City Council - Regular Meeting

Done.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. I have 6 p.m. and I will call the city council meeting for August 10th to order. Would you please all join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you. Do we have any council members online?

No. Okay.

Do we have any council members behind the bench? All right. All council members are present and the clerk will make note of that. let's proceed then to announcements and committee reports. Firstly, a couple of announcements. We are about to resume work at 12th and Commercial. As promised, the next phase begins mid-August, and mid-August we now know means Monday. So you'll see people positioning equipment over the next week or so. And then you'll see work begin at the intersection of 12th and Commercial. They will then proceed to 11th and Commercial to fix the carnival ride hump there. So all of that will occur over the next month to six weeks. You'll see quite a bit going on, and you'll see some lane reductions, but the intersection will never be closed. If you want more information, of course, anacorteswild.gov slash projects. The library's got some events coming up, including Teen Trivia Night tomorrow, and then a presentation for adults, AI Made Simple, on Wednesday. They are taking a break from children's programming August 17th through September 13th. Open Streets, where downtown Anacortes is converted to a car-free environment for your bike, e-bike, skateboard, and other personal transportation devices, is coming up on August 30th. It starts at 11, ends at 3 p.m. We hope to see you out there on the streets. A recurring favorite the residential cleanup day is coming September 19 that's a Saturday. 9am to 12pm bring your residential garbage and yard waste to our operations facility at no charge, and I believe we also require proof of residency a utility bill or something like that. And today is the day that our new e-bike ordinance goes into effect. So helmets are now required by law for all bikes for riders that are under age 18. The speed limit for all bikes, unless you're on a street with a faster speed limit, is 15 miles per hour. It is against the law for anyone age 16 to ride an e-motorcycle under 16. 16 and over must be licensed with motorcycle endorsement. Tickets for a first violation of our e-bike ordinance is $52, which includes some court fees, and the police may impound a bike that was in violation of our ordinance, and parents may be held responsible for the actions of their children. For more information, go to anacortesois.gov slash e-bikes, where you can get all the details, including how to distinguish an e-motorcycle from an e-bike. We will have, I think, gentle enforcement at the beginning of this, and it will ramp up as we... are able to see changes in behavior or not. We'll also have helmets available to the public, probably at the Open Streets events, and then we'll have more information on the e-bikes webpage, again, at anacorteswa.gov slash e-bikes when we've got that ready. Okay, council, we've got some committee reports. Let's start with the Housing Affordability and Planning Committee. Who wants to do that report?

Mayor Walters.

Ms. Moulton.

Thank you. The planning committee met at 5 p.m. this evening, and it was Council Members Young, Currier, and myself, and Planning Manager Libby Grage, and Planning Director John Coleman. And it was sort of one of those summary-type, free-form conversations that was really a lot of fun. because we haven't seen each other for a little while either so it was nice to catch up but um the things that we talked about related to planning were the great news about the 750 000 grant we received from the county for the event center so that's super exciting that's a big boost to our progress and we're very grateful to the county the port also received a grant in that tranche of money too for one of their projects. And the port, speaking of the port, they also have released a request for proposals for a hotel in the Northwest Basin area that will be very complimentary to the event center. And so we're looking forward to that synthesis that relationship of those those two eventual structures. We also have applied as a city for a grant from the state for $75,000 to continue to refine our planning processes and to continue to improve those and streamline those so. Fingers crossed on that. There were compliments on the planning department's website updates, making it easier to navigate and also, you know, not only find what you're looking for, but it's just nicer to look at in general. And just another mention, I don't know if everyone knows yet, but that the city prevailed on and some of in challenges to our growth management act and um so we are grateful for that and it's just another indicator that our staff is doing a really good job and the judge thought so too so that was pretty much it all right thank you uh do we also have a committee report on the port city liaison committee

Mayor Walters?

Ms. Cleveland-McGrath.

