City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Hello. How you doing?

Oh, yeah. This is the big kahuna as far as getting a lot of people to come out.

You need to be cool like you guys and take out my laptop. Welcome back to fall. I wasn't really in...

okay good afternoon good evening welcome back to the city council uh today is september 20 sorry september 1st 2026 and this is the city council's regular hybrid meeting uh mayor dave rosemont tonight's hybrid city council meeting is being brought to you in person by zoom we're also broadcasting the city's youtube channel and on mitv channel 21. Thank you for joining us. Council members, please have your microphones turn off for the roll call. City Clerk and your Larson, please call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Andrall. I can't. It looks like you're muted, Council Member Andrall. Is this better? Yes. Thank you. Here. Council Member Shea? Here. Council Member Reynolds?

Here.

Council Member Weicker? Here. Council Member Weinberg? Here. Deputy Mayor Becker?

Here.

And Mayor Rosenbaum? Here. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Okay. I'd like to note that Council Member Anderle has joined us via Zoom. Next, we have the Pledge of Allegiance. Council, if you have joined us in the Council Chambers, please stand and face the flag. If you have joined us via Zoom, please mute yourself and turn off your video to ensure that the U.S. flag is visible. 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 now move to approval of today's agenda. If there are no questions, may I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. Second. There is a motion by Council Member Weinberg and a second by Council Member Reynolds. City Clerk, please call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Reynolds?

Aye.

Council Member Shea? Aye. Mayor Rosenbaum?

Aye.

Council Member Weicker? Aye. Council Member Andrall? Aye. Deputy Mayor Becker? Aye. And Council Member Weinberg?

Aye.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Okay, thank you. Motion passes and the agenda is approved. Next on the agenda will be the City Manager's Report. Welcome City Manager Jesse Bond.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. Let me hide this here. Welcome back. Happy September 1st. I am the voice behind the room. Everyone's turned around. In front of you is the PowerPoint that I'm driving, so you don't actually have to turn around. The screen right above Council Member Weinberg. There you go. All right. Casey's driving for me. Next slide, please. Council, just a quick look at your upcoming September schedule. I'll remind you that your next council meeting is Tuesday, September 15th. Between the July meeting and today's meeting, we did move some items around on the planning schedule. So if you haven't had a chance, take a look at that in your packet. Also this week, the Parks and Rec Commission is resuming their work, and next week the Utility Board will be holding a meeting. All of the meetings are included on our website, and I've got the link there at the bottom of the slide. Next slide, please. Gosh, summer is our busiest time in terms of capital projects. I wanted to take a moment tonight and just update you on a couple that are headed out to bid so that you are aware of what's coming. In addition to two bigger projects we have on the agenda tonight. Council, you may recall that the city is... working to replace the asbestos cement water mains or water pipes throughout the city. This has been a high priority for the last couple of decades. We have a major project happening in the Mercer Wood neighborhood, which is continuing our work to replace that asbestos cement mains. We are out to bid for the project, and we wanted to let you know this pretty impactful but important work. 5,700 lineal feet of AC pipe will be replaced with ductile iron pipe and upgrades to 90 water services. so our bids are due in a couple weeks we expect to award the bid in early october and the project will be complete in 2027. like all of our other major capital projects we'll be working with the neighborhood closely on communication and to minimize impacts we have another big water main project happening starting up very soon as well so communications is going to be one of our top priorities Alright next project update Also related to our water system. We are continuing our work to replace our aging pressure reducing valves These are essential pieces of our water system infrastructure We are currently working on replacing five vault valves across the city with four new PRV stations and a new water main and the 3700 block of Not needing to go into a whole bunch of detail tonight, but definitely wanted to make sure you were aware of the full scope of all the utility work that's still going to be happening this fall and into next year. This Phase 2 PRV station replacement work will be starting this fall and should be completed in the spring. All right. On an unfortunate note, we've had... Repeated and ongoing vandalism at two of our parks. We just wanted to call it out tonight because it's impacted restroom buildings. Groveland Beach restroom was vandalized again, significantly requiring deep cleaning and repairs. The facility has reopened and we'll keep it open through Labor Day. We want to thank the police department since this restroom has become a An attraction for vandalism, Mercer Island Police Department is adding patrols in the evening to keep an eye on the building. Unfortunately, Dean's Children's Park restroom building was also vandalized. The locking mechanism was broken, so we are working on repairs. So I just wanted to highlight this, that we've had two facilities damaged. Encourage anybody that knows anything to let our police department know, and your team is working hard to get these facilities reopened. Annual docket requests, changing topics entirely. I'll remind you, council, the annual docket is the yearly process for the public to submit requests to amend the comprehensive plan or development code. We are now accepting requests for those amendments, and requests must be submitted between today and October 1st. The city, the planning department, and the city will be promoting this, making our community aware. that we are in the window to accept those applications. All the information about submitting an annual docket request is on our website. Couple heads up on some upcoming events. We are collaborating again with the Chamber of Commerce on another blood drive that is happening tomorrow. My understanding is there still appointments available from 1030 to 430 here at the Community Center, so we want to thank the Chamber for their continued partnership and bringing these opportunities to our community. Next slide, please. Also coming up, gosh, I can't even believe it's already time for the Mid-Autumn Festival. The Mercer Island Chinese Association, in partnership with our Parks and Recreation Department, is happy to bring back the Mid-Autumn Festival. It will be held here at the Community Center on September 20th from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock. All sorts of activities, food trucks. It's really a lot of fun, and it's always very, very busy. So we encourage you to come early. This is a free event and we will be cross promoting this over the next couple of weeks. Next slide. Just a little highlight of something we did over the weekend. In partnership with King County, we hosted a Fix-It event here at the community center. If you haven't been to one of these events, volunteers come in and the community is invited in to bring household items that are broken or clothing that needs to be repaired, and the volunteers in the room try to fix it. It's a great opportunity to have something repaired versus having to replace it, and it's diverting items from the landfill. So it was really well attended. I thought it would be fun to just share about the success of the event. We plan to host again the next time King County offers. So thanks to the community center team for making this happen, and that is what I have for you tonight, council.

Thank you, City Manager Pahn. Our next item in business is appearances. This is the opportunity for anyone to speak to the City Council on any item, except items requiring a public hearing, any quasi-judicial matters, or any campaign-related matters. City Clerk, is there anyone who has signed up for appearances that wishes to address the Council?

Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Tonight's agenda will include in-person public appearances and remote appearances via Zoom. Individuals wishing to address the Council may do so in person or by Zoom, provided they register with the City Clerk by 4 p.m. today. When it is your turn to speak, your name will be called. Remarks must be addressed to the council as a whole and not to individual council or staff members. Any person making personal, impertinent, or slanderous remarks or becomes boisterous, threatening, or personally abusive while addressing the city council may be requested to leave the meeting. Audience members should refrain from applause or disapproval of individuals' comments. Please note the city council does not provide responses during appearances. Please speak audibly and state your name and city of residence for the record. There will be a timer on the screen. You have three minutes to speak. When your time has ended, your microphone and video will be turned off. I will thank you for your comments and move to the next speaker or item of business. The three-minute timer is strict, and that is on purpose. It's nothing personal, but we do want to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity to share their thoughts with the council. Staff, please promote the first speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before I call the first speaker, I'd like to remind the Zoom people who have registered to speak on Zoom, please make sure that the name you have joined the Zoom with is the name you've registered with so that staff are able to find you when it's your turn to speak. Our first speaker tonight is going to be Denise Jaffe. Denise will be followed by Charlotte Mains and Gina Gonchar. Ms. Jaffe, you have two devices in the meeting. We're attempting to promote one of the devices. You do have to accept the promotion. Ms. Jaffe, we're requesting you to turn on your camera and unmute.

Thank you. Yes, I did that now. Do you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. I'll begin. Thank you. I urge your support for amending the comprehensive plan to change the designation of the JCC property from single-family residential to commercial, allowing the Jewish Community Center to move forward with plans to replace its aging facility. The J makes an effort to ensure that cost is not a barrier for those who cannot afford membership. In that sense, the J's mission extends well beyond its membership. It contributes to the health, well-being, and viability of our entire island community. But the current facility is aging, outdated, no longer able to meet the needs of the community it serves. It's not simply a matter of wanting a newer, larger building. The existing structure presents significant challenges related to safety, accessibility, infrastructure, and security. The J cannot simply remodel its way out of the limitations of the building. It is time for a thoughtful teardown and rebuild. I understand that some Islanders have concern about the proposed project, including traffic, membership growth, The scale of the new building and whether rezoning would provide the JCC with an unfair advantage. These concerns deserve to be considered, but I also believe they need to be evaluated in the context of what this project means for Mercer Island as a whole. I live on the north end where construction has been ongoing for over three years on a sewer pipe down my block. We had two neighbors make the ultimate sacrifice when their homes were seized by eminent domains so that the light rail could be built, all for the greater good of the island. We are often asked to make sacrifices for others. At the recent Planning Commission meeting, even those opposing the rezoning acknowledged the JCC's significant contribution to Mercer Island. Yet they would deny it based on speculation that the JCC is only after the rezoning so the property would be more valuable to resell, followed by fears about what some hypothetical future buyer might build. I also believe the proposed rezoning should be viewed in the context of the property's history and existing use. It has long served as a community institution and the current zoning designation does not fully reflect the property's established role or the services it provides. Changing the designation would allow the land use designation to better align with the reality of how it's functioned for years. The decision is ultimately more than building one organization. It's about what kind of community we want in Mercer Island. I urge you to support the requested comprehensive plan amendment and rezoning. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Our next speaker tonight is Charlotte Mains, followed by Gina Gonchar and Jane Boulware. Yep, right to the podium.

Hi, everyone. I'm Charlotte Maines, and I'm a vice president at Amazon, and I live here on Mercer Island. My address is 9785 Southeast 41st Street, so I'm about a quarter mile from the J. I can walk there in about five to ten minutes, depending if my three-year-old's with me or not. And I'm here to also urge the support of redesignation from residential to commercial for the J. My family, I have two boys. We're seven and four. We have been going to the J since we moved to Mercer Island right before Weston was born about four and a half years ago. We'd heard about it, and in fact, we were looking at a couple of different houses on Mercer Island, and just one, but one of the reasons that we chose the house that we did, which we love, is that it was in walking distance of this great, vibrant center of the community. And the first thing we did was get them in swimming lessons, and they've been doing that since our first time we got on the island. But since then, they've done a lot of the different sports, stinky dunkers, the soccer. They do J camp every summer. We go swim in the pool. We go, and when the weather's bad, we go to the gym, and I run them around the track. and run them, and run them some more, and run them some more, and somehow it's never enough. But I'm sure some of you can relate to that. Because it's just open for all. As a member, you can go and you can enjoy the facilities. I also use the workout facilities there. So it's something that's just really added a lot to us as residents of Mercer Island. I've seen others who feel the same way. I've made friends there. My neighbor is one of the fitness instructors at the J. It's just a really vibrant part of the Mercer Island community. And I think that we all value it. whether indirectly or directly. So, you know, I think that our last speaker was very eloquent about some of the challenges that Jay is facing, so I won't go into that. But I can certainly see that there's opportunity for it to continue to grow and serve more members of our community than it can today within the constraints. And I just want to say that as somebody who lives very nearby and can actually hear, you know, hear my kids having a great time at Jay Camp from, you know, kind of through the trees as their crow flies, I'm still very confident based on my experience with the J that they are going to proceed and will proceed in a respectful way for the community. Nobody loves construction or whatever, but I just know that it's the right thing and I'm excited about what it can be. And so I just really appreciate the J and everything it's brought to our family and what I see it bring to Mercer Island. And, you know, everybody, if you're around Seattle, everybody will bump into somebody who will be like, I learned how to swim at the J. And they might be, you're like, you learned how to swim? You know, like, so anyway, it's been around for a long time. And I think we all want to continue to bump into each other and have those stories. And I think the way that happens is by supporting this. So thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker tonight is Gina Gonchar, followed by Jane Boulware and Orly Steinberg.

I want to begin by thanking the council members for your civic engagement.

Please state your name for the record. Gina Goncher. I live in Bellevue in Anati.

As civic leaders, you know firsthand how vital the JCC is as an incubator for community engagement. connection and real local value. I'm a fifth generation Seattleite, and when my husband and I moved back to the area with our young family, we strategically chose to live within a safe bicycle ride of the Strom JCC. The JCC is deeply woven into my family's history. In fact, on my very first walk through the preschool, I noticed a bronze plaque dated 1956 that had my aunt and uncle's name on it. They helped build today's JCC. I was inspired by their legacy, and while I was there with my kids in the preschool, I built the JCC's Reading Garden Lending Library in 2004, which prepares the island's youngest children to be readers before they even enter our public schools. The J has been my family's home base. It's where we made our first friends, learned to swim, play dinky dunkers. We learned to play mage, how to cook from a dean assessment. My kids attended SJCC camps and later got their very first jobs right here in J as camp counselors and lifeguards. They became volunteers for Friendship Circle in this building. But the JCC's impact stretches far beyond its own walls. It has a massive ripple effect on the entire Mercer Island ecosystem. Because our life revolved around the J, we became daily patrons of our local economy, buying groceries at the QFC, going to the post office, getting lost in reading at Island Books, eating a slice at Pogs, learning to ride a bicycle around and around and around Mercerdale Park. Just last week, I met a mother who had recently relocated her family from Kansas City, and I asked her why she chose Mercer Island. And she told me she searched online. She'd never been here. She searched online for excellent schools, safe parks, walkability, and crucially, access to a vibrant community center. Without a modernized JCC, Mercer Island loses that competitive draw, and it loses the chance to shape the next generation of civic-minded citizens. The JCC is the hub of this island, but to continue serving the next generation, its infrastructure must evolve. That's why I urge you to approve the rezone permits, to rebuild the old and add in the new. This rezone is an investment. in our local businesses, our civic life, and the families who keep our island thriving. The J is the juice that gives Mercer Island its life. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Jane Boulware, followed by Orly Steinberg and Addie Smith.

