City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, residents of Everett, Washington. I would like to call to order the Everett City Council meeting of July 15, 2026. For information on council meetings and how to participate, please visit our website at everettwad.gov slash city council. Please note that we do not allow comments of any kind of campaigning, whether for or against ballot measures or candidate running for office. We also do not accept comments focused on personal matters that are unrelated to city business. Clerk, will you please take the roll?

Mayor Franklin.

Excused.

Council Member Bader. Here. Vice President Ryan. Here. Council Member Brabano.

Here.

Council Member Dewey. Here. Council Member Weir. Here. Council Member Zarlingo. Here. President Schwab.

Here. At this time, I'd like to ask Councilmember Tui to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me. Thank you. And at this time, I'd like to ask Councilmember Ryan to read the Land Acknowledgement.

The City Council wishes to acknowledge the original inhabitants of this place, the Stohops people, and their successors, the Tulalip tribes. Since time immemorial, they have hunted, fished, gathered on, and taken care of these lands and waters. We respect their sovereignty, their right to self-determination, and honor their sacred spiritual connection with the land and waters. We will strive to be honest about our past mistakes to bring about a future that includes their voices, their people, and their stories to make for a more just and equitable society.

Thank you very much. So we'll move to old business. Do we hear a motion to approve the minutes for July 1st, 2026? That's my bittersweet.

Second.

Motion and sex are made. Clerk, please take the roll.

Council Member Bader. Yes. Vice President Ryan. Yes. Council Member Bravano. Yes. Council Member Tuohy. Yes. Council Member Weir. Yes. Council Member Zerlingo. Yes. President Schwab.

Yes. Now it's time for public comment, which includes written comment acknowledgement. Under our rules, written comments shall be considered in the same manner as oral comments. The person submitting comments must provide their name and city of residence to be made part of the official council record. Good evening, Ayanna. Do we have anyone here to speak?

We received written comment from john people's which was provided to the Council beagle cities clerk and administration be part of the record in here today, we do have William parents.

And and I am do we have anyone online at this time. Okay um i'm sorry can we do our online first appreciate that thanks for your patience, I know you're good at it anyway, I know you're good at this, though you've done it a few times.

Thank you. Ishmael, would you like to speak?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you, council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Ishmael Muhammad and I'm a local housing developer in Everett. First of all, I want to take this opportunity

Could you unmute your microphone? There we go.

Excuse me, Ishmael. Ayanna, do you have a timer set for them? Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you. If you push mute, we're blaming you, but go for it. Start over.

Thank you, council members. I'm going to start again, my timing wise. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm here today. My name is Ismail Mohammed. I'm a local developer. And for last 35 years, I've been part of every tier Today, I'm here in support of the Everett's MFTE program that the council is going to listen to or going to adopt. I'm in favor of lowering the minimum count from 16 to 4 units and expanding eligibility citywide. These changes would make MFTE more effective, equitable, and usable for the small-scale builders already producing much of Everett's needed housing. The current 16-unit threshold excludes many infill projects Everett needs most. Everett has more than 20,000 properties with infill potential, many suited for missing metal housing that fills vacant lots, activates underused parcels, and fits existing neighborhoods. Without MFTE, many projects do not pencil out. Lowering the threshold to four units would give local builders and property owners a feasible path to invest here. Citywide eligibility is equally important. Expanding it citywide would allow homeowners, small developers, and neighborhood-scale builders to add housing where it makes sense near transit, schools, jobs, and small infill parcels. These updates support Everett's Housing Action Plan by encouraging infill housing, missing middle options, and stronger feasibility tools. MFT does not require city funding and the exemption impact is minimal. It is a fiscally responsible way to encourage private investment while delivering affordability. This change also supports local builders, small business owners, architects, contractors, and residents who live here, hire here, and reinvest here. These community-based builders want to help meet Everett's housing needs, but need a program that reflects small-scale development realities. Council members, this is a practical, targeted, high-impact update that supports affordability, feasibility, local builders, and Everett's long-term vision. I urge you to adopt these changes and make MFT accessible to the full range of housing Everett needs. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

All right, and Melanie, if you would like to make a public comment, please. How long do we wait?

Yes, I would. I'm here. Sorry, it had me rejoin. So I'm here. My name is Melanie Young, and I have been coaching at the Everett Community Rink since it opened in 2003. I have more than 35 years of coaching experience and over 45 years in figure skating. I've earned two US figure skating rankings, completed numerous tests, competed extensively and dedicated my career to developing skaters in our community. When the community rink was opened, Learn to Skate was taught and run by experienced figure skating coaches, including Kyle Wintermute, Arlene Kim, Susanna Dottie, and others who helped build the program. Kyle Wintermute, the original rink director, brought a US figure skating background, which helped establish a strong skating community. Today, I'm concerned about the direction of our figure skating programs. During difficult and family and personal health challenges, I experienced bullying and harassment from rink leadership. No coach should feel unsupported or intimidated while serving this community. I'm also concerned about the new coaching policies. Coaches are now limited to only two hours of coaching each week if they do not participate and learn to skate under the current expectations. Coaches are also expected to teach camps and learn to skate on Saturdays, which is not realistic for many of us who work other jobs to support our families. These policies affect both coaches and the skaters who depend on consistent instruction. The compensation changes are equally concerning. Learn to skate classes have historically paid $20 for a 30-minute class. Under the new structure, that effectively becomes $20 an hour or only $10 for a 30-minute class. This does not reflect the value or experience coaches who have spent decades developing their skills and serving this community. I asked the board to consider how repeated schedule changes and inconsistent communication have affected our skating community. I have also personally lost students because of last-minute changes, and adult skaters have shared that they no longer feel welcomed or respected at the rink. This rink should be a place where coaches, skaters, and families feel valued. I respectfully ask the board to listen to the coaches and Everett Figure Skating Club representatives review these policies and work toward a positive, respectful environment that supports the long-term success of figure skating in Everett. We need a contract to secure the future of our skating community. And I thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Melanie. Mason, would you like to make public comments?

Yeah. You can hear me okay?

Yes, we can.

President and council members, thank you for the opportunity to speak. You've been doing a lot of work this summer. Well done. I'll be back to share about your work on massage parlors and park pavilions at a future meeting, but I just wanted to take a second to to encourage you and say, well done. This is not easy work and thank you for your work. I'm here to follow up in your discussion at the last meeting about the charter review. The charter review process has a very natural flow and you all talked about honoring our work and thank you for that. But really the public has the ideas. Our commission gathers those ideas. We debate them, ultimately synthesize them into a document that you have before you in partnership with the city attorney's office. And now, appropriately, the work moves to you. You're the professionals. Most of us on the commission are civic amateurs. You're the pros. Council Member Barberino last week said it well, and I agree with him. We trust your refinement. We have handed this to you, and we trust your work from here. And from here, the voters will have their say. So even if you do the work, there's more work to be done. It's a beautiful democratic process. I'm so proud to be a part of it. And I just want you to know, as one member on the commission, I fully trust you and the work you're going to do. I do want to acknowledge a few things you talked about at the last meeting. We did need more time. Council Member Ryan mentioned this. But we got done the majority of what I think we were called to get done. You can always use more time. A few things that you talked about that I thought needed some refinement. The one-year residency, yes, one year was arbitrary, but so is two, five, or ten. I mean, I've lived in the city 23 years, and I still don't feel like I'm a real resident until my grandkids graduate from Everett High. I'm just a poor old Edmonds kid. So their residency thresholds are imperfect. What matters most is the heart and the attitude that someone brings to the city of Everett. And the other thing you didn't say that needed to be said is what we wanted to limit was opportunistic people. In other words, people that moved into places or jobs to get their opportunity ahead rather than building opportunities for other people. We need people in positions that aren't opportunists, but are building opportunities. The fiscal analysis was well said. Providing a simple link was important. We did talk about that a lot and not just a QR code because my mother-in-law and father-in-law get really freaked out by QR codes. So please include a simple link as well. 60 days versus 15 days for initiatives. We understand the complexities of that. Our discussion was mostly just going, how do we make sure that items are serious considerations? Five years versus 10 years for the Charter Review Commission. I appreciated your comments last week. The five-year suggestion came from the pace of change in the world, and I don't think it came from a deep conviction. That's my own personal opinion. So I don't think people are going to get fired up about that either from the commission. And then districts, it was stated in last week's meeting that the Charter Review Commission discussed districts. We did not discuss districts. At least I was at every meeting. I don't remember that ever coming up. There were some intricacies of it around voting, but they didn't go anywhere. And then on term limits, I thought your discussion last week that you had enlightened me a lot in the last meeting you had. Out of 281 municipalities in Washington, only six have term limits. That's remarkable. Our discussion was more about the leadership strength, the bench strength in the city of Everett. We need a deeper leadership pipeline. And so if not term limits, I just hope you keep that in the back of your head is how do we continue to develop leaders in our city and create seats for them to move into. I can go into the whole baby boomers moving out of seats for people to take leadership. I think it's super important. And then finally, Council of Neighborhoods was not in our discussion and it was not what we brought forward, but it was very much discussed as a part of our time. It was just decided that it wasn't a part of charter work. So thank you for your discussion. Two weeks ago, I just wanted to come in and give a little bit of my view on it. So thanks for your work and thanks for entrusting us with the opportunity. Now we trust you with it. Go get them.

Thank you. William Parent, please.

William Parent, Silver Lake. This is for the action item 10. This is for a comment Ben said about the foot scooters being at 15 to match the same as the Lime scooters. the line scooters can carry two people at once but um i didn't want to bring up they're designed at stock to go a max of 20 and they can't really go that far at 20 miles an hour i just didn't want to be able to have you know, because it goes stock max at 20 miles an hour. And when I have no conflicts with police department, because he been wanting to keep it at 15 the same as lime scooters. So and then it said something about riding on the sidewalk. Now if you go to the Silver Lake and you're on the 100 or the 100th Street by the Winko and you got air tires, The bike lane's always full of glass. And when you got to get somewhere, you can't have time for a flat tire when you're commuting from, you know, Silver Lake to downtown Everett on a foot scooter. And then the difference between Our bike lanes in the city of Vancouver, they got some mean turtles going down the bike lane. And we don't have those mean turtles. Makes it safer to keep you off the sidewalk and not in the street. You know, they had some mean looking to keep the cars from swerving into the bike lane. And then they had some... painted green you know on the bike lanes in vancouver downtown vancouver washington which is you know makes it all feel a lot safer to drive to ride in the bike lane i just want to mention that i don't i mean to put a limit on a stock setting to compare to a two-person scooter, which is real nice to see two people riding the scooter in town. But yeah, that was my only concern about having conflicts with going 20. That's all.

