Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

Yes,

Julie.

Great. Good evening, everyone. My name is Kaye Williams, and this is my first meeting as a commissioner on the Transportation Commission. I am a Bellevue resident and lived in and around Bellevue for thirty five years, a long time. A commuter, a, you know, a resident shopper, diner.

I do a lot of biking, a lot of walking, a lot of running. So I'm really familiar with a lot of the the streets around Bellevue. I am, I worked for many years for Microsoft as a project and, product and program manager. And I, in in addition to that so that's kind of what my career has been focused on. And then I have spent, quite a bit of time doing, a variety of public oriented activities, starting from being an intern in my House of Representatives growing up on a page for the United States Senate.

Then I've been on homeowners associations a couple of times. And in my work at Microsoft, I helped to found an open source consortium related to soft securing open source software, and I served as the chair of that for one year, the first year that that was getting started. So all of that, you know, interest in transportation and, you know, background in doing, public work, made made me interested in joining the Transportation Commission, And, I'm really looking forward to working with you all, with staff and other commissioners, and, working towards, you know, keeping our transportation efficient here and keeping Bellevue a a vibrant and livable city.

Great. Well, welcome. We're really glad to have you.

Thank you.

Commissioner Rubin, just a quick introduction.

I know we're doing this today. Hey. So I was born and raised in Issaquah, a little farm out there. No. I don't know how far we're going back, but, I've been on Bellevue for probably thirty years. Worked most of my entire working career. It's been in the city of Bellevue. Was an avid cyclist, don't ride as much, but still had quite a bit. And, like yourself, I volunteered quite a bit. PTA, flag football, softball coach, and I was also a big brother with big brother and big big sisters.

Yeah. Sure, Ting. Hi. My name is Albert Ting. It's great to have you on the commission. So for myself, I was born in Seattle, been in Bellevue for forty plus years. I'm probably one of the more senior members on the commission now. So it's been great seeing everyone involved, and I'm I'm sure you'll be a wonderful addition to the to the team. I used to work at Microsoft also for a while, and now I'm taking a little bit of time off. I do some time paddling, spending time with the family, camping, hiking, that sort of thing.

And, of course, transportation has always been very interesting for me. So I'm really looking forward to having an almost full commission moving forward. So welcome.

Thanks, commissioner Kielman.

Hi. I'm Susannah, and I'm so happy that you're here because I'm no longer the newest one. And but I'm I'm coming at this from a layman's approach, and my only introduction to transportation was through prior service being in the US Air Force, where we just would go to third world countries and assess the situation and build infrastructure from nothing. And so I served as a medic there, which segued into my career in pharmaceutical research, which I've been doing for the past twenty five years. And I serve on various boards and commissions, mainly in the Asia Pacific Cultural Center down in Tacoma as a community advocate there. But welcome. Looking forward to working with you.

And I'm Drew McGill, and I've this is, I think, my third year on the commission and Okay. Been in Bellevue since 2009. I had a thirty three year career at Boeing and I'm retired now, and I spend more of my time now doing community service type work mainly in the Bellevue area.

So Great.

Really glad to have you. Okay. Okay. Great. Well, let's move on to the election of officers. So, Kevin, can you please announce the nominations you have received for the position of chair?

K. Thank you, vice chair McGill. Having put out the the call for nominations a couple months ago, I've received one nominee for the position of chair. That nominee is Karen Stash, who would like to be reelected reselected. My duty is to see if there's any nominations from the floor before we have a vote, if there's any nominations for chair.

K. The the city attorney's office advises me that we should have a vote even if there's only one candidate. We haven't done that previously, but I have I have new direction from the city attorney. So everybody who would like to vote for Karen Stash to be chair, please say aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

It appears to be unanimous, and I will I will send congratulations to chair Stash so she can resume her duties when we reconvene in September. Kevin, do you have a nomination for vice chair? I I do, vice chair Miguel. I have I have received one nomination for the position of vice chair. That person is Drew Miguel. I'm seeking up nominations from the floor for the position of vice chair. Seeing none, I'll call for a vote now to approve, vice chair McGill to be reelected. All in favor, say aye. Aye.

Aye. K.

Appears to be unanimous, and vice chair McGill, carry on.

Okay. Well, we're moving through the agenda quite fast now. So, we'll move on to oral and written communications. Kevin has forwarded us, all written communications. Anything else today, Kevin?

Okay. Nothing else today. Just just that one message from Kevin Wallace.

Okay. So oral communications, we have our bylaws. The public comments are limited to three minutes per person and a total of thirty minutes for all the comments. Staff will keep track of staff, Kevin, will keep track of time. Comments need to be related to the city of Bellevue government business and must also be related to the roles and responsibilities of the transportation commission. So, Kevin, do you wanna read this, or you want me to it's public participation. Okay. So I'll just read it. Right.

Yep. Vice chair Mega, why don't you read the public participation rules regarding communications during election season?

Okay. Yeah. That's a good point. So in compliance with Washington state campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during elections, RCW forty two point one seven eight point one or five five five. No speaker may support or oppose a ballot measure or support or oppose a candidate for an election, which includes your own campaign. Any speaker who begins discussing topics of this nature will be asked to stop. So, Kevin, could you please, call on the people in order that they've signed up?

Vice chair McGill and commissioners, I have two people signed up, for oral communications. The first is Chris Randalls, and I don't see him online. Oh, he's here. Okay. Chris is here followed by Vic Bishop.

Welcome, Chris. This one okay? Perfect. Alright.

Evening commissioners, I was hoping to wish whoever was elected as the chair tonight, good wishes on being elected chair, but your status isn't here, but I hope that can still be conveyed. Commissioner Williams, it's really good to to meet you and to hear about your experience. So happy to see your work on the commission. Chris Randall speaking on behalf of Complete Streets Bellevue in support of the curb pricing study update as presented to you tonight by city staff. As an organization, we've been happy to follow the curb management plan throughout its development.

We were there for virtual outreach sessions in 2022, and it's unanimous adoption by council in 2023 to the discussions around its implementation today. So it's incredibly fulfilling to witness a Citi project go from conceptualization to adoption to implementation and beyond, and it really speaks to the impressiveness of the work and time given by stakeholders, members of the public, and staff on a program that's meant to make Bellevue even better. Throughout that time, I've witnessed many a commissioner discussion, and I always appreciate your detailed feedback. Mine might go too, actually, which is gonna impact okay. So far, it hasn't hit mine yet, so I'll keep going. Oh, there it is. Okay. Perfect. Alright. Thank you all for your patience.

Throughout that time, I've witnessed many a commissioner discussion, and I always appreciate your detailed feedback and willingness to dive into data. And I also appreciate the requests for clarity on what's being asked of you all as a body on a particular topic so that your discussion can be most effective. Reviewing tonight's materials, as we understand them, it looks like staff are essentially asking for what the kids might call a vibe check. Does this work that staff and the community have contributed to align with unanimously adopted council principles? And we are here to give you the good news that not only is this work data informed and aligned with best practices, it's also aligned with council direction and the current management plan.

Staff have already outlined those principles and their materials for each night, but I wanted to share some additional text from the original, again, unanimously a past curb management plan. Quote, curb pricing is one of the most effective demand management tools. As Bellevue's urban core densifies, ongoing growth will increase competition for the limited parking supply and intensify pressures along the curb. Revenues from a curb pricing program would help improve curbside enforcement activities and be reinvested into the community, improving mobility operations and livability within urban court areas, end quote. The due diligence that staff has done through research, data collection, public outreach, and more is proof enough that this work is in line with council vision and industry best practice.

So we encourage you all to affirm that this work, quote, passes the vibe check, as Keith might say, as it were, and we urge you to support this item heading back to council for further discussion and adoption. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Who's next, Kevin?

Vic Bishop is next. Line up, Vic.

Good evening. My name is Vic Bishop, and I live at 2114 West Lake Sammamish Parkway Southeast over Bike Lake Lake Sammamish. I'm a long term traffic engineer. I served two terms on this commission and was chair about a decade ago. These guys are kind of familiar.

I've been a traffic engineer since I graduated from college in 1962, so that's around sixty plus years I've been playing in traffic. And I had my own traffic engineering firm here in Bellevue that where I did public work for cities and counties in the state as well as private development work, doing traffic impact analysis work, estimating future trips. I wanted to emphasize a couple of things with respect to your very important, item tonight, which is a preliminary work on the TFP, the transportation facilities plan. This is this this is a major, major deal. This is what sets up the city to spend its money on transportation stuff over the next twelve years.

And we do this every two years, but it's gets updated. And so I think it's really important, and and and that's why I handed this out. But to remind you that you, as a commission, represent all citizens of the city of Bellevue. And this track shows that's three quarters of those citizens use cars to get to where they wanna go on a daily basis every day. And about half a percent, maybe three quarters of a percent of those people use bikes to get around.

So when you're talking thinking in terms of how you're spending your money, the capital money for transportation projects, I want you to think have some sense of proportionality. When three quarters of the trips are in cars, I would hope that you'd be thinking at least half of the money go towards project that might support those those people in cars. And if it's got less than 1% in one mode, it's probably not a good idea to go much more than 20% of your capital money towards that mode. And keep that in mind. I'm the president of the Westlake Sammamish Homeowners Association.

We're very interested in the in the Westlake Sammamish Parkway, and you've got TFP two fifty seven on your list funded at 12 and a half million. I'm here to support that, say that's a good idea. This will be the third phase of five phases, since the we were annexed by the city, 30 ago, forty years ago, promised that the parkway would be upgraded, and here we are on a fifty year program, and this funds the third segment of that. We're we're ready to have you go. And another one that I would advocate for is, which I don't see on the list, is in South Bellevue Way and HOV Lane from 112th going down to I 90.

That corridor is overwhelmed. It's congested in PM peak, and HOV Lane along the West side southbound has been there for a long time on the list, and we need to get it done. We got a lot of capacity things that we need to do. Thank you.

That's great. Thank you.

Kevin, who's next? Nobody else has signed up, to to speak. There are people in the in the guest room that may want to speak. I haven't seen any raised hands, and there may be people here that might want to speak.

Anybody in the room that would like to speak? Okay. Let's go online. Anybody online?

There's one one person online, Joe Kunsler. Joe, I will unmute you. And when I do, you will have three minutes to speak. K. You should be good.

Why thank you, Bill Food Transportation Commission. Joe Kunzler here, concerned transit activist. I'm really excited at the fight of Tulink being able to bridge to Seattle. It was, you know, I I recently rode, the two line to go past your wonderful city to the greatest city, in the central transit pod. That would be Redmond.

But it would you know, I would definitely have gotten off the train in Bellevue had there been a concessions or something to grab a coffee or a soda or Gatorade, and that's something you may wanna consider asking South Transit is if you can have a seven Eleven or something like that, at the stations, to bring more revenue to your awesome city, especially more awesome when Alex Zimmerman isn't speaking. That was a joke. You know, moving along, we're about two minutes left to go. I while I was in Redmond, I was able to use a Lime electric scooter and scoot around the greatest city on actual paved bike paths, and it was a a real adrenaline rush. And I'm so happy that I came prepared with a helmet.

I I hope that both of soon will have a a bike lane network, and I really, you know, interface well with with your awesome light rail and really make it easy for people to get around, which is one the reasons why I call commissions like this and ask for more transit access because we normally hear from car lovers and, basically, respectfully, they've decided the issue, versus transit advocates who just you know, some of whom might be of disabilities and just cannot drive cars, but as we'd like to go 70 miles an hour instead of seven. That was a tip to Hubert. You know, I mean, I I I really, you know, really appreciate your volunteerism and willingness to work in an evening to improve Bellevue's transportation network. It is much appreciated that we have great Americans willing to give up their time and volunteer in the community. I am grateful that mister Zimmerman is not there tonight.