Hi, I'm Jane Boulware, and I live at 9822 Lake Washington Boulevard in Bellevue, Washington. And when I first was asked to speak on behalf of the J, I wondered why. I'm not Jewish. I don't live in Mercer Island. And I've only been participating in the J for the last year or so. And my only regret in doing that is that I didn't join sooner. I'd been looking for a community to belong in. I didn't want to belong to a country club. I wanted to belong to a community of people that I felt like I could relate to. And people suggested over and over again. I knew some friends that participated at the J. And they said, you should really go check it out. But I never did. Because I thought, I don't belong there. I don't know that I would relate to that. And so I hope that you on the council aren't like me in judging the J from the outside. Because what I found when I went through the doors and I had my first orientation, and then I participated in the fitness classes, and then I participated in the learning classes, although I really still stink at mahjong, is that I found myself... getting healthier physically through the classes, but emotionally and also through the community and the sense of belonging that I experienced at the J. And I started spending more time in Mercer Island. I started bringing my friends over, and we started having lunch. And of course, the Allen Bookstore, I became an advocate of that. And a lot of people would say, geez, Jane, you live in Bellevue, but you talk about the J a lot. I thought you were, I didn't know you were Jewish. And I'm not. But I am a person that cares about other people. And what I experienced there is that when people are hurting, when one of the instructors passed away suddenly, they were supported by the entire community because it's really about belonging and it's about becoming a part of something greater. And so if I were in Bellevue and were to say to the city council there what I thought of the J, I would say, that's what you want. They are the envy of what we want to have in our community. And I sincerely hope that you support the reconstruction and the zoning changes and everything associated with taking the J to the next place and enabling the next generation of people to experience a sense of belonging and community that I've experienced. Because I know as a Bellevue resident, I would give a lot to have it there, but I'm so grateful that it's here, and I brought a lot of my friends to experience it as well. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Orly Steinberg followed by Addie Smith and Thomas Jacobs.

Yes, please.

Our next speaker is Addie Smith. Addie Smith, if you're in the Zoom under a different name, please raise your hand. Also, my microphone was off, so I'm going to recall Orly Steinberg. Orly Steinberg, if you're in the Zoom under a different name, please raise your hand. Mr. Mayor, I do not see Orly Steinberg or Addie Smith in this Zoom. I will move to the next speaker of Thomas Jacobs, followed by Joe Schockinen and David Azos.

Greetings, city council members, staff, and the audience, both in person and on Zoom. My name is Thomas Jacobs. I've lived on the island for several decades. I live on East Mercer Way. For many years, I went to the downtown YMCA playing racquetball. I knew very little about the J. Then I found out that the J had racquetball. Around 2010, I joined. My wife joined in 2019. So glad that we did this. It's open to the general public. It's open to all. I find it to be warm and welcoming, safe and secure. It's for all ages, activities for children, teenagers, young adults, adults, seniors. And the events, oh yes, the events. There's plays, there's movies, there's comedy acts, there's speakers, cooking classes. All good, amazing. The fitness facilities are excellent. There's a pool, there's a basketball court that you can also play pickleball on, racquetball court, a weight room. In the fitness room, they have rowing machines, stationary bikes, any kind of weight machine that you'd like. The fitness classes, oh, I love the fitness classes. Tuesdays, I go to Zumba class. Thursday, I go to step class. Saturdays and Sundays, I play pickleball. In between, I lift weights. I go to the men's locker room, and I tell you, I marvel at the cleanliness. That place is spotless. I mean it. However, all that being said, the J is aging. The time has come. In order to move forward with renovation, there's an obstacle that needs to be overcome. Single family, it needs to be changed from single family use to commercial use. I'm not sure how this stayed the way that it was because it's never been single family. I don't get it. The J has been here for over 55 years. Let's move forward and get the plans authorized to prepare for the future. The J is a very valuable asset to the community. Let's give it the go ahead. Let's get over this final, this hurdle. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Joe Schaukinen, followed by David Azos and Margie Starnes.

Hi. My name is Joe Schaukinen, and we live on 77th Avenue Southeast. First, a very sincere thanks to our dedicated public officials for their service to our community and I'm speaking on behalf of the JCCC amendment. As you all know, and as attested to by the many letters and speakers, the JCCC is recognized as an important and valuable part of the Mercer Island community. It is one of those institutions that makes our community special. As you also know, maintaining and modernizing non-profit institutions is exceptionally expensive and difficult these days. I believe public officials have a duty to support our most important community institutions, to do everything in their power to help those institutions succeed. The JCC is one of our community's most important institutions. It needs to grow and modernize. It needs this amendment. And for these many reasons stated, I urge its adoption. I would like to make one other point. The JCC has served the Mercer Island community for 55 years. I think it is a safe assumption that those speaking against the amendment all bought their homes during that time and therefore were fully aware of the J and its impact. Institutions do tend to grow over time. None of this should be a surprise. I'm reminded of SeaTac, our regional airport, which is constantly growing. It faces opposition from some of the neighbors over its growth plan. They all bought their homes near the airport, knew what that means, and now some of them are opposing the airport's necessary expansion. I'm sure our King County commissioners will approve the airport's growth plan, and I urge our Mercer Island City Council to do the same and approve the JCCC amendment. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker is David Azos, followed by Margie Starnes and Jill Handley.

My name is David Azos and I live at 7740 81st Place SE in Mercer Island in the lakes. We are one of the original families that moved in there 39 years ago and I think there's maybe half a dozen of us that are still from the original group. I've also kind of been in your shoes because I served on the Mercer Island Planning Commission for four years, from May of 1997 to May of 2001, and I want to thank you for the time and energy you put into this. I know you don't get paid a lot of money, and there's lots of late nights, and I really thank you for that. I have three grown children who all attended Mercer Island Public Schools and have gotten married and now live on Mercer Island. I have eight grandchildren, six who are still attending Mercer Island schools. Two are now in college. I have retired from the commercial real estate business, and now my son runs the company, Azos Commercial Properties. My company moved to Mercer Island 13 years ago above the old Rite Aid at the south end of QFC. I'm an owner of commercial real estate on Mercer Island. I'm the managing member of the storage court, the mini warehouse on the south end of Mercer Island that I built more than 20 years ago. I'm also a partner, one of five, in the Walgreens property in downtown Mercer Island. As you can see, I have deep roots in Mercer Island and care deeply about its future. I would not want to promote anything that would detract from this place. I've had my children and grandchildren attend preschools and programs at the JCC over the past 39 years. And my wife and I now regularly attend water aerobics and other senior organized workouts at the J. When I was on the Planning Commission, I always made decisions which were in the best interest of Mercer Island and the community and made logical sense. It just makes sense that the zoning for the JCC aligns with its past 55 years of use, and my hope is the JCC will continue to be a valuable asset for all of Mercer Island residents, so I urge you to approve the JCC comprehensive plan. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Margie Starnes, followed by Jill Handley and Anastasia Mirinova.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak and for all the time of our council members. My name is Margie Starnes. I live on 60 or at 6200 South 27th Street on the island. We moved our young family here in 2006. Twenty years is the longest I've ever lived anywhere in my entire life. We first came to Washington State and moved to the Fort Lewis area in 2002 because we were stationed for an additional five years of Army obligation and never really thought we were going to stay in Washington State. We assumed we'd go back east. When my husband got a job at the University of Washington and we looked in this area, I have to be honest, one of the main reasons we chose Mercer Island was because of the proximity to the JCC as well as the school district and other things, but the JCC was certainly one of the things that we immediately learned about and I visited before moving here. We started spending a lot of time there immediately with my younger daughter in preschool and my older daughter starting in kindergarten at West Mercer Elementary. I have wonderful memories of those years. I met so many friends, many of whom are still my friends. A couple are actually in this room from that very first year. and countless hours that I spent there doing things with my kids, the J summer camp, dinky dunkers, attending the fitness classes. I remember hosting my daughter's birthday party in the gym. I think that was first grade. I remember the countless times I utilized the parents' night out, being that we have no family in the area, and that gave us an opportunity to have a date night while our kids played there and had a great time with friends. So many other things, and lately I have been spending more time there and going to some baking events, going to other cooking classes, utilizing the fitness classes once again, and just other social gatherings, the book events, so many different things that they do for the community. It's really vibrant, wonderful place. I really can't imagine these last 20 years without the J being there. I don't know all the ins and outs of the land use situation, but I certainly know it hasn't been a residential property all these years. As a community center, it served people in all aspects of their lives, from the little babies and kids, the preschool, all the way up through the senior programs. It really just reaches out to everybody in the community. It only makes sense for the city to align the comprehensive plans and the maps with this longstanding use. It just seems so logical to me. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to do that. It's a vibrant place. I really, really hope you approve the amendment, and I throw my full support behind it. Thanks for your time. Thank you.

Our next speaker tonight is Jill Handley, followed by Anastasia Miranova and Mark Clausen.

Hi. My name is Jill Handley, and I'm currently the president of the board of directors of the Strong Jewish Community Center. stand here tonight not as somebody who lives on Mercer Island and not even as somebody who grew up here in Seattle. I'm a transplant from Houston. And trust me, coming from Houston, I understand what can happen to a city without thoughtful zoning restrictions. You get parks next to high rises and you get strip clubs next to elementary schools. I promise we are not trying to build a strip club and we're not even trying to build a 400,000 square foot office building contrary to what you may have heard out there. We are simply asking that our property be rezoned so that we can continue to carry out our mission to be the Puget Sound's most open and welcoming community-centered Jewish organization. And as the only Jewish community center in the state of Washington, we take that responsibility seriously. Right now, the constraints of our building make fulfilling our mission harder than it should be. Imagine that you have mobility challenges. You just finished a chair yoga class downstairs in our fitness center, and you want to come upstairs and get a challah for Shabbat. Sounds simple, but you can't just take an elevator upstairs like you can in this building here. Instead, you have to go outside, most likely in the rain, down the sidewalk, up the ramp, re-scan your fob to get back into our building. And under our current zoning restrictions, we can't just simply fix that. So I ask you, how does that allow us to be the most open and welcoming community center we can be? It's impossible. I was going to stand here tonight and tell you all the other wonderful things that Jay does and all the things we can't do. But this morning, I met with our oldest living past president. He's almost 98. He recounted in remarkable detail the history of the JCC from its beginnings in 1949, renting rooms downtown, to raising enough money in 1959 to purchase a permanent home downtown, to purchasing land on Mercer Island in 1966, and to opening our doors here in 1969, one year before the actual city of Mercer Island, according to my research, and the town of Mercer Island merged to become one city. And I was struck by two things. First, every generation of leaders before us had to think about what their community needs, not just today, but for generations that follow. And second, this rezone is bigger than all of us. This isn't about one board, one city council, or one moment in time. So tonight I'm asking you to help us protect this legacy. And while I seem nervous standing up here asking for this, it's the least I can do to honor the people who came before me, the people who dedicated decades to ensure that the J would have a permanent home for generations to come. I thank you for your consideration and ask you to please consider this reason. Thank you.

Our next speaker tonight is Anastasia Miranova, followed by Mark Klassen and Stephen Lincoln.

Hello, city council members. Thank you so much for having me today. I really appreciate your attention. I would like to speak against this amendment. Please state your name for the record. Oh, thanks so much. I'm Anastasia Miranova. I live on Southeast 40th Street. I live immediately adjacent to the property that is being rezoned. This is a very, very personal decision for me and for my family. I would like you to hear me out. I would like you to understand that most of the testimonies here, they really are not about the decision that is before you. They're about people liking the JCC and wanting a better community. I do not believe that rezoning is the right way to solve this problem because we as residents also have to be considered in this public equation. The relevant questions. for the rezoning are not that the people like the JCC. They are that are there changing circumstances in the city as a whole to justify altering the land use designation? The answer to this question is a resounding no, because Mercer Island is and has always been a residentially focused community. On the administration website, it says it's a place with high quality residential neighborhoods. And with the rezoning to commercial, we are now under higher limits for noise, light, and reduction in setback requirements on this property and next to our homes. And because the zoning stays forever, I could end up living next to a 24-7 Amazon hub in the future. We don't have any control over this because zoning does stay with the property. The second question that's relevant for the rezoning is, is the proposed land use change compatible with the adjacent land use and development pattern? The answer to this question is also a resounding no, because this is a residential neighborhood. It's always been this way. My house was built in 1957. It hasn't changed since. This is what we do, and it's how we like it. The relevant question in criteria number three is that amendment must benefit the community as a whole and must not adversely affect public facilities, public health, safety, and general welfare. Well, certainly you have had neighbors writing to you requesting to reconsider this rezoning because we are all concerned. This is not just me. It's all of us. We are concerned about safety, about the traffic. I personally really fear for my kids because you're writing a blank check to the JCC to do whatever they want without any consideration for what it means for us. I fear for my kids walking in the street with all the traffic from the JCC. I would like you to talk.

Thank you very much.

Our next speaker tonight is Mark Clausen. followed by Stephen Lincoln and Pavel Sterba.

Good evening. My name is Mark Lawson. I live at 6107 Southeast 32nd Street. We have lived there since 1995. I am speaking in support of the change that the JCC is proposing. I have practiced law for close to 40 years. I'm retired now, and I got to tell you, it's the best job I've ever had. But one of the things in my real estate construction and land use practice that was kind of fundamental is that the community should try and keep the zoning consistent with what has been on the ground prior to whatever the consideration, whether it's a comp plan or a rezone or whatever. And the JCC obviously has been in that location for such a long period of time that it probably should have been something that was cleaned up long before you all took your seats there. But now you have the opportunity to really bring it into a situation where it can provide the maximum benefit to the community. I think you can trust the JCC when they say they need to do the renovation to improve the quality of the service they are providing. I don't think, as the prior speaker said, that there's any kind of a blank check. I think there are lots and lots of opportunity for notice and opportunity for hearing as the process moves forward. And I think if there are concerns, the city staff and the council can address those issues at the time. I think what we're talking about here is generally bringing the zoning code into a consistent state with the way the community has been using the JCC for more than 50 years. So I think this should be a relatively simple solution. And I'd also like for you all to think about, how would the city replicate what the J provides if the J were not there? And I think at a certain point, if you don't allow for upgrading of the facilities, you may have to face that question. How do you get the Parkinson's exercise classes? How do you get the morning water aerobics classes? How do you get the teenagers coming to work out in the gym in the evening? I've seen all these things since I've retired and had the opportunity to come to the J at various times during the day. I hope you will agree with the JCC in this. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Stephen Lincoln, followed by Pavel Sterba and Douglas Rosen.

