City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, it is Thursday, August 13th, 2026, and I'm calling this session of the Ridgefield City Council to order. Would you please rise and join me for the flag salute led by Councilor Hamilton?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. You can be seated. Miss Julie, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Davis. Present. Council Member Fevella. Here. Council Member Wells. Here. Council Member Burkle. Council Member Hamilton. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Chipman. Here. Mayor Cole.

Here. And Council, I'd accept a motion to excuse Councilor Burkle from tonight's meeting.

I motion to approve Councilor Buerkle from tonight's meeting. I'll second.

Moved by Fevella, seconded by Chipman. Any questions? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, thank you. Councilor Buerkle is excused. Okay, any late changes to the agenda, Ms. Nottingeris? All right, we're gonna keep going then. We're gonna go into public comment this evening. Anyone wishing to address City Council regarding items not subject to a specific public hearing, which we have a couple tonight, may come forward at this time to use the podium or use the raise hand feature located in the toolbar at the bottom of your Zoom screen. For controls over the phone, press star nine for raise hand and press star six to mute or unmute. Please state your name and limit your comments to three minutes.

Nancy Fagan, Ridgefield resident. Good evening. We're here. Preserve Ridgefield Waterfront is doing its part.

Could you start with your name, please, ma'am?

Nancy Fagan.

Thank you, Nancy.

Okay, I'm sorry. Okay. We're here. Preserve Ridgefield Waterfront is doing its part. We're showing up. Our numbers are growing. Our petition has over 3,400 signatures, and our Facebook group has over 700 members. We've been doing our own summer of engagement, and we actually have two-way conversations when we engage. We have had members meeting with state representatives, presenting to special interest groups, canvassing door to door, talking with journalists, and more. We have members researching flood plans, barriers over toxic soil on brownfield, and even the type of chemicals that come off your tires when you drive. We have members measuring hotels and apartments and learning that rooftop structures are exempt when calculating building height. We have been attending port meetings, city council meetings, and city planning commission meetings. And I'm not sure if your colleagues knew what hit them last week when we walked in. Although the port says they are listening, there is no evidence that we're being heard. That's OK. We will continue to show up and watch and listen and expect accountability.

Thank you.

My name is Michael Jennings. The port is planning on building apartments near where the trains are And there are 35 to 50 trains every day.

And can you imagine anyone wanting to live there and hear all that noise?

Not I couldn't. Thank you.

Hello, Shawna Fisher here, and I'm going to talk to you about dedication. It's my birthday today, and where am I? I'm right here. Right. Thank you. So yay. Right. Woo hoo. You guys. Yeah, right. There you go. So yeah, so that's why I'm here. So I just wanted to come to address a couple of things to talk about the waterfront and the ports and their the engagement and just transparency. And then I also want to say how I appreciate all of you when we're up here talking and you guys listen and you engage, right? Like I can tell that you're listening to us and what I really love is after your meetings and after the planning commission meetings, even though I know you guys can't have that back and forth dialogue in the moment, after every meeting you always say thank you, we're listening. When you go around and do your little like staff reports, I think that's what you call them, you always do that and I would love to invite the commissioners to do that so we know that we're being heard because I feel like there is just a lack of that, a lack of like we're being heard. And yesterday in the meeting, there's so much defensiveness that is going on with the port. And, you know, it's like they're just so closed off when we're talking and it's really disheartening. There's not a lot of openness. And even in the meeting yesterday, I noticed there was like some eye rolls and just some like the way that I'm not gonna call out who it was, but just some of the people that are involved with the port had that. And I just think that that's just really not cool and that's not open and that's not how you engage with the community. And there just hasn't been, the commissioners haven't been at any of the engagement activities. And there's a thing about mindset too, right? In business, there's a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, right? When you have a growth mindset, you're open to growth, open to possibilities. then when you're a fixed mindset you're kind of closed and you're not open and you're not receptive and i just feel like that's how the port is i feel like they're not listening to the community they're listening to their consultants and they're not listening to the needs of the community and the people that they do hire as consultants they get from outside of the community so i would just invite you guys as city council to really help to like advocate for the waterfront and the survey in any ways that you can help I think would be greatly appreciated and just that more transparency and it's like just you know tying into the refuge and i did have one port person tell me that oh yeah people are people are just kind of you know surveyed out because i think they have like 800 surveys so i just hope they take that into consideration that maybe people aren't filling out the survey because i've heard people say oh there's no point they've already decided so i hope you guys when it comes to your guys's part you take that in consideration thank you thank you miss fisher and happy birthday thank

