City Council - Regular Meeting

Call the City of Mount Vernon City Council meeting for Wednesday, June 10th, 2026 to order. The time is now 7.04 p.m. Would you please stand with me for the flag salute?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for

to ask the clerk to please call the roll.

Council Member Beaton? Here. Council Member Damon? Here. Council Member Hudson? Is excused tonight. Council Member Oliver?

Here.

Council Member Tercero?

Here.

Council Member Vanderstoop?

Here.

Council Member West?

Here. Thank you, Carrie. Item 2, Council, I would entertain a motion to approve tonight's agenda, if you like.

I'll make a motion. I'll second that motion.

Motion by Navora, second by Melissa. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Item three is community comments. If there's anyone in council chambers tonight who would like to address city council, please come on up and state your name, your city of residence, and introduce your chickens. Aye.

Okay. I'm Virginia Learned. I am a board member for the Skagit County Fair for the advisory board, and we have mascots this year. And so the mascots are making the rounds to remind everybody about the fair that's taking place in August. So our hope was maybe we could get a little picture with y'all. Wonderful.

I've got that kind of time right now.

And so here we are, if you don't mind, which you might, but sorry. Don't be afraid. They're just chickens. They're not even real. They don't bite. Nope, they don't bite.

What's wrong with the one in the back?

Okay, so that chicken happened to have attended the bubble run at the Cedar Valley Chamber event last weekend, and we've kept her attire on her because it's been a really rainy couple of days. So, no, the rooster spark. So, we are just working really hard to get the word out to make the fair a success, and so this is part of that, and Demi's my pal, so I coerced her and said, hey, can I come? So I want to thank you for the opportunity to share with you. You each have a flyer with the date and the website. And thank you.

Thank you. Looking forward to the Skagit County Fair, August 6th through the 9th this year. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to address City Council? I will say there is an open public hearing a little later tonight for the Transportation Improvement Plan. If you're here for comments on the Transportation Improvement Plan, just have you hold on a minute or two. I welcome.

Hi, Andre. I'm Mount Vernon. So I would like to start by thanking all of the council members for the ward meetings that you've committed to doing regularly. I'm really enjoying them. So thank you. It's great to hear just the public. Conversation with you guys. I appreciate that a few council members have discussed creating some sort of civic information or civic school for the public and and how to participate in city council meetings. And I hope that the council and mayor will take these suggestions to heart. I come here every week. I've sat through a couple public hearings, and the conversations in my community today were, wait, how does this work? Wait, what can we do? Can we ask questions? So there's a lack of knowledge on how these proceedings take place, and it would be really appreciated if there was a... You know something up on the YouTube channel that was like this is how you participate in a public hearing. So that would be really great and then I would also like to ask Council to consider streaming live or recording the committee meetings. While these are open to the public there are people in the community that do not want to come to the police station and I understand for some that might be hard to understand. But it is a reality and it does keep many community members from being able to observe and participate in committee meetings and follow along with the thoughts and ideas of the council and the mayor. So please consider making those more accessible to the public. Thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you. Anyone else?

Hello, Sam Irons from Mount Vernon. I just also wanted to thank everyone for the award meetings. Those have been great to connect in the community together. And I've met a lot more people and neighbors, so that's been wonderful. I also wanted to thank you for bringing up FLOC again, that the contract's coming up in the fall. So it's great to have open communication. I think that transparency is really important here. And it's just such a concern for folks in the community. So for it to be taken seriously and open communication is great. I also wanted to highlight the United Way Community Action, our partnering to host the Clean Up the Cape, June 27th and 28th, to help support families in Skagit. I don't know if all of you have heard about that. Even though it's East County... helps folks in Skagit, and then also there's teams you can sign up with and randomly be selected to donate $5,000 or more to your charity of your choice. So it might be like a fun way to get out in the community, support neighbors, and then maybe help folks around here too with that. So I just want to throw that out there, but thanks.

Thank you. Any other comments from the community tonight? All right. We will move on in our agenda. Item four, tonight's consent agenda includes meeting minutes, payroll, claims, an agreement, and a resolution. Would council like to move for consent agenda adoption? So moved.

Second.

