City Council - Regular Meeting

All the city council workshop of May 26, 2026 to order. Reminder that this is both a physical and a virtual meeting. It may be viewed on YouTube and on Facebook following the meeting. Public comment is not normally taken at workshop meetings, although the council may allow or request public participation on action items. We have no action items on our workshop agenda today. Welcome to all of you in attendance today. Thank you for being here. Our first up is our sky patrol bird services falconer services mid contract report and here to introduce this is our public works director Steve Schuller.

Thank you, Mayor Wright and thank you City Council. As you recall, on February 17, Council approved a pilot program for Falcon services. And let me open it's coming up right now. Very good. Certain areas of the city experienced recurring issues related to large congregations of birds, including accumulated waste, reduced cleanliness, and associated public health concerns. Falconry-based bird deterrents had been successfully used by other municipalities as a humane, non-lethal, and environmentally responsible method to discourage birds from congregating in sensitive public areas. We are just over halfway through our five-year month contract, which runs March through July. In addition to the falchory work itself, one area that has already become clear through this pilot program is the number of local businesses and residences feeding the birds. To help address this issue, we have recently put up new signage on our waterfront parks. And so here's a sign from Flintstone Park that was taken this weekend. Yeah. great work by our communications team to help address this issue. Not only have we put up new signs in our waterfront parks, but we also have been expanding our public outreach efforts through education-focused conversations and community engagement. This afternoon, we'll receive a brief report from our falconer, Cole, Cole has been involved with Falconeering since he was 13 years old. He is currently finishing his senior year in high school, and as a Running Start student, plans to receive his associate's degree in biology next month. Cole's first day working for the city included being interviewed by King 5 TV. Interesting way to start your high school job. And he did an outstanding job representing both the program and the committee. And so here for a brief report is Cole.

Hey, can you guys hear me? Perfect. Hope you guys are all doing well. Thank you guys for having me out here, especially you, Steve. Thank you for preparing this. And I also want to thank Caitlin for coming out and joining us. With me, I've got Mantis here, for those of you watching. expected that. And so yeah, I'm here to just talk about what the contract has gone through so far, kind of a brief report. We've written a much longer report, about 30 pages, that will be out for the public to view eventually. Right now we're just letting the city review it first. But yeah, for those of you who don't know, falconry-based abatement is essentially the use of trained raptors on pest species to manage them. In this case, it's preventing seagulls from nesting on our rooftops. and dropping feces everywhere and costing the city a ton of money. Throughout the program, we've not just flown the birds around town, but we've also taken diligent notes and allotted data and done surveys with business owners so that we better understand the full extent of this problem, because we weren't here last year when there weren't falcons around. And so that includes taking goal data at the beginning and end of each day. So each day throughout the program, we've seen a reduction rate of 80%, which means for every 100 goals there are on average daily, there's only 20 with the pilot program. And so that means there's five times as much poop when there aren't falcons in town, essentially, which is a lot of money.

It costs five times as much.

This nesting season, we're expecting a ton of goals to come back to town and try to breed. We believe, I've talked to business owners in the city itself, and we believe there are about 150 nesting pairs around town, 500 individuals living in the greater Oak Harbor area. And so those 150 nests alone are gonna produce about 400 chicks, a little less than that. And that will cost the city a ton of money. We're hoping to apply this reduction rate of 80% to those nesting numbers though. to hopefully have a maximum of 30 nests around town versus 150, which will save the city tons of money. And the great thing about nesting is it's a lot easier to prevent nesting than it is individual goals, so we think that is a very reasonable thing to achieve. And on this graph here, by the way, you can see that there's a blue line, and that line is the reduction rate. It's okay, I don't need that. is the reduction rate over time. So you see the higher that line is, the more effective it is. Essentially the more we reduce the goals. So you see at one point it got to up to 95%. On average it sat at about 80% though. And that's where I pulled that number from. But you'll also see that on the other side of the y-axis, there are red bars. Those bars signify events of feeding that I noticed. So if I saw someone feed goals more than five pounds of food, I would take note of that. And you'll see how that impacts reduction rate. So there's one day in particular, April 12th, I believe, where you saw my reduction rate go from an average of 80% to only 44%. And you know, that really bummed me out that day. It was really bugging me. Couldn't figure out why that was the issue until I pulled up the instances of feeding that occurred. Calm down, buddy. And you'll see that that was the record day of feedings. There were eight feedings that day, and they reduced the pilot program's efficacy by 50%, essentially. So that goes to show just how effective feeding is at keeping the goals in town and why it should stop. And that's why we recommend that we implement potentially civil ordinances or whatnot to stop it from happening in the future. And the city's already taken some pretty good steps to doing that, including public education from both my end and their end, and also signage and whatnot. And we've talked to business owners. Pretty much every instance of feeding that we've spotted from actual businesses has been stopped. But there's still a lot of big issues with feeding, with people just driving by into parking lots and randomly dropping food scraps. And so we just need to make sure that there's a way to punish that behavior, if at all possible, because it does cost the city a lot of money. And yeah, so I mean, the only other thing I'm really here to talk about too is, oh, Mantis is here to talk about something. You're good, Steve, it's fine. I'm all good. You know, throughout the program, I'm trying to keep track of, and it's written in the report too, you guys will see it eventually, I'm trying to keep track of exactly how much we're saving the city, because this pilot program costs $35,000. That's not a small amount of money. And so... It's very hard to keep track of exactly how much the city saves because it's so nuanced. This affects the city on so many levels, from tourism to business costs to the city's public works, including filtering water. You know, we based our estimates on super conservative estimates. I'm talking like unrealistically conservative estimates to create a minimum baseline of savings. And that savings so far has been $53,000 for the city. So that's been a net savings of I think it's $17,000 so far. And that's using very conservative estimates. It's likely way more based on what business owners have been telling me. For example, one business like Ace Hardware spent $250,000 on a new roof. And Cheryl, the owner there, blamed it mostly on the goals. So you can see just how much of an impact these goals are making. But other than that, that's kind of all I have for you guys today. If you guys have any questions, I'm happy to take them.

All right. You guys have questions for Cole? Yes. Council Member Stuckey.

anecdotally having a business down there does, to what I can see, appear to be a lot better than prior years. And I've been very much impressed with your professionalism and enthusiasm with engaging the business owners. So good job. He's a keeper. Thank you. My only question is, when it comes to tracking goals, obviously you're counting the goals. And that's a give or take. I don't know about you guys. They all look the same to me. Maybe it's just me. So how do you, I know you don't know for 100% certainty, but relatively, how are you counting them to get a realistic number?

Yeah, so before I did this job, I actually helped the US State Department of Health at a local lake in my area, counting thousands, tens of thousands of waterfowl daily on a lake that had major algae blooms. And so during that time, I learned to count large numbers of waterfowl. There were some days I'd count 20,000 snow geese in one day. And so it becomes a game of learning to estimate bird numbers based on what you can see. And then also, over time, noticing some patterns and noticing that those numbers are grounded in reality. And so at the beginning of every shift, you'll see me spend about 15 minutes driving around the central business district along the water. And I'll count goals, and I'll take estimates on colony numbers too, just to confirm that those numbers stay roughly the same so that my answers are reasonable. And I ask the city if they themselves want to keep track of that data, because obviously, I'm the one scaring the goals away. So do you want me being the one counting the goals? And the city decided they wanted me to count them. Yeah, and I also, not just going off of my own numbers, I've talked to business owners, especially Ace Hardware, Pioneer Automotive, Oak Harbor Motors, and gotten their estimates on goals, and those have lined up with the numbers I've counted, if that answers your question.

It does. It does. And I wholeheartedly with this graph, I wholeheartedly agree with looking to an ordinance about not feeding the goals. I mean, I know Anacortes recently passed to just no feeding any wildlife, no deer, no goal, but you know, it would be a shame to do away with some of the work that you've done by massive feed. Also five, who's feeding five pounds. Like I understand some fries, but five, what was it? It was five pounds.

Absolutely. I'm not going to call out any businesses, because it's not any businesses' fault. But in some of the larger parking lots, I'll just be flying my birds around, and I'll see someone pull up in some old minivan and drop off tons of food. Just throw it out their window. Whether it's food scraps from home or from a separate business, I don't know. But they'll drop it off, and then they'll bail. It's like a hit and run with food. And I can scare the goals off all I want, because those are scout goals, right? Goals will scout out. And if one bird sees food, it'll call, and they'll all go for the food. And so I can scare them off, but they're aware the food's there. And even if I clean it up, they're going to come back and investigate. And that's why it ruins the efficacy of the program, because they're scared of hawks. But as soon as they don't see a hawk, they're going to come investigate. But it's just people driving by in their vehicles and dropping tons of food off, usually. In the beginning, it was actual businesses doing so. But after talking to them, I've not seen one instance of feeding from any of those businesses. So it is a lot of independent people just dropping food off from who knows where.

And it's also helpful for businesses to maintain their lots and stuff. If you have a business that shares food, naturally some of that waste is going to go there of no fault of the business. So as business owners, we have to maintain our area as well.

I've talked to the business owners that have that happen in their lots the most often. And so I've talked to them a lot, and hopefully they're working to reduce it, but I'm not sure what those steps are, what steps they are taking. And so having the city take steps themselves and introducing fines or some form of way to prevent it would be great, I think.

Well, wonderful. Thank you so much for all you've done.

Of course.

All right. Anybody else? Questions, comments? Council Member Romero.

I was a bit skeptical originally, but I'm delighted to see that there's results with regard to this. And, of course, my attention to the people who are dumping off food, then that's a separate matter. And I'm certain that maybe we can have law enforcement do something about that eventually. Thank you.

And, you know, I look forward to letting you guys see the mid-contract report, too. This is just one graph of many graphs. And the raw data, a lot of the raw data is included in there, too. And so it really does prove the efficacy of the program. And, you know, it's up for you guys to interpret. But if you look at the data, it's pretty damning. And so I look forward to letting you guys see that.

Well, thanks for being here, Cole. Thank you to you and Mantis. We appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you guys for having me. All right, we are now going to turn it over to council and call upon you for your reports on any boards, commissions, or committees that you want to report out on. Council Member Merrill.

With regard to the Island Transit District, there's a project in work to build a South Whidbey Transit Center there about Clinton, and the contractor KPFF came and did an initial presentation, but My natural skepticism about it being thorough kicked in, and I asked him about, do they have a swale, and do they have a holding tank for waste, and on and on. And obviously he was surprised that I came up with a question. And so I would just state that this is an ongoing effort to address... a need down there for parking and for transit service. And we don't have a timeline yet for precisely when this is going to go forward, but we are meeting the National Environmental Policy Act requirements with regard to getting approvals along with the environmental impact statement and an environmental assessment. That's all I have, Mayor. About Clinton, yes. Because it depends on the approvals for the effort. It's sort of like the marina or some of the other things where we're trying to deal with approvals. So we don't have a timeline yet. Okay.

Council Member Stuckey. We had our first executive board meeting for the Whidbey Camino Island Tourism. That went well. We extended the contract, our current contractors, for a little while longer as our tourism manager kind of gets the lay of the land. Mayor Kennedy and Langley was made chair of the executive committee, and I was vice. volunteered to be the advisory committee liaison from the executive committee. Related, I mean, I know that there's traffic kind of stinks and things can always be better, but what a win for tourism this weekend. As I drove around, I mean, it's kind of obvious when you see people in Renaissance gear, where they're here, unless people are just wearing their stuff. But the amount of money that goes into our restaurants, to our local businesses, when an event like that happens, And then, you know, that gives the ability to spread more of that money around. It's cyclical, right? I mean, people come to me for a donation if I had a better year at the movie theater or some other place. You know, you're more likely to give that money back. So while it can be frustrating with traffic and things can always be increased, it's good to look at the positives on something like an event like that. And I think that this weekend was... and then followed up by, of course, the Memorial Day gathering on Monday. I'm glad they didn't push into that so we could honor those that have lost. So that's all I have.

Good. I'm glad to hear that about Whidbey Ren Faire. I did reach out to the executive director of downtown Main Street as well as the hotels. I'm kind of curious to see what we actually saw as far as results related to that. Yeah. So anybody else want to report out? Yes, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you. This last Thursday, the Arts Commission had a workshop where they determined which projects are going to move forward immediately and how they're going to do that, and assigned to each commissioner which art projects they're going to basically shepherd and move forward and talk to the people who brought those ideas to the city and that sort of thing. It was about a four-hour meeting. It was very productive, and I'm glad that they took the time to do it and appreciated all the work that staff did to put it together and give them direction.