Hi, my name is Morgan Rumble. Yesterday afternoon, I posed the question to the port, why did they choose to work with Palindrome, a company with a history of tolerating sexual impropriety of vulnerable people? I want to know. It doesn't make any sense, and there have been no answers. So without any other information, I'm starting to draw the conclusion they just don't care. which is so rage inducing because nothing has changed in like the 20 years since I graduated high school and went out and started renting my own apartments. In 2011, I lived in Bellingham, Washington with friends in multiple apartments. The onsite property manager, we found out, was entering our apartments with the master key unbeknownst to us when we were not there, stealing small items and our tip change. This culminated in the experience of him walking in on me while I was coming out of the shower and he ran, when I hid into a bedroom, when he found out I was there, he ran out. We called the landlords. Oh, he said, she said, nothing we can do about it. So for the next month, luckily we were moving out in a month, but for the next month we never knew if our stuff was secure when we were gone or if we were gonna wake up to have fucking gills standing over us in the middle of the night. I just don't understand why we're still in a place where we don't care about the safety of people in their own homes even. So I asked Steve Stewart and each member of city council and all the port commissioners, are you gonna stand there and shake the hand of the Palindrome CEO when we do the ribbon cutting and the groundbreaking and say, we're proud to have this in Ridgefield. We welcome this in Ridgefield. Would you want your children, your grandchildren, you to stay in a place that we know that the landlord holds profit over safety? No, absolutely not. It's disgusting, it's unacceptable.

Good evening. I'm Peggy, and I'm an almost 30-year resident of Ridgefield. I attended the last Ridgefield Planning Commission meeting on August 5th because of my opposition to the Port Waterfront development. There were many people there commenting with concern regarding this development plan. After comments, on their agenda was a review of a report titled Envision Ridgefield 2045, I'm sure you're familiar with it, which is a multi-year planning project by the city to update its 20-year comprehensive plan. It was interesting to hear the goals they're focusing on up through 2045 that touched on our current objections to the port's waterfront development plan. Under the topic land use, quote, targeted mixed-use centres meet population requirements while preserving Ridgefield's unique small town feel and protecting our natural spaces. Under community vision, under the parks title, direction for the future, first quote, this quote, the city takes pride in its exceptional parks and it's dedicated to providing recreational and natural spaces for its growing population, end quote. My comment on that is the waterfront property is the mother of all natural and open spaces in Richfield. Second quote, Quote, the city will continue to partner with the Port of Ridgefield and other entities, county, state, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, to develop and maintain regional resources. My comment now, we have the jewel. That is the Port waterfront right here in the old town, the original historic Ridgefield. Envision Ridgefield 2045 had many goals that touch on concerns we have about the waterfront development. Goal 7.3, quote, enhance and sustain Ridgefield's parks and recreation system to provide quality recreational opportunities and green spaces for all Ridgefield's residents. Policy 7.3.3, quote, partner with the Port of Ridgefield to restore and protect open spaces, end quote. Under arts, culture, and historic resources, there's a title commitment to preservation of art, culture, and heritage, quote, retain culture and heritage, and maximize the city's natural resources and attractions, including the Richfield National Wildlife Refuge, archeological resources, waterfront area, the Lewis and Clark, and Native American connections." My comment in that, one, Richfield's premier natural resource and attraction is the refuge and the adjoining port waterfront. Two, The waterfront is a major archaeological and historic area. Lewis and Clark came to Richfield and traded with the Catholic portal, the original people, right at the waterfront. Why are we planning to put many large apartment buildings on this historic and beautiful area? That was my time. I think it's up. To be continued. Thank you. Thank you.