I am I have found his comments extremely rude, offensive, campaigning, and other issues. I I won't drone on that. I hope he will no longer be coming to your meetings because you deserve so much better. And and I real again, I really wanna close this. I really think you need to lobby self rights if you have concessions at your stations to sell things like Gatorade and and water and, maybe have restrooms and really and and also support a bike net path network to be as awesome as Redmond. But that's just my opinion. And and I hope I helped you, and I hope you have a great eve meeting and a great meeting for evening. Thank you for public service. Goodbye for now.

Thank you. Kevin, is there anybody else online? No. Has their hand raised?

There are several others online. Nobody is raising their hand right now.

Okay. Well, having no more comments, we will move on to the next part of the agenda, which is communications from city council boards and commissions. I know that council Yeah. Andrew can Okay. Great. So council member Newhouse will be here maybe a little bit later, but, obviously, he's not here now. So any reports from commissioners? Okay. We are moving right along. Staff reports. Kevin, do you have a staff report? I

have one one item in addition to the memo that was in your in your packet from Colin Munson in community development on the environmental sustainability initiative. My my staff report is a is an update on the implementation of the urban core bike network, formerly known as Bike Belvieu. The the the commissioners last year recommended early implementation for several corridors, and we've begun to work on those. The ones that are are in design right now and will be on target for implementation in 2026 are the the Lake Washington Boulevard corridor between 99th And 1 Hundredth, essentially along the Maidenhower Bay Park frontage. The other one is a section of A Hundredth Avenue Northeast between Main Street and Northeast 1st, and then a connection that that corridor would provide a connection to Northeast 1st and Northeast 2nd between A Hundredth And Bellevue Way, that section, like, along the the downtown park.

Those are in design and are funded for construction in 2026. Others other projects that were also recommended by the commission for early implementation, we are in a process of applying for grant funding to support the design and funding on those. So probably not till 2027 at the earliest on those.

K. Any questions for Kevin? Okay. Any more staff reports, Kevin? Okay. So we'll move on to the public, hearing. We don't have a public hearing and public hearing tonight. We do have a study session. So we'll just head into item seven on the agenda, and that will be transfer first seven a, which is transportation facilities plan revenue forecast. And for that, we will have John Risha, Evan Phillips from finance, and Andrew from who is the the director of communication here in the city of Bellevue.

Welcome you guys. By the way, just on this one, as you guys saw from your packet, no action is requested, so this is more informational. Would you we will have time for questions. Would you rather have us ask them at the end or during the presentation or what works best? Presentation whether you do that, ask it. Okay. Sounds good.

Well, thanks, everybody. I I want to introduce, you to, John Risha. He's the, the the director of the Department of Finance at in Asset Management. And Evan Phillips, he's the director of financial strategy and performance. And one of the things that we're doing that's different this time around is a a twenty year, TFP.

And part of the reason for doing that is in order to make the current CIP, which is a a three year a six year document whole, we need to extend it out to twenty years due to the the revenue associated, with it. John will go into a little bit more detail about that later. But, you know, it's important to understand that the TFP is a it's a planning document. It gets updated every two years with the information that we know. It's very possible that there could be new revenue going into it, but that's where we're at right now.

And a couple of things just to understand about it as well. The big part of it, about 12,000,000 a year, used to be in the CIP for the overlay program, which is largely a maintenance activity. That got moved into the, operating budget. So that keeps that those programs whole as an operating activity. And then the other thing to, keep in mind too is that a big chunk of, the money that comes out of, you know, translation revenue is paying off debt service for the TIFIA loan and matching programs for it out in the Belgrade area, which is a philosophical decision.

But I think that it really ended up being a good one where we got ahead of the development and built out all the arterial roadways in the Belle Of Ed area, leaving really not all that many major projects left. And, we believe that what we've got keeps our programs whole. And with that, let me turn it over to John.

Excellent. Thank you, for having me, commissioners. John Riesha, CFO for the city. Tonight, we're gonna talk about just a few things. I will warn you, Evan and I are carrying around a wet blanket these days.

The broader economy gives us this really wet thing to carry around. It's challenged us as a city in how we think about our revenues and our investments. It's really required us to hone in on our policy focus to make sure that we're utilizing our revenues, which are tax dollars from you and your neighbors and from the businesses of this area to make sure they're invested in the right spaces. And so we'll spend a little bit of time on the revenue forecast, and then we'll get into the CIP forecast. It's the TFP forecast itself. We

won't

talk to you a whole lot about what's inside the TFP. That's you in the transportation department. We get to talk about the wonderful economic conditions that we're all in and have led us to the place that we're at.

And so with that, Evan.

Alright. So I will be talking a little bit about our comprehensive financial policies here tonight. Something to be aware of if you aren't familiar with House City of Bellevue budgets. We do try to make sure that our comprehensive financial policies, our CFP, is reviewed at least biennially, if not every other biennium, just to make sure that we are adhering to the latest best practices, that we're making sure everything is aligned with how we wanna move forward with the city and also bringing council along in that conversation to make sure that not just our staff, but our elected representatives are all on the same page in terms of how we wanna manage our finances as a city. So one of the major things that we reviewed this last biennium conversation was our investment waterfall.

Our investment waterfall, as you can see on on the left side of your screen on the slide, there's, more information about this in your memo, and I do have to just put a harmless plug in for our entire comprehensive financial policies. If you go to bellevuewa.gov//budget, you'll see the entire comprehensive financial policies there. If you're curious, it is, perhaps bed night reading. It's not beach reading, but it is there available if you're curious to look beyond the excerpt that was included in the memo. But one of the things that's been consistent regardless of what year and what sort of policies we're talking about is debt always comes first.

It's always the first call on our money. We must pay our obligations. It is really. It is the thing that has to come first. The second thing on our list is maintain maintaining our assets and services.

So to Andrew's point, we did move some CIP expenditures that based on accounting rules should really be recognized as an operating expense. We are making sure that things like the overlay program are paid for second, that no matter what as we're going through and allocating our resources that we pay for debt, and then we maintain what we already have. So making sure that the quality of our roads or other infrastructure is maintained at the very least before we go into the third priority, which is deliver on that planned growth. So as I'm sure all of you are aware, our comp plan requires a lot of growth that's gonna happen in the next twenty years. How does this commission and other similar bodies meet that meet that challenge?

Right? So how do we deliver? That is the third priority. The fourth priority is planning for that future growth. So our long term facilities plan, this TFP is part of that conversation as well. And then the fifth thing is to demonstrate new programs. So if we wanna have a three year pilot program, how do we set that up thoughtfully? How do we collect data to know whether or not that pilot is successful? And then if it's not successful, how do we have an exit strategy to make sure that we aren't holding on to new pilot programs that, don't meet the needs of the city? So all of that is to say we focus on debt, we maintain what we currently have, and we plan thoughtfully for growth.

An important thing to remember is that you'll notice the footnote below the table. This is an exact math. So at the end of the day, members of our council, like council member Newnhouse, get to decide, you know, there is something that maybe is more speculative to say, like, a pilot program. That's the fifth thing on the waterfall. Maybe that is worth going a little bit higher in priority. Maybe that's something where there can be an exception. It isn't hard and fast. It's not formulaic. But generally speaking, we like to hew to this. That's because we do have a financial strategy guiding principle.

So we as I say, one of our core values is stewardship, financial stewardship in this case. We do wanna be transparent why we're coming to groups like this and others to explain why it is that we're doing the way and sorry. The why we're doing and what we're doing. Professionalism, we do like to make sure that we have a balanced risk profile. These are extremely uncertain times, so we have to be really thoughtful about what risks that we take.

But that said, we don't wanna be so conserve small c conservative that we aren't able to be nimble to respond to those challenges, which brings us to one of the other policy areas that we addressed in our update this last year was debt. The city does not engage in debt issuances all that often. Is a very rare occurrence, and transportation is one of those few things outside of the loans for or the bonds for this building, city hall. Transportation is really where a lot of our debt obligations reside. But generally speaking, we don't use a lot of debt as a city, but now we have to figure out as the needs of the city grows and we are supposed to meet the comp comp plan targets, how can we use debt more thoughtfully, and how can we kind of open our minds to some of those possibilities?

We as Andrew mentioned, we have a six year CIP. We are aspiring to move to ten years. We have to grow to some maturity there in planning our operations to meet, this the capital, cadence, which is used to having more ten, twenty year time horizons, and then, financial visibility. So with that being said, I do wanna move us into the tax revenue forecast. What you're looking at here is the tax revenue growth from 2019 through 2034.

And as you see, these are some of the major taxes you all may be aware of. Utilities taxes, just to be clear, this is often something confused, so no need to feel embarrassed. But utilities taxes are the taxes that are on the utility provider. So in the case of Bellevue, in many cases, this is actually our utilities department or Puget Sound Energy. This is not the part of the bill that you pay on your gas bill or your electric bill.

Then property taxes, including our transportation levy, our business and occupation, b and o taxes, sales taxes, and real estate excise tax, REIT. These are, in ascending order from most stable to least stable. So at the bottom, utility tax is very stable. Property tax is also very stable. REIT is the exact opposite of the spectrum.

It is very unstable. It's very volatile. It is very, as we would say, bouncy. So as you could see, one of the things that we've been talking about is that we were looking at flat revenues across the city for '24 and '25 and '26. And you could see that, as you're looking at the top, the little blue, square or rectangle for REIT is a little bit smaller, but everything else is roughly flat.

And when we have that flat revenue, that means that, we're obviously not getting more money, but we're also not seeing growth that may just occur naturally through inflation. A lot of these things are based on revenues or costs of goods and services that are obviously influenced influenced by inflation, and therefore, our revenues usually at least go up by inflation, if not a little bit more than that. So when we have a flat period in a lot of other jurisdictions, that would be a down period. So something to be aware of. The other the only other thing I would point out is you'll see a little bit of variability in the property taxes.

In 2023, you'll see a jump. That is the the parks levy that passed. And then you will see a noticeable decrease when that levy goes out in 2032. What you aren't seeing and relevant to this group and others is in 2035, that's when your transportation levy falls off of our roles as well as well as the fire levy. So something to be aware of.

Before we leave this one, I wanna give you a couple other things to think about or things that we consider when we're looking at these revenues and some of the impacts. So some of you may remember that in 2023, we actually, 2022 leading into 2023, we increased our business and occupancy tax. Well, because we did that right as we were hitting the coast post COVID hangover, as I like to refer to it, where we saw really big changes in our business environment. Microsoft moved back to Redmond. We see saw some consolidations.

Even though the business with business community support, we actually raised those taxes. We actually saw a real dollar decrease in tax revenue in business and occupancy. Additionally, with the crazy volatility that we've been seeing, sales tax has been all over the place. In some portions or sectors of sales tax have been up. During COVID, we saw huge increases actually because people were at home with destination based sales taxes.

We're having everything purchased and shipped home, and that portion went up. But what went down was sales tax on construction. And that is a leading indicator for us as a city of a slowdown of the economy because the cranes weren't going up. They weren't carrying as much material. We weren't seeing as many things, and so that sales tax on construction has come down.