Thank you. Actually, we do, and it seems like weeks ago at this point. We met on August 4th, so last Tuesday. We had Councilmember Fantini there, Commissioners Pittis and Ottenbright, among a variety of representatives from the city and the port. We had a pretty quick agenda. One of the items was the Tommy Thompson Trail, where it crosses the... seafarers way. So when you come in, when we're seafarers way, you're going to go out to the park there where they do the Friday and Wednesday music that right and left-hand turn out of that park and, or, uh, off of the – across the Tommy Thompson Trail gets really congested, partially because there's a left-hand turn lane there, partially because it's just a really busy area. And so we started the conversation of what if there's any calming devices that we could use for specifically bicyclists because they're usually riding faster than pedestrians would and what that looks like. So we're starting that conversation. It's difficult for cars to see the bicyclists. It's also hard for the bicyclists to see the cars because of how busy it is there. We talked a little bit about the Curtis-Whorf pump-out agreement. They are still working out some of the details on the volume that is expected it to generate and the number of hookups required. um that we also talked a little bit about the peer to retention pond outfall assessment so when some of the yearly work that occurs at the wastewater treatment plant allows for um the pond the peer to retention pond to have some further study done and uh Making sure that they coincide in a timely manner helps both the port and the city get the necessary work done each every so many years. So just kind of making sure that when we need the next assessment done, I think the last time it was done is 2021. It needs to be done again. So making sure that we're just in coordination is really helpful for both cities. both entities. And then finally, there was a little bit of a discussion about the boat show. The fact that when we see sales tax receipts kind of come in three months delay, we're starting to see that and the boat show was really successful and busy this last year. So kind of having a discussion of, yes, you sell the boat, those boats are sold, but then what, how does that generate further economic activity throughout the community for our, boat builders, our maintenance people, our grocery stores, our hotel businesses, and seeing if there's ways that we can better articulate both for the port and the city what that impact is year over year. So that was all that I have for my notes.

Thank you. Mayor Walters? Mr. Fantini.

No, I just wanted to add on that last point, because I actually, so I don't have a lot of education around the maritime industry too much. But it was really interesting to hear about, yes, boats get sold here. But like, there's people that do pump outs and underwater washing of those boats. And like, it was interesting. It was incredible to hear how much money is spent by visitors that come here. So yeah, coordinating that was awesome. The other thing that did come up that I wanted to touch on too was there was a little discussion around the event center and the want and desire. to get some more information out there to the public i know the mayor has mentioned before that there's some really good information on the website of how progress is going on on all of that and i know there will hopefully be some more information coming forward for the progress and full council pretty soon so thank you and yes that's that's right we're working on additional updates to that web page and um economic activity in the voting industry

raises all boats, but also generates revenue for the city of Anacortes, which we need. Okay, council, do you have any other announcements before we move on to our awards? No. All right. Thank you. Okay. So that brings us to the mayor's awards of merit. Uh, the mayor's awards of merit are granted to city employees who have demonstrated particularly meritorious conduct in their service to the public and the city of Anacortes. So we have a number of them tonight, and I'm going to ask their supervisors department heads to come forward first and tell us a little bit about what their conduct was that warranted the award. and then we are going to hand out some awards. So first, I'll ask our public works director, Mr. Logan Lee, to describe the meritorious conduct of some of our water treatment plant operators.

Yes, good evening. It's my pleasure to introduce several members of our water treatment plant team, Wade Hoskins, Cameron Frazier, Seth Hsu, and Gilbert Quevedo. They are being recognized for their exceptional service during the historic flooding event that happened last December on the Skagit River. These four operators were on shift overnight during the peak flood levels, and although we were confident in the improvements we had made over the years to improve the plant's resiliency, this was an unprecedented event, and there was a real chance that the river could overtop, the dike could fail, potentially leave them stranded. And in the end, the event passed with zero plant downtime. And due to these operators' commitment and willingness to work through difficult conditions, they were able to help protect an essential service for the residents of Anacortes. So I'm thanking Wade, Cameron, and Seth and Gilbert tonight for their hard work and dedication to the city.

Thank you, Mr. Lee. I would like each of you, all four of you now, to come up and receive your awards. All right, we'll start with Cameron. Thank you very much. How about Wade? Thank you. And Seth. Thank you. And finally, Gilbert. Thank you. And then. Who's doing the photo?