John Dotson, Citizens of Richfield. I'm here, and I want to give you a little insight on this portion. But under the Freedom of Information Act, I got the newest update on the proposals that are out there, the MOUs. And there is some minor changes. It has to do with timing and that sort of thing. in the construction process. It's interesting. It's nothing about anything different. It's just different timing. And in doing that, I ran across a couple of things that kind of spun my head a little bit. I wanted to find out who, thought I had this here. Yeah. What's on this page? Sorry. Who is the MLA? They're in the whole structure. I know that this is for Master Lease Association or something. I don't know that there was going to be a lease in that area, if that only pertains to the buildings that are built. Or if, I don't know, maybe the port's leasing the land. I don't know if they sold it. I don't know who owns it. So that's a big question. And that is in the master plan. Then that's under the memorandum of understanding. So that was just a couple of questions I had. I know you can't answer tonight. I'll try to get that information from over there. Also, in that same packet, I got a listing of public meetings by the port with people of the city. That's what I requested. I got it right here. Somewhere I thought they had one over at the fairgrounds, but I'm not sure. Let's see. Workshop, workshop, workshop, workshop, workshop. Oh, excuse me. Workshop, workshop, workshop, workshop, workshop, workshop, workshop. There's no invitation to the public at these meetings. They tell you it's open. And it's like here, you get three minutes, and they sit there, they listen, and they say, bye-bye. And that's all we get. Nothing else. It's kind of a tragedy, to be honest with you. Thank you.

Hi there. I'm Jan Haig. I'm a 22-year resident of 98642. I'm a newcomer in some ways. And I would like to speak out against the plan for the waterfront. They've been talking about it for years. And I have to say I was partially paying attention. I never went to port meetings. I never went to city council meetings. But I do remember that they told us that no residential will be down there. They had some nice ideas. The fish and wildlife would be down there, WSU extension and stuff. But now we are up against a clock. I have heard them blame it on newcomers. The new people have come, they see all that open space, and they just want it that way. But in the last 20 years, the port has developed other land and buildings, and they have created jobs elsewhere. And so they don't necessarily have to rely on the waterfront just as their only piece of property where they need to develop jobs. Why can't they build one building at a time down at the waterfront? Why do they need a developer to bring in all of this all at the same time? And all of that money that the developer will be receiving in rent will now be going out of state. We don't need several hundred residents creating a traffic mess. I also propose a larger park, as the city requires 25% to the developers. And that would make it at least 10 acres. And that doesn't include the bank on the river. That's really not usable space. Times have changed. We are seeing the value of this piece of property. It doesn't have to be built with buildings everywhere. Save this special piece of property and develop it correctly. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm a little nervous to do this, so I'm just standing here tonight asking for your help. I've lived here for 24 years.

Could you start with your name, ma'am? I'm sorry, yeah.

Shannon Cosgrove.

Thank you, Shannon.

I've lived here my whole life in this area, and I'm a teacher in town, and I spent my day up in my classroom setting it up and getting it ready and thinking about the year, and it got me thinking. I went to the port meeting last night, And it was super frustrating. And it got me thinking about my school year and I was doing my training and one of my trainings today was on bullying and recognizing it and dealing with it. And I feel like as a resident of Ridgefield, which is making me write this down and talk tonight that we're being bullied by the port. We have three people deciding for all these residents, I mean 3,400 I think in our group who don't want it, and they're just deciding it unilaterally. They did a summer of engagement. They didn't engage. It was not really engagement. I don't even know why they bothered to do it. I spoke with a bunch of my teachers yesterday. We had coffee in the morning and then today at school. They're all just aghast. They're just dying that this is happening to our little town and our community. We live here. So I'm asking for you to help us, because I know that you can. The port wants to do what they want to do on their development, but their gateway to that, their access to that is Pioneer and Maine. and I don't want that to be made easy for them. I don't want that turned into multi-lanes. I don't want roundabouts. It's not safe, it's not feasible. Pioneer is gonna be chaotic. All those sweet businesses with the parking, gone. We were told at one point that downtown Old Town Ridgefield would be preserved and saved as it is. It's this charming historic town. I'm on the parade committee. I'm a big part of that. We love the parade and everybody always comes down and raves and raves about this is the best town. If all that goes in down there, it's lost. We're gonna have traffic and kids not being able to be out in the streets and you're gonna have to change the roads and change the traffic patterns. And I know some of that has to come with some development, but the amount that will be needed for down there is scary. And once it's paved over, we can't go back. So I'm asking for your help to help us stand up to basically five people, I think it's like three port commissioners and two people, deciding the fate of thousands of people who live here. Help us protect downtown, thank you.