The side effect that we're also seeing with that is real estate excise tax. We've had some really big years in real estate excise tax, and that's really just the tax that goes on the transaction of sale. There's still home sales and a few smaller location sales, but we don't see the large property and large building sales that we were seeing in the early and mid two thousands. So here we are now looking at, and we think our read is probably at the lowest it will be in on a current day dollars. It's actually very low.

We're hoping to see some things change. We're right now finalizing our forecast that we're bringing to council, which is our mid biennium forecast for the next period. And it's a really interesting economic environment. But all of that, we started to react to and respond to during our last budget process, which this forecast is part of. And I wanna show you a little bit of what we had to address during that last budget process.

So this is a really this is my wet blanket chart. So going into 2023, we were anticipating growth in b and o and a regular set of growth in sales tax and, seeing REIT continue to be a strong environment. What happened with the decrease in those tax revenues, though, we had forecast see that upper line above the blue, was what we had anticipated receiving, and that grows on itself over time. What we saw in a flattening of revenue was a different picture, and that's the lower line of the lower edge of the blue. The difference between those two two points is about $25,000,000 a year.

So we grew the city. We grew our operations. We anticipated work being done. The money did not come in. And because of our prudent planning and our strong reserves and our cash basis that we had in the background, the city has been able to weather this storm.

And we've been able to do that without seeing a reduction in staffing. Though many cities and county around us and the state, all were looking at reductions. We are grateful to the taxpayers have contributed to this really great environment. We as stewards of the public trust are very careful and thoughtful, but it allowed us to weather this. Now what does that mean for transportation?

I wanna talk a little bit as we get into the next spaces. But with the shift of 10 to $15,000,000 out of capital into operating to cover the maintenance, which included some growth of that maintenance to make sure we were taking care of our assets, The more than $15,000,000 a year in debt service on the quarter billion dollars of two separate bond issuances and the TIFIA loans. We saw a $30,000,000 shift. And so we've had to really look hard at our transportation program. And Andrew and the team have done a really, really good job.

And there were some things that were a little, what I'll call, funky about our last budget process in the CIP. You may have seen a contra or have had some discussions about a contra line in that. What transportation did was showed us the TFP investments that were needed for that period, but we used a contra line to help council understand, here's how much revenue isn't available to do all of those projects. And so transportation has is living within the means below that. And so they're going through a process right now to realign that, and that brings us to tonight, which is looking at that stretch of the, of the TFP to be able to do all of that work, but in a longer period based off of today's forecast and today's anticipated revenues.

So as we think about that, separate from the roughly $30,000,000 a year that is taking care of debt service and maintenance. There's about 111, 112,000,000 of taxes and other revenues that are coming in to support. There's about 196,000,000 in the levy, and this is over this longer period of time. Now I wanna caveat that. Transportation has made an assumption within that levy that it is renewed.

When we do our normal forecast and we get beyond this this current period, we won't show that for the city because we have to show where the levees come down. But for TFP purposes, this is not an unreasonable or an, strange occurrence. You anticipate that level of renewal with a big asterisk that says you plus the community plus the council have to make a choice to get that renewed in order to see those revenues achieve that $196,000,000 level. Motor vehicle fuel tax, your gas taxes, we get a small amounts, little more than 1,000,000 a year. That's a diminishing, revenue.

We just don't have as many gas taxes coming in because we don't use as much fuel as we used to. Our transportation impact fees, with the reduction in development that we're seeing, transportation impact fees aren't coming in in the $89,000,000 a year as they were at some of our peak levels. They're really down in a couple million dollars a year. So it's a much lower amount coming in for transportation impact fees. And then we come to the last, which is grants and other external sources.

We bring this forward with a big asterisk associated with it. The grant environment across the nation is a very, very tenuous space right now. We've seen a lot of federal funds that have dried up. A lot of our pass through funds have started to only come in in a late limited basis. Transportation has very thoughtfully brought forward a average, but a lower average, just under $6,000,000 a year, which is lower than what they have been able to achieve.

And we feel felt that was a reasonable approach to have this about $5,800,000 a year, resulting in about a 116, almost 117,000,000 as part of that forecasted revenue. We note this is an area of financial risk. We don't suggest you don't count on it or don't look at that, but it is important that we do note that it is an issue of risk. And we hope that that grant environment will stabilize so that we can do the really good competitive work that we've been to achieve so much through grant revenues. But that leaves us as just under about a half billion dollars for that twenty year period.

I'm gonna talk a little bit and then hand to the other side of the table to talk a little bit deeper. When we look at that 496 or almost $500,000,000 of forecasted revenue for the twenty year period, we think about the current CIP plus the contra that's in it, which is additional work that we had hoped to be able to do, but the revenue just doesn't exist to be able to do more. And that leaves then continuation of programs through '31 to '45, and there is a little bit extra under the current scenario for additional candidate projects. I won't speak to what's inside of the CIP or inside of the programs. I'm gonna leave that to a very capable team, but we wanna be here to answer any questions about the space that we're in.

I will comment a little bit on the forecast one last time. As we go before council in the next week, our forecast is actually not likely to change in a significant manner except for a much larger question of risk because we are characterizing the forecast as bouncy. And it is significantly bouncy because the economic conditions and there are many, many things in the global world that are affecting locally, whether it's tariffs, whether it is political instability, whether it is changes in the Washington state tax code. There are so many different things. We're seeing stubborn inflation resulting in potentially stagflation and conditions that we worry about.

We're seeing revenues, some up, some down, but, generally, the course that we have charted is pretty spot on. The city of Bellevue has an economist on staff that works under Evan's team. My brag point is she missed 20241%. And I don't know of another economist who's come anywhere close to that. So she's watching the right figures.

I will say the actual revenues where they hit were a little bit off, but in net or in total, she was only off by 15%. We've been watching very closely. We've been working with the state, with the county and others to try and understand where they're going. What we're finding is they were more optimistic about the future while we were more conservative. And so they're having to do reductions because they overestimated how much they were getting in in the future. And we're looking like if things go the way we think, we should be okay, and we should be on the right trajectory. And with that, we're available for questions.

Thank you. Questions? Yeah.

So just a quick question on the I think it was transportation impact fees. Mhmm. You said those were quite a bit less or down from what you imagined. Do you have any insight as to what's driving that? Is are developers going elsewhere? Is it getting too costly? Is the city getting built out? What any any ideas on that?

Insure interest rates. Plain and simple. When the interest rates came up from we're paying you to take out long term debt to, hitting the five plus, now the Fed rate's in the, what, four two five to four four five range. We're starting to see a little bit, but they're waiting to see if there's another Fed rate cut before we see the market come in. We know there's a lot of pent up capital that's waiting to invest, and our development services has a queue of development that they know is just waiting for the pro form a to make sense. And once that hits, then we can recalculate and recalibrate. But right now, with with impact without the development, we aren't gonna see the impact fees.

Yep.

Could you help me understand on the contra line item, how how is it determined how much of that goes to transportation? So is that something so, you know, obviously, there's we're we're not projecting as much revenue as we had initially thought, and that impacts all of the activities for the city. And then how is it determined how much of that goes to transportation versus

So we follow the waterfall. That's the first and foremost. We took care of debt, and we had to fund that both with transportation and general dollars. We then had to fund maintenance and grew maintenance for transportation to make sure that we were meeting the asset requirements and meet the requirements across the city. We project that out over a longer period of time over a six year, and we have a citywide six year financial plan for both operations and capital.

And we look at the available resources versus what is also invested in other areas. And transportation actually has a pretty significant in addition to the debt and the maintenance, which was growing, there's still a significant portion that is going into that, which is greater than the levy itself. But we do start with those protected levy dollars before we see what else is left in the general fund. We will offer that there's not a lot left over. And in fact, in our six year financial plan as a city, our end years, our cash reserves, after we take care of the real required reserves, we actually the unallocated reserve is single digit millions.

So the city is not sitting on a lot of cash. There is a whole section of reserves. I just wanna be really clear. It roughly accumulates to about 7 or $800,000,000. But those are different kinds of cash reserves that we're supposed to have for different purposes, including our utility reserves.

And so we protect all of that. We look at what's left over and invest in capital following that. Parks got very little of the general fund as Parks saw an increase in a levy and was the beneficiary of something that hit taxpayers very interestingly as the assessor did a did their five year sweep through, and all of property values went sky high on the residential side right as they voted, and it set the levy rate at a much higher rate. I feel you. I saw it.

I'm like, oh my timing. So we have a well funded capital program for trans for parks through that levy that has given us the ability to back down how much general fund was going into that space. Yeah. We do have other obligations in the city to augment our fire levy, to also take care of city hall and things like replacement of fuel tanks that are are at end of life. And so there are things that we have to do as well. And so we balance all of those choices out, and that's what goes to council. And we're councilmember Newnhouse here. He could attest to the joy of a budget process.

Okay. Great. I have one more.

Yeah.

So the roughly 25,000,000 that is for debt servicing, it sounds to I'm just a little unclear on this. It sounds to me like that used to be covered someplace else, and now it's moving into

the No. The debt issuances are new. Right? So in 2016, 2019, and then the TIFIA loan. So there was a 70,000,000, an 80,000,000, and then a 100,000,000 of TIFIA. So two bond issuances. And in total, as the work gets completed, debt has to be paid for. And so these have begun. The bill has come due, and we had to account for them. And we had to make sure that we had dollars to pay that debt before anything else, and it just wasn't there before.

And so we're just seeing the wrap up of the TIFIA projects. We're just about there right now. So hence, the reality check of, oh, those bills are big. But to be clear, I love me some TIFIA because the actual interest rate on the TIFIA, it is cheaper to use a TIFIA loan than to pay cash for it because the cash over time because the the interest rate is below 2%.

Wow.

So it's it is a gift from the federal government to be able to participate at that low of a rate for an infrastructure investment and front loading, but it still costs us money to pay it back.

Great. Thank you.

Other questions, mister Jing?

So for the contra line, it sounds like that that line item basically covers all of transportation related costs that were basically at the high priority end. Is that is is that about close?

No. Let let me so what transportation provided in their capital improvement program was all the programs that they were going to invest in for for the TFP and for that capital improvement period. The contra was a balancing or a negative against all of those. What specific projects are being invested in, transportation is working through that space, But it was an accounting effort so that, one, the public and council could see all of the transportation need, and, two, we could deliver a balanced CIP and a balanced budget without having to not show how much really important work is there and the $157,000,000 of work that we'd love to be able to do but do not have the revenues available to be able to do that.

I see. So it's a combination of the monies that had to go for the first and second priority of debt service and maintenance, plus what we think was important for the city to accomplish in the transportation plan. And so a quick follow-up to this question then is, was there a a decrease so I assume that there's a certain amount of monies that go from the general fund into transportation typically. Is that the case?

There have been historic guides of what is dedicated, but, really, the only dedicated revenues, are real estate excise tax that per can be used for, there's two types of REIT, and we could get really technical. But there's some REIT dollars, so 50% of REIT two and the transportation levy. Historically, there we've used portions of sales tax and B and O to fund those things, and we're using those same kinds of general fund dollars to take care of your debt service that didn't exist and the growth in the maintenance.

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Just a quick question about the $500,000,000. So if you were to look at that last year, I know it's a different period of time, but how much did it change from last year? I'm just the broader question is you you spoke about variability. So when you think about variability, we're how much variability do you see between I I assume this is, a nominal where you expect things to be, and then you probably have an upper and then a lower depending on assumptions that are made in the economic forecast.