Okay.

All right. Thank you very much. The water treatment plant, the wastewater treatment plant, the ops facility. Some of our other facilities are not as connected to City Hall as those of us who work here. And we want to recognize, be sure to recognize, everybody who works for the City of Anacortes. All of the dedicated hours that you put in, they're very important. Obviously, the water treatment plant provides drinking water to all of Anacortes. And it keeps everything going, even in really adverse conditions. The floods last December were somewhat scary. And so we really appreciate the work of our water treatment plant operators all the time, but especially in conditions like that. So thank you very much. All right, now let's bring up one of our star staff members from the planning department, Libby Grage.

Well, thank you, Mayor, and thank you especially to Libby Grange. So Libby is invaluable in many ways. I don't want to go on too much about that, but tonight in particular, we want to talk about her and acknowledge her work on the 2025 Comprehensive Plan and Development Regulation Periodic Update. And much like it's the name of the project, it is a very long and detailed project that started all the way back in mid to late 2023 and was completed in 2025. Libby led this project from start to finish, including when an appeal was received of the documents Libby also then spent the next several months providing detailed analysis of how the city did indeed meet all of the requirements of the Growth Management Act, providing detailed information and documentation all through the way to our legal team to defend it at the Growth Management's hearings board, which is a very daunting task for anybody to take on, and Libby did it with great grace. Because of Libby's hard work and dedication through the updates were upheld by the growth management hearings board. And by the way, Libby did this on top of all of her regular duties at the office as well. So I wanted to acknowledge and thank Libby for all she does for the city of Anacortes and especially this meritous conduct associated with the comprehensive plan and development and regulation updates. Thank you very much.

either it's a day or five for our communication, the hours that we put in, the countless, Okay, we now have two more groups that we're going to call off. First, 4BC. So I'm going to ask our fiber manager to come forward and provide them to regale us of the tale of 4BC. And then they call off.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council members, during the months of June and July of this year, Corby, excuse me, the city's fiber network core equipment experienced various issues that affected that network's ability to deliver internet service to our customers. That required extensive and exhaustive troubleshooting and hours spent with the equipment manufacturer. On more than one day, team's calls began early in the workday and lists lasted until past 5 PM. Corby Stevens worked tirelessly to diagnose matters, maintain close contact with the equipment manufacturer, find and implement solutions, keep other city staff aware of progress and follow up with affected customers. In addition to his normal shifts, he worked a total of 46 and a half extra hours during June and July. Perhaps most notably, he worked 26 extra hours over the July 4th weekend. Corby took personal and professional ownership of the fiber network performance levels, often saying, nobody wants this solved more than I do. Corby's example and commitment to keeping the city's fiber network up and running are not merely commendable. It's a reflection of who he is. And for that, I do not have adequate words to give him the level of honor he deserves.

I do remember that we did go along to Slater.

But we are so grateful for that.