Hi, my name is Ryan Williams. I'm a 35-year resident of Ridgefield, Washington. Raised my family here. I've been spending the summer down at the launch ramp engaging with recreationalists, all forms, fishermen, just party boats, jet skis, canoers, walkers. And I've engaged with over 180 people in that time. A lot of the residents, the Ridgefield residents that I engaged with, say that they came here. They didn't plan on having jet skis, but then they realized how beautiful it was out there. They found Bachelor Island. They found that big 2 and 1 half mile sandy beach out there. They started spending time out there. The fishermen, obviously, they've always been here. I can remember the days when we were reclaiming the waterfront land, and we were forced to park in town with our trucks and trailers. And it was chaos. I mean, we'd have to walk from pretty much here down to the launch ramp to find parking. I see that coming again in the future. I don't know how we can avoid something like that other than make it illegal to park up here. But there's people from other communities that come here, too, for various reasons. Battleground, this is kind of one of their closest access. I've met a lot of people from out of town, even as far north as Tacoma, come down here to access this during the peak of the fishing season, which comes to mind that the peak of the fishing season, the WDFW is in control of the the regulations on the river and at a certain point, Warrior Rock North becomes the boundary in the river or upstream, I should say. That creates a ton of pressure as far as the recreational people down here. So I think that I've seen Ridgefield grow. I've been patient with the growth. I've learned to love my new neighbors. And I welcome everyone to do that, but we put all these building permits here, and people say that they came here and discovered this, and now we're telling them there's just not going to be that opportunity anymore. Yeah, so I have one more thing on my mind. I'm talking from my heart because I really do believe we have a very special place down there. It should be preserved. I know there's all kinds of issues that come along with that kind of building. Last night, we recognized. I don't have enough time. I'll catch you on the next one. But thank you very much for your time. And let's keep this place a little bit special. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Suki, and I want to thank each of you for listening and being respectful of each of us as we speak. It does not go unnoticed. I want to state for the record that I am not here to villainize the port commissioners or staff, but I want to share the several experiences I've had attending their meetings, workshops, and their summer of engagement events. And honestly, I'm here begging for your help to help us preserve this waterfront. In April, the port hosted a commission coffee and dozens of residents attended to express their concerns over the proposed waterfront development. Almost immediately, I observed appalling behavior by two elected port commissioners as they yelled straight in residents' faces. Honestly, it was shocking. After that meeting, I decided to prioritize as many city council and port events as possible. Since then, they have hosted various workshops and commission meetings where people stand up, pour their hearts out, and share how important and special the waterfront is to them and to their families. People are dedicating countless hours talking with neighbors, collecting data, and preparing statements for city council and the port meetings. People are taking time off from work and parents are sacrificing family time with their kids to attend the inconvenient meeting times that they offer us. That's how important the waterfront is to us. But you know what's discouraging and honestly offensive? Being met with eye rolls, looks of boredom, and next each time we speak at the port meetings. It's upsetting to show up to not one but multiple meetings where the room is too small so people are standing in hallways for hours. We were asked to engage with the port this summer to share our input on the waterfront while simultaneously being told phase one is not negotiable. Our paid elected commissioners have not been present to hear from their community at these tabling events. How is that engagement? Over 3,400 people have signed a petition opposing this waterfront development, and we've been called the loud minority. I was called argumentative because I didn't agree with the need for a hotel or additional residential. Again, I'm not here to villainize them, but I have to wonder how genuine their engagement efforts have been. I'm here because I believe that the city does have a say in what is approved down on our waterfront, and I feel that it's essential that you're hearing from the same residents who feel dismissed by the port. I've requested that the port share all comments and findings from their survey publicly. I know I'm not the only one who has made this request. Several people have expressed concerns over the skewed survey but have used the comments section to record those concerns. However, yesterday the port stated that they will analyze input and survey results and then report what they heard. I'm sorry, but I'm skeptical and concerned that their analysis will look similar to the analysis from the previous survey. That very same survey from a few years ago overwhelmingly showed the community wanted natural spaces, and yet we are here with an overdeveloped waterfront concept. Please continue to listen to the very same people who elected you. Thank you.