Good evening. My name is Steve Lincoln. My family and I live in Bellevue, but we've been coming to Mercer Island for the last 22 years, primarily to the J. And I'm speaking in favor of item number 18, which is the comprehensive plan change to the designation of the property as commercial. My daughter... attended the preschool at the J. She went for three years. After that, she did the swimming lessons. After that, for many years, she went to the camps. I remember one time, the camp did a field trip over to the Mercer Island Police Department. They showed the kids the jail cell, which was empty. And I mentioned to my daughter, I had heard that sometimes they use that cell for kids who refuse to do their homework. Today, my daughter's in college in California studying criminal justice. So I don't know if that had anything to do with that, but I really thank the J for that. So the J's been serving this community for over 55 years. So we just heard from a prior speaker about concerns about what's going to happen here, but. That house that she said was built in 1957 was built after the J had already been there for almost a decade. And the idea that changing the zoning is going to give the J an unlimited path to whatever is just completely false, because anything they do there will require subsequent permits, hearings, public input. So this just gives the pathway to a... to modernization. And the J serves far more people than the Jewish community. The preschool had lots of non-Jewish kids. The French American school kids were coming over all the time for swimming lessons. the camps, the summer camps, were full of non-Jewish kids. This plan amendment is not a request to change the character of the island. It's a request to preserve it by allowing the J to modernize, and that preserves one of the very things that made this island a community. If you have an island full of houses, you have an island full of houses. But when you add a community center to the mix, You have a community, and that's what the J has been providing for over a half a century. And so I thank you for your consideration, and I hope we can have a viable path for the J so they can continue to take an upgrade, their aging facility, and continue to serve the community. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker tonight is Pavel Sterba, followed by Douglas Rosen and Matt Goldbach.

Hi, guys. My name is Pavel Sterba, and I'm not from Bellevue, okay? I'm not, okay? Guys, I don't live on Bellevue or on Lakes. I'm on 4340. I'm right next to it, right? And I like what it does for the community, but I don't like them as neighbors. Because, you know, if somebody comes to me and says, I want to renovate. Guys, you guys want major expansion. Then say it, right? Tell me you want to expand. I'll work with you guys, the neighbor, right? Make it work for us too. Just don't tell me what you want. I want to just fix my building. And then you want double size, right? So people from Belgium can come. People from Seattle can come. Why? Well, I'm having a massive trick by my house because someone from Seattle wants to come. I pay taxes here, guys. You serve me, not them, right? And so it's always nice to see somebody from Bellevue coming, telling me, would you be reasonable next to my house? Guys, next to your house in Commerce, if you like that. I don't like that, right? And so, and I'm okay with the J guys, what they do, right? But look what happened on the Herzl Center, right? They want a small, one-story building. They're building massive three-story buildings. These guys want a renovation, they want expansion. Be truthful, guys. And you guys, I mean, I want to join the showroom club. You know what they told me? You can't because you have membership limits. They don't have membership limits. How is it possible, guys, that one group can bring all members from all the Seattle area and others can't? Guys, that's a major favoritism, guys. That's not right. And so, to me, my point is, If I'm okay with all the proposing, but my issue with these guys, 10 years ago, these guys wouldn't have an extra entrance on 40th Street. They ruined my life, my family, right? I mean, how can you want to be a good neighbor when I'm going to have a thousand cars floating by my house? I mean, they promised buffer zone, but they don't do it, right? And so if I knew that, guys, you're going to be in a buffer zone and no second exit, I might work with you. I'd be okay with it, guys. But I just don't have a trust. They do what they say they would. And so, again, I love what they do, guys. Great people. But as a neighbor, it's not awesome, guys. And so, again, it has to work for me. It has to work for them. It doesn't work for people in Bellevue. It doesn't. Or Seattle. We live here, right? And so I would like you guys... I don't want this rezoning. I want you guys to find different fixes to this, so you guys can keep your control, more control over what's going to be built there, and Jay can renovate, expand some real matter. I just want to give them a blank check. I know it's not a blank check, but once you do a commercial, what you can do, what you can stop them, a lot more limits, right? And so I just want, let's do this, work with them, right, but just not by rezoning, guys. Find a different fix that can work also for them, also for me. Not just guys at Lakes or putting blocks away or in Bellevue, guys. Just work for me, too, guys, and my family. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker this evening is Douglas Rosen, followed by Matthew Goldbach and John Hall.

Hi, I'm Doug Rosen. I moved to Mercer Island in 1979 for the water skiing, for the great schools, and for the Jewish Community Center, where my family has been involved since the kids were little. I coached basketball there. I've been on the board. I've been involved in all the social and film festival stuff. It's a wonderful community spot. and it's added immensely to the life of my family and many of my friends. In addition to that, I've been a real estate development person for the last 30 or 40 years and have spoken before planning commissions and city councils up and down the corridor from Olympia to Lacey to Federal Way in Kent and Seattle and Bellevue and Woodville. And the one thing that I've noticed is that there are very successful communities in that corridor, and there are also communities that are not thriving. And the ones that are thriving are the ones that are focusing on their community agencies, the parks, the schools. They're making sure that the lifestyle of the families in their community are outstanding. and that people are getting together and enjoying their lives as a community. So I would encourage you to take the relatively simple step of clarifying the zoning for this comprehensive plan so that the J can make their plans in the most efficient possible way and proceed to improve the facility to have it go forward. Thanks very much. Thank you.

Our next speaker tonight is Matt Goldbach, followed by John Hall and Robbie Cape.

Hello, can you see me?

Yes, we can.

Okay. I'm Matt Goldbach. I live in the southeast corner of southeast 40th and East Mercer Way. I've been here a little over a little over a decade. I'm here to speak against the comp plan map amendment ordinance 2612. And I think it's The question in front of you really is land use. And I think the JCC is a wonderful organization. I think I'll go along with that. And I think they have a great cheerleading squad there today. But some reality that has to fit in here is the JCC has constantly had problems with its neighbors. And it's constantly had difficulty with city code. And I think probably right now almost always in one violation or another. I know they're in violation right now of some fence issues and currently owe the city a lot of money. Virtually every community organization on the island is theoretically in the situation of the Jays. Almost all in residential areas, they almost all operate with cups. The J is the outlier in they just have a problem living within what they've agreed to do. And this has been a problem for, at least I know, since 2003. The Cup provides the city and the residents of the city with some leverage of the organizations that they've granted privileges within community. The J was a whole lot smaller when they started 55 years ago. They've morphed by acquiring residential property all around them. they're doing it again right now there's three more three more residences they're going to try and add to their property here but right after this particular discussion ends over on 97th street i'm afraid what's going to happen here unfortunately if we just still just deal with cheerleading and what a wonderful group it is We're going to end up back in front of the GMA, and this thing is going to get thrown out again, just like the CFZ was. It's up to you as councilors to live within the law and provide land use decision, not a kumbaya on this. I think the J—we're not going to drive the J away. If you get a commercial zoning, they have a potential for exiting. They don't really have one right now. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker this evening is John Hall, followed by Robbie Cape and Alex Zimmerman. Mr. Hall, the host is asking you to turn on your camera and unmute.

Hello? Can you hear me? We can. I don't know what happened to the video, but you can hear me?

We can hear you and see you.

Good evening, Mayor and members of City Council. My name is John Hall. I live at 9970 Southeast 40th Street, Mercer Island, since 1958, before the J was there. I'm here tonight to ask you to deny the JCC Comprehend Your Plan Amendment. and rezone application. I provided more detail written comments, so rather than repeat all that tonight, I want to focus on the fundamental issue. The JCCC has known the limits of its footprint and intensity of use at this location since 1967. Those limits exist for a reason, to allow the JCCC to operate while protecting the surrounding residential neighborhood. This is not a small neighborhood club compared to other organizations on Mercer Island. According to its own filings, the JCC reported 472 employees and 115 volunteers in 2016. French American School reported 126 employees and 250 volunteers. That's 963 employees and volunteers between two organizations before considering visitors, students, parent drop-offs, and pickups. The scale of activity matters when you're considering whether to allow an institutional to use expand further into a residential neighborhood. I also want to specifically address two residential parcels. Parcel 2655500136 at 9824 Southeast 40th Street has a long history of a residential property and buffer. The JCC previously sought to use this property as a daycare and was denied by the city. There's a designated wetland to the west and a 60-foot greenbelt to the east that was intended to help protect the neighborhood. Yet this residential property has most recently been used for outdoor daycare activities against the cut rules. Parcel 2655500132 at 3985 99th Avenue Southeast is also residential property. The JCC purchased it, but it's remained a rental residence. Simply purchasing residential property should not create expectations that can be later incorporated into an institutional rezone. And that is really the precedent I'm asking you to consider tonight. If an institution can purchase neighboring residential homes and then gradually have those properties rezoned for institutions, where does that expansion stop?

Residents? Thank you very much.

Our next speaker tonight is Robbie Cape, followed by Alex Zimmerman.

Am I connected? Can you all hear me?

We can hear you and see you.

Okay. It's an honor to have this opportunity to speak to the city council. Thank you so much for giving me the time. It's worth noting that my wife, my three kids, and I moved to Mercer Island because of the JCC and Herzl-Neritamid across the street. These are reasons why we are here living on the island and will continue to live here on the island. I want to just draw everyone's attention to a very interesting sort of dichotomy about the J. If you walk into the J in the morning or in the afternoon or evening, you'll very quickly notice that the J is really a community center. It doesn't only attract Jews. It has Jewish in its name. But it attracts everyone, anyone from across the entire community. And it makes it a somewhat magical place. The changes that we're asking you to prove here is really about enabling the J to continue to operate just as it has in the past which at least our sense is that for any other organization this would be a foregone conclusion. What is unique about the J, different from all these other organizations that serve the broad community, is that we have the word Jewish in our name. We are unabashedly a Jewish organization. And I worry deeply that a decision to reject this change will end up looking, unfortunately, even if it's not, the optics of that rejection, the optics of telling the J that it cannot continue to do what it has been doing for many, many, many years, will end up being attached to one single characteristic that is different about the J, which is that it is Jewish. In today's world, I realize that some folks might not realize this, but as a Jewish member of the community, I can tell you that we're living in a state of unsurpassed, undeniable antisemitism. And that anti-Semitism, it's all around us. The community is looking for ways to affirm it. And I'd like to see the City Council take a step that does not. I would like to see the City Council approve and enable us to continue to serve the community just as we have been for many, many years up to this point. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Our final speaker this evening is Alex Zimmerman.

Thank you. Hi. Hello. My name Alex Everman. Yeah. I'm a Jew, live here for 40 years. So I come because it's very interesting. I come before you give me two trespasses, police trespasses here, so I cannot come for two years. Jewish center give me trespass for one year, and this big synagogue, Gersh, or what is name there, I don't know too much, give me two, and I don't need nothing. I'm only talking. So I'm a little bit confused about this because I hear too many Jews here. And they're talking, Jew, Jew, Jew. For me, Jew, what is not a sect, different opinion. This is not a Jew. This is a Judas. And I have experience with Judas for all my life. You're more dangerous than Hitler, Nazis, Jews who kill Jews. We have experience with this. So you're more dangerous. So the situation right now is very simple. Listen right now. I spoke more than 5,000 times every week, approximately 5-10 times from Tacoma, Seattle, and every week. You know what this means? What is I see right now in king country is a slave. You understand what is mean? Look what is they talking about. They talking about their home toilet. They not talking about change you because is democrat, because you are fascist, and because you are bandita. You understand what is I'm talking? It's a very serious problem. No one talking changes and bring somebody different. Maybe two-party system good too, you know what it means, because I respect and fight for America for all my life. But they talking only about personal toilet. They not talking about change you. They have a problem, they have a problem, they have a problem. And everybody very nice. So how you can change too many problem when you crooks and you belong to Democrat? As a mafia, a bandita who's stealing right now $35 billion from Sound Transit 3. Can country housing authority bring thousands, thousands, Not legal immigrants spend $100 million. I talking about everything. Zero, zero reaction. How is this possible? Yeah, nice people. One be nice. You cannot be nice with bandito like you. You understand? It's not because you're Jew, because you're Democrat. A mafia, organized criminal. It's exactly who you are. Viva Trump, viva new American revolution. Stand up, slave, and happy cow. And I'm always guilty. Why? Because I support Israel. Huh? In Donald Trump? It's a crime in America right now? I have 7,000 days of trespass. You're not allowed. Thank you very much.

Mr. Mayor, there are no further speakers this evening.

Okay, thank you. We now move to our next item of business. The City Council will go into executive session for approximately 20 minutes to discuss with legal counsel pending a potential litigation pursuant to RCW 4230-11011. The City Council will be in recess from 6.10 until 6.15 p.m. The City Council will convene the executive session at 6.15 p.m. until 6.35 p.m.

Good evening. Thank you for your patience. City Council will continue an executive session for an additional five minutes until 6.40 p.m. Thank you for your patience. My mic was off, so we're going to do all that again. Good evening. Thank you for your patience. City Council will continue an executive session for an additional five minutes until 6.45 p.m. Thank you for your continued patience. Good evening. Thank you for your continued patience. City Council will continue an executive session for an additional five minutes until 6.50 p.m. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for your continued patience. City Council will continue an executive session for an additional five minutes until 6.55 p.m. Thank you for your patience.

Okay, the City Council was in executive session from 6.18 p.m. until 6.51 p.m. We now move on to our next item of business, approval of the consent agenda. Staff, please put the consent agenda on the screen. Okay. The consent agenda contains 15 items which are available on the screen and have been in the packet. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So moved. Second. Seconded by Deputy Mayor Becker and seconded by Council Member Reynolds. To approve the consent agenda, City Clerk, please call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Shea? Aye. Deputy Mayor Becker?

Aye.

Council Member Weinberg? Is not present. Council Member Andrall? Aye. Council Member Reynolds.

Aye.

Mayor Rosenbaum.

Aye.

And Council Member Weicker. Aye. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Okay. Motion passes. Our first item of regular business is AB6971, the Fire Apparatus Acquisition and Financing, Ordinance Number 26-12, First Reading. Welcome Finance Director Matt Mornick.

Good evening, Mayor Rosenbaum, members of the council, City Manager Bond. I'm Matt Mornick, your finance director. And tonight I will be brief and introduce the item before the council this evening, which is to purchase a Type 2 fire truck. I'm joined tonight by Deputy Chief of Support Services from Eastside Fire and Rescue, Jeremy Hicks, also formerly the City of Mercer Island Fire Marshal. who has been an outstanding partner in helping us work through the nuances of working with Eastside Fire and Rescue's technical committee, as well as Hughes Fire Equipment, the vendor who we are going to be acquiring this. So Deputy Chief Hicks is going to walk you through the Type 2 apparatus as well as provide some context of how this fits into the city's fleet of emergency vehicles. And then our Management Analyst 2, Carson Hornsby, is going to walk you through the financing plan and the purchase agreement to bring this vehicle into the city's fleet. So with that, I'll hand it over to Deputy Chief Hicks. Thank you.