Motion by Navarro and a second by Demme. Any discussion there? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion passes. reports councilmember comments any councilmember comments tonight yes

I just have a real quick one. One, I want to thank everyone who spoke earlier and also everyone who's shown up for the hearing that will speak in a little bit. And then I also wanted to give a shout out to our library real quick. They have a summer reading program. They have a youth one and one for adults. I will be participating. I would love to see everyone else also participating. And I just want to shout out our wonderful library.

Great.

Thank you. And the board. Um, yeah, just thank you to everybody who showed up to our ward meeting on Monday. Um, it, it was a very, uh, I thought vigorous, um. Discussion and so I look forward to those in the future because I'm, I'm hoping that. Uh, more people will show up and, um, give us their opinions. Um, we, we talked about the downtown. And just different ideas of. what people saw as our challenges, saw as our opportunities. So thank you so much for everybody who showed up on Monday there at the library. Thank you.

Melissa, then Randy.

Thank you. Yep, I just wanted to remind everyone that Ward 3 is having our ward meeting a week from tomorrow, Thursday, June 18th, from 5.30 to 7 at Fire Station 3. And we're hoping that they might actually be able to pull those fire engines out and let us be in the bay and have a little bit more room. So, yeah, hope to see you all there.

Can you tell us the date one more time?

Thursday, June 18th, a week from tomorrow.

Okay.

Thank you. Council Member West.

Yep.

Thank you. And I'm just kind of piggybacking off of Navor on the appreciation for the library. Isaac for the for the venue for the ward meeting on Monday night, and then thank you of course to the people that attended We didn't quite fill up all the seats. I'll admit but you know that gives us a goal from for the next one so And this one had kind of an outdoors focus, but people Just from the quick notes that I had folks were wanting to make the outdoors More recreational and more accessible And in terms of safety, you know, enforcing speed limits that are already there. Just, Mr. Mayor, so you're aware. Better sidewalks, trail systems to connect our parks. I suggested, you know, maybe bringing in Bellingham. I love the Bellingham parks and trails system. And, you know, I'm not afraid of learning from people that are doing it right. So, you know, maybe we have the Bellingham Parks Department come give us suggestions on what they would do with with our environment. Then e-bike regulations, you know, that's something that's at the front of most of our minds right now. And so, yeah, a lot of it was focused outside. Thank you.

Anyone else? All right. We will move on to the mayor's report. So for Mayor's Report tonight, our community helped us find a safe central location to post letters spelling out Mount Vernon in preparation for the 2026 World Cup, which begins this week. Mount Vernon is joining other Skagit cities and towns who have created similar signs, all of them funded through a grant from the Skagit Tourism Bureau. The Tourism Bureau coordinated this effort as part of a larger grant that they received to promote and prepare for the arrival of out-of-country soccer fans coming to the region this month through mid-July for World Cup games in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. Visitors and locals are encouraged to visit all six signs around Skagit County. Take a selfie at each sign. Collect your selfies. Explore the Skagit cities and towns. That's all part of this promotion. The letters will remain in place in downtown Mount Vernon indefinitely. We'll see how they do there, how they hold up. I also want to take a quick moment to congratulate all of the graduating seniors in the city of Mount Vernon. The Mount Vernon Bulldogs and the Mount Vernon Christian Hurricanes both have seniors that are moving on to the next stage of their lives, and we wish all of them well. I know that the Mount Vernon high school seniors were parading through downtown just earlier tonight and celebrating with our residents down there, and we hope to be there next year. We hope the next year's parade can be scheduled on a non-city council meeting night. so that we can all join. But congrats to all of our seniors who are graduating this spring summer. That is your mayor's report for June 10th, 2026. Thank you, Adam. We will move on to new business. Item A tonight is the presentation and public hearing for the city's transportation improvement plan update. And our capital projects manager, Frank Reinhart, is going to present this item to us. Hello, Frank.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. So this is kind of the penultimate presentation for this year. Stop doing that. It's not going to let me do it that way either.

Do we have it there somewhere? Again, did it run away? Yeah, that toolbar sneaks up on you. You got to be quick to hit the icon. Nicely done.

All right.

