Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

And we should be good to go, Chair. Great.

Thank you. We will call to order for the Planning Commission Finance Subcommittee at 6.33 p.m. And Casey, can you help me with the roll call?

Yes. Commissioner Berger? Here. Vice Chair Daniel Garcia?

Here.

And Commissioner Ibrahimović? Here. And I will also note that we have Chair Quinton joining us as well. So we have quorum chair.

Thank you so much. And I will now call for an approval of the agenda.

So moved.

Thank you. And a second?

Second.

Okay. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

And then looking at the minutes from two weeks ago, I'll ask for a motion for approval of the minutes.

Motioned.

Thank you, Samir. And a second?

Seconded.

Okay, all in favor?

Aye.

Okay, thank you. Casey, do we have anybody in the audience?

uh chair it looks like we have no one uh here in attendance for uh for for an audience so i think we can skip public comment okay thank you so much we'll move into business items and um casey if you could introduce us to the staff we'll take it away Sure. Thank you, Chair. So staff, I'll just kind of call out names real quick, and I'm just going to ask you to hop on camera real quick and introduce yourself and who you're here representing. And then what we'll do is we'll roll right through the Q&A document, which I'll share after introductions. And this is just an opportunity for the planning commissioners to ask questions. clarify any of the questions and if there's any follow-ups to some of the written responses this is an opportunity for that and this is all in preparation for the public hearing that's coming up on September 21st so the Q&A document in particular will be shared with the rest of the Planning Commission so that they can use that as they move forward with their recommendation to City Council So with that, I'm just going to go right through the roster as I see it. Adam, can you introduce yourself real quick and who you're here representing?

Hello, I'm Adam Cummings. I'm the chief fire mechanic with Olympia Fire Department. And so I am representing the fire department today. Thanks, Adam.

Next on my screen is Joey.

Hi, I'm Joey Jones. I'm a senior engineer with Public Works Transportation.

Thank you, Joey.

Sean? Ruan, I'm Sean Lopez, Budget and Finance Analyst. So I help Casey putting the document together and making sure all the numbers tie out, things like that.

It's good to meet everybody.

Thank you, Sean.

Next is Tammy.

Hi, Tammy Ledoux, Finance and Policy Coordinator with the Parks Department.

Thanks, Tammy. Next is Paul.

Hi everyone, my name is Paul. I'm a wastewater project engineer with Public Works. I contributed to the wastewater portion of CFP.

Thank you, Paul. Next is Susan.

I'm Susan Clark. I am a engineering and planning manager with Water Resources, which means I'm here representing both the storm and surface water utility and the wastewater utility.

Thank you, Susan. And then next is James.

Yes, hi. My name is James Patton.

I'm a senior stormwater engineer, and I can answer some questions for the storm and surface water utility.

Great. Thank you very much. And let me double check. I'm trying to check her. I think that is everyone. Did I not call anyone or did anyone not have a chance to introduce themselves yet? All right. Well, with that, I'll share screen. Oh, looks like I've got one other person joining. Chief Flowers, are you willing to hop on and just introduce yourself real quick?

Absolutely. I'm trying to get my phone to work. Sorry. I got the computer screen that said reboot. So you get me on my phone. Chief Flowers, Fire Chief for the Olympia Fire Department here to answer any questions that you guys might have.

Great. Thanks. Thank you, Chief. And we'll go ahead and i think what we'll start with is we'll go to parks first so i'm going to share screen and folks if you can just give me a thumbs up here in a moment let me know you're seeing the q a document Sorry, I lost screen there. Are you folks seeing the Q&A now? Great. Oh, we can see it. Good deal. Thank you, folks. So with that, we'll just go straight to Parks. And I'll turn it back to Chair Berger, if you want to start with any questions or other commissioners, if you have any questions or clarifications you would like to ask of Tammy. If not, it can be a quick thanks to Tammy.

I think one of my questions, and I think this has come up in previous years, is just about how the level of service is calculated for parks. There was an answer to that, and the answer made sense. I was just wondering if maybe we could learn more about just like why is it like parkland for like thousand people? Like how does that number come up? Is that just like a standard number across Washington state? Just wondering kind of like where that number comes from and like how that is developed.

Yeah. I, I believe that is just a national standard that we've also adopted. And the level of service for us is the number of developed parkland parkland. And we separate into three categories, neighborhood parks, community, and open space. We also do have performance measures as well that we have out on the city's website. And so those are kind of complimentary also to our level of service standards. And as we noted too, we are in the middle of updating our parks plan. So the level of service, we don't update those annually. We update them every six years because that is the time when we update the parks plan. And so let's see, was there more to that question?

um not really just just more interesting um and i think it helps me for other sections because i think there's other sections i have similar questions about level of service so those questions are not for you but just helpful to know in this context for other uh ones um i was wondering though so then at the one of my other questions was there's no level of service for the armory why not

We categorize the armory similar to the Olympia Center, so we consider it a community park. And the armory, I think it was in maybe May of 2021 is when the city received that. And the parks plan was really underway at that point as far as the new one being developed because it was adopted in early 2022. So it is lumped into community park. So it will be part of our update to our metrics. But it also will have its own performance measures. I know that as soon as the armory is back open to the public, that is one thing that Val will be working on and working on some specific performance measures for the armory specifically. But in the parks plan, it is lumped into community park.

