City Council - Regular Meeting

I call the Wednesday, July 1st, 2026 council business meeting to order. I met with the council members at 5 p.m. in the sixth floor council conference room for a briefing to discuss tonight's agenda. At 5.30, we moved here to the first floor chambers to conduct the council business meeting in person. And because we encourage community involvement, we invite the public to join us in person, attend via remote option through Zoom or UMBCAT. Tonight, Councilmember Christy Camerota is absent. The council will accept spoken public comment on items under the consent agenda. We've also set aside time

Are there any members of the public who would wish to comment on any items on the consent agenda?

Thank you. Is there anybody else who has any comments on the agenda? I wonder if I could depart a little bit from this and let the Public Works Director just to, well, actually, if you go back and watch the study session last week, we did have a long discussion on that interlocal agreement. So if there are things that were missing there, I mean, were you able to watch that? No, you weren't here, you're right. I was speaking to the two gentlemen who have asked that it be removed from the consent agenda.

Oh, so you didn't watch it last week? Because there was a thorough discussion on it. Is there anybody else who would like to discuss anything on the consent agenda with us? Okay, well, I'll call for the question then.

I move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

So tonight there is no general business items, so we'll welcome Mayor Wheeler next for the Mayor's report.

All right, thank you, Council President, and good evening, Councilors. I've got a few slides to share with you this evening. I bet if I was to ask if anybody had scored yet in the USA match tonight, I would get an answer pretty quickly, since we're playing right now. Still zeros? Okay. All right. Kitsap Lake, exciting times. And Quincy Square, the fan zone is packed right now. A lot of energy. And it is good family fun. And speaking of family-oriented events and just efforts, we had the Kitsap Lakes Park Beach cleanup recently, June 24th. We have city staff. with the local residents there that

Now would be a good time to ask the score.

I think, yes, this is a good time to ask the score. The United States just scored. Oh, man. That's a USA, USA. But I'm...

Okay, next up is council member reports. This is an opportunity for council members to provide an update on any issues or events taking place in their district, announce any events they've recently attended or plan to attend or speak on any other city-related topics. Since this is the first council meeting of the month, we'll start with District 1. Council Member Jennifer Chamberlain. That's me.

Okay, there we go. I have a couple slides here. All right, so the problem with Pine Road, we got a little graphic there. The video may or may not work, but essentially what it's showing is this is the west side near Terra Court, I believe, on Pine Road. That's in 2025. You can see it's not in great condition. Here's the current condition. There's just some random blocks covering the easement where people can walk, so making it impossible. You can see a car coming. That's actually a limited sight distance, that hill right there. No signage for that. I don't know what the legal definition for it

All right, well that's, okay, so the next one is gonna be July 18th, show up for your free coffee or donut, your t-shirt, go clean up around Warren Avenue Bridge and the outlying neighborhoods around District 1 and District 2. Last week, I rushed through some statistics. I'm done with my slides, right? I wanted to talk a little bit about those. These are statistics from Pendleton Place. So they opened up about four years ago now, I believe. And some of the statistics I was quoting was zero to four years prior, or five years prior, and then in the zero to four years since. So 63 people who GAVE

Thank you. Next up is Council Vice President and District 2 Council Member Denise Fry.

Thank you. Let's go ahead and get into that. This is my only slide. Sometimes planets come into alignment and we've been talking about quick build, traffic calming measures since I've been on Council and since I've been on the Public Works Committee. uh this is certainly an a concept that is well known throughout the country and we have this big project coming up called safe routes to school at the new view ridge elementary school and it was important to integrate this measure which is a what we call a quick build temporary traffic calming it was It was important to incorporate this at a certa

Next up is District 5, Councilmember Michael Goodnow.

OK, I think I've got some slides. Yes. So first off, I just want to kind of bring people's attention to what is legal fireworks wise in the city of Bremerton. We have a couple two years ago, I think we sort of set some boundaries on our limits on what's available, what's allowed. And honestly, Nothing that flies into the air or self-propels is allowed. And the best place to find information on this is Bremertonwa.gov slash 240 slash fireworks with a capital F for lowercase work. should work anyways so just please be safe and respect your neighbors and you get a chance review this or reach out

Oh, I guess we'll go. Okay. Um, you can go back to the slide if you want to extend me. So, um, I also did want to thank council member, uh, Chamberlain. Uh, we also did a, uh, flag raising sort of mini ceremony at the boardwalk, which is, it's nice. And, uh, so we have a pride flag on the, uh, boardwalk flagpole that sort of greets people as they enter the city. So, um, really proud that we got that all done. And then I wanted to share Friday is the Art Walk. And there is a new shuttle that's been running. An organization called Mobility for All is running it. And it basically is going from so

Thank you. Next, let's hear from District 6 Councilmember Anna Makler.

Thanks, Council President. Hold on. We're trying to really work on this whole time thing. OK, OK, OK, OK. My goodness. So just one thing that I wanted to remind everybody of as we're entering this season of fireworks is Bremerton One is a really useful app or email bremertonone at bremertonone.gov or download the app for either Android or iPhone. The second thing I wanted to say is that I have met with Joe Crane of St. Vincent de Paul. I'm sure you all know that the 13th in Wyckoff, 13th in Callow, almost all the way down to the 711 on 11th is being transformed into workforce housing and trans

Thank you. Next, District 7 Councilmember Rick Tiff. Do you have a report for tonight?

I do not have a report tonight. With the exception of the event in District 7 was the opening of Kitsap Lake Park and Playgrounds. Oh, sorry. I do not have a formal report tonight. I just want to echo what the mayor said with regard to Kitsap Lake Park and clean up. And that's the big event in District 7. So for the last couple of weeks, thank you.

Thank you. Max, I think I have a couple slides. So we had a really interesting conversation the other day with the Department of Revenue. And as we get into our budget discussions, I think it's really important for folks to learn about tax shifts and how that happens, because there's a lot of them happening in Bremerton. Whenever we give somebody a tax exemption, That means the other folks pay more.

So this is an example looking for that same $100, how different things would affect people's tax bill. Somebody's house burns down, well, their tax is less. Obviously, they're just being taxed on the land. If somebody is new construction, well, it's not done being built, so they pay less. So that means everybody, or at least some people, pay more. So it's just something to start thinking about as we go through the budget. Next slide, please. And council is doing a community budget survey. So I hope everybody takes it. And if you need the flyer to give the QR code out to somebody else, I've got

I don't think the speaker's working. No.

OK. Now it's open to other people who didn't have the opportunity to sign up.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to speak?

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to speak? Okay.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to comment tonight? Okay, seeing no one, this concludes tonight's regular council business and meeting is adjourned. Thank you.