So you guys, was that your regular arts commission meeting?

No, sir. That was a planned workshop. Workshop. Okay.

Gotcha. Okay.

It's part of the arts plan that they get two workshops per year.

Okay. That sounds good. All right. Anybody else? Parks? Anybody else? Nobody else? Going once. Going twice. All right. We're going to move on. I'm not going to beg today. We're going to move on to the city administrator's monthly departmental report. And here to introduce that is our city administrator, Sabrina Combs.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll let Tim pull up the slides. Okay. So our big topic is recruitment. We did have the HR Director's contract approved here at Council, so we've moved that through. We are currently in the process of hiring a Parks and Recreation Director. We also have just hired an Administrative Assistant for Community Development. Yay! and a code compliance officer in community development. So both of those positions will be starting in June. We are very excited about that. We also have gotten, have hired our camp counselors for our summer camp program and moved those through the background check process. So we're very excited about getting some of these recruitments through and we appreciate those of you who help out on some of these hiring committees because It is a process, but it does take time, and we appreciate everybody going through that. Next slide. The Enterprise Resource Program, or ERP as it's referred to often by staff, has gone live. We as staff are adjusting and learning, so bear with us. We are very excited to see this process go live. It took some time with some training and some setups that staff has been working on for several months. But it is very cool to have this online system where everything is tracked and monitored and approved. So way to go to our finance department and key folks in different departments who are helping out as we built it along the way. But again, just know we're all not perfect at it. I think we're all learning a lot about it. And so give us some time as we adjust. And then the last slide, the other item I'm going to highlight is the life jacket loaner program. Lee spoke about this, our harbor master at the Marina Advisory Commission. But this is a really great program that is now available that we are a part of that provides life jackets to folks. They're also replacing the signage to make it clear about how the program works. And this is an important issue for keeping safety at our marina. So those are my items. If you have any questions from the report, let me know. Thank you.

Any questions for Sabrina? Yes, council member Stuckey.

Regarding the software, that software kind of is integrated to everything we do, including the customer facing side. That's not just internal software, correct?

Yeah, it'll eventually get to the customer-facing side. It's being implemented in different phases. We had to do the core internal phase first because we needed to get the financials on board and the budgeting software and all the general ledger and all that technical stuff had to be put in place. We have phase two, which is the human resource modules and payroll modules, and then phase three will affect more the customer-facing side, like the utility billing and so on.

And that's exactly what I'm segueing into. I mean, we've been talking about this software. I mean, things take time. We've been talking about the software for years. I get it. Is there any hope of auto-pay for utility billing? I mean, I got another person randomly reach out to me, and the answer has always been it'll be integrated in the new software, but that's been the answer for at least a year or two now. So is that... Is that possible with this software? Is that on the horizon?

It'll be integrated in with the new software. It's phase three, and because of the phasing and because of the way it's being implemented, it looks like it's going to be in 2027. We're working as fast as we can. We just really have to iron out all the issues and make sure that we have all the internal phasing things first, because that is what we report to the state auditor. And that's vital for, you know, for everything else we do. And it's kind of like the base, the core, like the foundation.

Sure. Yeah. But I mean, no one, I mean, at least I mean, I was just looking that was on the radar. And yes, it is tied up with that. And it's, we're getting there. Okay, thank you.

I'm confused. I thought we had auto pay. Now I pay my bill with auto pay. I don't do anything.

Someone reached out to me and told me that they couldn't auto-pay the bill.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the new auto-pay with the additional.

Auto-pay for utilities. So I don't pay auto-pay with mine. Yeah, yeah. Mine just pays automatically.

There will be an easier way to do auto-pay in the future. I thought that's what you were referring to. Yeah, currently right now they can do auto-pay. Okay. You just have to fill out a form.

But there will be an easier way to do so.

There will be an easier way to do in the future. But right now, yeah, they can call us up and we'll help them out and everything. Okay. I'll double-check. Because you mentioned ERP. I was assuming immediately you were going right to the future.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. You can show how often I pay my utility bill myself.

Thank you. I don't think about it either. It just pays. All right. Yeah, hold on one second. I have a question for David though before. David, I get to look like a fool for a second. Is there any way in that ERP system that it notifies us when there's something in there to approve so I don't get hate emails from your staff?

I'll let you know. Let me look into that.

I mean, there is a way to set up reminders, though, right? So it notifies us that there's something in there for approval?

Let me get back to you. It may not be turned on yet because we had to...

Okay, no problem. I was thinking I didn't do something right, so I just wanted to figure out what I need to do. Yeah, we'll work on that. All right. Council Member Marshall, sorry.

Thank you, Mayor. Sabrina, I had a question on the youth and adult programming for parks. We were told by the previous director it would take a couple of years and then these programs would be profitable. But looking at the 19 classes that we had offered in spring, only one of them had double digit participation and three total had more than five participants. I mean, where are we at in that profitability of this programming?

So that is one of the things we're going to be looking at with budget and the new director is what do we want to do around these programs and how do we encourage them. Our focus right now has really been the summer camp and making sure that that's set up right and that we're getting that enrollment. So that is the focus is to look at those numbers and see what we need to do around that.

Okay, thank you.

That it? Okay. Anybody else? Yes, sir. Council Member Romero, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. With regard to the ERP, I'm always leery about getting a beta program or the latest upgrade and it disables everything. What I'm requesting is just kind of, is this a proven system across many municipalities and all the rest?

This is probably the largest system that's available throughout the country for cities our size. Once you start getting into the King County and New York City and stuff, there's like $100 million programs out there. But no, we went to one of the probably the largest vendor for cities. Not the largest, like the second largest vendor for cities our size.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Peterson?

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm confused. I don't see the three slides you just showed me in my packet, so I'm wondering what I'm missing. Can you tell me where to look, please?

So we don't put those slides in the packet. We give you the full report. So you have the full report that's attached in the packet. And then what we do is just pull a couple of key items out to do my presentation here instead of me reading through the whole report. We just select a couple tidbits we think you might want to be interested in and the community would be interested in.

So that's the monthly departmental report memo that I'm seeing. Yes. And we haven't gone down to master fees.

No, we haven't gone there yet.

No, master fee is a topic in today's workshop that you will be discussing.

Thank you. I just got really confused and I'm like I went through this whole packet Thank you.

No I think what what Councilwoman Marshall was referring to is we also typically give a report from Parks and Recreation that gives a little more data into the classes and what's happening just like we tell numbers from the marina. So some of the departments have provided more detail and that's why we call it the monthly department reports and metrics because we're trying to give you a little bit of both because in the past council has asked for that information.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, sure thing.

Do you guys want the slides? Do you want the slides? No, I just couldn't find it. Okay.

Is it okay if we send those after the meeting or you want them beforehand? Because usually we produce them after we finally got those reports done.

That's what I mean. I would just have them on the desk for when they came in.

Yeah, happy to do that. We will print those off for you. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Council Member Marshall, you had a question or a comment? Thank you.

Yeah, I just had a question. I see that we're starting to put up some of the don't feed the seagull signs. Are we providing any of those signs to the businesses that are the high traffic or high areas like Safeway, for example? I mean, I saw a little girl feeding the seagulls the other day, and I wanted to go and, but no, don't do that. If there was a sign, you know, then perhaps she would see it or something.

Yes. So we are. Yes. We've talked to a number of the businesses and asked if they, and some of them have said, yeah, we're going to put that right by our front door.

Awesome.

So, you know, we're starting off small.

Yeah.

And so we're not getting to everybody, but it is beginning and we are increasing our engagement. So a lot of the businesses have been very supportive. Thank you. Good question.

All right. Anybody else before we move on? All right, we're going to move on to the Master Fee Schedule Parks and Recreation Update. Here to introduce that is our Deputy City Administrator and Finance Director David Goldman. To present, he will be joined by Parks and Recreation Supervisor Brandon Cable and or Recreation Coordinator Craig Lomas-Cole.

All right. Good afternoon. David Goldman, finance director, deputy city administrator. So we were, we were looking today at the master fee schedule as it relates to parks and recreation. As part of the budget process, we're going to be looking at the entire master fee schedule and we'll bring that back to council sometime in the fall or early winter for you to approve. But right now we're just going to focus in on the parks and recreation fees. Cool. So real quick, this is just a overview of what's being changed. We're adjusting the baseline for labor inflation and implementing direct cost recovery for some external services. We're trying to lower the barriers of entry for local vendors with our concessions. And we're also unifying seasonal league access. We're taking a look at legacy rate structures. We're renaming assets for clarity. And we're putting in incentives for timely compliance. And we're also expanding some of our offerings, which we'll go into in the next few slides. So we're going ahead and just updating for inflation. And just so you know, labor inflation might be a little different than your typical CPI inflation that you see in the news. Because for our employment contracts with our various employees, they do get a cost of living increase, they also get a step increase between like every every year they have an anniversary. Unless they're at the top of their step, they tend to get one additional step, which increases the pay. So taking a look at this, we are proposing to increase the hourly rates for the use of parks staff Not changing. Thank you. I thought it was all together. So anyway, thanks. So anyway, by 5%. And we're also looking at cost recovery for city-provided portable restrooms. For a standard unit, that would be $207 a month. For an ADA unit, which is that larger unit, it would be $259 a month. There we go. There we go. So we're trying to standardize the league experiences. So we have three, maybe four major leagues in the city. In 2023, we had a $9 per participant charge for the leagues that went into various hourly rates for 2024 and 25. We're proposing based on input we've received from discussions with the leagues to simplify it and go back to what we had before. And we're moving that to $11 per participant with two exceptions, $2 per participant for tiny tots, and $15 per participant for select soccer, just based on field usage. so next slide all right so um as far as the concession stands go um we were noticing that most of the time throughout the year it was not being used so um based on feedback we received from staff we've um proposing to revise that down from 500 to 200 per month the senior discount, we're just chewing that up to reflect the 20% discount formula across the board. And as far as courts go, we're moving the tennis and basketball court hourly rate to $10 an hour. And we're assigning a new pickleball rate of $10 an hour to anticipate future pickleball courts. all right so um we're just changing the names of the football practice field and football game field to multi-purpose field a and b just to reflect that it could be used by more than just one sport we're providing a universal sports tournament rate of 25 per hour in addition to the base field Rates, those don't apply to the leagues, though. The leagues, they're in a separate category in the fee schedule. And to encourage compliance with our agreements, we're looking at $50 per day of field use. We don't expect to collect any of this because we expect the leagues to comply with the agreements that we're working on. So we added a few new things, including the pickleball rate. We added a commissary kitchen commercial rate, a rate of $25 per hour, a deposit of $75 fully refundable against the cleaning checklist, and also a refrigeration fee. So much of what is in the fee schedule remains unchanged. We have the special events and hourly field reservation fees outside of the league fees. Those remain unchanged. Public room rentals, those remain unchanged except for the adjustment for the senior discount. Our community shelter rates, those also remain unchanged. And our program membership for the 50-plus membership, those also remain unchanged. We could look at all these other rates as well as the entire fee schedule as part of the budget process. So we may be bringing you back some additional proposals in the fall. So this is just a recap of everything I talked about. And this is a financial analysis that I put together. This is not in your package because I completed it after the package publication date. However, if you look on the left, you'll see that I broke down the expenditures for parks and recreation for the year 2023. Sorry, 2025. So you'll see in the first row, salary benefits and supplies and then services and then maintenance and other costs for a total expenditure of 3.2 million I subtracted grant-covered activities, so the net expenditures is $2.9 million. Before I get to the bottom chart, let's go to the right. These are all the revenues, and I broke them up into categories so you can kind of get a sense of where our revenues are coming from. So you can see, starting from the top, we did book some park activity fees from the leagues from prior years, from like 2023 and 24. They were booked in 25 just based on timing. For the current year, 25, the park activity fees were about $13,000. We have passport fees. We have the senior program fees, youth and adult program fees. We have some inter-fund charges for services when parks maintenance staff helps out another department and another fund. There's some internal charges that they charge. Our vending concessions, we have facility rentals, donations, and just miscellaneous revenues. So the subtotal of the direct revenue from Parks and Recreation is $376,000. The next bunch are just transfers from different funds. And the last number, the 2.1, well, the last, last number is the total revenues of 2.9 million, which balances with the net expenditures. However, the general fund subsidy is basically everything not covered by either grants or by either transfers from other funds or by direct revenues is considered coming from the general funds, because that's the home department for the Parks and Recreation Department. so if you go back up to the subtotal direct revenues i took that number and i divided it by the net expenditures and i got 12.9 so that is the direct revenues to net expenditure ratio for 2025 for the parks and recreation department i'm working on some trend analysis to show you during the budget process i'll be showing some more trend analysis on what's happened in the past In the past, the senior center operations were in a separate fund. We brought them into the general fund, so it might look a little different when we go back in the past. And that's that analysis. So with that, are there any questions or direction?