Yeah. When we do our forecasting, we do have optimistic and pessimistic for for council. And we right now, we have a tendency to try and stay as middle to pessimistic. We do not have right now, the volatility that we're seeing in the broader market is driving us away from the optimistic end. We've seen so when we think about revenue volatility, we're looking at the potential or the likelihood of greater than 5% volatility year over year.

We are seeing fifteen and twenty percent volatility in these revenue sources, which makes us very nervous from a forecasting standpoint. So to understand the factors behind it you know, unemployment used to be a great indicator. It now doesn't tell you half of what we thought it did. It doesn't have a direct correlation anymore. We're seeing all sorts of different things, which is why our economist is spending so much time trying to understand all of the different factors that we have to watch.

So when we look at this, we feel confident because it is our, middle of the road to pessimistic range, and we feel confident in this. And it turned out that in for '24, it proved out in the in the year. And we carried that in for '25, '26, which is the period we're in. Right now, hopefully, and hope is not a strategy, but things will stabilize. But the caution that we give is every one of our factors that we're gonna look at, once you hit stability, it takes another six to twelve months for the economy and the economic factor or the tax result to stabilize.

Right? And in Washington, particularly in this part of Washington, we're a lagger, meaning the rest of the country will see something happen economically usually three to four months before we will and sometimes as much as six months, so one to two quarters difference. And we will be watching what also happens on the East Coast and Midwest to see will it play out here, and do the conditions look look the same. And so this is a this is a really crazy environment, and nobody and there are no economists, and there are no financial leaders that I have spoken with who have a playbook for right now. So hold on.

That's about all I can say about it. I don't know if that helps your your answer on that, but this is it's all the pieces that we have to watch and try and figure out how we make make sure. In this 500, how confident are we? Relatively confident. We are least confident in those grant dollars right now.

Under that chart that shows the breakdown too so we see the grant percentage. Okay. Thank you. And there you

go. Thank you. This Michael picked me up, but I can, excuse me, say a little bit about our grant tracking. We keep a a metric. We look at the last ten years, and it's a rolling ten years. So 2015 through 2024 is our latest. And on an annual, we really do it by biennium because some of the grant programs come every other year. But in our current metric, we're looking at $10,700,000 per year average over the last ten years. That's been climbing steadily for pretty much every biennium. In 2324, we we got about 15,700,000.0 per year.

2025, we've already got about 9,500,000.0. And but those aren't new those those 9.5 are new awards. They're kinda add ons to the previous awards where we're helping the region spend its money when other cities aren't moving their projects forward, and we're like, we can take more. But what John was talking about, the future is what's unknown. The other side of that, especially with lower revenues, is you have to have your own money to match the grant applications, and you have to have the good projects that compete in the grant programs before you're gonna be successful bringing in those dollars.

So that's that's why, you know, we're looking at an average 10.7. We're more than cut that in half in this forecast.

Think So last question here. So if if you looked at the contra line and you did the the simple math to compare it to the the shortfall in revenue, during that time period, do those end up being fairly close, or is there is is one higher than the other?

The shortfall is higher because there are other areas where we've had to tighten our belt and remove certain programs and not grow in the rest of the operations of the city. And so the whole of the city has felt that this isn't just transportation capital that has felt this as this feature.

Got it. Got it. So the forecast is for the entire city. If we if we zoomed in just to the transportation revenue that typically goes to transportation, I should say, and you compare that to the contra line item, does that end up being fairly close? I guess I'm just trying to get a sense of if we looked at the if we didn't have the shortfall, how big would the contra line item be as sort of a way of asking? Does that make sense?

If we didn't have the shortfall

Oh, when we projected

If we had another 25,000,000 a year, we would be having a different conversation. Right. But we don't have an so if we if we had that additional 25,000,000 a year for the city in our general fund, there would probably be a different size, and I can't tell you what it would look like what the of a CIP, and there could be some other investments in other parts of the city. There's backlog a of fire stations. There's significant investments in a variety of different areas.

And to be really clear, the council did some trimming for future year investments and cut off demonstration programs with this biennium that do not have funding in the future. And so there are programs that are going to be ending in this biennium based off in the operation side of the city because of that. And so the council would have made different choices on how to invest that, and so I can't give you a

Got it. Fair enough.

You know what?

If we

had all the money, you'd get it all back. First of all, that's not my choice. But second, it doesn't work quite that way, Adam.

I understand what you're seeing now. Alright. Thank you.

Okay. Great information. Really appreciate it. Any other last questions on this? Okay. Thank you all. Really appreciate you coming and giving us well, it's not great news, but thank you for the explanation. Thank you for letting me schedule. Thank you.

And if there's anything else, feel free to have Seth reach out to us. We're glad to help out anytime.

Okay. Thank you. Andy.

Kevin? Thanks. Can we go back just a sec? Because we kind of went pretty quickly, and there was a we had a memo. It was going to be covered in the staff reports, the environmental sustainability plan. Is that something that we're gonna have the opportunity to ask questions on in the future, or how would you like us to direct our questions at from that memo?

There is there there's no commission discussion or inputs on that memo tonight.

K.

The the community development staff is going to to the council, I think, in September to to lay out the environmental stewardship plan and the action the actions that help to implement that plan. In in the fall, if you'd like to have a briefing, we we may have more time on the agenda after October. K. But not tonight. Okay.

Okay. Great. Okay. So we'll move on to our second study item, the transportation facilities plan update. And now we're starting to get into the meat of it. Right? So we have a lot of material. I don't but we've also had a lot of time. Yep. We've been talking about this well, we've had time.

We've been talking about this a little little bit. So I think our goal tonight is to try to get through this. We had less time than we anticipated. We had two fewer meetings, but we are attempting to get through this to allow the council to review. We wanna make a recommendation while they have the slot open in the summer is the way I understand it. So that's why we're pushing through tonight. And so so yeah. So I'll turn it over to you guys. And if you would just yeah. My we have a mic, and it's Eric.

Yeah. Eric and, of course, Christy, who's been here many times. So how would you guys like to do this discussion? Would you like to do a go through your presentation and or you you are there stops in there for us to be able to ask questions?

There's a couple of stops. So, yeah, why why don't we we'll we'll we'll work through the presentation, and then we'll Okay. Pause for for questions and discussion. Okay. So thank you, vice chair McGill. Good evening, members of the commission. So we're here really with no new information tonight. The new information is what you just heard. So so, really, we're here to revisit what we've looked at and worked on this last, you know, six or eight months and and to you know, what we'll be asking you to advance this to the to the council. So so here's the outline.

We're gonna look at the information we just saw, really. And then the project prioritization categories, which is what you looked at in in May. And then item three is we'll we'll ask ask for your action regarding recommendation to counsel, and then we'll just look at the overall timeline and and and what's left. So moving on to the first substantive slide, this is the information we just looked at. So I just want to refer back to that.

Really, we have $26,500,000 to work with in the twenty year time frame that we're recommending for the for the transportation facilities plan. So, you know, frankly, not very much in terms of, you know, as as you've already well, that was the whole subject of conversation. But but, you know, in the past, we had more money to work with, and we could actually recommend allocating funds to various projects and prioritizing projects. And at this point, we're just proposing that they that that their projects either be in the TFP or not in the TFP because, you know, that amount of money just doesn't make sense to try to allocate to to individual projects when you you know, as as time evolves, you know, the different projects are gonna have different needs and different opportunities. So it's better to be a little more flexible and dynamic.

So next slide. So the project prioritization. And this is what we looked at in May. So, you know, as referenced in your memo and in the project list that you now have in front of you, you know, we have four color categories. The gray ones being the ones that are, you know, already adopted in the TFP or, excuse me, in the CIP.

So the council's already said we want to do these ones. So that's really not up for debate. That's that's something we're just taking as a given. The next category is a short list of priority projects, seven of them, which, you know, already have some kind of work in progress or partnership that that's in effect. And so those are really the shortlist of high priority projects. The next category being the peach ones, which we recommend for inclusion in the transportation facilities plan. And then finally, the red category, which are the ones that frankly are are just not as strong at this point. I mean,

lot of them would be

great things to do, but they're not as as high priority. And therefore, we're recommending they not be included in in the TFP. So we'll look at in in a minute here, we'll have an opportunity for the conversation about what's in and what's out. But I wanted to just capture that that's, you know, the the framework that we've looked at back in May and that we're proposing here as we go forward for discussion with the council. Now I will point out ultimately, you know, when when the TFP, the final TFP is developed, you know, projects are in or out.

There's no green category and peach category. I mean, they're all gonna be either in there or they're not in there. But but for our purposes right now, this this is the kind of framework that we've we've found useful. We did add the ongoing programs to the project list so that, you know, to better understand kind of what activities do happen in the city on an ongoing basis. So even though it looks like, you know, there's not a lot of projects that we can afford, there is still, you know, meaningful work going on that does put, you know, improved conditions on the ground over and above the the basic maintenance require activities.

And then finally, we did, as re in response to comments that we heard in May, add information about the project need and the project benefit for the projects that are in the green and the peach categories as well as information about the red projects. And I think it was there in May about why those were were judged to be less strong. So next slide. So again, this is the short list of the seven green category projects. And these are the ones we looked at back in May.

In May, we did also have the Mount Sun Greenway on there. We've now split that out to two pieces. There's one piece that's gonna be start work this year. So it's it's basically in the gray category. And then the other piece is East Of 1 50th Avenue Southeast. And that's a bigger longer term issue of figuring out what do we want to do there. So that's a now that's a beach category project. So so the it does it's no longer here in the green, but it's it's just been split out into two different places. So then next one. So we did add two projects to the gray category.

So, again, these are already in this in the budget. We just, you know, didn't we're we're we're kind of being more holistic and and capturing more more of everything that's relevant. So one of them is the Belvedere local streets, and this is a project that has $4,000,000 in the CIP to facilitate the build out of a local street network in the Bell Red area. So as real estate has developed there you know, right now, just have a few major kind of arterial streets out there. And the goal is to have a finer grain street network.

And as projects that are on fairly large footprints, you know, build out maybe a block size project, we've had a number of those underway, they're building out half street improvements on either side. And and so over time, we will get the idea is that we'll get a a finer grain, you know, 300 foot grid of streets in that area. It does take some public investment to do a preliminary design and to support some of the challenging situations that arise in doing it this way. So that's what that adopted CIP project is about. And so it's now been added to the list in the gray section.

And then another one is one that we frankly just missed, and that was a little bit embarrassing. But it's the improvements at Southeast 5th Street and 1 18th Avenue. This is at the north end of the trestle where the East Rail crosses Southeast 5th Street. And and we have a kind of a funky situation there where the street isn't centered in the street right of way, and the curvature of the corner isn't doesn't meet standard, and the sidewalks don't connect to the East Rail. So we wanna fix all of that.

And there's money in the CI well, there's a program. The CIP says in 2030, we we will fix that. We'll have to see what timeline really happens. But but it's it's adopted in the CIP, so we won't recognize that and put in the green section here. So next slide.

So this is where we wanted to have a a a, you know, discussion and consider, you know, the project list. And and really, I think the way to think about it is, you know, is there anything in red that we're concerned about that shouldn't be red? You know, in in the grand scheme of things, I mean, can pick a few things there and think, man, that's really great. I'd love to do it. But, you know, we we know, and I think we had an opportunity to look at this back in, you know, in in May.

And and I didn't hear at the time concern about any particular projects, but I guess I just wanted to, you know, pose a question now. And and while you're at it, you know, are there peach projects that, you know, really are lower priority and and should be read? And and we can have conversation about either one of those.

Okay. So good time for questions.

Yeah. Absolutely.