Certainly. First, Aaron Brown. On the afternoon of June 29th of this year, the fiber internet experienced a major fiber outage requiring an immediate and extensive restoration effort to reestablish communications serving residents, businesses, and public services throughout the city. Without hesitation, Aaron Brown volunteered to remain on duty well beyond the completion of his regularly scheduled shift, understanding the restoration effort would continue throughout the night. Working continuously from the afternoon of June 29 until approximately 10.30 a.m. the following morning, Aaron demonstrated extraordinary professionalism, perseverance, and commitment to public service under physically and mentally demanding conditions. Throughout the restoration effort, Aaron willingly moved between multiple mobile splice operations, anticipating needs, supporting fellow technicians, and ensuring that work would progress safely and efficiently. His positive attitude, technical expertise, and unwavering work effort were instrumental in restoring critical fiber infrastructure as quickly as possible, minimizing service disruptions for the citizens and businesses of Anacortes. Aaron's actions exemplify the very best of public service. His willingness to place the needs of the community above personal convenience reflects exceptional dedication to the mission of Anacortes, access fiber internet and the city of Anacortes. Thank you. Yes, Ian Wade. And Ian is a fledgling volunteer fireman with one of the county districts. And he has fireman's training on Monday evening. So he's not here this evening. And for that, I'm very thankful because that means that his far, far, far better half is here. Melissa is here in Ian's stead. on that same day we experienced that fiber outage that required extensive restoration effort. Without hesitation, Ian Wade volunteered to remain on scene throughout the overnight restoration, despite exceptionally difficult working conditions. His mobile splice van automatically shut down after extended idle periods. And I should pause there and just indicate that actually we took, I believe it was Parks and Rec's van, yeah. and we converted it overnight into a splicing platform. And so it has an automatic shutoff on it, and after it idles for five minutes, it turns off so it doesn't burn gas and damage the engine. So Ian's sitting in there doing his splicing work, and every five minutes he has to jump up and turn the thing back on. He's pretty much working by almost candlelight in there. Rather than allowing those challenges to delay restoration, Ian improvised by converting an otherwise unsuitable vehicle into a functional mobile splice station using a portable generator, a folding table, electrical tape, zip ties, and other available resources to establish an unconventional splice point. Working through the night with determination and professionalism, Ian never complained, never slowed his effort, and never lost focus on the mission. He adapted to changing conditions, overcame equipment limitations, and continued producing high-quality work while helping restore critical fiber infrastructure for the community. Melissa, you should be very proud of Ian. Please come up.

Yes, very good.

Thank you.

Thank you to our award winners, but also thank you to all of our city employees. We know that our city employees are doing hard work, sometimes dirty work, sometimes mentally challenging work, work that tests their resolve frequently in almost every department. but not everybody gets the award. And so we're really thankful for the people who were here tonight, who received the award tonight, but we also know that our employees are what make the city operate, what make it possible for all of us to live here in Anacortes. It is truly valued work that you do, and we would very much appreciate it if you would keep doing it for us. All right, our next agenda item is public comment. I have one person signed up in advance for public comment. That's Audrey Houston. And then if there's anyone else in the room, we'll take them next. So Audrey, come on up to the podium. You have three minutes. You'll see the lights on the podium there. Please adjust the microphone. Tell us what neighborhood you live in, your name, and go.

Um, okay. My name's Audrey Houston. Uh, I live in ward three, I think I live in skyline a little bit on the mic so we can hear you a little better. Is that better?

That's better. Yes. Thank you.

Now I can hear myself better too. Okay. My name is Audrey Houston. I live in Skyline, which I think puts me in Ward 3. And I'm here tonight representing Anacortes Girls Basketball. And I will say I am representing Anacortes Girls Basketball, but the same challenge applies to boys basketball and youth sports in general in Anacortes. So keep that in mind. Anacortes Youth Basketball Association serves students and residents in Anacortes. We typically have five teams, one per grade level, fourth through eighth grade. Last year, we had 53 athletes enrolled. We are preparing for another basketball season, and we are asking for your support in tackling one of our greatest challenges that we face as an organization. Specifically, we're asking for priority scheduling for our athletes to have practice at Fidalgo Elementary Monday through Friday between 5 and 8. Currently, most of that gym time is booked with Parks and Rec adult open gyms, which leaves just one hour for practice for five teams between 5 and 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. As I mentioned, we host five teams as part of the program in the past, this scheduling arrangement leaves us cramming up to three teams, 10 athletes each. So that's 30 girls into one gym. Um, and that is a space obviously built for one team. So you can imagine how loud it is, how hard it is to teach the girls, the things that they need to know. Uh, we do sometimes have practice on the weekends, but because most contests are Saturday, that really only leaves Sunday. Obviously, it would be nice for families to have one weekend day to do whatever they would like to do also. We have coordinated before. We've tried to reach out to Parks and Rec, and the information that we receive back is that because the school district and the Parks Department have a priority scheduling agreement that they book out all their times before we have an opportunity to book. So that's youth and adult programs. Obviously youth sports, Parks and Rec youth sports is open to all youth of all ages. So clearly that takes priority. But if you look on the district website, group two should include community members, 20 and younger, which is what it says on the website, with open enrollment and open participation. Then group three would be nonprofit groups for youth 20 years or younger who participate in select or competitive tryout, which is what we would fall under. We do host evaluations, but since I've been part of the program, we've never had cuts, which means all the girls that show up, we've been able to find a place for them to play. And then that would be followed by what the district says, nonprofit local adult groups with their prime focus of interest for adults in the community, which includes adult organizations with nonprofit status, adult organizations approved by United Way, senior citizen groups, City of Anacortes Park and Recreation, adult programs, adult activities sponsored by government agencies, And organized community groups. That's directly from the website. That's where we took it from.