Technology challenge accepted. So just to refresh here on you, we are currently in the process of working on our annual update to the transportation improvement program. This is the 2027-2032 tip. We posted it to the city website on May 20th and advertised for tonight's public hearing in the Schedule Herald on the 20th and 27th. We have made a couple minor corrections, well, moderate corrections to the draft already since it was posted and since you received it in May. But we're still kind of moving forward with the idea that those corrections would just be folded into large ones. Basically, the corrections... involved finally fixing a math problem with table one that I've been looking for for a year now. Again, a lot of the tip is set up to kind of cross add itself. So tracking these math errors is a little bit difficult, but basically it was grabbing the pre-2027 column and adding it into the 2027 projects. So I was ending up with spending $9 million in arterial funds next year. And I'm not planning on actually doing that. But I also needed to extend the design preliminary engineering budgets for the three major federally funded transportation projects because those projects need to have a lifespan that goes until the scheduled construction period. When WSDOT final approves a project to move forward to construction, they have to review it against the federal standards that apply at that point in time. Even though I'm finishing the project designs for the most part in the next year and a half, I will need to make some allowance for updating it to the current standards in anticipation of actually advertising those projects. So I've made those adjustments in the tables. And then finally, there's a small plethora of typos in the project descriptions that I'll be correcting. But other than that, the purpose of tonight is to receive public or counsel and then public feedback on it. When we get to the hearing portion of the, I do have two public communications that came to me directly, which I will read into the record as part of the public hearing, but otherwise the anticipation is to receive that tonight. And unless there's a reason, otherwise bring you a recommendation at your June 24th meeting to adopt the final tip for this year in a, Advance of the statute deadline of July 1st. So with that, questions from the council or comments from the council.

Thank you, Frank. Council, before we open the public hearing, do you have questions for Frank or comments? Okay. Well, with that, we will open the public hearing for the transportation improvement plan. Let's start first with the written comments and read those into the record, if you will, please, Frank.

The first is an email that I received today at 1.28 p.m. from Kate Selting Smith. She writes, Hi, Frank. Thank you for all your leadership for transportation improvements in our city. Just wanted to share that as a mother of two young kids that love to ride bikes, I appreciate projects that prioritize protected bike lanes and improve connections between existing public trails, lanes, and routes. For example, efforts to improve the connection between the downtown Riverwalk and the Colson Trail would be amazing to help create safe routes to schools and parks. Thanks again, Kate Selting-Smith. First one. The second one was an email received yesterday, 8.29 p.m., from Ingrid Hennen, who identifies herself as a member of the Skagit Valley Bike Coalition. She writes, Hello, Mr. Reinhardt, Mayor Donovan, and Mount Vernon City Council. I want to make a few comments about the TIP draft for 2027-2032. First, thank you so much for all the designs, plans, and efforts to improve the bikeability and walkability of our community. It feels inspiring and hopeful to imagine these updates make Mount Vernon a place where we can see more people out and about than we see cars bumper to bumper. There are a few projects I want to make note of. One, the pedestrian bridge. Very exciting. I hope this is prioritized. And a question. In the interim, is it possible for bike sharrows and a bikes on bridge sign to be added to the bridge? She's referring to the 536 bridge. While all this maintenance is being done, seems like a perfect time to add that visibility. Number two, dike trail improvements and additions. Yes, I think this is an underutilized asset that is so special to this area. and could hugely impact the trail connectivity of our region, and it's a win-win. Off-road trails are cheaper, easier, and appreciated by drivers and cyclists alike. Three, I am a little confused about the Riverside Drive improvements. They sound limited. This road is generally stressful for pedestrians and cyclists. Will there be better access and ADA improvements, or at the very least, is a parallel route being worked on? For example, I am delighted by the Complete Street program and notice that Kincade Street is slated for Multiple multimodal improvements, particularly at intersections to bring the street up to current complete street standards. This will include improvements to the railroad crossing for pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as mitigation for habitual and hazardous pedestrian crossing. I would love to see this at more major intersections and areas with high traffic so that people can access shops, parks, schools, and grocery stores with ease. Number four, a general note. I am glad to see the tip includes comments to, quote, incorporate stormwater utility improvements as required by the current Ecology Stormwater Design Manual. It makes me wonder if there are plans to incorporate street trees into these designs. I would imagine bigger improvement projects naturally include some element of plants, greenery, planning, and I would love to see this as a central part of the design of our roads, sidewalks, and pathways. Street canopies and vegetation include make for healthier and more beautiful cities. Again, thank you for this dedicated ongoing work to improve Mount Vernon and incorporate into the wider comprehensive plan to address how transportation is linked to our health and the health of the climate of this beautiful region, gratefully, Ingrid Hendon. So that concludes the comments that I've received in advance.