Questions, comments? Yes, Council Member Peterson.

A couple of questions. If we bring the money from the senior center directly into the general fund, does that mean that we can use that money generated for whatever the general fund so desires, or how does that keep those monies available then for?

Well, those are direct revenues that help cover the expenses for the senior center activities and so on. And those revenues don't cover more, you know, they're not at 100%. I don't know if it'll ever be at 100% for most of what we do. That's just, you know, that's not the nature of government. Except for the enterprise funds, that's a separate story. But Anyhow, so the R being used for, you know, senior center activities.

Is that we, they're supporting themselves almost, or sort of.

Well, overall, Parks and Recreation's at about 13%. If you break out the senior section from the rest of parks, it's a higher percentage, but it's still probably only around 30%. The revenues are only 30% of the cost of operating the senior activities, basically. So the offset, but they don't offset the total, you know?

So I guess my real question then, cause I don't get it is why didn't we leave that money in parks and rec? Why did we move it to general fund?

Oh, because, um, the decision was made to create a parks and recreation department. So we just transferred it over last year to, um, the general fund. So we have parks and recreation senior centers now been incorporated into the recreation. So, um, It's all in the same fund now.

The same general parks and rec fund, not the same city general fund?

Well, yeah, the general fund. Yeah, the city's general fund. Parks and recreation's within the general fund. Oh, it is. Okay, it's not its own market. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, thank you. Yeah.

but we do track them. We track all the revenues separately from the rest of the general, you know, we track them in parks and rec directly.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. And then I looked at your master fee schedule update, which, and I pulled a couple cause I was confused. Oh, um, on the schedule G where we're talking about vendors and concessionaires in parks, um, Probably easier for you maybe to find it. We changed from football practice field to multi-purpose fields, A and B. And we said there was no change, but the numbers are changed from $55 an hour to 69 on one and 69 for one deleted to 55. And that is a change. So I'm confused.

So what happened was it was just a change in the order. That's what I wondered. Yeah. So you had the main football field, which is now multi-purpose A. Okay. And then the practice field was now multi-purpose B. And basically, it just switched. Like, alphabetically, it switched. So I had to show, like, a crossout for 69. And then I added the lower number. But then below it, I had to add the crossout for the lower number. And I added 69. So basically, the only change is really a name. It was like an alphabetical thing.

Wow.

Because it's a 26% change if you look at it straight across. I'm like, that looks like none to me. Okay. And then I appreciated that. And then why under the baseball field, 2025 to 2026, we've got $7.21 an hour and $11.75 an hour respectfully, and then we're not charging them anything, and it says no change, but zero is a change. That's under reservation of city fields.

Oh, yeah, because we're going to our per participant rate. Yeah, that's the change. So basically we're just, that's going away. It's like you can't divide by a zero or it gives you that error. You know, it's like mathematically impossible. You know what I mean? So it's all per participant now.

OK. So it's not really. Oh, so it's just an NA. It's not applicable. Yeah, not applicable. There's no change. OK. Thank you. All right. That helps my other questions that I'm like. That doesn't make sense to me why. But I didn't apparently understand everything. I knew you did it right. I just didn't get it. That's all right. I'm trying to help. And if I don't get it, trust me, there's other people who also don't. So thank you. I appreciate that. All right.

All right, anybody else? Yes, Council Member Romero.

Director Goldman, I love the detail that you have. You bring light to the darkness with regard to the line items. And I very much appreciate that because it's not a broad brush sweep where you're making a percentage change up or down. So for the record, I'm a general advocate of the principles of zero-based budgeting because it proves accountability. But I'm not saying that it's wise to institute it everywhere. So I just want to thank you for bringing the details to light

specific line items because that really can improve our efficiencies which of course you have you and the administration have been doing thank you thank you council member marshall thank you mayor uh steve my first question is on the commissary refrigeration um it's 20 per 24 consecutive hours but it says it must be booked in conjunction with commissary kitchen rental so do you have to rent the kitchen for 24 hours as well or

You just have to make sure that you have time on that to get it. So if you're scheduled on like one day and you do the 24 hour, you have to schedule yourself on the next day to make sure that you are going to be retrieving it as well. We're not just scheduling you to drop it off. We're scheduled to drop off and pick up.

And so you have to pay an additional $25 for each one of the $25 for the drop off and the 25 for the pickup plus the 20 for the refrigeration?

Exactly, yeah.

So essentially, the refrigeration for 24 hours will cost you $70. Yeah. OK. Um, so my question, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you going back to a per participant fee model. I think that simplifies things for the leagues. It makes it easier for them to budget. Um, now we don't have the issues with, with leagues trying to circumvent that by playing games other places. And so I think that is the best way to go. I think everything that you've implemented in here, I'm not super thrilled with the commissary refrigeration piece, but everything else is great, except the question that we're going to have to answer to is still on the bathrooms. Why is that the one cost recovery piece that we're really going to dial in on? We talked about some alternatives in charging perhaps one league. If you have varying needs and perhaps you charge varying fees, not all of the leagues get charged the same thing. It's based upon what your actual needs are. Has the city looked into purchasing porta potties? I mean, so what we're looking at right now and let's just use, you know, our festivals, for example, if we're going to close the Portland lose for Holland happening in 4th of July and we're going to the city is going to put two replacement porta potties there in. Does it become more cost effective for the city at some point to purchase additional lose and then they just rent that out as part of their lease agreement or their participation agreement? And so. I just don't know. I mean, we look at one of the things that has come up as an argument over the weekend, and I thought it was an outstanding argument, is the splash park, for example. We spent a ton of money on water, and we let the entire community use it, but there's zero cost recovery on that. um you know and so with with we only recover a very small percentage of what we pay in parks why is that on the backs of the youth leagues as opposed to the entire community as as a whole you know and and so how do we justify that that's the one area that we're gonna just dial in on that we need to recover our money is is porta potties so

The one thing I would say is that, first, there are bathrooms located at some of these facilities already that are in existence. And so the additional requests are what are being asked for, which is why there is a fee for those additional units that are being utilized. When you talk about adding the cost for having staff do that or the city running it, I think those costs might be greater than we would anticipate because of the amount of times that they have to go out and be serviced. If you have a full day of games, for instance, or practices and games, And that container gets completely used up. It has to be serviced and monitored. And staff has already on occasion put out extra toilet paper for them and done things to address that. But they get filled up rather quickly. Also, sometimes, as we all know, there's vandalism at these. They are one of the most vandalized things that we have in a sense because It's available for people to get into and fill with material, other things. They've been shredded. They've been burned. Units have been pulled out of them. We have tons of examples where we've reported those incidents. And then lastly, I would say the other piece of this is this is about our long-term planning. So as a city, we are talking about how in the future we work with the school district and we're working with other agencies to say, can we look at, programs where we can put in more long-term bathroom structures in some of these places. But we're just not there yet. And until we get there, there's these additional costs for this. So these costs become greater because of their usage and their frequency and adding more containers. So that's just some of it. And when you add staff doing it, there's a cost for that staff time that we'd have to address as well. So staff can cost those out for you as council, but there's going to be some costs associated with that. And we even talked about that at one point. Do we add on a fee for going out to monitor them but then again that is another fee that would be added on to having the unit itself so there's various costs and once those units are full they have to be emptied and so that's why we've looked at different things around that that we could support that so those some of the answers for you the staff itself is not the one emptying those right we contract that out

Yeah, as of right now, they are contracted out through Diamond Services. If we took that on ourselves, I've not contacted Diamond to say if we had portables, would you clean them ourselves? We, to my knowledge, do not have a portable cleaner to suck that stuff out. So that would be another cost if the private companies were not willing to service them. private or a private portable that they were not getting paid to service. I don't know. That would be something I'd have to call diamond sites.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's all I'm talking about is just making sure that we are looking at all options. And when we have to explain this to the community as to why we're doing a certain thing, you know, have we explored all options? Have we, have we checked these boxes and say, these, these are the possibilities and this is why we can't do X, Y, and Z. And so what, why we've landed on this particular item right here.

And Councilmember, we've also heard about grants related to restrooms and so we're looking into those with Wendy Horn. We've looked at again, you know, as budget comes up do we talk about that with you and say these are some locations that we might want to do a capital project to add a bathroom, another Portland loo or something like that that's available. So those are all future conversations. We just don't have the dollars sitting in an account right now that we can go pull out to put in that restroom at that location and there's going to be plumbing work in addition to the actual facility itself that needs to be done for those.

But we do have the money in a sense to pay for these port-a-potties because we've been doing it for all of these years. It's not like it's a new cost. It is something that the city has been providing as part of the leagues for many years. And so it's not a new cost. And I understand the vandalism thing, but... know what they burn down the equipment shed and and things happen right i mean that's we can't say we're not going to do something because of of this one part of the this is a possibility of what could happen i mean the skate park gets vandalized all the time but we don't we don't close it right and so um i think this is something that we have budgeted for we have done why is it all of a sudden that this particular item is an important cost recovery aspect when

I don't think it's just this item. I think when we're looking at overall for the leagues and what we're putting into these facilities and these locations, what costs are adding up that are across the board or cost specific to this league. And in this instance, what we've said is if you want to have them specifically used just for your league's usage, then what we would do is give you a key so that you could lock them for that usage, and then that way you're paying for that because it's not open to the public. So everyday taxpayers who are going to that park can't use it because it's locked potentially at that time. We've also suggested where there's a park where it's next to a baseball field is next to an area that soccer is also happening, that you could partner with another league and put that on that site and share that cost as the two leagues utilizing it. we're just looking at this cost recovery system that we've been trying to go into as a city related to our parks and recreation and Finding the places where there are some lost costs available and that every monthly charge and especially the frequency of when we have to go out and Service them are the costs that are associated that add up over time All right, thank you Yes, councilmember Stuckey

A couple questions. So I'm asking, Tim, could you pull back up that slide that wasn't in our packet? Mr. Goldman, it was the one that... Okay. I'm going to talk and do some math at the same time. So to put this in other terms, we spent quite a bit of time, both staff, council, and I'm not saying everyone was all for it, but of going from a per participant to an hourly. Is this basically us saying we tried it, it didn't work, we're going back to the old way, to be blunt?

Well, the feedback that we received was to, you know, I talked to all the leagues and just was trying to figure out, you know, their satisfaction with, you know, the services we provide and the fees that we have. And the feedback that I was receiving was it was a lot easier on them. And also talking to the feedback I was getting from staff was also if we just didn't participate, it would probably be easier to handle all the way around.

So we're but we're essentially that that we tried something and we're essentially scrapping and going back to the way it used to be. I mean, there's nothing wrong. I mean, it's good to adapt when things don't always work out. I just want to make sure that I was getting it right in my mind there. And my next question. So we have reached out to the leagues and this is being done with feedback from.

yeah yeah i i received uh pretty positive feedback from all the leagues to go to this um to go to this structure um one of the leagues did talk about the portable restrooms that uh council member marshall brought up um yeah we do have um i did a little quick I used to be a planner, so I took my scale out and did a little quick measurements to the closest permanent bathroom to the center of those baseball fields, like I guess where that building is, small building is. It looked like around 500 or so feet from the closest Portland Luz, but it is out of sight. So if somebody was to walk over to the Portland Luz to use the restroom from those fields, you know, the concern was that they're not in the direct line of sight from those sports fields.

So, you know. Just bouncing around here, I don't think we should, I don't think it's necessary to have a pickleball rate. We didn't apply for the RCO grant. We have no plans to have pickleball courts in the short term. I don't think there's a reason to have that just to probably adjust it in the future before it even takes effect.

So we are looking at a temporary option that we're looking at for Fort Nugent that we brought up before. So we're just making sure that we have the fee structure in there if we have it.

