City Council - Regular Meeting

Yeah. And we're an employee. So I don't wasn't gonna city council regular meeting. The last thing we have last week is. I'd like to remind us about guiding principles. Are we raising the bar and all of our actions? Are we already?

We not really? Mister

mayor, is your mic Mister

mayor, apologies. We're not recording. Don't believe. Can we get mic Can you make sure your microphone is on?

Maybe we'll

I think this is I

can't hear it.

I don't want that to do that. No.

Mm-mm. Maybe the lights on. I think it's just to be

we have a lot more people here. Can see that.

I'll take it with the phone. You shouldn't.

Mine's on. Can you hear me?

Okay.

Just wake up. I

know. Talk to them. Alright. Let's start over. Good evening.

I'd like to welcome you and call the order for our city council meeting for February 24, and I'd like to remind us of our guiding principles and the actions that we're about to take. Are we rising raising the bar in all of our actions? Are we honoring the past? We're not living in the past. We're building positive connections to our community and our partners, and is the decision making process for a diverse It's an ING.

Is that what you're referring to? Mhmm.

Yeah.

I second it.

K. So you're removing consent item c and making it business item h. Motion is second. All in favor of consent.

Aye.

Okay.

Actually, it's before public comment, your Mr. Mayor. The on the business item agenda this evening for item A, we have the proposed rezone. And just a reminder to the public present and to counsel that we will be unable to take additional public comment on that topic because we closed the public hearing at our last meeting. So if someone were to begin to speak about that, I would have to inter intervene and have the clerk turn off the mic. But members of the public who are present who wanna speak to that are free to do so at the end of the meeting when we have our second public comment period.

Excuse me. So I signed up for both of us here. That's okay.

Oh, you don't have to

sign up. This is just if you want information back

Oh. For follow-up. But yep. Okay.

Fine. Well, here you go. Well, thank you. And I I'm gonna let Corinne join me. I signed both of us together hoping to get some extra time. I have a bit of a recovery issue with with a flu, so I might lose my voice in the process here. But, I wanna thank you for allowing us to speak to you, members of the council and mayor and staff. I understand that tonight there was gonna be some folks here talking about challenges and permitting small business, etcetera, and I thought it'd be

You all know you have to be good again by yourself.

Of course. Steve Sego at Carinajada. Carinajada. At 3711 Southwest Fredrona Lane South, what we call Brigadoon out in the country, and we own properties in in in in Bremerton or, excuse me, in Bremerton, but in in in Port Street at Bay Street, the Ross Point properties, etcetera. We we host the WWCA to help keep them alive for a while.

But as you all know, those of you who do know me or have been a part of this community for a while, we've spent a lot of our time, resources, energy, vision, passion, dreams to try to support this community every way we could think of. We've been doing this before I came back to South Kitsap. As you know, Corinne has been a part of too many things to list when it comes to, you know, service to this community and nonprofits and community organizations, and so many of you have worked with her over the years that know that. We also had a restaurant called The Doc Bar and Eatery that after nine years of trying to keep people employed at our expense, we knew we couldn't keep that going, so we closed that. But we understand the process of working with a a business downtown as well.

And I just want you to know this is not something I'm proud of, but we've never made a dime. We've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars here, but we did it with a passion and a commitment and a belief and a vision. And, you know, no nobody has to eyes were open. But we we also know that there's still some opportunities, challenges, and we're part of some of those. Some of you might know that we're currently trying to restore the historic DNR theater, Dragonfly, and have made much progress. Hopefully, sooner our our kids can move in because if they can't, they're gonna have to move in with us, and we have enough grandkids in our neighborhood right now. So but we are working really hard to get them into a a a space that they should have moved in March. That yellow light means Yeah.

One minute.

One minute. Okay. Can I take her time too? Mhmm. No. Oh, well Well, you

can talk. She can talk to you.

Oh, well, I'll just set you up then. So I just wanna tell you that, you know, we about a year and a half, two years ago, as we're trying to permit the the the theater, and we had completed, thanks to the community support, Largeste, the the the building out of the the alleyway there. And we're trying to get a certificate of occupancy, and we asked for the city. The city contacted us and said we want to meet you on-site. There's some issues we have.

We met there with your building inspector who pointed out to me, surprisingly, that we had improved our neighbor's property, not just ours. And I was confused by what that meant. And I said, I don't understand. She showed me a map, and it showed right down the middle of the the alley a line. And she said, well, there's a property line, and now you're over here and at the stage, and that Cal Soy building next door is, you know, part of your your project. I said, that's not true. You're wrong. Why why do you believe that? Well, here's here's the map. And I looked at it, I said, well, that's the reflection of the shadow of the building next door down the middle of the alley. And instead of her saying, oops. Sorry. It was, here's something else I'm gonna ding you with. And off we went with this process. And I knew that we had a problem in this city.

And I gotta say, I love Nick Bond. I love the staff. You guys are great. But there's something afoot that we need to resolve, and I have confidence that we can fix this. I do. I know other people here tonight wanna share their stories, but I'm an optimist. And Corrine, do you wanna share anything else in addition? And there's some notes.

I didn't wear my my glasses, so

I can't even read your notes.

But I will say that, you know,

that there is a struggle with a lot of businesses, individuals, and organizations, and some of them are here tonight. Some could not be here tonight. But I even heard a few individuals express concern about expressing their concerns for fear of retribution. Now that may be true or not. Retribution, not so much from you guys, but maybe from potential staff. And they didn't feel like they could come forward and share again. That's really unfortunate. So and just reiterate what Steve says. We believe in this community. We put our heart and soul and a lot of funds, a lot of time, a lot of effort.

And, you know, we haven't made a lot of we haven't made any money. We have not we seriously have not made any money, and that may be poor judgment on our part. But we keep trying, and then there are roadblocks put up for us and a lot of other people like us. And it's been worse the last two years. It just gets continually worse. So I'll I'll leave it at that because there's a lot of other people I think that wanna speed up.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Jeff, thank you.

Steve's nicer than I am. My name is Ray Klein, and I'm here tonight to highlight a great injustice taking place right here in Port Orchard. A renegated city employee, deputy DCD director Angela Garcia is weaponizing the law against small business, and you may or opt to cancel it or allowing it to happen. Building codes are supposed to exist to promote safety, but under this administration, they're being used to stop all positive economic activity. Angela and her team receive ever growing salaries, benefits, paid time off to perpetrate this injustice against us.

We believe the goal is to grow bureaucracy, hiring employees to perform tasks that common sense dictates do not need to be performed. With the law weaponized and over applied, the DCD has created an artificial workload. The side effect is the decimation of lives, the destruction of investments in this community, and the punishment of innocence. Now many we have many stories tonight about the victims of DCD, but what you won't hear are the stories of the businesses that simply gave up, the ones that quit early, the ones that went out of business silently. You won't hear from the people currently fighting the city because they're terrified of retribution.

I'm afraid too. Will I suffer from speaking tonight? I'll let you know. Regardless, we can't cow cower from bullies. We're demanding an attitude adjustment from the mayor and the DCD. Follow the intent of the law. This doesn't mean using codes to block all improvements. Provide guardrails for basic safety, sure, but exercise common sense and judgment. Mayor is a role for a leader. Our mayor is a coward hiding behind an expensive, wasteful bureaucracy.

We don't need more so called experts. We need regular people who exercise common sense. Overregulation is killing activity everywhere in America, and right now, Port Orchard is leading the way. I'm not here just to complain. I'm here to show you a better way. I brought a gift for council members. This is an economics book, Build Baby Build, by economist Brian Kaplan. Leads reading. It creates a clear case for why we need to deregulate. It's very informative and mostly pictures.

Okay.

Mayor wants to hire more people. This is the exact opposite of what we need. The city needs to spend less, do less, and let the citizens make a better port or treat. Please change course before the damage becomes irreversible. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. Thank Thank you. I have my name.

Thanks, ma'am.

Thank you.

How are you? Thank you.

Council, mayor, staff, audience. From disaster to nightmare, my story of building a home in Port Orchard.

I know I know who you are. Guess.

Nancy Donlin, former council member. On 08/02/2022, my home was destroyed by fire at 205 Taylor Street, and I lost everything. City representatives quickly arrived posting no trespassing signs and taping off the area. Angela Garcia, a city official assured me I'd receive preferential treatment for rebuilding permits if I informed the DCD that my loss is due to disaster and that gave me hope. After nine exhausting months, I finally received the permit and construction began 01/02/2025.

For eight months, progress was steady and smooth. I have the first one up. That one. Yes. That one. Yes. Okay. Good. Then on September 2, I noticed Angela Garcia and two others carrying a stop work sign marching solemnly in front of my project. They said a complaint had been filed about tree removal and demanded all work cease.

I explained we'd only cleared saplings with permission from her supervisor Nick Bond. She insisted I needed a special permit and dismissed my explanation ending the conversation abruptly. If only she had contacted me first. From that moment forward, the city's approach shifted. Inspections became frequent and increasingly scrutinized, progress stalled, and the atmosphere felt charged with hostility and suspicion.

Each new inspection brought costly issues and lengthy delays. It was hard not to feel targeted as if the city's actions were less about regulation and more about retaliation for our earlier disagreement. Could I have the next one up, please? The biggest setback came when the city suddenly required my home to be pinned into the property, a $125,000 eleventh hour decision. Who can afford that?

Can any of you write a check like that and think nothing of it? I can't. An expense that should have been addressed much earlier in the permitting or construction. Instead by waiting so long options were limited and the cost soared. Altogether the city has added nearly $250,000 to my construction costs with work suspended for seven months and still loan interest piled up nearly $50,000 My fiance and I have been separated by distance unable to live together until the home is finished.

The ongoing delays forced me to postpone major surgery and the stress took a toll on my health, even sending me to the ER with dangerously high blood pressure at 200. In summary, the city's actions have affected my finance, my personal life and my health. This is bureaucratic bullying at its finest and I fear, I fear further retaliation for speaking out. We urge the DCD to discover customer service and put it front and center. Adopt customer service instead of customer indifference. We want leadership that is real and not created by hiring a mission statement consultant. I want to get my inspection scheduled right away and back to building. I'd like to know why that can't happen immediately.

Thank you.

Welcome to.

Yep.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Sarah Butler. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here tonight. Small businesses are not just tenants in storefronts. They're the heartbeat of Port Orchard. They sponsor our youth sport teams. They donate to our fundraisers. They employ our neighbors. They create the vibrancy that makes our downtown and commercial corridors feel alive instead of vacant. When small business opens its doors, it's not just a transaction. It is a family taking a financial risk. It's an entrepreneur investing their savings. It's someone choosing Port Orchard as a place they believe in. I grew up here. I've watched this community evolve, and I chose to build my business here because I believe in Port Orchard.

I'm a hometown kid who chose to invest my career, my reputation, and my energy back into the city. However, many of our small business owners are facing significant challenges navigating the permit process. Delays, inconsistent communication, unclear timelines, procedural hurdles are making it difficult, not only for new businesses to open, but for existing businesses to expand. For a small business, time is not abstract. Time is rent being paid on a space that cannot yet open. Time is payroll starting before revenue begins. Time is inventory sitting idle. Extended permitting timelines can be the difference between success and failure. I see this firsthand in my role as a commercial real estate broker. My job is to fill those vacant spaces and bring new energy into our community.