So

could you just refresh my memory on theization? So if we do have 75% of users that are using a vehicle, do we use that when we're looking at projects? Are we trying to allocate, you 75% to vehicle improvements and then on down? Or how do do we take

that into account is what I'm getting at?

Well, I mean, that's up to you. It's been there there have been attempts in the past to try to quantify how much money is, when we had money, would we allocate it to pedestrian or bicycle projects versus roadway projects? And it becomes a pretty difficult exercise because a lot of projects have multiple modes that they benefit. And so trying to parse out which part of cost is attributable to one improvement versus another. So it's kind of, sort of, maybe helpful sometimes, but really isn't a very useful, know, ultimately, hasn't hasn't proved to be a really very useful kind of way to look at it.

We you know, another way to look at it is that, you know, we have fundamental gaps in the pedestrian and the bicycle system. Right? Whereas, you know, on the on the vehicular system, I mean, there's a couple of roads we'd like to build, most especially, you know, Spring Boulevard, that that piece. But, you know, for the most part, the network is there. So it's just a matter of, it as nice as you'd like it to be?

Whereas, well, we've heard it certainly from folks on the bicycle side in particular and to some lesser extent, perhaps on the pedestrian side that the facilities aren't there. You can't do it. Right? Or at least people think they can. And in some cases, I think I really understand that they can't. If the facility isn't there, you can't travel through certain parts of the city. So so that's, you know, there there's different there's there's multiple ways you could look at this, I guess, my point. Does that start to answer the kinda what you were getting at?

Yeah. No. I mean, that's fine. I mean, I I guess my one of my concerns would be is that if we're gonna have a population increase in the city Yeah. You know, is that gonna reflect, you know, 75% of the new population is gonna wanna drive? Mhmm. Do we need to look at that and look at the expansion of, you know, what do we have as far as infrastructure?

So I guess the way I would look at it is you can scale roadway up to a certain point and then it doesn't work as well. And we're reaching the point where some of our, if we try to scale up the roadway stuff, I mean, we've got intersections where you can't do anything more. We'd have to start doing flyovers. You can get growth without getting you can get growth in population growth in jobs without getting commensurate growth in vehicle traffic. I mean, we've seen it in downtown.

We've done traffic counts at cordons, you know, across, you know, different parts of this of downtown, And the counts have been stable for twenty years. You know, I go out and look at you know, for sometimes everyone's time looking at our streets, and we we have, you know, in our system, we can look and see for the last twenty years, what are roadway counts? The counts haven't changed. In many case, I mean, we they're lower now than they used to be. I mean, fifteen years ago, can I can go out on Bell Red Road places where fifteen years ago, there was higher traffic counts? So, you know, now these are daily counts. You know, maybe you look at a peak hour, it may be different. You know? So there's a whole lot of things that aren't fully captured by that. But the reality is that it's not a linear kind of relationship. Yeah.

First off, I'd like to say thank you for the hard work in adding the extra columns. That was really useful in looking at them and and trying to, you know, make heads or tails of all different projects. So thank you very much for that. To maybe have a slightly different take on what commissioner Rupun is mentioning is I think it would be really interesting for us to have that framework so that we do have an understanding of how we have the discussion around the balance between the different modes. So I'm not gonna make a statement right now as to, like, what the exact number should be, but at least understanding how we're going to have that discussion, I think that that would be really useful for the commission.

And this echoes my earlier questions in the past, which is how do we think about the allocation of funds between the different modes? Because we have a scoring system within the MIP within mode, but we have yet to figure out how we want to think about that across modes. So I would just encourage you to maybe it's a set of principles, maybe it's some guidelines that are qualitative. I really am not quite sure how that nets out, but I think that would be that would be very useful for this commission when we look at the projects in the future.

Yeah. Commissioner Gilman.

Just a follow on comment to that. I I appreciate the color coding system as far as that prioritization, but to to take a little bit of a deeper dive to prioritize again those those gaps, I know that the transit center I I mostly see people getting off of the buses and then walking to their jobs. And especially in Washington where we're we have so much crazy weather and we have rain a lot of times, and I think people are more inclined to be pedestrians over cyclists during that kind of inclement weather cycle. And so I would just ask that maybe that gets looked at as far as how are people commuting into the city, and are they getting off with their bicycle, and then how seasonal that is, etcetera. I know that we need to make it as multimodal and as fair as possible, but I think we need to prioritize by what the majority of people are doing based on the weather and and, of course, base that along our our vision zero guidance that we have.

Other questions? I think we're digesting this. Go ahead, commissioner team.

One thing that I found really interesting is thinking about the network effect. And I was having a conversation with one of the finance guys and sort of asked him, like, oh, you know, how do you think about this? And he created some interesting ideas, and it was thought provoking because the concept was if we look at, for example, a transit system, if you think about buses or other forms, how do we think about sidewalks or the roads that you use to get to transit? And how do you think about the ways that you can use the other modes, whether it's walking, biking, or driving, in order for that transit to be more effective, and in order for that transit to be used more? And I'm hoping that you have sort of this master vision where you you think about, like, I've got a transit system, and the way that we can use it more effectively is by trying to figure out how to make it more accessible for people as they come from other modes in order to get to transit.

So it was hard for me to look at sort of the TFP and sort of do this mental model. But it is, in some ways, thinking about how the modes can help support each other so that we can get more people onto alternate modes to make, you know, the the transportation system work better for everyone. I'm hoping that you've had some thoughts or there, you know, there are ways that we can look at specific projects that have that sort of multiplier effect on the other modes. Is that something that you guys think about? And is there any way that we can sort of glean that information from spreadsheet?

I'll take a stab at answering this question. Maybe it looks like Eric might have some thoughts too, or maybe I'll just defer to Eric if you're

Well, one of the things that that the city has done is do light rail stationary planning. Specifically, there's been light rail stationary plans for the South Bellevue Station, for the East Main Station. Downtown has been kind of built into the city's downtown planning for decades, you know, based around the transit center for buses. But obviously, with light rail coming, that's been enhanced. And those studies come up with specific recommendations.

One of the on Main Street leading down to going east, leading down the hill towards the East Main Station, We're soon to go to construction on a on a multipurpose path that runs all the way up to 108th Avenue, which is our North South bike corridor. So that was a recommendation of that. You know, it's been a recommendation for a long time in terms of our kinda lake to lake trail as well. But in the terms of the stationary planning, that was an that's an example of something that's coming to fruition based on that planning in the in the current CIP. And, you know, other projects are going to construction soon down by South Bellevue Station, more connecting the sidewalk network to to get folks from the neighborhood, you know, by foot down or by by down to the to the South Bellevue Station.

So I don't if that's helping to answer your question.

There's Yeah. I think mainly it's someone has been thinking this through, and someone has been helping put that into the prioritization. Because when I look at the spreadsheet, it's it's just hard for me to figure out whether, you know, a particular project is gonna help amplify, you know, a mode or something along those lines. So I think it's really just for me asking, you know, have you guys done this type of analysis to figure out where you get the most bang for the buck given the the limit of our funds at this moment. And I I I guess I'm hearing the answer is yes. You guys have done that type of analysis.

You know,

it both the BellRed stations. BellRed has been studied like crazy for years with the plan that light rail's coming and how to connect the the the growth that's happening there and the people that will live and work there to those to those, you know, high capacity transit systems.

Thank you.

Just go ahead and add that I, I manage the neighborhood sidewalk program as as well. And when we have those candidates for that the community asks for to get the missing sidewalks in their neighborhoods and things, some we have a framework in transit frequent transit network, and the transit stops are parts of those of where are we missing. It it falls in line with the different kinds of gaps in the arterials that we looked at, you know, that we look at from the MIP as well. So the ongoing programs that you saw in all of that financial thing that do some of the smaller, bits of infrastructure that go on, We have those kind of pieces in our framework as well, you know, how close things are missing or or next to, you know, transit stops, activity centers, shopping centers, things like that, and where we're missing that kind of infrastructure.

Great. Thank you. One of the

questions that came in is how the how the Grand Connection ended up in here and, know, with the allocation allocation, but I guess the number of 46,000,000 on there. Is there anything you guys can shed light on that?

The connection is in the CIP. So that figure that you see is is a CIP figure.

Yeah. Okay. Is that that's in the CIP, the existing CIP?

That that's my understanding. Yes.

Okay. Any other

It is in the it is in the CIP, but that's not the full project cost. That's we'll fund the design and maybe some of the right away acquisition for the for the I 405 crossing of with that piece of the grand connection.

But So

when I see, like, 46,000,000 and it's 89,000,000 total, is 89,000,000 for the whole thing, or is that just the trans

60,000,000.

Oh my gosh. Okay. So there's then allocation process in terms of how much of it is transportation, how much of it is parks, and so forth. Right? So if it's 89,000,000

They're working on the funding plan for it, and and I think they've worked the number down. They've sharpened the pencils, and it's it's it's not $2.60 anymore as far as I know, but I'm not maybe you

know It's it's still over 200,000,000, but all of the money right now currently is reflected only in the transportation CIP.

K.

So are there other questions or discussion points? The next we'll next turn to requested action.

You know, just kind of a follow-up onto that question is maybe it's more for us in the future is is the TIP where we might look at multimodal transportation, and we might be looking at how they work together to improve the transportation overall, the efficiency overall. Right? Is that where we might be able to have this discussion? Because we've had this discussion a lot about how we were trying to figure out between modes. Right. How does one mode help another? Right?

Right. You know, this is actually the place to have that conversation more than the TIP. TFP is is is really the the probably the right place or the MIP when when that comes up for update. You know, frankly, I I think it's it's hard because, you know, they're they're kind of apples and oranges. I mean, know, they they really are.

It comes down to kind of what are the values. Right? And so that's where, you know, Albert's suggestion of, you know, policy framework or guiding principles. That that's helpful in trying to sort this out. And frankly, we don't have in my opinion, I think we struggle sometimes on the staff side to kind of evaluate if you've got a situation where Bellevue Way, do you widen out the intersection in order to put it in a right turn lane? That's going have an adverse impact. Sure, it might help the cars, right? But it will have an adverse impact on the pedestrians. Right? Because they're crossing there.

Well, did you know, the evaluation was done. Turned out it didn't really help the cars that much. So that we were okay on that one. But but that's the kind of, you know, trade off that you may have to look at. You know, we've got another situation downtown where know, 1 12th Avenue Northeast 10th Street, you know, that's on the k line transit route. But, you know, do we do we take a outside lane and make it a BAT lane? You know, that well, that will adversely impact the vehicle. So, you know, how how do you do those modal trade offs is something that we're, you know, increasingly looking at and and struggling to figure out, you know, what kind of guidance do we have? Do we need more? And and and, you know, how do we ultimately, you know, get some more guide. I mean, other cities have this guide. You know, Seattle is like, yeah. We'll take a lane. We'll put in the bus. You know?

And and that moves more people, you know, they have all their reasons. You know? But but we don't we don't have that kind of framework or or guidance yet. Right?

Other questions? Yeah.

K. Go ahead. Given that we have both the green and the peach are going into the TFP, is there going to be another discussion with the commission in the future that describes what the next bucketization of what's in the TFP because we've got more projects, right, than than we can afford to do at the moment. So what is the next step or, I guess, the future step where this commission will give feedback on which of those particular projects will get prioritized?

Well, the next step typically is the CIP. But we've already heard that there's a big backlog there. Right? So this is going to be our the TFP ultimately is your bucket of the priority projects. And then which ones get elevated is the CIP process. And that's a more compressed process that happens during the budget process. So it's not as open and and lengthy and extended as what we're doing here.