But that would only apply... If I wanted to go with my dad and play pickleball there, I'm not paying that. That would be only if there was a league. And as I understand, they're unlikely to do official league player tournaments in a place like that that would not be certified for such.

I'd have to...

When does it go from me and my buddies to a league when it comes to something like Pickleball where there's less structure?

The league is going to be whenever there are times and places that you're going out there. What we had proposed to do at Fort Nugent was put up a shed with a lock. The We're going to have to work that out. The hourly rate would be for to get the net from that locked service. If you had your own net that you were bringing, then I can't imagine that we would charge you a rate to play on a lined pickleball court. But it would be for the net access would be for the rates.

Yeah, I don't see, or at least in my conversations, I don't see people bringing their own nets. David, if you could check my math here. Assuming a population of 25,000 in Ocarbon, I know we're a little short, and that's just keeping in mind city limits and not outside. Our per capita, if we took that 2,913,000 and divide it by 25, it's like $113 or something like that. Does that sound correct? I have $116.50. That's the per capita? Okay. And the cost recovery is $19. And I'm just going by the... They're always outliers. I'm just going by the National Recreation and Park Association. They show an average per capita of $103.13 per citizen. And then a cost recovery of $27.2, which seems like they're spending less per person, but they're making more... to offset it, what are other places doing that we're not?

I would say mainly it's being a young department not having a lot of recreational programs. Right now we've ventured into camps. Camp is in year two and based on what we're doing we're really looking at solidifying the programming, not growing the programming. As we grow in the future and we grow programming, private camps alone will double a lot of that income just right off the bat from the recreation side. So that alone is going to make a big change in the future.

Yeah, you did make a good point there with it being a new department and the cost of being a little high on the front end. So it would just be nice, of course, and you do provide it to us, tracking it year over year to see that we're heading closer to what the averages are. But I do understand you have a good point with it being a new department. We were told by the last Parks and Rec director it's going to be a couple years of pain, so to speak, to get a little more to where we need to be. So appreciate it.

And to piggyback on that, I think that you also have to take a more concentrated, focused approach in the beginning to start out slower and not try to be so broad with everything that you're offering. So we've had to kind of scale that back, which is why we're trying to really define the programs and really boost those programs now and then expand them as you have healthier programs. um trying to just throw everything out there you know the first year it doesn't work you can't you can't do that so when everything's brand new so um live and learn all right any other questions for where are we at are we on parks and rec or we're doing the master fee schedule yes council member peterson

I have one more question going back to the refrigeration because I was thinking about that too. $20 per 24-hour consecutive and I thought I just understood Councilmember Marshall to be told basically that if you were there on Thursday and Friday you'd get charged $40 but that's not really what that says. Is that what I heard? Because it seems to me that if I bring in my stuff at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and get everything set up for my 10 o'clock meeting tomorrow morning and I'm gone by 2, that's $20.

Well, I think part of the issue, and Craig can correct me if I've got this wrong from what I've learned, is when you're utilizing that fridge space and you've taken it up because you reserved it, it's really hard to have somebody else come in and do their prep and use that fridge space. When you're using up that space, there's not... So we're occupying the space for what it's going to be used. So when you're reserving it, you're reserving all of that space to use because nobody else can come in and utilize it as well. And a lot of the people that they're dealing with are a lot of our food trucks and folks like that that are prepping their food. for the next event or the next activity that they're doing. So they've structured their pricing to adjust for that. Well, it says shared. I'm sorry? It says shared. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could share. But that, again, is adjusted in the cost that they're doing.

So why doesn't it say $20 per day? Why does it say per 24 consecutive hours? Because to me, that's 2 o'clock in the afternoon to 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

Well, and I think that's to help because some of these people do have different hours that they're fluctuating in. So they're covering that time gap. And that's also allowing us to reserve it in the system and do the scheduling of the time.

Right. But that's not $40 if I come in on Tuesday at 2 and leave at Wednesday at 2. That's $20, right?

it would be $20 for the refrigeration. And then again, when you're coming in for the, for the time you're coming in at two, the first time you're going to have a $25 charge for the time you're coming in. The second time there's a $25 charge. The overnight refrigeration in between is a $20 charge. Totally 70.

That's not what this says. It says per 24 consecutive hours. So if I come in at 2 o'clock in the afternoon to prep, put my stuff in the refrigerator, and I'm going to come in at 10 o'clock in the next morning, that's still part of a 24-hour consecutive clock. So I'm just confused about what we're actually saying.

It's the refrigeration cost and the actual coming in and doing your setup, using the space, those are two separate charges.

The rental rate is different than the refrigeration rate. Correct.

I understand that.

It's an additional charge. Yeah. But I'm paying $25 per hour for my rental rate.

Yeah, because a lot of people are coming in and they're just using it for a prep space. They have to get whatever they need prepped in the commissary kitchen and then they take it to their food truck or whatever their business that they're going to take it to. This would be an additional and separate fee that would be for people who would need the overnight refrigeration as well.

$20 overnight.

Correct.

Okay.

Council Member Marshall. Thank you, Mayor. So what happens then, Craig, if I need to come in at 2 o'clock, I'm going to use your time, to pick up my food and somebody already has the kitchen booked at 2 o'clock. Am I then not able to come get my food at that time?

It's all taken in part of it. So if you're going to be booking that time, I mean, unfortunately, with what we have available, we don't have the availability to handle multiple different people using it at one time. So that would then just book that period. So we wouldn't necessarily be able to have somebody else come in and just use the prep kitchen knowing that we don't have the refrigeration space if that's what they need. So it would be based on whatever they need. If you're coming in and calling and saying that you need no refrigeration space, but you just need to come in for that time, you can come in. You're not going to conflict with the refrigeration space.

In essence, though, if I'm booking it for 24 hours and you're saying there's no additional refrigerator space, then wouldn't I have to book the entire kitchen for that 24-hour period?

No. The kitchen, it's a lot of area. We have a lot of different sinks that are able to be used. really our refrigeration space. We have one refrigerator and it's like a third of it that's designated and approved for the commissary kitchen purpose. And that small amount that we have is really what's causing the limitation for us.

Do we have a lot of call for the commercial refrigeration?

We have had a lot of interest in it. Yes.

Okay.

And to run the commissary kitchen, we also have to have a staff person or a couple staff people who meet certain requirements from Island County. So there's also some steps that we as a city have to do for our staffing. So there are some things to consider in that as well.

Oh, I fully understand that. And I'm just curious about the refrigeration part. I mean, it doesn't take somebody special, right, to put something in the refrigerator and then take it back out. And so that's the only question I had is.

Well, we have utility costs, too, that we have to account for.

Which I get, which is the $20 for the 24-hour period. But to charge to come in to put the stuff in the refrigerator and then to charge again to come and get it back out, that's where I have an issue with. Because now we might as well just say it's... it's $70. I mean, instead of saving us $20 for a 24 hour period, it's going to cost you $70 for a 24 hour period, right? Cause you got to check in and you got to check out.

I mean, again, it depends on the needs. Like most people who have, I don't want to say most people we've had in a short time, probably three to four users, but when they're coming in to pick that part up, they're not just coming in and taking stuff out of the fridge. They're coming in, doing a little bit more prep for what they need to do. If in theory you had zero prep and you're literally just coming to clear out the fridge, then there wouldn't be that secondary charge. It's all need-based.

okay and then and i'll just use a specific example right we had a food truck that came to the last event and they that's all they needed was refrigeration and so i i suggested they reach out to the center and and see if they could at least on paper show that they had a commercial refrigeration right because they they couldn't keep the stuff at the site overnight but To say, yeah, it'd cost you $20 to put the stuff in the refrigerator. They're not prepping it there. They're just coming in, put something in the refrigerator, and then coming back the next day to grab it. Especially if it was during work time and that kind of stuff. So I understand there could be some variables, right? But I was just trying to narrow that down a little bit. So I appreciate it.

All right, anybody else for the master fee schedule? Going once, going twice. All right, we're moving on. Next up is the police department continued discussion, ordinance number 2043, amending Oak Harbor Municipal Code 10.12.010 related to parking and traffic control definitions. Adopting Oak Harbor Municipal Code 10.12.170 related to parking restrictions for vessel, trailer, recreational vehicles, or oversized loads. Adopting Oak Harbor Municipal Code 10.12.175 related to a residential loading exception. Here to introduce this topic is our Chief of Police, Tony Slowik, as well as our Community Development Director, Stacy Pratchner.

Hello. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. I believe we have some public comments that are in your packet to read. So just so everyone's aware of that, um, I am going to go over, um, a little background from our last meeting and then, um, what you guys have asked us to provide today. So a little recap, um, as a council member Stucky, uh, was able to locate, uh, sorry to interrupt.

Are we not showing those comments then?

I, I,

Councilmember, we can show those comments. We do have them prepared. We did include them in the packet for you. They will be shown in their entirety at the public hearing on this item on June 2nd.

Okay.

Thank you.

Is that acceptable?

Okay.

So back in May, it looks like May 25th, 2022, there was a presentation provided to city council. I did find that presentation packet I couldn't find that it was that was ever recorded presentation it did talk about this same topic March of 20 March 27th of 2026 we had a right blend community conversation where this was brought up by citizens as a concern April 14th was the last presentation I provided to City Council at a workshop So just to recap, that presentation was a policy presentation regulating vessels, trailers, recreational and oversized vehicles, parking on city streets for 12 hours. And then with that, there was a restriction for five days of parking without a permit in front of your own residence. During that presentation, city council asked for information regarding a potential creation of a parking permitting system. So as we're looking at what the right of way is, I think it's good to just make sure we understand the laws in WAC and RCW that we're following here. So here's information pulled out of the RCW, so RCW 3586A010. In 2020, the Washington State Legislatures in Olympia declared on-street long-term parking inadequate in commercial, industrial, and high-density residential areas. Um, for the whack, uh, denotes land property, uh, devoted to highway transportation purposes. And when we really ask what is the highway transportation purposes mean in MRSC, uh, gives us a little better definition or understanding where public land reserved for public travel and movement of people and goods, which includes temporary and short-term parking on city streets. So really the question that we're talking about is should the city council, should the city's definition of right-of-way facilitate transportation per the RCW and WAC or should it accommodate for long-term storage of private property?

It's really our fundamental policy decision to discuss.

So when we're talking about right-of-way, the rationale involves safety of cars, bicycles, and pedestrians. That's really what we're concerned with. One of the challenges that we're having now is large non-passenger vehicles such as vessels, trailers, recreational and oversized vehicles are blocking clear vision of street corners and driveways, creating public safety concerns in high density and residential areas. So part of that challenge is based off of our engineering rules that we follow. The RCW and our carbon municipal code mirror each other. The city's adopted the RCW, which talks about parking prohibited from driveways, and that's only five feet. And that is a state law. And so when you put a large non-passenger object, let's just say a trailer, or maybe it's a boat, and or it could be an RV and it's parked within five feet of the driveway. Per the law, it's legally parked as long as it's off the drivable portion of the roadway. However, what it does is it blocks the safety of people entering and exiting that driveway it blocks the pedestrians being able to be seen between vehicles because typical passenger cars are 22 feet or less often they're five feet or less in height they have windows that you can see through and you're able to see people moving around so if you're a driver that's just driving on the roadway you're able to see people that are on the sidewalks or pulling out of driveways or coming through cars. However, these large objects create a barrier for that. So when we talk about permitting discussions, I really came up with two permitting models that we're seeing that are in our surrounding areas. The first one is long-term storage permitting. This would allow for A designated residence requirement, extended street parking, which really allows us to change and make vehicle or roadway parking really privatized is what we're doing. We're saying we're going to allow for long-term storage on city right-of-way. So under this permitting model, a resident could have a registered RV trailer could be a commercial vehicle whatever that would be they would have to provide proof of insurance provide proof that they are the registered owner that the police department or the city could issue a permit and they could have it parked indefinitely in front of their property or an area where we we said that it would that's adjoining to their property excuse me for the entire year we see this we sorry I'm going back to permitting we have seen that looks like there's permitting in some areas but most areas don't have long-term street parking like this so the other model that we've we talked about is a this is a fire five-day model which is looking at our ordinance that we've proposed that allows for five days of standard parking without a permit after that five days a resident could request a two weeks of special permit parking in front of their residents for their vehicle or maybe they've got a family member coming in and that could be done three times a year so it would still preclude we would still have a 12-hour parking through the entire city allows for more turnover of vehicles but in it really limits for or encourages people to park off-site at a private facility so when you compare the two side-by-side So the residential storage would be primary use as long-term storage of oversized vehicles on city right-of-way. So those are the eligible vehicles. Required will be mandatory, frequency unlimited with current insurance and registration. The option number two is a needs-based. Everybody would be able to park for 12 hours on city right away. You could do five days in front of your residence with no permit, and then you could do a special permit for up to two weeks, three times a year. So if somebody was maybe traveled or had family stopped by, there's multiple times through the year you could do that. Any questions with this part?

