City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. I now call the July 21st, 2026 regular city council meeting to order. We'll start by taking a moment to take a roll call of the council members by position number. Please say here when the city clerk calls your name.

Thank you. We're gonna start off with a city manager review of agenda. And in lieu of our city manager, we have our deputy city manager, Claire, here to do that tonight. And if I call you city manager at any point in time during this meeting, Kyle, forgive me if you're watching this.

Thank you very much. Next up is council approval of agenda. Are there any changes proposed to tonight's agenda? Seeing none, we'll move on to...

I actually would like to add something. All right, Council Member Dodd. You will find on our shared desk... a copy of a letter from the City of Lake Forest Park to King County Metro and they have asked us if we are interested in signing on to this. They plan to deliver it to Metro in two days, so this would be a cool thing to make a decision about tonight. Where would we throw that into the agenda, Mr. Mayor?

We could. Why don't we do this right before the study sessions? Oh, council reports and conversations?

Yeah, there's not going to be a vote needed.

And we probably don't need to take a vote because we're not adding it to the agenda. We're just going to talk about it then. Cool. Thank you. Anybody else? In that case, we will move on to public engagement opportunities. Help shape the future of downtown. Help us plan for the next 20 years of growth by attending the Downtown Sub Area Plan Open House. Learn about the draft plan, explore its recommendations, meet the project team, ask questions, and share feedback. That's Wednesday, July 22nd, 5.30 to 7.30 p.m. right here at Bothell City Hall. Opportunities for artists. We're seeking profession

Thank you. All right, next up we have the City Manager report and presentations. City Manager.

I can't believe we made it here. All right, next up is council reports and conversations. Council members? Council Member Dodd?

Hey, so we have this letter on our desk and essentially the City of Lake Forest Park has authored this. They are aware of the typo in the last sentence. And City of Kenmore has signed on, other organizations, and I would like us to consider whether we could sign on to this. And Deputy City Manager, I know we might have some staff input that we could share as well.

This is Council Reports and Conversations, so I do not have to call on anybody. You can just jump right in.

So I just wanted to ask, do you recommend us signing on, Claire?

So understood. And I know we've been working on, um, along with Steve on this, um, here. I mean, It's kind of a nice to-do thing for our neighbors. If there are no glaring red flags, it seems kind of like a no-brainer, but I don't know what I don't know.

I'd be happy to speak to this. I have been looking forward to an opportunity to put my name and sign on to this project like this for a very long time. And I'll just share that up until 2013, the 372 was a route that we relied on or that my family relied on every day. That's how my husband finished his PhD program after we moved here. And I was mapping it out earlier today that if the proposed changes were to take place and we were to rely only on the spine of the light rail to get people to UW, there are two stations essentially that serve UW. There's the Mount Lake Station as well as the Roo

Do we think Metro is going to do anything? Will they hear our plea? Because they have a lot on their plates, and I'm not trying to disparage King County Metro. Please don't come for me, King County Metro. But I'm just wondering if we have a prayer here.

I think I'm pretty comfortable having, you know, the Lake Forest Park kind of take the lead on something like this. Like, that's like I don't know that I would expect you guys to spend a lot of time working or any time working on that. I do really appreciate that we have allies just across the north end of the lake that care about the same kind of things we do. they they're they're rowing in the same direction we do and and whether or not this is incredibly impactful for us is to me less of a concern than just wanting to show support to our neighbors with similar values so I'm totally comforta

every day, so I was a daily commuter back and forth. And it was nice to have, sometimes it was a minute overlap, and as bus service, Transit Claire would attest sometimes they're one minute apart, sometimes they're 20 minutes apart. But that's not the issue for me. The issue is that there was enough service that if I was a couple minutes late getting out of the house, I was actually able to get on a bus that took me to the UW versus having to wait 10 or 15, 20 minutes For the for the next one, so I feel like it's a good one and I agree with my colleagues and it's okay for Our friends in other

inclined to agree bringing it forward. But I don't live anywhere near the 372 and I haven't taken it. So I appreciate both Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor Emeritus for bringing up their personal experience and I support signing the letter.

Would it be Deputy Mayors or Deputies Mayor? Probably Deputy Mayors. Yeah. I want to say Deputies Mayor just because it sounds nerdy, but I'm going to stop talking now. I think you guys have what you need. Cool. We will move on to projected agenda discussion. Does anybody have an item they would like to discuss? Seeing none, I would love to accept a motion to approve the consent agenda.

I was just going to say that I do, as I sit here looking at the Disability Pride flag flying, I'm not making a motion. I'm just saying that I'm hearkening back to the last time we did a projected agenda item and I brought the flag up and I'm just very grateful to see it flying over the city this week. this month, and it's been really just lovely to have conversations about it and to bring awareness around the one in four Americans who experience a disability. So I will miss it, but I'm glad that it will still be up for a few more days and that we were able to do it this year. So thank you, col

I have a motion from Deputy Mayor Alderks and a second from Council Member Rodd to approve the consent agenda. Would anybody like to speak to the motion? I will just say that it always makes me happy to see the multimodal projects coming in, contracts going for that in the consent agenda. So that pleases me. City Clerk?

Thank you. Next up is our first ordinance and resolution, establishing a public hearing date for the street vacation petition for a portion of Northeast 185th Street between 108th Avenue Northeast and 110th Avenue Northeast. Deputy City Manager.