Got it. But really the next prioritization, there is no more prioritization that will happen at TFP level. It's essentially what are we taking from the TFP going into the CIP, and that's where the actual prioritization will occur is what I hear you're saying. Yes. Okay. Alright. Thank you.

Okay. Let's keep moving.

Hey. Bye. So we're we're asking tonight for action to endorse the TFP project list as well as to approve the transmitter letter and to designate a commissioner to accompany staff to the council meeting on August 4.

Okay. So we could take a motion now if you guys are ready. We could take a motion on all three. Well, we probably should take a motion on the first two. We could break them down. Why don't we why don't we if there is is there a motion for item a? So moved. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. All in favor of, the motion, which is to seek, commission well, we're we're providing endorsement of the TFP project list. So we just wanna be really clear on that. So we are endorsing this to go to the city council for the next step. All in favor, say

aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Okay. It's unanimous. Great. Okay. So the next one is the transmittal letter. I think you had some changes, Albert.

I can withdraw those changes now that I understand that couple literally means two. So

Better. Has everybody had a chance? Everybody had a chance to review the transmental letter? Okay. Good. Oh, go ahead. Ask your question.

It's not a question. I was just gonna say I did review a bunch of documents, but I don't remember that one specific. However, I am in inundation mode.

So Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Can we pull it up on the screen really quick, or is it

I I did hand out hard copies. Okay. So in that stack or whatever you have in front of you, there's it's a two and a half page.

Just give me just a second of that.

I did review this, so it's good.

K. So I would entertain a motion to approve the transmittal letter.

So moved.

K. Is there a second? Second. K. Commissioner Ting. Okay. Any discussion? No discussion. So all in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Passes. Great. Guys, we're making a lot of progress tonight. That's great. The final one is we need to designate a commissioner to attend the council meeting to discuss the TFP with Andrew and the team. So I'm happy to go. I'm here on the fourth. Anybody else wanna go?

I I won't be available on the fourth.

Okay.

So would I'd entertain a motion?

So moved. Okay. So the motion

is to send Drew to the council again. Last time, it was tough. Okay.

QTS exec

QTS QTS exec exec

Any discussion? Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. That one passes too. Alright. I'm due.

So at August 4, we'll share the project list with the council along with the staff recommendation to extend the TFP timeline to twenty years. So in terms of the TFP, we'll be going to council, as I mentioned, on August 4. And then we'll follow-up follow that. Assuming the council is comfortable with the project list, we will follow-up with an analysis of that project list to ensure that it checks out with our impact fee program because we have to make sure the projects in there will support the impact fee structure. And we're confident they will, but we need to do that math in that analysis.

And then we will do the SIPA checklist and get that, you know, process in order. And we'll then return to the the commission seeking final endorsement of the TFP. We'll have the document ready at that point prepared and seeking your final endorsements. It'll be later in the fall, at which time then we'll we'll advance it to the council.

K. Perfect. You. And, again, thanks to the staff. We've asked a lot of questions. We've you've given us spreadsheets with extra columns, and I think we've dug into that. And so it's been really helpful to to have all that. That's a lot of information. So really appreciate it.

Hit your wit on that. Yeah. Say, may have.

It's all

good. It's all good.

I'll just comment to you that we had, like, a little bit larger pool of candidate projects this time around because of the referrals from Bike Belvieu. So, you know, we we had more to digest this time around. It's always a lot, but this time, there was there was particular lot.

Hey. Before we go on the next topic, I think I wanna give council member Newn House just a quick you know, if you if you had a chance to hear share. No no no update. No update. But thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. Okay. So we will move on to the curve pricing update. And for that, we have Chris Long, Chris Iverson. You know it's toward the end of the meeting because Chris Iverson is coming. No. It's good set at the end. And and some of the So you're gonna give us a status update on the current pricing study. No actions requested.

You're just looking for kind of just a thumbs up from the commission and touch base. Right? So turn it over to you. Maybe you can introduce the team.

Yes. Chris is getting set up here. I'll go ahead and introduce the group. So I'm Chris Long, assistant director, mobility operations. Good to be here again with you. And with me is the consultant team that's helping. Chris Iverson is serving as an extension of staff as a consultant as the project manager for this project, And then our, consultants that are doing the the, the line share of the work, is, Chrissy Mancini Nichols and Kenzie Colson from, Walker Consultants. And so we're all here together in person, for this presentation as they've been here doing a second round of outreach that Chris will talk about in the presentation. So yeah, it looks like we're up. We can get to the next slide.

So we will kick off with a little bit of background, just to remind you where we've been, what we've been working on, talk about that second round of engagement that we've been doing. We are part of what Chrissy will be presenting is the concepts of what curb what a curb pricing application or or paid on street parking could look like, and we've been socializing that in the public, getting some input there, and then we'll talk about next steps. So with that, go ahead, Chris.

Vice chair, Miguel, members of the commission. Good to see you all. And so I will be running through a background of where we are with the current pricing study. Much of this material has been covered already in previous commission meetings, but, you know, for the sake of just refreshing since the last time we talked to you was way back in March, we thought it'd be helpful to go through it. So the CURT pricing study is a direct lead in from the curb management plan, which is a council adopted plan that the transportation commission helped develop in 2022 and 2023.

It was unanimously adopted just about two years ago. As part of that plan, there are over two dozen practices. We call them practices. Essentially, they're ideas for long term implementation to help improve conditions on the curbside. One of the highest priority actions was to perform an implementation study for a paid parking program.

This aligns with the overall, goals of a curb management program as well as aligns with a council adopted policy that's in the comprehensive plan. So this is, again, just kind of the next step and really the first out of the gate from the curb management plan initiative. We are focused in the urban core areas of Bellevue, again, very similar to the curb management plan with slightly more definition. Really focusing in areas like downtown, Wilburton, and Bell Red. There are two subareas in this geography that are split out separately, Old Bellevue and the Spring District.

Those two are within they're not official neighborhoods. They're kinda within the broader neighborhood, but they have very unique parking circumstances and designs that require kind of some nuanced attention. And so for the sake of this study, we are looking at those slightly separately from the broader neighborhood. In addition to the the main study area, we are also exploring other ways that a potential paid parking program could impact the neighborhoods adjacent to the study area kind of on a conceptual level. So that is kind of in the context of potential spillover and impacts to residential parking zones that currently exist.

So just want to to kind of add some clarity there. The curve pricing study has a handful of goals. Again, these are in alignment with best practices as well as some that are stated in the curve management plan. Ultimately, the hope is that by implementing a curb pricing approach, you make it easier to find spaces at the curbside. There's a best practice where you set a specific rate that encourages slight travel behavior change so that there's about one or two parking spaces available pretty much any time per block.

And what that does is that opens up the curb space for not just parking, but then hopefully makes it easier to have other types of curb uses access the curb such as deliveries, rideshare, things of that nature. Also, with the with this project, we're looking at increasing parking compliance, which, again, tied to safety and overall predictability of the curb. And, really, what we're trying to do is understand the various needs of the curb and balance some of the outcomes in an equitable manner. We collected data back in the 2024, hour by hour, figuring out how many parking stalls were occupied at the curb. The short version is is that street parking is almost completely full beginning in the afternoon and well into the evening in pretty much all of these study areas.

So what that results in again is you see a lot of double parking. You see delivery vehicles blocking the travel lane, a lot of the things that, again, we're trying to address. Many of these vehicles are parking illegally because they can't find a place to to pull over at the curb. You know, it's it's been stated here multiple times. The curb is a dynamic space.

It's used for multiple different uses other than parking, and so the competition is very high. But in terms of parking, this is really just one of the main uses that we see. And when we are doing this data collection, we also did an assessment of the existing market rate for parking in the study area. Ultimately, what we found is that prices range between 4 and 4 to $8 per hour for the first two hours of parking for a large number of off street parking facilities. So that kinda just gives you some information about where, you know, the existing free parking system is compared to a large supply of parking that, is paid parking.

So here is a quick update to the schedule. We are here in July. So we've been doing a lot of data collection. We had a robust public engagement effort back in the, the early spring, which I can touch on a little bit later. We have been developing kinda some concepts and recommendations for a potential curve pricing program, and we are really in the process now of defining and refining an implementation plan that will ultimately go in front of council later this year.

Back in May, some of you might recall that our project team submitted a a memo to commission for awareness about project direction. And there it's a it's a slight nuance, but I think it's an important one. Originally, our team was going to transportation commission was going to seek a letter of support and kind of an overall recommendation for all elements of the program. That, based off of some feedback from our city attorney's office and other departments, has been modified slightly so that right now transportation commission really is going to be focused on kind of ensuring that the recommendations are in alignment with the adopted plan. And ultimately, that will be coupled into a staff recommendation that will be brought forward to city council.

So, again, slight nuance. The the reason for the change is because this is a unique program in the context of transportation. You know, we had a great presentation about finances tonight. Really, the difference between curb pricing and a lot of these other things is that this is a very revenue forward program, and, ultimately, that will require council attention and needs those those details need to be sorted out at the council level. So that's ultimately, that's ultimately where we're headed.

And, really, the role of commission at this point is just to ensure that the the concepts and the ideas that are associated with a potential program are in fact in alignment with some of the principles that are outlined in the long range plan. I will touch on a little bit of community engagement. Again, this is a this slide is a review, from, the March meeting. We conducted a lot of engagement project, ranging from stakeholder interviews to door to door interviews where we talked to almost 50 different businesses, collected over 200 intercept surveys on the streets where we were just talking to folks on the sidewalk about their parking experience, collected online surveys, had an in person open house, had a virtual open house, sent out almost 17,000 mailers and flyers to the study area and neighborhoods in the vicinity. And this did, back in February and March, get a lot of media attention on social media and other news sites.

So this is kind of in the in the know in the community. There is a stakeholder and community feedback report available for your viewing on the project web page. And one other important thing too is that that really helped us set the tone for some of the recommendations that we will be showing tonight. So we are actually currently in kind of a a step two engagement now. This photo is actually from the Family Fourth event.

We had a booth set up where we were collecting feedback about the program among other city topics. But we we've also had conversations with folks like the old Belvieu Merchants Association, Belvieu Chamber of Commerce. Again, the feedback collected from those groups varies widely. There's, I think, consensus that something needs to change. You know, there is a managerial process that needs to be updated. Status quo isn't working anymore. There is some openness to the idea of curb pricing. You know, some folks want it, some folks don't. There have been some people that have come out and said things as blunt as it's a no brainer. We should just move forward.

And there are some that say, no way. Not at all. So it you know, parking is a it's a touchy subject. But, ultimately, you know, as we've come here and and mentioned several times at this point, pricing has been shown as a national best practice for managing the curb. That's the reason why we are exploring it very seriously.

So right now, we are actually doing some tabling exercises and outreach at the Downtown Park. We were there yesterday and today. You could probably see from the red on my forehead. And we'll be there tomorrow for a handful of hours, again, just collecting input from the public on this on this proposal. I have one more slide, and then I will pass it off to our consulting team to go into the details.

Just a recap of the curve pricing principles that are included within the curve management plan. These are outlined. Again, these are stated in your packet for tonight's meeting. These principles really they were workshopped with commission about two or three years ago when this was when this plan was being created. The the principles really focus on what a program could look like.

And so you can see here that the anything related to rates should be established to really achieve some of those goals about occupancy. It should help support in, efficient enforcement and optimize mobility. It should be easily understood by the public and communicated well. Any permitting associated with it should be simple and transparent. The the pricing structure should include strategies to ensure equitable outcomes.