And folks just your track and I will update the document with the questions asked, and then the responses so i'll go back to the video and and update based on some of the responses but. Just taking quick notes as we move along so with that other questions for tammy.

He got can I add one one thing on there that tammy mentioned to about the performance measures. Please do. Tim, I just want to highlight also on the city website, I think there's about 20 or some odd performance measures kept in the Olympia performance, the ClearPoint strategy page. I just want to make sure that that's mentioned too as another way to be able to find those performance measures, correct?

Yes.

I'll include a link to that in the Q&A document when we move forward. All right. Anything else, commissioners? Chair, if you're good with it, I think we're ready to move on.

I'm good with it. Thank you so much, Tammy.

Thank you.

All right, so moving on through.

Next is gonna be transportation. So Joey, I think you're on deck for us here. So this is a fairly lengthy section. So commissioners, if you've got any clarifications, please let me know or ask Joey now, or if you have additional questions, or if there's a question that you want me to zoom to, just let me know.

Okay. Well, Joey, here we go. On question one, I am looking right now at the chapter four and the chart that you have with the existing and the 20-year project list. It's actually really tight, really neat. Why don't we, or why would, I would love to see that in the CFP. because would you be willing to bring that over?

I don't know that I can answer that question, but it's definitely one that I can propose to the staff is, yeah, why not include that table? We may have a reason. I'm not privy to that reason, but I'll definitely broach that question with the staff.

That might be something, Sean, you and I could take a look at.

Yeah, I think every year we try and find ways to make both the CFP and the budget more informative and provide the right information to the public and to the council and to the planning commission. So, yeah, if there's some additional information we can include that will help provide additional context or add some more clarity, I think that's something we can add. And so, yeah, Casey and I can work on that.

You know, there's a lot of really good information here. And I think there's a lot of other places where we flag the level of service as not having enough information, but there's indications that there's information elsewhere. So, you know, to add on to that question, it crosses over a few others. Are there databases that we are able to get information from to put directly into the CFP where we are supposed to be evaluating these projects? Whether it's transportation, wastewater, I think had a few questions having to do with level of service. Because I saw in the wastewater master plan that there was, and not to jump subjects here, but that it said that it knew how much each project would have impact people, but that information was not carried over. And so how do we get those things connected better?

I think I'll take a crack at some of that. I think some of that has to do with the CFP being a financial document. It's not a project document specifically. So we can link where possible to some of the either the master plans or to some of the project websites if we have those available. As a financial document, it's already several hundred pages. So we're trying not to overload the document with project specific things. So it's really going to be focused on project costs and brief summaries. So I think that's kind of why you're not seeing the breadth of detail that you might want on project to project. I don't, Joey, I don't know, or Sean, I don't know if you have anything to add to that, but I think that kind of the short answer is it's supposed to be a financial document, not a projects document.

Thank you.

I can add on to that really quick, too, is the more we kind of copy things versus referencing, then if one thing gets changed but the CFP is outdated, then it's a situation of the man with two watches never knows the right time. So making sure that if we do have a source document that we're linking to the source rather than trying to keep track of the information in two separate places.

Yeah, so I think the question is how can we Is it possible to do better referencing so that we are able to get that information directly because we know it exists?

Again, I think that might be something that Sean and I might have to work on a little bit with staff to see if we can get those referenced better. So, yeah, I'll follow up with you, Sean, and see what else we could possibly add there.

Thank you. And then Daniel, did you have a question?

I just wanted to follow up on this part of like, yes, I totally hear that it's a financial document. We don't want it to be gigantic and 8000 pages. I will say that though, then the source documents I think need to be clearly laid out and labeled. I clicked on the link for the one that says chapter four for the TMP. And I think this came up last year, Casey, that link, at least for me, if you click on the PDF, it comes up, the PDF is like formatted wrong. So all the pages are like cut off in the half. happened last year as well with the cfp process too so it's like you click on the link and then like the pdf is like it's supposed to be like landscape but then it's like formatted vertically so then like half the page is cut off So like some of like the source documents you're like linking to don't work because like I can't read half of them. So this came up last year with last year's CFP and I just am pointing it out that it's happening again this year.

So I did just click the link. And Vice Chair Garcia, that might be a browser issue or a platform issue. And that's something that I might have to look into myself. So how we link it and how it displays. And I'll follow up. I might follow up with you directly and see what impact that might be.

I think one of the other questions, are we ready for more questions? On a level of service going down the line, there are some areas where the transportation in particular references the minister plan and says, wants to provide complete streets. And I appreciate that it can be very difficult to get some of this data, but it's also level of service and measurable outcomes. And essentially that's that section is why are we doing these projects? And so the question that I had is, can we use national data or reference what studies are guiding us to make these decisions? And I think that would also make those sections much more robust in providing information for why these projects are prioritized. So that was question two.