Good evening, council. Jeremy Hicks, Eastside Fire and Rescue. Next slide, please. Provide a little background. Eastside Fire and Rescue is the city's proud provider of fire and emergency medical services. Per the ILA, the city owns its fire apparatus, and Eastside maintains those through our fleet services out in the Issaquah area. One of the city's Type II fire engines is overdue for replacement in 2026. The apparatus was purchased back in 2008 with a 16-year expected lifespan. In spring of 2026, our technical committee that's made up of firefighters, fleet mechanics, administration, just a whole bunch of people get together and they evaluate the need and the design of the fire apparatus. That committee concluded its work and provided the recommendation to purchase a Pierce manufacturer engine, a Type II engine. The proposal meets the requirements to serve Mercer Island's response area and also aligns with Eastside's standardized fleet program. Next slide. So the Pierce International Pumper is a Type 2 pumper. It's called the Mini, which is not to be mistaken for Mini, which if you look at it, it probably means about the same. It's a smaller fire apparatus. It's definitely more fuel efficient. The big thing for Mercer Island is it's pretty specifically designed for the roads in Mercer Island. And the fact that they're narrow and the maneuverability of those, there's a lot of roads, especially down by the waterfront in Mercer Island, that these rigs have been used since back in the 1980s. I was trying to do a little history on them. They've been here for quite a while. It's ideal. It also combines fire and EMS capabilities and rescue services on that rig. The price for the rig is $774,266.47. If this moves forward, the manufacturing lead time is about 14 to 19 months to get this into service.

All right, moving on to the purchase agreement. All right, moving on to the purchase agreement. So the recommendation from Eastside Fire and Rescue is to purchase a Pierce manufactured engine. And in Washington state, that means that if you want to buy a Pierce, that means that you need to go through their exclusive dealer, which is Hughes Fire Equipment. So staff requested a quote in May and then worked with Hughes over the summer to draft a purchase agreement that mirrors the terms of the city's prior purchase agreement for the Type 1 engine from 2025. And you might recall that during negotiation of that prior agreement, there was one particular clause that the city went back and forth on with Hughes pretty extensively, and that was the manufacturer's price escalator clause, which essentially says that any price increases on major components that are built by third parties can be passed along to the customer within a certain timeframe before delivery of the apparatus and then after the purchase agreement is signed. Hughes was unwilling to remove this clause, but the city was successful in securing a cap on that clause of 10% of the original purchase price of the apparatus. And we're happy to say that that is being carried forward into this agreement for the MIDI as well. So other than that, the agreement is essentially the same. The biggest difference is that this time around it's not a joint purchase agreement. It's just between the city and Hughes Fire Equipment since Eastside did not need to purchase any engines at this time. So moving on to the financing. Staff received financing proposals from two banks and also submitted an application to the Washington State Treasurer's Office local program. Local stands for local option capital asset lending, and the program pools municipal financing proposals together to secure lower interest rates and also to reduce debt issuance costs. The local program does not offer financing terms until the program goes to market with a bundle of municipal financing requests. So unfortunately we don't know the exact interest rate that would be offered to the city until that funding details for the funding cycle are announced. Another caveat of the local program is that they do not offer financing up front. They don't release the funds to the city until we take receipt of the apparatus. So that would mean that the city would not be able to take advantage of about $29,000 worth of prepayment discounts from Hughes. The most competitive terms were offered to the city by Municipal Asset Management, which is a firm that the city has worked with several times in the past, most recently with the Type I engine acquisition last year. The municipal asset management offered an interest rate of 4.97% over a term of nine years, and that pencils out to annual lease payments of about $108,786 per year through September 2035. After the last lease payment in 2035, the ownership and the title of the apparatus transfers over to the city to be owned by the city. Since the city already has a master agreement in place with municipal asset management, that means that we just need to add an additional property schedule to that existing agreement, and both of those items are included as exhibits in your packet tonight for review. So with that, the recommendation is to move forward with financing from municipal asset management. However, staff will be monitoring market conditions, and if refinancing at some point in the future makes sense, we'll plan to come back to council to seek further direction on that. Moving on to the budgetary impacts, the city's equipment rental fund will pay the debt service for the new apparatus. And then, heads up, later this month, the finance department will be presenting the preliminary biennial budget for the next couple years. And as part of that presentation, they'll be covering some new fleet financing strategies. So stay tuned for later this month for more discussion on that topic. All right, and to finish up with your recommended action tonight, so approval of this ordinance will authorize the city manager to execute the purchase agreement with Hughes and the new property schedule to the master financing agreement with municipal asset management. And given that this is your first reading, the recommended action tonight is to schedule ordinance 2612 for second reading and adoption on September 15th. And with that, I'll turn it over for questions.

Question about the financing first.

Would it have been an option and did you explore the possibility of doing some internal financing and borrowing from the utility funds for example?

Thank you for the question. So the city's utility funds are very busy at the moment. We've been tracking the cash flow in the sewer fund and stormwater fund as well as the water fund. I can say that the sewer fund is running very lean. The capital program is very active, as is the water program right now, the water utility. We did not explore looking to do a loan to get the money internally and finance the acquisition of this. Instead, we went with the previous practice of doing a lease purchase agreement.

And quick follow-up, if I may. The fact that we're leasing it and then we own it at the end sounds more like a finance purchase to me. There must be a legal distinction. Why is it structured as a lease as opposed to just buying it and borrowing money to make the payments?

This is the typical mechanism that's used for acquiring heavy equipment at the municipal level. There are specific third-party entities, banks that, like Municipal Asset Management, specialize in this kind of lease purchasing agreements. So this is the mechanisms that municipalities have at our disposal, and we're using it in this instance to acquire the vehicle.

Thank you. What's the name for the vac truck, right, if I remember correctly?

The vac truck?

That's not the name of it. The big giant.

The vector truck?

Sure.

I don't have any information on the vector truck purchase, unfortunately. Jason's agreeing with me.

Okay. Questions?

Nope.

One more?

Councilman Reynolds.

A question for Deputy Chief. I want to make sure I understood, because it It sounds like the process you were describing involved a fair amount of customization to the truck. And I'm just curious if I'm reading that correctly, and can you give us a feel for what sort of things are required? Naively, I would have thought there would be hundreds of other communities that would want a truck kind of like what we want, and we'd just be able to pick out one off the rack that might be less expensive.

Great question. So Pierce has a couple different levels of manufacturing. You can get one off the, you know, what we would refer to like a demo unit as a stock unit. And then they have the high end where you fully customize everything. And then there's the middle. It's called Build My Pierce. And that allows you some flexibility in that. When we start looking at the capability needed for a MIDI unit, It's a unique rig. There's not hundreds of them. In fact, when we were trying to find a stock picture of one, We can't, except for the ones that we have here. They don't build a lot of them. Pierce is unique in the fact that you can take that middle, you can't take a demo unit because they don't make them, so you have to take that build my pierce section, and they allow the use of putting the size of pump we need and the size of the foam capability for structure fires we need in there, and then the compartments that we need for the apparatus. So we were able to semi-customize it to meet the requirements of what we use the biddies for here in Mercer Island without going to a full custom. So that was really value engineered to get us into that price range.

And just a quick follow-up. I think I've always had the impression, but it's based on impressions, not facts, that there are two or three big vendors of fire trucks besides Pierce, or maybe three including Pierce? Yes. How did we decide on Pierce, and did we do any comparison shopping with the others?

Absolutely. We do that with all our fire apparatus. Pierce is kind of the, if you were to look at the fleet that we have within Eastside, Pierce is what we have. In fact, those are the apparatus that you have here on the island now. When you go to a different manufacturer, They don't have this rig where it's kind of in that middle where they design part of it and then you can add to it. If you go to a different company, it's actually a full-on custom build where they have to manufacture everything to fit on the chassis, and that gets a lot more expensive really quick. Thank you.

I just want to thank you guys for all the planning and work that went into this. I just want to give you a minute to talk about how you guys do this planning long range of the life of all the vehicles and the fleet for Mercer Island and the scope of Eastside Fire. We do a good job. Our staff is on it and you guys are too. So if you could just speak a little bit about how all this planning to get to this point to approve the funding with that local consolidation of trying to get the best interest rate possible. It takes a long time to get to this point, and I just want to thank you for that, because every time anyone I know calls, you guys are there within a minute and a half, wherever you are. So I just want you to brag for a second about the planning that goes into meeting our needs.

All right. Well, only a second. There's actually a lot of work that goes into the fleet. We have to look at having a fleet as something that's constantly – it's a moving target, which – working with Mercer Island on some of the other apparatus. Apparatus aren't what they were back in the 80s and 90s. They're very technological pieces of equipment and then that's coupled with a lot of safety standards that are imposed on the type of apparatus and how they operate. So we're constantly monitoring what the technology is doing to the apparatus and then also evaluating when does it become a maintenance risk to keep putting money into an apparatus versus purchasing a new one apparatus to stop making parts. They stopped making the computers for them. They stopped making the safety standards for them. And then you're, you're stuck with this piece of equipment. So we try to get ahead of that. Other things we do in the maintenance program is we have a pretty comprehensive maintenance program. The rigs come in very routinely to get serviced. And then also we monitor the miles on them. So, for instance, there's various apparatus that Mercer Island owns, and we try to rotate those around to level out the mileage on them so we're not putting a lot of mileage on one vehicle and not so much on another. So when we replace them, we're actually doing a pretty accurate analysis replacement schedule. This does get complicated as the years go on, but we're trying to work that out right now with the city and our own fleet to make sure that we're making educated decisions on how that looks moving forward to make sure everybody's aware of it.

Councilor Reynolds, is that old hand? Okay, Council, is there a motion to schedule the second reading of ordinance number 26-12 on September 15, 2026? So moved. Second. Moved by Council Member Weinberg and seconded by Deputy Mayor Becker. Any comments? Please call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Deputy Mayor Becker?

Aye.

Council Member Shea? Aye. Council Member Andrall? Aye. Mayor Rosenbaum? Aye. Council Member Weicker? Aye. Council Member Reynolds?

Aye.

And Council Member Weinberg?

Aye.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Okay, thank you. Motion passes. Deputy Chief, nice to see you back here. Appreciate your continued service to the community. Okay, we're going to reshuffle here for a minute.

Andrea, could I just ask the question? Yep, go for it. My screen shows that I'm muted and that my video is off.

I see your video on. I do see that you are muted, but I can hear you. Okay, so I'm not really sure on that. You might try logging out of the Zoom and coming right back. That might solve it. Well, that's too hard. I think we can make it through the end of the meeting.

That might be it.

Oh, Daniel noted that you're in the meeting twice, and that actually could also be creating the echo that we've been trying to figure out where the echo is coming from.

Oh, I didn't know I was in twice. I'll log out once.

Thank you.

Can you hear us okay? If you can, we'll...

I can hear you guys. Can you hear me? And is the echo gone?

We can hear you and see you. I'm not hearing an echo, so I think we might have fixed the problem.

Okay, thanks.

Okay, next item of regular business is AB 6988, Comprehensive Plan, Map Amendment for Four Properties Owned by the Strong Jewish Community Center, SJCC, Ordinance Number 26-13. And we'll begin with the applicant presentation. We welcome Amy Lavin and Jessica Clausen.

Do I need to do it? No, you turned it on. Thank you. Can you share the screen? Okay, thank you, Molly. While she's doing that, I'm Jessie Claassen. I'm a land use attorney with McCulloch Hill. And I also happen to live on the island at 6730 82nd Avenue Southeast. And we are going to get pretty deep into land use now. So buckle up. But we are very, very, very happy to present to you today because it's been a long road. It's been many, many years. And we're here so that the JCC can remain on Mercer Island serving the community for the next 60 years and hopefully longer. Today we're going to talk about, if you want to go to the next slide, Molly. Okay. We're going to talk about why we're really here, which is the need for a remodel and reconfiguration. We're going to talk about the zone constraints that the single-family zone has. We're going to talk about the CO zone requirements that are very restrictive and protective of the community. And then we're going to talk about why the application meets the criteria and go over a few things that were talked about at the Planning Commission meeting. Next slide, please. So we're here with a comprehensive plan amendment, obviously, to change the future land use map, or the FLUM, as some people like to call it. We want to change our properties from single family to commercial office. The commercial office designation only exists in this part of Mercer Island, and note that the Herzl property is designated CO on the FLUM, but it's actually rezoned to B. So that's just showing the maps. Our docket request was submitted in September 2023 and was docketed by the City Council in December of 2023, and we're here now before you. Next slide, please. So again, our proposed map change is to CO from single family. Note that we are surrounded or we are adjacent to CO zoned properties and designated properties. Our docket request was actually submitted prior to the City Hall redesignation and rezone, which happened as part of the 20-year update. So that's why this map doesn't reflect that when we submitted our application, the City Hall property was actually not designated public institution as it is today. Note that we do have, so the JCC properties are listed on there. There's one little tiny property in the bottom right hand corner of our assemblage which is designated in the dotted line. I'll call it the parcel 0132. That is currently in single-family use. It is a single-family home that we rent out. And the rest of the property is what you typically know as the JCC property. And we'll get back to that 0132 property in a little bit. Next slide, please. Amy, this is for you.

