City Council - Regular Meeting

Good

evening. I'd like to call the 03/03/2026 meeting of North Bend City Council to order. Can the clerk please call the roll?

Mayor Pro Tem Errol Tremolata? Here. Council member Brendan Elwood? Council member Mark Jocelyn?

Present.

Council member Heather Cullen? Council member Rob McFarlane?

Here.

Council member Christina Rustic?

Present.

Council member Susan Torgerson?

Here.

All are present with the exception of council member Elwood and Cullen, and they are both excused.

Thank you. Will the clerk please lead us in the flag salute? Okay. At this time, I'll be asking council member Jocelyn to make a motion to approve tonight's agenda.

I so move. Do

we move?

Second. Thank you. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? This motion carries unanimously. We will now move to the consent agenda. We have five items on the agenda. Can I get a motion?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second. Second. Alright. Council member Jocelyn made the motion, seconded by council member McFarlane. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Any opposed? The motion carries and is unanimous. Alright. So we will now move on to audience participation. If you wish to speak, now would be the time to come forward. We'll take in person comments followed by online comments. Please remember to state your name for the record. Please spell your last name for the clerk, and limit your comments to three minutes. Anybody wish to speak?

Oh, do you? I will follow you.

I normally don't go to first. Is it allowed to use a script? It's it's my first time.

You would get one of my Okay.

Alright. Here we go.

Is it better? Good evening, mayor and council members. Thank you for your time tonight. My name is Vivian Mobley. I'm a Pacific Northwest transplant, and I'm also a solopreneur.

My business is Vivian's Cultural Hub, where I am dedicated to culture exchange and education through tea and educational workshops and experience. A big part of my work is community education, and I try to help people connect and learn something meaningful together. I also care deeply about volunteering in the community. I'm a long term volunteer with the Mount Sinai Senior Center Trail Youth Coffee Home, Chamber of Commerce, North Bend Library, and the Empower Youth Networks. I love being involved locally, and I spend a lot of time outdoors with my family using our parks and trails.

That's what brings me here tonight with two observations. First, I want to raise a concern about teens and electric bikes, especially on shared trails and in public parks. I'm not here to blame kids. Ebikes can be a great thing in terms of independence and getting outside, but I've also seen more closed costs on trails, particularly with higher speeds and limited visibility around corners or crowded areas. My hope is we approach this as an education and safety issue, something we solve together as families and as a community.

A few practical steps that could help. Number one, no speeding on electric bikes and a yield to pedestrian signage in parks and trail entrances. Number two, working with schools, PTAs, or youth groups on trail etiquette and safety basics. Number three, consideration of speed guidance in certain high traffic trail areas, especially where families walk with small kids, elders, and dogs. Hope we can make our community be a safer place to live.

Second, I've noticed a lot of trash along I 90, especially around Exit 31 To 34. Every time I drive through, it really stands out. It's not just an eyesore. It affects wildlife and the pride we feel in our region. If the city or county has an existing cleanup program, I would love to support. I don't want to create more work for staff. I just want to offer help. In closing, I'm here because I care about safe and shared spaces and a clean community. Thank you for everything you do. Connected. I'm Vivian Mobley, and I'm happy to follow-up after the meeting. Thank you.

Anybody else? Yep.

Why do I always get these hard acts to follow? My goodness. So Deborah Landers, 14615 438th Avenue Southeast. Again, I'm here to represent North Bend Art and Industry because we have a lot going on. So first of all, I wanna share with you our March happenings, and I'm gonna pass these around. And I'll start with

you, Suzette. Why? Thank you.

With the March happenings, we have one in particular that's kind of a standout. We have Josh Tuaninga who is the founder of the Medium Design Company in North Bend. He's also a published author. He has several children's books that he's published and a graphic novel called We Are Not Strangers. If you haven't seen the book, it's amazing.

It came out about two years ago, and right now he has two new novels that will be coming out in 2027. Well, he's doing an author discussion question and answer at the Center for Creativity on March 31, and I'm inviting you guys to come and attend and see and hear and ask questions of Josh around what it takes to, both write, edit, and get a book published. And right now, he's on tour. He's touring all over The United States for his two new books. So he's kind of hot stuff, and he's right here in North Band.

So with that, also want to remind you that we have some upcoming events. Art Off the Rails is June 20. It's gonna be at our Depot Park, the William Henry Taylor Park again, June 20. We will be the sole location for artists again this year. This is still done in collaboration with Snoqualmie's Arts Commission and the Northwest Train Museum.

They'll have elements of a festival, but we will have artists, and we already have, I think, almost 50 artists signed up. So we're looking at probably maxing out at 80 this year. So lots of artists, some great musicians, some great food, some wonderful art activities on June 20. And just to highlight that we've never had good weather for that festival, not one year, this is our fourth year, and I'm looking for umbrellas for swag so we can be the East Side Bumper Shoot this year. So so put it on your calendar.