So I'll take a stab at this one. But yeah, I mean, as a response, We don't really know of any like a mathematical estimate for why a specific thing would be valid for our city. There's countermeasures and we regularly are looking at that. There's a breadth of information out there about countermeasures for safety projects or other types of projects. The FHWA, the Federal Highway Administration does have a pretty robust website that they have that they call their proven countermeasures. So we keep up to date on those, but it's not as simple as you can plug a number in and you know that by doing this countermeasure, you're going to save this many people from getting in a collision. It just doesn't work like that. So it's a difficult thing to quantify.

Yeah, absolutely. And so I think less about measuring the actual impact, but more about demonstrating why the project is being done the way that it is. Using those national standards and showing like that, what impact this will have. And so as far as making the sections more robust.

So I think that comes a little bit back to what Casey was touching on is that this is, you know, by and large, a financial document, like we're not getting into the details of the project here. And so for most of our safety projects, you know, some of our projects don't, you know, like a street resurfacing project doesn't have a project website, but a safety project, most of them will have a project website and you know, maybe there's an opportunity to provide links to those project websites in the CFP where then that's where we actually get into, you know, more of the details of like what we're doing, why we're doing it, how the project came about, where the, like even more detail on the funding. So I think, you know, in the interest of, you know, the public's, you know, kind of interest in a financial document, you know, we're, we're trying to keep it so that like, here's the finances, here's, here's what we're spending on these projects. Here's a very brief description of the project, but, you know, I can definitely see arguments for, if you want to learn more about this project, you know, go, go here because that's, that's where we provide more of that type of information.

Christopher McConkey- And I would say for prioritization a lot of that's going to be under the particularly the transportation master plan, which is updated said every five or 10 years I think we're coming up on a 10 year review for that.

I think it's six to eight. I could be wrong on that. And our last one was adopted in 2021. So we're at five years since adoption. Yeah.

And I know that there's been discussion on getting the TMP update rolling here pretty soon. And that's where a lot of the project prioritization will come from is is within the transportation master plan so looking at the five to eight year timeline and then even 20 year. kind of capital projects might be identified in the tmp so. yeah i think you'll see more of the prioritization focused in the tmp document um than in the this document here but again coming back to the linking it back to that and maybe showing some of the um linking particularly to the prioritization discussion in the tmp maybe we can provide that going forward yeah yeah i touched on this a little bit in a different question i believe um but yeah you know we are so our

Our TMP gives a complete network and then says, here's the projects that we think we can do in 20 years or that we want to do in 20 years. And then, so those 20 year projects end up in our CFP seven to 20 year list. And then from those, we pull out to put into the six year list and those get prioritized just based internally on a multitude of factors, complexity of the project, funding availability, kind of community interest in specific projects. So I touched on that on a different question. I can't remember which number that was. So that's how, as far as prioritization goes, you know, there's kind of like the scaling, right? You've got the full network, then down to the 20-year, and that's kind of the TMPs. And then the CFP is where we pull those 20-year projects to put into a six-year list.

Yeah, Joe, I think it's on question 12. You laid that out. Thank you.

Thank you. I mean, following up on that, looking at the actual TMP, it looks like there were a number of projects that were highlighted to be in the 20-year project list, and some of the ones that were pulled forward actually had a lower score than some of the other ones. So is that purely a financial decision, and can that be reflected in the CFP?

It's not purely a financial decision. Like I answered in question 12, there's kind of a multitude of factors that go into it. There might be a really high priority project, but it's a really, really complex one. And we just don't have all the details. And there's a lot of things to cover where there might be another project that's slightly lower priority, but it's maybe not a slam dunk, but like, oh, we think we can get this done. We have... We've got much more information on it. We know we don't need right of way, for example. So that's a lot easier to move forward in the interest of keeping projects moving. And so some of those other ones that are more complex are just going to take time internally. We're still thinking about them. We're still spinning on them. But they're not ready to be put into that six-year list because we're not ready to start dedicating those capital dollars to them. That doesn't mean that we're not working on them. It just means that they're not going into that kind of official six-year process.

Thank you. Does anybody else have questions about transportation?

In kind of a similar vein, Joey, the answer to 12, I think, is a clear description of kind of how it gets to the precipice of the COP. But you were describing that internal process. I'm wondering... Cause I think sometimes this comes up because we don't have much insight into that internal process. And I realize it's kind of a, you know, there's how that final decision gets made might not be, you know, based on some algebra equation. Yeah, no. But my kind of question in this was just, I was just out of just curiosity, like how, if there's any kind of like a broader concept for how those, those intersection projects, you know, either work together or if it, if it is kind of like a complexity issue.

or something like that but yeah again it's it's it's a whole host of mix of different things and and you're absolutely right there's no algebraic we can't we can't just plug in a formula and say like oh this is the project we should do next um it really comes down to here's the projects that we think that we are ready to pursue or we think that you know oh this one might be a good for an upcoming grant opportunity Or there's been a host of new collisions that have happened at a specific location. Like, oh, we should move this up because it's starting to see an issue is emerging. Or maybe there's a community interest in a specific project that has risen up. That's maybe lesser, but it's still prevalent if we're getting a lot of requests at a specific location for something. Or even just like internally, we are out and about. Our crews are out and about. And they'll say, hey, our signal tech might say, hey, this signal is starting to see a long queue length. So maybe around about sooner rather than later at this location or something like that. These are just hypotheticals and examples, but things like that. All of those kind of feed into our decision making process. And that's why it's, I think, really hard to put anything into writing. uh, like in a CFP document for that, because it's, it's a little more, I don't want to go so far as to say it's esoteric because it's not, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a decision. Um, and it's one that we make internally based on our, our, you know, our engineering experience and our planning experience and just our knowledge of the city, I think is kind of all feeds into that. So that's something that's really hard to put down on paper.