I work with entrepreneurs who are excited to come here. They see potential. They want to invest. But when they hear stories of lengthy or unpredictable permitting experiences, they hesitate. Some choose neighbor in jurisdictions where processes are clear and timelines are more reliable. The this impacts not only my business, but our entire community. Empty storefronts prop affect property values. They affect tax revenue. They affect public perception. When business struggle to expand or open, we all feel a ripple effects.

Port Orchard has an incredible potential. We have passionate business owners, supportive residents, a growing population. What we need is a permitting process that reflects the same spirit of partnership and progress. Predictability, transparency, accountability within the system would go a long way towards supporting the entrepreneurs who want to build here. I am here I'm not here to simply point out problems. I'm here because I care deeply about this town and its future. I want to continue bringing new businesses into our community. I want to help our existing businesses grow, but we must make it easier for them to succeed. When small businesses thrive, Port Orchard thrives. Thank you for your time and your commitment to our city.

Thank you.

Hi. I'm Nate Klein with Townsquare Port Orchard. I'm here to speak on behalf of Barbara Bradsher, who runs Wine About It, and I wanna talk about her difficulties working with the Department of Community Development to get her store open. In July, before she even signed her lease, she called DCD to make sure every she did everything right. She explained exactly what her business was and asked what she needed to do to get open. The first thing they told her was that cooking wasn't allowed in her suite. That's fine. She wasn't planning to cook anyway. But then they told her she needed a grease trap. That doesn't add up.

If the DCD didn't allow cooking and Barbara didn't plan on doing any cooking, why require a device specifically designed for cooking? After a sit down with DCD to get clarification, they gave no real explanation other than those are the rules. So she hired a licensed plumber and had it installed. She did what they told her. Over the next few months, they rejected her site plans three times.

The city required ADA accessible seating built directly into her fixed counters. She pointed out there are ADA compliant tables right next to them. The city wouldn't budge. She built the counters, spent more money, and moved on because that's what you do when you're trying to open a business and the goalposts keep moving. In November, the site plan was finally approved. She failed her first inspection. Her shelving wasn't sufficiently sufficiently secured to the walls. There was no mention of this requirement prior to the inspection, but, again, she fixed it anyway. A week went by, and the inspector noticed the grease trap the DCD had required her to install. She failed again because she hadn't pulled a separate plumbing permit to document the installation.

By this point, Barbara came to me in tears. She was ready to walk away. A business only seeking to improve the community started by someone who followed every instruction she was given, was about to close before it ever even opened. Because every time she satisfied a requirement, a new one appeared. At some point, that stops looking like an accident. She finally got to open at the November, four months after her initial consultation. I wanna fill Townsquare with good businesses. I want to help the city grow, but it's a hard sell when this is what they're walking into. Barbara did everything right. The people who show up to open a business here aren't adversaries.

They're the tax base. They're the employers. Port Orchard deserves a department of community development that actually develops the community. I urge this council to take a direct look at DCD's culture, internal processes, its communication standards, and its accountability to the people it's supposed to serve. Thank you. Thank

you.

Hi. My name is Mike Anderson, and, I'm Nancy Donlin's builder. Just wanna say a couple of things out of the experience that I've had with the city of Port Orchard versus many other counties and cities that I've built in for the last thirty years. Our first five inspections were actually very smooth. Everything went really good, and I noticed that city of Port Orchard outsources their inspectors, whether they're too busy to have the actual city employee do all the inspections. But the inspectors that we started with for the first five inspections went very smooth. Nice guys came up. They've been in the trades for a lot of years. They know what they're talking about, very educated. Everything went really smooth until we got to the combination inspection.

Then the young lady came from the city of Port Orchard. She wasn't subbed out. She's an actual employee. And this was out of my experience with her anyways, but she came on the site. She didn't say hi. I'm a very friendly person. I try to get along with everybody because, you know, it's already stressful as it is already. She shows up. She doesn't say hi at all. I have my plans. I have my notebook. I follow her up because I wanna make sure that I write notes. If there's notes to be taken or something, if I get caught on something that I didn't see. We head up in the, up in the observation room up above where she started. She sat down in the middle of the floor, and there again, she hasn't said two words to me.

And so she starts writing. I'm going, I'm I'm sorry. Excuse me.

I said, are what what are you writing?

Are you writing corrections? She goes, yeah. And I go, well, can we talk about these corrections? I mean, the other community, you know, the the the counties and the cities I've ever worked before, we talk about them. You can still write them up, but I wanna talk about them to get clear you know, clarity on what what you're actually asking for me. So she goes, no. She goes, well, I I write them all out, and at the end, if you're gonna wanna talk about I go, at the end, it could be four hours, the rate you're going. We've been up here for thirty five minutes, and we've written, you know, four things. This is gonna be a long inspection. So I said, look.

I go write your list, and we'll talk about them when you're done. So I went out in my truck, sat in my truck, let her do her her whole inspection. And then, she gets done, starts walking right towards her truck, doesn't come to me, completely goes to her truck. I get out of my truck, start kinda running over there and said, listen. I need that inspection card because I need to know what you want. Well, I went back and half more than half of the items that she wrote down were so dumb and so minor. And usually, don't mind fixing that kind

of stuff.

But with the way the city of Port Orchard goes is if you have a correction, you put in the correction, it's a two week turnaround. So you do one dumb fix one dumb thing, you get it back, and then they have two more to follow. And then you have to fix those two, and there's more to follow. We've been going four and a half months on things they keep adding for the inspection. So the layer inspections that the city of Portia have doesn't work. They've never been we've never had a friendly experience one time with any of the inspectors. We don't look for trouble. We just want to be a team and work together and get this home built. There's not a team effort on the city side. It's like, how can I write you up?

What can I write you up for? And how much more money can I cost you? Because that's exactly what is being done. It's bad. It's bad business. And it definitely is not teamwork in the city of Port Orchard. This will be my only house I build in the city of Port Orchard. Thank God. Because the fact is the experience is it's really bad. So appreciate your time. And Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. Thanks. My name is Dave Montour. I don't own a business here in Port Orchard, but I do in Silverdale, I'm Kitsap County resident. So I really don't have any skin in the game here in Port Orchard, but I just wanna remind you politics is local. I'm that employer. I'm that guy who's been through this process in different jurisdictions many times. I know what it feels like. I know what it feels like to pay rent on a dead room you're sitting there and you walk in and it's cold and there's no heat in the building and you're waiting and waiting on permits. It is so discouraging.

You know, the comments I hear tonight, I'd love to have a business in Port Orchard. You know? I consider it my hometown even though I live in Southworth. But, boy, certain certainly gives you pause, you know, when you hear these these horror stories, about going through this process. And I'll just remind you, know, politics is local. You know, the heavy handed government my main beef is down in Olympia right now, but I even heard it this morning at my my club meeting with Rotary from the Kitsap County auditor and just the comments coming, you know, from the bureaucrats. Boy, you know, it certainly gives you pause as a small business owner. Is anybody on our side out here? You know? What are we gonna do?

These past five years have been quite a challenge, in the small business community. I've seen so many people close and go away. I don't wanna see that happen to my business. Goodness knows. I should have thrown in the towel a long time ago. You know, Steve, I empathize with not making any money because I know that feeling. It's tough out there, guys. We feel it. So anything you can do to change the culture, shift it, be more positive in your dealings with us, us small business owners. We're employers. We have you know, I don't have any children myself. My employees are my family. You know? I used to have 22 employees in the city of Seattle. I've got five employees in Kitsap County, and I fight for them and I protect them.

And anything I can do to support them, I'll do that. Anyway, thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. I'm Christy McGee, and I'm a small business owner here in Port Orchard. I'm gonna be very clear. What's being described by local business owners is not exaggerated. We've personally experienced it ourselves as well. We have dealt firsthand with a lack of transparency, poor communication, and a process that feels inconsistent and at times adversarial. We have been left without answers, given conflicting direction, and ultimately treated as expendable, almost as collateral damage rather than families, employing families, and people that are trying to invest in their community. This is not how it should work. The issue is

not safety. The issue is not code compliance. The issue is not how authorities may exercise and how this process is being managed. We personally experienced situations where technical direction from the city conflicted with established standards only to have other another department confirmed our original approach was correct. That kind of internal inconsistency caused delays, drives up costs, and puts real pressure on projects that are already operating on tight margins.

And beyond the process itself, there's a broader concern in this business community. People feel that pushing back or asking questions can come with consequences. Whether acknowledged or not that perception is real, and it's causing people to stay quiet instead of speaking up. That should concern every one of you. City government is not above the people.

It works for the people and for the businesses trying to build something here, create jobs, and invest in this community. Right now, that relationship feels broken. This is not an isolated issue. It's a pattern, and it points to a leadership problem that needs to be addressed. I'm asking this council to take a hard look at what is actually happening in practice, not just what policy say on paper, and to restore a system that's transparent, consistent, accountable, and manageable.

Port Orchard should be a place where people can succeed, not a place where they feel pushed aside while trying to do everything right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, city council and mayor. My name is Katie Hudkins, and I am the lonely wolf that took over where I mean Steve were at the dock. So now the rest took a grow. Let me tell you, if I didn't have $90,000 out, I would have walked away months ago.

I own five companies in Kitsap County. I have over a 100 employees. I've done permitting for tens of years. I would go to Kitsap County, City Of Bremerton, City Of Paulsbo, heck, City Of Ocean Shores because I even have a project out there then wanna be in your city. I came into the city so excited to be a part of Downtown Port Orchard because I believe in it.

And it it needs some new faces. It needed some refreshing storefronts. And with our ideas and we know Sarah, we know I pretty much know everybody behind me. And I I wanna cry right now because I'm now a single mom with that much debt out just trying to open a restaurant. And, mister mayor, you have walked into Good Grocery numerous times and never once come over and said hello, introduced yourself. Nothing. I've emailed you. I've emailed Nick Bond. And let me let me grab what Nick Bond told me, that my words have been abusive towards his staff. It's not words that are abusive.

It's my soul getting upset because we took over a restaurant that was existing, and all we did was put in new appliances, new valves for sinks, and put a pass away door through. But we got hit with the red stock work. You're not allowed to touch anything. We got hit with those matrices that people are talking about when you have three things to fix, and then the next time you get it back, there's 18 on it. It is not a joke, and that is what Angela Garcia and her team thinks this is.

We're small businesses trying to bring so much love and energy to this downtown part of Port Orchard. If I was a paw shop, if I was apartment buildings, I would have been approved months ago. But because I don't know every code in the book, I'm being told to figure out yourself. Go look it up yourself. If I told you I'd be doing your job when I'm just trying to get some answers on the salad bar that we wanna put in in our restaurant, That's not it's not a partnership.