So, again, trying to think about the mitigation strategies and and the balancing act. And ultimately, as an umbrella, it should be achieving city goals and policies. So these are the principles that we are building some of the some of the concepts underneath or and hoping to get some of your feedback and questions tonight on that. So with that, I will pass it off to Chrissy.

Great. So we've been working on a model of operations for the crew pricing program, and it takes into account many factors, the the capital cost, the anticipated revenue scenarios, all the changes we'll need to make to enforcement and staff operations. And that is based on what how we've worked with other cities on per pricing. It's based on best practices, but it's also based on all the data we collected. We've collected tons of data.

We've and as Chris said, we've done a lot of engagement, in what we heard from the community. So as a result, we've developed the model of operations about what this parking program could look like. We're looking at a three hour parking time limit, and that three hour limit is based on we heard from you commissioners, what we heard from the businesses. It's also you can see here, we have different areas of the city and hours of enforcement that we're looking at. That's based those hours of enforcement are based on data that we collected where we're seeing high occupancies beginning at 10AM and going on through the lunch hour.

In Old Bellevue, we added additional time to the enforcement hour because there was so much demand in the evening, to so we wanna support the neighborhood that way. And then enforcement on Sundays to match, you know, business operations that are in opening hours. Just so, you know, these are not set in stone. You know, we can change the hours of operation based on feedback. This is the model we're putting together right now.

So what we'll talk about is, like, prices. You know, We're recommending a pricing approach that council will adopt. Prices will be set based on existing data. Looking at off street rates, there's a lot of off street paid parking already in Bellevue. So we looked at off street rates.

We were looking at national best practices, and we're looking at the revenue model and and making sure the program pays for itself. The idea is the highest rates will be in areas with the highest utilization. And after the program is in place and it's stabilized and we understand how the behaviors are changing and how people are responding, the city will continue to monitor the program and then start thinking about, well, how do we adjust rates based on demand? And in places with higher demand, you know, you could increase rates by some cities increase rates by a quarter or 50¢. In places with lower demand, you reproduce rates, and that's where you start to get the performance of the system and the demand based pricing.

But, yeah, I mean, the idea is you would be flexible program that's continuously monitored. And we're building equity considerations into the program. We're talking about charging for parking, but that's just part of an overall layered approach to managing the transportation and congestion and and, parking demand in Bellevue. So we will have multiple payment options, but importantly, we're exploring how paid parking can support other transportation options other than driving and parking, especially for employees. You know, we we're hearing that.

We understand that, employee considerations and needs are important. It's a very complicated challenge to address, and we're working to come up with a solution. But the good thing is, you know, once the program is you know, if it should be approved by council, by the time you go through procurement, there you know, that would take a maybe a year and a half to actually implement. So there's time, even once it's approved, if it is approved, to work through those things and listen to the community, listen to businesses and the employees, and to start thinking about, you know, how to address any potential challenges. The operation cost assumptions take into account all the factors you see here, staffing, enforcement, equipment, hiring, additional resources, a parking manager, enforcing the residential permit parking zones to make sure that there's not spillover in those residential areas, enforcing the park parking lots, and just, you know, installing and maintaining the, infrastructure.

And then on the revenue allocation assumptions, we are looking at what the program would support. You know, first, we need to fund the program, and, you know, we're working on our model is based on the program funding itself. But then, you know, the city staff would be have revenue left to fund the overall current management program. And then in make investments, like parking wayfinding, loading zones, accessible parking, like we talked about the employee transportation options, and then other things, you know, potentially that we heard from the community, you trash receptacles, flowers, streetlights, you know, some of these other things that could potentially be funded as well.

Great. Thanks, Chrissy. So, again, we just want to highlight how we think that these recommendations align with the principles. I this is essentially copied and pasted from your packet and really just rehashed one by one. So in terms of the principle number one regarding the target parking occupancy goals, as Chrissy mentioned, we're aiming to establish this program so that the rates can be adjusted on a regular basis, and we are achieving that overall goal, hitting the median around 80%, hopefully on a consistent basis.

In terms of supporting enforcement structures and optimized mobility operations, you know, again, the the revenue stream would be able to support things like augmented enforcement and some of these other practices that are listed in the current management program. So ultimately, the the community benefits from from some of these some of these more complex managed material practices. In terms of communication, we were really hoping to make this system as accessible as possible. Materials will be translated in multiple languages. There will be several options to be able to pay for parking, and information will be readily available.

You know, with a with a paid parking program, there would be enhanced signage. And, really, this the the overall goal is just to make sure that the public understands how it works. In terms of permitting structures, there's nothing directly associated with the curb pricing study that's actually tied to permitting, but kind of tied to the overall curb program in the curb management plan. There are some practices related to revisiting and reforming some of their right of way and public space usage practices in the transportation right of way. So that would be kind of part of the overall package.

And, again, the program would help support some of those reevaluations. In terms of strategies for equitable outcomes, again, really, the hope is that the program would be invested into other types of curbside improvements, added loading zones, added ADA, accessible parking stalls, enhancing TDM programs, things of that nature, really just to try to better understand, mitigate, and monitor any potential impacts that a that a curb pricing program could cause on the community. And, again, on a high level, really, the overall hope on a on a very high level basis about better curb management is improving the safety and efficiency of the transportation system. If you have a curb that works, that means that you have less double parking, you have less blockages of travel lanes, you have more access to the curb that all types of users can have. And, you know, we again, we believe best practice shows that establishing a pricing can help open the curve up just enough to allow that more efficient structure to happen and be set in place.

So with that, I will pass it off to Chris for some closing.

Yes. So next steps here, we we are working on the the final report for the the implementation study. We'll have a draft of that out before the next commission meeting for your review. We'll be back on September 11 to discuss that report with you and, see if you have any additional feedback before we prepare to bring that to council, towards the end of the year. We're continuing that second round of outreach, doing a lot of engaging with the the public and the people who had provided input in the initial round as well, reaching back out to them to share the additional information and, you know, look to get council action by the end of the year.

And with that, the just discussion and that kinda head nod that we're headed in the right direction with the principals.

Okay. Questions? Commissioner Ping? Oh, go ahead.

Yeah. First, I just wanna say thanks to Chris and Chris. I've got several briefings over the last, couple of days, and that's been super, excuse me, super super helpful. Just a couple of small things for, your consideration in the report that you're writing. One of the things that I saw, and I mentioned this to both of you already, one of the things that I noted in the feedback in from several cases was the question about employee parking or con construction parking.

And I understand the, you know, the idea is to work on transportation demand approaches to that, so really to help find better alternatives to curb parking for those specific needs. In your document where you describe the feedback. I think I saw a q and a section in there. May 26.

Yeah.

And, it might be worth adding a q and a on that specifically if it's not there. Just one thought. And then the second one and I think this might already be addressed, but if not, maybe you could just take a look to make sure that it's it's clear in the report. And that had to do with the, the ease of payment for pricing and just you know, it should be requiring people to use an app is a is a big step for people. So and I I know that you're already thinking about that, that there would not be an app required, but, or maybe that that an app would be used, but it would not be there'd be a lower level.

So the ability to just pay with a credit card, so it'd be good to to, point that out. So thank you.

Thank

you. Yeah. Thank you.

So a quick clarification. Is enforcement for RPCs part of the plan of record? Is it part of the recommendation, or is it simply the ability to add that in the future?

What we are building into the pricing is an assumption that we will be dedicating more enforcement energy to RPCs based on any unintended consequences of paid on street parking. So we heard that loud and clear from the community when we were working on the curb management plan that they were they were concerned about that, and we wanna make sure that that's factored in. Today, all of our RPCs around the city are enforced by two parking enforcement officers in the police department. So they're they're stretched fairly thin. So what we are anticipating is that the the enforcement that's dedicated to the urban core where the paid parking is will also be servicing those RPCs as needed. Great.

Thank you. And then another clarification.

Can you tell me a

little bit about how residents use on street parking? Because on one hand, I don't know if a two hour time limit, how someone that lives there would use that parking. But in part of your documents, it implies that residents mostly have off street parking. But then in other parts, it sort of refers to the fact that residents do use on street parking. So what's the data that you have regarding residents and how they utilize on street parking?

The information we have is mostly anecdotal. We have the what we heard we talked to a number of residents yesterday when we were standing out at the edge of Old Bellevue in the downtown park. And most of them or all actually, all of the ones we spoke to yesterday have parking available in their building. Where when they use it, it's mostly with visitors. Some of them have visitor spaces in their building, but others rely on that parking for visitors to come as well.

What we heard from those residents is they they agree that their visitors struggle to find parking. Will their visitors like to pay for parking? Nobody likes to pay for parking. But they do like the idea that maybe it'll be more accessible with a paid parking system. We asked the question, do you think it would impact their desire to wanna come visit?

And one particular resident said, well, if that's going to impact them, I'll pay for their parking. And so it's but it's so that's generally what we heard. We don't I we we there are pockets that we've heard in past communications with the city that where residents do rely on the parking overnight. But it's not in Old Bellevue. This is in other parts of of Bellevue that like Spring District, we see that happen a bit there.

It's built as a TOD environment. The number of parking spaces is a little lower in some of those buildings, then it's, know, a hair under one per unit. And so a lot of so we do see people parking overnight in that area.

Okay. Any other go ahead.

A few questions specifically about Wilburton because I know that that's a train stop for the two line. In other areas in Washington State and along the I 5 Corridor, they have the park and rides where you park for free, and then you get on a different mode of transportation. And I I wonder what your thoughts are on that because it it seems like that would be almost de incentivizing for someone to want to use multimodal transportation if they're let's say they drive to the bus stop and it's a rainy or snowy day and then they wanna take the train, the rest of the lane to work, if they're having to pay for parking every so hours, what's the solution there?

So our program is not changing any of the operations of any park and ride So the the the only parking facility dedicated to transit that's in the project area is at the the Bell Red Station. There's about 300 parking spaces between a hundred and thirtieth and a hundred and thirty second. And we there is on street parking on both of those two streets that will be paid parking, but the parking lot to is not part of what we're gonna be managing there. So the near the Wilburton Station that's right behind Whole Foods, there is an adjacent street there that has on street time limited parking, and that is currently, is that that's the only street in Wilburton today that has on street parking that is part of the study area. So that that's different.

That was not necessarily put there as for transit ridership. I actually don't know what that parking was for. So it's but it's there. It's time limited to two hours today, and so it would be part of that program.

Okay. And then do you have any examples or case studies of where operational costs you know, don't exceed the revenue that comes in so that

Yeah.

We can kind of justify this? You know, I'm gonna be at the city council meeting, and that's part of what I wanna know is, is this gonna cost me more than this is gonna make the city?

Right. Christie, do you wanna speak to that or Kenzie?

Yeah. So we're modeling to forecast that the program would pay for itself. And, you know, that's the the goal of all parking programs. You don't want them to be a lag on the general fund. I mean, a lot of parking programs send money to the general fund or they fund other enhancements like we're talking about with the curb management plan. So our model is showing that the parking program would pay for itself, and then you'd have additional revenue to support the neighborhood enhancements.

Do you have any case studies of in other areas where that has proven the case?

Oh, yeah.

I just off the top of so, like, right now, I'm working with Sacramento, Boulder, San Luis Obispo. I mean, I we could name a bunch of cities and or provide case studies That would you. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you.