I am aware that, I've been aware that this is going to be coming to us for a while. And the last time I heard it mentioned was in the context of a quasi-judicial process, just as like a heads up to council. And so could you go back to, I think one slide on the presentation where it says October 20th council decision ordinance, is that going to be a quasi-judicial hearing at that point or? I'm just wondering, like, where that factors into this process.

Thank you for the clarification on that. I know that it's a process that doesn't come up very often and will be very new to a couple of our council members. And so staff will be here to talk us through it and make it make sense. But I did just want to know where that fit in the context of the timeline. So thank you.

I would like to move the recommended action. Second.

I have a motion from Council Member Dodd and a second from Council Member Aldrich. Would anybody like to speak to the motion? I would like to speak to the motion. I just want to say I enjoy that the UW Bothell is talking about pedestrianization and kind of a lot of the same sort of things that we're working toward. I'm looking forward to hearing what the further improvements to that street is sort of a pedestrian zone are, and I'm excited that they're looking at making pedestrian improvements. And I will be voting yes. City Clerk?

Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. All right. Next up, we have the Sammamish River and Wainita Creek Restoration Project Construction Contract. Deputy City Manager.

Yeah, it is 628. We'll come back at 635. Thank you. All right, it is 635. I think we've got our technical difficulties ironed out. And I'm going to turn it over to staff to talk about the Sammamish River and Weyneda Creek restoration project construction contract.

Somebody's got to have something to say about this.

Councilmember Curd. Thank you for the presentation and for coming to council to share a little bit more about the project too. Because of the committee that I sit on, the watershed committee about salmon, I hear about this project a lot because it's so important. One of the things that makes it really special in my mind is that it's the furthest downstream in our jurisdiction where a small stream enters into the Sammamish River. If you haven't heard me harp on it before, the Sammamish River is really hot. It's hard for salmon to get around because of what we've done to it over the past several

I have a motion from Councilmember Curd and a second from Councilmember Dodd. Would anybody like to speak to the motion? Councilmember Dodd.

Thank you. Thank you for bringing this to us. There is no planet where I could speak as intelligibly as Councilmember Curd about this restoration work, but it is great to get confirmation that it is a wonderful and exciting project. what i am capable of understanding is the slide that has all of the grants that you guys received to make this work like what an amazing bit of work because we don't do environmental restoration just for bothel it is obviously part of our whole regional water network and um Now I'm going to take away Cool Salmon Hotel from this. So thank you for all the work that y

Thank you, Mayor. Great presentation, a lot of information I learned. I served on one boat the last few years, not anymore now. Great work. Thank you so much for doing it for our city and for everybody, for the neighbors. Thank you.

I just want to chime in and say thank you for this great presentation. Super excited about this. Cannot speak about salmon in any way other than I like to grill. But I am just so proud of us and a way to go to make a dollar out of 15 cents to get to about 8 million, so well done.

I just would love to throw my thoughts in about just how impressive the team has been in putting this together. It's a very impressive funding stack where you've brought in partners and at state, county, corporation, and public funds. I'm really excited to see how the project turns out and especially to see those riparian areas be restored and have more native vegetation there. The Wayne Open Space is a gem in our community. I think all of us at some point have been out there volunteering. in some way to plant and restore it and to bring it to a wild open space. And so it's just really fantast

I am so excited to have this back to us. Um, I don't get to say things like all my salmon friends, like council member curd does, but I'm really glad that we have him up here. Um, I also love that we get this presentation cause it's like a victory lap for all the good work that y'all have done this whole time. Like, cause we have to approve it. Like we're not going to, um, and, um, it's just, yeah, I'm, I'm so pumped for the next two years. And I also just want to like shout out like the project team, like when we were going through the design of this, like we, when we talk afterwards, I had a

All right, next up we have a resolution authorizing a ballot measure for the November 3rd, 2026 general election proposing annexation of the Bothell Fire Department into the Shoreline Fire Department Regional Fire Authority. Deputy City Manager. I would have talked slower if I would have like seen you getting up to come to the table.

All right, Council. Council Member Alcabra. I'm still working on it.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you. As the city manager said previously, and depending on who you talk to, this conversation has been going on for a couple of years or a couple of decades. So I'm glad that we are finally putting it up for the voters to decide on this. There's a reason why corporations merge. It's because for operational financial efficiencies as well as which is the most important thing for me, is improved service delivery, right? We've been focused on financial and operational efficiencies a lot. We've been talking about how service will also improve, but can we, one last time,

Yeah, thank you. That's a good explanation. And I think we have talked about cost and how distribution of cost across now the one region called the shoreline RFA is a good thing. I think from the other perspective, you know, how when Steve Jobs once introduced the iPhone or iPods back in the day, it's like 3,000 songs on this device. It's not 200 gigabytes or one megabyte at the time or whatever. It's something that people will understand and resonate with. That's what I was asking. I know service calls have been increasing. How have we been responding to them? And then how is this going to im

So the levy rate of RFA, 45 cents per thousand, so this would affect approximately in 2028, if I understand the need to approve on that. How much do we, I know we do a general fund collection right now, how much do we collect at this moment? Is there a

So if all goes well, again, It's not that I'm talking just because I have a house. I'm just talking about every resident in Bothell. If somebody has a million dollar house, an average, I'm just saying, Would they be paying additional $450 based on this?