Come on out. It is fun. The other thing that is new to us this year is the art in nature walk. This started last year incarnation with the Lee Arts Foundation. They provided wood rounds for artists to create art on, and then they hung them on trees along the Snoqualmie Valley Trail.

So this has been expanded this year. It'll go from starting from Carnation to Fall City and North Bend. So there's three organizations representing art in nature walk. That is right now, we're taking, artist applications for their wood rounds, which are in our center decorating the walls of our center, and they'll be spending about two months to create their art. And then we hang the art, at the June from July through August. That's it. I'll tell you more next time. Goodbye. Thank

you. Anybody else wish to comment? Bill, is there anybody online?

Not tonight, your honor.

K. Alright. We will now move on to announcements, presentations, and appointments. Item number six, we have a presentation and the planning commission report. At this time, I'd like to invite planning commissioner chair, Hannah Thiel, to come forward and provide us with the planning commission report.

Alright. Good evening. And, I'd say good evening to all planning or not planning commissioners, all city council members. I apologize. I don't wanna downgrade you.

But I appreciate you, mayor pro tem Cimolata as well. It's really an honor to stand before you representing the North Bend Planning Commission. We're a team of volunteers, a team of constituents that were appointed to recommend and advise you on matters of land use and how it pertains to our city. As a city with a small footprint, our land use choices are near and dear to all of our hearts. The recommendations we have forwarded you are on the basis of developing and maintaining our long term sustainability that encapsulate encapsulates the priorities of our residents.

Today, I'm going to review 12 planning commission accomplishments of 2025 that you may reflect on fondly or maybe not fondly, and then I'll outline eight items to look forward to in 2026. So in February 2025, so over a year ago, we reviewed and recommended, ADU regulations bring the city into conformance with recent state legislation. And this is a lot of our recommendations and amendments are based off of updating to accommodate state and sometimes federal, regulations. So we wanna make sure that we are current and following the law since we are a city that is interested in that. Also, in February, we hosted the public input community meeting for the development of Middle Fork master plan.

We reviewed and recommended a development agreement for the Mountain View Townhome and Commercial Development Project. Then in March, we reviewed and recommended the amendments to the city's critical area regulations and critical area maps. This is also a state requirement that we were adhering to. And this follows suit. The next few will be state requirements, led, but it's important to us whether it's a state requirement either way.

So April and May, we reviewed and recommended amendments to the city design standards for conformance to the design review to reduce and eliminate design standards that are duplicate of city regulations. So cleaning up our code. So partly state code, but also just cleaning up what we already have to make it user friendly for staff and also user friendly for the public. Then we also reviewed and recommended the city's residential impact fees to scale fees according to home size consistent with state regulations, but that's important to our residents and future growth also. Impact fees are important, and we'll get to that also in this coming year for commercial impact fees.

In May, we reviewed and recommended the city's form based code. So this was pertaining to design review and reducing and eliminating standards that are duplicative in our code. In June, we reviewed and recommended water and sewer regulations for accessory dwelling units. And, of course, that plays into the housing crisis that our state and country is really dealing with. In August, we recommended amendments on the city's landscape regulations to simplify bonding requirements and also water conservation, which, although it's raining, is still an issue in our city.

August and September, we reviewed and recommended amendments to the zoning regulations, including definitions and other amendments relating to state requirements. September through December, we reviewed draft updates to the city's sign regulations, and this is ongoing. So, you know, the sign regulations, as funny as it sounds, is actually something I'm really passionate about, and I'm really excited to be able to have sign regulations that fit our personality and our city. So, miss Hepworth has been doing a really good job on on getting into all of that, and I'm excited for us to continue to be able to recommend on that front. And, also, in December, we reviewed and recommended the dockets received for consideration of 2026 and the planning commission work plan.

So tonight on your consent consent agenda, you may have noted, some work plan items for this year. So this is a guiding plan of efforts for the year. Many of these are initiated because of state requirements and federal law changes, and some are just due to natural growth, not meaning influx of development, but also, you know, city consultant findings or Snoqualmie tribe inclusion. So more details of these items can be found in your packet on page 27 or page 29 if you downloaded the PDF. So coming up in 2026, you'll see some comprehensive plan updates.

So you're going to see economic development elements, parks elements, and capital facilities elements. You'll see new unit subdivision regulations and lot splitting regulations required by the state. And this I know planning commission has already looked at this, and I'm not a 100% sure if you guys have seen it on your agenda yet, but it's coming if not. Updates to the city's parking regulations addressing multiple state requirements. Updates to the transportation and park impact fee regulations.

And this is for the commercial impact fee regulations, which is really exciting for any new commercial coming into our city because I know that that has been a complaint in the past. Exciting to review it and make sure that it's fitting within what we want for our city. An expansion of the multifamily tax exemption regulations to apply additional areas to the city, amendments to the design standards, amendments to the sign regulations, and amendments to the city street frontage improvements and requirements applicable to new development. Now that's not exhaustive, but but it does give you a glimpse of what's coming, and we're really excited to work with you on that. So on behalf of myself and the rest of the planning commission, I'd like to express our sincere appreciation of your time and your consideration of the land use issues we recommend you.