Okay. So I think.

Oh, am I out of time? Darn. I have one more paragraph.

I think we have the gist. And if you leave your contact information, if you're the right person to contact for the group. Sure. We're happy to chat about what it is we can do to accommodate the group.

And we are going to go to the district and to the parks meetings and just kind of like try to encourage a continuation of this conversation.

For sure. Yeah. We can make that happen.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Do we have anyone else who would like to offer public comment at this time? Okay. Seeing none. Do we have anybody online? Nobody online. All right. We'll close public comment period and move on to our consent agenda. Two items on the consent agenda, minutes and approval of claims. Council.

Mayor Walters.

Ms. Moulton.

I move to approve consent agenda items 5A and B.

second motion a second to approve the consent agenda no discussion is allowed on the motion to approve the consent agenda if i don't hear anyone who would like to pull any items Hearing none, we'll proceed to a vote. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no. The ayes have it and the consent agenda is approved. Our next item is other business and it's a contract award for Ziply Fiber dedicated internet access. And Mr. Lemberg will come to the podium and introduce this item.

Mr. Mayor, Councilmember, and members of the public, the fiber division is requesting your approving a contract with Ziply Fiber for our upstream connectivity. We've negotiated the terms, and we feel that they are acceptable. The price is probably a little bit more than what we would love. but then we can't always get everything that we love. We anticipate that Ziply Fiber's service will be very strong. I would note that Ziply maintains two geographically diverse fiber paths between Seattle and Anacortes. One basically runs up the I-5 corridor, one crosses the Sound, comes up Whidbey Island, crosses Deception Pass, and comes then up to Anacortes. They run their network in a manner that if there is a disruption on one of those paths, the traffic automatically flips to the other path. When they sell capacity on that path and plan for their own use of capacity on those paths, they only use 40% of each path's capacity so that you've got path one running at 40%, path two running at 40%. If this guy takes a hit, his 40% traffic flips to the other path and only uses 80% of that path's potential ability to carry traffic. I personally feel very confident in the engineering of that and feel it will be a strong addition to our providing robust connectivity for Anacortes to the rest of the world, if you will. And I'm Very happy to answer any questions, offer any clarifications that you might wish.

Thank you, Mr. Lemberg. Council, do you have any questions?

Mayor Walters?

Mr. Fantini?

I was just curious. Could you say a little bit more about why you went with Ziply fiber? Because it's not the cheapest, but it also does sound like there's more additional benefit there.

Yes, yes. It carries the dual paths for us so that we know that it certainly could. You could take a hit on both of their paths at the same time. Stranger things have happened, but I don't think it's highly likely. Okay. I also feel confident another consideration in our connectivity to the rest of the world is the quality within which that other party connects to the rest of the world. And I feel very confident that Ziply Fiber connects their network with the rest of the world in a very robust, in a very low latency manner. And that's why I chose Ziply Fiber. Great, thank you. You're welcome.

And we also have another backup provider.

We do. When we turn Ziply Fiber on a little bit later this year, we will make our current primary connection to the world our secondary connection. Ziply Fiber will become our primary connection, and then our existing connection with NoahNet will become our backup connection.

Thank you. Mr. Currier.

Just curious if they have any sensitivity towards marketing directly to our citizens for direct Ziply services. No, they do not.