Thank you, Jesse, and thank you to the council for being here tonight and for your service. My name is Amy Lavin, and I'm the CEO of the Strom Jewish Community Center. I've also lived on the island for 41 years, and as stated earlier, I learned to swim at the J as well back in my toddler years, and it has not changed much. Okay, so the Strom JCC is a very busy place, as you've heard throughout tonight's comments. With visitors from birth to 100 years old in our building regularly, we serve an incredible range of visitors with a vast set of interests, needs, and capabilities. Our mission, as was stated earlier, is to both serve as the most open and welcoming community-centered Jewish organization and to do that by amplifying profound connection for every generation. But with an aging, non-ADA-compliant building with mechanical equipment from 1969, this is challenging. In fact, following the windstorm in November of 24, we were left without power for several days. We couldn't bring our building back online to effectively heat our early childhood school. The systems couldn't be, as I say, rebooted without one little failure causing another quirky outage. This led to disrupted operations, and we had to ask parents to stop their work days and come pick up their children in the middle of the day because we couldn't keep the heat on in the building in 2025, which is simply unacceptable. The equipment behind and under our swimming pool isn't much better. As we saw with the Mary Waite pool, a facility even younger than the J, the guts of these facilities are failing and the costs of updating them are immense. We have spent nearly $150,000 in the last two months fixing pumps, pipes, and gauges. and the work and repairs continue. On top of this, we are not ADA compliant and we don't have an elevator, yet fixing these things is nearly impossible because of the code. Significant improvements would require code-compliant upgrades, yet the way we'd have to upgrade isn't addressed by the code. Earlier this summer, a FedEx delivery driver set down the packages in our office and looked at me and said, whew, I hope they fix your AC soon. I literally chuckled and said, what AC? I don't have AC. Our facility makes it hard to welcome people with mobility challenges. Our systems are energy intensive and not environmentally sustainable. Beyond that, the spaces aren't designed for contemporary living, lack the technology and programming space to use effectively. These things are counter to our agency values, bad for the environment, and distract our people and resources from what we should be doing, which is building community and enriching people's lives. In the eight years we've been working intently to find a path forward, construction costs have skyrocketed have skyrocketed and continue to escalate, and any changes we hope to make to our building now would, in today's dollars, cost tens of millions of dollars more than they would have when we started this. As you'll soon hear, the 2017 single-family code update has had expensive, time-consuming impacts for the city and the J. Imagine the impact the J could have been having on the community if those funds and agency time throughout the past nine years, eight years, and all of our energy were applied to programs that enrich the lives of people of all ages. It's time to create a path forward for the strong JCC, an agency that I believe serves more, employs more, scholarships more, and enriches more island lives than any private agency on Mercer Island. I urge you to recommend approval of the Comprehensive Plan Amendment, and I thank you for your time.

And I am back. If you would go to the next slide, please, Molly. Thank you. So these are some of the failing systems that Amy talked about. Again, she talked about the money spent on reviving these outdated systems that are very, very old. It's much more efficient and cost-effective to fully remodel and reconfigure. As anyone looking at remodeling themselves knows, sometimes you just have to do the whole thing. And holistic renovations would require vacating the building for an unsustainable amount of time given the fact that this is a nonprofit membership organization and paying members need access to the building. The building is made of precast concrete and the structural system and use of concrete masonry unit interior walls doesn't lend itself to easy modification. You can't just poke holes in concrete and expect buildings to keep standing. So it's a very significant issue and very difficult to deal with within the existing walls of the building. Next slide please. So wanted to talk a little bit about kind of the, I guess, land use history or the kind of the way that things have been permitted on Mercer Island in single family zones for organization like the Jays over the years. So we've been on this site as on a single family zone parcel of land since 1969. the JCC itself has not been in single family use at all during that entire time. The way that the code deals with non-residential uses in single family zones is through a conditional use permit or a CUP. And that's the permitting method that all of the single family zone clubs and churches and schools on the island have historically used to be permitted and be able to exist in the single family zones. The JCC does have a CUP currently. which has been revised over time with various remodels and additions over the years. So you can see the different land use approvals that have been issued over the years. Those are NCUPs. And there are conditions of approval in the CUP that are related to SEPA review, which is the State Environmental Policy Act, environmental impacts, and then just things that the city determined were needed to make sure that the JCC could coexist in the single-family neighborhood. This all worked great until 2017. So next slide. Um, in 2017, the city council passed the mega mansion legislation, um, ordinance 17 C 15, which created maximum square footage limits for all uses in the residential zones. And obviously the intent of, uh, the council at the time was really to restrict the big, huge mega mansions that we were seeing on the island. In the JCC zone, the gross floor area limit for any structure is 5,000 square feet. We far exceed that, far, far exceed that. Obviously, the size of use limitation was not targeted at any of the cities, community clubs, or churches or schools, but it was inadvertently targeted. not limited to you know exclude us and so we are technically subject to a 5 000 square foot limit we could not build today in that location we would not nobody could build that so typically what you would do from a land use perspective if there was a code thing that you could not comply with is you would ask for a variance And that's something that Mercer Island has allowed for over the years in other contexts. So when we were embarking on this journey of determining what to do on this property, we looked at the code again and said, I wonder if we could get a variance from that size of use restriction. So if you could go to the next slide, please. So in 2022, we actually asked the city, we filed a code interpretation to just make sure in writing that to see if we could obtain a variance from the maximum size of use limitation. And we asked the question very specifically, could the city grant a variance from the numeric standards for a non-residential structure sited in a residential zone? And the answer is no. And the answer back from the city based on the code is that the code prohibits variances from numerical standards for non-residential structures and residential zones. So essentially, since we're a non-residential structure in a residential zone, we can't ask for a variance and we're kind of stuck with what we've got. And we are an existing non-conforming situation on the island today. Next slide, please. So why do the non-conforming provisions matter in this context? Obviously those code provisions I just cited create a non-conforming situation. We cannot comply with that 5,000 square foot limitation. On Mercer Island, the code allows for non-conforming structures to continue under certain conditions. The code allows for interior remodeling to occur up to an unlimited monetary amount. And you don't lose your non-conforming status. So as long as you stay within your box and you do not make a change to your box, you can remodel to your heart's content. But this works only so long as no exterior alteration or enlargement is involved. So the way that we read this code is even if you change one thing on your exterior, technically you're subject to the monetary limits of how you remain an existing legally non-conforming use. Legally non-conforming uses or structures are limited to construction costs in excess of 50% of the structure's current King County assessed value. Over and the construction costs go back for the last three years. So if you alter anything on the exterior of your building You are subject to a cost cap which given what we need to do at the J We just we can't comply with that the current assessed value of the JCC structure is 26 million dollars and there's no way we could remodel a in our existing box for under $13 million, half of that. Especially when you hear what Amy just said, we have to become ADA compliant, we have to upgrade all the systems, and then anything that we do to the building, we also have to be compliant with the codes that are in effect today. Current building codes, current structural codes, current energy codes, which are a really big deal, that's all very expensive. We're very stuck. That is why we are here asking for this redesignation. Next slide, please. Again, I think you've heard we have significant challenges with staying in our existing box. We are continually trying to put, not duct tape, because they're actually fixing it correctly, but Fix the systems as needed, but if we are to become ADA compliant, we cannot stay in that existing box. We're going to have to change something on the exterior. We will also say that fixing access and impervious surface issues and parking issues, we know that those are issues on our site. Those are also things that we can't change. Those are outside. So we do feel very stuck and that is why we are here. Next slide please. So the commercial office zone requirements, we just wanted to walk through these. It's a zone that's pretty small in the city, just so that you're aware. It is a very protective zone. I mean, I think Mercer Island does a very good job of making sure that its zones are protective of surrounding single-family users or residential users. The height is 36 feet, which is only six feet taller than what would be allowed on the site today. There are actually increased parking requirements beyond what would be required today. There's a 60% impervious surface limit, 35% building coverage limit, which is about the same as what would be today on single family. And then there are pretty significant setbacks required that are in excess of what is required in a single family zone. So you've got 50 feet from all rights of way, and it gets complicated in terms of the yard setbacks, but the minimum setback from a residential property is 50 feet, and that is definitely not the setback that is required today in a single family zone situation. So it is significantly increased. Next slide, please. And this is kind of hard to see, pretty small. But if we did consolidate our lots, on the left is what the setbacks would be. Again, this is not a building footprint diagram. This is not showing the buildable area of our lot. Not even close. This is just showing how those dotted lines, which are a little bit hard to see, I'm sorry. You can see that there are significantly increased setbacks under the CO zone. We just wanted to show that the co zone is actually quite protective of neighboring properties Next slide please So in addition to just the zone standards, there's also a whole host of things that would have to happen going ahead in order for a project to be built that are also extremely protective of neighbors and the public and quite a lot of public process and opportunity for comment. So anything that would be built on the property requires a site development permit and design review, which includes a public hearing and opportunity for both staff and the decision maker to insert conditions of approval. There is the requirement of compliance with design standards in Chapter 1912 of your code, which are very protective. And I would say that when the J was built, you didn't have design review standards, and you didn't have design review. Many of the things that we've kind of heard, the code already addresses those things in the context of design review, and they're actually code standards now. It's not guidelines anymore. State law changed. so that we do have to meet those very restrictive design review standards. You also have review under the State Environmental Policy Act, which is SEPA. That's to review and mitigate for all the environmental conditions, so that's really the traffic and parking things that you keep hearing about. Again, that's something that staff does. They take it very seriously. Permit review is not a cakewalk on Mercer Island. There's concurrency and transportation engineering review. I'm not meaning that as a bad thing. I'm meaning it as a good thing. Concurrency and transportation and engineering review, which is really looking at what's the capacity of the streets surrounding, making sure that any access points are safe. All of these things happen when a project is reviewed and approved by staff. Then finally obviously compliance with all the other technical codes. We've got a very strict tree code on this island We have a lot of trees on that property that probably means there's not going to be as much buildable area on the site as you know some may think stormwater codes Any critical areas, steep slopes, those all take areas out of the lot that we could actually build on. So just to be clear, these are just the requirements of building a project on Mercer Island in the CO zone. Next slide, please. So bringing it back to the approval criteria, Um, under what you're making your decision tonight. So, I mean, you have them, you've read them in the staff report. Um, we do believe that amendment is consistent with the GMA, the, the, uh, countywide planning policies and the city's own comprehensive plan. We outlined that extensively in our application. Um, the redesignation is consistent with the entirety of the comp plan. which calls specifically for protection of community centers like the JCC, actually. And the amendment does address changing circumstances of the city as a whole. The single-family zone changes, which we discussed, are something that happen to the city as a whole. They apply to the entire city. They apply to every single person. community organization like ours, and they were the changed circumstances that created this cascade of effects. We also, the staff report at the Planning Commission also talked about some of the other changed conditions on the island. Since the JCC was built, the island's population has increased about 20%. That means more demands for the types of services that the JCC offers and more members. And then there's just general change circumstances that affect us all. The spaces that exist in the JCC obviously are outdated. We cannot remodel them as we've discussed. They can't be reconfigured and they're just really not usable for the types of things we need to do today. And then there's another changed condition that really affects all of us. It's inflation, frankly, and the cost of reconstructing and the cost of doing any sort of a remodel. The inflation and constantly rising costs, it means we can't even come close to that $13 million number and effectively remodel and remain in the limits of the non-conforming code. That remodel would not comply with necessary ADA energy and structural codes, and it wouldn't add the level of security that the JCC needs in standard, that $13 million number. So there are multiple change conditions here. I just wanted to outline that. The amendment is compatible with the adjacent land use and development patterns. First, it acknowledges the use of the property, which is what land use is all about. The property, except for 0132, that parcel, has never been in single-family use since 1969. The CO zone allows for community service. center uses, such as the JCC, and it pulls down the existing CO designation from the north, which is a good planning policy. You want to have designations near each other and consistent with each other. And, as discussed, the CO zone itself is protective of and compatible with the adjacent land use development patterns. And the property is suitable for development in conformance with the standards under the potential zoning. Taken as a whole, the JCC parcels can utilize the CO zoning standards and achieve the remodeled JCC that we need to achieve. Finally, and I think you've heard this in the public comment significantly, is the amendment benefits the community as a whole. It will not adversely affect the community development public health, safety, and welfare. And we did read every public comment that was received, and Amy responded to the people that raised concerns. She personally responded to them. The vast majority of the public comments received were in favor of the redesignation, and those that were not really raised a couple of issues. One is the traffic and parking. We all know traffic is an issue down in that neck of the woods. I took my kids... preschool we all know about it in camp I will say that it it is going to be a significant we cannot change anything if we can't remodel nothing changes we can't we're stuck we can't change things so we hear people we would like to address things we cannot do that unless we are redesignated and can rebuild so we just want to you know a address that publicly again as we did at the Planning Commission hearing and let people know. The other concern was about changing the zoning to commercial and concern that this rezone would allow for the building of office buildings or allowing for some massive 400,000 square foot GCC. We said this at the public hearing, and I think I said it maybe five times. We are not building anything other than a JCC on this property, and we are not building a 400,000 square foot community center. That is not an affordable thing to build. This is a nonprofit organization that is fundraising for this build. The current JCC is a little bit under 90,000 square feet. What we would anticipate is something about that size-ish. We do not have plans. We don't know what those square feet are, but we can just say it over and over for the record. That's all I can do. It's our understanding that it's difficult to place conditions. I've never seen it in my 20 years as a land use attorney putting conditions on an actual comprehensive plan amendment because it's a legislative matter and it's really just a map change. So, we've never seen that done. I can tell you that as we move forward to a rezone situation, we will be presenting similar discussion to the hearing examiner, and at that time, we are very open to conditions related to siting of the facility on the site and size limitations, that's really the place where those conditions could really attach. It's difficult to do that in a legislative comprehensive plan situation. So just that's my opinion. And then finally, you know, as discussed at the Planning Commission, there was a lot of discussion you saw in your staff report and some changing of findings, et cetera, specifically related to that single family parcel 0132. And planning commission meeting, we kind of talked about like, why did we include that? And we kind of can't remember why we included that in our application back in 23. I think it's just because it was part of our ownership that is in single family use. And in discussing with your contract city land use attorney, Eileen, it's our understanding that if the council wanted to not include that parcel in the map change, you could do so because it is in single family use. And we are okay with that. We just wanted to say that for the record. If the council doesn't want to include that, you can just do the other parcels, not 0132, because that isn't single-family use today. And we wouldn't redevelop it as part of any sort of remodel for the GCC. So, you know, we do believe that we are consistent with the criteria. The JCC absolutely benefits the community as a whole, as you've heard. And the map change itself does not adversely affect public health, safety, and general welfare. Did you want to do a final? Okay. And that's all we had. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. We will now move to the staff presentation.

Sure. Mayor, we've got a few staff here at the table tonight. For the record, I'm Jeff Thomas, Community Development Director. Assistant Director Alice Van Gorp is two to my left, and Molly McGuire, our Senior Planner, she's going to be doing a short presentation for the council before we get to your questions here this evening.