Thank you. Would Brock Howell like to make comments?

I am a resident of Everett, 98201. I'm here with both my hats of executive director of Snohomish County Transportation Coalition Snowtrack and Stations Unidos. Mostly this is regarding the new bike ordinance. Uh, but I just want to briefly mention, uh, did just submit a letter to the mayor and to council, uh, regarding the potential for the transit merger and the historic opportunity we have with that project and some recommendations that are tied to it. Um, so that's what snow track, um, supportive of the changes to MFTE of thinking about the future of how do we make sure that we have an affordable city? Um, okay. Excited about the stadium. More progress tonight on the stadium from Stations Unidos perspective. It's nice to see continued progress on that front. Now, finally, the ordinance. So I think it's a common sense solution to a real problem we have right now of an increase in traffic violence that's happening. Our streets have been happening for 10, 20 years now of increased number of collisions of fatalities, and serious injuries. The number one reason for the increase is the safety of our roadways. I want to be clear on that. We need safer roadways. We need to redesign them so they are safe for all people. But as we see new e-motos come into the marketplace, we do see children and others who are riding them inappropriately in unsafe manners, and we need to have a regulation in place that provides the right context for them. So I think this is a common sense approach. I'm excited for the city of Everett to be a leader on this front. We had a little bit of concern from Everett Station, District Alliance, Stations Unidos in terms of how it would affect our ambassadors. We do have two bike patrols and we need them to be able to ride on the sidewalks because there are streets that are unsafe to ride. We give our ambassadors the choice of where to ride on the street for what is the safest for them in the context. I'm really happy with the attorney's office working with us to make sure that the no riding on sidewalk provision was limited to west of Broadway. So that way our operations can continue to provide much needed services to the district. So thank you very much for the team.

Thank you. Christine, would you like to speak?

Is there a way I can watch so I don't run over my minutes?

No. Okay, thank you. I'm here. There's something that really works is our Everett buses. Don't get rid of them. When something really works, keep it. Everett has a really great bus system. It works really well. The drivers are friendly. They're helpful. The system is really easy to navigate, which is really important. You do a printed schedule. This is not what all bus systems do. I'm not going to name the system, but I've ridden on a bus system that will not give you a printed schedule of all their stuff. And you have to have a special app on your phone to ride the system. Otherwise, you get stuck in the middle of the night not knowing how you're going to get home. You know, if it's after hours for you to call them. So I'm just saying this because Everett system works for lower income people, old people who don't drive, a lot of old people like myself who aren't super technologically facile. And a lot of vulnerable populations. And it's a great system. It's friendly. You got all the signs of the stops marked. You can, you know, I don't, I just, you know, if I start out in one place and decide to go somewhere else, all I have to do is carry this. And it's true for me and a lot of other writers that use the system. They serve everybody. And as I say, um if we kill everett transit uh we will be losing a great bus system it works it's really great um and we will be also losing local control so maybe this is such a good bus system because it's just everett um and we can we know we're closer to it um And so we're going to be losing a certain amount of control of our buses. Now, of course, we'll be paying more in taxes and in fares. And because this is such a good system, we're very, very unlikely to get as good a system as this is. So if it's good, keep it. Thank you.

Thank you. Renee?

Hello, good afternoon, council members and everybody. My name is Rene Bayrou. I live in Everett. I'm a taxpayer and I'm a boarder in Everett. And I would like to talk about CT or ever transit merger with CT and what it means on the perspective of fiduciary responsibilities. I was trying to look for an example to show how irresponsible is. I have mentioned this word, please don't take it the wrong way. But whenever you pay, you have a payment, which is an increase of taxes for everybody here in Everett, which is equivalent to $30 million extra that the citizens will have to pay for n numbers of years. Let's put it 30 years. I'm just trying to see if you, Sherry, I'm looking for a financial product, which is a mortgage. We have the element of time, 30 years. We have the payment that the city will pay, $30 million a year. We have a principal, which is approximately $80 million. And then what is the cost of that for everyone? The interest rate for that mortgage in 30 years, $80 million, and $30 million extra is 37.5%. 37.5% on the lower estimate. That makes no sense. You're supposed to have a future responsibility with the people that... you swear to serve. So I don't think that this is a sound decision if you are a productivity. So 37.5% is the lowest. I gave you a little note that I call the tax that can pay back the taxpayer. It's just an idea in order to see how another perspective can reach the same amount and leave the money here in the city and help the taxpayers, motivate the taxpayers, make them be part of what we're doing. That's the whole concept. And I also gave you a little bit of this history, some stickers, if you want some, I have some, that reflects basically what I believe Evertransit has been. 135, 33 years serving you, serving everybody. And the city owns since 1969. That's what Evertransit is. And the decision of giving it to CT, increasing the taxes, independently of anything else, as a financial decision, is not sound. So I beg you, reconsider. You have options. Take them. Remember, there's a story back in 2,000 years ago, whenever they went to sacrifice a man, and they went to the Roman, they say, You decide what to do. What did the Romans say? I wash my hands on this. Do that. Thank you.

Thank you. June, would you like to speak?

Oh, I didn't mean to slam that. Good evening, Council. My name is June Schober. I'm a resident of District 3. The staff working on the transit consolidation interlocal agreement may need to consider explicitly reserving for all operators from Ever Transit as of today a right of first refusal. or first steps, if you will, on driver route bidding over routes that spend a majority of its running time within the city, even should transit dispatching be integrated. This is one more way to provide our current operators additional peace of mind and ease the transition in a proposed consolidation. It may even reduce the training burden for doubling service as our drivers know our traffic patterns well. Such provisio, like many other labor-related issues, would probably need to, labor, sorry, labor related issues that this ILA would, would address, may probably need approval through both our drivers through ATU 88, 88, 83, excuse me, and community transit drivers through ATU 5776. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Thank you.

Good evening. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Steve Schmieder. I am a resident of Everett, taxpayer. This is going to be pretty short. I think that this is a really bad time to jack our taxes up without a vote of the people to fix a problem that isn't broken. I don't see where emerging Everett Transit with CT should be a priority right now everybody's feeling pretty strapped everybody's got a lot of economic anxiety and i just don't everything seems to be working well with ct they do their their job very well they move people in the county ever transit moves people in the city they do their job very well um this whole process seems to be kind of rushed which Um, makes me a little suspicious and a little bit anxious. And, uh, again, at this, this economic timing is pretty bad. Um, we don't know what's coming. There could be a recession on the horizon. We haven't run through all of our oil reserves yet, but when that happens, we're going to be in trouble. So, um, I would urge you to vote no on this merger and put it to a vote of the people. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Christopher.

Good evening, Everett City Council. My name is Christopher O'Neill. I was born and raised in Everett, attended St. Mary Magdalene School, was heavily involved with the Boy Scout Troop 18, attended Cascade High School and Everett Community College. I am currently employed as a bus operator for the city of Everett. I began my bus driving career at Community Transit and after nearly five years, I had the opportunity to move to Everett Transit and drive for the city that I love, to serve the community that I belong to. Unfortunately, I am in a place of uncertainty about my future. Allowing a merger of Community Transit and Everett Transit will hurt the citizens of Everett. A 0.6% tax increase on the public is unacceptable. That brings the sales tax in Everett to 10.5%. And I can tell you as a resident of Everett, I will no longer shop within the city of Everett. I will do my food shopping outside of the city. While I'm there, I will fill my car with gas. And when my wife and I want to go out to eat, we will not eat at any restaurant in Everett. Sorry, I lost my place. So I would ask the City Council at this time to please deny this merger between Community Transit and Everett Transit. It is a bad idea, is bad for the citizens, and is bad for the future of Everett. Community Transit can promise you the world with what they will deliver in service, but their word is not worth the paper it's written on. As a former employee, I can promise you that. I'd also like to ask about the levy that is, I see the signs up around town for the fire department and the EMS. They're asking for a renewal. My understanding is that you are also trying to disband the Everett Fire Department. So why are you asking us to approve a levy for a system that you're looking to eliminate? I don't understand that. The local fire department responded to my house less than two weeks ago. Their response time was seven minutes. Thank you.

That's all. Okay. Thanks. And for the record, I'm not trying to disband the fire department. Okay. We'll move on to actually just before we start just, you know, the agenda, we have one change. Item 12 is a first and second reading with action on July 22nd. That's item 12, first and second reading, action on July 22nd. So at this time, we'll move to council comments. Council Member Bader.

Just a quick thank you to so many in the city, both city staff and volunteers, who did such a great job with the 4th of July, whether it was the parade or the celebration of Legion or the fireworks. So I think the community really values that. I just want to say thank you to so many people for that. Other than that, no comments, no report. Thank you. Council Member Ryan.

And thank you to the Everett 4th of July Committee for their hard work to put on a very fun parade. I had a great time. My family and I had a great time watching. So thank you for all your work as well. Thank you to our commenters as well. I agree that we should have better striping on our streets for all modes of travel. Thank you for bringing that up. And also, I wanted to mention for, thank you, Melanie, for your comments earlier. We did receive a response letter from Oakview Group, so I'm hoping that there's a way that this could be part of the public record, since we have a hard copy of it, and we'd love to... See if there's a way that they could still come to council in person or the PFD to respond in person to some of the concerns that had been brought up or I'm happy to make the request if that's not already in the works. Great. Also this Saturday, I wanted to make sure folks are aware that the Stations Unidos, formerly Everett Station District Alliance is hosting a cleanup starting at nine o'clock with what I understand to be some cool new volunteer shirts. So everybody's welcome to join for that. And also this Saturday is the Port Gardner Neighborhood Association yard sale. So check their Facebook page for a map of all of the participating Port Gardner neighbors that are going to be doing yard sales. And Port Gardner will also be having their Neighborhood Association meeting coming up this Monday at the Community Resource Center starting at 7 p.m. Thanks.

Thank you, council member bottle and the comments, thank you, because we're doing no comments, I just want to thank all the folks that spoke tonight appreciate your comments, thank you.

Because we're.