Okay, so yeah. My first question is if we have a 12 hour parking, allowable. What is to keep someone from every 12 hours, sending themselves a nice little alarm at 11 hours and 45 minutes and move in the vehicle a hundred yards and just rocking, rocking it back and forth.

Yeah. I think what you would eventually see is people are not going to do that. What they would be is reminded to move along those things. I think it also allows for, um, when, when, uh, people come through town, that aren't staying here it allows them to use restaurants I think that's the other consideration is where's the balance with this I think both of those those things could be challenging I think for the 12-hour parking and somebody who is just staying in their vehicles and with that I think we have some other ordinances we're looking at that we'd like to bring to City Council but for this I think there gives a balance

Thank you, Mayor. So the language, and I'm only going to cover what you've talked about so far. The language in the ordinance does not allow for, doesn't mention anything about the special permit in order for families to stay for a couple weeks. It is simply limited to five days for very specific reasons. So how is somebody going to find out that they have that option of allowing the family to stay in the church?

Yeah, so we would have to add the language to the ordinance. We're looking for a direction from city council today. Instead of going and writing up 15 different drafts of ordinances that I think would then get socialized throughout the community, which would then be very confusing, really we're hoping to get some feedback from council today on the direction they'd like to go so we can get this put into the ordinance to bring this back to council.

Okay. You mentioned a special permit. Is there a fee associated with that?

That would be, as we come into a few other slides, that would really be up to council. Do you feel like that's a, would council want there to be a permit requirement? You know, there is a cost to this. There's a cost to managing the permitting system, which I'm going to get into here that we can cover.

Okay. And you mentioned they can get an exception up to three times a year. Is there a limit to the number of five-day periods that they could potentially have in front of their house? There is not. So five days, go on 72, be back for five days theoretically if they say they're working on it.

I will say that I drove around over the last two weeks, especially after looking at these comments that we're getting from the community. I found that there are a few people who have businesses that are running out of their homes. We're not looking at making that a hardship on businesses and those type of things. I've seen a few utility trailers. But those trailers are getting used every day. So they're going and parking at their house. They're then going and driving them to work to do landscaping or whatever they're doing, construction. And then they're bringing them back to the residence They're parked overnight and then it's moved again. It's maybe there for the weekend. That would be a perfect example of where it just keeps on getting moved around and utilized and it would fall within our parking ordinance. Yeah. But then there are people who have a motorhome parked on their property, a boat parked in their driveway, and now they have another motorhome parked on the right of way of the property, like on the corner. And it's hard to see around all of that. It's an older part of town. There's not a lot of shoulder. which now becomes a two-lane road when you have a motorhome on both sides or a boat and a motorhome, now becomes a one-lane road because it's just very congested. And these are in some of our other areas where we see people coming in talking about concerns with traffic with schools and those becoming more dense areas.

So in either one of these scenarios, the 12-hour or the five-day, how do we know when that time period starts? I mean, is that going to become the emphasis of patrols to see what is out there, or are we counting on neighbors to try to call each other?

No, that would have to be observed by a police officer. I don't think you could go and honestly could say, hey, my neighbor complained and said my motorhome was here for 13 hours, and then we go contact him and say, hey, here's what the rule is, explain everything to them. That's when that clock starts at that point.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

And we do that currently with other parking zones that we have throughout the city. We do have some one-hour parking areas, those type of things. Okay.

I like that you acknowledge the impact on businesses, because that is one thing that I know, at least for myself, people reached out as like, hey, I work construction. I park my trailer in front. And so I'm glad that we were discounting that.

I'll say I found several businesses that what they're doing is they're putting their utility trailer on their property and parking their vehicle on the right-of-way. It looks like the few places I've seen that have businesses working out of their residence, they're trying to figure out how to make it work with the current situation and not being an impact to the community.

So my only question with your presentation as far as that, that, uh, 12 day, 12, it was 12 days, right? Or two weeks or no, the two weeks, the two weeks, there's two weeks. Could that be stacked? So for example, my family is going to be here for three weeks. Could I stack those three times or those two times to have them there?

Yeah, I believe as we talked about with administration that you could. I think you're looking at two two-week periods. You define how you're wanting – or three two-week periods. You define how you want to do it. Somebody could get to that two-week and ask for another week longer.

So it sounds like there's some discretion involved. It is.

And looking at how Anacortes and Mount Vernon have permits and they've written it, it's written vague in there to allow for that. reasonableness okay thank you we're not trying to put hardship on anybody understanding people have family that come to town um understand that it might not be their motor home and it might be the family's motor home and being able to explain all that so yeah okay Uh, so as we look at a permitting system, um, a couple of things that we want to talk about is the capabilities. So really we want to have something online. Um, it could be online submissions, uh, permit approval status. So people know what the status of their permit is a registry of current and expired permits. I think that's an important thing. Um, the documentation of law enforcement would need would be the proof of current registration and insurance. And then really the question is, is there a fee tied to this? What does council believe? There are some jurisdictions like Burlington that don't have a fee tied to their permitting system. And then there are some other jurisdictions when you get closer to Seattle that do. Operational challenges that we see. are going to be implementing a permitting system, introducing significant resource demands. The software licensing and database management really is the initial piece of it that we feel like is going to be challenging. The staff time for applications and verification Um, and the inspections. Um, we believe that with the addition of the fourth records person that we added this year, the police department does have bandwidth to do probably that two week permitting piece. Um, and then the enforcement, um, as part of patrol, we feel like patrol can handle that. the challenging with a permit system is really the geographic equity and land use that we have. So, um, different types of residents have different availability. So for example, a single family residence has clear property frontage simplifies permit assignment. However, where a mixed use or high density apartment complex, um, does not have that same type of availability and, and under both systems would be issued a permit. They would be denied, denied a permit. And then the question of public access for large vehicles and long-term storage are effectively privatizing public spaces.

That's really the question there.

Additionally, we discussed this before, which are HOAs and CCR limitations. The city isn't in the position of negotiating or managing those covenants. The concern that we would have is by issuing a permit where there is an HOA CCR or HOA limitation that we would be really legalizing to say, sure, you can have that there when that goes against their HOA rules or something like that. So just a comparison as we make a little chart on seeing where some of the challenges are. And personally, I'm in favor of option two with the two-week time periods. It's my personal belief. And then as we talk with our community development department, really all city ordinances should be simple to understand, equally applied to all residents, and practically enforceable by staff. So when we just go over a review of our proposed ordinance again, it's for oversized vehicles, 22 feet length and 8 feet in width. Recreational vehicles, which includes motorhomes, trailers, fifth wheels, utility trailers. And then we get into vessels and the trailers with those. Again, we talked about what public right-of-way is. It could be allowed for 12 hours on public right-of-way as long as it's legally parked. Signage is not required for this. Removal timeline, it's our standard illegally parked vehicle policy and ordinance that we have, which also complies with the state law. And so we use the same forms where we have to put the tag on the vehicle. The form explains that you have to move your vehicle within 24 hours from when it was tagged. we go through that same process for removing the vehicle and then this is the five days of loading preparation exception really as long as it's in front of your residence or the property line when we talk about the property line I would say those are just those houses that are on the corner that have really two property lines on two pieces of it where might not be feasible on the driveway side but maybe it's feasible on the side of the house you know the reason why we do five days is the prep and loading and unloading of your trailer or boat or whatever that is before and after a trip or prepping for a trip trying to reduce the number of vehicles and stuff on the roadway. We would be adding a no. Currently, we don't have this, but we would be adding a no extension cords, cables, obstructions permitted to go across the crosswalk. That's an important thing. I think as we look at ADA compliance, we're not allowed to have anything that obstructs sidewalks. Currently, we don't have anything in our city ordinance that obstructs that. And we do have some of these motorhomes that are running extension cords across sidewalks to power them up. And then there's a reset period after the 72 hours. So as we look at the different sections, so 10.12 is adopting the parking and traffic control. let's see here I already covered all this so it's impounding or moving the vehicle within 24 hours and the city reserves the right to remove vehicles immediately and without any notice that are in no parking areas and their traffic hazards so that doesn't remove our city responsibility right now I'm happy to take questions Yeah, so the last part is that it does, so we have, if you're illegally parked or you're obstructing the roadway, we can move your vehicle right now. We can impound your vehicle right now. The ordinance allows us to continue to do that. So if somebody had parked and they're blocking a driveway and we can't find the person and get it moved, we can get the vehicle moved now. If they're over the fog line and in the drivable portion of the roadway, we can move the vehicle immediately, those type of things. If they're parked up on the sidewalk and completely blocking the sidewalk, we can move it then. And I'm happy to take any questions.

So I'm in agreement, generally speaking, with regard to not doing a permitting system, or at least not a complex one. But I did want to make mention of the fact that it's common to have permits for construction projects of certain types for doing different types of things. And so the idea of just a blanket prohibition of using permitting. I'm not sure that that's the exact answer. And I wanted to also address the matter about civil process, legal process. With regard to tools of the trade, they're somewhat protected. And I see a distinction between people who put their 14-foot tall RV in front of a residence and park it there, and those who are actually using their tools of the trade, that they come and go out of the parking in front of the residence. But I would ask that you would address the question about the five-foot rule. We can make that more restrictive, correct? That is to say within 10 feet or 20 feet of a driveway. Because what I'm stating is, I mean, I've heard it over and over again, these people that are blinded by these huge RVs. There's not many of them, but there's some.

You could. You could extend that. parking, our city ordinance can be more restrictive than the RCW. The challenge you get to is anybody that comes into our community, that is the standard throughout the entire state. If you are going to make something more restrictive and we're the only community that does that, it's going to be a challenge. And you're going to have people violating that frequently. And then I would defer that more to Alex as well, who's our traffic engineer and can talk more about parking within driveways and all of that.

So currently the City Municipal Code and the RCW both talk about five feet within the the edge of the driveway is what it is and then it's

being on the drive or the shoulder of the roadway, not on the drivable portion of the roadway.

I think council member arms.

Well, I'm a little confused, too. I mean, how are you going to how do you know that somebody's been there for 12 hours or even five days? I mean, what your neighbors are going to call up and say, hey, you know, this car's been here. I mean, I mean, I know this is regular cars but on our street I have a picture of this this isn't good I mean you can barely get down the road to get to the driveway because you got everybody parking on the road uh you know so I'm just confused I mean how are we going to tell yep so somebody you're right there's two ways that some it's the officers are going to figure it out one is somebody's going to call in and complain and then the officers are going to go out there and observe what's going on find the person talk with them leave a note on the car whatever that would be

The other one is the officer's proactively in your neighborhood. They're going to see the vehicle, and then they're going to have that same contact. So those are the two ways. And then we document it. We have a system already to document those things. We do a field contact with it, and then we start a clock. That's the way it works.

Well, I mean, I may not be one that's exactly happy about permitting, but there we have a record. You know, we know for sure. I mean... We are getting a bigger city. I mean, you're going to spend a lot of hours driving around seeing this. I mean, there's nothing you can do. When we go out from O'Leary and go either left to Regatta or go down further, you can't see around. The bus driver goes 90 miles an hour down that road. You can't see around. That is a very dangerous corner. i told jeweler about it it's crazy i can barely see to get out this is regular cars because they never made any anything back in the day and nobody can park because there's no parking all right any other questions yes comes from romero

For the record, I want to address the matter, and it was made clear by some of the comments made by citizens online, and that the matter of fairness, because there are hundreds of RVs and trailers in paid positions online, that month by month they've been paying to store their items, and yet we have those who think that they are privileged to use city space that was paved and designed not for storage but for use for temporary parking or actually a shoulder of sorts. And so I just wanted to state that we've got to do something so that we don't have this lack of fairness. Thank you.

Council Member Marshall. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. To kind of stay on Council Member's topic, is there adequate storage options available if we were to implement something like this? Look at you come all prepared. You knew that question was coming.

I did. I had my detective sergeant call around last week. And let me see if I can log into my computer. Okay, RV parking list.