And your efforts are truly noticed, and we really appreciate all that you do. I also like to thank, the community development staff, mister McCarthy and miss Hepworth, miss Burrell and mister Henderson, and other members of the staff. We truly have such a great team with North Bend. And and I know that there's countless hours that the staff put in, putting together analyses and working with business owners and residents and contractors. And the care that they take in assembling our packets and all of the work that we get to look at is we won't be able to do it as just volunteers.

So their professionalism is really appreciated, and thank you so much for supporting us. And we look forward to another great year, and I'm open to questions if you have any.

Thank you, commissioner. And and, on on behalf of myself, at least, thank you to the planning commission for all the work that they do. I can say for myself, having been there, thousands of pages of material that you're going through, and, that's that's, pretty daunting. I'll take the role of one of our previous council members who always made sure that they pointed out the appreciation for how much the planning commission does before it ever gets to council. And so I wanna thank you for that. Sounds like the work plan coming up. Mike's not gonna let you breathe.

Mhmm.

That's normal as well. And and then I'd say, I would certainly put out there that how much respect I have for the work that the planning commission does in making their recommendations and taking the time to get the public feedback and walking through the issues carefully. And so when recommendations come to me, I certainly am thinking you've done the homework. I'm I'm with you. Thank you.

Councilmember Joffla?

Yes. I'd like to echo echo councilmember McFarland. I will commit to as the liaison to the planning commission being more present than I was in the past year. I did come by a few times. Right.

As a as a state mandated body, what you do for our city is foundational and instrumental. You mentioned the countless hours put on by put in by staff, which I very much acknowledge and appreciate, but I I don't think they or, you know, you need to look in the mirror and say the same thing. Because of the countless hours that you and the planning commission, upon my being present, I am always struck by the thorough in-depth detail that you folks put in to do your homework, read the content that's before you, and make informed, considered decisions following the discussion, and it's all volunteer work. And, again, I think I already said it's it's so instrumental and foundational to our city and keeping us on the rails. And so I am and we are, I believe, in your debt.

You and your fellow commissioners just thank you so much.

Thank you.

How's my metorgasen?

I remember those days. Sometimes you get a packet like this big, you have to read through, so I totally get it. Sometimes we still get those packets. But, no, it it you guys are volunteers, and it's wonderful, all the work you're doing, because it seems like things are getting more and more complicated. And so I too appreciate all the work that you've you've all have been doing, and, I appreciate that. And I want you to let everybody else in the team know that too. So thank you.

Thank you. Alright.

Yeah. I'll just say, you are tasked with a very, dynamic time for this town, so I think your work is critically important. I certainly, from here, we're making some pretty big decisions, over the last year and going forward, and I I'm definitely leaning on planning commission to help that those those processes and those decisions and provide as much input to us, as possible because, things are are very different today than maybe they have been in the past. And and it's complicated, but also exciting at the same time. So we appreciate all the support. Thank you very much. Alright. Thank you. Alright. On to item number seven, presentation by the North Bend Downtown Foundation.

At this time, I'd like to invite executive director Jessica Self, of the North Bend Downtown Foundation to come forward and provide her update.

Yeah. I grab the cookie. Okay.

Well, thank you everybody for being here. I'm excited to tell you what we've been doing over the last I've been here now for about two and a half years. So over the three years, so North Bend Downtown Foundation has has been doing what we've been doing. And I am joined tonight by my board president, Brian Davis, and board member Jacqueline Goodbar and treasurer, Katherine Potchwitt. So for those that don't know what the North Bend Downtown Foundation is about, it actively builds communities, supports economic vitality, and champions historic preservation in order to make North Bend a thriving community for residents, fit businesses, and visitors alike.

And in addition to the board members who are here, we also have Lori Hay. We have Rachel Bennett, Mandy McDonald. James Henderson sits as our ex officio, and myself, the executive director. And I wanted to talk about what we've been focusing on, and this is in the arena of I'll be going through a few slides of our promotions, events, and marketing year round activation, business assistance, and support, and our Downtown North Bend appearance. So in these next couple slides, I'm gonna talk about our promotions committee that drives economic vitality by positioning Downtown North Bend as the community's hub for events, commerce, and connection.

And we work on promoting the local businesses by sharing a lot of the Facebook posts, Instagram posts, and and sharing it into the stories, which is huge. We really work on doing shopping local campaigns. We create our social media and print graphics in house practically daily. We have our monthly email newsletter, and we really focus on that social media marketing and management. And I'll show that later of the impact that has had.

And I'm not gonna run through all of this, but you can see all of the events that we are planning, have planned, have done, and have in our future. And everyone will have a copy of this presentation so you can look at those a little more closely, but we'll talk about a bunch of these moving forward. Now we do the downtown block party, which is huge. I think Mary Miller was I can quote her from saying mayor Mary Miller for saying that this is the largest crowd she has ever seen when she was on stage last year, which was really great. We had definitely had over 3,000 attendees.