Thank you. I want to also give a shout out to all the volunteers and staff that worked on the 4th of July events because it great turnouts for the parade and for the Legion Park event. It was a lot of fun. So great weather too, which is always good. So I attended the 123rd anniversary celebration of Bailey AME Church in Delta neighborhood. And just for a little perspective, our city was only became a city 133 years ago. So they've been really committed to service since and work in the community for a long time. So congratulations to them on the 123 years. We had a great informative meeting with representatives from City Public Works and members of our Northwest neighborhood last night down at Whelan House. This was regarding portions of the Port Gardner Storage Facility project that will be happening um at the location of 15th and rucker and those people that are really going to be impacted by it so it was reassuring i think for the residents to hear directly from staff what that was going to look like and and what they could expect and gave them a little bit of a a breath of relief i think so that was great so big kudos to um ryan sass tom hood randy loveless and kathleen baxter from the city for spending their evening to meet with our residents was much appreciated by all. August 1st at Wiggum's Hollow, the Delta Neighborhood Association is sponsoring their annual Shakespeare in the Park with Macbeth. So come and check that out. It's a wonderful time just to sit on the grass and have a picnic and watch some theater outside. And it's also the mother of all garage sales in the Northwest neighborhood that Saturday. So big things happening up at the north end. And then the following weekend, I believe, is the Riverside, correct?

August 8th, actually.

Yeah, the following weekend after.

Did Port Gardner have one too?

This upcoming Saturday. Yeah. Thank you.

Lots of big. Saturday after that is Valley Views. Oh, my gosh.

Okay. So, yeah. But, yeah, that's it for me.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Zalingo.

Well, first of all, I think council member Bader's comment should not obscure the fact that he was a real leader and has been year after year in the 4th of July celebration. So let that be reflected in the public record. Last Friday, I attended Boeing's 737 North line startup and ribbon cutting. So Boeing's about to start assembling the 737s, their fourth manufacturing line here in Everett. That's a $1 billion investment in our community. I attended that with Mayor Franklin. Actually, Mayor Franklin spoke there, did part of the ribbon cutting and actually participated in the mostly employee staffed Baton Relay, not a race because it was just a relay run from Renton all the way to Everett. So congratulations to them, to her. But the thing that struck me about that was the number of employees there. Certainly there were the typical people like me, officials and that sort of thing. But I think the thing that really struck me was there were hundreds and hundreds of employees there on the floor, in the chairs, and in the balconies watching that. And that's an acknowledgement, I think, by Boeing, their focus on shifting their culture, the critical role that they're seeing of their employees in quality, safety, and therefore overall company success. That repeated emphasis on quality, and on a measured and careful build of this new production process and production rates. The person-to-person transfer of skills and experience, including people from Renton working alongside people in Everett for months and months to ensure that the people that they're hiring and bringing into those roles can do a quality job. So I think the involvement of the employees, the focus by the company on those employees was really an encouraging thing for our community and for Boeing as well. One other comment, I attended Puget Sound Regional Council's Transportation Policy Board meeting last week, and a couple of interesting nuggets of that. One of them is that gasoline sales in Washington are dropping about 2% per year, and that drop continues. So that's changing what happens in terms of tax revenue for things like roads. And that's also why there are various processes being considered for alternative taxes on that or alternative revenue. And also crashes and injuries, serious ones are declining after the increases in the 2020 to 2023 year, which were quite steep. We're still up over historical ranges. And interestingly, deaths and serious injuries are much higher per driver in rural areas than urban. That's probably because in those areas there are faster travel speeds. So I guess what that means is there's a kind of a minor compensation for all of us in slow traffic and that we're less likely to be seriously injured or hurt. That's it for me. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. And thank you, Council Member Bader, and your team for leadership on the 4th of July parade. Great turnout. Do you have a number? An estimate?

Linwood Times said 15,000. I think it was a little shy of that. It was a pretty gray morning.

Wow, that's a big deal. Thank you for that. Don't forget, we have an upcoming national night out August 4th. So if you're watching, please do everything you can to attend and get connected with your neighborhood groups. It's a great way to get out and just build relationships with your neighbors. A couple of things on behalf of the council. I know we talked about translation issues. challenges with different languages. Angie and I, and thanks to the help of Jennifer's staff, we're looking at a translation software that does captions. And it's actually in addition to Zoom. So hopefully we'll be making some progress on that. I know we're going to do some testing here pretty soon. Also, there is a couple of things that I know that council has been getting a lot of emails over, and that is the The animal shelter and our policy on how and when, unfortunately, an animal may have to be put to sleep. And there was an unfortunate event, and it was reported. I spent time with both the constituent and several representatives from animal humane organizations. rights groups and I think this the city's done a really pretty good job of evaluating their process I know there was one one change that they're gonna they make is that as if someone drops off an animal and and through the process the decision is made to put it to sleep that they'll call that person and let them know and give them like one last chance to make a decision whether they want to keep the animal or not so I know there's a lot of time and effort put into that. Also, I know the ongoing concerns that the Everett Figure Skating Club has with the Angel of the Winds Arena. And there's certainly multiple layers in this. Of course, it becomes a little bit of a criticism between um potential about our public facilities district and our contract management team that we have there so i'm hoping um i met with both all the parties involved separately and i'm hoping that we can or they can come up with some sort of compromise um So that both the philosophy of the event center, trying to maximize its use and the availability that we have nonprofit groups to use ICE in a way that their organization can function. So more to come on that. I think a little bit more, of course, we're kind of somewhat removed as a council, but whenever there's a large group of our community that's concerned and that makes me concerned. So I know all of you are concerned with that too. So I'm hoping that, I know the mayor has also been investing in that. So hopefully we can come up with a compromise. So I just want to let you know that I've been working on that process on behalf of the council. Okay. Let's go on to administration. Jennifer.

No update. I know you have lots of items to get to tonight, so I'll be short.

Thank you. How about our city attorney? Our acting city attorney, right? For how long?

As long as I can keep the position. No comments and no executive session tonight.

Okay. And so we'll move to our consent items. We have nine before us. No, we have eight. Okay. so um are there any any is there a motion a second Council member Ryan moves approval of the eight consent agenda seconded okay motion and seconds been made clerk please take the role

Council Member Bader.

Yes.

Vice President Ryan. Yes. Council Member Burbano.

Yes.

Council Member Tuohy. Yes. Council Member Weir. Yes. Council Member Zerlingo. Yes. President Schwab.

Yes. Okay. Moving on to a proposed action item and briefing. This will include a public hearing. So for item nine, I will read it into the record and open the public hearing. So council bill 2606-35, first reading adopter ordinance, updating the rules and procedures for the multifamily tax exemption program in accordance with RCW 84.14, amending chapter 3.78 of the EMC municipal code, third and final reading, will be July 29, 2026. So now that the public hearing has been open, do we have anyone wish to speak on this issue?

They do not.

Okay. Thank you very much. All right. So we'll do the presentation now, and then we'll close the hearing. Now, we close the hearing after today, right? We don't have to keep it open? Okay. Great.

We have planning director your New York Stevens watched and I think special projects manager frank Kong to do the briefing and I think rank is just pulling up the PowerPoint see is the lead on this proposal so.

Good evening members of the Council, Frank Hong, Housing Policy Development Lead. I'm here tonight to speak on the efforts of the City in updating its multifamily tax exemption program, and I have a short presentation to present to you tonight. We'll cover four areas, provide a little background in historical context, discuss the proposal at hand here, some of the findings from our study, as well as next steps. The city has had a MFT program, a multifamily tax exemption program, since 1999. It is a state authorized program. Over the course of the past 27 years, we've received essentially applications and interest that amounted to over 3,700 units and $850 million of construction activity during that time. The program is one of the few tools that we have to really help incentivize housing. It's structured as a tax exemption waiver. It's not a permanent. It's a temporary waiver based on the terms that you see here on the table. Generally, there is an eight-year term that helps incentivize housing by a developer who wants to build housing. They can apply for an eight-year term if they meet the minimum eligibility criteria. There's a 12-year term that has a set aside of 20% affordable units, and that one is open to both renters and owners. And then there's a 20-year term that is setting aside 25% affordable, but that's mainly for ownership. I'll add that the initial purpose of the MFT program is really to help incentivize more dense development activity, help support and facilitate transit-oriented development. But I would also say that over the course of the past few years, there's also been shifting policy priorities at the state level that also included middle housing, which you've heard much about over the past few years. the proposals that we are going to be discussing tonight sort of hit on both of those areas. While again, this initial program was merely made for more high density multifamily types of development. There is ownership options available in the MFT program, but they are rarely used because just the program mechanics don't really lend to the ownership. There's about 10 projects and they're all in the city of Seattle, roughly about maybe I think 147 units or homes, and they are all Habitat for Humanity or a community land trust project because... Unfortunately, just market rate development housing just doesn't really work with the ownership side. Why MFT matters? As you're all aware, there is a housing crisis, significant housing shortages across the state and much of the nation. And the city, again, relies on the tools it has to facilitate housing production. This, again, is one of the few and most productive tools we've had over the past 27 years to facilitate housing. Rise in construction and financing costs are making housing, creating housing much more challenging, especially for smaller housing developers. As you heard earlier from the public testimony, as well as, you know, the city has also done a lot in terms of opening capacity, but at the same time, there needs to be a little bit more additional support to help address our housing supply again because of the high cost of construction and other elements around that. There are multiple changes being recommended here to this evening, but the main ones are really the eligibility. The minimum eligibility currently in our program is at 16 units, and we are proposing to lower it to four units. There are I believe 59 MFT programs statewide currently and there's only about four or five that have said it above four units. So the majority again are at four units. The city has said it at a higher minimum eligibility unit, I believe in 2021 when we last revised the ordinance. There was thought that during the 2010s, MFT was utilized a lot. There was thought that there might be a strain on capacity if we had too many projects. We have not seen that to be the case. And so I think, again, it's more worthwhile to lower it back to four to make the program more utilized, make it more user friendly to many more developers throughout the city. The other big change is expanding the residential target area, essentially the boundary where the program can take place. For the most part right now, it's in most of the multifamily zoned areas, and we are proposing to expand it into the NR and UR4 zones, which typically in the past were some of the more lower-dense zoning areas. And I'll have a map to show you following this. Additionally, some of the major changes were there was a recent House Bill 1494 that had a lot of other changes related to eligibility and compliance, and we are integrating those as well. And just a lot of other sort of minor changes to help improve the program language from eligibility as well as utilization. This is the map, as I mentioned, in terms of the existing area is in orange and the expanded area is in brown. One of the gentlemen in the public testimony mentioned earlier, it's citywide. It's technically not citywide because we aren't including the NRC, which is the constrained areas. So there are areas that are still excluded, but for the most part, the program is being proposed to expand to the majority of the city. And the purpose and... purpose and impacts of why we're doing this. What are the potential impacts from these proposals? Lowering the minimum eligibility from 16 to four units and expanding the RTA to include NR and UR4 will help drive additional housing units, especially addressing middle housing. In terms of housing outcome, how will this influence future housing development? We believe that there will be some additional housing supply created in these zones. The tax impact, what is the financial impact of the MFT program that we're going to address? The taxpayer impact, as well as the displacement rates. These are some of the four questions that we look to address tonight. So in terms of the housing, In terms of the housing outcome, we expect there to be anywhere between 15 to 100 units. This is sort of new ground for us or new areas because, again, prior to the zoning, every 2044 comp plan update, the NR and UR4 zones were single family. So generally they had restricted this type of development. So there's not a lot to base off of. We did look at historical activity. We looked at a variety of models in terms of trying to figure out what the impacts of expanding the boundary as well as lowering the units from 16 to 4 would be, and we right now assess that it's probably going to be adding about 15 to 100 units a year. This is still a relatively small number. When plan director York Stevens watched, did his Ever24 comp plan update, the land use analysis in there, looked at the capacity for NR and UR4, and projected that that will have something like 8,200 units over the next 20 years. And so this is just a small addition into that capacity. We did a lot of financial modeling and concluded that each new unit that is developed under the MFT program costs or shifts the tax base roughly two cents per unit to a taxpayer. And so we quantify that by the number of units we project. That's going to be roughly $0.30 to $2 annually a year, which is 0.05% of typical property tax. The typical property tax in Everett is about $4,700 a year. And so again, this is a very minimal in terms of the tax impact of expanding this program to increase the supply of additional housing units in some of these lower dense areas. As part of the expansion, we are required to also address displacement. We did not find there to be significant impacts. Generally, when we think of displacements, it's in higher areas where if you maybe demolish an apartment building, you won't displace a lot. But since a lot of these areas are essentially infill areas or low concentration areas, we do not expect there to be much displacement risk in that. The city has taken many efforts in terms of preserving and protecting areas more recently with the manufactured home zones and others like it. In summary, again, MFT is an established incentive. We've had this in the city for 27 years. All we're doing is trying to make it more user-friendly to not just our larger developers who have taken advantage of this, but to a lot of our local smaller developers as well, as well as property owners who may want to, again, add in ADUs and other types of projects in their properties. We see this as an expansion to proposal to further accelerate housing. Again, as I mentioned to both types of builders and essentially all housing types. And as I also went over, the financial impact is extremely minimal and isn't anticipated to adversely burden the city or its taxpayers. Next steps. We went to planning commission on a few occasions as shown in this Timetable as well as previously presented at the parks and environmental parks and built Environment Committee. We are here today at the first reading second reading is on July 22 with Council action on July 29 at that. Staff is recommending approval of this of the updated ordinance planning Commission has also issued their support for the ordinance. I also reviewed the ordinance with commerce. They have also expressed strong support in favor of this ordinance. And yes, any questions I can answer?