Why should I keep my businesses with you guys? I rent 37,000 square feet in Bremerton. I rent 16,000 in Silverdale, and now I have two leases here in the city of Port Orchard. I stupidly just signed another lease to put in a childcare center, and I'm scared to even do the permit process. I'm scared of the retribution because my name is attached to that restaurant that this team and Nick Bond have now labeled me as abusive when I'm just a single mom trying to bring businesses, jobs, opportunities to our city. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. I had a speech, but my phone is dead, so we're just gonna wing it. My name is Jamie Williams. I am born and raised Port Orchard, Washington for fifty years. My family is deeply rooted here. We go back as far as my grandpa loaned Chuck Hazelwood the money to start his first used car lot. I wanna start a business here one day, and with whatever's going on with the permitting is disgusting. Your system is broken and needs to be fixed. I watched front row center, Harbor Hewt Hotdogs go under the other day, and it was heartbreaking because those guys shouldn't have had to start their business off a year and a half in the hole. It already takes two years to recover your startup cost as a business, a food and beverage business.

And so that puts them at three and a half years, and you can only charge so much for a hot dog before it's just ridiculous. They had no choice. They might tell you because they're moving out of state, but their underlining issue is because of the permitting. I don't understand what's going on. If you need more staff, hire them. If if permitting is, you know, too much for you to handle because you spend a majority or 50% of your time on other committees and boards outside of Port Orchard, then maybe you should let some of those go. And I'm talking to you, mister mayor. And a lot of people are scared for retribution or whatever. I'm not scared. Okay? I'm not scared of nothing. And, I mean, I'm a little nervous, but I'm not scared. And so I think, you know, your system's broken. It needs

to be fixed. Something needs to

change because this is ridiculous. I hear it from dozens of small business owners here in this Port Orchard, and it's not one or two. It's it's a lot, and it's all the same story over and over again. So, you know, respectfully, step up or step aside because you're not doing your job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, members of city council, mayor. My name is Cain Fenner, and I'm here to speak about a small business owner, Youssef Solehi, the man behind discount at Town Square Port or discount store at Town Square Port Orchard, the man in the back row of the room, And how his business was shut down for three weeks over a door to a storage room. Not a broken door, not a dangerous one, a door that was too safe. When we discovered an unpermitted opening to an access at a storage room, we pulled permit number 24Dash847 for a ninety minute fire rated door. Due to shipping issues, what arrived was a three hour fire rated door, more protection than was required.

But when the city inspector arrived, she refused to sign off on the three hour door because it was not the one that had been permitted. The city then agreed that to allow if we provide the installation instructions, we could use that which we did provide them. Then the city insisted that they were the wrong instructions because they were for a different brand, controverting the distributors established and certified practices to use instructions for one brand generically for all because the components are all exactly the same. Despite daily interaction and visits to the city office in good faith, the city red tagged his business so they could not operate beginning October 20 for three weeks. Youssef sat on now useless Halloween inventory, losing income all because a label on a piece of paper didn't match.

The city added new demands. First for a smoke seal, then for a threshold, both for a door that was not required at all, but we did that too. When the mayor finally intervened, one of the official options was to remove the three hour fire door and replace it with a ninety minute one. Think about that. Make it less safe to satisfy paperwork.

In the end, to save the business, the landlord had to bury the three hour fire fire door behind four layers of drywall, a literal wall over a $3,000 door. The discount store is open again, but those three weeks of lost revenue are gone. Mister Slahi's story is not an outlier. It's a warning. When the city departments prioritize paperwork over real safety and human livelihoods, trust erodes.

I urge this council and demand accountability from the Department of Community Development review how permits are processed, how inspections are handled, ensure expert input is respected, and put a stop to arbitrary enforcement that punishes good faith. Our city deserves a building department that values safety, fairness, and common sense, not one that drives hardworking families to the brink over a door that was too safe to be allowed. Thank you.

Thank you, Ruth.

Thank you. This is a postscript update to the story you just heard about the fire door. The door is still not permitted. Just yesterday, the city responded after nearly three months of silence with the requirement for documentation for a completely different brand of door from the one was installed. So we responded by requesting the city review the materials we sent them three months ago, which matched the door installed.

One can only speculate it will take the city another three months to respond with a requirement for something else. This should not be. Remember, this is not a broken door, not a dangerous one. This is a door that is too safe. And for that, the city finds reason to delay and obstruct. Thanks for listening.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Robert McGee, City of Port Orchard. Thank you for letting me speak, council. I'm here to address an issue that affects every resident and business in the city whether they realize it or not. Recently, at the South Gets Up Fire and Rescue Commissioners Meeting, it was discussed that the Washington survey and rating bureau classification for the city of Port Orchard has increased from level three to level four. For those unfamiliar with that rating, it directly impacts what people pay for their property insurance.

It's based on factors such as fire department response capability, staffing and equipment, water supply, emergency communications, and fire code enforcement. In simple terms, when the rate goes up, insurance costs go up. This is not something that citizens vote on. There's no appeal process, yet homeowners, renters, and businesses all bear the financial consequences, which are a direct result of city decisions. This did not happen in a vacuum nor was it caused by any reduction in service from South Kittsburgh Fire and Rescue.

In fact, with continued community support, their service levels have increased and gotten better. In 2022, the city made the decision to cancel its contract with South Kitsap Fire and Rescue for fire marshal jurisdictional services. That decision moved the city away from established fire safety jurisdictional standards. The former fire marshal the city abandoned warned the city about these negative impacts and raised concerns at the time, and today, we're seeing the negative result. Not every member of this council is part of that decision.

However, mister Patonsu, council members Diener, and Rosa Pepe were, and that matters because policy decisions carry long term consequences. And newer members of this council are now responsible for addressing those consequences, and that matters too. What's especially frustrating is the community consistently supports and funds fire district needs expecting that investment to maintain or improve outcomes. As it's working outside of city limits, the WSRB rating has remained stable while those in city limits are now facing higher insurance costs tied to poor policy decisions. Though it's a tough pill to swallow while continuing to be asked to support the district for fire financially.

I'll leave you with this. Or excuse me. At a time when families and businesses are already dealing with rising costs, taxes, fees,

every additional increase matters, this is real money. These impacts may not struggle with the city bill, but they hit just as hard, if not harder, because they're hit. Here's the reality. When policy dissenters raise cop for residents without a vote or visibility, that's a hit in the inductive paths of people you represent. This issue needs to be acknowledged, need to be addressed, and it needs to be corrected. The city cannot ignore the financial impacts this place is on its residents a bit of accountability matters, not just for past decisions, but for how this council responds right now. I to take seriously and find a solution and restore the line of the stuff, get that fire and rescue, and restore public trust. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, city council and mayor. I'm Gary Anderson. I have a business here in Port Orchard and own property in Port Orchard, live in South Kitsa. I had some prepared comments, but, you know, the tension in the room and the capacity in the room demonstrates that there's a big problem in the city of Port Orchard. I've been doing this a long time in commercial real estate, and I I probably heard more negative comments about the permitting process in the city in the last year and a half than I ever did before, and I've been doing this for thirty five years.

There was a time when back when Loews wanted to come into Port Orchard, and the city council at the time, because they had a desire for it to occur, it happened very quickly, extremely quickly, because they wanted it to happen. And I think that's just an attitude change about what the city wants or what it doesn't want. So with the with the complaints that I'm listening to, it sounds like the city does not want business here. I don't know why these fine folks who come here this evening and stand up here and address you calmly and with respect aren't screaming into the microphone. They should be able to do that because some of the things they've had to deal with are just so unfair.

And to to them, it affects their livelihood in many cases. And I just don't think that's the city the way the city wants to be. I think it's become that way for maybe just one reason, and it needs to be dealt with right away.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, mayor and city council. My name is Brian Lyman, and I live in Manchester. I'm a professionally licensed architect and have been practicing in Port Orchard area for thirty six years. I've become accustomed to professional relationships with our building departments and shared goals of protecting public health, safety, and general welfare. The building codes share an equal recognition of the building official and the design professional, and it's always at our best interests to work collaboratively.

A past example of collaboration was my years in Port Orchard Rotary when we operated a community service program called the Rotary House. Rotary would purchase land and high school students would design and build houses. This was sustained for over 15 cycles. Could we operate such a program today? I cringe at the thought of operating such a community service project under the current culture of the City Of Port Orchard's building department.

I'm willing to testify that such a rotary house program today would quickly wither and die under the city's death by a thousand cuts or because I said so culture. I've attempted to a bill to obtain building permits for the past two years, and I have yet to receive one. I've applied for three. The following is one egregious example. An existing funeral home exists here 34 at its current location.

This funeral home uses a covered side patio for funeral processions from the chapel to a funeral coach and then on to the graveside proceedings. This building was a design, permitted, constructed, and occupied in this fashion for the past three decades. The business owner recognizes that this covered patio at times is impacted by cold winter winds. They thought, wouldn't it be nice if we added some wind screening windows at the perimeter of this covered patio to reduce the effects of winter weather on the funeral procession? The city determined the funeral procession through this covered patio is illegal.

They are not. They advised that code enforcement will be paying a visit to the building orders to cease and to assist using the funeral coach patio in this way. They better not. They declared that this area is a parking garage. We, me and my subject matter experts, responded with lengthy and detailed demonstration of a funeral procession at this site and declared that occupancy of this patio is not a parking garage.

In response, the city doubled down. The because I said so and death by a thousand cuts culture now in full swing. They continue to declare this patio as a change in use, that a full building fire protection sprinkler system would have to be installed, that a fire alarm system, radiant patio heaters would require full upgrades as a heated space, Parking garage mechanical ventilation systems added. Fire separation walls added. 300 additional people will require new bathrooms. Nonsense. The funeral home desires to add some windscreening to this funeral procession. The patios project is dead. Mister mayor, my closing sentence. The time is now, mister mayor.

Change the culture of your building.

You. Thank you.

First public comment period?

Maybe offline.

Just a reminder, mayor, we do have members of the public, online.

They want to participate. They just need

to raise their hand with the solar noise major.

Alright. I will close the second. But since the comment period, on to our consent agenda, we have items a, d, and e are still on the consent agenda. Is there a?

Mister Mayor, I motion to accept

the consent agenda as amended. Second. We amend the consent agenda. We have no presentations. We have no opportunity. We are to our first business item. Business item a, and the adoption

Yes. Good evening, mayor and members of council. In 2025, the city received an application from Noel Larson on behalf of nineteen o nine Holdings LLC requesting a site specific rezone of approximately 2.7 acres from R2 to R3. The request applies to two adjoining parcels owned by the applicant located at 10061 And 10083 Hall Avenue within Port Orchard. Consistent with Port Orchard Municipal Code Section 20.40-forty and Chapter 20.24, the application was forwarded to the hearing examiner for a notice to public hearing and recommendation to the city council.

The hearing examiner's role was to determine whether the proposed rezone meets the criteria outlined in Port Orchard Municipal Code Section 20.42.030 to issue findings and conclusions of law and to make a recommendation to the city council. On 12/03/2025, the hearing examiner held an open record public hearing on the Hall Avenue rezone. Notice of the hearing was provided in accordance with Port Orchard Municipal Code requirements. At this hearing, city staff presented a detailed staff report. Following the hearing, the hearing examiner issued an initial recommendation.