Thank you. All right, so the purpose of the meeting on this item tonight is to consider the Planning Commission's recommendation to the City Council to approve the proposed Comprehensive Plan Map Amendment based on their adopted findings. I'll go into more details about that proposal and the findings in their recommendation. First, I will start with some background. So in December of 2023, the city council adopted a resolution which added the SJCC's comprehensive plan amendment and rezone to the 2024 annual docket. And in December of 2025, the SJCC submitted their applications for the Comprehensive Plan Amendment under CPA 25-002, a rezone and a non-project level SEPA review. A SEPA determination of non-significance was issued on June 22nd of this year and no comments or appeals were received on that determination. Because the SJCC submitted an application for a comprehensive plan map amendment and paid all of the appropriate fees, the city is obligated to make a decision on the proposal following the correct review process. It's also important to note that this is not an application for a rezone or a development proposal. and analysis related to the consistency of the rezone criteria or the property's consistency with development standards for future or current development should not be done during this meeting. This meeting is for the proposed comprehensive plan amendment only. So a comprehensive plan amendment is an amendment to the comprehensive plan, which is a long-range planning document establishing goals and policies affecting changes for land uses, natural resource protection, and city facilities and services over 20 years. Amendments to the comprehensive plan can be considered by the city council no more than once every calendar year, and they must meet specific criteria laid out in the code to be adopted. The three maps shown on the screen show the four properties that are part of the comprehensive plan map amendment that's in front of you today and the existing land use map in the comprehensive plan. Now these maps are kind of hard to see. You can see the single family residential in the tan color and the commercial office is in that blue purple color. And the gray color is public facility and the red is multifamily for your reference. You can also see that a portion of the north property, which is the parcel ending in 0115, is already partially designated commercial office, and the proposed amendment would fix that split designation and put the whole property under the commercial office designation. These maps show the proposed land use and you can see it redesignates those four properties from single family residential in the tan color to commercial office in the blue. When an application is submitted for a rezone that also requires a comprehensive plan amendment, the applications must be considered together, but because the two applications follow two different review processes in the city code, to accomplish consideration together, the applications must follow this timeline shown on the screen. A public hearing was completed with the Planning Commission on August 5th and those findings and recommendations have been made to the City Council and included in Exhibit 2 in your packet. And if the City Council decides to move forward with CPA 25-002 after tonight's first reading, the public hearing for the reason would be scheduled with the hearing examiner and this would likely occur sometime in the fall. After that, the reason would receive first reading and then both applications will come back to City Council together for possible adoption in December. The application that's before the City Council today is to amend the land use map, as we discussed, and re-designate the subject properties from single-family residential to commercial office. And the Planning Commission adopted findings for each of the criteria for comprehensive plan map amendments in the code on August 5th as part of their recommendation. And the City Council must consider that recommendation in their discussion tonight. And the findings adopted by the Planning Commission are included, are in addition to the findings presented by staff in the staff report in Exhibit 3. Ultimately, the Planning Commission made two additional findings, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but I'll go over the criteria for comprehensive plan map amendments. Criteria F1 requires the amendment to be consistent with the Growth Management Act, countywide planning policies, and other provisions in the comprehensive plan and city policies. The city agrees with the applicant's response contained in the staff report, stating that the proposal is consistent and in-depth descriptions of those policies are included in the staff report. The amendment also needs to meet either subsection A or B of this criteria. This is an or criteria, so one or the other. And the applicant and staff both agree that there is not a technical error in the comprehensive plan, but that the amendment does address changing circumstances of the city as a whole. which can be described as an increased demand of a facility that is at the end of its useful life as shown by the applicant and the upgrades necessary to sustain the facility would result in the loss of their non-conforming status. Obviously, the single family designation is written for single family development and does not provide the applicant the opportunity to redevelop the existing facilities since those standards are not appropriate for community facilities like the SJCC. Since this amendment is directed at a specific property, the three additional criteria shown on the screen must be met. And the first is that the amendment must be compatible with the adjacent land use and development pattern. Adjacent land use patterns include both single family residences and commercial buildings and public facilities, which align with the existing facilities on the SJCC properties. and the commercial office land use designation represents commercial areas within Mercer Island located outside of the town center. Complementary land uses are listed as health care, schools, and places of worship, and this designation aligns with the historic, current, and future proposed uses of the subject properties as described by the applicant. The second is that the properties must be suitable for development in conformance with the standards under the potential zoning, which would be commercial office. And those allowed uses include professional, scientific, and technical services, office uses, places of worship, and civic and social organizations. So required development standards include but are not limited to screening adjacent to external boundaries of the site, restrictions on lot coverage and building footprints, height limits, yard requirements, parking requirements, which would all be addressed under an application for a development proposal. So staff agrees that the property is suitable for development in conformance with those standards. And finally, the amendment must benefit the community as a whole and will not adversely affect community facilities or the public health, safety, and general welfare. The proposed comprehensive plan amendment and potential following rezone if approved would allow for new commercial development in an area that has contained uses that align with those allowed in the CO designation for many decades And the comprehensive plan states in the land use element goal 7.4 that social and recreational clubs, schools, and religious institutions contribute to the mental, physical, and spiritual well-being of Mercer Island residents. So staff agrees that the applicant has demonstrated that the amendment would benefit the community as a whole. I also want to note that while a SEPA determination of non-significance was issued for the proposed CPA and rezone, this was a determination for a non-project action only, which means that it is not associated with a single site-specific project and is more broad and affects plans, policies, and programs such as the comprehensive plan. So if a future development proposal is submitted, the proposal would undergo super review for a project action, as well as review for conformance with all the other applicable development standards that I mentioned, which includes traffic impacts, critical area review, and review against the development standards. The Planning Commission reviewed the application for compliance against those criteria and adopted two findings to revise the findings originally presented in the staff report. You can find the full findings in Exhibit 2, but they can be briefly summarized in the two bullet points here. First is an amendment to the staff finding for Criteria F1 to require an instrument to run with the land. A comprehensive plan amendment is a legislative process, not a project application that can be conditioned like a permit, and because of this, staff recommends that the City Council reject the Planning Commission's amendment to this finding and retain the staff finding in Exhibit 3. And the second is to revise the finding for criteria F2 to change the boundary of the amendment proposed by the applicant and contract the boundary to exclude the parcel ending in 0132, which is shown in that tiny blue square in the image. Unlike the previous recommendation, the City Council does have authority to add or subtract properties that are subject to the amendment. So should Council wish to proceed with this recommendation to amend the boundary for the area, this can be accomplished by adopting the Planning Commission findings for Criteria S2 and directing staff to amend Ordinance 2613 for second reading. So with all of that information, discussion by the City Council should be limited to whether or not the proposed comprehensive plan amendment meets the criteria in the code. In completing first reading of Ordinance 2613, the City Council may select one of the following options, which is to accept the Planning Commission's recommendation, including both amended findings. amend the Planning Commission's recommendation to reject one or both amended findings, one for the instrument to run with the land or two for the contracted boundary, or reject the Planning Commission's recommendation as presented and adopt new findings and provide direction to staff for second reading. The recommended action is to move to amend the Planning Commission's recommendation by rejecting both amended findings. Your packet also includes alternate actions, and I can pull those up if you need to see them. But that is all I have for you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Okay, thank you. I'll start with a question. Anyone who can answer this? Prior to the structure that the JCC is in being built, what was on that land before?

Trees. I'm being told trees.

Okay. My understanding is apple trees, so that's helpful.

We passed the test, okay.

Okay.

Councilor Adderall.

May I ask a question of the applicant or only of staff?

you can ask a question of the applicant or the staff, or both.

Okay, so for the applicant, it was a very lengthy slide presentation, very well done, but I think one of the things you said that jumped out at me is, you know, if we were to remodel, we would have to ask our clientele to not attend for a long time, wouldn't have facilities for a long time. But how does this

rezone or comprehensive plan amendment and subsequent rezone how does that avoid that i mean what exactly do you have planned so we don't have any plans yet and they're not really obviously before the city council um i guess when we've been there is a reason why we are here and that we have explored many options to figure out can we exist in the code, right? We wouldn't be asking for a rezone if we didn't think we really needed one, or a redesignation is what we're here for. And so, I think one of the things that has been obviously problematic about staying within the boundaries of our walls, which is what we would have to do in this situation, is it would be so disruptive to our members who need to use the facilities. I mean, thinking about us as a membership organization, if I am a paying member of the JCC and if I couldn't use it for a year because it's closed for a remodel within the existing walls, you're probably gonna lose a lot of members and that's gonna be financially problematic. So I think when I said that, that's what I meant. Does that answer your question?

No, not at all. What I'm wondering is how do you avoid that consequence with the comprehensive plan amendment and subsequent rezone? What do you plan to do that allows people to continue to use the facility while you expand, redevelop, whatever? I'm worried about the footprint and construction impacts and all those other things. Maybe that doesn't come until we talk about the rezone, but I think it's really good information to inform our decision tonight.

Sure. So I think, again, getting back to the non-conforming provisions that talk about you can't change your exterior. So if we have a rezone and we can change our exterior because we're subject to the CO code and we're not subject to the 5,000 square foot limitation anymore, we can build, I'm making this up because this isn't planned or anything, but to the north of the property, you can build something before you're having a problem in the existing building and displacing whatever is in it. So in my world we call that phasing, so construction phasing, right? So you can construction phase because you don't have to be constrained within your existing walls. So that is part of the solve with the CO zone.

And do you think you can do that without exceeding the lot coverage and square footage requirements? Well, we would have to.

Okay.

Thanks.

That's more like it.

So I want to thank everybody here for laying out all the legalities that we're all facing here with this being a comp plan amendment, not a discussion of what the plans might be when we get to rezones and potential development projects. We've been here a long time talking about this, a lot longer than 2023, so I thank everyone for their patience and staff for working through it. My question is about this lot 0132, and could you give us a little more background on that? I'm Not inclined to back it out of leaving some flexibility here, but I'm curious why why I want a little more insight on the Planning Commission discussion and then You said this evening you you'd welcome not including it, but you had included it So just could you both talk a little bit more about that, but yeah looking back again

It is in single family use. It is a single family house. The JCC does get rental income off of it. There's no plan to demolish that. I think it may have been, I'll just say it personally, it may have been my mistake in including it just because it was a parcel that the JCC owned. You know, again.

And it is lot coverage, so it allows for that impervious surface and open space and playgrounds. And so, Jeff, how about while Amy gets to the podium, why don't I let the technician.

I don't know if I'm going to be the expert. I think it's very important to know that this was submitted years ago, and we wanted the flexibility we could have. We, of course, would rather that it is included because it offers flexibility and And at the same time, to the point of changing what factors in the island have changed or otherwise, it has remained a single-family home to this day. And it may or may not stay that way, but commercial… But, of course, that's back to believing that if, in fact, we get rezoned and can put a project forward, it is subjected to all of the same development requirements and standards. that would require necessary screening setbacks and pervious surface lock coverage.

Right, in the commercial zone. Yes.

So speaking strictly from a technical perspective on that, when we looked at the application that we received to process, those CO standards that Ms. Clausen covered in her presentation here this evening, Our professional opinion was that those standards provided those increased setbacks, the tree protection, everything she went through. In the aggregate, we felt, again, what our ultimate recommendation was to the Planning Commission was that there were findings to support the change to the CO. The Planning Commission had a discussion and where they arrived at, I'm paraphrasing here, but they felt like the exclusion of that parcel would provide a buffer to the other single family zoning that is adjacent to it. So it's six of one half dozen of the other essentially. You're either going to retain that small parcel as single family or you're going to move it into the CO and then have those CO standards apply to that area. What you've heard from the applicant here tonight there. I mean they've offered their opinion on that parcel I think it's really up to the council. You've got options in your packet to make a motion that would Retain that that was not the staff recommendation we provided in the agenda bill But we've certainly provided an alternate that would accomplish that if the majority of the council felt that way Thank you for that history Council Reynolds

I'm not sure if this is a question for staff or for the SJCC people, but what happened between 2023 and 2025? It was docketed, but then no action was taken. Was that just because we were busy with the growth, benefit, and hearings board issues, or was it because we were waiting for the application from these folks? And if we were waiting for the application, why did it take two years? Put both of you on the spot with one question.

I'll speak from December 25 onwards. So we did receive the application. We have worked on it consistently throughout this period. We did discuss with the applicant that we needed to get the Growth Management Hearings Board work through the Planning Commission first before we would be able to take their application that had been determined complete and was being processed behind the scenes. And that's exactly what we did. The Planning Commission finished up their work on the Growth Management Hearings Board in June of this year, obviously, just a few months ago. And we attempted to schedule a Planning Commission meeting public hearing for July. Unfortunately, we weren't able to secure a quorum for that meeting. So then the next available date that we looked at that quorum was available was August 5th.

To clarify my question, I'm more interested in before December 2025. Was that because it was not your place to deal with it until you had an application? Is that the issue? That's correct. Okay. So then the question comes back to you of why did you wait two years?

Yeah, I don't actually have an answer to that, why we waited.

Okay.

Yeah, but that was a good explanation of the timeline from Jeff.

Is it an appropriate time for motion?

Go for it.

Okay. I would like to, let's see here, move to amend the Planning Commission's recommendation by rejecting both amended findings for MICC 1915, 230F1 and 2 and replace these findings with those originally presented by staff to the Planning Commission as detailed in Exhibit 3 and schedule the second reading of Ordinance 2613 for December 1, 2026.

Second.

Okay. Motion made by Council Member Reynolds and seconded by Council Member Weinberg.

And for avoidance of doubt, that is the recommended staff motion.

I hope I read it correctly. You did. Okay, would you like to speak to your motion?

Yeah, a couple of things. We heard a lot of testimony tonight, and obviously it falls into two categories, as did the written 700 pages that we got to read through this weekend. One is that the SGCC is a tremendous community resource, and even the people that don't want this to go through seem to agree with that, and I definitely agree with it as well. And it's part of what makes this community a community, and I think that's very true, and I want to see this organization preserved. The other category of comments we had were the people who were opposed, and they largely fell in the category of the SDCC is a challenging neighbor for reasons related to traffic or lighting or noise or an even number of other reasons. I've been hearing about these things for a long time, and I've been on the council now for six and a half years. Before that, I was on the planning commission with Council Member Weinberg, and we heard about it back then when we were talking about the community facility zone. And my reaction to the people that expressed concerns always comes down to this. Okay, you've got some concerns, and I understand those concerns, and I would be bothered by those things too if I lived where you lived and was experiencing what you say you're experiencing. But I'm a believer in intelligent design and good design. And this gives the SJCC a chance to do it right and build a facility that makes things better for the neighbors, not force them to live with what they have. And I believe you can do that. And I want to give you a chance to do that. And I think this looks like the best way forward to make that happen. Councilor Anderall.