Cities would pull it out if it wasn't making money.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

I mean, just so you know, the the what we do today with enforcement doesn't pay for itself. We don't make we the the the tickets that are that are captured do not pay for that enforcement cost. So there's not a it there's not enough revenue out of enforcement just to cover out of the ticketing just to cover enforcement.

And does that enforcement include the maintenance of the overheads? I think there was a slide on here that mentioned, you know, making sure that no one is tampering with the machines, things like that.

That's that's

what we built into our our our financial model is all of those pieces we assumed, you know, contracted services for cleaning graffiti off of pay stations. We included it was mentioned in there as the ten year replacement cycle. We have a program at the city that, for a lot of our, as an example, the the the cabinets that we use to run our traffic signals, those those are on a ten year replacement cycle. And so we feed a fund every year to help pay for those every that replacement. And we do that with a lot of different equipment, and that's what we would do here as well.

All of that was built in, so we made sure we captured every every cost that could possibly come up so that we're we can assure that it's we're we're not going to lose money on this endeavor.

Down to uniforms and, you know, insurance. Yeah. Every Insurance. Yes. That would go into the class.

Last question. Can you explain to me again? I I understand freeing up parking spaces being equitable for more people to have the ability to park in these areas. But can you just explain to me or elaborate on the equitable part of paying for parking?

So the the way that we're phrasing the the equitable approach really is just in terms of access. And part of it is access and part of it is understanding the potential impacts and trying to mitigate and monitor those impacts. So in terms of communication, you know, there's there's sort of this equitable approach so that we are communicating the the status of parking to our diverse community, Language language translations, public information, access to staff, you know, that is actually a big one. Make just making sure that there is availability so that the public feels comfortable asking questions and has an understanding. Multiple payment methods, for example, you know, to to, commissioner Williams' point earlier.

So from a from, like, a communications aspect, there's that. In terms of a mitigation and monitoring aspect, we just wanna make sure that any potential impacts that a paid parking program would cause, we at least have something to be able to address those mitigations. So whether that's through things like the the TDM approach, you know, looking at some potential alternative transportation or commute methods or encouraging other modes of travel to and from shops or or business destinations, potentially looking at other alternative parking approaches. There there are a lot of solutions on the table, and, ultimately, the hope is that and the goal, part of the program, not not a hope, a goal, would be to make sure that we are mitigating for those impacts, in the best way that we can.

Thank you.

I have a clear understanding, I think, of what success looks like for the overall program in terms of the 80%, revenue neutral, communication with the public, simplicity, etcetera. But expanding on Commissioner Kilman's question of equity, can you tell me a little bit about who is the target audience that you're considering from an equity perspective? And what does success look like?

So I I think that there's a there's a baseline understanding that the transportation system exists and functions for all, and the curb is part of the system. So Mhmm. There is target audiences. You know, I think that what we've heard through some of the community engagement that we've done is any, you know, hourly workers of retail or restaurant locations, that's a big concern. That's something that we would be looking into as part of the program in a really serious way about figuring out, how we could potentially mitigate.

We've heard that and, again, we don't know for sure because it's difficult to track license plates to specific individuals, but we've heard that, a lot of the workers in places like Old Bellevue, some of them park on the street and move their car frequently during their shifts. Some folks actually do pay for a permit, and park off street or park far away. So I think success would would look like finding solutions for that scenario, whether that's, again, collaborating with our transit our regional transit providers, whether that's talking to other parking lot owners, figuring out the mitigation strategies for a potential paid system. And I'll actually pass it off to do want to mention something as well, Kenzie?

Well, I I I think Chris maybe stole a little bit of my thunder there. I think, yeah, I I think we are talking about a system that addresses issues for all. And and when we say that, think about some of the folks who are impacted right now by by some of the lack of compliance. We have delivery drivers who block lanes, creates congestion, creates safety issues that can affect, ultimately, pedestrians or other drivers. You know, we're looking to mitigate some of those impacts.

We're looking for better access for those who need to get closer to a shop front. Those with certain mobility issues are going to have an easier access point to the location where they're actually going, and that's a a type of equity. We're looking for an ongoing program that gives a framework for assessment data and engagement into the future. Right now, what is happening is a program that doesn't really cover all of the best practices. It doesn't operate in a customer focused way, in a unified way where we're listening to the community.

They're out there giving select tickets. It doesn't pay for itself. We want a program that addresses all the voices that we hear into the future. So I will say that programs like this often launch, and we have a lot of data in peer review to know how to look at models and how to think about the spillover factors and how to try to be prepared. But we do know there's going to be some unintended consequence.

There are gonna be some voices who say, wait. What about me? And we wanna be prepared for that. And so the program bakes in some staffing to be available for that ongoing engagement, the modification of the program, the tweaking, the refining. And as Chrissy mentioned, that data in the future is designed to to tweak pricing so that we're not way off in in left field where we do something that is drastically, adversely affecting anyone.

We're looking at the data and saying, oh gosh. Now we're going to tweak the program and continue to get better and better and listen to what the people need and and go from there. So I really think about it like a it's a it's creating a foundation for being able to address all the needs

Okay. That the city will hear.

Alright. So it sounds like the two main groups in terms of equity that we're looking at, one is going to be those with mobility issues, and the second is going to be lower income workers. Is that

I think we're we're looking at access for all those who might use the the short term curb. And so in terms of

But from an equity perspective.

On street, we wanna make sure that there is availability for folks to interact with the the short term and long term parking options.

Right. And that makes sense from an access perspective. But from an equity perspective, it sounds like, from what I've heard, those are the two main groups that we're looking at. Is are there additional groups? So we've got those with mobility issues and low income workers.

I think we're we're more looking for every transportation user to have a voice, and so I'm not I'm not sure that that that there's a there's a singling out of any any

So from an

equity perspective, you're looking at all transportation users?

We are. We're looking at the streets comprehensively. We're looking at at customer engagement education. We're looking at the ability to have a dialogue going forward with all those who might have a need or request. And and the program provides that into the future as well as it's designed to be assessed and and evolved.

So just some feedback. Usually, I think about equity, I think about disadvantaged groups. And so maybe when we look at the curve pricing program, we can think about, again, an equity perspective, what are the groups that you think we should help support? It's probably a subset of the entire population of transportation users. And then we can think about what are the outcomes that we're looking for.

In other words, what does success look like? Is it for the low income worker that they have an alternative low cost or no cost parking so that they can get to work every day? It's just sort of thinking through that, because I think for some of the low income workers that would normally have to move their cars around, if they have to pay for parking, that could be a significant impact. And so that I think would have a real measurable negative effect on their lives. So that's just some feedback I would suggest you think about it and then figure out if, like, how we would go about helping those particular groups. What who are those groups? Who are those populations? And then how do we wanna help them?

Yeah. That's definitely like, we discussed that we've heard loud and clear that employees, especially the low income service industry employees, those are, you know, subsets of users that we're looking for a strategy around how to make sure that they're not affected. We we went out and talked to every business, and we talked to a lot of employees. And right now, they're either moving their cars every two hours or they're getting tickets. You know? So that's that's not a a great solution either because then they have to pay the citations.

So Very true. Yeah. True. Okay. Great.

Thank you. Yep.

Just a follow-up comment on the equity thing because it I I totally understand and respect the different languages for I mean, especially here in Bellevue where we have so much diversity, and I definitely appreciate that. I just from someone who does advocacy work, when I hear that same word of equity, I just wanna make sure that it's genuine and that it's not an umbrella term, and everything gets to get classified under that. So, again, you know, I'm thinking about the audience. It's gonna be in the city council meeting to really classify things that are equitable versus things that are user friendly. That's all. Okay.

Well, you got maybe a little bit more feedback than you anticipate. There you go. Okay. One one last Super quick.

Yeah. This has come up in the past, so it's just a quick reminder. We've always asked whether paid parking is a net win or a net loss economically for businesses. And so there's studies that sort of go either way. So if you have any additional studies or thoughts on that, I think that's a great part of the messaging for businesses for those that are concerned about, you know, fewer people going out. So don't know if you have any. You don't have to get into it now, but just something if you do, that'd be great to share with us. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much for the update, and we look forward to seeing you on September 11, I think. Right?

K.

Thank you. Okay.

We are on to agenda item eight, which is approval of minutes. We have two sets of minutes to approve, minutes from April 24 and minutes from May 8. If you guys would if you all would like to make a motion to approve both.

Second.

And there's a second. Any discussion? Any changes? Okay. So all those in favor of approving both sets of minutes, April 24 and May 8, say aye. Aye. Okay. That one passes as well.

Abstain. Because I'm gonna In case she wondered.

You. You're gonna be great. Okay. So agenda item number nine, unfinished business. We don't have any. Right, Kevin? New business, we don't have any. And so it's time to review the commission calendar before we adjourn. Kevin?

September 11 is our our next scheduled meeting. Do you know one of the agenda topics, which is the, you know, follow-up on on curb pricing. One topic that you haven't seen for a while that will be on your agenda for September 11 is the draft update of the mobility implementation plan. You've done all of this substantive work, and staff and the consultant team have been consolidating all that substantive work into a into a draft document for re your review. And in addition to the substantive work, I think Molly and Chris reviewed this with you last time.

There will be updates to all the maps and tables and figures with data that is more recent than in the adopted mobility implementation plan. So all that updated work will be embedded in that. So we'll I'm looking for two touches on the mobility implementation plan, kind of a a quick review, an overview on September 11, and then a a a recommendation to the city council on the October. I think it's October 10. So couple couple touches on the MIP coming up. And October 9,

I think, is what we have. What's that? October 9.

Ninth. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We also have on the agenda the introduction of a new commissioner. If if if council member Newhouse was still here, he would tell you that the application period closes tomorrow for applicants for the remaining vacancy. And we we we will review those applicants, interview, and hopefully have a selection before the September 11 commission meeting.

Okay. They're smart. They're watching tonight. Oh, just kidding. Okay. See what you're getting

comfortable about.

The potential retreat date. Typically, we would do a retreat in place of a regularly scheduled meeting. Right now, it is looking at November. Specifically November 13. Thirteenth. Yes. According to my calendar. So let's let's think about that. Typically, I also work with the chair and vice chair to develop an agenda for the retreat. So now that we know who those people are, we can begin to to build an agenda.

I don't have my calendar. It's right there. But what day is that?

Saturday night. Thursday night.

Yeah. We would do like what we did last time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Just be in place of a ringer meeting. Perfect. Okay. Second Thursday. Alright.

Great. Oh, yes. Question?

Not a question, but a comment on so I see that you're updating the mobility implementation plan, and you said some mentioned something about adding more figures to it. And I did find as I was reading through it that it's it's a great plan. I'm really tickled to see, you know, the detail that, you know, went into putting that together and the, you know, clarity that it helps to provide by having the the prioritization factors. So so that's not great. I did find that I for some of the prioritization factors and then also some of the, facilities, I didn't always understand what it was.

There'd be especially, like, for bicycle lanes, there are different types of stripes and such. And and I did see some, like, photos of some things, but it would be helpful it would have been helpful to me if, you know, every time we were describing something, if there was maybe some sort of visual or maybe a link to some place to go find more information on that.

So Yeah. I I can guarantee that you will have both in the in the update of the MIP, links and visuals. Okay. They may may be photographic visuals. They may be graphic visuals, but you'll have visuals.

Perfect. Thank you. K. Thanks.

Okay. Well, that's a whole summer's worth of transportation commission in one meeting, so that's great. Oh, good good shot. Are there any objections to adjourning the meeting? No objections. So we are adjourned at 08:50. Thank you.