During staff review of that recommendation, we identified incorrect citations related to allowed densities in the existing and proposed zones, as well as minor scrivener errors related to recommendations in hearing dates. Staff requested corrections and on February 5, the hearing examiner issued a second revised recommendation, which is the final and accurate version. This recommendation was included in the 02/10/2026 packet for a closed record hearing. The public was notified of a closed record hearing before the city council on 02/10/2026. Only parties of record, including the applicant and individuals who testified at the December 3 hearing were permitted to reiterate their earlier testimony.

After holding a closed record hearing, considering all testimony and deliberating, the city council voted five to two to accept the hearing examiner's recommendation and to direct staff to prepare an ordinance amending the city zoning map to to rezone the parcels at 1061 And 1083 Hall Avenue from R2 to R3. This ordinance was prepared in compliance with that direction. The zoning change is illustrated in Exhibit A to the adopting ordinance included in the packet. Consistent with the direction from the city council on 02/10/2026, staff prepared an ordinance amending the official zoning map of the city of Port Orchard, reclassifying the property at 1061 And 1083 Hall Avenue from R2 to R3. Thank you.

That's fair.

Yeah. Mayor Aronson, the board of ordinance, amending the official zoning map city for work, reclassifying the property located at 101 Avenue from Residential two to residential three.

Yeah. I got a question. When we found out about this, we couldn't talk to anybody for, like, a month, and then we deliberated mister Bond for twelve minutes. And so if you could answer some of my questions right here, I think this r two to r three in is a really big deal. We really and to really consider all and it says right here, all the testimonies I did, but I didn't feel like we put our the people's testimony in in our decision making.

And my conclusion was different from the examiner, And I will address you why, mister Bond and my fellow council members, around the corner will be 300 apartments, and the builder can easily build on R 2. If you turn it to R 3 to apartments and introduce it inconsistent with the established character and scale of the surrounding neighborhood. Nothing has changed the neighborhood since it has been R 2. But if you make it R 3, the character of this neighborhood will take away everything that the neighbor has been established by. And so and with, our, management I mean, our, what, our the capacity that you wanna change, the way we're doing our, management comprehensive plan.

We wanna do more single family and, and it's not apartments in that area. So I am very concerned that we are taking this neighborhood that has been established, and you're gonna take away R 2 to R 3. If you can address any of this, that would be fine because I feel like what I'm saying is very consistent, and it is okay for me not to, you know, go I think I'm different from the, examiner in this situation.

Council member, just just a procedural note. The closed hearing was at the last meeting. So any questions of staff, any concerns with regards to the substance of the application had to have been addressed at that closed hearing. I also didn't necessarily hear a question in there for Nick Bond. Is there anything in particular that you are looking for to be answered in particular about the process?

Well, I don't know why I can't say all this.

No. No. You absolutely can say it. You absolutely can say it a 100%. I just you you ended by saying, can you answer this, mister Bond? And I don't I didn't necessarily hear a question, and it may have been me mishearing. But if you could restate the question.

Our comprehensive plan is more for single housing and for middle housing, not an apartment. So if this r two changes to r three, this builder could put all apartments there. Is that correct?

It is correct.

That is already established.

It is correct that the R 3 zone allows apartments, and the R 2 zone does not allow apartment buildings.

Right. So if we agree to R 3, then we're changing that whole neighborhood when right around the corner is going to be 300 apartments.

But I we're this is about changing the map. We already

I thought we're changing the zone.

No. We are the zone. That's

I agree with that council member Rosa at this point of order that that this is about changing the back of the two general zoning happened in the last Oh,

when I was talking to Jennifer, she said we can we're gonna have this discussion again.

So you authorized staff to proceed with drafting an ordinance that approved, and the council said we approve and confirm the hearing examiner's findings. And so we prepared that ordinance and so that you can vote as a body whether that ordinance matches the intent. You are free to vote however you want on the ordinance, but tonight is the ordinance which changes the map in front of you. So the hearing on the substance of the zoning change was at the last council meeting.

Okay. So the zoning and the map, it still changes. So it's already o r three no matter what? Is that what you're saying?

No. The ordinance will make the actual change to the map.

Okay. So I yep.

So So everything you've said is valid. You're allowed to say that this evening. It's as far as interacting with staff or getting in new information from staff, that's the piece where I just wanted to make clear that that was at the hearing at the last meeting.

No. I'm not trying to get in Okay. Information. I'm just saying I'm just saying say stating the fact of what R 2, this this zoning map is gonna change to R 3, and is that really what we wanna do in this neighborhood?

You go to Jess.

Okay. So.

Good. Mhmm.

Watching

the. Alright. Great. No. Shame. A second.

Aye.

Nay.

Mister mayor, apologies to interrupt. We're having a microphone problem from the mayor left. We we're unable to hear you. So we're gonna actually ask that we circulate this microphone so that you can be heard on the and captured on the recording.

Oh, shoot. Couple of questions.

I believe it I'll get back to you on that. Yeah. Absolutely.

So these microphones are good?

Can you hear me?

I can hear you. Testing.

Yeah. Testing. Testing.

Yeah. We can hear you.

Seriously. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay.

Get here. Council member. It's not recorded. Can read something on the order. Okay. I I was glad that we did that. Yeah. Because it needs to be recorded.

City attorneys. The will of the council.

Do we wish to back up and

no. Yes. My second dash is important. It is important. Should be Is

there a mo is there a motion to re to to reconsider the last item?

I don't have to remember him being allowed to reread my speech being that there was a technical difficulty in the last business item. Mhmm.

I second that.

Motion and a second to basically redo the last business item. This and all in favor of doing that, please say aye.

Aye.

I have can you see it? Raise of hands. Three, four. Okay. So we're gonna go back to that last business item. And

Can you pass the microphone to her so

she

I and after after I read the Thank item back in

you.

So we are dealing with the adoption of an ordinance amending the official zoning map, the city of Port Orchard reclassifying property located located at 10611061 and 1083 Holland Avenue from Residential 2 to Residential 3. And I can't believe council member Fenton, did you have a statement you wanted to read first?

Hers hers was recorded.

Hers was captured.

Hers was captured. Yeah. Council bed and then okay.

Okay. No. It's

it's just the restatement.

Alright. Just to make it clear, I am rereading a speech I previously read. We are not trying

oh. Yes. Before you read your statement.

Sorry. So do we redo are we redoing the vote or merely a statement?

This is not a reconsideration. This is merely the reread of the statement. Yes.

Appreciate That's

Well, I'll point of order because that wasn't the motion that was made.

Well, I misstated that. It was not what she

Correct. The mayor misstated the motion. Her motion was merely to respeech.

Yeah. That's

fair. And appoint a order order before you rejoin council member Scott, you wanted to table this and put it at a I didn't. A work study, or no? You didn't? Okay. I didn't. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

So, yeah, this I that that's why I wanted to just clarify that we are not handling the entire motion. You can look at that before. This is me restating something because tech we were having technical issues, and my speech was not allowed to be recorded. Therefore, I wanted this recorded. So to restate this, I was I am talking about why I do not support the, ordinance, for the change in the map, regarding the rezone.

The hearing examiner noted that the city could legally defend either approval or denial. Here is why I support a denial of the rezoning ordinance. I want to focus on five key issues, the burden of proof, the unresolved safety concerns, the lack of demonstrated need for additional R3 capacity, meeting middle housing goals, and the compatibility issues with the surrounding neighborhood. Number one, the applicant has not met the burden of proof. There is no presumption in favor of a rezone.

The applicant bears the burden of proof and the rezone must bear a substantial relationship to public health, safety, and welfare. The hearing examiner acknowledges this standard. However, many of the concerns raised, particularly public safety concerns, were deferred to future project review. This is not what the code requires. A rezone is a legislative decision.

Once R3 is granted, the intensity of use is established. You cannot later revisit whether R3 was appropriate when reviewing a building permit. The applicant must demonstrate now that this up zone serves public safety, not that safety issue might be addressed later. Number two, public safety concerns were deferred, not resolved. The record shows Hull Avenue lacks continuous sidewalks.

There are known blind corners. Local intersections are exempt from concurrency. Impacts to transportation were described as significant, even if technically within concurrency thresholds. Yet the examiner concluded that these issues could be addressed in subsequent permitting. Respectfully, that shifts the burden away from the applicant. The standard is not whether future mitigation might be possible. The standard is whether the applicant has demonstrated that the rezone itself supports public safety. That burden was not met. Number three, there is no demonstrated need for additional R3 zoning. The examiner found that the city had adequate R3 zoning capacity elsewhere.

At the same time, the city's comprehensive plan examines increased middle housing. R2 already allows middle housing, including townhomes, duplexes, and other attached forms. What R3 adds here is unrestricted density apartments. If the city already has sufficient R3 capacity, then there is no demonstrated change in conditions requiring this up zone. And if the policy goal is incremental middle housing with low density neighborhoods, retaining R2 accomplishes that goal.

Upzoning to R3 is not necessary to achieve housing diversity. Number four, existing apartments nearby are not a justification for further upzoning. The examiner cites the nearby Forest Song apartment development as precedent. But that project shows that this area is already absorbing significant apartment growth. Rather than creating a trend that justifies further expansion of R3, it demonstrates that higher density housing is already being added in this vicinity. True housing diversity means a mix. R1, single family. R2, middle housing. Limited R3 nodes. Expanding R3 further erodes the balance rather than enhances it.

And finally, point five R2 townhomes are more compatible with the surrounding area. The surrounding area is predominantly R2 and single family development. While R2 and R3 share a 35 foot height limit, the difference is intensity and massing. R2 allows townhomes and middle housing that transition gradually from single family homes. R3 permits apartment buildings with no maximum density limit, the applicant could still develop substantial housing under R2, including the proposed townhomes, while maintaining compatibility and gradual transition.

The comprehensive plan requires balancing growth with neighborhood character. Retaining r two does both. And for these reasons that I stated, I don't support this rezoning ordinance.

Alright. We're back to item b now, which is an adoption of an ordinance approving a memorandum of understanding with the Washington State Department of Transcitation for the WashDOT fish passage program coordination. Mister Ryan, this is you.

Thank you, mister mayor. Good evening, council. We previously discussed our water transmission main that is affected by the WashDOT, statewide fish passage program to meet federal which is a requirement to meet federal requirements to replace culverts that block salmon and steelhead migration. Several of these projects in Kitsap County fall within the city's utility service area, which means some city owned utilities may need to be relocated to protecting during construction. To support coordination, WSDOT has proposed an MOU that outlines how the city and WSDOT will work together on these projects under the MOU.

WSDOT will manage and fund the fish passage program while the city will be responsible for the relocation costs of any utilities within the wash dot right away. Each project may also include separate utility construction agreements and defined detailed scope and cost responsibilities. The MOU is, nonfinancial, does not create a separate legal entity, and runs through 2032. It ensures timely project coordination and helps protect city infrastructure while meeting the state and federal requirements. This will be the first step.

This is a cooperative purchasing. This gives us the ability to do cooperative purchasing. The state has gone off the bid, successfully, awarded the contract to KeyWit Construction. We will be able to piggyback off that contract because the state has provided that they will meet all bidding thresholds required by the state of Washington. And so that agreement will come at a later date.