How much approximately do you anticipate it will go down approximately? Just taking this example, will it go down by... like 10 cents per thousand approximately, because these questions might come from the residents, okay? We are going and... So do we know approximately how much we are going to? I'm trying to see what goes up, what goes down, net effect for a homeowner.

different calculation so I can't tell you right now without looking at the 2028 assess value although I'm not talking about I'm talking about at least a baseline of current current appraisal value I mean things will go up and down I'm not talking about that if we are implementing this this is a 45 cents per thousand irrespective of what it we home value a million dollar home can be a five hundred thousand or a $1.5 million. Just because we can only go with what we have, we cannot talk about what we do not have. I'm just trying to see based on what we have the numbers right now, can we at least

And maybe question to you, our chief. Can it be even higher than 45 cents later when the board decides? Can it be, or is it the cap right now, 45 cents?

Again, it's up to the board. You can amend. I understand. But right now we are anticipating. I'm glad that I see a number here. Yeah. So, I mean, at least that is a number we are approximately anticipating based on current valuations, our current budget, what they have. That's what I'm anticipating, but it can be higher or lower. Correct. Okay. When was the last time for both residents we have levied more than 20 cents per thousand? Do we know, as a city staff, when was the last time we levied more than 20 cents? I usually see 5 cents, 10 cents on the ballots, but looking at 45 cents, I'm just

That's what I thought. No, the question I'm asking is, when was the last time we levied from the Bothell City like a... like we approved something like this, and then we were able to, like, we are also thinking for parts levy, right? I don't know what is the parts levy. We are still thinking. I do not know whether it's 10 cents or 20 cents. We don't know. We are still thinking.

Point of information, Council Member Ongulary, I just wanted to jump in because a lot of these rates are things that either we will set as a council, like if we change our general levy collection, or that the RFA will set in their authority. And I don't know that our staff can it's not appropriate for them to estimate that amount because they do not have the statutory authority to set these rates. They would be guessing what we will do as actions, and that's not normally something we ask our staff to do.

And the other thing I would say is, I think it was the last meeting that we talked about this. We got a lot of the details on those finances, and we are going to essentially, between now and the levy, decide what we're going to do, and we will have the opportunity to communicate that to the public. And so we're going to have all of these conversations, and we're going to get all of the data, all the information, because we know that the fiscal part of this is super important to our voters. So that's absolutely work that we're planning on doing.

So the last question, maybe I missed it. Can I see the language? What is the language we are approving today? Okay, so this is the language that every resident will look at it on their ballot.

No, we're going to. So we're going to appoint members to a pro committee next. And that committee is going to draft what is on the ballot measure. This is adopting the resolution saying, yes, we're going to submit a ballot measure. This is not what people are going to see in their voter penalty statement. I mean, unless the committee copies and pastes this, which I don't think they will.

Thank you. I mean, I just want to make sure, yeah, full disclosure, I don't mind $450 and, you know, I'm just trying to understand as we are all going through this process, that's all. I just want to let you all know how this is going to play out for a resident if they come back, if they ask us, hey, what's happened? How did you do it? I didn't know what I'm approving or... Because a lot of times, sometimes we say devil is in the details. So I'm trying to say my apologies. I just wanted to make sure that that is the intention. That's all. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

I'd also like to make a point of information to answer one of Councilmember Ungulary's questions around levy rates. And so I just looked up the public safety levy and the sidewalk levy. And the public safety levy on the website shows it was 44 cents per thousand, and the safe streets and sidewalks is 50 cents per thousand. So it's right in the middle of other levy rates that the voters have approved. And so it is significant, you know, like none of those levy rates come close to what you estimated or said that you had seen before. So like it is, you know, 44 cents, 45 cents, 50 cents. It's all

Thank you. So probably... Again, we don't have a magic wand. Probably that point of information is great. Probably we might reduce by 30 cents. If we are collecting, if we are not collecting for our fire, for Bothell fire, we might be able to reduce because that's what we are currently collecting. Is that right, Deputy Mayor? Is that what we are collecting for our fire?

On the public safety levy that was voted in 2018?

Yes. So this decision doesn't affect the public safety levy because the voters have approved that levy and that will go to the end of it. But as a council, we will decide what we want to do with our general levy now that we're not going to have to use it to pay fire anymore. And I've already said my piece on what I think about that. So I'm not going to repeat myself yet. But that those are conversations we are planning to have that we haven't had yet. And we absolutely will.

And I would also like to take my turn for comments and questions. Thank you. I do appreciate just the level of attention to detail that you have brought to us and the broad overview, kind of bringing all of the work of the last several years together. This is a momentous occasion. It has, for those who have been asking about this for two decades, it's finally coming to the point where we can approve to put it on the ballot. And so I'm just grateful for all of the preparation and work that went into preparing the ballot language and that there is a bond committee who's preparing the explanatory

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Claire and Quan. I don't know if I want to call you deputy city manager, acting city manager, so Claire. But I just really want to shout out your efforts, the efforts of our other staff, our fire chief, and just getting through this process and taking two organizations that have shared goals but different ways of operating, different ways of administrating is really difficult to put it very simply. So I really appreciate all the dedication that's gone into this and the ways that our concerns of a city, that the RFA's concerns as their district have be

Did Amanda just take credit for this moving forward? I would do no such thing.

I'd like to move the recommended action.

Okay, give me a second. Okay. I am really excited that we're here, not just so we can stop talking about it. I know Chief Cowan's probably really excited to stop talking about this and get back to just dealing with one board that you have to work with. And it's been years, and I... I have not always been a big cheerleader for it because I just didn't know if it was the right thing to do. And this is one of those decisions that when we make this, when we put this out, like it can't be walked back. And that has a lot of consequence to me. So I, um, I'm only happy to move this forward because I a

I'd like to move the recommended action.