Great. I'm always curious. Um, I had one other one L if it's all right. Um, the, in the 2027 sidewalk repair project line item in the CFP, it just has the 500,000 for 2027. Um, and then nothing, but is that, is that, uh,

rather than intending not to have money in that going forward is that more just that the kind of the policy decisions are still being worked on um i would say no uh for the past i'm trying to remember when we did our first one was that in 2024 we had our first sidewalk repair project and we've um started with 500 000 um because these projects started kind of coming at us, these sidewalk repair projects, we're playing a little bit of catch up. These aren't necessarily projects that were in our TMP that we had kind of a preliminary ideas for on where and what to do. We kind of just have to go year by year. And so we'll put 500,000 in for the next year CFP. And then I'm in the process this fall of like pulling all of our sidewalk data and selecting locations for the 2027 repair project. This is something that you know, in the next iteration of the TMP, maybe, maybe, you know, I'm not making any promises, but could be built in of something like that of, you know, a better methodology of prioritizing right now, or we're just having to kind of do it each year. You know, we pull the data, we say, okay, here's, here's the locations that we know we need repair, which also is like, you know, the condition of a sidewalk can change year to year. You know, you'll all of a sudden you'll get a tree that will heave a root really bad one year. And so it's like, Oh, maybe now this is more of a priority than we thought it was a year ago or two years ago. So in some senses, it makes sense to do sidewalk repair kind of on a year to year, but it really, Right now, the kind of pending policy decision is not impacting what we're doing for the sidewalk repair. It's just a matter of selecting those locations and then getting them put into the CFP, getting them put into the official project. And we use $500,000 as kind of a baseline for each year. This year, our 26 sidewalk repair, we're actually doing closer to a million dollars of repair. And that just was, you know, once we have kind of those locations identified, we'll kind of adjust what funding is needed. But that's kind of our baseline goal is about 500,000. And that includes design and construction.

Okay, great. So the intention is still there. It's just the projects aren't quite prime time for CFP. Great.

That's all I had. Something I meant to do at the start was also clarify that we're just reviewing the preliminary at this point. I know that some of the Public Works teams actually have some pretty significant updates that they're still working on that will go into the final. And so that's something to bear in mind is that we're still working kind of from a draft document. where different departments are making some changes and you might actually see some line item changes that will be finalized during the final CFP review process. So something to bear in mind, this isn't all set in stone just yet. So apologies that I didn't start the conversation by saying that we're looking at preliminary numbers and that some of this is still very much in flux.

Thanks, AC. I thought I had.

I had a question in the answer to number 34, it asks or talks about the pavement management model. What is that?

Um, so I'm going to try to try to distill this down because the pavement management model is a pretty complicated thing, but, um, So we use a program that's called StreetSaver and that's a pretty widely recognized software for pavement management. And what that software does is that you input the condition of your streets and that uses a variety of factors of the condition and then it run the algorithm and then gives you what's called a PCI. And so that's the pavement condition index. And that's a scale from zero to 100 100 being a perfect street zero being a completely failed street for each of the street segments. And so the pavement management model would be the software models. what it thinks that pavement's going to, given its current condition and given its volume of traffic and given its asphalt thickness and its underlying conditions, how much it thinks it's going to deteriorate over the next several years. And then with that model, you can then also do a financial model and say, okay, if we had X amount of dollars per year to spend on pavement management, you could do this much repair on those streets and bring those PCIs, you know, up by so much. And then, so it's, you know, a combination of things, but the model is really talking about the street saver model of current and predicted PCI values, as well as with our current project estimates, what kind of projects and with the amount of funding that we have or currently put toward pavement management, what we think the pavement condition will be at the end of, you know, whatever model period you want. We currently model on a six-year period just because that matches what our CFP is. We could do longer, we could do shorter. Six years is actually a pretty good estimate length of time for a payment management assessment, just because, you know, as you start to get into it, if you go too far out, it just gets really unpredictable. You know, you don't know if you're going to have a bad winter or things like that, that can have pretty big impacts to payment management, as well as, you know, we just don't know what the funding will be too far out. So six years is actually a nice number to have. So it works out well that it kind of matches up with the CFP timeline. That being said, we don't update the model every year with the CFP. It's a big undertaking. And so we do that about every three to four years, sometimes even more, depending on how many projects we've done.

That makes sense. Thank you. So I guess related back to the level of service questions, could you use street paver to better estimate level of service? Because I feel like that's what that question was kind of getting to, is that there wasn't defined level of service. Could you use street paver to guesstimate like level of service and like, Oh, if we, you know, put in this many more bike lanes, that's going to take out this much asphalt, meaning we save this much money on, you know, roads and cars wearing down those roads, but then the bike lane is going to be cheaper over the long run. Like, do you see, like, could you like make some sort of guess like that?