It's fantastic with the music, the community performances, our kids zone. It's it's a very exciting event. And mark your calendars for July 18 this year. It's always the third Saturday. We also do trick or Treat Street, and it does not matter if it's rain or shine. It's like art off the rails. We have it both ways, but we still get literally over about 1,500 attendees, the families. People come from all over North Bend and Snoqualmie, and I ran out of some that were even, like, beyond their we had Issaquah last year. It's great. So people get excited for that and come around and hop into the stores and do all the fun stuff.

And everyone gets very creative with their with their costumes. We also have our holidays annual event where we help get the tree downtown, the tree lighting, the lights downtown. And it's very exciting that we have so many businesses and community members that help with the holiday crafting and have lie, I've just read live. I'm sorry. We have our live music, obviously, in performances, but have the free movie at the North Bend Theater.

We have, complimentary coffee and cocoa and s'mores. So it's very exciting because this does not happen without a ton of volunteers. And we do the sip, suds, and sigh event. And so it's very exciting getting different wineries, cideries, liquor vendors coming all throughout going all throughout town. We also have visitors that come from actually, there was someone who came from Portland last year.

So it definitely is a is a great event to pull people from out of town, plus we definitely have a lot of locals that come to that. We started the pub crawls just last year. So we started with our Saturday night fever. And what was so great what we do with our pub crawls is we have decided to turn these into fundraisers. So we actually raised $1,550 for Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank, in January 2025. And then this year, well, I sorry. Not this year. The end of last year, we had our holidays eve, pub crawl dashing through the pubs, which had a crazy windstorm with it too, but, we managed to raise $1,800 for Snow Valley Pet Services. Services. So that was fantastic.

People loved it. We definitely love to put it all on social media and get the FOMO going, and people are like, I can't believe I missed it. Like, when's the next one? So we are planning more, so stay tuned. We just had the real Twin Peaks weekend a couple of

weekends ago. I feel like it

was yesterday. I don't think I have caught up on rest yet, but that is okay. I will eventually. We had visitors join us locally across Seattle throughout Washington. We had nationwide, like Austin, Chicago, New Jersey, Colorado.

We had people coming from France, China, England, Ireland, Bulgaria, Italy, probably some other countries that I didn't get to talk to them about. It's pretty amazing. It was so many businesses had offered so many additional Twin Peaks style items and had changed maybe up their their coffee offerings to have cherry with it or, obviously, the cherry pies and had fun names. And it was fantastic. And Twin Peaks Day was actually on a Tuesday, and we had people come in town the Tuesday or Wednesday before the weekend, and some stayed through the Tuesday, Wednesday the next week, which was very cool.

So we had people stay who wanted to come to the sign on that morning at 11:30AM when agent Cooper comes into town. And it was it was a it was a magical time. So if you've not come out to any of it in the last few years, I highly recommend putting it on your calendar for next year. I will let you know when that is. And none of this can happen without us collaborating with a ton of different organizations.

A lot of our, events happen because we partner, also with either physically having people volunteer their time. We volunteer at different organizations. So it's just kind of you you you help each other out to make all this happen, which is which is fantastic. And we've definitely been growing our collaborations, and more and more people have been wanting to come and volunteer. They're I think we've heard multiple people say, North Bend's fun again.

You know? So that's exciting. I do want to say we are very, very excited for the social media growth that we've had. So last year, we gained 411 followers on Facebook, 730 followers on Instagram. But then this year, we grew it even higher than the year before.

So it just keeps growing. And it's exciting to have almost 3,000 followers on Facebook and the about 3,400 as of February on Instagram. And last year, we had that 456,000 views on Facebook, and now we're over a million views. And it just keeps growing, which is huge. And that's us sharing the businesses, what they're doing, what we're doing, what the city's doing.

It's it's really exciting. We're getting a lot more interactions. So with having 607,000 views on Instagram going from the 250, it's it's a very big deal. And I I also personally do the real twin peaks social media, and we we grew that from about when I got ahold of it, it was about 250 followers, and it's almost to 8,000 followers in just a couple years. So that is all that is a lot of North Bend on there with, of course, some Snoqualmie. So it's very exciting. So yay. And we're building upon our success. So here's what's coming up this year because America turns 250 this year. If you did not know, now you do.

And we do have the World Cup coming to town, and that's a big deal. So here are some things that we're doing to activate more during the summertime and leading up. So, everyone, we are going to have an inaugural fourth of July family fun parade, Tykes, Strikes, and Tails. So this is gonna be, like, your hometown style, like, neighborhood style that we will shut down the street, like, the block party street. And we'll have more information to come, but we will have new motorized vehicles.