Thank you, Dion Hess. I wasn't going to come to this meeting tonight, and then I saw all of my fellow citizens, everything they're doing, and I felt guilty in coming. And I wasn't planning on talking, but what I've seen the last couple days, this is the time to talk. We were invited to a steelheaders Northwest Columbia River chapter of the Northwest Steelheaders meeting to talk about how this development will affect the boat ramp and the potential things that it will cause us. Anyway, Robin and I were, and I'll get back to that in a second. I was at yesterday's port meeting. Councilman Wells could talk about that. You couldn't even get a seat. It was sitting room only, not standing room only. She had to sit on the floor. I was at the last planning commission meeting. The first one I went to, there was like six people there and three people commented. The comments went, the first round of comments went for over an hour. You know, I wear this shirt really out of pride, out of the folks, the citizens that I've engaged. I remember Robin, the first time I saw her, I came back from fishing, and there she is by herself in the rain getting petitions. I remember 3,400. I've seen Wendy leave a meeting yesterday, and people follow her out to want to talk to her. That's leadership, and that's what we need now. I saw another lady come in.

She's just tearing up Facebook.

I got a Jamie for you. There you are right there. These are leaders. There's a lady, and really they're heroes. And I really want to talk about the hero that I've seen. She's not here tonight. I've seen her in here at planning. I saw her yesterday at the Port Commission meeting. She's a pregnant lady with a little kid and two kids that still well behave right there, fighting for her community and fighting for her kids. Those are the folks that really, I think, who we need to be listening to. You know, if we're not gonna be heard, you know, we're not gonna use our ears to be heard, or if we're not gonna be, people use their eyes to be seen, let's use our noses. This plan stinks and we all know it.

Robin Knight, Bridgefield resident.

I wanna share something very honest and personal with you tonight. I am an introvert by nature. I have a full-time job and I work overtime every single week so that I can take time out to attend meetings that are scheduled at inconvenient times for working people. I have a life I would like to be living, one that doesn't involve reading zoning codes and waterfront market analyses and drafting public comments on my lunch breaks. Canvassing door to door, organizing volunteers, and sitting through hours of public meetings aren't something I picked up because I needed a new hobby or was looking for a way to make new friends, though I appreciate all the new friends I've made. This is not how I would choose to spend my time if I felt like I had a choice, but I don't feel like I have a choice. I'm here and dozens at times hundreds of other Ridgefield residents are showing up with me because our waterfront matters enough for us to sacrifice for it. We are not professional activists. Most of us have never organized anything before this year. We are neighbors, parents, retirees, people with our plates full, and we are doing this anyway because what happens to our waterfront will outlast every single one of us in this room. I'm not asking you to care about my discomfort. I'm asking you to recognize what the waterfront means that so many people who never wanted to be organizers have become organizers over this. It isn't manufactured outrage and it isn't going away because it's inconvenient, because it's inconvenient for us too. Our community is telling you in the most inconvenient way possible that we are paying attention. We know the city has a role to play in the redevelopment of the waterfront in updates to the zoning codes and interpreting what gets approved as a similar use or which view corridors can be sacrificed and we will be paying attention through every phase of this process. I am still seeking answers to my questions regarding the 2023 waterfront mixed use code. There are several aspects of it that I would like council to consider updating if you haven't already. Require a public hearing for any similar use determination. especially involving lodging and for all view corridor exceptions. These are decisions that affect our whole community and therefore I feel there should be a process for allowing residents to weigh in on them. They should not be administrative staff level decisions only. I hope everyone involved in these decisions understands by now that Ridgefield residents are not just going to take this lying down. We can't be sold on a development we don't want like a car salesman sells an upgrade. by skipping the walk around and hiding the fine print. We don't want this, and we will continue to let everyone involved know it in every way we have available to us as engaged citizens. Public comment, media outlets, and yes, at the ballot box. Thank you.