Because while you're looking for that, I called three places this morning just to kind of get an idea. And of those three places that I called, only one had available spaces. But it was for a maximum of 20 feet. And our ordinance is looking at 22 feet.

So there are 10 locations within the city or right outside city limits that do long-term parking of trailers, boats, whatever. Some of them also do storage units. Often those two things go hand in hand. There are two, three, four, six that currently have parking available. Three say that they have significant amount of available parking. Three say they have significant amount of available parking. is what she called. You're right. There are some that say they have limited parking. Like for one, and I won't say this has limited, but this one has five for 20 feet, four for 30 feet, five for 40 feet, and one for 60 feet. Another one has 10 spaces up to 30 feet. Another one has one space for 20 feet. So I could probably guess which place you called. Another one has several up to 30 feet and then some that are 18 feet. So I'm guessing that's probably a car, like a car space. Yeah. And then there's one that said that they have like significant as well.

Okay. So... What happens when the carnival comes to town? All right. So the carnival comes and they come on Saturday and they don't set up till Sunday or I mean, Monday last year, they parked on Bayshore because it was legal for them to park special event permit.

So I think you do, that's part of your special event that you just submit just like any other festival or event that we're doing. That's what you're requesting is for, Hey, along with this special event, we're going to need street parking in this area. Let's say it's Southeast Bayshore drive, for example, for this much room for this amount of time. And then we put special event parking signs up. It limits the parking for citizens in that area, and we allow that special event parking. I think that's how you control it. I think that it can be accommodated a lot of different ways with that special event permitting. It allows us to track that information better as well and provide that detail to council.

So do we have to implement a new tracking system for the five days, the two weeks, the special events like this? Does that require a new system?

I think the question really is how we do the intake of the form right now. We can manage the permitting piece of it for our citizens on the police department, the spillment system that we have. There is a module in there that we have access to that we could use, talking with Stacy you know there's potentially we could use the system they have or we could have a form stack created one of the two ways to intake that information and then it's really how do we manage the permits I think as we issue them we just put them up on the police department's page of here's a running list of current permits something like that

And then how practical is it to remove an RV? Who pays for that that's towing and who pays for the storage?

I'll say the city has paid for a significant amount of that over the last several years. Last year we destroyed 10 RVs that were left on our streets. We currently have two RVs in a trailer that are impounded to the city property. We, as in the police, it comes out of the police department's budget for that tow fee, and then it comes out of the police department's budget to hire an excavator and then pay city staff, public works staff, to chump all that up so that what we give to our towing company is a rolling chassis. which is what they're, that's what they're willing to accept. They're not willing to accept anything else because they're not big enough tow companies to do salvage work or anything like that. So it's a, you know, it's probably $15,000 a month or a year or some 50,000 a year, something like that.

So if we tow an RV from some in front of somebody's house, how do we recover that money?

So, so, uh, depends. So if it goes to a tow yard, then the tow yard, we don't have to pay anything. But if it goes to our property, which per the law, if they're claiming it as their habitat, their residence, then we absorb that cost ourselves. If they are, the law says we cannot charge them for that tow or holding of the vehicle. So often we just eat the cost if they're going to get it back or we destroy it because they've surrendered it or haven't claimed it.

So is it more difficult to tow a trailer if they're claiming it's their residence?

We can tow a trailer. The nice thing about trailers is we actually can tow a trailer with city vehicles.

Let's say an RV.

An RV, often we have to get a tow truck from Mount Vernon. And that tow bill is maybe $1,000 one way.

So my, I guess what I'm concerned about is if we, if they're not on the street, right, they have 12 hours and they go to a private property, they go to a, they pull into a grocery store somewhere else. Then what does that timeframe look like? How long can we get rid of it from that point?

It's in private property is not our responsibility to impound. It's the private property owners. We work with them on, on how to get that process going. I will tell you, there are big box stores that have allowed people to park their RVs on the, their parking lots and then they've been abandoned there, but they don't want to pay for the removal of the RV. So often it takes a few months to get that process going.

So we're potentially taking our problem and putting it on a private business if they choose to then move into the parking lot?

No, because if a property owner says, hey, I don't want that vehicle here, we can move, trespass them and move them along. Okay. Yeah. And we work with the property owners. And I will say, if this policy was implemented, we would work with the owners of the trailers, RVs, and all of those things as well to gain compliance. I mean, there would be a period of time where we would want to work through all of that, what's reasonable. Somebody maybe is living paycheck to paycheck and can't, you know, maybe they have to move some other vehicle off their property before they can park it on their own property or something. So we'd work with them.

That was my concern with the five-day implementation. I mean, is giving people enough time to make other arrangements and find a storage unit or something.

Yeah, that enforcement piece, we have control over the tempo of that. I know, right?

Okay. All right, Chief, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

You sure that's it? I'm sure. All right. Council Member Stuckey.

You ask most of my questions, though, so you've made my time shorter. Although I'm a little nicer, so... So I'd say looking for feedback on the ordinance. I'm still on the fence, but it's better than it was. I do like the two-week for people that are visiting. As you know, I run a lot, and right up my street, I see an RV that wasn't there before, and I can kind of tell it's people visiting, and they've probably been there a week and a half, and I would feel bad saying, hey, can't do that. Yep. And I like that we've acknowledged the business owners and not making a hardship on them. The only place where I struggle, and no matter what we do, a lot of people aren't going to like it. I do feel for those that purchase an RV, are using their RV. It's not like an abandoned RV. And they purchased it parking in front of their house for years, not expecting the expense of storing it. Now, things change, and that's just how it goes. I just want to acknowledge that that's kind of part of the way in which I'm struggling. I'm not suggesting necessarily a grandfathering program. But that is where I see some difficulty. I'm not coming to you with a solution. I just want it out there that that is where I would think we would get the pushback of the people who have been using their RV. It's not expired tab. It's not derelict. It's not abandoned. I parked it in front of my house for the last five years. Maybe I wouldn't have bought this had I known that that would have been a requirement. And that's where I struggle.

I would then... I think that often we would see, and this is my personal feeling, that that's probably not used much and stays in the same place a long time. And maybe this is the piece of helps them move it along or put it on their property. I don't know. But change is hard. I think that's the other part.

Oh, again, no matter which route we go, there's gonna be some outspoken individuals about it, but I appreciate you looking into it. I agree that a total permitting program wouldn't make sense, but I'm glad that you guys looked into it and the impacts it would have. So I'm still a little on the fence, always looking for feedback, but I do think it's better than it was the first time around.

Anybody else? Yes, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you. The driving force behind all of this, and as you have stated, Mr. Mayor, is safety. Got to be able to see around them, got to have kids be able to play, all of that. So is the five-foot rule that we kind of have to abide by, is that a good distance? Or are we kind of missing the boat if we maybe at some point went to the legislature and said, why don't you make that six? I mean, I don't know because I don't do distance.

I don't have the data to show those type of things, but I'm going to turn it over to Alex because he really wants to talk.

Thanks, Alex.

Well, I've heard this come up a couple times now. Yes, I'm Alex Warner, your city engineer. Hi. So this is written into our code, as the chief mentioned. There are five feet distance from driveways. There's further distances from stop signs you can't park with uncertainties of stop sign, crosswalks, intersections. That's all written into our code, and that is consistent with the RCWs. That is based on general engineering practice that probably hasn't been updated in decades. I think it's reasonable to keep that as is. The part that I struggle with that you've probably seen additional paint down here on Bayshore is communicating that to the public. How can we reasonably expect them to know you can't park within five feet? They don't have a copy of the municipal code in front of them or sitting in their car. So in my 10 years here, I had not seen any curbs painted. The city hadn't painted any curb. that changed recently down on Bayshore. So that's a tool we can use. We can also use additional signage. So any striping or signage falls under the authority of the traffic engineer, which is assigned to the city engineer and part of our code. So I guess it's always available to reconsider those distances. But I think a better approach would be how to better communicate that to the public. and then see what kind of enforcement we have, compliance. There's another added piece of what we call site distance triangles. The chief mentioned it as sight lines. And we look at that for fixed objects and landscaping. Any time you're coming up to an intersection, there's standards, AASHTO Green Book, a bunch of engineering um that goes behind that and we analyze that for these fixed objects and other things but it doesn't directly apply to parking there are certain situations at intersections and other areas at wide shoulders where we mark out where you can't park within As an example, you can't park within, say, 75 feet of an intersection because a car's parking on the shoulder near that intersection is blocking the sight distance. Right. So we've done that out on Whidbey Avenue years ago before we re-striped it. You see that out on East Whidbey Avenue as it approaches Regatta. There's hatching or gore striping, as we call it. So that's another tool we can utilize.

OK. Thank you. I think I'm an offender because I usually park out here and I think I'm parking in the yellow because the striping starts here, but I think the yellow starts here and I think I drive up. I'm going to have to be a better parker. And then it was a little bit, and I think Council Member Stuckey or Marshall covered that. If I own an apartment complex, I can say you cannot park your

RV in my area right oh yeah so if it's a community parking situation yeah they can manage their own parking lot they would have to impound the vehicle and all of that by themselves by themselves yeah okay and we work we work with several apartment complexes through it within the city to manage vehicles they don't want in their parking lot

And then you talked about HOAs and how HOAs kind of can make their own rules and not all of HOAs follow that, but they can make their own. I live in one of those. Since people would be coming to the city to get their extended permit, but the HOA may have other restrictions, will you manage that by like having spoken to what we have 15 HOAs and kind of keeping a little book so you know if you can or how would you manage that?

Yeah, so I think that the two-week parking piece, I think that's the question. Even with the two-week parking, do you just issue the two-week parking and say you're allowed to be there for two weeks and then they deal with their HOA? More likely than not, the HOA is not, you know, I don't know. That's a great question.

They're not going to marshal that.

I guess I feel more comfortable doing it that way than... One year parking, yeah, you can park it there for a year, and now it's a big problem.

Oh, absolutely. And then lastly, you talked about cords not being able to go across sidewalks, but then that means that the... RV has to park there and be on their noisy generator all the time. Could we maybe make it so that you have to have like a, like see the barrier thing there where we've crossed the, can we turn that potentially into you have to make that a safety measure, you have to have barrier-free crossing or something so that it's ADA and how would we do that?

Yeah, I'd like to respond to that. You touched on it there at the end, the ADA, Americans with Disability Act requirements. So anything in our right of way, including those sidewalks, needs to be ADA compliant. And I would be cautious to seek any sort of citizen compliance with that. That, in my mind, should fall to us as city staff to implement what is ADA compliant. um so generally and I think this goes back to code enforcement and complaint based if you have a garbage can a basketball hoop an extension cord anything like that on the sidewalk that is a violation of ADA so we can't say you have to have a barrier proof rug thingy bobber in our code yeah i think i think that would require further conversation because right now that is those type of um items on sidewalk are installed by city staff or contractors that are licensed and bonded so it can't be like just comes with the rv that they can buy one and sling it down you don't think that works I would have to look into it further. I'm not aware of any, so I can't commit to that, and I need to discuss.

Because I just don't know how we're going to keep people from plugging in. I just don't understand how we can do that. So then that would be an enforcement thing. And what are you going to do to me? Then I'm going to run my generator. Then I'm going to make all the neighbors mad.

So I would, Sandy, I would make the recommendation that people utilize their driveways and then park their cars in the streets so that then you don't have the cords going across the sidewalk issue.

I guess I would agree with that if your visitor's RV fits in your driveway.

Caddy Corner, it should fit.

Huh?

Caddy Corner, it should fit. I've done it before.

Oh, Caddy Corner.

OK.

I'll measure my driveway.

And I guarantee you my HOA will be in here complaining about all of this stuff with the city when they started showing these permits.

I'm just not sure then if somebody had to go out in the road to get past the thing. But I appreciate your, yeah, that could also be a way to work.

I mean, it's just a recommendation. That's what I would recommend.

Yeah, got you. Yes.

OK. And with respect to the cord crossing, of course, I mean, in law enforcement, we always say, all you got to do is have somebody with their $16 go to the county and sue you. Well, I mean, that's been years ago. So the reality is that there is a liability of running a cord, even if it had a legitimate cover to prevent a trip hazard, there's always a liability.