Customers are lingo.

Yeah, Frank, you'd mentioned 20 and 25% affordable proportions in a couple of those developments. And how is affordability defined in this case? Is it like an 80% of area median income or is that the kind of typical figure?

Yeah, the AMI affordability has changed over the years. Somewhere earlier was at 100, 115, but now the standard is at, for example, the 12 years, 20% set-aside affordable, which means 10% at 60% and 10% at 80%. The 25%, that's at 80% because that's on the ownership side. And again, I'll add that no one has ever used the 20% because the ownership option just really doesn't work. We are proposing some changes in this updated ordinance to see if that can, some of these changes may make this option work. For example, right now, the ordinance says that on ownership, it's restricted to 80% AMI. One of the updates is to lift it to 115% AMI. It's just housing construction. Yeah, 80% just has not worked unless, again, you are a mission-driven organization like Habitat and the cases I mentioned in Seattle. But even 147 homes out of the thousands of units that have been through the MFT program, it's significantly small.

Well, I appreciate the attention in that factor. And I've talked with Council Member Brabano about this as well. I think, you know, we're a city that has a majority renters. And one of the things we're weak on is ownership housing opportunities. So I'm particularly attentive to anything we can do in that direction. Thank you. You're welcome. Council Member Trujillo.

Yeah, I just have a clarifying on the taxpayer impact. You have 30 cents to $2. Is there, how is that assessed? Is that per $1,000 of the assessment of the home or is that per taxpayer? I'm kind of confused on how you came up with that represents.

Correct. So again, it's per unit base. We looked at our 2025 MFTE information and based it off of that. And we, again, lot of calculations looking at all the tax levies, and we calculated to essentially be, again, $0.02 per unit. And so when we look at projecting 15 to 100 units annually because of these updates per taxpayer, that's roughly going to be anywhere between $0.30 and $2. And normally, as I went over at the beginning, there are 8-year and 12-year. So if we just say the average 10 years, anywhere between $3 and maybe

20 at most uh over a 10-year period annually and then after the when the program exits then it'll revert and so it changes after that okay but it's very minimal yeah i don't go ahead yeah just a final point i mean it's after eight to twelve years he's in the back or on the tax rolls fully so helping to spread that tax base uh more broadly so thank you

Yeah, and then I'm, oh, here we go. Council Member Bono.

Just looking at the map really quick. How come the certain areas were not selected for the expansion of the zone?

So they might be commercial, industrial, and then again, the NR constrained areas that aren't applicable for this. So prior, again, most zones were included. We just added in the UR and NR, which is the brown area.

Also, for the 20 years, 25% affordable ownership, did we just say that it doesn't really work that way, that it doesn't really, it's not appealing for the builders?

Yeah, I mean, mainly because from a rental perspective, if a developer uses the program, they receive tax benefits, so it benefits them. And in ownership, you're selling that product off. And so the developer really has no financial incentive to use the MFT program. There might be some marketing where you say, I will apply for the program. Whoever buys my home may then have some tax exemption benefits thereafter. But for the developer, why would they do that? They have to pay an application fee. They have to pay, there's costs involved. And so from their standpoint, it just has not made sense. And so it's really been delegated to those mission-driven organizations, like again, Habitat, who aren't really concerned about the long-term maximizing ROI. They're just maintaining the affordability. And so Those have been the only examples of using the ownership across the state. Again, 147 units, 10 projects, that's all.

And I might just add that we know how important ownership is as a policy priority, and so we're looking at other tools that can support that. Community Land Trust is a model that encourages ownership that Frank kind of alluded to, but I want to make sure we cite that as one tool that we're looking into how to implement that, how to find the partners and things like that.

Okay, Council Member Weir, and then Ryan. Okay.

So just for clarification, this is just for new construction, right? So if somebody has a existing large home that they want to convert into four units and sell them as quadruplex or rent them, that would not apply. Is that correct?

No. So this generally has been used for new construction, but rehab and conversion are also options here. But nobody's ever used it for rehab. We just had one conversion recently that is undergoing at this moment. But it can apply to those. There are some other conditions around the rehab and conversion that you need to also meet. For example, like on the rehab, the property has to be vacant for one year. So there are some other stipulations, but it is open to other

Okay. And then just looking at the map, with that concern that others have expressed over ownership being a real area that we're lacking ownership opportunities, that is there any concern that by expanding it over such a wide area, and I realize there's zoning issues that will come in for certain types and sizes of structures in certain areas, but is this going to end up as it's being presented to us, benefiting those larger developers that now they can gain those, that incentive or that, you know, that tax incentive in other areas that maybe we want to incentivize those. So I'm like, sorry, I'm not stating this very well, but like, would it, for this expanded area, would it be just ownership maybe posing it that way or that a certain percentage has to be ownership opportunity projects as opposed to just rentals everywhere.

One way to think about it is the area is expanded, but what's being expanded is a lower unit count. So instead of it only being available to a developer that is building 16 units or more, now it's available to maybe like a single property owner that likes the idea of Yeah, I think, which I think is great.

I'm just saying, you've got, you know, right now we're using that tax benefit for a very targeted areas, which these large developers are taking advantage of like you've already said it's you know it's not something that the ownership piece they're not going to build. you know, 100 unit condos, that's just not going to pencil out for them. So how do we incentivize this type of program with this target area expansion to really benefit smaller developers, individuals that do want to have ownership opportunities on their properties?

The mayor was here, she would say that supply in general is an important part of solving housing affordability in general. So this is part of that supply question. What gets built, whether it's like a fourplex and you can sell it off or it's a fourplex that you rent, is really governed by the zoning code that's already been adopted by council. This will encourage development so you said this is a new vision with the comprehensive plan you set a vision for the city and we're bringing you a tool that can help implement the vision and encourage folks to build on those sites that's what my answer would be but they actually work yeah i i mean i i think the lowering it is great i'm just like how can how can we

make sure that we are actually incentivizing more home ownership opportunities at those affordable levels, because that's probably what these would be. You know, if you're talking condos or ADUs and things like that, as opposed to, you know, rentals are an important part of the housing pool, but I just think that so many people now are outpriced out of being able to even consider buying something and even rentals are, you know, the market rate on rentals is so outrageous that, um,

This is not a tool to encourage homeownership. We've already been rounding around with them already. This is just the added volume.

But how can it not be both?

More to come. There's more to come. Okay. We didn't do lot split yet. We're going to bring that to you.

But this particular item.

Thank you. That is coming to you in the future. We have more stuff to come. This isn't going to solve those questions, but just wait for the rest of the summer of housing.

This particular item is not promoting homeownership.

Yeah, again, it's an option there, but it's really not exactly right. And I'm trying to figure it out. I've talked with a lot of folks trying and across our government partners and private sector partners, again, trying to figure it out. But this really isn't the right tool. But to Jennifer's comment, we are working on several other homeownership initiatives that we will be coming back with.

Councilman Ryan.

Thank you. Since we're on this slide, during the Parks and Built Environment Committee meeting, Council Member Zerlingo and I had brought up that if it was possible to consider keeping the orange ones at 16, since they are high transit corridors, But then the expanded zone, the brown, would be the four unit target. So I was curious if that's been taken into consideration and just comments on that. And then I have one more brilliant idea.

Is that a motion?

Or just a thought? I would like to hear the active motion first.

We did discuss it further internally, as I mentioned also last time when the comp plan update was adopted. housing target numbers from the region is roughly, let's just say 40,000 units of housing over the next 20 years. The comp plan addressed capacity throughout Everett, roughly double that at around 79,000 units. So there is capacity across the city and we were accounting for projects. We have seen a couple of projects that are higher zone where maybe you will see a lower density development project come in, but Generally, for the most part, you rarely see that because it's not economically, it doesn't make sense. Somebody who's going to be paying more for a property that has an increased zoning capacity generally wants and desires to maximize to the best use of that property versus underdevelop that property. But my understanding is that the mayor has said that we will continue to encourage the four units across all zones.

