOCUMENTS TO ALL OF OUR EMPLOYEES SO THIS GETS US UP TO DATE. NAVIA WILL REMAIN THE CITY'S FSA ADMINISTRATOR. The resolution is required by NAWVIA to adopt the updated plan documents, and there, again, are no changes to benefit offerings, employee eligibility, or plan design. That is everything, and I'm here to answer any questions.

All right, Council.

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Currier.

Seems pretty straightforward.

Just would move that Resolution 3219 be approved to approve and adopt the AWC Employee Benefit Trust Employer Master Participation Agreement, update effective July 1st, 2026. Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve Resolution 3219. Any other discussion on this item? Any discussion at all on this item? Hearing none, I'll proceed to the vote. The motion is to approve Resolution 3219 regarding the AWC Employee Benefit Trust. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no. The ayes have it. Resolution 3219 is approved. You have one more resolution on this agenda item. Mr. Currier.

Oh, sure. Mayor Walters. I move that resolution 3220 be approved to approve and adopt the form of the amended and restated Navia welfare benefit plan effective January 1st, 2026. Second.

There is a motion and a second to approve resolution 3220. Any discussion on this item? Hearing none, I'll proceed to the vote. All those in favor of approving Resolution 3220 regarding the Navia Welfare Benefit Plan, say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, say no. The ayes have it, and Resolution 3220 is approved. Thank you, Ms. Moyle. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Swetnam, come on up for contract approval with respect to the Whitmarsh Landfill Remediation Site.

Thank you Mayor Walters and members of council, members of the audience. I don't have slides for you. This item has come about relatively quickly and we've tried to move fast to accommodate a request. So the background here, the agreement is in your packet. It's a discharge agreement. with Skagit County, similar to other discharge agreements that the city's entered into with other entities that wanted to discharge water to the city's sanitary sewer system. The background on this particular situation is that the county is in the middle of a mock cleanup process, the Model Toxics Cleanup Act. And that project is cleaning up the Whitmarsh Landfill, which is on March's Point, kind of adjacent to the casino. I apologize for not having a map, but that's where it is. So part of the cleanup requires them to dredge out fill material from the landfill. And to do that, they need to dewater that area. What they've determined through the process of working through the cleanup is that the water that they're removing from the site is too contaminated to be able to discharge it directly to the sailor's seat. So the Department of Ecology has told them that they need to discharge directly to a sanitary sewer system. So the county reached out to the city and asked if they would be able to discharge that dewatering water directly to the city's sanitary sewer system. Brian Walker, who is the wastewater treatment plant manager, has been in communication with the county's public works director to talk about the levels of contaminants in the water and talk about what the city's plant could take. The terms of the agreement have really been negotiated with Brian Walker and the county based on what ecology wants to see based on what our plant has the capacity to take based on the level of contaminants that the plant can safely treat with within the bounds of how it operates So to kind of summarize the key terms, the term of the agreement is 600 days or whenever the county gets to substantial completion of their project, whichever is sooner. The cost is mainly a consumption charge, so they'll pay Based on gallon of water that they that they discharge to the system But there's also a monthly $100 admin fee and then a $300 permit fee there are protections built into the agreement for the city system and those are you notice there's a table to at the at the back of the agreement that's an exhibit and that has limits of different contaminants and And it also has required testing frequency to make sure that we're monitoring those levels over time. And so that's been integrated by reference or incorporated by reference into the agreement. So those regular testing parameters are there. The agreement's also very clear that if they go beyond what the agreement anticipates that the city can terminate the agreement and stop accepting that discharge water. And that city has access to the site so that if city staff need to go out there and look at something they can do that and then Mainly that the city has the ability to interrupt that discharge So I know that the county is somewhat anxious to get this agreement done because they have already mobilized a contractor and my understanding is that contractor's on hold until we get this discharge water issue sorted out. So staff have spent a fair bit of time in the past couple of weeks working with the county to negotiate these terms and so we're recommending approval. I'm happy to answer any questions and I think Logan is here in case there are technical questions.

Thank you. Mr. Young.

I've struggled to find the Whitmarsh landfill. Can you just tell me where that is again? Maybe I'm missing it.

It's out on the north of Highway 20 between, I think it's between T. Bailey and the casino. I've seen it. Okay. Yeah, correct. And it was a historic landfill that was capped at some point and apparently needs to be revisited, and they're working through that process under the jurisdiction of the Department of Ecology. Thank you. You're welcome.

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Fantini.