Thank you, Frank. So that's our written comments. Would anyone in person like to address City Council for the public hearing? for the 2027 to 2032 Transportation Improvement Plan. Come up and state your name and city of residence for the record.

Andrea, Mount Vernon. Can I ask questions?

You can ask questions. We might get back to you later. Okay.

Um, one question is what does projects not programmed mean? So there was like. Projects. And then there was like all the really exciting, fun stuff that said not programmed. And so I, I don't quite understand what that categorization was.

Council of it's all right. I break our, okay. So, um, so projects that have funding identified within the next six years are programmed in the transportation improvement plan. We don't have a funding source identified within the next six years, then it's not programmed However, it's set aside to earmark that this is an important project.

Okay, perfect. Okay. Thank you for that So my next comment is that I hope any Riverside Drive improvements will include some sort of making the sidewalk feel safer and making a possibility of a bike lane a Or a parallel while you're... I rode my bike here tonight and there is no north to south bike lane. I weaved in between a bike lane, a shoulder, no shoulder, cars speeding around me, cars almost running red lights at college. There's no good... Yeah, so making that a priority for the next six, sometime in the next six years, I would hope. The next thing I would like to consider that I believe is actually quite urgent is crosswalk lights at 15th and Blackburn. So there is a crosswalk already there, however, Blackburn is a straightaway. You can see where the new housing development is all the way from like 13th. You can barely see the stop signs at 18th and Blackburn. I walk that crosswalk. least once a day and I am very concerned I'm going to get hit when I'm standing at the corner people do not stop for me when I am in the crosswalk I constantly have to stop and like make the driver aware that I'm there I've spoken to all of my neighbors we have a very active neighborhood that crosses 15th and Blackburn on a regular basis some elderly folks as well And we have all have stories of standing in the middle of the crosswalk being like, oh, my God, are you going to stop? So some lights there would be like the blinky lights that you guys did on Broad and 12th, I think, right by the school. That was such a. like needed improvement. So thank you for that. But it would be really nice to have that on Blackburn, especially with the approximately hundred new homes that are going in on Blackburn. I am concerned that people are going to be driving on that. Like it's a highway because there are no barriers. There's no, I think Andrew, you had a term for it, like shrinking the size of the street basically and making it less easy to speed on would be great. And I think those are all my comments. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else? Yeah, come on up.

Hey, again, Sam Irons, Mount Vernon. I just wrote down some places I've noticed while I've been walking, biking and driving. There's a trail that kind of oddly is across the street from like Trumpeter Drive on 30th and people walk. across that road all day. Kids walking with their backpacks, couples walking around with dogs and parents with strollers and they just have to like bolt across. It's pretty dangerous. So that'd be great if there was like a crosswalk there. And then today I was walking down to the bakery and realized there was a pole right in the middle of the sidewalk um it's across from the ufcw union building on it's like that first block of north 18th street off of east college way um looks like it would be a complicated thing to fix but people literally can't use it um they have like walkers or wheelchairs um so that's really unfortunate um then I noticed a lot of 30th Street was on the document but it wasn't specified the sidewalk out front of the mobile park which is really difficult to maneuver on a bicycle so I was just making sure that full road plan wasn't just like because it also floods there I'm guessing was the issue with that road there but I didn't see it mention the sidewalk portion But it's very dangerous, so I just wanted to let you know about that, too. I think those were my top three I wanted to talk about. Thank you.

Thank you. What was the first one? Sorry, I didn't get a chance to hear it.

On 30th, it's like right where Trumpeter Drive meets 30th. It's the college trails where the baseball, softball fields are kind of normal. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.

Anyone else?