Okay. And then back to slide three, our favorite slide for tonight. For the 20 years, I'm curious if for affordability, instead of having 25% set aside as affordable, it's just set aside for first-time homeowners.

We cannot change more than, so again, this was the state minimum. And so we have not changed the, we cannot do more or what do you call it, less than the state. And so that's what they've said. And that's what we comply with.

We can add, but we can, we can add conditions to eligibility, but we cannot go below the minimum affordability requirement. If you were suggesting replacing the affordability with the first time home buyer.

Okay. Understood. Thanks.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, just a couple comments. When this first came out, I too wasn't enthusiastic about it because it's not promoting homeownership, which, of course, is a high priority. Also, my concern about promoting more rental units, as was brought up earlier. But I think in the end, this is a minor change, I think, as it affects and just adds to a large list of things that we're trying to increase volume as a way of attacking housing problems in the city. One question just for clarification. The property tax exemption is on the city. Is the city levy rate only, correct?

I also want to mention before when you talked about, well, first, in terms of levy, no, there's multiple various taxing districts. It's not just the city. And right now, In short, there's about 47% of the taxes are in the city that shoulders the burden, and then the rest is outside of the city, hence why the rates per unit are so low, and there's multiple different levies that are involved.

So like the state and the county all have a levy rate? That's all part of it?

Correct.

That would be outside the city. So the exemption is on the inside. The taxing districts are in the city limits? Yes. Is that right?

So this is where it gets, I don't know how deep in the weeds.

Well, just in generally, we're talking about not just the city levy rate.

The entire property tax that would be paid is waived for the period. So whether it's the city tax, the state tax, the school tax, all of those are not paid and all of those are transferred to other taxpayers within the district. So that means that the property taxes paid to the state of Washington are shared that tax shift throughout the state of Washington. About half of the incentive is imported into the city.

Okay. Well, I was just mentioning earlier in terms of, again, when you say this is not for ownership, technically with multifamily, if you can do the condominiums and so that we're also trying to work on condo reform. And again, that's something later on down the line, but this could be used again for those larger buildings.

And as mentioned earlier in our meetings, you could tell the council we really like to increase our ownership here in the city.

You've been warned, right? It was mentioned, I think, with the community land trust. We're working hard on recruiting, developing organizational capacity, and otherwise getting a community land trust, one of the features of the MFTE program. If you have income qualified, restricted sale price ownership units, you can't have a situation where somebody gets a discount and then turns around and sells it at full market value. So generally a land trust or some nonprofit has to hold the land for a series of buyers over that whole time. So even if we were able to get a developer to... share in the exemption with the buyer, you would still need some sort of a third party to manage that. So we've been working hard with a couple of different partners to bring that to Everett and make that a viable option.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. I guess at this point, I'll take a motion to close the public hearing.

Councilor Ryan, some moves?

Second. Okay, this is a motion just to close the public hearing. The final reading will be on the 29th. Clerk, please take the roll.

Council Member Bader. Yes. Vice President Ryan. Yes. Council Member Bravano. Yes. Council Member Tuohy. Yes. Council Member Weir. Yes. Council Member Zarlengo. Yes. President Schwab.

Yes. Thank you very much. Next is our proposed action items. Item 10 has been read into the record. Are there any questions on item 10? Okay, final reading is July 22nd, 2026. Item number 11, council bill 2607-36, first reading adopted ordinance, amending ordinance 4177-26 entitled Everett Outdoor Event Center Fund 342. Program 052 to accumulate costs for the design and partial property acquisition for the Everett Outdoor Events Center. Third and final reading will be July 29, 2026. Does Council have any questions? Okay, we'll move on to item number 12, Council Bill 2607-37, First Read and Adopt an Ordinance Amending in Ordinance Number 3959-23, entitled Main Library Building Envelope Improvement Project, Third and Final Reading, July 22, 2026. Council, any questions?

Just to point of clarification, this is the first and second reading for this.

Oh, thank you for that. Yeah, I mentioned it earlier, but for the record, it's the first and second. Thank you. We'll just give a quick pause here.

Yeah, we appreciate that the council's combining the first and second readings on this. We had a situation where we had to re-bid the original bid, which caused a little bit of a delay. So now we're kind of up against the next phase of the project. We want to use the nice weather before it goes away to do this building envelope that's outside, right? So they want to be able to do that while the weather is good. Yeah. Thank you for combining them. And there are staff here. I told them you would give them a hard time for combining the first and second. So you want to ask any questions, they're here for that, but you don't have to.

Okay. And then Councilman Ryan, do you have any questions about item 10, 11, or 12th?

No, thank you.

Okay. So moving on to item number 13, Council Bill 2607-38, First Reading Adopted Ordinance Amending Ordinance Number 4024-24, entitled South Police Precinct High Vac Control Replacement Project. Third and final reading is July 29, 2026. Is Council on this one again? It seems like every month we're bringing a new high back system, right? This is a constant challenge for the city, right? These things are expensive.

We constantly are making sure we're taking care of our equipment and our facilities.

We're waiting until the last minute, aren't we? We're stretching things out.

We are getting all of the years of life that we can out of them.

Thank you. Okay, so... Moving on to number 14, council bill 2606-33, third and final reading, adopt ordinance approving changes to the city charter to be considered in election by the residents of Everett and requesting that the Snohomish County auditor place these charter ballot measures on the November 3rd, 2026 general election. So at this point, I'd like to go through the propositions. And if there's any motions to make any amendments to them currently, and then we'll have a vote at the end to accept them all.

Okay.

So I'm trying to remember, since it's been a couple of weeks, what our current status is. Was our motion made originally on these items that is now already on the table?

I believe so, because this is just the reading of the ordinance.

It was a motion to put these in on to create this resolution. Okay, thank you.

Okay. Well, I have a short PowerPoint. The whole tool is to facilitate your discussion, not like a briefing or anything. So let me do this. There we go. These are the propositions that you are considering. It's a little different from the cover sheet, but it, of course, matches the ordinance that you have before you. So there's one, two, and as you might, I'm sure, remember, we had combined three with eight, and we had combined four with one. So they're numbered up to nine in the ordinance, but really, at the end of the day, if you did all of them, it would be seven. So that's the summary. We can come back to that if that's helpful. The city attorney sent out three potential amendments by email, and I put them up. I have slides for them to help us review them. So this is the first one. This is amendment to the 2.2 section on eligibility. This is what... What was presented and yeah, I was not. I was very sorry to miss your meeting on the first where you dug into this. So I'm going to make Ramsey support any additional information that's on these.

So maybe we could just summarize exactly where we're at in its current form.

So the current form was the somewhat ambiguous language in the charter that says that you have to be a registered voter and a resident for one year. And there's a lack of clarity of whether the registration for one year was a requirement or not. And so this addresses that by separating them out and making it clear that, again, the Charter Review Committee recommended having the one-year requirement for both registration and residency. And so this language is an attempt to... capture that with avoiding any of the ambiguities. So the first sentence deals just with the registration requirement for one year, and then the next sentence deals with the one year of residency, both for the at-large positions, which is citywide, and then residency within the districts for the district positions. The registration requirement is currently separate from residency. So you just have to be registered in the city for a year. You don't have to necessarily be registered in the district for a year. Um, And so that's what that's.

But there's still a separate residency.

There's still the separate one year residency requirements. So the district, you have to be resident for that district for a year. Other for that large in the mayor, you have to be a resident of the city for a year. And then the registration is anywhere in the city.

That's how the current application is. So.

And it's also tagged to the date of the general election. I think there were common, there's been conversation about that. There's different dates that you could pin that to. This pins the voter register, well, pins all of it to the general election. Not filing week, not whatever.

That's the start, that's when the block hits.

One year from that, so it starts a year before. Okay, great. Council Member Bader?

Thanks, Mr. President. Ramsey, I did listen to some of the conversations on the charter review going to YouTube or wherever they're at to listen to those. I thought that one of the challenges here was that residency was a difficult thing to prove and that registered was a bright line because you were registered at a certain address. Any comments on how hard it would be to prove or disprove residency if that was challenged for someone who filed for office for a district position?

I think that at least if the registered to vote within the city would at least give another marker to showing that they actually at least live in the city. But it doesn't really help prove the particular residency of when they do it. This proposal as drafted does not give us any additional tools in proving actual residency. um so i don't think it really addresses i did listen to the the meeting as well today um and i don't think that um the you know i didn't so i'm not sure that it quite does addresses that concern i think we're um you know and it's a difficult issue i think that what we came up with um last year with at least getting a sworn declaration was a good step in it um

And, but it's, you know, it would be nice if it said the city attorney could decide whether they're resident or not, but that's not what we've drafted here.

And so.

Okay, Council Member Ryan.

Thank you. I also re-listened to the meeting twice earlier today and I was working on doing my due diligence for the meeting and I wanted to get the general gist and the intent of the commission. And when I re-listened to that first meeting, I heard that there was a strong intent about a one-year residency requirement, but I didn't hear the same for a one-year requirement for being registered to vote. So I listened to it once and I was like, wait a minute, did I miss something? I listened to it again. The motion that was proposed had a slew of things, but it included a one-year residency requirement and just the requirement to be registered to vote without a time minimum or maximum. And then the there was more discussion. And then the motion was restated with those two things and was unanimously decided to move to legal for a draft to come back to the commission. So what I heard was from the conversation was the intent of the one year residency requirement and that they just need to be registered to vote without the one year residency without the one year requirement. But then as things happen with drafts, it seemed like the language continued to be kind of murky. And then what ended up finally happening was still that murky language that we're still working on clarifying. So the approach that I've been taking to these propositions is to support the recommendations and the intent of the commission. But what I heard in that initial conversation, the intent was to have a one-year requirement for residency, but only just being registered to vote without the time minimum attached to it. I appreciated Commissioner Relidge's comments earlier, which is inspiring me to share that I do think tying the date to the general election might be a folly. I think that there was a long discussion about the need to be in the community for at least a year. But since the general election's in November, a year before that's the previous November, filing to run is in May. So at that point, a person could have only been a resident for six months, but the commission was sharing about how they wanted it to be at least one year minimum. So I think we should change the general election to the filing week with at least one year of residency preceding that and just that they need to be registered to vote at the time of filing.

Is that a motion or just a thought right now?

Right now, it's just a thought. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Councilman Zalingo.