Second. I have a motion from Council Member Dodd and a second from Council Member Curd to adopt a resolution authorizing a ballot measure to be submitted to voters within Bothell for consideration at the November 3rd, 2026 general election, proposing the annexation of the Bothell Fire Department into the Shoreline Fire Department Regional Fire Authority and approving the amended RFA plan incorporating such annexation. Would anybody like to speak to the motion?

Thank you. I did want to add, inspired by things that other council members have said, whenever you take over a job that someone else has held, whether it's a city council or a finance manager or a deputy city manager or a fire chief, I'm just picking on people in the you're going to inherit the decisions they made. And I think it is very easy to be like, ah, man, like, um, Mr. Mayor, you mentioned, you know, we replaced two of our three fire stations in our 2018 levy. None of us were seated up here. Um, but now it feels like, oh man, if only we had done all three, right. And we, we weren't pa

And also to be clear, you only know what you know. And I don't know what we knew back when this happened. And like looking with the benefit of hindsight, like we should have done more, but I don't know what we know then. So if you're watching this and you were on the city council in 2018, man, get a hobby. But also like I didn't want that to seem like a naked criticism because it wasn't. Council Member Angulari.

Thank you very much, Quan and city staff. A lot of work you guys put in. I'm hoping for the best. Thank you very much for everything you guys did until now. Thank you.

Thank you very much, and thank you very much. All right. Next up, we're probably going to have the same people at the table because our next agenda bill is the PROCON committee appointments for Proposition No. 1, annexation into the Shoreline Regional Fire Authority for the November 3, 2026 general election. Deputy City Manager.

Thank you. Tangentially, will Fire District 10's measure have different pro-con committee members? It's a fully separate deal. Is that correct? Because they're not part of our measure. They're running their own. Is that accurate?

All right, well, I'm not seeing any lights go on. And we can have three people?

Okay, fantastic. I don't know either of the two applicants and the information that they gave us didn't have a whole lot of detail. I kind of feel like one of us should be on that committee because we have written pamphlet statements before and these are our constituents. We're going to be asking to do this. So I would love to have representation from one of us on there as well. And I would be happy to do that, but I am not married to that.

I would, I would happily second that nomination of the mayor to, uh, to serve on the pro con or on the pro committee.

I support to Mason. Thank you very much.

And I understand what I'm doing when you say I'm willing to do something. So yes.

Oh, I was just going to say, I fully support your dreams and I think you're going to be great.

Are you guys sure you don't want another thing to do? Um, um, Yeah, I feel like if we're going out and we're asking our voters, I want to have some input into how that is phrased and how that goes out to the community. And we've all had to write ballot statements before.

Anyway, Council Member Dodd? I'm assuming we need a motion, Clerk. Okay, I got a nod. So I move that we appoint Mason Thompson, Wesley Wang, and Brandon Keith to the pro committee for Proposition 1. I second.

I have a motion from Councilmember Dodd and a second from Councilmember Aguilera. Would anybody like to speak to the motion? Seeing none, City Clerk.

All right, and with that, we have two study sessions after this, but we are going to take a 14-minute break. It's 7.36. We're going to come back at 7.50. I'll talk slow. Welcome back. We have a couple council members that are rolling in late, so I was joking that I'll talk slow, but I can only do that for about two words. We have a couple study sessions tonight. Our first one is on procedural code updates. Deputy City Manager.

Thanks for bringing these forward. Wow, there's a lot. Our code is messy. I haven't... listen to any planning commission discussions or deliberations on these. So I'm kind of approaching this from a blank slate. So a couple of them that you've been reading, I have more questions about. One is on the public hearing process changes. I agree that sometimes opening a public hearing and then closing it because there's nobody who comes to give public testimony at City Council because everybody's already done it at Planning Commission. But when would we decide as a council to hold a public hearing on

but that would be that's our initial thought but then yes if study session one you thought I think we should have a public hearing on this that's we're happy to go to go and arrange that so if someone comes to give comment during the three minutes that they have at the beginning of the meeting of one of our meetings on a topic that's on our agenda that's just a study session we wouldn't incorporate that comment as

I don't love the looseness of that because it just means one of us has to think this might be big or staff might have to think that and I and it just I don't know I think I'm a much more defined process person I wonder if it's a big enough topic that staff is holding some kind of open house on it that we then have the second public hearing at Council I also wanted to ask You said state law only requires one. Does it require the one at Planning Commission? Or is that the one you guys chose because for the smaller issues, that's where we get more comments?

I'm still digesting it a little bit. But yeah, I don't like the looseness of we could have a second one if we ask for it because I feel like we can't always predict what will strike a chord with people. as we're working on it early.

I do like the idea of of complying with the one required public hearing and I think I lean more towards earlier in the process than later because a lot of times you know all of the work has been done the plan is ready to be adopted and that's when people are jumping in with like I want to engage people earlier in the process so that they can shape the process instead of come along and try to squash a process. And I guess that means And I think it's important for that to come to city council, if that makes sense. And I don't know if we can have it that way. I know that definitely hasn't been ho

And are we waiting for the planning commission to provide an advisory recommendation based on what they know and what they've heard? Or are we asking them to do our job by interfacing with the public? That's my question, too. I'd rather that the public come talk to us, their elected representatives, than our appointed representatives. busy, like detail people to the, the reason why I loved planning commission, um, was because I liked getting information on a topic and learning about it, learning the staff perspective, using my own, um, experiences to inform decisions and then making a recommen

at the level of planning commission i'd rather have it be us because we're the ones who can take the heat we're the ones who can actually develop relationship with a constituency and go from there too so i thought i'd add that the other thing that i would point out is that um even when we had really controversial topics and you know we saw in like the comp plan like a whole bunch of people came and talked to us and nobody went to the planning commission anyway because the community knows where the decision lies. Like they understand who they elected and they understand who they need to speak t