They are aware why we are buying this and what we're doing with it. And it's called coopetition. We both cooperate and we compete. Yes, and it is not at all unusual for these sorts of relationships to exist within the telecommunications industry. It's very common. Thanks for the context. Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Limburg, for that. Yeah, to the point about co-op petition, there's only so many entities that actually own fiber from Seattle to Anacortes. So for this particular application, Ziply's a great choice, I think. It will be turning down the cogent circuit.

It is correct.

And that circuit is a 10 gigabit circuit at roughly $3,700 a month. We're going to a 20 gigabit circuit at $4,200 a month? Yes.

Yes, sir.

So our price per gigabit is actually significantly better. Yes, it will be.

I should also further add that One of the terms that we got into the contract was that we can terminate the contract with 30 days written notice. So if for some reason we become displeased with the service, we can very easily just kill the contract. I don't expect that to happen, but we've gotten that into the contract, and I feel very good about that.

That's great. Yeah, and I think we're also, like, we've had some peaks, like, during, say, Super Bowl streaming or, like, the hockey championship where, like, it was approaching 10 gigs. So that's really great that we're upgrading the capacity, but also that the service itself is carrying that much traffic. Right.

Now, Walters. Mr. Young. No, I think I'm always impressed by the due diligence that's done, the work that's done to move our city from having nothing And, you know, service that was questionable and no one was willing to sort of step up. But then the city did. And, you know, we had some baked in advantages, one of which is on the dais up here. And then the people that we recruited. And it was just it's just been a wonderful thing as we fight. to provide a level of service. And I appreciate that. I can't tell you the number of agencies that approach us to try to sell us things now, whereas they wouldn't give us the time of day a few years ago. And then you were cuckoo for even thinking about trying to get this level of service. And so that's why it's impressive. And I'm very much appreciative and short of any other conversation from anyone else on the diet. I moved that the city council authorized the mayor to sign a contract with Northwest fiber, LLC, DBA, Zipley fiber in the amount of $151,200 for 36 months for ethernet internet access service.

Motion and a second to approve the contract award for dedicated internet access. Any other discussion? Hearing none, we'll proceed to a vote on the motion to approve the contract award for dedicated internet access, specifically fiber. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no. The ayes have it and the contract award is approved. All right, we will now proceed to consideration of resolution 3196, which is adoption of the Skagit County Hazard Mitigation Plan And our Public Works Director, Logan Lee, is here to present this item.

Hello again, Mayor, Council, and members of the public. Tonight, as the Mayor said, I'm asking City Council to adopt the 2026 Skagit County Hazard Mitigation Plan update, which also includes the City of Anacortes' annex. The hazard mitigation plan looks at the natural hazards that have the potential to affect our community, evaluates the likelihood and potential consequences of those hazards, and identifies actions that can reduce the risk to our residents, businesses, infrastructure, and public facilities. For Anacortes, these actions include such things as improving critical infrastructure resiliency, addressing vulnerable transportation routes, reducing flood and stormwater risks, and improving emergency preparedness. Additionally, federal hazard mitigation funding programs generally require communities to have an approved and adopted mitigation plan in order to be eligible for certain types of funding. In particular, Public Works has been working on analysis of the Whistle Lake Earthen Dam, and that is funded through one of these grant programs. The Anacortes Annex in this plan will fulfill our grant requirement specifically for that grant. The plan is also intended to be a living document as conditions change, new hazards emerge, projects are completed, and additional vulnerabilities are identified. The plan will be updated. Happy to answer any questions.

Council, do you have any questions? Okay. This is a multi-jurisdictional plan, so it's not really susceptible to editing. At this stage, next time it comes around, we will have conversations about whether or not we should do our own plan. But at this point, this is what's in front of us, and it would be helpful to approve it, which would facilitate us getting some money in some circumstances. So are there motions?

Mayor Walters?

Mr. Currier.

I recommend that we adopt resolution 3196 as presented.