Jamie Kaiser, Ridgefield resident. I did not write anything, so this is not going to be nearly as eloquent as what Robin had to say. But I'm just another citizen that would love to see you guys hopefully step in and change what the port wants to do to our waterfront. This is a very special space, and once it's done, it's done. And for me, I went to the port workshop last week, and I get it. Apartments bring money. you're not gonna get a developer unless you bring in apartments. Apartments are money makers. You're always gonna, especially waterfront apartment and low income housing, you're always gonna be making money. And that's what it comes down to. Is the port paying off its debt? and then building that waterfront park. But I think it needs to be something different. We need to see compromise from the commissioners and from the port, and there hasn't been any. There has been eye rolling. There's been dismissive. You ask them direct questions and they dance around them and they get mad at you if you ask again the same question. I've emailed them twice the same question and all I get back is a copy-paste thing that they send everybody here, take our survey, which is skewed towards their favor. I say at this point they need to start compromising. They use Independence, Oregon at the workshop as one example. That is a town of 10,000. Ridgefield is 17,000. Independence, Oregon, their waterfront park is 26 acres. Their development is much smaller. I think it's a hotel and like five apartment buildings. I say at this point they need to rethink what they're doing. Ethan told me at one point in time it was going to cost $25 million to do the new waterfront park. I think a lot of the people in the community would prefer something smaller if we get a bigger park, and we don't need all those amenities. Yes, we want a better kayak approach. I get that. Those river rocks are just a hazard. But I think the port needs to start listening to the community and saying, what can we do different? How can we compromise? And at the moment, they're not. They're digging their heels in, and they're basically saying they don't care. And it's frustrating. So we're coming to you, and this is just the tip of the iceberg of the people that really want to see this not happen or see this at least change. We're coming to you because we know you play a part. We know you can make decisions. We know you can help shift this in a different direction. So that's what I'm asking from you. And I know talking to Ethan and Abby, well, we've been doing this for 20 years. This has been in the works for 20 years. And I said, Well, if I'm doing the same job for 20 years and approaching my clients the same way and all of a sudden they say this isn't working, I'm not going to keep moving forward. I'm going to stop and say, okay, what do I need to do differently? They got very upset about that. They also said the survey was invalid because how many were actual Ridgefield residents? And I said, I get that because those are the people who vote in the commissioners. But when I was doing the canvassing the weekend of the big flower sale, it was people that are coming to Ridgefield. One guy said he thought it felt like a beach community. He loved the old town. He liked how quiet it was. People were coming to the restaurants. Okay, you're building this kayak statewide destination. You want to bring people in, but now you're saying their survey results don't matter. So I'm just asking you again, please do something to change this.