Yeah, I would just, and I'm not sure procedurally, I think I've been on council long enough to know how to do this, but I am in support of the alternative action 2B, which is to reject the Planning Commission's recommendation for covenant that runs with the land at this point because of the limitations on being able to do that within the comprehensive plan amendment, but I really do think we should exclude the residential parcel. I don't believe that there's a good factual support for that to comply with all the requirements for a comprehensive plan amendment. The J is not opposed to us removing that, and I think that's just a better, more prudent course of action. So I don't know if that's, a motion to amend the existing motion or how we approach that?

Yeah, Council Member Anderle, if you would like, you would need to make an amendment.

Okay, well, so I would move to amend the existing motion to modify it to comply with the alternative actions in the agenda bill 2B, number 2B.

Deputy Mayor Becker?

Second.

Okay. There is an amendment to the motion made by Council Member Anderle, second by Deputy Mayor Becker.

I need the motion restated, Mr. Mayor, or the amendment to the motion restated.

Okay. I'll try to do it more comprehensively or more concisely. I would amend the existing motion. to reflect the actions in the agenda bill under alternative actions 2B, except only amended Planning Commission finding F2. I got it.

Maybe. So I've got the amended motion to be amend existing motion to, because we need to turn the motion into what I can put in the minutes. So referencing the agenda.

Andrea, let me, Jeff, may I ask you to propose an amendment so that Andrea can get it into the record that aligns with what Council Member Randall is requesting, please?

Yep. So it would be an amended motion to reject instead of accept F-1, actually. So in essence, the council would be accepting F-2, which was in the main motion. Did I get that right? I did get that right. So it would be accepting F-2 and rejecting F-1.

Okay, so amend the main motion to reject MICC 19.15.230 except MICC 15.230 and replace that finding. I'm missing the last part. That's where I'm getting tied up, Jeff.

and replace finding F2 with the staff finding for that same number that's detailed in Exhibit 3 in the agenda bill packet?

I'm not sure that that reflects what I was trying to do. In plain English, I would reject the recommendation of a covenant that runs with the land and accept the recommendation to exclude the residential parcel. I think it's 132. I don't know how we get that solidified, but I'm not going to vote on something I don't understand.

With all due respect, we're trying to get something in the record. So, Andrea, are we close? We're super close.

I've got it. Can you put it on the screen?

Yeah.

I need a comma.

Commas and grammar I'll catch when I get it.

I just want to be sure that we are very clear here.

Where do you want the comma, Mr. Mayor?

I'm assuming it needs to be after this. Let's find it. Okay, let's do this. Can you put the first motion on the screen as well?

So when taken from the aggregate here, the two motions, the original motion by Councilmember Reynolds was essentially the recommended, it was the recommended motion that was in your packet materials. Councilmember Andrall has made a motion to amend that main motion. When you take those two together, it essentially gets you to alternate action 2B that's in your packet, which is to accept the Planning Commission finding for F2, but reject F1 and replace it with the staff original finding for F1 that was presented to the Planning Commission in August.

For me, that's perfect. I believe that's what I was trying to accomplish.

So we're clear this would take... What had been F1 would make that F2. Sorry, what had been F2 would make that F1.

No, F1 and F2 are two different subjects, so it would retain F2 as recommended by the Planning Commission, but it would reject Planning Commission's F1 and replace it with the staff's F1 that was presented to them originally. So F1 is the instrument running with the land. F2 is removing that small parcel from the actual land use map.

Jeff, can I just ask a question?

I'm worried that we've still not got it quite right. I just chimed in. I think I have it.

Yeah, wouldn't the amendment just be to replace the motion with option 2B?

I think that is the easiest way to do this.

Well, that may have been where Council Member Andrell started originally in her comments, and then we took this journey through F1 and F2. So, yes, that would be a short-form version, City Manager, of what's on the screen here. Point of order?

Sorry, I'm having word difficulties.

Point of order. Council Member, state your point of order. It strikes me that if we're basically saying replace this motion with this other motion, we can't do that because there's already a motion on the floor.

i don't think we can do that if if i this is not productive i would like a five minute recess so that we can write a proper amendment because i cannot go forward with a record that looks like this may i have that five minute recess okay counseling recess until 8 21 p.m

Okay, the council was in recess from 816 until 823 p.m. Would you like the motion brought up, Mr. Mayor?

I would.

Okay, Councillor Anderall, does this represent your intent? Actually, first, Council Member Reynolds, would you like to revoke your point of order?

I don't hear anyone.

Even though this has the effect of what I was worried about, at least it's phrased as a proper amendment, so I don't think I can claim a point of order here. Okay.

Council Member Anderle, does this represent your intent? Can you hear us?

Council Member Andron, can you hear us?

I'm not hearing anyone.

How about now? Can you hear us now, Council Member Andron? You looked up, maybe not.

Can you hear us? Is there something you can change on your end? We can troubleshoot this.

Oh, okay. I just tried changing from, I mean, my AirPods are charged, but I took it out and I'm now through the computer and it works.

Okay, great. Thank you. Does this amendment represent your intent when you made your amendment?

I think so. If what it does is exclude the residential parcel, then yes.

Okay. Would anyone like to speak to the amendment?

i can speak to it first um which is that the jay doesn't object to removing this is not even clear why it was included at first and i think the planning commission's recommendations are very very firmly supported in fact that the parcel does not comply with a comprehensive plan amendment um it's not been used in the way that the jay is using the rest of its uh parcels. It's been single family since it's been acquired. It's single family now. I don't think it hurts anyone to exclude it. And I think it sets a bad precedent to include it. So I would just kind of clean things up and pair this out.

Okay, Councilor Shea.

Yes, so just being in the room, I just want to make sure that this is what the JCC wants. Because, you know, I also heard from Amy when she went on to the microphone that they would like to have the flexibility of it being a commercial office zoning, which, you know, any commercial office project, would require design, standard review, permit review, public hearing, opportunities for conditions, compliance with trees and SEPA review. So it's not a blank check like some people have or a couple people have said tonight. And I just want to make sure that, you know, It wouldn't make a difference to the JCC, and I think it would. I think to me, you know, being here tonight, hearing all of the testimony, you know, they would like to see that as part, as included. You know, and I don't know if Amy can still speak to it or if Jessica can still speak to it. You know, is this important to the JCC that this small parcel is included?

City Manager Bond.

Mr. Mayor, we've reached the point of deliberation where the councils begin motion-making. It would be unusual to re-engage in discussion with applicants, but I will leave that decision up to you.

I agree. Councillor Weinberg. Yeah, so I'm not I've not heard a convincing argument for why parcel 132 should be excluded from the CEO map area. It's contiguous with the other parcels. And it provides the additional flexibility enables for intelligent design. So I don't plan on voting for this amendment.

I am also going to oppose the amendment because I think it is important. The concerns that we heard tonight, I think that having this flexibility will allow for more opportunity for screening, et cetera. So I think having that flexibility will actually address many of the concerns that we heard earlier. Councilman Reynolds.

I'll be opposing it for a similar reason. I want to give the SJCC as much flexibility as we can give them, and I think this is the best way to do that. What I heard Ms. Lavin say was that or collectively the two of them, was that they could live without this, but there's a preference to have it, and I'd like to give them all the flexibility they can to do this right, and I think that's potentially better for them and better for the community.

Okay, any other comments on the amendment? So to quick, please call the roll.

So wait, can I just clarify, is this the amendment that Council Member Anderall?

This is the amendment that Council Member Anderall made. Oh, okay. And then we'll have opportunity for other amendments, and if not, we will vote on the made motion.

Quick question first. Who seconded the amendment to the motion? Deputy Mayor Becker. Thank you. Mayor Rosenbaum.

No.

Council Member Shea. Nay. Council Member Weicker. Nay. Council Member Andrall. Aye. Council Member Weinberg.

Nay.

Deputy Mayor Becker. Nay. Council Member Reynolds.

Nay.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, motion fails one to six.

Okay. Are there any other comments on Council Member Reynolds' motion?

Okay, I will make a quick comment.

I will be supporting the motion. I'm asked a lot, sort of, what is being on council like? And I often joke that I've learned more about hot mix asphalt than I ever thought I would. But the reality is that I think all of us decided to run for council because we want to have an opportunity to shape the future of the community. And I think as we do that, we would sort of want to have organizations that allow everyone to be a part of it, that allow everyone to improve their mental well-being, their physical well-being, and be in community on the island and not elsewhere. We would want a place where young families can send their kids to school without concerns about the HVAC system breaking regularly. Learn how to swim, it's obviously a safety issue. But I also think that there's other elements of this that we've heard very clear that there's not other options here. There are serious ADA deficiencies in the building. Something that we didn't hear a lot about, but it is top of mind security. It is not a secret that when you walk into that building, you go through a metal detector and an advanced imaging system, then there's reason for that. And I also think you talk about conditions changing, and the fact is that the security needs to change significantly since this building was built. But most importantly, you know, Some of the comments we receive are about housing and sort of the need to have more housing, and I agree with that. We obviously did extensive work on our comp plan recently to add housing. That was something we've done, Jeff, correct me if I'm wrong, we've spent more time on that in the last couple of years than I think ever before. But we sort of have a juxtaposition here where if we think about the church on the corner of 40th and Highland Crest that my understanding is going to become housing, I remember having a lot of conversations with Council Member Jacobson about when the LDS church stopped meeting there, what that loss meant for their community and also for the community of Mercer Island. The reality is that land is very expensive on Mercer Island, and being able to assemble enough parcels anywhere on the island is really challenging. You know, whether it be, you know, in town center, the commercial zone, where it be anywhere, and the reality is once these facilities are gone, is that they're gone. And I don't think we want to have a, as we think about the future of the island, I don't think we want to just have housing in our town center. I think we want to have community institutions and places where people can feel that they can be in community, and that is honestly something that people who move here and people who live here say that they love the most. And I think as a council, we have a responsibility to shepherd that. So when we have opportunities to support organizations like this, and I recall similar conversations about the tennis bubble and the shore redo and the Herschel new building, and I'm proud of those decisions and the You know, I put that up similarly with the playground at Mercerdale. You know, it's now accessible. Those are all decisions that the council has made to really grow the sense of community on our island, and I think that's one of the reasons I ran, and I'm assuming it's one of the reasons everybody else ran. So I think it's the right decision, so I will be voting yes. I'm happy to turn the floor over to Chancellor Reynolds. Is that an old hand? Of course. One of these days. One of these days we'll learn. Okay. Anybody else? Please call the roll. Council Member Weicker.

I'll just say again thank you to staff and the J for all the hard work on this for all these many years. And this is only the first step. There's more to come. This is the comprehensive plan amendment. There's a lot more conversation. I don't think we're going to see this again until December. There's still a ton of work to do, and this is just a first step. And I really appreciate everybody's input tonight and neighbors that aren't so excited about this potential redevelopment and change. I invite them to be part of the process going forward. My experience with the J for my entire time being on this island for 25 years is they and their leadership are always open to conversation. Whether you agree or disagree, give Amy Levin a call. She is not going anywhere. And I think she works probably 100 hours a week. So thank you for your service to this community.

Okay, so please call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Shea?

Aye.

Council Member Weinberg?

Aye.

Council Member Reynolds? Aye. Council Member Weicker? Aye. Mayor Rosenbaum? Aye. Deputy Mayor Becker? Aye. And Council Member Andrall? Aye. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Okay, thank you. Motion passes 7-0. We will give ourselves a moment to swap folks out here. Okay, our last item of regular business is AB6963, the Water Supply Pipeline Project, Mini-MACC2, a near-term funding authorization. Welcome, Chief of Operations Jason Kinder. Since we have our Public Works Department here, I want to clarify that my comment about hot mix asphalt was not negative. It's that I did not anticipate learning so much about it when I got involved here. We know you secretly prefer chip seal, right? Ooh. I have to start getting my terms right before I can start having strong opinions about these things.

Indeed, you used the term correctly. So for the record, Jason Kittner, the Chief of Operations, and I'm ecstatic to hear that you were referencing hot mix asphalt in your analysis.

And the back truck, even though that apparently is not the right one.

That was great. You have a very good memory, so kudos. So good evening, Jason Cannon, Chief of Operations. I have a handful of staff here with me today to talk about one of the bigger projects we've had on the radar, and we've talked to the council and the community at numerous different times, and tonight we are here to discuss the MiniMac 2 award. Next slide. So just real quick, and I'll go through the slides pretty quick. Just a reminder, some general background for the council and the community. The city has provided water by Seattle Public Utilities. They're the sole provider. The segments that come to the Mercer Island network or part of the distribution system, we are 97% responsible for that system, or the cost associated for that system. As the community and the council is fully aware, we had two major emergencies that happened in 23 and 2024. In fact, in 2024, the leak on the main supply line or main transmission line was in a very steep slope and tough area. It had to be repaired. We had to do some pretty significant emergency work and conservation efforts during that time until the emergency repair was restored. and following that incident the council directed staff to start looking at alternative options for a future replacement which is what we're here for tonight next slide so this is the map that we've used a handful of times just to refresh everyone's memory the yellow line that runs along southeast 40th that's the existing sbu line where the the break occurred the orange that runs along Southeast 36 and up Gallagher Hill, is where the new supply line is being proposed, and then it connects into the red section, which ultimately leads up to the reservoir facility. That red is an existing location, so the rerouted pathway is approximately 5,000 linear feet, That's a new city-owned pipe, so the city will own and control this pipe moving forward. It's a 24-inch pipe that has earthquake resistance and will meet our future needs and demands for our community. The new project includes new connections to the SPU water system near the boat launch facility, which you see on the right, that green dot. It also includes, this project is very complex. It actually is three projects sort of combined into one. So the first sort of business, which we actually were in front of the council back in April earlier this year, was to award the MiniMac 1, which was to replace the existing AC main that runs down Gallagher Hill. And that's where you can see that blue line running down Gallagher Hill now. We have to do that work first to clear out space within that right-of-way to bring in the new 24-inch line and obviously replace the AC main. We've talked about AC mains in our distribution system for many, many years. They're prone to failure. They're problematic. It's a program within our capital program to replace all of these within a certain near window of time. I believe they're all going to be out of the system by 2030 if I'm not mistaken. mistaken. This new project also includes new connection points to Shorewood. As we've talked about before, Shorewood will become a customer of the city rather than a customer of SPU. And then finally, the third body of work will actually happen next spring, and we'll be back in front of the council in early 2027 to award that body of work, but that's the street improvements, the pedestrian improvements, ADA and enhanced lighting along Gallagher Hill and this construction area. So as we talked about before, we're using alternative service delivery. We're using the heavy civil general contractor construction manager form process. This is different than our traditional design-bid-construct process. So this project is awarding what we're calling mini-max, which is the overall maximum allowable construction cost. at different phases of work. So we actually hired our design team and our contractors, Carsella, early on in the process to help with modifying the design, working through permitting challenges, and we start awarding the work and completing the work in packages. So the first package, again, was the MiniMac 1. That was the 10-inch DC main work. That's going to be the first construction work activity that's going to take place Actually, this month, because it's September now. And then the 24-inch main is the MiniMac 2. That's the rest of the water work. And then, as I just mentioned, the remaining construction work flew back in the council in early 2027 for the street work and the remaining construction dollars. Next slide. So again, because we're using this alternative service process, it allows us to do the work in different phases and batches. So what's in front of the council tonight is actually the Minimac 2, which is that construction of that new 24-inch line, and then add those connection points to Shorewood and SPU. We are working quickly to get the work, the associated water work completed this winter ahead of the spring peak demand season. As outlined in the agenda bill, there's quite a bit of different moving parts, different agencies we're working with to coordinate that work. Ultimately, the Department of Health has to sign off on all this work prior to us turning the system over, but we are targeting a spring of 2027 turnover when that demand for a water system is at its lowest, or a lower amount than our late spring, early summer, through summer process. Next slide. So here's our timeline. Again, we're ready to hit the road. Construction's ready to begin in fall, this month. We've been waiting for the King County and Walsh project to actually finish up because much of the construction already overlaps. We are well aware of that. we're working hard with our notifications the community and the public our stakeholders including the school district to work through those anticipated construction impacts but again that work will begin in September of 2026 with that 10-inch water main Late October, we anticipate working on the 24-inch water main and Scarcella, who's the contractor of record for this project, will actually be completing that work. Again, we'll be back in front of the council in 2027, Q1, with that final amendment and the street-related pedestrian improvement work, hopefully turning on the new water line in spring of 2027, and then we'll reach substantial completion at the end of 2027, once the roadway and ADA and pedestrian improvements are completed. So tonight, the council request is to fund the MiniMac 2 with the total project budget you can see on the screen in the agenda bill. That's to authorize the MiniMac to Scarcello Brothers Incorporated, our contractor, appropriate the necessary funds from the water fund, and then authorize the city manager to execute the related construction documents for the work. Again, we're back in front of Council 2027 with the next update. Questions? There's a ton in the agenda bill. I went through this quickly. Happy to answer questions. The team is here to answer questions if you have specific elements you want to talk about. Councilor Reynolds.