Uh, yeah, I see what you're saying. And the short answer is, is no. Um, and, and the reason being is that, um, there's just not a good way to predict like, okay, if we put in a bike lane, that's going to reduce vehicle numbers by this much. You know, we don't have, there's, I just, I can't even think of like a way that we would have that kind of methodology.

I mean, could we look at other cities that maybe have done these things and look at studies of like, Hey, this bike lane does reduce by X percent.

Yeah. We potentially could. Again, I don't know that there's going to be a lot of data about that. The other thing to keep in mind is that when building a single bike lane, we even in transportation, especially now, don't anticipate that that bike lane is going to necessarily be heavily used. Until we get a complete street system, we're trying to piece together things at this point. Our transportation master plan was only adopted five years ago. you know, we haven't had time to fully build this, this network, this complete network. And so if we build a, you know, a bike lane along a segment, it might get used. Yes. But is it going to be used as much as when we get to a complete system? No. Um, and so, and then the other thing on that too, is, um, street savers, you know, it's, it's a little bit of a black box and that like, you can't, there's no way to like input, like, You know that would be very granular information that would be a very difficult as like you'd be saying like oh i'm this specific street we built the bike lane, so the. vehicle volumes are going to drop by this much it's it's much more like Okay, you have an arterial street, which means volumes are between this much and this much. And you have a major collector streets of volume there between this much and this much and so. That would be, and I'm not aware of any payment management software that would have that granular of a level of detail where street by street, you say, okay, the volumes on this street is X amount, and it's gonna drop by this much because of, some some factor you know that this is all it's very it's very big picture you know we've got over 200 miles of street to to do and so if we had to do that on every street the model that's already a big undertaking would be a massive undertaking that every year have to update the volumes um of vehicles yeah yeah i hear that it makes sense i guess it's just like hard to like then know because it's like if there isn't like a super clearly defined like level of service

And if we are just like basing it on like assumptions, it's kind of just like as a commissioner, like when you're reviewing this, like it feels like kind of hard then to like know what to look at and we've noted i think in past comment letters that like the pavement condition index is like too low like we would like it to be higher and so it's like also hard to like just like it feels like we've like said that to council like in our comment letter have like noted that to council like two or three years in a row so it just would be nice to like be able to suggest something to them like hey we've said three years in a row to you we would like the payment condition to be higher. And so it'd be nice to like suggest some, like, like not just yell at them or not just continually say the same thing over and over, but like say something productive and be like, Hey, we've talked about this and we would suggest this thing.

Yeah, no, I understood. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is that, you know, even like, You know, adding a bike lane to a street doesn't change the PCI of the street because that street is still potentially failing. So the only way to bring a PCI up is to do some sort of pavement repair. And whether that's, you know, a chip seal or a crack seal to at least, you know, preserve the pavement or to do a full overlay, that's really the only way to bring the PCI up.

I mean, yes, and cars off the road would mean less wear and tear on those roads.

Yes, that's not going to raise the PCI, though. The PCI is based on the physical condition of the street. It's based on the potholes, the cracks, the allegation, the stresses on the pavement that are already there. And so if you add a bike lane, those stresses are still there. And there's still a pothole, right? You haven't fixed that pothole by adding a bike lane. And so the only way to bring the PCI up is to repair the pavement in some way.

Joey, I think it might be more that perhaps the ongoing maintenance would be less, right? If you could reduce the vehicle miles traveled across the system by 10% or something like that, then that would change the model a little bit for how fast the wear happens.

Yeah, that's true. I do want to emphasize that, you know, vehicles are not the only thing causing wear and tear, you know, especially personal vehicles. Freight is, you know, a much, much bigger factor. You know, big trucks and honestly, transit buses are very, very heavy, very, very stressful for the street. And then honestly, freeze-thaw cycles are extremely damaging to streets. So you're It's an interesting thing that if you lived in a climate that gets cold and stays cold, your streets are actually better off. When you live in a climate that gets cold and then warms up and then gets cold and then warms up all winter long, that's very, very hard on the street because you get water into those cracks, it freezes and expands and then it melts and then it gets water and then freezes and expands. And so those cracks just grow all winter long. And so it's more than just vehicles, right? There's a lot of factors that go into the street.

I just, on this topic, I had one, um, quick clarification is the, so there's the pavement management report that includes some of these projections. Is that, are those projections the same thing as the pavement management model? Are you taking this?

Yeah. So the projections come from the model. Yes.

Okay. And that, that model is all part of the report. Not, not like something separate the arc.

Yep.

Chair, any other questions for this group or would you like to move on?

I just had one more looking at 28 and 33. It's just because I saw this echoed. 28 was asking about if we're measuring connected trips. So that would be trips that might also use the bus. And so 33 also asked measuring pedestrians' ability to get around bus stops and proximity to bus stops tracked in the TMP. Okay.

For sure, proximity to bus stops is tracked in the TMP. That's one of the things that's one of the prioritization methods in the TMP on where we should build new sidewalks is based on proximity to things like bus stops or other pedestrian generators.

And that's taken into account in the prioritization?

Of the projects in the TMP, yes.

Okay, thank you. Were there any other questions? No, we're good. We made it through. Thank you, Joey.