Second. I heard a motion and a second to approve resolution 3196. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll proceed to a vote on the motion to approve resolution 3196, adoption of the Skagit County Hazard Mitigation Plan. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no. The ayes have it and the resolution is approved. Thank you, Council. Our next item is a contract award for the Water Treatment Plant Intake Pump Station Alternatives Analysis. Mr. Terry Nemeth, our Water System Manager, will present. Terry Nemeth, Water System Manager.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So the project before you is the intake station analysis. The intake station was built in the 70s, early 70s. And here's the location of the intake station, if you're not familiar with it, which shows the intake station on the west side of the river pumping through raw water lines over to the processing plant. And then, of course, you see a south supply line, and there's also a north supply line that's further north of this location or this map. The intake station is photoed on the right. And like I say, it was built in the 70s. But the 2025 condition assessment concluded that the structural and mechanical components of the facility were in good condition. But the piling supporting the structure could fail in a 2021 IBC design seismic event. This would lead to an overall failure of the intake station. This right here is just basically a profile to show you how it's built and supported. And you see the piles down below, those are the ones that are in question right there. The structure itself, the ramp, everything else is in good shape. And believe it or not, for being what, 56 years old, it's in pretty good shape. So this right here is the expected failure. You have to pardon my pictures. They're kind of obscured. But the sway of the east and west and north and south is what the concern is. And the goal of the analysis is the objective of this scope is to analyze alternatives to retrofit the existing foundation to improve its performance and goal of identifying capacities to accommodate the 2021 IBC design seismic event. This analysis will consider the feasibility of implementing the retrofit of the facility, which must maintain operation and maintain water delivery. The analysis will also consider the cost of the project and high-level permitting requirements. So what I'm asking is to approve the award for HDR at not to exceed $158,700 to do the alternatives analysis so we can determine how we can support this building without having to spend $20 to $30 million to replace it. Questions?

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Fantini.

I kind of want to break this down in the simplest way that I understand it, which is kind of like the foundation of this building is failing. We're going to spend $157,000 to hopefully find a plan that is going to cost us a lot less than millions of dollars to replace the entire building.

That is correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Mayor Walters.

Mr. Young.

Mr. Nemeth, just refresh me, if you would. We only have one intake. Station? Building. One intake building. Correct. And even though we have, you know, pipes. Multiple pipes, multiple pumps. But one building. Okay. All right. All right. And okay. So, no, I think that just sort of answers my question, really, just wondering why. I guess the reality is that we have to maintain it or the whole system goes out. And so, you know, it's not really an option, but you know, again, we, we provide a great service and, you know, people always say that we have some of the best water anywhere. So yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Mayor Walters. Mr. Nemeth, this contract with HDR says it'll be done this year, end of 26. Do you have an idea when we're hoping to actually build something?

I'm guessing that would be 27 or even 28. I mean, I believe, from what I understand, the 2021 seismic event is a 7.2 or above, right? So it's quite a ways up there. Let's hope we never see it, but I don't think it's a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And we just wanna be prepared for that. And we don't wanna arbitrarily just spend 20 to $30 million on a new intake station when we could have tied it back with cables to the dike or even put in some more H beams or I beams or whatever it is to stabilize the foundation.

So the deliverable for this contract would be, hey, here's what we propose. And then we'd probably have another design contract to actually have.

For a construction. Buildable plans, yeah. Correct.

Thank you.

That was actually going to be my question, what magnitude seismic event we would be planning to. Maybe we can have some further conversations about that. Since we are predicting eight or nine.

Yeah, that's up there.

A nine being ten times the magnitude of an eight.

Let's hope we have a river in the same path at that point. And a dam. And a dam.

You know, short of any other questions about council, and, you know, the point is that we continually hear people say it's not a question of if, but when. And preparation for those things are crucial at this point. So I move that the city council authorize the mayor to sign contract C-2026-2022. 0218 with HDR Engineering Inc. in the amount of $158,700 to perform the WTP intake pump station alternatives analysis.

Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the contract award with HDR for the water treatment plant intake pump station alternatives analysis. Any further discussion on this item? Mr. Fantini?

Quick question. It says not to exceed $158,000. Is there anything that this would come back to us to require a budget adjustment?