Hello, Dan Budzinski, Mount Vernon. I have to admit I haven't done my homework, but I want to just point out that one of the impediments for walkability from the hills to downtown is on the corner of 11th and Broad. northwest corner uh the south corner both south corners on that or south walkways on that corner are ada accessible that one is not and it's it seems a little more highlighted because there is a pedestrian lights flashing there but when you get to the north side you can't get up that if you're in a wheelchair or trying to push a stroller so i hope that it's on the TIP plan, and I hope it's towards the top. Thank you. Thanks, Dan.

I want to comment on all of these. We're not commenting. That's not what this is for. Come on up.

Welcome. Good evening. Lennis, Mount Vernon. I guess I have a few projects one is already done, but I hope it's gonna get better the changes that were made to the intersection at Blackburn and Little Mountain they took out the right hand no light recorder no stop and put in a three-way stop and then they removed all of the shoulder off an already crappy shoulder and So you used to at least have to have shoulder to walk on, but cars might hit you. Now they might hit you and you have no shoulder to walk on, so they could address that. And then following on with the comments about the 100 new houses going in, give or take, along Blackburn, some sort of pedestrian improvements along there, improving access to Little Mountain would be great. Perhaps even moving on the land that the county would love to let the city have. a trail would be great and then Oh third thing is I think it's out of its broader Kincaid but whatever the street is from up on the hill to downtown where it's overgrown there is some effort Thank You councillor Oliver to clean that section of sidewalk up hopefully soon but if it would be possible to put some speed bumps or something they're like high speed bumps Even if you can still walk on the sidewalk people drive twice the speed limit down that thing as they're gearing up to hit the freeway, so Slowing traffic down some other way along there would be Anyone else All right We're going to close the public hearing for the transportation improvement plan

Thank you, everyone, for your contributions. Really appreciate that. Really value that. Frank, you can comment on things if you have questions. Were we close with the program, not programmed? Yes.

I can offer some general ones. So some of the projects that were mentioned this evening are on the unprogrammed list. Some of them are not yet on the unprogrammed list. Um, the, the one that was referred to on 30th intrepid or is, is one of the higher level ones on my personal wishlist that has not made it onto the list. Cause I absolutely agree with the public comment. Um, having watched that myself for the last couple of years and it's driving me faintly batty as a transportation professional. Um, One of the things that's noteworthy about this, and there was a couple people mentioned Broad Street, and they mentioned Broad Street once you are at 11th and west of 11th. There is a unprogrammed project called the Broad Street realignment. It has been on the tip for a while and whatnot. I certainly absolutely agree with all of the various issues that have been identified up to the ones that have been mentioned this evening. The reason why it hasn't moved from where it's at right now is it's going to be a heck of an expensive project to do. If you look at the North 2 ramps that were referred to this evening, they are actually so grade separated from the street that it literally has that old archaic steps so that people can step down to the street level for the crosswalk from where the sidewalk is at today. So essentially, that's going to have to be rethought out just how that whole overall area looks, whether it retains its curvature or whether we turn that into an intersection, for instance, right where it takes the bend around the hill. how we adjust the hill slope to accommodate bikes coming down that road, because there's no accommodation right now for bikes on that street whatsoever. And it's a primary conduit between the up uptown area and the downtown area. I just wanted to share with council. There's a reason why I haven't gone nuts with the unprogrammed listing of the tip so far. And that's because there's a hundred million dollars of projects on it right now. Um, and there's probably a hundred to $150 million of projects that aren't on it. That should very much be on it. One of the things that I have been pausing on is the comprehensive plan update. Um, a lot of times transportation planning. I want the tip to follow the transportation element of the comprehensive plan because comprehensive plan is where this council. Uh, sets with public input and public participation. the sorts of transportation policies that dictate where is our priorities, where are we going to spend what limited city funds we have, as well as whatever we can beg, borrow, and steal, if you'll pardon the expression, from state and federal sources and whatnot. That list is pretty large. A lot of those projects that are on the unprogrammed are leftovers from the past comprehensive process. And from my standpoint, I don't consider it a legitimate decision for me to arbitrarily delete them and make space for new projects because that list of unprogrammed projects was adopted by a city council 10 years ago as part of the 2016 comprehensive plan update. That said, we've run out of room on the program section of the TIP from the standpoint of funding capacity and whatnot. And we have more projects. And every project that was suggested to you there this evening, if it isn't already on the tip, it should be. And we need to probably work on starting to introduce that. But I don't ever want that unprogrammed section to just turn into. A quarter billion dollars of projects that we're never going to see accomplished in 25 to 50 years of history in this city. Because it just becomes too easy to say, yeah, we just can't do any of it and then do none of it. So that's the reason why I'm careful about it there. But I certainly acknowledge that that unprogrammed portion of the tip represents a lot of stuff that's on there, but also a lot of stuff that is not yet on.