Yeah, thank you. All right. Next, we had fire. So Chief Flowers and Adam, if you're ready to take on some questions here, welcome. Chair, do you want to start or other commissioners?

I do not. I would let commissioners let us know if they have questions.

Again, broken record, I think in the past we have asked about, we've been told by transportation that we need large streets because fire trucks need to turn around or turn. And then we asked the fire department and they say we have no problem turning. So I just was noting this again here of just like an additional just like point to bring it up of just wondering about small fire trucks. And I think the answer, again, kind of makes sense. But don't know if anybody from fire wants to speak about smaller fire trucks.

I think smaller fire trucks are always a reasonable question to ask. When I think about what does that look like here in the U.S., though, I think we have an idea of a model I would suspect that's probably more of a European model that's a little bit smaller and tighter. And the reality is that isn't really manufactured here in the United States. So we can't really, not really productive for us to bring them over because we don't have the mechanics trained or the, I'll say, repair ability here within the states. And we do have the requirements within our city code that require us as far as the turn and the hammerhead so that we can turn. Those things are important, as well as the width of the streets, just so that we're able to put our ladder truck out and have accessible operations. So I think it's always going to be a balancing act of balancing competing priorities of a walkable city. And then we're going to selfishly say we want us to be able to respond to all sorts of hazards and really just balancing the two. You can look at smaller type trucks, like they would call those mini pumpers, but the mini pumpers I would say are kind of more just like what we would have as a brush truck. It's like a glorified brush truck and a little bit better than what we have now. As that it holds more water, but doesn't really. doesn't really do what we need it to do as far as a structural engine or a type one engine. And when we look at those type of vehicles, they don't hold the amount of hose or meet the NFPA requirements. So we're kind of stuck in a balancing act, I'll say.

Got it. Have we also, this might be outside of like CFP discussion, but have we also maybe like looked at like fire safety like i know that there's like also conversation around like single stair apartments and like fire codes and like how safe new apartments are with like all the new fire safety features versus like older apartments just wondering if any of that was like also factored into like thinking about like responsiveness to like ability to like fight fires

It does factor in as far as the single staircase. I know our fire marshal's office has been in contact. Seattle Fire has done that for a long time, but they have very specific requirements as far as the single staircase, the number of stairs, the fire access, and then kind of the fire protection models that they have within those buildings. So our fire marshal's office is always working on those. I hesitate to say that it changes our response model in the sense that we still need a Type 1 engine to be able to respond, which isn't a smaller engine system. Those are typically more than a single story apartment, which if there was to actually be a fire, we would need our ladder structure response. So any of those commercial structure fire responses are going to are going to necessitate a large response. And that's just to get the effective response force on scene.

Got it. Thank you.

I had a question related to question one, just with annexation. And I hinted to this or at this with Casey last time. And I was wondering if. TIF, just with the change to state law in 26, if tax increment financing was considered to be used to fund part of the station, just I don't know if there's predictions for growth in that service area, while then like general obligation bonds or traditional financing could be used for the existing service needs and things like trucks instead.

certainly could use general obligation bonds to do that or the other type of financing. It's really just a matter of when the council decides that they would want to merge. And the biggest discussion is we know that there's a necessity to put a fire station in that south UGA area if we want to annex it. And so I think it's just balancing the cost with what the revenue is and And in my discussions with Tim Smith and community development is that it really just hasn't penciled out yet. That doesn't mean that it won't ever. But it's a balancing act, again, of figuring out what their revenue source would be and would they be able to fund the necessity, you know, kind of the necessitative, I'll say, infrastructure within those within bringing it into the city.

Yeah. It's not just the fire station and fire coverage issue. I think part of the response there is also talking about increase. If the city does annex the South UGA, I think the other major concern for, I won't say concern, but major cost factor is sewer coverage and probably the necessity for an additional sewer pump station. There was some discussion of a sewer lift along Boulevard when LBA was not LBA but was possibly going to be a future subdivision. And part of that discussion at the time was that if that subdivision went in, there would be a sewer lift that would actually serve the South UGA. When that subdivision didn't go through, that sewer lift station also fell through. So the infrastructure for the South UGA has some pretty major needs for us to be able to provide that level of service or just even the utility connections down there. So there's the fire department consideration, but also utilities and water, As well as police department coverage. It's an increased area that's currently under the Thurston County Sheriff's Office jurisdiction. So there's a lot of factors that go into it. And like Chief said, it doesn't necessarily pencil to... Basically, in a 10-year outlay, we were, as part of that discussion with Council, I think going back to 2023, is that within 10 years, we were going to be looking at a pretty significant shortfall in funding to be able to annex that area at this time. So unless there is ongoing service fee coverage, it's not necessarily viable just yet. So there are some other ways to work around that, but it's not just the fire department by any means.

So it depends pretty heavily on voter approved levies then at this point for existing taxpayers. Yeah. I think I was, I'm just thinking strategically if there's a way to capture some of the increased assessed value and I'll make it maybe an easier pill to swallow, I guess, if it's had issues in the past.

I know some of those discussions are still ongoing, but I think at the moment, council doesn't have an appetite for annexation of the South UGA. And a lot of that is pretty strictly financial. Just finding the resources to actually continue to be able to provide a level of service that the city expects to provide to the community.