I definitely agree with that. And I think the main thing that I'd love to see with public hearings is that they're just a little bit earlier it does feel like it's at the end of our study session process. And while there's opportunity for people to give feedback throughout the life cycle of a project and doing that work, public hearing makes it sound like that's when you should do it. And it's often weighing in on the final product, not shaping the decision. And so I think some way to make it more clear when we're shaping it versus like having it right at the end, I think gives people the impr

I would just like to say is that folks should just feel free to come to the boss and be able to talk to folks because that's what we're here. We're all elected officials. I think we've all said that. But knowing that they have a voice and it's okay to talk, pro, con, whatever. and then letting them have a voice sooner. I think we all want to have a voice, and being the caboose is always the worst thing in the world. I see this in my day job where I'm the caboose, and I despise it in my job, and I actively work to change that with my peers and my leadership. So as an elected official, I'd like

So based on what I'm hearing from my colleagues, is it possible and does it align with law to do a public hearing after a study session and before it's brought back with refinements for like a proposal or a resolution?

I feel like, I mean, we do a public hearing because we have to do a public hearing. We have to do a public hearing before we do the vote. But what if instead of promoting the public hearing as the way to get engaged, what if we were like, hey, council is having a study session on this issue on this day. What if that was part of our social media strategy? Come tell us what you think at the study session. Like, because, like, if we hear a bunch of comment before the study session, then we can take that into consideration when we are having these conversations. Like, oh, that thing was interestin

I think that's a good idea. I think we could change our communication strategy. I do not know what it is or how to make it better because hopefully we can get people to the table and feel like it's okay to speak and that they want to speak. With regard to YouTube one of those viewers is probably my child and our dog.

I Will add that I will add that one of the strategies I've tried to use with my newsletter is telling people when there are study sessions and with an invitation of like come learn with us like come come find out what you know, the information is that we're considering and And because they're really valuable experiences to be able to just like dig into the information, get a solid presentation from staff and really just have the topic framed and set up in a way that we can engage as a community. And I know that over time we have been talking about, you know, sometimes some of the admins at Bot

And thank you for sharing the mic. I appreciate it, CD Steph.

Deputy Mayor, I want to ask you, when you put out public hearings in your newsletter, do people ever come back to you and ask you questions about that? I'm just curious if you had a feedback loop.

Not on public hearings, no. Yeah, like sometimes a study session item I'll hear back.

I want to touch on a couple of other things that you brought up in the presentation too, and I'll just list them off and then if other people have different ones or want to refine some of the things, that's fine too. You mentioned the phasing requirements and only granting 50% occupancy for the first phase of a multifamily development. And I'm thinking about incremental developers who have an idea of a big multifamily project on their site, but it's taking them a while to get there or they have a plan to start with a triplex. and then move on to a small apartment unit. We're seeing projects in

I'm just impressed that you deeply read these dry documents as you characterize them. They're not that long.

I see. In that case, I don't really have a problem with that if we don't cede that authority. But there are times where the hearing examiner decisions are kind of like, well, that wasn't actually the intent of the legislation that we, the land use legislation that we passed. And so I'm kind of like, what is the, what is the process that we have to be a check and balance on the hearing examiner or are they just like the judicial process and we don't have any, like it's very confusing to me what the hearing examiner's limits of their authority are and what we do to influence how they do their jo

And to your point, there are other, it's not judicial when the hearing examiner examines something, but there are other times when a judge is intended to consider what the legislative body was intending with legislation. So it would be good to get, I'm going to just look at Eileen, but it would be good to get kind of a grounding, I think in how that would, that concept is applied with the hearing examiner. Does he look at our intent or just the direct word of the law? And like, even, the last round of hearing examiner reports that we got, um, the hearing examiner had called out a code update t

I was going to talk about, one of the things you had mentioned was landmarks and shorelines items. Formally go to the Planning Commission before the council and I'm wondering so those are those Types of things are in two different boats right now shorelines joke So we don't have a shorelines board. We chose not to reappoint one So how would that work in practice without a shorelines board I

I enjoyed the conversation about the hearing examiner discussion. I wrote down that quasi-judicial decisions feel like they should have a quasi-judicial process instead of a legislative process, so that seemed reasonable to me. You asked another question, is the Council open to opportunities to streamline development review procedures where appropriate? And I think you know my answer. is yes, very much so. We know that a lot of our code is legacy code that was built by people who were trying to prevent things from happening a lot of the time. And any vestige of that that we find, we need to do

Okay. I would be comfortable with going by 90 days as long as that were the case. Just I don't want to get into a situation where somebody has something outside of their control that's pushed them outside of 90 days. You know, if somebody sits on it for 85 days and now it's an emergency, that's different.

Is the example of the giant drill not being available one where someone could ask for an extension?

Well, is it correct to kind of look at that as like right now it's 180 days, no extensions. We're looking at moving to 90 days, but if stuff is happening and it's not, we'll work with you on it if you communicate with us.