I guess I'm interested in clarity here and also not positive about clarity. someone just registering to vote and then immediately filing to run for election. I think the intent of the Charter Review Commission was that people have at least a year's involvement here in the city. And with respect to the complex legal questions or the thorny and tricky ones that came up in a court case last year where residency was as as Mr. Ammerman said, harder and tricky, and you have to go to court to dig that out. The idea of one year for voter registration, if I understand it correctly, when you do voter registration, you are making an affirmation, an assertion that's legally binding, a legal claim where there are penalties if you misrepresent that, that you live in the place that you say you're living. So It seems like the requirement for voter registration one year before a general election is clear and simple and a natural time for people to be registering and where that is a decisive assertion that you live in the city, in the district at that time. and are involved or interested in being involved in the political process, at least, at the very least, as a voter. So I guess I am positive about the wording here about a registered voter for one year in advance, because it just simplifies these things. And as I've said in the previous comments, I don't think being a registered voter one year before you expect to be elected is very much, it was too much to ask.

Any other comments? Councilman Toohey.

Yeah, I'm kind of stuck on tying it to the general election versus filing week, because either you wait a year after the general election, so then before you file, it's actually a year and a half. Or it's only six months and you barely get one year out of that on election day, but you're still involved in the political process of running for candidate. So for me, it kind of makes more sense to tie the date with the filing week. for that purpose. Then everything is a year to filing. When you file, that means you've lived there for a year. You've been involved for a year minimum. So for me, I would rather see the filing week be the trigger point date.

Council Member Weir.

I would agree with that as well.

Okay. All right. Council Member Ryan. Okay.

I'd like to make a motion that we change the timeline date for section 2.2 in all areas to be filing week instead of general election.

Like the last day of or the first day of?

The last day of.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Okay. On the, I guess we're going to amend the language, not necessarily the final motion, amending the language. Is there any comments or questions?

I guess I'm trying to understand the timing here. Are we talking about someone registering at the end of filing week? I mean, filing first and then registering afterwards?

No, a year in advance. So the clock of one year of residency and voter registration, instead of being like being a year back from the general election, it's a year back from the week of filing, the last day of filing.

So that will often be about 18 months then.

By the time you take office. So instead of taking office and like minimum, you've got 13 months of residency. Now it's, you know, 18 months.

Got it. Thank you. Council Member Bono.

I don't remember very well, but I think when I registered to run for office, I think I went to a county website and I read the requirements for it. If we change the requirement, it's probably going to cause some confusion between the county and the city. Or should we just want to keep everything the same?

I will have to work with the county. I imagine that they, the county, and at least I don't know specifically for this question, but I know that the county definitely takes into account the municipalities general, what, you know, what their requirements are on some of this stuff. So I'd imagine they'd want to change the website so it's accurate because it's still binding on it. They want to properly inform candidates, but... I don't know for certain on this exact issue, but I'd be surprised if the county didn't work with us so that the registration requirements were clear. Thank you.

Okay, Council Member Bader, I saw you on the mic there.

Yeah, actually I'll – but I do have a question for clarifying here, Ramsey, in terms of parliamentary procedure. So are we essentially – if we make a motion on this, are we essentially breaking this down into potentially seven different motions here to put like each one on the ballot? Or do we need an overriding motion and then start amending it?

In the past, sometimes you make motions on the second reading and you amend the ordinance and then it comes back to you as amended. So maybe you might think of it as following that path where you're amending what's before you. But you also could...

I do think you're going to be doing seven votes because it's seven different propositions.

Well, seven, seven different motions.

Okay.

Okay.

No, thanks for that clarification. So we're not passing just one motion for all of it at the end. We need seven is the way it,

I mean, there's one ordinance in front of you.

I take that back. It is written as one ordinance. There are seven different propositions as you have, you know, you can, you don't have to, you're going to have to make a motion. I don't have any of them. Are you going to conclude in this ultimately, obviously, because we also have the eighth one, which is the term limits, which you need to decide whether you want to include that in this as well, too. Right. So probably we're going to have votes to what to include in the ordinance and then one final vote at the end.

So that was my goal. So it's a break it down, simplify it. And then at the end, we'll vote on everything all at once.

Okay. So to clarify, Council President, if I may ask, it would now read, no person shall be eligible to hold elective office unless he or she has been a registered voter within the City of Everett for at least one year immediately preceding the date of the last day of filing week. Is that correct?

Yes.

Thank you.

Good.

And then same with the other references to the general election. Yep. Thank you.

Okay, so this point, we have a motion a second. And this is not to pass a proposition to put on the ballot. This is to change the proposed language.

So it's this new proposed language was the intent. Yeah. So that's what you edited.

Yeah, with no further questions or comment, clerk, please take the role.

Councilmember Bader. Yes. Vice President Ryan. Yes. Councilmember Burbano.

Yes.

Councilmember Tuohy. Yes. Councilmember Weir. Yes. Councilmember Zerlingo.

Yes.

President Schwab.

Yes. Okay. Now moving on to Proposition 2.

Council President, were there any other motions on Proposition 1?

Oh, I'm sorry. No, we're still back to Proposition 1. That's right. We just amended it. The language. Thanks for that. Okay. So we're still on Proposition 1.

So in addition to the eligibility requirement that we've been discussing this also, sorry about the typo. I made this PowerPoint, like whenever this meeting started is when I get finished it. So this has the inclusion of the 4.10 section, which is the oath of office and the no outside elected government office for council and mayor there at the end. I don't know that you guys have talked about the dual offices all that much or the oath of office piece, which is just like a clarifying thing that will help our staff.

Councilor Rader.

Ramsey, is there any concern about the constitutionality of this? We've got the power to restrict this. I support the idea, but I'm just concerned that ultimately it could be changed.

The simultaneous office issue? Yeah, that's perfectly fine. Thank you.

Okay, seeing no questions, we'll move on with the Proposition 1 language.

As amended, basically, when you get to the end, yeah. Okay, yes.

Oh, Councilmember Buono.

We're also amending the time requirement for this one as well, right?

The what requirement? Sorry. Okay.

It also has a time requirement. Must have been a voter and resident of the applicable council district.

This is the key language. The actual proposition measure language is just what was in there before, but it'll be matched to the as amended.

Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Okay, number two, this is a section that sets a floor of the number of city council meetings at 36 plus spaced out through the year with one that has to be in the evening. What you discussed last time was handling that question of who chairs meetings in the absence of the council president. And so that was the proposal that City Attorney Remeron sent to you. This adds this language here. In the absence of both, the president designates council member to preside over the meeting.

And that's how it's currently written.

You would need to make a motion to amend the 3.2 section to add this into Proposition 2.

Council Member Ryan moved to approve this language as proposed on the screen to incorporate into Proposition 2.

Thank you. I'll second that.

All right. Motion, seconds. Made any more discussion? You okay there? Okay. Motion and seconds are made. Any further discussion or questions? Okay. Clerk, please take the roll.

Council Member Bader? Yes. Vice President Ryan? Yes. Council Member Pagano? Yes. Council Member Tuohy? Yes. Council Member Weir? Yes. Council Member Zarlinko?

Yes.

President Schwab?

Yes. Thanks for the heavy lifting, guys.

Just one quick note on that, if I could, President. I don't particularly personally favor the idea of reducing us to 36 meetings, but out of respect for the Charter Review Commission, I do support putting this on the ballot for that. So anyway, I'm just concerned it may potentially look to the voters like we're trying to get out of work, but not that we're trying. Anyway, just saying.

Councillor Azar's lingo, did you want to make a comment on this?

Just a comment. I agree with that, but I also see that we aren't going to approach 36 meetings given the work, the number we've been doing just by necessity for the content we have.

I don't know how it'd be possible at this point. So, okay. Thank you.

So we just did that. Number three was sections 3.4 and 3.5. They're combined with the modernization language in Prop 8. Number four, we already talked about that was section 4.10, the oath of office. We already discussed that guy. So anyways, that's too bad.

That language has been changed and already proposed with this group.

They were in the ordinance, but the cover sheet, anyway, sorry about that. Okay, no thanks for the info. Um, so proposition five would be renumbered to like three, I think. Oh, I can move my screen around, uh, to yes, to proposition three. Um, in our final document, you don't have to take an action on that, letting you know that it's number five in the packet and we'll get them so that there's sequential one through whatever number we get to. This is a civil service one. So that's it. Unless there's further questions, that'll just be in the, in the final, final ordinance.

Yeah.

I don't, yeah, I don't think that, I guess I would say for your procedure and like timeliness, if there is a sense that you want that there's a divided vote on this and you want to make sure to take an action because you kind of don't want to advance this one, you could make a motion to say you want to make sure to include it. But if this is more of a routine item that you are feeling like everybody is okay with including, we could just move ahead.

I think it's routine. We had time to.

Yeah.

Unless someone wants to make a motion, I think we could probably move forward as stated.

Okay. It looks like unanimous consent generally. No questions. We'll keep five as the new three in the package. Six as the new four. Okay. This one has a proposed change. So this is the one that deals with a bunch of initiative and referendum, the thresholds for signatures, some process items, and then this fiscal impact statement. So there was language in 11.5 that had the idea that in the in the explanatory language, which was only 200 words that we would direct voters to find that on the city's website. Karen Hollweg, Last time you guys added this kind of procedural piece that includes a like when does the finance director prepare this statement that it is at this stage of the process so that's. Karen Hollweg, Should you want to include that that this would be a motion to amend 11.2 E.

Okay, so we need to add this language if we do so. We'll need to do this change now.

If you want it, make a motion.

All right. Discussion? I guess let's have make a motion, then we can discuss it. I'll make the motion. All right.

And just to clarify, what happened is the Charter Committee recommended the language in the explanatory statement of recognizing there is a fiscal statement, but there was nothing in there that actually required the preparation of the fiscal analysis. And so that's what this language is doing is saying, yes, we should prepare the fiscal analysis, and then the Charter Commission's recommendation, then it's going to be referenced in the... Do I have a second?

A second.

Okay, so I think part of this was that it's... probably too long to go on a ballot. And I don't think that process was worked through in the Charter Review Committee.

The Charter Review Committee's recommendation was that they want the physical impact statement as available and obvious as possible. And so they said it should go on the ballot or in the voter's pamphlet. And I returned to them and said, we only get 200 words in the voters pamphlet. The auditor said we can use them for whatever we want. The city attorney said 200 words is not enough to explain the ballot measure itself. How about we say that there's a link to the impact statement? Little extra step for the voter, but hopefully makes it accessible for most. And generally, that last meeting, the committee said, No, Jennifer, we want to stick with what we said and the city council can decide to listen to the city attorney's advice if they want, but we want to stand by using those 100 words for that fiscal impact statement. But they know that you are going to likely weigh the fact that we want to use the 200 words. In the voters pamphlet to fully explain the actual impact of a ballot measure versus using half of it for the finance director's analysis.