Councilman Ward?

Yeah. Mister mayor, I move to adopt resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a memorandum of understanding with the Washington State Department of Transportation for coordination on the Wastew Fish passage program. Is there

a second? Second.

Okay. Motion by council member Warden, a second by council member Rosa Peppri. Questions for mister Ryan. This is really an example of when the power company or the gas company or the phone company has utilities in our right of way. They have when we do a project, they have to move them at their expense. And now we have utilities in wash. The state of Washington's, highway system that need to be moved, and, those same rules apply to us.

Now my only question, Dennis, is there's a lot more details to be worked out here. This discovers the utilities part of it, and I know that several members of the council have a lot of concerns about other impacts to the infrastructure, but those will be addressed in later documents then.

Correct. The only the only thing at this state that's gonna be impacting the city is the water transmission line.

Yeah.

And and we and they are working they're working at their own risk right now with the design. They are at about 60%. We're meeting weekly with WSDOT and KeyWit just in preparation so we can get this project done before the summer high use times of our water infrastructure.

Yeah. The

city in

contract with Kiva?

I'm sorry?

Is the city in No idea. Yeah.

Okay.

Comes about like we are not

That microphone is no longer working, mister mayor. Apologies.

This no.

Oh, now it is. Okay.

Mine's working just fine. Okay. So the question was whether or not whether we're in contract with Queue it, and we are not at this point. And and

I can vote on

You can vote on this. This is contract is with WashDOT. We their future agreements, you may wish to recuse yourself. K? Further question? Councilman Fennen?

Sounds like the fiscal impact is not gonna be that much.

There's no fiscal impact for this agreement today. There will. Today. This washout agreement has no fiscal impact. This just allows the city a tool to use to procure when we do need to hire the contractor.

Try. No. Because it's kinda.

Oh oh, yep.

For wash out fish passage program coordination. All in favor, please say hi. Hi. Anyone opposed? And I apologize for we're having microphone difficulties everywhere, so apologize for that. We're to item c now, adoption of a resolution fixing the date of a public hearing on the petition from Kitsap County to vacate city right of way for the city council's regular meeting on March 24. Miss Wallace?

Yes. Good evening, mayor council.

I'm I'm myself, please.

Yes. And I would imagine councilmember warden too. Thank you for prodding me there.

Alright. Good evening, mayor, council. So petitioners Kitsap County and Steve Tyner with KMT LLC, owners of the adjacent properties submitted petitions to vacate city right away pursuant to Port Orchard Municipal Code chapter 12.08. There are 10 secondtions being requested to be vacated. They are as follows.

So a portion of an alley off of Taylor Street near Sydney Avenue, which is identified as section two I'll show the map here in just a few minutes after I read all 10 secondtions. That first section, which is labeled Section two, is approximately 2,450 square feet. Second is most of Austin Avenue from Taylor Street to Smith Street, identified at Section eight, which is approximately 8,434 square feet. Item three most of an alley off of Austin Avenue from Taylor Street and Smith Street. Those are identified as Section six and seven with approximately 8,434 square feet.

Item four is a portion of an alley off a Division Street near Sydney Avenue labeled Section 3, approximately 3,054 square feet. Item five, which is most of alley from Smith Street to Taylor Street, identified as Section 9 with approximately 1,540 square feet. A portion of Sweeney Sweeney Street off of Sydney Avenue, which is labeled as Section 4, for approximately 4,667 square feet. Item seven, most of alley most of an alley from Klein Street to Austin Avenue, which is labeled as Section 10 with approximately 3,897 square feet. Item eight, a portion of an alley off of Sweeney Street and Sydney Avenue, which is labeled a Section five with approximately 4,667 square feet.

And lastly, number nine, a portion of an alley off of Klein Avenue near Taylor Street was I, which is identified section one with approximately 1,498 square feet. The total area requested for the vacations totals approximately 38,641 square feet. As a reminder, the clerk received a completed application conforming with the requirements of Puerto Rico Municipal Code chapter 12.08, including section 12.08 dot zero one zero. The public works director and the community development director supported the vacation as the city has no current or future needs or plans to open the city right away. Easements associated with the applicable city owned utilities located with the areas requested for vacation would be provided as a component of the proposed vacation.

Puerto Municipal Code twelve point zero eight point zero one seven and Puerto Municipal Code twelve point zero eight point zero five zero authorizes the city to obtain an appraisal of the area of the proposed vacation to assist this council in evaluating proposed adequate compensation for the those proposed vacations. Compensation can include in lieu of transfer of real property as well as other contributions of monetary value. Following an appraisal, Kitsap County provided a statement of proposed compensation for those areas to be vacated, including the payment of $30,000. The transfer of Veterans Park, which is 48 acres of real property located within the city, and dedicated public parking on the county's campus for special event parking where an event is sponsored or promoted by the city. A copy of the Kitsap County's proposal to compensate the city is included in the pack for tonight's meeting.

It cannot be acted upon until after the public hearing and associated action by the city council, if any. Chapter 35.79 of the RCW requires that the city to adopt a resolution setting that date and time of a public hearing to hear and determine the petition to vacate the city's right of way. Based on the city council's regular meeting calendar, staff suggests holding the public hearing to vacate those proposed city right of ways and accept the associated compensation for 03/24/2026 at 06:30PM, which is at least twenty days but no longer than sixty days from the date of this resolution if adopted tonight, 02/24/2026. Upon adoption of this resolution, staff will prop post proper notices of the date and time of the public hearing and provide notice to all adjacent property owners. With that, staff recommends that the council adopt a resolution setting the date and time of the public hearing on the petition to vacate a portion of alleys and streets as described in my staff report and presented to you this evening and direct the proper posting of notices of this public hearing.

The hearing will be held on Tuesday, 03/24/2026 at the regular council meeting here held in the council chambers, 216 Prospect Street starting at 06:30PM.

Council member Finn.

I move to adopt a resolution setting a public hearing for 03/24/2026 at 06:30PM on a petition from Kitsap County to advocate a portion of alleys and streets as described.

Second.

Motion by council member Fenton, second by council member Rosa Pepe. Brandy caught most of the compensation, but I think she missed one item. So the compensation will consist of the Veterans Park transfer at a future date at our at our discretion, up I think up to ten years. And the after hours use, and then also there's $30,000 in cash offered in as part of that. And then the city attorney will bring that agreement with or the authorization for me to sign that agreement once it's executed by Kitsap County once we complete the street vacation.

So alright. Any questions on this? Alright. You'll be voting on a petition to vacate the city right of way for the Kitsap County for at a meeting to be held on March 24. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Anyone opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. And we're gonna go retrieve our other council members. And and, I mean, just for the record that council member Diener and council member Warden recused them self from that the last action.

Yeah. That's quite what they were questioning on.

Whether we

need to reboot them.

Alright. And, counts okay. Motion in a second.

I don't think we need

to take we'll take five minute break.

Oh, I thought we did. Sorry about that.

Re reconvene at, 08:00.

Is that powered? Can you hear me? Can you hear me?

Eric.

Can you hear me?

Oh, they said it was on, but I think Eric's.

No idea. No.

That one kept batteries. No.

It's got

a green light. Testing. Testing. Oh, mine's not working either. Mine's not working. Testing. Testing.

Well, this one's not here we The

ceiling mic was on. That's why it wasn't working.

Oh,

alright. Now we're live again.

Alright. Is that mean

No.

No. This this one quit working also. Alright. So we're we're back in session, and council member Warden's gonna recuse himself again. And we're eye to item d, adoption of resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a a professional services agreement before the Annapolis Creek Fish Passage culvert project. Mister, Ryan, this is you.

Thank you, mister mayor. The culvert carrying Annapolis Creek under Bay Street near Whiskey Gulch has been identified to as a fish passage barrier. With upstream and downstream improvements already completed, the city is moving forward with designing a full replacement to restore habitat connectivity, improve stream function, and meet regulatory requirements. The site is priority in the city's identified in the city's stormwater action plan. An RFQ was issued last fall.

Three firms responded after evaluation Skillings Incorporated was selected as the most qualified consultant. Staff has negotiated a contract not to exceed $735,000.41 for the design. Services funded through a combination of local stormwater dollars and a $425,000 grant from the Brian Abbott fish barrier removal board. A budget amendment will be needed to cover the remaining amount. Staff recommends adoption of resolution authorizing the mayor to execute the professional service agreement. And just to give a little bit background on this fish barrier culvert, this is a wooden culvert. It's, exceeds probably a 100 years old. So when you drive over that section of Bay Street, you're you're driving on a wooden bridge. So thank you.

House member Diner.

Oh.

Second. Motion

by council member Diner, second by council member Trenary. And the staff report could lead you to believe that we've got $900,000. We don't. So we we but if I let me pull this back up. And Noah, can you

maybe yeah.

It is not written as clearly as I would like. So let me open that up and so we have $500,000 in the budget. The grant is $4.25 Is the grant. Yes. And so we only have 75,000 in the budget. So that means Noah's gonna need to bring back a budget amendment for the 200 and change, wherever that that that whatever that number is.

236.

236. Thank you. And so and that will come from storm water funds, storm water capital funds, which there are fund balance in that in that fund. Correct? Correct. Yeah. Okay. So I just wanted to be clear about clear about that. We'll be bringing back a budget amendment to fund the remainder of this contract for this design.

Is it the 236,000? Because I don't

Yes.

Yeah. So just one more time to clarify. So in the budget currently, we have $500,000 of expenditure authority. And to forward the expenditure authority, we have budgeted for $25,000 to come from grant revenue to cover that portion with 75,000 local. So that's what we have currently. We are going to have to increase our expenditure authority budget by another 236,000, and that will all come from local funds for '23.

So when we built the budget, We believe the grant was coming, and we thought the project was gonna cost half $1,000,000. And so that's that's why we built the budget to the dollars we have. Now we've negotiated the scope with the consultant to do the work, and it's $236,000 more than that.

And why say the guy losing any more hair if you make the numbers match? I now realize you rounded to 236,000 to round up to $7.35 $0.04 1 as opposed

to maybe match exactly what the contract is.

Yes. He rounded. Alright. I am just

took all of us to make that.

Alright. Any any questions, process other than the budget amendment? Okay.

So I'm just clarifying. Is this just for the, the plans?

The design.

Is just for the design.

This is just the design.

This will be a multimillion dollar project.

This this is considered a bridge for in transportation. This is such a unique infrastructure. It is classified as a bridge. So it has to be built, designed to seismic standards.

Yeah. We'll we'll we'll get

a design first, and then and then we will award a contract for the the construction work at a future date. Alright. Any further questions? Alright. You'll be voting on adoption of a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a professional services agreement for the Annapolis Creek Passage Project. All in favor, please say aye. Anyone opposed? Hearing none, the the passes unanimously. And if we wanna bring council member Warden back in? Alright.

We're to item e now, which is the approval of a resolution authorizing a permitting pilot program and associated agreement with Permittable AI. Mister Bond, this is you.