Not in the analysis, no. As a matter of fact, it was brought to my attention by HDR that this actually throws out six or seven different proposals, and we may only be interested in three or four.

Perfect. Thank you.

All right, if there is no other discussion, we'll proceed to a vote on the motion. The motion, too, is to approve the contract award for the water treatment plant intake pump station alternatives analysis. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed say no. The ayes have it, and the contract award is approved. Thank you, Mr. Neiman. Our next item is Ordinance 5035 regarding contract numbering, and our city attorney, Ms. Darcy Swetnam, will present this item.

Thank you, Mayor Walters and members of council and members of the audience. So tonight is an ordinance that would amend the code regarding contracts. And as we kind of use the code, we find things that need to be updated. And this is sort of an accumulation of a couple of items that the legal department has identified as important. desirable cleanups, along with a change that's necessitated by the implementation of the Tyler EERP software. So existing code has this format for contracts numbering that's required for all contracts, and Tyler's unable to accommodate that numbering scheme, and so we need to update it. I know that we've already done a bunch of work to update the numbers of existing contracts, and we're using the new format for all contracts moving forward. So we're just asking that council approve this code update so that our code actually reflects what's happening on the ground. The two other changes that we identified as cleanups are... Here in Section 130.030, we had the position of the contract specialist noted in the code, but that's been changed to the contracts and grants manager. And then the other cleanup item is in the approval of municipal fiber contracts. With respect to dark fiber leases, we've had some questions come up where we needed to make modifications to dark fiber leases, and we just wanted it to be really clear. that the contracting authority that the mayor has with respect to those items also includes an analysis of modifications. So this is a non-regulatory ordinance. So to read rule is not required. But if council has questions or edits, we're happy to make those and bring it back. And I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

Mayor Walters?

Go ahead, Ms. Hunt.

Ms. Bentham, I just wanted to offer a huge shout out to the contract and grants manager, and I suspect also to Mr. Franciak for coming up with a way to adapt to the EERP requirements. And there's a lot of back work that had to happen for that. Thank you to your team. Thanks for acknowledging that.

Any other questions? Mayor Walters. Ms. Moulton.

This probably goes without saying, but I'm going to ask anyway. So are existing contracts that don't fit this format, they're just, there'll be still their same old numbers. Yeah.

So this is, it's, it's fairly remarkable. There were, I think 900 open contracts that had to have the numbers updated to this format so that we could continue to work with them in Tyler. Now contract, this is sort of for the financial accounting plot platform. We do have contracts that are closed out, and we're not going to be updating the numbers on those contracts because we don't need to interact with them in the ERP software. But as Ms. Hunt acknowledged, there was a lot of reverse engineering that needed to happen to make existing contracts be able to function in this new software.

So, yeah, good question.

I did not do any of that. I can't take credit for that. So big shout out to the finance team and the contract staff who did a lot of manual work, I think, to get those updated.

Mayor Walters? Ms. Hunt? There is, in fact, on the legal, on the contract SharePoint site, an extensive crosswalk so that you can see the old and the new contract number that somebody had to assign. So yeah, a lot of work.

Mayor Walters.

Ms. Moulton.

With thanks to staff for doing all that work, I move we adopt Ordinance 5035 to update the numbering system for city contracts.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve the Ordinance 5035 as presented. Further discussion? Hearing none, we'll proceed to a vote. This will be a roll call vote. Clerk, will please call the roll. Ms. Hunt.

Yes.

Mr. Currier.

Yes.

Mr. Young.

Yes.

Ms. Cleveland-McGrath.

Yes.

Ms. Moulton.

Yes.

Mr. McDougall. Yes. Mr. Fantini.

Yes.

Mayor, the ayes are 7, the nays are 0. Sounds like the ayes have it, and the ordinance is approved.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Council. Our final item this evening is an executive session for a potential real estate transaction. It's authorized by RCW 4230-1101C, and we are planning for 15 minutes. It'll take us just a couple minutes to get upstairs, so I'll be back down here around a little after 7-10 to close out the meeting. The meeting is adjourned.