Well, the body of work that you put together for just the programmed portion of this and identifying funding sources and where those will be implemented for each project is pretty significant. So thank you for your work on that. I think Director Phillips has something, and then Council, I'll go to you if you have any comments or questions before we close this item.

Dancing and dining pleasure. Okay, so some of the comments that were made, quite frankly, fit a different context. category in the sense that it's a traffic safety issue it's a life safety issue some of the things that you all are talking about um for the first two commenters i just pointed this out but for the people at home i just want to make sure there is a means of getting that information in here that we will sit there and take a look at and that's through the traffic safety review so on our website if you go to the department select public works then select the drop down that says traffic safety There is a whole portion in here that talks about everything that just was mentioned by our public. And there is a PDF fillable submission form that if you hit that link and add all the things that you just talked about, it doesn't fall on deaf ears. type of a setting with our police department and a variety of other folks that are around there and then it can make it to a conversation that comes back to you but you will get a response from this guy right here on what the city is doing and i think again i just The Broad Street piece, one thing I just want to point out is that Mary and the council said, hey, we're concerned about pedestrians coming down that hill, and I don't want to lose sight of the fact that the city does nothing. The city did work with WSDOT. The city put a flashing pedestrian sign that should not be white noise to vehicles coming down that hill, so they know that there is a pedestrian crossing that's up there and should, again, slow down. It may come into a fact that Chief, sorry to put you on the spot here. That's an enforcement issue. People speeding down that hill, we, Public Works, could do what we can. But again, it's the broader government response to that, which again, we do work with our chief and ensure that his folks are aware of what's going on. And with that, that's my color commentary. Thank you, Mayor.

Thanks, Public Works Director Chris Phillips. Yeah, and I believe in addition to that, the changes there, that light, the timing at the light for the pedestrians was lengthened as well. Not a silver bullet, but it's a step in the right direction. If anyone listening at home was listening to Chris's explanation of how you get to the fillable form and the PDF and your mind just exploded, you can pick up the phone and call my office anytime, 360-336-6211. We'll talk with you and get you to the right person. For for questions that you might have council Comments questions.

Yeah Quick one and maybe this should be a committee thing, but I won't get a chance for a month So I'm just gonna do it right now So when we look at a project like this is gonna be tough because you don't have the image up but Broad Street For Broad Street, we're talking about two different parts of it We're talking about the northern part. We talked about the southern part of Broad Street And when it's going down the hill There's a piece of... There's something that we can do with Broad Street, in my opinion, pretty rapidly, which is on the south side, we have to grow that sidewalk because it's maybe, I don't know, maybe two and a half feet, maybe less. And then there's a power pole in it. And when we're talking about different projects, how does the department or how do we decide what is a good Band-Aid? Like in this example, it's that we take out part of that retaining wall on the south side, and we extend that sidewalk over, and that's a band-aid, right? And how do we decide when we're going to do that versus, oh, we're going to do a $10 million, we're going to close down, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, and all that jazz?