Yes. Good evening. The Department of Community Development has been exploring opportunities to streamline and expedite the permitting, the building permit plan review process. One identified cause of extended timelines for permit review is the submission of applications and supporting materials that are incomplete or not compliant with applicable building codes and submittal requirements, necessitating additional review, correction requests, and resubmittals before approval can be considered. The city has identified a possible tool to aid in addressing this issue through pilot program in partnership with a newly created company, Permittable AI, who has developed an AI tool that would allow volunteer applicants for single family building permits to prescreen their plans prior to submitting those plans to the city for review.

During the pilot program, Permittable AI would make its prescreening software to volunteer applicants in Port Orchard free of charge for a one year trial period. Running an application through the program prior to submittal to the city would be entirely voluntary on the part of the applicant. Permittable AI and the city would partner on a trial period to evaluate the potential for the software to reduce the number of review cycles for plans submitted to the city and to reduce demands on limited staff resources. Staff believes this tool may save applicants time and money in the application process and seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool. Permittable AI is a private company that applicants would rely on at their own risk.

This would be communicated to all applicants. The resolution creating the pilot program directs the administration to ensure that adequate disclaimers be provided concerning the use of permittable AI, advising potential users of the system under this trial period of risks, including but not limited to delaying permit vesting by making plan corrections prior to making an application to the city, the possibility that the system could identify corrections that the city would not have requested, and the risk of sharing their plans without an outside party. Under the pilot program, the city would identify this optional tool on its website and provide a link to applicants wishing to use the tool, but clearly identify that the use of the tool is entirely voluntary. The Permittable AI website will require the creation of a user account. Once the account has been created, users will be able to drag and drop plans into the tool for prescreening.

Depending on the complexity of the plans, the review can take between a few hours and as much as a day to generate a report that flags potential issues that may be identified in the city's plan review process. Users will be given a discount code that reduces the cost for the reports to $0 The city will be gathering information from applicants to learn if they pre reviewed their plans using the tool and if they made changes to their plans resulting from their use of the The city seeks to collect data to determine whether the system is reducing plan review cycles and the number of comments and corrections identified. Prior to the launch of the pilot program, the city will be testing the system by uploading public records consisting of previously reviewed and approved plans to compare the corrections identified by Permittable AI to the actual comments created by our plan reviewers. After establishing a baseline for accuracy, the city will provide public records consisting of plan review comment letters to Permittable AI so that the company can calibrate the system to better capture the city's typical plan review comments. The city will then test the system again to ensure that accuracy has improved.

Once the department believes that the system is ready for public use, we will launch a website presenting the public with the option of using the tool and instructions for how to use the tool. Long term, the company would like to see a TSA PreCheck style permit track where pre screened permits can be given a fast track review and a more cursory review by city staff. It is too early to know whether this type of framework is viable, but staff will utilize the pilot program to evaluate the system and to determine its usefulness to consider a long term partnership. McCormick Communities first brought this tool to the city's attention and introduced the Permittable AI team to the city. McCormick has been testing the platform privately as part of their development.

They have reported to the city that the system currently catches about 85% of comments that were being made by city staff, and they are satisfied with a low occurrence of false positives. McCormick's use of the tool has has likely already had the effect of calibrating the system such that it is close to being ready for wider use in Port Orchard. Real quickly, I'm going to share my screen and show you what this interface looks like. I shared this with the Land Use Committee earlier this week. So the Permittable AI platform here, it is a drag and drop site.

You would you would create an account, and so once you're signed in, your your name would appear in the upper right hand corner. You are dropping your building plans, your energy code worksheets, a site plan, and potentially structural engineering or other documents into this box. Once there are files in this box, you can hit next and it will upload those plans. You choose which reports you're seeking to receive from Permittable, and then, you hit submit and it's going to do its analysis, and, at the end it captures your payment information, and so you'll have to enter a discount code to reduce that fee to zero. I also wanted to share what the output report looks like.

We have an example from McCormick Communities that was run through the system. And so, this report, actually captured several rounds of review. Typically, would be a single round of review, likely between eight and ten pages in length, depending on the number of comments. So it starts out with a cover page explaining what property and property characteristics were evaluated and what codes were evaluated, and then it identifies which files were reviewed. It's going to include a narrative summary for the first cycle of findings and basically say overall that, you know, this is on track or it requires a lot of work.

And then it goes into a correction matrix where it has categories for administrative items on the plans. This one flagged, that a plan was missing a wet stamp from an engineer or architect. And then it gets into more specific, categories of architectural requirements. In this case, there was a flagged, a missing label for an egress window for identifying which window in a bedroom was used for, egress and, identified handrail requirements that were missing and, generally just produces a nice report that hopefully gets plan gives people the opportunity to fix their plans before they submit them to the city. So, with that, the staff recommendation is to approve a resolution creating the pilot program and authorizing the mayor to enter into an agreement with Permittable AI.

Councilmember Diener.

Second.

Motion by councilmember Diener, second by councilmember Rosapepe. And I just wanna address the email we got today with the concern about our data. This does not reside on our servers. This is an outside software company and and people it'll be disclaimers and people you know, it's a choice to use this, not it isn't anything that's on the city server. So council member Rosepepe.

Yeah. I just wanna make a comment. This this was brief that we had used, and if the word interested in it, see how it works, realize we have an issue with permitting and any tool that would help.

I don't think it would be a

bad tool right now. So

when we look at it, it it the trust. Mhmm. Go ahead, Marcy. Go ahead.

Yeah. I wanna thank thank you staff for putting together and. I do wish all of I believe it was 17 speakers

How's Maradina?

Yeah. That that's correct. I this program is really for IRC reviews, so one and two family residential projects, which are fairly narrow. And I think that one of the difficulties I I do believe that we are going to have AI review for commercial in the future, but I think it's gonna take a lot more work. I think one of the pitfalls is that when you're doing a residential project, the system knows that it's receiving a single family residential project, and it isn't having to control for bad information going into the system.

And so if you were to upload plans that you think meet the code, but you've described the use incorrectly or identified the wrong occupancy classification, I think there's all sorts of things that could go wrong, and it would be because incorrect information was on the plans in the first place going into the system. And so it's reviewing under certain assumptions, and then it would spit you out information that is just incorrect because something a human needed to catch needed would have needed to be identified sooner. So I think this is relatively easy for IRC type permits. I think once you get into IBC, there's a lot more room for mistakes, and I just don't you know, this system, they're not asking us to look at IBC commercial and multifamily type projects yet, but, I I don't know of any technology that's really ready for that type of review at this time.

Even though it doesn't do commercial, any relief we can you know, duties we can take off of people to provide a higher level of customer service on the commercial side is is welcome. Yeah. We have a huge number of us in

apartments that walk through. So

that Yeah.

Councilman Fenton?

Yeah. I'm just, have a few questions here on, for the family, building permit. If if you're going that way, why not we're not looking in this for, businesses permitting. And then another question is, this is this what questions me too. The private company that applicants would rely on at their own risk. What does that mean, at their own risk?

Well, I I think mister Bonn already answered your first question. It's not available for the commercial. It's just it's not that's not what it's designed for.

It's residential.

It's residential only.

It's it's it's not designed for commercial yet. It's not that that application is not available yet.

Okay. Well, they say, why would it okay. So even if it's just private, they're applying at their own risk or not? Yes.

Yeah. I I can tackle that question. So, one thing that happens when you apply for a building permit that is specified in Washington laws that you vest to codes. If you were if the city council were considering changes to codes and somebody decided they were going to go through Permittable AI and then they applied for a permit five days after they submitted to something to Permittable AI, they would vest five days later. And if the code has changed, you potentially you know, that's a risk that you face as an applicant, is taking time to go through this review process and then making corrections before you've gotten your foot in the door with an application.

So, I think that there are risks because this is a private company, and and, you know, you're you're giving them information voluntarily. And so what they do with that information, you know, I'm I'm told that they're not sharing this with outside parties, but it is a private company, and you're giving them building plans that has information on it. So it's it's data sharing, and you're doing that at your own risk.

Okay. So the and and it's all volunteer?

Yeah. You don't nobody is required to do this. This is a tool we're giving people. It's free of charge, and and they can use it if they choose to. And if they don't wanna if they don't wanna use it, that's fine.

Right. Okay. And then and then my last, question here, if you said, McCormick Communities, they're the first one to try this, and they like it. So you're saying it's not for builders, it's for homeowners doing

No. It's for bill it it's bill it's for builders of residential construction.

Exact okay. Exactly. And then it says the comprehensive plan contains numerous goals and policies related to housing affordability As this tool has the potential to save builders time and money, it may indirectly improve housing affordability by lowering development costs. So with saying that in our comprehensive plan, is that just kind of a statement, or we don't know if that's really gonna be, affordable housing in this in this?

Yeah. So, customer, on the staff report template that we have, there's a section that says relationship to comprehensive plan. So when staff have when they're bringing something to the council for consideration, we do our best to try to explain why what we're bringing to you relates to what you've told us through the comprehensive plan matters to you. And so what Mr. Bond's department and I believe I help to navigate write this language, that's why I'm explaining it.

What we're trying to say back to you is you have told us in your comprehensive plan that affordability and making sure that people can build and live in your city is important. So we took that and said, here's a tool that could potentially make development costs less because the developer gets to sort of preview whether their designs will comply with the law without having to spend a lot of back and forth time with our staff, this is something that can hopefully save them time and therefore reduce the costs for development and therefore make affordability better in the city.

Yeah. Well, I hope so because when I hear about affordable housing, it's always market rate. So it's really not affordable housing. It's market rate.

Councilor Mary Cheniere?

Okay. I think all of

us up here and and many in the room earlier, can get behind expediting the permit process. If we do improve our single house single family housing process, that will

We're we're gonna create a website that provides information about the optional program, and it will clearly state that this is optional for applicants to use. And then it may save them time and money, but that they're not required to use it. We're gonna work with the city attorney to provide disclaimers to everyone, making sure that they're aware of, the risks of using this private party tool and explain that we're in a partnership with this company to test AI capabilities for for helping streamline the process. And and and those that will be the extent of the disclaimer that we provide. There will be a link to Permittable AI.

Once you go to Permittable AI, you are leaving a city website and you are using that tool at your own risk, and and we will have provided adequate disclaimers. We are we will be exchanging information with Permittable as they see things coming through the system using our discount code. They will they will coordinate with us, and we will follow-up to make sure that the plan review comments that we have and the plan review comments that were generated by their system, we will we will kind of compare notes of how this is going as we we go through the pilot program period. But that's the extent of any oversight. We don't have any any involvement in operating Permittable AI, and the report that's generated, that's that belongs to the person who submitted their plans and to permittable.

And and if they share it with us, that's fine. But we're not we're not going through and checking those reports on when each one is generated.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Customer Wardens? Yeah.

I actually spoke to Nick Toski quite a bit about this application that they're using in McCormick and is really hoping that we would implement, obviously. And so I'm really glad we are. With 251 houses a year going up in McCormick and with sets and heights gonna put up real soon here, couple 100 more.

100. Yeah.

100 more? Yeah. Like, we're gonna be even more overwhelmed than we are. I think Nick already has a 100 permits, you know, in there right now. So if he thinks that we need to use this and he's been using it, I think we'd really need to give it a give it a try. My question is is did he tell you what other cities that he works with that that uses this Thank you. Application?