I would actually just refer it to legal. Council members, I would just refer it to legal, probably, and let legal give us guidance on what to refer to legal to give guidance.

yes just because of one of the public comments i read and observing just human beings in regard to people doing things out of residences is that five days i mean like seven days is a full calendar week yeah and uh is there a reason we couldn't go to seven days or would there is the five days kind of set in stone we can make it anything we want honestly um

Anacortes does three days.

Three days.

And then you've got to be off the roadway for a day. And then you're off the roadway for 24 hours.

Well, just people making trips and doing behavior, and they go here, there, and there. I mean, the seven-day option might be of value. And there was one other question I had, but the good news is I can't remember it, so we'll pass.

All right, Councilmember Arms, I think we're going to get there eventually.

Since everybody's talking, we might as well continue. The only thing is, Councilmember Stuckey brought it up, you know, it's nice to say you're not using your RV, but not necessarily so. You know, if people are working, they may have it, you know, maybe twice a year they do it. And the other thing is, a lot of people don't want to park They don't want to put their RV in storage. They can't take care of it. They can't watch it. They can't do anything. And also, it's a lot of money. And people have had vandalism at these places, and people aren't comfortable with it. And I mean, that means you basically have to take all your gear out, then you have to put all your gear back. And so that's another consideration. Maybe Council Member O's right, maybe instead of five, seven days, but it is a problem because people do have problems. Not that the storage people don't drive, but you know, people want to be able to have it when they have it. So it is a problem that way.

So can I respond? Absolutely. I would just say if we're, if we're doing seven days on the street, might as well just go to a full permit system and, and because I, well, I mean, that's what you're saying. You're saying you're going to allow them to just park it there for set a vehicle there for seven days. without a permit, what's the time limit they're not allowed to park there then? I guess I'm confused on what that is. If you're saying, hey, people can just park it for seven days because you don't like five days or you don't like three days or whatever that is. I guess the question is, You know, that's the challenge.

Council Member Wittgenstein has something to say.

Yeah. I was thinking about that seven day too, but the five day actually is fine as somebody who camps every weekend, used to at least. You're giving people an opportunity to be able to come home from the weekend. They've got four or five days to unpack, get repacked, to go back out. People who use their campers and RVs use them that way most all the time. They're out there and whatnot. What's the throwback at you there, Chief? You said we might as well go to the permit process or we're just going to allow people to park there for seven days. What's the difference between seven days and five days then? Yeah, I mean, there's two days.

I think the question really we're looking at is I think we're going to gain more compliance. So I think the people that actually use their trailers and get them off the road are now not keeping there for long-term storage. I think the people that are And we have several that are not moving them at all. We're looking at making that change. And then it's in front of your residence. That's the other piece of it.

And remember that this all started because it's a safety, a line of sight issue for the children in the neighborhoods and driving and other things. So it doesn't then address the safety issues, which is why this all came forward to begin with. Thank you. Council Member Merriman.

Thank you, Mayor. So in the Navy, we would say belay my last. So I would say with regard to the seven, I'm hearing the message of the chief, and I'll go with the five. Thank you.

All right. Going once, going twice, we're done. Thank you very much. Chief, do you feel like you have enough? Probably more than enough? Yeah.

My understanding is if we add the clear language on two weeks for the parking three times and what that two-week permitting looks like, we can move forward. All right. Sounds good. Is that accurate?

Yeah, I think so. All right. last item and we're in good hands sandra just got here infrastructure master plan utility water sewer and storm water and transportation comprehensive plan updates here to introduce this topic is our public works director steve schuler to present

Thank you, Mayor Wright. Thank you, council members. Yes, we're very excited to be here by the good work of Mayor Wright and Sabrina and many other staff in our community development department. We've moved along far enough on the land use part that now we can bring you the infrastructure piece that follows your land use decisions that you've directed forward. So we're very excited to be here. All right, so just as background, Council knows that in November of 2024, you approved the 2025-2026 budget, and this work was contemplated there. And so there's a number of capital projects that are in place. at the council meeting on september 16 2025 we brought council a draft consultant request for proposals and this follows very much in line with that draft that you saw back in september and again we really appreciate the work of the city in getting us moving forward on this 2045 comp plan We received feedback from eight consulting firms, and here are the four that a city panel selected. And again, this has really been a project. You can see it's taken us eight months from September to get to this point. As you'll see from your packet, this is a lot of work. This is building a tremendous foundation which the city desperately needs to move forward. All right, very briefly, these are pretty straightforward. We have a lot of state and federal requirements. This is why we're doing this. We need to understand our infrastructure assets, especially as they start to near their lifetime. We need to then come up with a very, we want to be able to make this very common amongst city staff and other departments and the community on what our plan is moving forward. And then lastly, we want to work with David Goldman and others to really understand what those utility rates and charges are going to be long term. So we don't have a lot of surprises. It's very understood what the pros and cons are of each of the alternatives. All right. As we move forward with this, it's kind of like a ship. We've had this beautiful ship that's been out there at sea, and now it's time to bring it to dry dock. And as we have more and more infrastructure, that gets to be near that end of its useful life, we're going to be very disruptive out there on those streets, ripping up a lot of stuff. The developers got to do it on raw land and build all that infrastructure and streets when nobody lived there. Now we've got 100 families that live there when we go out and do it. So the exciting news is you're going to have lots of exciting disruption in the decades ahead. And so we want to make sure and do that really with a master plan in mind. We don't want to just do it idly. And then we really want to understand the cost of doing nothing. That's what starts to build up over the decades, is you have the ship that's out there and you don't make a decision, you don't do nothing, and then when you need to come to dry dock, it is ten times more expensive to deal with those issues. We know, like we talked a little bit about at one of our last meetings, that one of the clear things that we're going to want to do is expand private investment in our city core. There's just not going to be an alternative if we don't do that. There's just not enough money that the taxpayers have or whatever want to give us without that private investment, so it's going to be a partnership. And then what's really fun for us in public works and working with the city is, yes, we're focused on 2045, but when a developer or the city puts in a water line, we don't want it to last until 2045. We want it to last 100 years. So we will be talking to you beyond 2045, which, of course, for all of us is going to be a lot of fun. Okay, here's just a breakdown of the costs. The clear thing here is that we are on budget with all the work that we've done over the last eight months. Worked really hard to make that happen. A lot of back and forth with the consulting firms to make sure we brought you a fully on budget scope. All right, one of the first things we're gonna do, and to me, the most critical is the infrastructure master plan. Without that master plan, you don't have the documentation. As I've come to public works the last four years, you'll ask people, I don't understand our water system plan. It makes no sense. And there's no one, wonderful staff, there's not a single person anywhere that can explain to me why it is this way. We don't have a master plan. I mean, important decisions were made, but we don't have that documentation. So to me, don't move forward with anything without this, so that there's a clear understanding, a visual understanding, and a document understanding of what we're doing. And again, we've worked through a lot of these things with council already. We want to have, you know, in today's world, when you build a Boeing airplane, they're not building that in two-dimensional plane, right? They have 3D models. So we want to be able to bring in those 3D models so we can know exactly how the water pressure is going to be affected in the downtown, how that relates to the other neighboring buildings. A lot of important decisions at a very detailed level that'll be important for the city to have success. And that's it for me. And now we're going to pass it on to our senior utility engineer.

Thank you. My name is Andy Walsh, senior utility engineer. Good to see you all again. So I will be presenting water sanitary sewer and storm sewer. So the World Health Organization has said that safe drinking water is a fundamental human right. Many of us understand the importance of that. Equally important is the safe delivery to our water customers of the water. And there's many opportunities to disrupt that delivery. Our goal in engineering is to minimize those and to create as much reliability as we can. for water we've selected rh2 out of a competitive rfp process to develop our water system plan which is similar to a comprehensive plan but the rcw has strict requirements on what's what's included in those plans pretty comprehensive includes everything from where the water's coming from and the reliability water rights to the infrastructure and treatment and safe delivery. so rh2 will be looking at our infrastructure pipes our water storage tanks pump stations they'll do some modeling to analyze what the near term recommended improvements are and model out to future growth projected growth and future infrastructure infrastructure needs like steve was saying the transmission mains or mains that we build for 100 years we want to plan And because it's so expensive, put them at the right location and the right size. We will also consider the transmission main, the 10 inch main that delivers water from Anacortes, which is 1940s vintage. So we will assess the condition of that similar to what we did with the 24 inch main in 2017 to 2020. And so we'll look at that transmission, which we all know is a risk and look at some contingency plans. We will also coordinate with some improvements with the Navy, in particular the seaplane base and some transmission mains that are crossing the city currently in some neighborhoods. Deliverables will include, of course, a list of capital projects and cost data to back those projects up. And that will be used to help us assess with condition impact fees, excuse me, impact fees. So all that capital project cost, we've got to figure out a way to build that over time. This next slide here are some pictures. The middle and the left are, excuse me, it jumped ahead. Middle on the left are some recent main breaks. One on the left is an aged steel main. Chris sent to me that was probably within the last two weeks and some night work in the middle there. So we are having to be reactive in many cases when we're dealing with aged infrastructure. The right picture is a new main being constructed on Regatta a couple of years ago. so world health organization has also said that sanitary sewerage is not just a utility service but a critical public health and environmental imperative it's also the most expensive utility that the city maintains and we we want to similarly address that the health and safety to meet our customers needs our h2 will be our engineer to develop our general sewer plan and the scope will include an assessment of our infrastructure our pipes our lift stations analyze and determine what the near-term and long-term growth projected infrastructure needs are again using some modeling and making sure we meet state ecology requirements. Deliverables will include, once again, a list of capital projects, cost data to assess our impact fees Under stormwater, the National Pollutant Discharge and Elimination System, or NPDES is the acronym, was developed in 1972 from the Clean Water Act. The state of Washington and the EPA coordinate regulations for the discharge of pollutions on stormwater. And the city similarly has a NPDES permit and a stormwater management action plan. We will be working with a different consultant, Northwest hydraulic consultants or NHC to develop that stormwater comp plan. And the scope will include assessment of our infrastructure ponds, catch basins, ponds, as well as some historical knowledge of people that knew where the flooding occurred, how deep it occurred. We will be taking that information, developing a model once again, and developing short and long-term improvements. We will also be utilizing the consultant to help us meet our NPDES permit requirements. They're experts there. They can help us efficiently meet those goals. Deliverables, again, are capital projects and cost data for our impact fees. And here's a picture of some green rainwater infrastructure from the city of Vancouver, Canada. And this is kind of a cost effective means for developing these stormwater improvements to help clean the water, to protect the environment and to mimic the natural rainwater cycle. We're hoping to implement some of this on our projects.

All right, I'm Alex Warner, your study engineer. We've got one more contract comp plan to discuss, and then we'll conclude it and ask for your questions. So transportation, we have selected Transpo Group as the most qualified consultant to develop our transportation comprehensive plan update, a not to exceed amount of $166,000. Their scope includes analyzing our existing conditions, producing travel forecasts, needs assessments, and they'll come up with that final plan for adoption. That plan will include an updated capital improvement project list, where to spend your money, and transportation impact fees, how to collect a small portion but an important portion of that money to fund the projects. So this map here, it means a lot to me because our funding decisions are based on this map for grants and where to spend our transportation benefit district money. So the way the Transportation Benefit District ordinance was written, we can only spend that money collected on locally classified streets. So on this map here that's blue and then the kind of grayish as well, that is where we can spend the locally collected TBD money. the yellow and the green and the red i know it's hard to see on the map but that is where we can spend our state and federal dollars for certain grant programs so this is very important because we have limited funding for our streets and that is only becoming more limited as it's not keeping up with inflation and it's definitely not keeping up with construction inflation So looking at all of these contracts as a whole, we are intending to start work this summer, and that is extending through the end of 2028. Any funds we don't expend through the end of this year, we'll be carrying over to the next budget cycle. We're already working with David Goldman on that preparation. These agreements will all continue through December 31, 2028. So again, this is supporting our 2045 comprehensive plan and the EIS that Stacy's team is currently working on. We're looking to have this make the city successful for another 100 years. And I do want to send credit to our two other staff here. Our administration's manager, Sandra Place, has worked with us on scoping, has included her operations staff, and has helped considerably on contracting of all of these contracts. And we also have our operations manager, Chris Price, and he has included his operations staff, too, in scoping this. And they're available for any detailed questions you may have. So bring this for full circle or long term replacement of the assets. We're looking to coordinate the utility and roadway work strategic annual improvement so that is something that steve touched on at the beginning that i've felt is a bit lacking with the current plans that the city is each individual plan is put together well but we really need to look at how they overlap and come up with these corridor improvements It is gonna be disruptive. You're already seeing we have some disruption out here so we can get prepared for a paving project You're gonna see more of that And then again this investment through the city's core. It's our beautiful new ship that we're hoping to keep afloat and sailing for another 100 years We're here for any questions, thank you Thanks, Alex and everyone questions comments.