I need a refresher, if you'll bear with me here, about alternative service delivery models. You just had the number up on the state screen. Was it 6 million or 9 million? I can't remember what the number was. From what I understand, since the contractor's been involved all along, it's not like a normal task where we put it out for bid. How do we know that it wouldn't be $1 million less if we put it out for bid at this point? It was $10 million. It wasn't $6 or $9. What's our control on the cost as compared to a competitive bidding situation?

So the control and the cost is actually working with our design team along the way. The contractor, by having the contractor partner with the designer and the staff along the way, as I referenced the multiple agencies that we have to work through to design this, by having the contractor at the table, it allows us to work through some of the challenges related to time of construction, the impacts of construction, how to minimize perhaps the additional mobilization fees, minimize that construction window, what types of strategies can be used both through the comprehensive design as well as the constructability process to reduce those costs to the city. There is more control by working with the design team and the contractor at this stage. If we do the traditional process, It's possible that we could see a lower bottom line. However, you lose that control, you lose that buy-in from the contractor and the designer on a complex project that's crossing multiple jurisdictions, different types of work, where you may have a lower original bottom line, but you may see increased change orders because perhaps the design wasn't fully vetted or there was issues with the design on specific elements related to that project or the different trades within the work. So the benefit here is having the contractor, the designer, the project team at the table from the early onset to work through the different nuances of a very complex project.

So if there's a given task associated with this, they say, okay, if we do this, this subtask is going to cost $500,000. And you look at it and you say, well, I think it only ought to cost $300,000. How do you resolve those?

Actually, I wanted to cut in because I think we missed maybe the main point, which is the city has consultants and sub-consultants working for us, just like we do in a traditional design-bid-build process. They're preparing preliminary cost estimates for the scope of work as we go along. So they'll say this task is a million dollars. Because the contractor is at the table with us now, they're looking at the design. As Jason just mentioned, they're pointing out, we have a problem here, I think we can do it this way and save a little money later. So we have cost estimators at the table, so we know that what we're putting forward is within a reasonable scope of an engineer's estimate, just like we would do with a traditional project. So the cost estimating is starting with us, and then we're working, again, to troubleshoot issues with the design or problems on the front side, which reduces change orders. Down the road. There's a whole complex relationship here regarding how much work the prime contractor can do, profit sharing, those kinds of things. Profit sharing is not the right term.

Is there a profit margin predefined in the contract?

Yeah, that's correct.

Yes.

And what is that, if I may ask?

I don't know off the top of my head. We will bring it back to you with the next amendment that's part of the next body of work that comes in the spring. I don't know off the top of my head we can get that number for you, though. And I will just add on to the city manager's point. There has been ongoing discussion, negotiation. There is conversation that takes place over specific line items within the body of work and whether or not that's reasonable, justified, what documentation supports it. As Clint can attest to you and Ian can attest to you that are on this call, there's quite a bit of reevaluating, evaluating, confirming numbers as part of reaching where we're at today.

Okay, and I apologize for the question because I know we've had educational sessions on this over the years, but I just wanted to get it out there again. Thank you.

Council Member Weinberg. Yeah, so there was a part of the scope that's talking about the connection to Shorewood, and I wanted to understand what's involved in that a little bit better. Will this project include the installation of new pipes in the neighborhood connecting Shorewood to 40th? Or is there just one spot where we're going in and changing a meter where it connects with Shorewood? I could say both.

It's actually – so the connection points to Shorewood are actually new and improved. It does include – some pipe replacement, so they actually have some AC main that's part of their existing system in order for us to improve water quality. We're actually installing two connection points that will allow a loop system, essentially, for their That area of the community loop systems are better than dead in mains as we've heard us talk about for many many years So there are improvements associated with it. We have designed this to Provide better connection points both for the city as well as Shorewood, but it does include both new meters at different location points as well as some new piping and

Can I ask a follow-up question as well? Go for it. So if we're placing some of the pipes that are in the ground between Shorewood and 40th, there's a few city blocks between those two. I presume that would involve resurfacing afterwards. Do we plan on doing any improvements? There are a lot of families that have school-age children in that neighborhood and there are no sidewalks. And if the streets already torn up to put in a new pipe Are we it does the project have any room in there for doing sidewalks or would that be essentially a separate?

A separate project it's a great question so part of that work That's being completed now is those pedestrian improvements as something that we are looking at and considering as part of our overall project we haven't officially know down the exact locations of all those pedestrian improvements, but there are a To your point, the areas that we are ripping up, doing water work, we are looking to improve enhanced pedestrian opportunities. That includes both new sidewalks, new curb and gutter, new lighting in those locations, improved ADA transition. Where it falls within the shoreward and the southeast 40, the private line, we can come back to you in the spring with that specificity, as that's still being fine-tuned right now. But there are pedestrian improvements that are being completed as part of this project in the third phase. Okay, thank you.

Could you talk a little bit more about that commerce grant? That's pretty cool. You've got some funding there.

Absolutely. We have a commerce grant for 1.2 mil. That is fantastic news, so kudos to our representatives to help us secure that. We have completed the grant application, and we've been awarded the grant, so the next phase is obviously implemented, but those funds are being used for this project, and it's no small chunk of change. One million plus for a project like this is fantastic.

Especially these days, so thanks to the staff for getting that done.

absolutely thanks to all of you as well.

Jason, can you talk a little bit about the sort of likely scenario of construction? So if you're looking to start pretty soon, it sounds like, how long should folks in that neighborhood expect 36th Street to be a challenge?

You can hear my side. That's the one drawback to this, I will say, and very, very sensitive and aware of it. We've actually talked with the utility board about it. We are looking at some different options for construction. We've been working with the school district for it. I'm not gonna shortchange it. There's gonna be there's gonna be impacts on southeast 36. I will say We're going to try and improve upon the lessons learned From our partners at the county and their work that has taken place there and make sure that we can minimize those impacts We're looking at we definitely will have some road closures some temporary road closures and some lane closures, but We are trying to get out there with the community and notify them ahead of time. Our Let's Talk page will be updated. We'll be working with our customer service team. Our team, our project team, will be on the site daily, so if we have to make modifications and improvements, which is, let's just face it, there are things that happen throughout the course of the year, certain events and things like that that impact things on a daily basis. So we will be out there constantly monitoring and fine-tuning those traffic impacts to the best of our ability. Ideally this is this is this is one of the challenges right so ideally we'd be doing this this construction work in a non school time of year But that's in direct conflict with some of the other timing that we have a service with the project So in terms of like peak water usage, yeah peak water use exactly so Something we're very mindful of, it's a constant conversation with our contractor, design team, our project management team. We have a good roadmap in place. There will be some impacts. We'll work to notify the community with that timely information. We're happy to hear from the community. I'm sure we are going to hear from the community, and we'll work to modify those to the best of our ability. We're trying some – we're possibly exploring some different types of construction techniques, perhaps some different time zones associated with the work if there's areas that allow for maybe perhaps evening work that's not next to the neighborhood. That's something that we're talking about and considering. But definitely mindful of it and know there's going to be impacts. We'll work with our contract team and our contractor and our project team to minimize those impacts.

How deep is that pipe going up the hill?

Ian Clint, do you know that off the top of your head? How deep is the pipe? I can get that number for you back to you. Oh, there's Ian.

I'm Ian Powell, street engineer. Approximately the new pipe, I would say, is about four to five feet deep.

425 or 45? 425. Okay. Between 4 and 5. All right. That'd be really deep.

And that's the top of pipe, correct, Ian?

To the top of the pipe, yeah. So it's a two-foot pipe also.

So a fairly deep trench.

I'll direct my neighbor strictly to you. Council, is there a motion to authorize the city manager to execute Minimac 2 with Scarcella Brothers Incorporated, a Washington-based corporation, in an amount not to exceed $10,535,100 for construction of the new 24-inch water supply pipeline and associated water system improvements, appropriate $6,142,000. from the waterfront available fund balance to the water supply pipeline, project 90.40.0032, and authorize the city manager to execute any related documents necessary to complete this work.

So moved. Second.

That's a lot. All right. It's moved by Councilman Andrew Allen, seconded by Councilmember Reynolds. Any comments? I'll just say this is an exciting milestone. I remember during, I don't remember which, I think it was the first leak problem that we had, you know, standing up where the current pipe is, and Jason said, we've got to redo this. And I said, well, that sounds like a nice idea. But it is, you know, It's exciting to kind of see these projects move forward that are critical, obviously, to living here and living anywhere. But just kudos to the team for thinking out of the box and how to do this in a cost-effective and safe way, I would say. Safe for the construction, but also safe for the community going forward. I think people are sick of various water consumption masks. So please call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Weiger? Aye. Deputy Mayor Becker? Aye. Council Member Weinberg? Aye. Council Member Reynolds? Aye. Council Member Shea? Aye. Council Member Andrall? Aye. And Mayor Rosenbaum?

Aye.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Okay. Thank you. We now move to other business in the planning schedule and turn to City Manager Vaughan.

Thank you again, Mr. Mayor. I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting that when we came back from our August time away, we had an overloaded September 1st agenda. So some of the items have been moved to the next meeting, and we're going to try to balance things out. We are headed into your budget season, so you'll see upcoming budget meetings all the way through December. And other than that, I don't have any other updates. Happy September.

Okay, Council Member reports. Deputy Mayor Becker? Nothing to report. Council Member Weicker?

Council Member Weinberg. So my next monthly open lunch is going to be 12 p.m. on Sunday, September 20th at Anise Thai Restaurant in downtown Mercer Island. The address is 7691 Southeast 27th Street. As always, all are welcome. It's an open agenda. Anything you'd like to talk about, all I ask is that everybody shows their respects to the chef by ordering some food and or beverage. The Thai iced tea is wonderful, by the way. And let me know if you're coming so I can reserve a large enough table.

Council Member Reynolds.

Just note that the Parks and Rec Commission meeting will be meeting this Thursday. Looks like a light agenda, just talking about the King County Library System annual update.

Council Member Anderle.

Nothing to report.

Council Member Shea.

Yes, with my background as a family physician, I'd just like to call to attention an important proclamation that was approved tonight under the consent agenda, AB6982, Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, Proclamation No. 396. And thank you to Mayor Rosenbaum for his support and for the council tonight. So here are some key points from the proclamation. Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among children in the US. Only 4% of federal government cancer research funding has been dedicated specifically to childhood cancers. The past year's federal budget cuts directly affected this already deficient allocation and has adversely impacted pediatric cancer research advancements and treatment accessibility. September is recognized nationally as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, a time to honor young lives affected by childhood cancer and to remember the young souls we've lost. The city of Mercer Island recognizes the importance of raising awareness about childhood cancer and the impact it has on families within our own community, including all the brave children on Mercer Island who are currently battling or have battled this disease, including Delaney Clark, Harry McGovern, Christina Scalzo, Shea Sweeney, Emerson Vivian, and especially Ewan Lill, Brett Story, Stacey Pariser, Stan Mildeberger, others, and our most recent angels, Kara Gupta and Keave Brown. Let's not forget them. The color gold symbolizes the precious nature of children and the resiliency of childhood cancer warriors. By joining the Gold Movement, Mercer Island can demonstrate its commitment to supporting these children and their families. And my next monthly community coffee chat will be on Wednesday, September 30th, from 11 to noon at ASA. Thank you.

Okay, I will, real quick, I just want to... I want to thank everyone who puts all the effort into the summer around here, which I think I mentioned in the last meeting. But as summer sort of wraps up, I just want to big thank you to everyone on the staff who's involved in that. I think everyone thinks summer is the best time in the Northwest, but I think in Western Ohio it's especially true given just the number of events and community building opportunities that we have, and it's always spectacular. Okay. Okay. And also welcome back to everyone going back to school. Setting a milestone for the school district, and obviously there's a lot of collaboration between the city and the school district. All right, the next regularly scheduled meeting, sorry, the next regularly scheduled hybrid city council meeting will be on Tuesday, September 15th, beginning at 5 p.m. The time is now 9 p.m. As a reminder...