City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call the Gig Harbor City Council meeting of Monday, July 27th, 2026 to order. Tiffany, will you do the roll call, please?

Thank you. If you'd all stand and follow me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before we begin the meeting tonight, I'd like to have a land acknowledgement. We want to recognize that we are gathered not only on the ancestral and traditional lands of the Sababish Band of the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, but also the site of one of their largest and longest standing historic villages of their people, the original inhabitants of the

Seconded. Those in favor of accepting the consent agenda, please vote on your screens. Motion passes 6-0. There is no mayor tonight. I am the mayor pro tem, Lee Rodenberg. I'm chairing this meeting in place of the mayor who's unavailable tonight. We'll have the city administrator's report now. City Administrator Katrina Knudson.

Thank you very much, City Administrator. Our first item of business tonight is Resolution 1365, Adopting the City's Three-Year Strategic Plan for 2026 through 2029. The staff report will be given by City Administrator Katrina Knudson.

Are there any clarifying questions from council? Council Member Eckberg?

I just had a brief comment. Really like the look of this. It's a great job of summarizing what we had discussed and the work that had been done. It's a really nice visualization of all the topics. So well done on that. And I think it's a great document that we continue to put forward. The old strategic plan kind of got tacked on the back of meeting agendas at the very end. And I don't know how much it got put into public facing positions. And this is a very good looking presentation that I hope can get in front of as many of the citizens as we can.

So taking on to council member at Brooks comments, I want to say thank you to lower America. I know she did a lot of work on this or communications director and hugely appreciate the look on this in the field. And then adding goals from our comprehensive plan, I thought was masterful. It really tied it in nicely. So thank you. And I'm in full support of it.

Are there any other comments from Council? Are there any comments from the public? Anybody online or in the audience? Please come forward, state your name and your city of residence.

Move to approve Resolution 1365. Second it.

All right. Those in favor, vote electronically. If you can't, please vote verbally. I don't have the results here on mine. And what was the, okay, motion passes six to zero. Thank you. The next business item is the Public Works Contract Award for Public Works Construction, Restriping of Hunt and Scanty Intersection. This will be presented by Public Works Director, Jeff Langhout.

Thank you, director. Do we have any clarifying questions from council? Council members don't.

Thank you. Full disclosure, I guess, I live near this intersection, so very familiar with it. But I'm curious, thank you for providing the renderings. So I'm trying to compare that to what's in our agenda packet here. So there's going to be a center turn lane going both directions on Hunt. And then, sorry, I'm just trying to make sure I'm tracking kind of what is changing about this.

Okay. When you said almost to the intersection, I was a little confused about that.

I see. Okay. And then, okay. Yeah. That makes sense. So then they'll still have a right turn lane. We'll remove the triangle strike bank that cuts you off. You're trying to turn on the scans. Yep.

And if this were to be passed by council, what is the anticipated timeline for when this restriping would occur based on the contract and bids?

Mayor Mrakas, House member record quick clarifying question on the West side of this site Jeff we're on on hunt going westbound currently. Mayor Mrakas, That curb lane, you can make a right turn it goes past the driveway to the development and then merges, so you have two lanes past that and then it merges into one so is that. Mayor Mrakas, The current through lane is that all going to be Center turn lane at that section as well, extending that way westward.

That would extend where the development is and then merge after that. Okay, that's what I thought. Thanks.

Thank you. I see no other questions from council. Is there any public comment on this project? Anyone in the audience or anybody online? I see none. Then we will move to council deliberation and comment and action.

I move to approve and authorize the following capital project for restriping Hunts-Gansey intersection for an amount not to exceed $128,757.50. Second.

Motion was made by Councilmember Stone and seconded by Councilmember Ekberg. Please vote on your screens or verbally if you cannot. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you, council. Now we'll move to staff reports. We will have quarterly finance and budget report by our finance director, Scott Larson.

Questions, clarifying questions from Council? Also member expert.

Thank you, Director Larson, for that report. I appreciate it's well summarized and easy to digest. I appreciate your conservative outlook as well on the new tax revenue sources. While those are still up in the air to a lot of potential contests. So just a couple of clarifying questions on the utility funds, the operating funds, there were appear to be running a good operational profit. Do those profits get transferred to the capital funds for those utilities? Do they go back to the general fund or?