We we are the first. So they are they are piloting this, and it I think long term, they're making it commercially available to people to pay to use the system. This is they're looking at partnering with a city to sort of collect information and and figure out how this can streamline our process. And so it is it is a pilot program and a partnership where we're we're getting a benefit because it it's potentially helping our applicants. They're getting a benefit because they're getting this per this partnership with the city and and feedback from the city on on how the system is working.

Yeah. And my last question is gonna be, because it is a concern. Anytime you implement something, how much time you have to dedicate to implementing it, training your staff to use it, you know, all that good jazz. How much staff time do you think that we're gonna take away from what we're currently doing to implement it? I get I get we're gonna catch up. Right? The goal is whatever we use, we're gonna we're gonna get it back. I'm aware of that. But have you

Yeah. And it's it's not much. My staff is not going to be using this software at all. There the only thing that my staff will be involved with is the initial testing. We've identified 13 building permits, and what we've done is we've tried to flag building permits that came in early in the code cycle.

So it was right after the new codes rolled out and when people were still getting used to the new codes. And we're trying to flag, kind of each builder's one of their first few permits that came in after the code change because that probably had the most number of corrections that were needed. More recent permit submittals, they probably have worked through most of those, and they're not continuing to make the same mistakes on on later submittals. So we've identified 13 permits that we're going to test. We're going to have we're first going to ask the the applicant and the engineer of record if there is one or the architect and verify that they are comfortable with us uploading their plans because we we do wanna Sure.

Give them that courtesy. If they don't want us to use their plans, we'll we'll pull one of the we'll pull that permit out of the the queue and and potentially replace it with a different permit. But we're gonna we're gonna run 13 plans through the system. This we just drag and drop these plans into the system, and we wait for the report to come out. And then the only work my staff is gonna do is they're gonna compare the report that gets generated to the actual first round of review comment matrix to see where there are common catches and where there are differences.

And we want to figure out, is this thing flagging too many things that we didn't flag that would have been incorrect? And also, are there are there things that we flagged that it is missing? And, once we kinda have a a gauge of how it is doing compared to our human reviewers, then we're going to feed our comment matrices into the system because it will learn from from uploading those documents. They'll say, well, this is what the city found. And then if you rerun those plans, it should it should be more in line with what the city reviewers are doing.

So once we've calibrated this to the point that we feel comfortable releasing it to the public, we'll make it available to the public. But I I wouldn't guess that this is more than two or three days worth of work for, one of my building department staff just to do the calibration Sure. Unless there are major inconsistencies between the two, and then it's probably a few more days worth of work. But once once it's released to the public, it's really just gonna be me communicating with the leaders at Permittable and seeing how things are going and getting feedback from them on how many how many people are actually using the tool compared to and then comparing my data and the permit system for what applicants are saying about the tool and whether they used it and whether they actually made the recommended corrections so that I I know, how to compare, data within our system.

Highlight. One more question. Is it gonna be this app application? Is it gonna be we're gonna pay if we use it after a year, are we paying for a yearly subscription to it, a a license, or is it gonna be by permit usage? Right?

We will look at what the next steps are after the end of the pilot program. I think we'll probably prepare a report back to counsel and let you know how it went. I know that immediately at the end of the pilot program, it is likely that applicants would be able to use this by paying a fee to the company or any other company that they want to use if they wanted to run something through after it ceases So to be they can pay to use it if it is valuable to them. If the city finds that we have a lot of value in the system, we could look at doing a subscription where it continues to be free for our applicants as a way of saving us money and try to negotiate a cost for that Or going the the TSA PreCheck comparison that they've made, we could talk about whether that makes sense, based on how the system performs. But I think it's really too early for us to tell, whether whether creating a fast lane for prescreened applications makes sense or not.

A lot of questions for a free

app, but I appreciate it.

Thank you. Yeah.

No.

That's

good. Alright. Any further questions? You're looking like you want to.

Yeah.

So if a problem, you better topology fee where we wanna get some of this. Could we wanna be sure it's off. Yeah. But so it sounds like InformaCode has been using us for a while. Have you seen a noticeable difference in output with their member application?

Well, it's it's hard to say because I think they were actually if I understand how they've been testing the system, they were running things through Permittable, and then they were running uncorrected plans through the city, and they were doing their own comparison to see how things were similar or different. So I don't know how many applications they have actually run through the system and made corrections based on what the system has said. I I don't know when that would have started, and it's it's hard to say. You know, we had a pretty rocky start in the village in terms of some planned corrections and and other issues, so it's hard to say how many of those things were already on track to be corrected versus what Permittable is actually catching today. So I I'm I would just say it's inconclusive.

But Nick would gladly give you that information. I mean, gladly. Yeah.

Alright. Are are we ready vote on this? Okay. You'll be voting on the approval of a resolution authorizing a permit permitting pilot program and associated agreement with permittable AI. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed? Hearing none, the resolution passes unanimously. We're to item f, adoption of a resolution granting final plat approval for McCormick West Division 15, phase one final plat. Mister Bond, this is you.

Yes. On 12/05/2025, McCormick Development Corporation submitted an application for final plat approval for phase one of Division 15 of the McCormick West subdivision project. The Kitsap County Hearing Examiner granted preliminary plat approval for the entirety of McCormick West with conditions on 05/30/2008 pursuant to WAC 190 seven-eleven-six 30 and nine-sixty five, Kitsap County issued a notice of adoption of existing environmental documents for this proposal. The McCormick West proposal was included in a group of projects known as the McCormick Village McCormick Urban Village under the South Kitsap Urban Growth Area ULID's No. Six Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.

The ULID No. Six was issued, 10/26/2001, and the final EIS, was issued January 9, 2002. The applicant for final Plat has submitted three requests for administrative minor plat amendments, were approved on 09/01/2023 12/05/2024 and 01/29/2026. The final plat for Division 15, phase one of McCormick West creates 123 residential lots and eight tracks including four for future development. The applicant has installed roadway illumination, roads, sidewalks, landscaping, water and sewer utilities, and storm drainage improvements.

Streets within the final platter for public use and will be accepted into the city's road system. The application for final plat includes all the necessary information required for approval, including but not limited to a bill of sale for infrastructure being dedicated to the city and maintenance bonds for that infrastructure. The staff recommendation is to approve a final plat for McCormick West Division 15 Phase 1. And I just want to note, because this came up at our land use committee, we are introducing an ordinance that would make these final plat approvals administrative because you're really just granting approval to something at the very end where things can't really change. So in the future, you may see an ordinance that would actually take approval of the final plats away from the city council.

But, for now, this is a business item. Normally, are on the consent agenda. But because we have new council members, we wanted this first new plat of the year to to be on the business agenda.

Council member Cherry.

Mister mayor, I move to adopt a resolution as presented, granting final plat approval for McCormick West Division 15 Phase 1.

Second.

Motion by council member Cherry, second by council member Diener. Any questions to mister Bond? Alright. You'd be voting on oh, go ahead, council member Benton. Missed you.

Miss Bond? Okay. So this is for the final class of the day in 15th Phase 1. And is this ending most of the houses out there, a 123? But you also got phase two, right, coming up, so we gotta vote on.

Well, there this is this is division 15 out of 23. So there's division sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, 20 through 23. But there is a phase two of McCormick West Division 15 as well that I I think is 15 or 20 lots. They just chose to there's there's one street at the perimeter of the plat that they chose not to finish the lots on the opposite side of the street that abuts the next phase, and so they're going to record that as part of the next phase of development, rather than as part of this phase of the development. But there are still, I think, close to 900 homes out there to or 900 additional lots to be platted.

Alright. Council Mardin?

Just since he brought it up, I'm I'm excited to hear about the ordinance that will remove us. I see our views of time vary with the home cost of the highest developers.

I'm looking forward

to that. So sometimes we're developers waiting

Yes.

For a council meeting to happen Yeah. Which could be two or three weeks versus moving forward on their project. So alright. You'll be voting on a resolution granting final plat approval to McCormick West Division 15 Phase 1. All in all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? That passes unanimously. For item d now, approval of the February 2 council meeting minutes, the special city council meeting minutes. And I think everyone was in in attendance except for council member Diener. And this is our motion to approve.

The mayor moved to approve the, special city council meeting on February 2 with one scrivener, error that mayor pro tem is, that's the divorce and that's not the ruling.

Okay. Fair enough. Second. The motion by council member Rosepepe, second by council member Trenary. Any other corrections?

Well, at the at the meeting, he was at the meeting, though, Deaner Deaner was met. He

was there.

He was there. Yep. That's right. That's another correction. Yes. He initially said he was not coming, and then he came. Yeah. So yes. So council member Deener was in attendance too. He just didn't notify the clerk's office. He came he he jumped in jumped in the car at the last minute. So we so we've got a couple corrections there.

So all seven council members were present during that meeting?

All seven council members.

And then we'll switch the pro we'll update the pro tem as well. Thank you.

Okay. Alright. Thanks for catching that. What's that? And the vote. I I think we did they're discriminatory. She'll There's she'll correct them. So, you know, you'll be voting on the special meeting minutes that all council members were present at. All in favor, please say aye. Aye.

Alright. Any opposed? Alright. And that passes. We are now to our new business item h, which was previously consent item c, which is adoption of a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a con conservation grant agreement with Pewter Center Energy for the completed relight Washington Street lighting work under TIB's phase five project. That was a mouthful. Mister Ryan.

Thank you. This is the the city recently completed the LED streetlight upgrades under the TIB phase five project in partnership with Puget Sound Energy. These improvements qualified us for an energy efficiency incentive through PSC's Relight Washington program. The city has been awarded a $5,276 conservation grant, which will be applied to the credit towards the project cost. This was nearly a 150 street lights that were converted from the, high sodium pressure lights that are not efficient to the LED. To receive the incentives, we need to execute a conservation grant agreement. This supports our sustainable goals and aligns with the transportation chapter of the comprehensive plan.

Is

there a motion?

Council member, go ahead.

Motion

by council member Jettman and Rosetta Morsi. Second by council member Morsi. Any questions from staff? Yes. Sure. Yeah.

So although high pressure sodium streetlights have lower maintenance costs and offer superior fog penetration, the city replaced them with LED streetlights. While energy efficient LED streetlights significantly worsen light pollution due to high intensity blue light emissions and poor upward scattering illumination, these lights cause severe glare, increased sky glow, and harm nocturnal wildlife. LED streetlights also significantly suppress melatonin production. Suppressed melatonin primarily causes sleep disorders like insomnia, delayed sleep onset, and poor sleep quality. It also triggers chronic, systemic, and metabolic issues, including, but not limited to, faster aging, weight gain, weakened immunity, and increased cancer risk.

And it may contribute to ADHD, as studies show that up to seventy eight percent of people with ADHD experience melatonin suppression. In children, suppressed melatonin leads to behavioral issues, including increased irritability, anxiety, aggression, inattention, and poor cognitive function. Prolonged suppression may contribute to long term issues like obesity and increased susceptibility to anxiety or depression. So while we vote now to accept a grant to offset the close to 5,300 dollar cost of LED streetlights the city incurred for their installation. The cost to the city of Port Orchard's people will probably be much greater than that.