This will be probably more people in the parade than actually watching the parade. But we're very excited to collaborate with North and Art and Industry, and we're going to have kind of some decorating parties leading up so people can bring their bikes, their wagons, their leashes for their dogs, you know, whatever whatever you wanna decorate. And so we'll announce that. But that is that is in the works, and we're super excited. So that'll be definitely more of a late morning because we do know that there are some, neighborhoods that have them at, I think, 10AM, we've discovered by having some of our community after hours and having conversations with our community members.

So this is exciting stuff. And we have just launched the historic walking tour, and it's a walk through North Bend's past. And, you will now start seeing these out in the wild. I just started distributing these, this morning. And the that is the actual window cling, not that large, and that will be on the windows throughout downtown, whether it's a historic building or not.

And people will be invited to just do their own self guided virtual tour. So it does when you scan it, you'll see you can click on a on a point, and you'll see what building it was in the past, the name, its history. It was in collaboration with the Snoqualmie Valley Museum, and they spent countless hours loading imagery information. So it's a really cool collaboration with them. So we're super excited.

We're gonna do some fun promotion around that and try to get people excited to even the history buffs to maybe walk around town and give some tours. So we'll talk more later about that, but this will be a great thing to have up and running for the summer for people to do. And we are working on a city of North Bend map, a printed map. We have a kiosk that will be set up, next to we felt like the best spot is near Tweets since they have people visiting from all around the world all year long, so it'll be a great place. And, we are going to do this a proxy map.

We have one on our website. This is the same type of map that the historic walking tour. And businesses have control also to update their own points. And we're putting everyone in North Bend on here and then highlighting, you know, downtown. But it is a way for us to measure the tourism engagement. It's a scalable platform for future events and activations. We can actually do kinda like scavenger hunts and things like that. It supports both visitors and residents. It's positions North Bend as a forward thinking, data informed, and visitor friendly while supporting local businesses in a practical, measurable way. So we're super excited.

There will be a printed map that will live on the kiosk, and those three little areas down below are actually, people will be able to put flyers in there. So that'll be a great spot to put, the art for Northern Art and Industry and things like that, all the upcoming. So it's very exciting. We're excited. We'll see how the first one goes, and, hopefully, we can get funds for a second and third one at some point.

So that's happening. We I hope everyone enjoys AI artwork. I was like, I wanna show something. We are going to have a visitor info booth that, North Bend Downtown Foundation, we will we will be running it in the sense of, we are going to encourage different volunteers to help, whether it is, community members or business owners. And we will have information about the city, have maps, what's going on, information from King County Search and Rescue on there, especially for the hikers.

And then if a business is helping volunteer at it, they can have whatever they want to advertise their own business there. So we're also gonna try to have some live music, especially on Saturday, maybe afternoon, Sunday afternoons. But, again, attempting to get some sponsors for that, so just just just remember that. And so we're very excited about that because we think that'll be very great, especially around the peak match days. So we have all those dates in mind.

So we also focus on business assistant and supporting businesses. So we have our economic vitality and outreach committees. And so we focus on quite a few different things with our community after hours, our merchant meetings. We have the proxy map that we're really taking advantage of. We've been encouraging our businesses to enhance our Google businesses.

We have, the holidays, WinterFest. That was a huge outreach program. Back when we did the holiday market, that was a very big deal to activate the So merchant meetings, we actually had one this morning here, which was which was lovely. We always have, we try to have someone speak from the city to give updates, and then we talk about, what we have going on and find out what the businesses have going on. And, honestly, these meetings have been great for the merchants because they come together. And some, even this morning, had never met each other. So every time, it's just building community within them, which I personally think is important. So that's been a great thing. And we have our community after hours. And these we've been doing monthly, and people are loving them.

So our most recent ones, we had our Wiggin' Out game night, the lovely picture in the middle. We had requests for another wig evening, so look look out for that. So everyone loves to dress up. We have found so we try to do a theme around whatever we do. We had our America Two Fifty US Trivia themed night at Pearl and Stone, and people were lovely and wore the hat I had him wear for a photo.

And, so it's been great because we've had great conversation. Business owners come out, community members come out, and, they have been getting involved with, giving us ideas of what they wanna do. It's like, let's let's just let's just have some sort of party every month. It's always a good time. So with our academic vitality and outreach committee, we have worked with the Masonic Lodge. We've worked with the Boxleys, Jazz Club. I'm not sure if all of you have seen our social media of elfin' around downtown and shopping with our Gnomies. We're definitely trying to make it fun. We hear from people that they're excited for all the videos that keep coming out, so we will have more. We might have an eagle and George Washington for our historic walking tour.

Just wait for that. And we also partner and help with the city communication with, like, a parametrics project with, like, the McLellan Alley project coming up. And then we also consistently walk around downtown, talk to businesses. It's very important to have conversations because sometimes some can't make it at all to the merchant meetings or community after hours. So we just try to keep the communication going.