Are there any other questions on fire? Thank you, Chief Flowers. Thank you, Adam.

Thanks, folks. All right, general capital facilities. So I'll just, for the general questions and for this one, I'll inquire, I think my point of contact for that is probably Gary Franks. I'll reach out to him. Sean, I might coordinate with you on some of the responses under general questions and general facilities. So I don't think we have anyone here for that, but I will follow up on that question for you. Daniel?

The general question, some of the typos and things like that that were found?

I believe that's what some of the general questions were, and I think we can address that offline. Yeah, I've already got those fixed for the final question.

Casey, also for general, I think my question was about the armory. And I know that it's probably like a funding thing of like where the funding comes from. But I guess my question would just be like, how far can we push that? Like what other types of facilities can be listed under the parks? Like, cause the armory is, it's got some green space, but I wouldn't, it's not what I would, it's more recreation than park. So yeah. And I think that's just to add on. If you follow up with that person, that was kind of like one of the other questions.

Okay. I'll follow up with probably Gary and actually probably Tammy. Tammy probably would have been able to answer that. So I'll note follow up with Tammy and Gary. And actually, just real quick, Chief Flowers, if you're still on, you're welcome to stay online. But also, if you want to jump off, you're welcome to jump off. You don't have to stay for the whole meeting.

Thank you. I'm going to go cook some dinner for the kids.

Sounds great. Thanks for being here, Chief.

Yep.

Let's go with...

You see, this is Susan Clark. Gary Franks oversees water resources, which is the stormwater utility. Yeah. So I'm not quite sure.

Not Gary. Eli. Eli. Thank you. Thank you.

That makes more sense. Perfect.

Sorry about that. Thanks. Thanks for that. Catching that, Susan.

No, no problem.

And can I just ask a clarifying question? Are the drinking water projects, those are funded primarily through utility rates, right? And the general facility charges?

Is that accurate? This is Susan Clark. Until a couple years ago, I also was responsible for drinking water. You're right. You're correct. Your question?

Is there a prediction on how much water rates would need to increase to fund the CFP?

Not going to answer that.

No worries. Just checking.

i think we are on drinking and i don't think we have we were going to have staff able to join us for drinking water but they did respond so what i will ask commissioners if you've got additional questions or clarifications on this i'll note them and we'll forward those to staff so commissioner ibrahimovic it sounds like you have the question of what would it take to fund these projects is that correct

Yeah, just because I understand a lot of it's like there's existing maintenance requirements. And then also just with some of the redundancy related projects that also I think is looking forward with population growth as well. So it's not all going to fall on existing taxpayers, obviously. So it's kind of a hard number to forecast with growth and how that balances out existing rates.

Casey, can I... Each year the utilities present the recommended rate changes to the council. I believe either late October or November the finance committee has presented that first and then the full council gets it. So we can follow up and get you the date of when that will be. But that takes into account not just the capital projects but also the operating needs that go into impacting that rate.

This is Susan Clark again, the finance committee meetings on the 19th at which those, that piece of information for all the utilities will be presented.

Yes. Thank you, Susan.

So I'll try to follow up on that and get some additional information there. Anything else on drinking water? All right, so next up, I've got, oh, Chair, are you good with we roll along? Sorry.

Yeah, it's totally fine. We can roll along.

All right. Storm and surface water. Any questions for Susan on this one? Not seeing any. Chair, do you have anything or shall we keep plugging along?

I do not have anything. So thank you, Susan. It looks like very thorough answers.

Cool. Thank you, Susan. And then driving on. Wait, did I skip one? I'm sorry. And I'm sorry for scrolling, folks. I'm not trying to make anyone dizzy here. So we'll just pause real quick and we'll move down. And next up is wastewater. So any questions for our wastewater team? Which I think, Susan, you're here for that as well, right? Yep.

I think I'm just reading about old port, one's historical problems and thinking, wow. Just a raw sewage spill.

Horrible.

Susan, it looks like you got us covered here, so. If there's no other questions, Chair, I'm going to pause and move on.

Thank you, Susan.

Next up was waste resources. Yeah, I don't think we had anyone for waste resources. Ron Jones wasn't able to join tonight. So I will say if we have any questions for waste resources, I know there are a number of questions there. Anyone have any questions regarding waste resources that they want me to follow up on?

Could I just add a question about what alternatives were evaluated compared to constructing a new facility? So like renovating the existing facility and what costs were associated with those?

Yes, and I know that there, there was a study done on that and i'll see if I can dig some of that info up so i'll just note that. And i'll check our previous I think that might have been a question last year, the year before, so I think we've got some information on that that I can follow up and share. But yes, so what alternatives. I will follow up on that and get some answers for you. Go ahead.

Also question, I don't know if it came up yet, but cable tax. Have we found a sustainable source for the cable tax declining revenue?

Sean, I'm not tracking that we found an alternative for that. I know that that's something that comes up pretty regularly when we talk CFP. And that might be something that was possibly even at city manager level. So unless you're hearing any other chatter, I haven't heard of any alternatives yet.

Yeah, we'll follow up and see if there's any additional information that we can provide to you on that.