Thanks. And then my other question. On the sales tax revenue, it's on page eight of the report. There was information I hadn't heard in that report that was really interesting to me where you talk about our per capita basis. And you mentioned that the city performs much better than other cities per capita wise in terms of our sales tax take. Is this just a function of us being small geographically and population-wise and now becoming a regional service center for a large population? Is this a testament to us being a good city that people want to come spend money in? Is there more we should tak

Thank you, Director Larson. I was really impressed by your presentation. It's very helpful in understanding, especially all of us having to jump into the next biennial budget discussion. So this is good question for you. Are there any I know we have a few bonds and are there any loans? I think there was a utility loan from one utility. I can't remember if it was like sewer to water or water to something. And I believe the state requires, even though it's our own funds that we have to pay an interest on that loan. Are there any things that that you've seen that it looks like we should be could

No, and you're just the person to help us through this. I appreciate it.

Thank you, really appreciate this briefing and overview. It's really helpful to see it broken down and it's accessible. So thank you for making that available to us as council and to the public. I also really appreciate that you've included like market dynamics too, because there's only so many levers we as a city and as a municipality can pull. And I think it's important context Did I, I think I read correctly that the average or the median sale price for Pierce County is like 595,000, but in Gig Harbor, it's 900,000? Correct. 906,000 in Gig Harbor, 595,000 in Pierce County as of June. Correc

That is a striking number. I mean, you think about what it takes to afford a home that's nearly a million dollars, right? We're looking at close to 200,000 probably for a household to be able to afford that in their annual income. And a lot of our residents cannot afford that at this point. So grateful that we adopted our strategic plan to look forward to making homes more affordable and attainable for folks. Thank you.

Mayor Mrakas, Are there any comments other from the audience or online. Mayor Mrakas, Thank you very much, director arson is great presentation. Mayor Mrakas, easy to understand, thank you. Mayor Mrakas, Is there any public comment on non agenda items. Mayor Mrakas, Please come forward state your name and. Mayor Mrakas, Where you live. Mayor Mrakas, And you have three minutes and push the button for the microphone. Mayor Mrakas, Is it green.

Thank you. This forum is not conducive to a two-way conversation, but if you'd like to send that information to our H3 director, Shae Smiley, manager, she can inform all of us on what you're speaking of. Thank you very much for your talk. Are there any other comments? Are there any comments online? Any comments from council comments on activities and committees? I see none. Oh, Council Member Martin.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Myself, as well as Council Member Ekberg and Council Member Tessitini were able to attend a Master Builders Association tour of a couple of facilities in Pierce County last Friday. And while those facilities were impressive, the affordability was still half a million dollars as we were just speaking And they shared a lot of housing facts with us. They had a national economist that presented to us, and they also talked about Pierce County specifically. And since we were just talking about this, it states that 75% of Washingtonians cannot afford a median priced home. Th

City Council Chambers, Thank you very much, can I add this one piece.

City Council Chambers, It was a very informative tour and Julie shared a lot of the facts, I think another piece that was interesting to me, we heard from. City Council Chambers, Developers that we're moving forward with multiple projects on the ground in pierce county so that the numbers were very real and very current and. City Council Chambers, The dream into the time element and delays also any additional costs. that get spread over time. It's more financing costs, more what the developers called carry costs. So the longer the project takes, the more layers there are, the more cost it adds

Thanks all. Just wanna, while we're on the topic of housing, just wanted to, on the record, say thank you to our city staff for the tremendous amount of work that's gone in, particularly just this year alone, to be able to move forward with our strategic plan, to be able to look at our development regulation updates, It's greatly appreciated. And also want to thank my council colleagues. We can't make these decisions alone. And it's really, really inspiring and empowering to be able to have a council that has a shared vision for our city and for our community. Many of us here are, on a weekly,

Thank you. I see no other council comments. There is a list of upcoming meetings at the back of the agenda. And this kind of concludes our meeting, unless there's anything for the good of the order. And I will. I will. You got more time. Go ahead. Move to adjourn.