Remarks by Mason Thompson
160 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 4 of 7
- Play at 1:26:09
“All right, well, I'm not seeing any lights go on. And we can have three people?”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 1:26:20
“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.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 1:27:02
“And I understand what I'm doing when you say I'm willing to do something. So yes.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 1:27:14
“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.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 1:27:49
“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.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 1:28:16
“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.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 1:54:32
“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…”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 1:59:06
“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…”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:14:53
“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…”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:16:22
“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.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:20:29
“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.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:21:01
“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.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:33:37
“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,…”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:35:16
“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?”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:35:47
“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,…”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:37:44
“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?”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:38:12
“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…”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:39:18
“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.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:39:53
“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?”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:40:52
“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…”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:46:16
“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…”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:55:58
“Council Member Kerr, did you have an opinion on 70% versus 80%?”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:57:00
“Are 70 and 80% in different bands for our commerce targets or are they in the same band?”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 2:58:46
“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…”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026
- Play at 3:00:29
“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.”
City Council · Jul 21, 2026