Alright. Anyone else have anything for the record, council member?

Station. Are

are you finding the type of good research with it? I'm not

come to understand more about LED lighting, but the the effects of LED lighting, is that is that when you're speaking to them, is that in a room like this, or is it related to

Big lights.

Specifically, I was this it it is really a tone

like this, but, specifically, I was talking about. So they found, like, seat lights, the LED, the white light, which is potentially also in the clear light. Those emissions cause melatonin expression. And so this is a a very real health problem. And, also, it's a problem to all of us and not just human problems about that. Thank you.

Alright. Any other comments? Alright. You'll be voting on I gotta get back to it. Resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a conservation grant with Puget Sound Energy. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Anyone oppose? Hearing nothing, that counts that is that resolution passes. Mister Ryan's gonna or the clerk's gonna bring up a slide deck for mister Ryan for our discussion item. Tremont 2 And 3 was discussed Oh, stop.

Point of order. How how did that how did it pass? 70?

70.

We appreciate her information and cost that we are ready. And and I think

she was curious on why we provide a.

No. I'm just curious. Like

Yeah. I can try that.

Yeah. Why why would you

Mister mayor, I I would request an executive session if this conversation is going to continue pursuant to, legal risk of a proposed action.

I'm good. I'm good. Okay.

Alright. Good. Can we move on? So the clerk's gonna bring up, a slide deck related to Tremont, two and three recommendation recommendation. This was studied multiple times at the transportation committee.

They left their last meeting with a recommendation that, staff agreeing with staff's recommendation. But after consulting with the planning department, we learned that the recommendation wasn't consistent with our comprehensive plan. So, we've backed up here. We're bringing this back to the full council so we can wrap this up. And, mister Ryan has a few slides to share with you on, a solution that is, in line mostly in line with what the recommendation was from the transportation committee and also comp, consistent with our comprehensive plan. Mister Ryan, go

you, miss Merritt. Just to reiterate, we always wanna do better. We we listen. We hear. We do value engineering. We come up with good solutions, and here we are again. So this will be brief. Can I just go straight to

the next

slide? So right here, you have your current conditions of, Tremont one. This is the width of the bike lane the the travel lanes, the, the bike lanes, and that's current condition. The bottom, picture there, that is what the potential Port Orchard Boulevard improvements could be someday. So just think of that multimodal pathway on the left side.

And then Going up the hill on Port Orchard Boulevard, we would take one of the travel lanes away to make a multimodal pathway. And if you look at so the upper drawing is our current Tremont project, the four lane road where the roundabouts are, and it has a modest bike lane on both sides by so the road with with really no separation between the travel lanes, just paint. Ahead, mister.

Go go to the next slide, please.

Yep.

And so this is what we came up with. This is what we are now proposing. Just please focus on that multimodal pathway. That is what we need to pursue our grant funding. So the extra wide multimodal pathway on the left, we've shifted the whole road. This is gonna require an additional 1.25 feet of right away. It does not impact any structures.

Over the other alternative. And another foot and a half beyond the alternative that that the transportation committee looked at. So so what we have because we're looking to get this grant funded, we need to have a multimodal pathway. And so you have on the north side of the street from Port Orchard Boulevard to Sydney Avenue, you would have that multimodal pathway, a treed strip, and then the four lanes of traffic that we have today, and then we would need an on the south side, an additional 18 inches of right of way to move the sidewalk back, and then build the new a new sidewalk, and then have the bike lane that's a little wider, but mostly consistent what we have as a current condition on Tremont, you know, currently, the other section of Tremont. Does that make sense?

Okay. But we have that much room for pedestrian No.

We will be a we'll be acquiring right of way to to provide pedestrian improvements that don't exist on the north side of the road. And to get a grant, if we just built sidewalks there, we would have to do that completely with local dollars. Well, pursuing this opportunity will allow us to potentially get grant dollars to build that that multimodal pathway on that side of the street.

No no no homes will be

No homes will be purchased, but there we will be acquiring right of way.

No eminent domain, basically.

Well, eminent domain is a a how you acquire, how you purchase.

Perks?

Mhmm. Eminent domain is not there. Yeah. Do not We're

just we're we're just making you aware of the body of work that the transportation committee, they were bringing this forward with a recommendation a week ago. And after that recommendation was made, we realized there was a fatal flaw in the recommendation because it wasn't comp compliant with our comprehensive plan, which is the bike lane on the right side of the screen, or south side of the street. We need to have You did not. Nobody did. The Transportation Committee did. They've seen it twice.

This is something

That came from transportation. They were they were bringing it forward with a recommendation. After they made their decision, we learned new information that it wasn't consistent with our comprehensive plan, and we told I've communicated this to the transportation committee that, you know, that we'd be bringing this back forward with corrected.

Everyone's knowledgeable on

Yeah.

I think it was discussed beforehand. Are they happy with this?

So I'll turn to these gentlemen over two of these over here.

Go ahead.

I'm I'm much happier with the design. I think yes.

Can you hear me? Yep.

I'm much happier with this design coming forward with having the bike lane, on the south side. This was not an option we were we were looking at or we were provided a couple weeks back. I know myself. I'm sure there's a couple other council members on that committee that weren't terribly enthused about it. We were all looking for some consistency from what I consider the new Tremont roundabout section to the Sydney area. This provides that consistency. The one thing I'd like to ask though is we're talking now, we're not gonna shift the road farther north. We're actually gonna push the sidewalk

Yes.

Farther south on the south side. 18 inches. 18 inches. Okay. But we will have consistency with the bike lane going from west of, the bypass

to to.

Correct?

No.

I think does mine work?

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm good. I'm good. We actually reviewed four with the consultants, four different options. And the South side option was not an option to we had to more concentrate the pathway on the North side because the South side is where the park is.

The fire station is also a big natural gas above ground system that would have cost way too much money to do. If we would have cut even into the park with elevation already to get down in there, that would have been that would eliminate the park parking. So the all that was having to whittle it down to two options. But for me, the only option that's I would vote for is one that has the multi pathway so we can actually get the grant funding to pay for it. So if it I'm not I wasn't gonna vote for anything that doesn't have that we're eligible for grant dollars to use to build it.

Because if we don't, we're not gonna do that. That's a back burner, not a priority. But if we can get the the grant dollars, then it's more feasible for us to to do the project. Am I correct on that, mister Mayor? Alright.

There's a extension extensive outreach to the neighborhood, and part of the reasoning for that pathway to be on the North Side is is it ties into the neighborhoods, and it'll tie in and why we were showing you the reference to the boulevard, it allows it to tie in to the multimodal improvements on the boulevard and then back into the neighborhoods. And and that was the desire of what we heard from the community in the outreach process.

Okay. And I'm I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but, you know, during those discussions, I was advocating for a continuation of the current profile for Tremont largely because it had bike lanes on both sides, and I wanted to be sensitive to a growing biking population and the potential for more commuting options. And I just saw it as as kind of not a good design to have that, and then they disappear, and then, you know, we should be growing those facilities. So I'm happy with this. It's it's about as wide a profile as we can get, and it provides for the multimodal.

I think it's great that it's the South side that has the biplane because I I think that that's where you'll see you could see more conflict with commuters heading back home if that was multimodal versus in the morning going the other direction on the multimodal as proposed on North Side. So I I think this is a good compromise, and I think it's about as good as it gets.

Alright. Councilman Rose, but PG, you have something to add?

I I did. I was hopeful that we'd see bike lanes on both sides. And, unfortunately, that's not the case because of, you know, restrictions. But, I'd at least we have bike lanes going in one direction. Just to let you know that, the biking paths that show through Port Orchard come up Port Orchard Boulevard. So I'm really excited to see the previous slide, you know, where you showed that we're doing the diet on Port Orchard Boulevard, that we're gonna be keeping those bike lanes. So that's that's you know, it's moving one step forward at a time.

One one last thing. Go ahead, Heidi. Sorry. Oh, actually, mister mayor can call on you, not me.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Either one of you.

Go ahead.

I like what you said about the grant on that. The one thing sometimes it would be nice were the picture I'm sorry. Maybe I'm just being picky here. The picture really matches up to that road. That doesn't like, if it didn't say Tremont, I wouldn't even know where that street is, what we're doing. It's just nice if we're paying for someone like this. Why don't they do our street?

We didn't pay anybody. Staff Oh, did you a tool No. So that we didn't pay an engineering term, firm to to do Okay. No. No. Concepts. Yeah. It was in house.

So one one thing that is kind of unfortunate is the the bridge, the Lund Bridge. That's really unfortunate because there's no room to put a bike path on that bridge. So you're gonna have bike paths on Bethel, and then they're putting bike paths on Lund from the roundabouts there. Mhmm. It'll have been nice to be able to go to, you know, volunteer park and just keep coming, going on to the bridge. I guess, share the road. Guess you can ride you can ride it, but there's not gonna be Yeah. Bike paths on the bridge. So there's there's no room for that. That's the only Yeah. Real downfall that we kinda realized when we're looking at this.

But yeah.

Councilman Morrissey?

I'll see you make sure that

this gets in front of us.

Yeah. We'll we'll or we'll at least email it to you guys. There's a couple more slides, just some concepts for a roundabout at Sydney And Tremont Intersection, and this is a tradition, we're early in this, and we just want this alternative is a traditional roundabout, and on the the top left the top corner, and the bottom corner to the right, there are very steep slopes there, and this would be, we believe, expensive to build. And there's an alternative for a peanut that lives within the existing right of way, and staff is evaluating those two alternatives. Brandy, go to the next slide, and you'll see what peanut looks like, And then we don't impact the homes on those two corners.

We're not convinced this is the right solution. It is something that we're evaluating the cost benefit analysis of this versus the steep slopes and impacts to the homes on those two corners. So, more to come on this. This we're not married to any idea. We we kinda need to know the I the cost for both approaches before we staff makes a recommendation. So yes.

Question on the Sydney and Beaumont. Well, both those intersection. I mean, I live off of Sydney.

Mhmm.

I'm never I mean, that that streetlight, I never get way backed up. So why are we spending a bunch of money on that roundabout?

Mary, I could take that. This this is a failing streetlight. It's problematic. It's it's one of our most costly maintenance. It is getting approaching. It's past the time that it should be totally replaced. So replacing a streetlight similar to this, you're at about a half $1,000,000.

And and and the traffic problem isn't north south, it's the East West on the four lane road. That's that's where that's where, you know, the congestion. Once we have a roundabout at Bethlehem Lund, and the other roundabout some having traffic lights on this corridor will be problematic. It's a it's a future problem. We're just looking looking at, you know, what the future could look like.

I I was just curious. Thanks.

You comment? Yes? No? Maybe? Well, I'm wondering if it's working.

Yeah. Again, do live in this area, and there is a south traffic issue when the county campus lets out. There's a lot of people heading up Sydney and are caught at that light for two, three, four lights sometimes when they're trying to turn, either direction or go straight through. So I do think this will be a traffic mover, in the long run, but we are a long ways down the road.

Yes. Yes.

Just sharing some concepts. That's all all it was. Alright. We're