I'm really glad to hear that you are considering an extension process where one previously didn't exist. I do like the idea of 90 days and then being able to ask for extensions if needed. I think you covered it pretty well. If most permit applicants are able to respond within 90 days and that seems to be working, then let's do that. Because one of the things that we hear from the community is that the permitting process is taking too long and that it's dragging out, right? And I also want to make sure that while we can we can shorten it by making this a requirement that puts it on the person a

Great. Yeah. And I think that reciprocity is just really important, right? It's respecting, it's both sides respecting each other's time and making sure that things are moving forward so that we're not losing opportunities to, you know, create value in our community, you know, that benefits the applicant and the community as well. So thank you.

I hate to be this person, but I'm going to be this person. I'm looking at time. It's 843, and we have one more study session. Are we close to wrapping up, or do we have any other thoughts that we need to talk about?

I was giving it a few minutes in case somebody else had something more to talk about and was planning on moving on shortly after that.

I think my priority tonight was to be able to hear discussion and contribute and talk about the policy that you're referencing. The refinements all seemed good. And housekeeping made sense. So I'm glad that we had a chance to talk about the policy pieces tonight.

All right. And with that, I think we're good. Christian, are you guys both staying up here for the next one? I'm staying. Okay. Perfect. Enjoy the rest of your evening. All right. Next up, we have a study session for our multifamily tax exemption code update. Deputy City Manager.

I'll start. I don't think I do agree with the AMI and duration. The duration piece seems very different than, so I opened up the packet and I'm on page 401 to that comparison chart. Super helpful comparison chart. Thank you very much for including it. If you haven't already heard that feedback, I did pass it on. And I'm just saying it publicly because, yes, it's very helpful. But also, yeah, it does give us a chance to compare other jurisdictions, including Shoreline, who has, like, they have been doing amazing on their MFTE. And I think a lot of that has to do with transit-oriented developmen

One could hope. And so I think I would like to be more like our neighbors, because even Bellevue with 12 as the lower limit, their upper limit is still 99, which is about 100, or hopefully encompassing that meaning of the life of the building. And so that's where I think that we should align more with our neighboring cities. And then... 70% seems like a very middle kind of target from what we're seeing between our neighboring cities. But I do like that there, I think I prefer the range of other cities too. So could we consider the 50 to 80%? and know that 70 is in the middle of that. And then

I don't have to wait until the end. So I'm going to go now. big picture, kind of like I said, the last go around, like I want to use this as a tool to maximize development that we get out of it. Like, and I want to like, so I, I think I, I don't know if I understood you quite right, but I do not think that we should go beyond the tax exemption period for the requirement, unless it's required by state law. Like I think the 50 year one is required by state law. Um, I have gotten some feedback on parts of this that we are going beyond the state requirement on things like percentage of units, that

Could we update our MFTE now without that 50-year requirement and then update that in a few years when it become when we have to?

Thank you. I would like to know that. Big picture and what I really want to know with all of the specific questions that I would have is because I want to see this program well utilized. I don't want to go beyond what we're required to do for it, really. Can you tell me in here, where we're going beyond what the state requires of us. Like, where are we being a little bit more aggressive and potentially making it, I mean, it's a, you know, on one end, if the property gets built, we get a little bit more something out of it, but on the other end, the property might not get built. So, like, where

Is, I mean, I know that Seattle built a ton of like CDUs and micro units over the last five or 10 years. And I know that they've had that issue down there. Are we seeing units on the east side at 80% AMI go empty?

Totally. And I guess, I mean, what I think when you say that is, and you kind of mentioned it, like in 10 years, it's still going to be 80% AMI. And the real estate market may have changed by then, and it's still going to be that guarantee. and it makes it more likely that a project gets built. So, I would prefer that we do it at 80 percent than we do it at 70 percent, because again, I'm looking at this not just as a tool to provide affordable housing, but also a tool to help make it more viable to get more housing built, which makes housing more affordable for everybody that pays market rate

Okay. Is there, and I guess I should not just stop at that 70%, are there any other ways in which we're going beyond what the state requires us to do.

In terms of what we're required to do, I am all for doing things we're not required to do that add flexibility, but not that add a mandated cost. I would like to add flexibility. We got a comment earlier today that suggested looking at 10% at 60% AMI instead of 20% at 80% AMI. Is that legal to do?

Or maybe add one other tier. So there's just like two and it's like, I mean, if you start mixing AMIs, I feel like that gets a lot more confusing, but that's what we have. But if, but if it's like, you know, 20 at 80% or 10% at 60%, like that's, that seems, seems like a developer shouldn't be too confused by that. But, um, I am not a developer. Um, the, um, let's see, I asked about renewable, um, Yeah, you know, affordable housing is a really big problem. And what a lot of people talk about when they say affordable housing is just the rent is too high at market rate. So, like, I want to use th

I do like the 70%. I agree that 80% is very close to market rate. Where I don't see us making enough progress is two and three bedroom units. I would love more encouragement for those. I think micro units have a place, and I think near campus, and there are other spots in the city that they make sense, but we get a lot of one bedrooms and studios at a low market rate that matches 80%. I would like to see more family size units. I don't know if we can have different tiers that encourage like for different bedroom amounts or whatever, but that's what I feel like we're not really getting from the

I would love to, without making it so complicated that people don't use it. I do think like two tiers shouldn't be that complicated, especially because we have a great department that our developers can ask questions of. Um, but yeah, I micro units at 80% just doesn't feel like where we're struggling. Like we've seen the downtown building has lowered the, average like household income required to live in downtown Bothell so I feel like that's not the big problem area I am kind of confused about like the life of the tax exemption versus the duration of the affordability I don't like is there ev

This is a very interesting topic. So I just want to put on some X daytime day job type hat and product management and understand what problem are we trying to solve.