Yes comes from Romero.

Where did you get this graphic?

I? I love this graphic. It's one of my favorites. I don't know the exact background, but, oh gosh, eight, ten years ago when autonomous vehicles became a part of the discussion, right, and Google and Waymo and Tesla and others started getting into it, this was someone's version of how we're going to travel around in the future. So I just don't know what year that's going to be that you're going to be able to play a board game as you head down the freeway.

Thank you. A follow-up question on a more serious thing is State Representative Paul came to me, Dave Paul, and he stated he would want to be communicating to the city the need to, in all these infrastructure-related projects, the changing of the sea level and sea state. Just for the record, I wanted to make certain and I was reflecting too on none other than Mount Vernon nearby. They had a successful hydraulic flood control barrier that worked. as designed. So I'm not stating that that is what we would need here, but I'm stating that we have seismic factors. We have silt deposition. We have king tides. We have extraordinary winds. And then, of course, we have the general rising sea state and then storm surges. So in any case, it's very complex. And I just wanted to be on the record that engineering and all the planning take into account

these somewhat imponderable but still can be anticipated to an extent thank you mayor thank you council member marshall and and councilman romero if i could just follow up a little bit on that you're right there's a lot of details here but i think it's really important i really appreciate that the team here you have in front of you and others as we looked at the stormwater plan all that stormwater eventually ends up at the shoreline so as you can see in that we do have our consultants looking at both the sea wall and at the Farmer's Dyke, not in a comprehensive way, but we know the mayor and others and Sabrina get a lot of questions about that from the county or environmental groups. So we want to be able to have some analysis that we can all share together and come up with a common long-term vision. So thank you. So we are considering climate change and those other factors you described. Thank you.

Much appreciated. Thank you too.

Yeah. So Steve, I, I'm glad you started the way you did, but I'm a little confused. What I see is we actually budgeted $933,841 for transportation, stormwater, water, and sewer, but nowhere in that did I see an infrastructure master plan that we had budgeted for. With that $933,000 that we had budgeted for and we take into consideration the $120,000 stormwater grant, that leaves us with $1,053,841 available. And we're actually short $124,337 from what we budgeted. And so that $124,000 has to come from another budgeted item, which is the shoreline restoration funds.

right so the the infrastructure master plan uh takes all takes in all the different things because it addresses everything it mostly will address water because we know one of the key things that's going to drive a lot of the decision making is fire flow and so i'll try to describe this without getting into too much detail unless council wants to get into detail as we redevelop our downtown a lot of thought is that that's going to be based on how many people live here but one of the key things that's going to happen is fire flow and that fire flow will drive the size of those pipes the size of the storage the the size of the supply needs so that's number one number two we have met with the navy and um i'll let them tell their own story but we do know they have a crosstown line that was also built you know after world war ii during world war ii they know it's near the end of its useful life they want to get their water for the seaplane base and for all that housing that's east of regatta through the city they have told us that So that master plan is going to be very critical on how we make that happen. So the master infrastructure plan is described back in September, and council got to see all those details back in September. That will come from transportation, water, sewer, and storm. And then as you look at this diagram right here, the thing we did discussed, which I already mentioned, is as we looked at the stormwater, there's the comprehensive plan piece, which we had put in money, and you can see that's $70,000. But as we worked with staff, we realized there's a whole nother part, which is not the comprehensive plan. And it is a little confusing because each of these have their own long story and how the state and the feds develop these. The state has its own five-year NPDES permit, which is not a comp plan. It's a 2024-2029 NPDES, National Pollution Discharge Elimination System. Thank you for saying it, Andy. So we don't have to say it again. so that's what that 120 000 is and so ecology knows that that cities have to update these plans and so they've given us a grant so if you look in that middle column that 120 000 that is a state grant from ecology that we are using for the npds piece portion of this so you got the comp plan then you have to meet all these permit requirements a lot of these permits require sound like comp plan requirements but they have to be addressed separately through their own separate process And then third is the shoreline restoration, which we have, because as we discussed this, we realized a lot of key decisions as the stormwater eventually all ends up in the same location and it is at the ocean. is there was a lot of confusing stuff that we did not know on how the city's plans were for the seawall that goes from Flintstone Park all the way to the marina and the farmer's dyke that goes from Flintstones Park all the way to, you know, Friend Marsh. And so we wanted to be able to then address that on a key level so that as we work with the college and the MPDS piece, it all fits together. Otherwise, we're going to have things that we telecology as part of our permit that won't match what we're planning to do as a city long term. So all three of those, what you're seeing there is all three of those things coming together in the stormwater plan. And so you can see all the rest are pretty much all in that first column.

Okay.

Did that help? Yeah, it does.

I appreciate that.

Oh, you bet.

So I guess my bigger one question I would have is if the infrastructure master plan is the most important of all of the ones, then how come we hadn't budgeted specifically for that particular item?

We did. It comes out of all four funds. So it's not just a master plan just for transportation.

Okay.

So our transportation consultant isn't going to do water. They're not going to do sewer. They're not going to do stormwater. They're going to only do transportation. The world is so complex now that they only do transport. Used to be able to hire a firm that did all these, but now most firms, they only do transportation. There's some that will claim they do it all. And then we have a separate, so RH2, they proposed, but they recommended a separate consultant, and we selected them separately, Northwest Hydraulic Consultants, or NHC, to do the stormwater. That's only something that I've seen in the last 10 to 15 years, where you have a utility engineering and planning firm that won't do stormwater. Water, storm, and sewer, those seem very related because stormwater has gotten to be so complex that separate firms just focus on stormwater. So that's why you have RH2 doing water and sewer, NHG doing storm, and Transpo doing just transportation because those have all been so specialized. But the master infrastructure plan has to tie those all together because we want to be able to communicate this to you and further elected leaders but we want to be able to communicate this to the community because they don't want to honestly nobody that I'm aware of including myself on a lot of days wants to actually read the entire call plans of any of these things they are painful right we want to be able to bring something that's a good communication tool so that we can describe what this is and we should be able to do that in an elevator right if we're doing our job right

So I just want to make sure I understand what I heard. So you were anticipating that this infrastructure master plan would come from the stormwater, the water, and the sewer as we approve those budget items. Is that correct?

And transportation, yes.

And transportation. OK. So as part of that $933,000, when the RFP says $930,000, you were anticipating that was going to be part of that $930,000. Yes. And then the prices came back significantly higher. Yep.

And they just described again in that September draft report that you saw, it was all detailed in that report eight months ago. Yeah.

Okay. And then, but this is going to give us an overall view of the entire, our entire infrastructure, right? Water.

That's a great question. Thank you for confirming that, right? This is citywide, including our, you know, UGA expansions that are part of the 2045 land use decisions that you've made. And then also it includes the up zones part of the EIS analysis you're doing. Yes.

So I guess I'm confused on the project understanding where it says the final deliverable will include two major documents. First, the waterfront growth blueprint, and then the catalogs, scenarios, refinements, and preferred results for growth and infrastructure. And second, a policy and capital action guide. Oh yes, good detail.

So it's not just going to be waterfront.

It is going to be the entirety of the community.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, the water, sewer, storm, and transportation comp plans will be citywide. okay the master infrastructure plan is focused on the downtown area yes that's not going to be looking at the areas that aren't going to change so for example out in areas where we have you know suburban development and that's not going to be up zoned that's not going to be changed that but we won't be we won't need to get into those details there won't be that much to need to show people But the plot you see right now is going to be the plot. Now, as we get into the water plan and we have to figure out what supply is long-term and we have the additional growth areas that are going to come in, that'll all be part of how we move water around. So no, the infrastructure master plan is focused on the downtown because that's where the most of the, well, I would say not just most, but all of the up zones per your EIS discussions will be having are going to happen.

So then I guess I want to go back to your opening statement then where this infrastructure master plan is the most important because you don't have any document to go to with all of this information as to where the water lines, where the sewer lines, all of that kind of stuff is. Is that what I heard?

Yeah, that really is. We don't know how that's all going to come together. We don't have a visual for people to really understand it. And then to move all the Navy water through that area too, we need to make sure that we really understand that on a detailed level.

But that will be addressed by the other plans individually, correct?

You're right. The master plan will help inform the decisions that get made in those other plans. So they'll all start to talk to each other. And the sewer plan has to talk to the water plan. And the transportation that happens on top, if we do something where we can't have the water line there, we're going to try to get as detailed as we can. I mean, not as detailed as knowing exactly where the fire hydrant's going to go, but we should be able to have a good visualization of that.

Okay.

So imagine it now, you've got, I mean, right outside here, you've got Barrington, you don't even have sidewalks, right, as we've discussed. You've got a road there with, you know, vacant property and, you know, buildings that are built in the 1950s, 1960s. You know, you're looking at the EIS and you're looking at areas that are gonna be, right, five, six stories. And those are gonna have sidewalks in front of them. You're gonna have people coming out of those buildings, right? and they're gonna wanna park, right? And then you gotta be able to get all your infrastructure in that. So it's gonna be a major analysis to figure out how the city and the community want to put that all together.

Which I see all of that, Steve, and I really do. The one I'm struggling with, though, is the infrastructure one, because it seems to be more specific to the waterfront redevelopment, whereas the water, the sewer, the transportation, the stormwater, that's all the holistic picture of what the entire city, including UGAs and such. But this one is specific to just downtown, correct?

It is specific just downtown, because that's where most of the major changes are going to take place. I mean, maybe as part of some future land use decision, someone will decide to take an existing suburban development and completely change it, but that's not what, right? That's not what the council is asking for right now.

Okay.

All right.

So, I mean, that's going to stay the same. So in your cul-de-sac or your suburban road, you know, out there in those newer developments, there's not going to be a lot of changes to analyze.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. No, very good follow-up. Thank you.

Anyone else for the good of the order? Okie dokie. Council Member Peterson.

Thank you. So since we're focusing on things that are basically rotting in place, they've reached their useful life. And what we're focusing on, I'm understanding, is basically the downtown area. What about the people who live in houses that have been here 75, 100 years? What are we doing with that underground infrastructure stuff? Do we not care? I mean, we must.

No, you're right. It gets to be, it all starts to fit together. And so, yes, a lot of those homes, as you know, or a lot of those businesses will start to face those own private decisions where people will, you know, we've got places that are boarded up. We have people that have taken some of those and refurbished them. But you're right that one example would be for water, between the main and that meter, that's our city responsibility. After that meter on their private property, that's their responsibility. And those will start to fail, and it's unbelievable and horribly expensive for people to deal with those. So you're right, it all will start to, but in some ways, we're not going to be addressing people's private decisions on their private property. I guess maybe that's not the question you're asking.

I don't think it is, but it does all tie in. But if I have a problem at my own personal area, but I'm tied into the main at what point, Is the main also going to fail? And it just sounds like we care that we're focusing on the downtown failing, but we have neighborhoods that are going to face that as well.

And I think the folks to the left of me will probably address this better. Here's a better example maybe. Right now we're doing the I&I sewer project that we got the $1.9 million grant from Congressman Larson.

Right.

We are analyzing, we are going to go through and replace those sewer mains, but we're very much concerned about what happens to all those laterals because a lot of them are really old and not in good shape as our cameras have shown. So we are trying to turn up and make it as easy as possible for those private citizens to then connect to this new main by having a new lateral that goes partially toward their property. So maybe that's a better example of what we're trying to do to make it as easy as possible for the private businesses to then connect to this new infrastructure.

Private businesses or private residents?

Private residents and businesses. I'm sorry, both.

That's all right. Thank you. Thank you. But we are looking at that. It just didn't.

sound like in this whole conversation that we weren't looking at it i thought we were well thank we we we are and that's i'm glad you asked that because we are because like in the sewer example we really are trying to not just say oh we replaced the sewer main now good luck trying to get hooked up to it we are looking at each of those laterals that go to each of those homes or businesses and and also trying to upgrade each of those laterals to a point right that's near the main but not into people's private property okay thank you

All right. Anybody else for the good of the order? I'm going once, going twice. Thank you very much, Steve and everyone else. Thank you, everyone. There being no further business.