We also focus on the Downtown North End appearance with our design committee. So we have focused on doing our meetup cleanups, cleaning up around town. It's shocking sometimes how many cigarette butts I know that we pick up. So we'll come up with maybe a plan for that in the future, but it's it's fantastic. A lot of people come partner with some of the different organizations around town sometimes, which is fantastic.

And, you know, you always get a good people honking as they're driving by saying thank you. It's it's exciting stuff. So people are happy to see it being cleaned up. We also helped with the mural behind Iron Duck and partnering with Tweeds for their three new murals. We also hosted the holidays window fest. And so last year, we did it in North Bend. And then this year, we actually included Snoqualmie. So we had two day or, yes, we had two days. And, it was wonderful. We had snowflakes in Snoqualmie and North Bend, and people helped from North Bend and Snoqualmie from Snoqualmie and North Bend both all day.

It was very cool. We had about 50 plus volunteers, and so it was very exciting. We also partnered with the city of North Bend for the local photographers that use, the photography that you see on the ecology bin. So we, we we paid a bunch of local photographers. That was exciting. And then we launched the Americana project with Birches, encouraging the businesses to create a cohesive downtown flag display from Memorial Day to Labor Day. So we're definitely encouraging businesses to do even more flags this year since America two fifty. So and and just flags in general everywhere. Red, white, and blue. Stars and stripes.

And the grant funded murals, and I don't think everyone realizes that that they were with North Bend Downtown Foundation. The Snoqualmie tribe funded the Iron Dog Public House mural in the back. So that was very exciting. And we were lucky with some four culture support, and so some of that is going towards working with tweeds and the three murals. As we know, the the they had to get re stuccoed because it was falling apart. So everything got taken down. So, they have the new, double r to go in the front that was redone beautifully. And a new welcome to Twin Peaks in the back. That is always a huge draw for people. And then there's going to be one to come.

Hopefully, it will start in springsummer, and it would hopefully be in the conjunction with, when Beth at the North End Theater has her always her fire walk with me event in August. So we'll do some reveal and have fun, but people are very excited about that. And I will take a breath and say thank you to all of you, the city of North Bend, and your always continued collaboration, your support. We can't do it without you, and, we invite you all to come out to our events and let us know how how we can support you even more, and come and talk to us on how how you want to maybe get involved too. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Council, questions? Yes.

Well, first of all, thank you, and thank you to all of you for your great ideas and enthusiasm. I that's not good ideas are not something that I can come up with, but I

know them when I see them.

So so thank you. Thank you. My question just was, you were talking about the the FIFA World Cup. Are there gonna be any watch parties in the city? What can you So we're not

we're not quite sure yet. So there was the announcement. I think it was a week ago or so that Seattle now has said, oh, we're not gonna do the watch party we were gonna do. And so they're trying to disperse things outward. So I think James and I will look into the possibility of one. We have no idea how

much it

costs. It's going to depend on that hugely. So if it's affordable, sure. But we'll yes. So yes. It'd be great. So we are working on figuring that out for sure.

Susan?

Oh, yeah. Thanks for everything you guys do. It's awesome. Wanna continue to see all the growth and with all the businesses, and we wanna see them do well. So this is great. I do have a question. I know that you one of the things you guys are working on is getting accredited with Main Street, and I was if you had an update on that.

So at this point, we are, focusing more on what everyone seems to like, which is the promotions and events and everything. And that is that is not what at the moment Main Street wants us to focus on. They would want a high focus on all of the

Historic.

Yeah. The the historical preservation. And so we are an affiliate, and so we did not we did not get it last year just for the same reason we didn't get the year before. Well, the first year was because we were promotions heavy, So we backed off on that and focused more on historic preservation and design and, economic vitality. But they still are looking at more historical preservation.

And what it seems is they they seem to just award accreditation to one, maybe two cities a year. So we are going to take a break this year from applying because we are definitely going promotions heavy, especially with America two '50 and FIFA. It's way important for our community for us to focus on that. And we will still be actively looking towards ways. But at this point, we are not just because of because of the reasons I just said. And oh, and Brian. Yes.

Hey. Brian Davis here. It's a great question. We talked a lot about it on what was important for the board and the foundation. And the main street accreditation is seemingly very vague on how they get people or towns through to receive the accreditation.

So we kinda needed to revamp and kinda regroup. And working with James, working with, you know, the city and what's important to residents, And we really are trying to figure out this year what's what's most important for North Bend versus what's important for the accreditation. So we still get to be a part as an affiliate, and we kinda get the best of both worlds that way, but we get to kinda make our direction for town the way residents need and not so much what the body up there that they don't even let us talk to them when we present. We have five minutes, to, you know, try to win a rubric. And if anyone's been in all that, it's it's very challenging.

So, yeah, that's that's our piece on that.

And to follow-up really quick, we are still operating like a four point approach, which I feel is important, and we feel is important because it's it it works so well.