Yeah, I received a couple questions from constituents that I forwarded over to Public Works Director Logan Lee and Brian Walker, but I wanted to share just because I think they're good things. My question was basically, one, how much are we going to be sending out over this 600-day term? And it's a... much greater than the estimated four to five million gallons that are actually out there, but for what they wanted, it represents about 10% of the plant's dry weather flow, for which we have plenty of capacity. And Brian said that we're in very good shape to start accepting this water immediately, and similar to what Darcy said, that I love the verbiage in the contract that allows us to cease at any time, if it affects our own compliance, including any hydraulic considerations or mechanical challenges. So it sounds like we're in really good shape that if we do this and there's a problem, we can stop. Correct. And the other question I had was, what are they identifying in there that's creating the problem for them? Because I think that's kind of nice to know, too. And it's something called, there's only one parameter that is exceeding that surface water standards, and it's manganese. So it's not like it's a ton of toxic stuff. It's just that manganese that we have to monitor.

Yes, there is some misperception that our sewage treatment plant doesn't have enough capacity, but actually on a regular day, it's just fine. Ms. Gillian-McGrath?

Yeah, I was just kind of curious, and maybe it's a question for Mr. Lee. Is there already infrastructure and piping to get this water to the wastewater treatment plant, or is it going to be trucked, or how does that, how do we actually get that contaminated liquid?

That's totally a Logan question.

Yeah, so we have sewer mains that go all the way out there, close to there. I'm not sure exactly how they're going to connect to our system, but there are pipes out there that I imagine that they will be dumping into very close to their site, and then they'll follow our normal wastewater mains back to the city.

Mayor Walters?

Ms. Tiana?

Just one follow-up to that. I know we're constantly checking our systems. You know, I mean, we're an older city. In many ways, we're expanding and we're reviewing. So I guess my biggest worry would be in using those systems that we make sure we do the due diligence to make sure that If we haven't checked them in 10, 15 years and they've been existing, we probably want to make sure that everything is still cool for that level of discharge using the system to make sure there's not any disconnects or anything like that. That would be my biggest worry.

Yeah, our wastewater plant crew does a really good job. There will be various pump stations that will go through. I don't actually know their current plan. They might be trucking it over and using our septage, but I'm guessing that just due to how much flow is coming that they will be using the pipes to transport the water. But our wastewater plant crew does a great job maintaining the system, checking the wet wells, and we have a pretty good feeling that everything's in good shape over there.

That's all I wanted to hear. Sometimes when you hear that from our experts here, it's comforting in a way because this is very clearly not something we want to not have control of as it goes to where it needs to be. Thank you.

Mayor Walters. Mr. Currier.

I'm just curious if, from a pricing perspective, this is being priced at a premium, or if it's a friendly neighbor rate, or how would you characterize the pricing structure?

I don't know.

To be honest with you, I don't know the answer to that question. But I do know that Brian Walker has been taking the lead on discharge agreements with other entities. And my understanding was that this was on par with what the city's charged in other agreements. I'm happy to track that answer down if that's helpful follow up for council. But we typically don't give discount rates on things as the city. MY UNDERSTANDING IS THIS IS FAIRLY STANDARD.

THAT WOULD BE MY ASSUMPTION. I JUST WANTED TO CHECK.

MAYOR WALTERS. MS. MULTON. I HAD KIND OF A SIMILAR QUESTION. IT LOOKS LIKE IT'S JUST ABOUT 1 CENT A GALLON. I'M NOT SURE IF I HEARD MR. FANTINI RIGHT. DO WE HAVE AN ESTIMATE OF MILLIONS OF GALLONS OR DO WE KNOW? I'M JUST CURIOUS BECAUSE IF WE DO 1 MILLION GALLONS, IT'S $10,000. I don't know. I'm just throwing that out there.

I don't recall offhand what we're looking at, but I do believe it's in like the four or five million gallon range, if memory serves.

Okay. Yeah, and I just also want to say I appreciate the thoroughness and the detail level in this contract and all the work that Mr. Walker has done to get us to this point and working quickly with the county who is obviously one of our main partners. So if there are no other comments or questions, I would move that we approve the contract as presented.

Second. There's a motion and a second to approve the contract with Skagit County for the Whitmarsh Landfill Remediation Site Water Discharge Agreement. Any other discussion? Hearing none, we'll proceed to the vote. The vote is on approval of the contract. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, say no. The ayes have it. All right. Thank you, Ms. Swetnam. Thank you, Mr. Lee. We're going to go on now to a closed session for collective bargaining per RCW 4230-144B. We're currently projecting it will be about 15 minutes, but if we need more time, we'll come out and mention that we need a little bit more. We'll have Mr. Hoagland, Ms. Swetnam, Chief Floyd, and Ms. Moyle in the room. Thank you all. See you all next week.

Recording in progress

The closed session will continue for an additional five minutes until approximately 8.03 PM. Thank you. The Anacortes City Council meeting of 8 June is now adjourned. Thank you.