There's a couple different answers to your question, depending on the circumstances, but I get the example that you're describing. Yeah. One of the things that you see me do a lot of times, and I'm now doing in the TIP, is I'm trying to break projects down a little bit. The project can get too big. It can get to a point where we can't deliver on it. And as this council is aware, that was my finding for Riverside 1 and Riverside 2. They just got too big. And it got to a point where there's a lot of stuff that we need to do for these two segments of Riverside Drive. But this project needs to do this incremental part of it. And then we need to program the next one. And that's, that's the reason why this planning horizon document is so important is we need to be able to know that we haven't just written it off entirely that It's like, okay, we have the project today, but we also have the project down the road. So to use the Riverside Drive example. A few years ago, when the Riverside 2 project was first started, it was recognized that the intersection of Pacific Place and Riverside Drive was a dangerous intersection. It's actually a double signalized intersection. It's the first intersection you come to as you're coming south into the city from Burlington over the bridge there. And there is wide areas of the roadway where you can't actually see, or at least see very well, the signal that's in front of you. And that has led to a number of accidents and whatnot. That is not going to be an easy problem to fix. And there was an attempt to try and lump that into the Riverside 2 overlay project. it didn't go anywhere. But the problem was it also didn't, at that point in time, spawn a new project like it should have. And so that was what I changed with the 2026 TIP update was to create that new project. Recognizing it's a high profile project, but it's also going to be a super expensive one for us. The only thing that made it into the TIP at that point in time was a grant match for the design of the project and the construction of the project sat on the unfunded or on the not programmed portion of the TIP, which is where it sits for 2027. I've studied that project a little further, and even the design is probably too heavy a lift. And that's why you see in the 2027 TIP a intersection alternatives study introduced for 2028 so that we can sit down, look at all of our options there, and define how we're going to approach the design from a overall sense so that we then can make sure that we're getting the money that we apply for for funding to do that design later on plugged into it. If we have a project that's still that way, like Broad Street, it's because I haven't gotten to it to break it down and start talking about this. But the mayor asked me a very pertinent question about this subject last year, and I think it's still true today. This project has sat on the tip forever. What do we do to make this project move forward? And the answer is we take a look at what we were proposing to do and we try and make if we have to break it into incremental projects to do it, we will do that. Please note that any project that's adding a city street asset over $25,000 is really a capital project in its own right. And so when we talk about, I use the term interim project rather than band-aid project. If we talk about something like that, that's where I will take a piece out of that project and program it separately, because even if it's smaller than the greater picture, it's still a capital project in its own right. And so it still needs to have its identity in the tip. It then needs to have its identity for you in your budgetary documents for the CIP for transportation so that we make sure that we, if we can deliver something sooner to give us that interim improvement, that we have it programmed and planned so that people see not only the interim fix, but also that the real fix is still out there.

Excellent answer. Thank you so much. Thanks, Frank.

So kind of online Andrew. So kind of kitty corner up there on Lincoln school, like that sidewalk, there were the shrubbery and everything is severely overgrown. Um, I've seen several people try to, and, um, several of us have tried to run up that way. Like, is there like, well, whose responsibility is that, that point to maintain or to do a better job of that sidewalk area?

So frontage maintenance, you know, for that is typically a property owner responsibility. The tricky part is a lot of times when you get into those geometries like what you have out there, the property owner may or may not recognize that that's part of their responsibility because it doesn't front on their parking on their particular property. So it becomes a combination of us working with development services code enforcement to uh, compel property owners to take care of their frontage. Um, and then from my standpoint, again, it becomes part of that larger conversation too, of sustainability on our streets. But if there's something that I can correct about the street to remove the problem. And in that case, I would insert every instance of poles in our sidewalks that we have out there. Um, that we then look at the engineered solution, bearing in mind that there's usually multiple levels that you're talking about. There's things that, you know, compelling maintenance or doing city maintenance that can cure some of these issues. There's short-term projects that sub $25,000 fix like the The additional signage that WSDOT installed there for the radar sign, as well as the signal timing changes there at Broad for the interchange to I-5, those are another level. Capital project improvements, that's another level above that. And it's actually a range. You have the lower level capital improvements, things like sidewalk ramp improvements, for instance, and then the higher level, the multimillion dollar projects up at the upper range. So there's just a lot of times with these ideas, we've got to find the one or more levels that get us to the outcome we need, whether it's one project or a series of pieces along the way. Great.

Thanks, Frank.

Yes, Council Member Beaton.

Quick question, Frank. On the Blackbird Road extension from Little Mountain to Eaglemont, you have $40,000 in there next year for planning.