I will answer that. My take is we adopted an MFTE that hasn't been utilized because we asked for so much that it made it not feasible to build things. And so we're getting nothing. We're not getting market rate housing. Like we have a, you know, even if micro units at 80% AMI aren't that discounted from what they would be, we have somebody that's wanted to build micro units and they own the lot and our MFTE has made it so it's not feasible for them to build. So we're getting none of those units at any percent AMI. And I would like to have a lot of micro units right next to the college. So for

This is good. Thank you. So because the other question, as you were talking, I completely agree we need to have any type of housing, not just micro. affordable, you know, less than 80% AMI. The layer that we have to also, if I remember our comp plan housing table, we have 80% or less is around 80% need of the home, right? We've over-indexed on the higher-end housing than the more affordable housing. Would this tool help make a dent in that, on those goals that we have? Because we're gonna come up on a reporting time, you know, in five years. It took a couple more years to go.

You can grow trees in the backyard, no? Yeah. Here in the courtyard, no? So this is good, because if the tool is trying to solve a problem, because we also know one of the problems is if you start going lower and lower affordability, it becomes less and less feasible to pencil out, right? So that means we have to, this tool may or may not be the solution to the less than, call it 70%, as you put it, AMI, right? So maybe if our target, we can target that range of housing, which I like the idea of taking out 40 to 70 because nobody's gonna build the 40%, everybody's gonna go and do the 70, and t

So as long as we're starting to narrow down our target units that we're going after, it's just a mindset thing. So that's a good thing. And I like the idea of we passed something, we counsel, passed something in the past, it's not working, we're going to change it and make it a little based on feedback that we've gotten from the development community. as well because they're the ones who are going to build the housing, whether, you know, some folks like it or not. We need those folks to build our homes, you know. So it'll be good to incorporate that feedback into this and see and run a test. H

I like the idea that Christian mentioned also. It's good to mention that here's the menu of options and here's the combos that will work well together to produce, you know, versus each one of those in a silo by itself. So that's a good thing to also help us think about also in the future. So here's the menu of things and combo one, combo two, you know, $1.99, $2.99. Get fries with that.

I like that. I also think that we could do a better job advertising to possible developers and to the community how to leverage the multifamily tax exemption program. So the city of Everett has a whole web page. and it's very, despite being a city web page, it's intuitive, it walks you through who are you and what is your purpose on this website and it's really helpful as like a communication tool. And so I would say that not only is MFTE, it has to always be updated in response to economic conditions because a project is gonna pencil at a different Dave Kuntz, Am I at any given time, based on

Everett even has a property list for tenants that has the affordable units listed. It's really nicely broken down. I really like that suggestion. I would love to see us being able to do something like that too.

Council Member Kerr, did you have an opinion on 70% versus 80%?

I wasn't thinking about it until we got the public comment. And now I'm thinking if we're seeing 80% in other nearby jurisdictions be empty or not leveraged, I'm kind of wondering if we try with 70% and then tweak later. Or we need to see some response before we open it up. more. And there is a cost associated with MFTE, right? And so that's one of the things that we're not talking about here is what is the cost to the community to run the MFTE program. And that's something that we do have a duty to make sure that we're achieving our bands. And so I'm kind of leaning more towards the 70.

Are 70 and 80% in different bands for our commerce targets or are they in the same band?

I do want what comes back to us to be based on what's working in other cities, knowing that we might be, you know, a Red Delicious when they're a Honeycrisp, but Honeycrisp is light rail. But I just, I don't want it to be based on any one group's feedback. I want it to be based on what's working. because that's really where the proof is. So that's, I want us to listen to our developer community, but it can't be exactly what they ask for, it has to be what's working.

I would also just say the same thing about Arch. Like if they say we've seen this happening, I would ask for numbers and details because I'm, oh mom, I'm the only one here that was here when we had this conversation the last time. Now I feel old. we did what we did last time specifically because arch recommended that like they said they hadn't seen a difference in uptake between some of the decisions we made um that it turns out block the housing from getting done so i am i love arch for what they do and i am hesitant to take their recommendations on planning because when we had this exact sam

I will say, yes, there are a ton of one bedroom and studios with a ton of deep discounts right now in Bothell. I'm not convinced that's what we're short on. Um, the other thing I agree with what you said about arch. And I think that I would look to your department, to take what works for Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond and buckle it up. I think that that's not where Arch is going to be successful. I think that's where you guys are going to be successful.

I will also say that I don't want to pit one type of housing against another. Like if somebody wants to build micro units, great. If somebody wants to build three bedroom units, great. Like I think we should have those and I think our developer community should have the option to build those and our MFT should work for all of those sizes, but I don't want to not have an MFTE that works for small units just because we think we have enough.

I agree with that, but I would challenge that MFTE costs us in a way that other incentives don't. So is it worth incentivizing what we are not short on? I think that that's the trade-off we have to examine.

I don't want to make the same mistakes we made last time trying to get something that's too good and ending up with something that doesn't work again for another five or six years. And I would over 10% AMI like I don't want to chance it because I've had this conversation before and I made the same decision basically that you're proposing this go around probably on a little bit different scale and it didn't work out. So maybe I'm once bitten, twice shy. I just... I would, if we have a bunch of homes that are built or if we have, I mean, how many are we gonna get over the next five years? If we

Wouldn't it be nice if we had some public comment?

Or like a crystal ball. Because if we knew the future, we wouldn't know what to do.