My concern is that if it's not long enough, there could be a lot read into it like on a ballot. Either we have it or we don't. We either have the option of putting a very good representation on a website or on a document or we don't because I don't think some of these issues just aren't long enough.

You're right. So this path that we are on that's in the packet and then adds this kind of procedural step would allow like however long that fiscal impact statement needs to be, it could be long because it's a whole page on the city's website without saying that the whole fiscal impact statement is 100 words. Yeah.

Council Member Bader.

If I didn't get a second based on Jennifer's. Oh, did I?

Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, no, you're good. No, we got a lot of heavy lifting. Keep it going. All right. Who did the second? Thank you. Ouch. All right. Go ahead. Council Member Zarlingo.

And I think I asked this question last time, but I want it to be clear as we're going through this. If there's somebody who is not web capable, they can always go to the city clerk and get a copy of this fiscal impact statement.

Yes, the clerk is telling me she will definitely have a copy of it there handy in the clerk's office.

Thank you.

Council Member Bader.

If this motion fails, are we essentially reverting back to the language the Charter Review Commission proposed that basically said it has to be part of the voter's pamphlet statement itself?

What what the staff present what I presented to you already removed the Charter Review Committee's recommendation. So it would revert back to the idea that the explanatory statement includes this link to a fiscal impact statement on the city's website. But it wouldn't have this which says who prepares it.

Gotcha. More detail. So more. So this motion would ask more more specific requirements for that reporting.

I am going to support this, but I just want to say for the record, I'm dubious that fiscal impact statements can be actually neutral. I think there's an opportunity for mischief, but I think the Charter Review Committee wanted one way or the other.

Yeah, I would agree. Anyone else? Okay. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, please take the roll.

Council Member Bader. Yes. Vice President Ryan. Yes. Council Member Burbano. Yes. Council Member Tuohy. Yes. Council Member Weir. Yes. Council Member Zerlingo.

Yes.

President Schwab.

Yes.

Um, so is there, are there other questions or discussion on the rest of, um, the proposition six, the new proposition for the voter threshold, the signature threshold, some of those procedures, um, the fact that the fiscal impact statement is a part of it. So.

if not i'll keep yes thanks uh if uh if it passes uh for voters i would suggest there being some sort of a landing page so that folks can kind of understand the changes and the thresholds and whatnot so if they did want to do an initiative that they have clear guidelines of the metrics that they have to hit thanks

Okay. Forging ahead, we just talked about that seven, the new five. This is the charter review to do that every five years, starting five years from now. Committee member Rutledge spoke to this a little bit. And I know there's been some discussion on both sides of this topic. So

Okay. Is there any? Council Member Ryan?

Thanks. Well, I am generally supportive of the recommendations and the intent from Commission. I do have an asterisk for this one because of concerns that I have about unnecessary staff time that would then be more coming up more often to support a charter review committee. And I know there's a lot of staff time that went into it. So having it happen more often than not, I do have concerns about protecting staff time and making sure that it's well utilized. And it also offer the reminder that if there are initiatives or topics that didn't come up during this last review, folks can come to council and we can change the charter at any time. It's not only contingent on the Charter Review Commission reviewing it. So I don't know if we need a motion to move this forward or not, but I would be voting against it.

Council Member Zalingo? I think Council Member Ryan said just what I'm thinking as well, because I'm not sure that the committee understands our ability via even in addition to our council procedures, which we look at every year and decide on and indeed have adjusted some for the way we handle when the president is not here to preside over the meeting with the vice president. So I'll second her opinion on that.

Council Member Bader.

Based on the way we've been proceeding through these, it seems to me to be proper for us to make someone, if we don't want to include this, to make a motion to remove this. Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Ryan moves that we remove Proposition 7 from consideration.

With reluctance in regard to the Charter Review Commission's work, I will second that.

And we have a motion and a second to move this. Council Member Bader.

Yeah, just to speak to that. While I think it's ill-advised and not the right procedure, I think the Charter Review Commission had the opportunity to consider that. And while I don't personally support this idea out of respect for them, I'm going to vote against taking this away from putting in front of the voters. Thanks.

I made my comments here, what, two weeks ago. I'm not in favor of this idea for the three reasons. One is we can do it anytime, staff time. Also, I think more of a philosophical point is I don't think the charter should be up for review constantly. I think it's more of a foundational document that should be slow to change. Any other comments or questions? Okay. Clerk, please take the role.

Council Member Bader? No. Vice President Ryan? Yes. Council Member Bravano? Yes. Council Member Tuohy? Yes. Council Member Weir? Yes. Council Member Zarlanko?

Yes. President Schwab? Yes. Okay, moving on to our next proposition.

We just have two left. This is the modernization, which allows for publication on the city's website, has some clarification on ordinances being available in the Office of the Clerk and what format and how many copies there are. And we also inserted some of the public notice language around the initiative and referendum processes into this. So that's the 11.6 that's up there at the top. I think this, no, that one doesn't have it. Oh, yeah, this was because I wanted to clarify 3.4 and 3.5 are in here. So this has been unchanged. There's questions about it. Or if you're all good with it, we can move ahead to our last one. Okay. Okay. looks like it um i think this is the last one which was the question of term limits and this is wouldn't be proposition nine anymore you already cut one and we renumbered some things maybe it would end up being six um and it's what what had been drafted and discussed by the committee ultimately was not included in the final report along with a few other items um what they originally talked about was three consecutive full terms of office so um

And this is our current language because we voted on putting this forward. Is there any?

Yes, we did. You did have, well, I don't know. I put it into the ordinance.

We put it there, but there's never been a vote to include it. It's just always, but because Council Member Toohey had a strong interest in this, we've included the language here to give you guys an opportunity. I think you would want to vote to include this.

Okay, so right now it's not officially not added. That's what you're telling me. to our current language proposal?

It is in the ordinance, but I think our recommendation is that unlike the others that have been part of the recommendation from staff the entire time, that we would recommend that you take an action.

You want us to have a separate vote to put it in the final ordinance? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

Council Member Bader. Thanks, Council President. I thought there was more elaborate language to this that had some caveats.

There is.

Okay, thank you. I just wanted to confirm that.

They all are more elaborate. They all are like at least a page. I just pulled the summary proposition language for the PowerPoint, so it's longer.

Council Member Toohey.

Yeah, I mean, I realize that this didn't come through as a final from the committee, and I appreciate all of their conversation on it. To me, it's been a very important part of what I hear from constituents, and it's similar to districts when council considered districts and that failed. So the community did come forward with initiative, and that very well may be at some point that would happen, but Everett, most cities don't have districts. And like they said, most cities don't have term limits, but Everett is kind of a unique size where we're not quite big, but we're also not little. And the other thing that this would do ultimately is to provide another opportunity for diversity to ensure that we're building diversity in our leadership and ensuring that we're representing our changing community. If I think back when I was in high school, the number of diversity that we had was so limited. And now it's like, it's really amazing what our community has done. So this is just another tool to ensure that we are able to continue to represent and to districts did a great job. And you can see by looking at the diaz here. So I support it. I understand most of you probably won't, I would be surprised, but I would move forward that we add this to to the voters in November.

That's quite a motion motions. Is there a second? Yeah. Councilman, we're Oh, do we have a second motion on the floor? There a second? She made a motion. No, she. Yeah, yeah.

What? No, I. I just was saying I.

You want to second? Second the motion.

Second with a different change to it.

OK, we can second an amendment. OK, if you don't know, that's OK. Let's see if we all second the motion so we can have discussion. Very good. Okay, go ahead. Do we have a council mayor where?

Sorry, I'm trying to follow the track of what we're doing. I would be in favor of if we changed it to four consecutive full term sub office because I think as it's written, it could be perceived as directly targeting certain individuals on council or in an elected office at this time. Whereas for gives the it does offer for the turnover that that council member to is referring to as far as making sure that we are getting fresh blood on the council makes it more maybe feel a little more accessible for people to to throw their, their hat in the ring for it.

A motion to amend. Is there a second on the amendment before terms.

I'll second that.

Can she second amendment to her original motion.

Okay.

Great. All right. So on the table, we have an amended motion. Okay. So on the amendment, right. We vote on the amendment, right?

Right. Yeah.

That's on the amendment. Any further discussion? Okay. On the amendment clerk, please take the role.

Council member Bader.

Yes.

Vice President Ryan. No. Council Member Burbano. Yes. Council Member Tuohy. Yes. Council Member Weir. Yes. Council Member Zarlingo. Yes. President Schwab. Yes.

Okay, so now we have an amended motion that limits it to four terms. Is there any further discussion? That's where beta you have kind of like the finger.

I'm so sorry. Yeah. And I apologize. Oh, it's good. As I said before, I like the idea. I like the concept. I'd be happy to sign a voter initiative for this. But for for me, the fact the charter review explicitly didn't advance this makes me well, gives a deciding reason for me to vote against it at this time. just because it seems so contrary to what they advanced to us. Thank you.

Councilor Ryan?

Ditto.

Any other questions or comments? Okay. For the no, we have a motion that's been amended to add to our language. It will be Proposition 6, most likely. Limit the three consecutive full-term to four consecutive full-term office. Clerk, please take the roll.

Council Member Bader?

No.

Vice President Ryan? No. Council Member Bravano?

No.

Council Member Tuohy? Yes. Council Member Weir? Yes. Council Member Zarlingo?

No.

President Schwab? No. OK. And so that concludes our propositions. So could we have a summary, please? Anyone?

Yes, you can. Because I took all my notes, absolutely. And I can tell you like some next steps too that might be useful. So we have the amended, so Proposition 1, amended 2.2, eligibility to hold office, no dual elected offices, and then the discussion about the residency, the one year, and the clock starting at the last day of candidate filing week. Number two, the 36 council meetings a year with the fix on who picks who runs the meeting when the president and vice president are gone. I think that's it. Number three is the civil service proposition proposal. Four is the, you also have to vote on the main motion, I'm realizing anyways, but four is all of the initiative stuff, the initiative thresholds, the petition process, the petitioner's committee, their ability to cure invalid signatures that they've submitted, the inclusion of a fiscal impact statement, when the finance director prepares it, where it's located. Um, five is gone. So that's not the periodic review. We cut that. So the new five is the modernization and website noticing that touches like nine chapters of the charter. And that's it. That's five. Yeah.

And so our original, we did original motion to, to create the language in the ordinance. Um, we have amended it several times now. And so do I have a motion to do a final adoption of council bill two six zero three dash three three as amended.

So move. Seconded.

Okay. Is there any more questions or comments? Okay. Clerk, please take the roll.