To follow-up with that, is there anything that we can

do to help you guys? Yes. We can we can discuss. I would love to sit and talk with everybody on, like, what it is that you would like to help with or what you can help with. And, I think we'll have some follow-up meetings after the presentation in a couple weeks also to just kinda see what next steps we can we can do and what's gonna make the most sense. And so, yeah, I'd love I'd I'd I'd love help, and we'll figure out what that help will be. Yeah.

Councilmember McFarlane?

Really impressed with Brian's use of rubric. That was that was awesome. And and super impressed with the the growth of the activities and the number of things that the foundation is doing or the group is doing is just having taking about a two year nap, you know, waking up and seeing how it's grown, how many more things you're doing, that's that's just fantastic. Yes. The accreditation was on my mind as well. Understand what you're saying there. Might have missed it on the slide. One question I had was also membership growth. The number of businesses who are part of the foundation. You have something on that?

So we don't have a membership. So right now, the membership would be we operate with highlighting the downtown, historic downtown. We have been having the conversations about, like, what Brian was saying, we're trying to regroup. We're looking at kind of expanding and highlighting more of the businesses beyond downtown. We already kind of do.

People do reach out to us from even over in the outlet mall, over by, you know, the the Safeway shopping area, things like that. So so we are talking about that because it is a finite area, and it will help we feel it might will help North Bend that much more if we can incorporate more businesses and and help more. So we are talking about that. And with that, we may start some sort of membership, just so we can get some sort of funds, and and they can have businesses will have a little bit more of a buy in and and things like that.

And I and I recall that the the notion of dues or something was I wasn't speaking to that at all, just how many businesses were involved with the group. So thank you for that. I I also missed it. The the kiosk that you're talking about in the whole historical walk was that's just really cool. But I missed where that was gonna be, that main.

So the kiosk will be set up, near Tweeds. You know how they have the, like, newspaper stands? So we're gonna put that there, and then, and that will be the city map. And then the historic walking tour, little, vinyls will be on the windows. But we're also going to be printing window clings for the city map too that will be we're gonna just make everyone know where they are.

Just awesome board and you. Thanks.

Thank you, Rob.

Well, thank you. I I will just add that I think the growth's been incredible, and it's awesome. And I'm only one voice up here. But if the brainstorming and whatnot leads to, hey. We should expand this beyond downtown because it benefits everyone, like, I am all for that. I think proof's in the pudding. Right? Like, all the events that have on are pulling every business from every angle. So I would fully support that. So I would say, you know, be as progressive thinking as we need to be to really kick this off and keep moving because I think you guys are definitely heading in the right direction. The residents clearly enjoy everything that's going on. So Yeah. And I'm very excited for the parade on for the job.

Yeah. Thought you would be.

I changed the name too.

Well,

if if and when we expand, we will definitely look at changing the name from downtown foundation to something. So maybe start plant planting a seed.

Start

picking some names.

Have a look at names.

On my mind of, like, hey. We should be open to a rebrand if it makes sense.

Exactly. We that has been on our

Small for the highest impact, and I think that's exactly where you guys are going. So I totally support it. Love it.

So Awesome.

Thank you.

Council, we good? Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

We'll now move on to mayor council administrator concerns and initiatives. Council. We will start with council member Torreson.

Okay. This Friday, do not miss out. At Huck's daughter, I think it's from nine to 10AM. There's gonna be coffee talks with chief Ed Hall, and then he's gonna do it again in the evening at what time?

Five.

5PM to 6PM? Volition. Maybe it's longer than 6PM?

Probably. That's

fine. And that's gonna be called a last call with chief Hall. So, that's that's this Friday. And then the next one, I think, is on the twenty fourth. Is that right? I had it written down, and I left it at home. Sorry.

March 25.

March 25? Okay. Yep. So it was around there. Same exact time, but different places. So the morning one is gonna be at I had it memorized, but I forgot, obviously. The evening one is gonna be at the, Blackwater. But the morning one is at I apologize. I have it on my printer at home. March 25 at

Red Coffee.

That's right. Now that you say that. So, yeah, so I think that'll be exciting, and that's a great introduction to our new, police chief since we'll be starting with them on April 1. It'll be a nice little transition. So that's all I have for today.

Thank you. Councilwoman Bustick. Yes. Thank you. So Saint Patrick's Day is right around the corner. And if you didn't know, on Sunday, March 15 at 09:30AM, there is a Snoqualmie Valley Saint Patrick's Day fun run, five k walk and run benefiting the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank. So, it's at Centennial Fields Park, and I will be there. So I hope people will join me. I don't wanna be the only one out on a Sunday morning at 09:30, but it does benefit the food bank. So if you sign up and quite can't quite make it there, it's still a good thing.

So there's a five k walk run, and there's a pot of gold kid's stash. So that's all I had. Thank you. Yep. Council member Jocelyn.

Thank you, your honor. At some point, we'll need to switch the order so Rob doesn't have to follow me every week.