I think it comes down to this. This is an economically driven calculation, and economics change all the time. So when we get this back as a policy, I'm going to be looking for when will it next be assessed. And having a regular check-in rather than like, oh, it's not working. when we get angry public comments saying your MFT is broken and that's what prompts us to fix it and work on it that's not that's not sustainable so I'd love to see us revisit this on a regular cadence and have that be part of the policy that comes back with these code updates

If we are going from 80 to 70, because you mentioned that like we could do, it's legal for us to do 10 at 60 or, you know, 20% at 80. Can we do 15% at 70?

I mean, I would like to, if we are going to require a deeper level of affordability than we're required, I would like to require fewer units. Just because, again, I want to make sure that they get built. Because if those micro units that ran out in market rate at 80% AMI, and we get 50 of those for people to move into at 80% AMI, that's a huge win that isn't measured in terms of like percentage AMI or affordability. So like I would, if we're gonna ask for more on the percentage AMI, I would like to ask for less on the number of units.

We're reviewing this, oh, We are reporting on this every year, are we? But can we review this every year also when the report comes out?

Because we can have a conversation like this at that time, and maybe ask, like, we did this, and then a year from now, okay, how did it work? Did it achieve some goal that we want to achieve? And then we revise.

Yeah, because I don't think we're going to have more than maybe one or half of one council member being like, it's time for the report to commerce. So if you can just put it in our faces, I think that'd be great.

I would love to have a conversation in the future about like the units that are getting built and the projects that are going in and like what we've learned from those projects that are going in rather than another year of, well, nothing got built. Maybe we should do it again when we know what works elsewhere. And like, so I want, next conversation to come with learnings to come with like here's here's what we've experienced here's what people say that have like actually built housing through the program here are the results we're seeing here are the rental rates for the units in them like i w

To be fair to the first conversation, we experienced a global pandemic that really changed our supply chain.

But a lot of stuff's gotten built since then. And stuff's gotten built since then elsewhere. And I understand that Shoreline got a bunch of light rail stations. So no matter what happened, they were going to get a lot more apartment buildings built than we are right next to there. But things are getting built elsewhere. And things would have been getting built here if we would have made different decisions six years ago. And I wish I could go back six years ago and make different decisions. And I just, I don't, I want to control what we can control. And we can't control a global pandemic and w

It's fine. We'll come back. We'll have another conversation about this. And a year from now, we'll have another conversation to discuss it. I mean, I don't have a problem with revisiting even within a year.

I mean, and you could be right. All the projects could get built at 70%. I just don't know.

No, and I just don't have a crystal ball. I can tell that you're frustrated that we're having to talk about it again and we haven't had projects. estimates and decisions were made in a completely different environment. Even though things got built, much less got built, and it is now much more expensive to build things. That's the point. It's not just the policy that failed. There was a lot.

And since things are a lot more expensive to build now, I'm really hesitant to add more costs than we need.

And also, the things we need are the things we should incentivize. I think we're all on the same page about trying to get the most out of it. We're just refining where we can do that.

Yeah, I mean, I see that. And I mean, my take is that getting the most out of it is going to happen if we tune it toward getting the most projects built. Because if we get more projects built, then the number of affordable units that we get go up. And like, if we want to do 7%, 70% at 15%, like, and we can utilize that to get more projects actually built, we're going to see a whole lot more affordable units and market rate units. Rented so I would just like to see us if we're gonna ask for more in one phase We should ask for less correspondingly in another phase And I foresee council member mi

to your point you want a crystal ball we do not have a crystal ball you have to do the best this that you can do and make the best decision with the information that you have six years ago six years ago global pandemic changed the world in a way that we'll probably never maybe see again in our lifetimes i know we're doing the best we can with what we have right so just make a decision and we move forward.

The lesson I'm learning from this is Mason and Amanda should have had a phone call before this meeting.

No, it was a good discussion. It was a good volley serve.

Well, and I think, I think what we're hearing is we tried something that didn't work. And so we are iterating and we're trying to figure out what is that next iteration to see what could work. And I think it's worthwhile to be persistent, to not give up and, and to just make changes until we see what we want. Like, you know, create the change that we want to see and just continue working towards that. And so I'm grateful to staff for continuing to refine and suggest and make recommendations so that we can try something new and see if we get different results. So I'm hoping this time around we

Maybe we'll get lucky, like somebody else. Who knows? Something will fall into our laps. Could be the micro units, could be family units. Who knows? Could be something else.

Would it be difficult, and you guys probably go, oh, no, when I say that, because we haven't really had a consensus around kind of what direction we want you guys to go with this tonight. Would it be okay, because I'm sure that we're all going to leave this conversation and we're going to think about it and we're going to see what kind of feedback we get if people go out to the study session and we're going to talk about it. Would it be okay for you to bring back a couple different options? Here are some things we could do. So when we have this discussion the next time around, the discussion w

Well, if you do that, we're going to take option C. That's how that conversation works.

And we're in a cycle right now where more people are getting laid off than getting hired, and all the macroeconomic factors are pointing toward rents getting cheaper right now. And we have been in phases like that in the past, and we will have phases like we've had in the past and the future, where people are hiring and rents are going up, and the context will be different then. So it's a snapshot in time. if we could have some of a like, here are the things that we heard in the conversation from council in the study session, and like here are a couple different options, like that would be, I

I think we call Magic A-Ball now Claude, right? Isn't that the thing? Ask the Magic A-Ball. Yeah. All right. Are we good? All right. We're adjourned.