Council Member Bader. Yes. Vice President Ryan. Yes. Council Member Burbano. Yes. Council Member Tuohy. Yes. Council Member Weir. Yes. Council Member Zarlingo. Yes. President Schwab.

Yes. Good work. Thank you very much. All right. On to our breaching action item.

Just a quick thank you to our charter review.

Oh, yes. Thank you. Yeah, please. oh and I just had one more thing too um without Council um unless Council has other ideas I would ask that the we allow the mayor's staff to make go through the process and make the appointments for the con and pro for the propositions and with a final decision by the council final vote by the council

So tomorrow we'll advertise to the community. We've got a press release and web form ready that there are, we had it ready for nine. Now there's five propositions. So we'll put the word out to the community for folks to sign up if they want to sign be part of the pro or con committees that write the language for the voters pamphlet. So we're going to launch that. And the deadline for folks to sign up would be basically Sunday night, the 26th, I think. Is that right? Yeah. And then we'll bring it as part of your agenda on the 29th for you to confirm the appointments to those five committees. Lots of opportunity for public involvement. if we don't fill all the seats, so it's kind of three committee members pro and three con for each of the five propositions. If we don't fill all of them, the auditor has a step where they also advertise, but we have to be kind of, to be very fair about how the appointments are made. So we'll follow the same process we did recently for the EMS levy and in 2024 for the um various things were on the ballot that year uh confirm that folks live in the city um under state law they have to live in this in the city of everett so they can't be an interested party from outside city limits so we'll confirm that and um no comment on how after that whole discussion we just had but that is part of one of the steps um and then so like probably sort of through a random draw make sure that there's you know the top three get appointed but There, Ramsey.

Council Member Ryan.

Can folks, apparently if you are registered to vote, that's an easy way to figure out if they live in the city limits. It's the only way. Can people sign up for more than one? Yes.

Okay.

Yeah. Good question.

Yeah. So the, it'll be just one form where you can fill in your info and then you just, you know, check a box for all the ones you want to volunteer for. Okay.

So without objection, is that fine for the 29th? Then we'll vote on the final selection of names. Okay. Thanks. Anyone else? Did you have something else?

That's it.

Okay, good.

Excited to have reached this.

And Scott, we just wanted you to stand up here a little bit longer. So Dave Kuntz, Okay, thank you very much for all your hard work both the Commission, I mean I and for this group, I just saw over and over hard work on all aspects, thank you Jennifer for your hard work and. Dave Kuntz, it's been quite a process so alright so moving on, so we have a brief and briefing and action item number 15 a resolution approving a purchase of properties for the everett outdoor events Center. So, Scott, thank you.

President Schwab, council members, Scott Pattison, staff, thank you for the time tonight. I know it's been a grind. Ben and I promise to get through this quickly. On April 29th, 2026, the council authorized the mayor to sign all documents necessary for the city to access the $7.4 million grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce. On that same day, the council also approved funding for property acquisition. Tonight, we are seeking your approval to purchase properties known as 1, 2, 3, and 5. Also tonight, I have our consultant, Ben Franz, with me, and we'll go through a short presentation with you.

All right. Council President, Council Members, it's great to see you this evening. As always, I enjoy being a witness to your parliamentary proceedings and process. I will admit that I got a little bit lost during some of the back and forth, but fortunately for all of us, you did not. And so I appreciate that. As Scott said, we will have just a brief presentation for you tonight. Want to touch on schedule, the specifics of our property acquisition efforts to date, at least that which we can share in public. As you know, much of that is protected in executive session as we have a sense of negotiations still underway. And then Scott will wrap up again with the specific actions tonight and then later this month. Tonight you'll take, you have before you some consideration of key properties that allow us to unlock the state grant. And those properties also constitute site control for us to be able to advance critical work in the field. Obviously, as soon as we present to you a full funding plan and a commitment from our general contractor for the total project cost. And so we anticipate that will happen later this summer. In September, we anticipate actually bringing forward to you all of the remaining properties we need to construct the facility and we're making great progress. on that front and then later this fall or early winter want to be under construction with the full project. So making tremendous progress throughout all the various project efforts. I want to share with you tonight just a couple of our most recent renderings. This is a view looking from the north entrance at Wall Street out toward the field. This is the field in the baseball configuration. As you know, this will both serve professional baseball and professional soccer. You can start to see some of the language of the materials of the facility really mixing that industrial nature of Everett along with some clues from the history of the local tribes and construction. So you're still seeing some nods to the longhouse that are in that central core of the building on the main concourse. We're also working just off screen to the left there, we're working through the details of what we need in the program and where we can make refinements to maintain overall project budget. So I'll just give you one small example of that tonight. We originally had four ticket windows. Now, most tickets are digital these days. You still need some ticket windows. You need at least one that's dedicated just to general customer service. So we're actually down to three ticket windows. Now, what does that mean? It means we're able to shrink the administrative building, use that one ticket window space now for administrative space. So there's just a one example of the kind of things that we're working on to refine the overall program, deliver what we need, have the facility meet what's really happening today and likely into the future for things like ticketing and concessions, and then again, aligning with our overall budget. um this is a shot just inside uh to the concessions area again working through all the details what's the flow of the customers and visitors and ticket holders through this where's all the seating i will note that the seating you're seeing here in this rendering this is just the platform the seating this will actually be individual fixed seats majority of them will be 20 inches around home plate you will see 22 inch seats there'll be a slight differential in the ticket price for baseball games uniform ticket price in those areas for soccer. So just a couple of examples of the work that's happening from a high level down to a few examples of, you know, details literally in the weeds of the project itself. So really pleased with the progress to date on that front and look forward later this summer to bringing you some more updated renderings and specificity. Shifting to the main focus of tonight's consideration for you is property acquisition. Again, making great progress on this front. All the properties you see here in that light teal color and blue have signed purchase and sale agreements. My compliments actually to Scott Pattison. He's been actively involved in this. and has been a significant contributor to finalizing these agreements. So really pleased with the overall progress, and we do have one in purple there that's a pending purchase and sale agreement, just some minor details that we're working through at this point on that property. What's before you tonight, however, is parcels number two, one, three, and five. The majority of these will be purchased with the state grant. As I've mentioned in the past, this is a preferred method for capital grants, and it's actually something that I didn't know about until we started talking to the state about this project. They really like being able to transfer those funds directly into escrow. It avoids some additional red tape on their end. It gives them confidence and surety that the funds are going directly to their intended purpose. And it actually can happen in a much tighter, much shorter timeframe. So for parcels two, three, and five, those will be purchased with the state grant funds. Four, we also intend to purchase with those state grant funds as soon as that closes. Of course, that will come back to you before that is done for your final approval. And parcel one will be purchased with some of the funds that you previously approved for the project. I believe that was in late April. Yes.

April 29th.

So again, just a summary here, parcel one will be purchased with a portion of those city funds that you appropriated in April. Two, three, and five will be purchased directly with those state grant funds with the state transferring those funds directly into escrow. And that'll leave a balance in that state fund grant. Again, we intend to use that to purchase parcel four. Also before you tonight is a first reading on a funding ordinance for the purchase of parcel 12. And I'll turn it back to Scott to talk about that.

Yes. So the first reading of the funding ordinance for parcel 12, the timeline on parcel 12, it was the first property we had under contract. The owner signed the purchase sale agreement in February. And with all of our due diligence periods, we are up against our six months. and we have to take action on that property. We have, through approved funds, the majority of the funds to purchase that property, but the additional $1.9 million would be used to close on that property before our due diligence runs out. I will remind you that this is a loan. that we're taking, in addition to the third reading on the 29th, I believe it is, two weeks from tonight, I will also be bringing a resolution in front of you that will allow us to pay ourselves back for our loan. I know that sounds goofy, but through policy, we actually have a resolution that you will approve that will allow us to pay ourselves back once financing is in place.

Council Member Tui.

And so that will include the other 10.6 million that we've loaned ourselves. Is that right? Both of those will be part of that. Correct. Good question. Thank you.

So I had a question about... Was there any other announcements or any other commitments by other agencies or anything that is going to come before us?

There will be a couple announcements expected in the next 30 days from what looks like to be two partners coming into the project with some additional funds.

So there's more announcements. We're still soliciting more investors in this project? That's correct. Okay. Council Member Toohey.

So on parcel one, you said a portion would be paid through city funds. Where does the rest of that come from?

Actually, parcel one will be funded fully with city funds already approved by council. Okay. I misunderstood that. Thank you. Parcel four will be purchased with the remaining balance from the state and some additional monies from the city.

The 1.9 million.

No, that's for parcel 12.

Okay.

Yeah, so parcel 12 in the first reading tonight, the $1.9 million in addition to already approved funds will buy parcel 12. Already approved funds will buy parcel 1. There's a remaining balance with the state of Washington of $1.2 million that will help us acquire parcel 4.

Okay.

So more to come on parcel 4. More to come on parcel 4. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions from Council? Okay, great. All right, is there any more? Okay, thank you very much then. Just need you to approve us purchasing some properties. Yeah, got that. All right, so before us, we have action item number 15, adopt a resolution approving purchase of properties for outdoor event center. Is there a motion?

Move to approve the resolution.

Council member Ryan seconds.

Motion and second. Any more comments? Okay. Clerk, please take the roll.

Council member Bader. Yes. Vice president Ryan. Yes. Council member Burbano. Yes. Council member Tuohy. Yes. Council member Weir. Yes. Council member Zarlingo. Yes. President Schwab. Yes.

Thank you.

All right. So we're going to move to public hearing. Another one. Item number 16, adopt a resolution. For the Annual Transportation Improvement Program, known as TIP, the update for 27 through 32, I will now open the public hearing. Is there anyone here to speak on this issue?

There is not.

Okay. They've all gone. All right. So I guess at this point, there's no presentation. The opening area is open. And is there a motion to close the public hearing?

Council Member Ryan, some moves.

Second. Okay. Clerk, please take the roll.

Council Member Bader? Yes. Vice President Ryan? Yes. Council Member Bravano? Yes. Council Member Tuohy? Yes. Council Member Weir? Yes. Council Member Zarlingo? Yes. President Schwab? Yes.

Yes. Do I have a motion to adopt item number 16?

Council Member Ryan, so moves.

Second the motion. Motion sex when made. Clerk, please take the roll.

Council Member Bader. Yes. Vice President Ryan. Yes. Council Member Bravano. Yes. Council Member Tuohy. Yes. Council Member Weir. Yes. Council Member Zarlengo. Yes. President Schwab.

Yes. And with no further business before us, no executive session, meeting's adjourned.