That is a project already in motion. And so a lot of times what you'll see for projects already in motion, and you can now, if you look at the individual project sheet, you'll know a project already in motion because it'll have a dollar total in the prior to 20,000, 2027 column within the individual project sheet. Very often I'm allocating, because we do annual budgeting here in Mount Vernon, I'm allocating what I expect to allocate later on. in the 2027 annual budget process, the money that I need to finish that study up. Unfortunately, a lot of projects that I do, design as well as construction, as well as the studies, are multi-year projects. And so I kind of have to space out the funding over the course of two or even three years to make sure that we're constantly making the ongoing budget decisions that we need.

Perfect.

Was there a second part to your question? I just wanted to...

No, I'm just glad that it's still on your radar. I knew it wouldn't drop off, but I was sitting there thinking, what in the world can we get for $40,000?

No, that is just the last of the budget that council authorized a couple years ago, along with the contract with David Evans to complete. And a preliminary transportation corridor planning study for the black future Blackburn extension. That's not a design for the Blackburn extension. The design from Blackburn extension is sitting on the program or not program portion of the tip right now.

Thanks.

Okay, well, Frank, thank you again for that. Item B is a resolution to surplus city vehicles and equipment and our public works director Chris Phillips has this item Chris.

Definitely not as sexy as the last topic that we had so good evening there it even City Council. One thing before I get into this particular topic, I just want to share is that whether we hear information from public. The Council for the mayor and it bears coffee. we get that together if it's a public works type of an item whether it's a light lighting at a parking lot near a church or if it's dealing with the sign that we talked about or a variety of other projects i'll go back with frank and figure out exactly what he talked about if it's the easy to do but it needs collaboration and other tools number one i think we're pretty responsive back to you and number two i think we're pretty responsive to our public as well as what we're doing and why we're doing it If it's easy, you're going to deal with me because Frank's too busy, and I'm going to sit there and play whack-a-mole to figure out who I need to talk to, how I need to do it, and then I'm going to provide updates to the boss as well as the council as to what we're doing with this. So, Councilmember Damon, I know we've exchanged a variety of emails, and hopefully I've earned your trust and confidence over the last six months, is that if you email me tomorrow about exactly where you're talking about at the Lincoln School, I will make sure that our code enforcement officer is aware of that. And we will go ahead and be Johnny on the spot. And then I'll follow up with him to me and me to you so that we're going to go ahead and take care of that site limit distance issue that we have going up there.

I've got a couple more.

Can we get back to item B, please? I'm sorry, boss. Again, I just want to make sure that, hey, people know how to make this happen. Thank you. So I am here before you to talk about something very important. Not sexy. It's dealing with the 2026 surplus vehicle and equipment list for those that were on council last year. You're aware of this for the new council members on this. We look at this every single year before we come to you with asking for new equipment in a budget year. So the new stuff comes in the stuff that's old, but still has value to it. We're going to go ahead and surplus it. And in this particular case. City staff recommends to City Council to approve Resolution 1102 authorizing the surplus of city vehicles and equipment to be sold at auction or disposed of scrap. In the executive summary here, staff has determined that certain vehicles and equipment are either no longer usable or are surplus to the needs of any city department and therefore we put them out for service. So on the resolution there, you can see a variety of vehicles for police, solid waste, parks, wastewater, surface water and streets regarding that. And again, we'll get the best top dollar off of that. It goes back into the city's ER and our fund. And then we'll come back to you again on how to repurpose those funds for the next year's offering as far as vehicles and equipment.

I did a fun exercise with that list, a fun exercise with that list earlier. The average age of those cars is 2005 or 21 years old. Yeah. So that's, That's not bad. We got some good service life out of it.

I think we got our minds worked.

We did. Interestingly, new vehicles are held by United States drivers for eight to nine years, used vehicles for 12 and a half years, and the average age of vehicles on our U.S. roads is 14 and a half years. So these are 21-year-old vehicles that we're getting. I just knew that off the top of my head. Well, thanks.

That's why you're in that position, sir.

Council, any questions for Chris? All right. Motions? So moved. Second. Motion by Andrew and a second, I think, by Navor. Any discussion?

Nope.

All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Motion passes. Thank you, Chris. Item 7, I'll ask our city attorney if there's a need for executive session tonight.

No.

That is the end of our agenda this evening and the end of our Mount Vernon City Council meeting for Wednesday, June 10, 2026. We stand adjourned at 7.54 p.m.