Hello. Let's

see. I wanna acknowledge that on February 17, Jesse Jackson passed away. Civil civil rights leader, he was the runner-up for the Democratic nomination for president of this country in 1988 and an icon of mine. I appreciate let's see. Semiquincentennial. I wrote it down. It was on a slide. This America Two Fifty, I don't know that I've ever seen or heard semiquincentennial. So that's a thing. But I wanna acknowledge that America two fifty should be inclusive, and I have a concern that our country is trending away from those things, in particular reading too much news, and that's my own fault.

But there have been numerous reports lately that with our country having started a war of choice in Iran, that a number of military leaders have sent troops off into battle suggesting that this is Armageddon leading to the rapture, and I'm not making that up. And it frightens me to my core, and I simply wanted to say that many folks, and I'm quoting Kerry Ovid here, many folks in this country are profoundly confused about the term religious freedom. The First Amendment does not guarantee us the right to discriminate based on our religion. It instead guarantees us the right to not be discriminated against based on our religious beliefs, and I hold that value at my core. With that said, now I'm gonna scoop you on your song lyrics and quote Edwin Starr from 1970, his album War and Peace.

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. War, I despise because it means destruction of innocent lives. Thank you, your honor.

Council member McFarland.

I'm more honored than than than not that it's spreading. I I am gonna stick to what I've started in making some comments beyond North Bend. But first, as as emblematic of of the two presentations tonight and in a sense almost bookends the the work of the Planning Commission that that is that is looking at how our community is put together, how we are proceeding forward, and then the very present in today work of the downtown foundation and focus very much on tourism and and events for our community. That's pretty cool to do, and I'm glad we had them together even though when I first looked at it, I thought, you gotta be kidding. Two on once.

I look at you. That said, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep going deeper. I do have a song for you. You know, every week, it seems we're more alarmed by things, and there are two things that happened this week, somewhat in addition to what council member Jocelyn spoke to. But one thing that I've learned is to trust the current occupant when he says something that he wants to do, little by little, he does it, and it's it's the boiling frog analogy.

There was an article in the New York Times that broke this past week on Friday, which any of you that follow politics, it's known in all White Houses as throw out the trash day because nobody's reading the news. So that's when you put out this kind of stuff. But it was released that there is a draft executive order to suspend the midterm elections based on declaring a national emergency and citing the same old lies about the prior presidential election and interference. That ought to shake everybody who is within your sight to their core. It's coming, folks.

Then, of course, during the weekend, we started a war with Iran that used to be a claim that that was what president Obama was going to do to distract us from the elections. One two, folks. One two. So tonight, couple lines from a song that was banned by armed forces radio back during Vietnam. It's called Eva Destruction by Barry Maguire, 1965.

Again, I invite you to listen and think through. A couple of lines not necessarily in order. The pounding of the drums, the pride in the disgrace. The Eastern world, it is exploding. Violence flaring, bullets loading.

Wake up, folks. Thank you, mayor.

Okay. And city administrator, Emery.

I, always struggle to follow the two of you because then I try to go back to something positive, and it just falls flat. So I will just say, I wanna focus on just one thing Jessica kinda glanced over, which is her social media numbers. I think that is such an important piece with getting our community out there. I know that I've lived in this community for nine months. Every visitor that I have come up here ends up following Jessica eventually on either Facebook or Instagram and sees all the amazing things that we're doing in this town, and they go, where did you find this woman at?

This is absolutely amazing. I've never seen this before in a town, and they're just so impressed with how our town is really marketed and the businesses inside are marketed the way that she does that on social media. So I just wanted to put a call out specifically on that slide how impressive that is, for our local community. And, thank you. I'll leave it with that.

Alright. So a couple updates. On Friday, March 6, incoming police chief Ed Hall invites residents to join him in the community conversation about local public safety and the city's new police department that will begin serving North Bend on April 1. Please stop by for two opportunities to connect this Friday at Huck's Dot or Coffee from nine to ten or Volition Brewery from five to six. Additional meetups are scheduled.

If you are unable to attend, please check the city's calendar on our website. Beginning Monday, March 9, Salal Water Association will begin their water main replacement project in and around the intersection of North Bend Way, Mount Sinai Road, and Stilson Avenue Southeast and will require intermittent lane closures from 9AM to 3PM. The city will update the community as this work continues. Drivers should expect traffic control during traffic interruptions. This project will likely wrap up between mid to late May.

I would also like to add that Little League has started as of today, so there will be lots of little ball players in and around Torgerson Park. Yeah. In the rain. So just a heads up, come out, check out some baseball. It'll be fun, and I would be remiss if I didn't finish off the evening with my call out to mental health. Major depression affects eight percent of American adults each year, more than twenty one million people. Fifteen percent of youth ages 12 to 17 are affected by major depression. That's more than three point seven million youth. Depression can affect anyone at any age and of any race or ethnic group. Depression is never a normal part of life, no matter your demographic.

Mental health matters. Reach out, talk to your friends, check-in on yourself, don't let the hard days win. And with that, I will have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Do I have a second?

Second.

You. Hey. Hey. You have to try.