Again, just something that I think we've asked about in the past. So it would be nice to suggest something productive to City Council and not just have a long list of complaints, but actually provide something

I'm fairly certain if there was an alternative available that you could suggest, the city would love to know. And I say that slightly glibly, but...

I mean, the answer in my mind is tax Netflix. But now you're really hitting me where my home... You're really coming for me where my home is. So I don't know if I want to suggest that to council.

Yeah. Yeah, and that's getting into kind of net neutrality issues. So I know there's a lot of discussion on how to find alternative revenues, but I think we're just going to have to follow up and see if there's been any other discussion or studies on that. And I'm not tracking any conversation on that yet, just a looming and decreasing revenue source for us.

Yeah, it's not totally here you and I'm half joking about taxing Netflix, but I just it is like one of those things like it feels like it's like slow moving. And I feel like we just say it once a year and then a year passes and then we say it again. And then it's like that's it adds up to a lot of money overall. So it's like not as insignificant amount.

So anyway. No, it's it's a concern that's not lost on staff by any means. Yeah, we're tracking that. I think unless there's anything else, I don't think we even have staff left. So any other general questions that Sean or I can answer? Anything else that the planning commission at large might have interest in that you want us to follow up on?

Wondering, Casey, if Zainab ever sent anything in.

Yeah, some of the questions. She definitely had some questions for waste resources. I think a fair number of the questions on waste resources and water utilities actually came from Zana. So I don't know if she had any follow-up. I have shared the draft document with the Planning Commission at large, but I haven't gotten any follow-up from any of the other commissioners. So, if they have follow-up, I guess we'll find out on the 21st. And like I said, I know that Gary Franks has mentioned some changes in some of the line items, and Sean, I've followed up with you. I think we're going to update some of those once we get towards the final CFP. So I think what we've done in the past is based on the preliminary will forward recommended planning commission will forward their recommendation to city council. I think when we present the final CFP, correct me if I'm wrong here, Greg, but I think I've done kind of an after approval back brief with the planning commission. If I haven't, that's something I certainly could do and just share where line items changed once it's gone through final adoption.

Yeah, I think you did that. I'm trying to remember whether it happened in all the comprehensive plan chaos, but in past years, yeah.

Okay. Well, I think, Chair, unless you've got anything else here for us, I'll go back and try to revise the Q&A document. I'll update a few things. Sean, you and I have a couple of things that we'll check on and see what we can provide. And I'll try to get a revised document into the agenda packet for the September 21. So you'll see that probably the week actually next week. So you should see an updated Q&A document probably by Tuesday, which is September 15. So unless there's anything else, I think that's all we've got for this chair.

Thank you. Do we need to make any announcements for upcoming meetings or do we need to go to adjournment?

Just for anyone that's here listening, our next meeting will be September 21st. We can, at the public hearing, decide if we want to hold a third finance subcommittee meeting. We can make that decision at that point, but at this time, there isn't a third meeting scheduled of the finance subcommittee. So if you do choose to hold another meeting, we'll advertise that and make that available after the September 21st public hearing.

Commissioners, anything else?

Do we, sorry, Casey, wondering, we don't have a third meeting scheduled?

I think I've got a tentative hold on the calendar, but it's not necessarily set in stone that we will hold that. We can make that call during any deliberations that we have on September 21st. If we decide to hold that meeting, we can schedule that as needed. Definitely don't need

Sorry, what was the date of that third meeting then?

You know, that's a good question now that I'm saying that. I think we, yeah. Well, I take back what I just said because I have that tentatively scheduled for the 21st. So if I'm going to notice that, I need to know. What we would typically use that third meeting for is to discuss the, basically the comment letter. Yes. I leave that up to you folks if you want me to go ahead and get that notice and scheduled, we can do that. And we could choose to cancel it. On the 21st and I can just send out a notice of cancellation, but for noticing purposes if there's any inclination to possibly hold one more meeting to discuss the comment letter. i'll have to notice that we can just plan on that from here.

I'm hesitant to suggest another meeting because I don't want to take up people's time or my own time, but I also think it would be helpful for us to have time to talk about the comment letter. So I'll defer to you.

I have not done this before, so I am inclined to have a meeting.

We'll just plan on the finance subcommittee. The next meeting will be the 22nd, which is the day immediately following the public hearing. So um we'll we'll reconvene right after the the commission at large so that we can get the comment letter rolling yeah i've also found that that follow-up meeting to be useful so okay so the next two upcoming meetings will be september 21st full commission and then um a final finance subcommittee on september 22nd thank you for pressing on that it's um yeah i thought we would have had more time but i was mistaken obviously

Noticing can be a lot with the calendar, but thank you. And I guess we'll see everyone Saturday.

Yes.

Planning Commission retreat.

9.30 Saturday at the Olympia Center, room 204. And just to clarify, that will be in-person only. I don't have an online option for that.

Got it.

Exciting. Probably the first only in-person meeting since I've been on the Planning Commission.

Probably going back to at least pre-COVID. Yeah.

There's nothing else. I'll take a motion to adjourn.

You don't need a motion, Chair.

I do not.

Just state the time and adjourn it.

You guys at 742, let's get out of here.

Thank you, everyone. John, thanks for being here as well. Thanks, Casey.

See you.