I'm Patrick Flynn, I am currently the Vice Chair on the Planning Commission and I'm here speaking as myself, not on behalf of the Commission. But as you can tell, there's a lot of frustration around the waterfront situation. I think there's a lot of people who are scared and angry about it and there's a lot of reasons for that. Everyone can have their own reasons and that's fine. My personal reason is the lack of transparency that we're having from the port, and it's on so many levels. It's the meeting times that they have. The public meetings are at three o'clock in the afternoon. That's absurd. Their website keeps on changing. They have links that redirect to the same page that you started on. They have blank pages that don't tell you anything. It's just disgusting, and they dismiss people all the time. And they refer to us as the vocal minority. which I think is disgusting in so many ways. The reason why we have these three-minute periods, this public comment period, is so that everyone has a chance to speak. And it doesn't matter if you're in the minority or the majority. We all have a chance to speak. And I think what they are planning down there is... I live up on Hillhurst. I don't have a view of the waterfront. but I care about the people who live on the waterfront who do have a view. And I don't boat or fish. Sorry, Ryan. I don't boat or fish, but I care about their access to the waterfront, to parking down there. I try not to even drive downtown when I can help it because there isn't enough parking right now. And just earlier this week, the port confirmed that phase one of the plan, I think, is supposed to have 200 houses, 200 residences, and then the entire project as a whole is up to 350 homes down there, plus a hotel, plus recreation, plus retail. It's just not feasible right now. Are we going to have to bulldoze City Hall and everything on Pioneer just to make another overpass? Or are we going to have to knock down people's houses that are a couple blocks up in order to get people down there? It's madness to think that there could be a 75-foot tall building blocking people's views. People have been here for 50 years, and their views are going to be taken away by some hotel. Anyway, I'm frustrated too now, as you can tell. I know, or I hope, and I know a lot of you, that you will push back when whatever the plan is comes out. And I know there's a lot of hurdles that they have to cross, but they're going to try and go as fast as they can, and they should. That's their right. but I hope that you will push back on whatever nonsense they kick out. Thanks. Thank you.

Is there anybody else wishing to give public comment this evening? Come on up, sir.

Thank you, I'm Tim Doughty. I've lived in Ridgefield for 34 years. So it comes down to this. It's a moral issue, isn't it? You, as the city council, have to decide what kind of position you're going to take. Where are you going to stand on this? The ports made their decision. And everyone here has told you what their decision has been, how they've been treated. We had a discussion with the commissioner a couple weeks ago. about the development, an informal one. Ryan was there, weren't you Ryan? And he blamed the city council for the development. He said it was out of his hands, it was up to the city council. It's time for us to make a decision about who's gonna become accountable for this. Certainly the port is not taking accountability. I have trust in the city council and all these people who've come here today. Look at them, teachers, citizens, sportsmen, retirees. These people are coming to you for help. They need you. They want you to make that decision. They want your help and that's why they're elected. When you drive around the community, look at the signs. Have you ever seen an upswelling like this in the history of Ridgefield? Not once. My wife and I took a drive around today with the dog in the car. How many protect the waterfront signs could we see? It's amazing. Right across the street from the port's office.

Right across from Joel Milroy's house.

Protect the waterfront. And so we come to you for common sense, for moral examination. Because once we ruin the waterfront, we're never getting it back. Consider this. Because we only get one chance to do it right. They knew this in Portland. When Tom McCall went with Mr. Nadeau and saved the waterfront park in Portland, it was inspired. And you have a chance to do the same thing. Thank you.

Is there anybody else in the room who would like to give a public comment this evening?

My name is Rick Grins, 37 year resident of Richfield. Um, I've done a lot of research, a lot of fact finding, trying to get to the bottom of the politics and what's all gone on here in Richfield. But I came across this article, uh, and I've had it for a long time, but I just kind of reviewed it and I found what I was looking for. It's dated, um, It's by the Columbian, Tyler Graff was the reporter that published it. It was November 20th of 2013. And former Mayor Ron Onslow is quoted as saying, the city and the port will work together to make the property work to justify the expense. That it will mean a development with a mix of retail, open space, and high density housing, including housing, including housing, will mean activity in the area won't die after 5 p.m. Now, when you're right there next to the Richfield National Wildlife Refuge, I think it is important to have things quiet down after 5 p.m. for the wildlife, the migratory waterfowl, and respect the refuge. This conceptual waterfront development this port's trying to run through is not respecting the refuge, and that's what makes Richfield extra special, along with all the other recreational activities that I've enjoyed over the years for the last 60 years. And that's in jeopardy right now with this plan. But anyway, this is what I think is going on is there is a partnership as I've been told between the city and the rich and the port in developing this waterfront. And when I say the city, I'm talking about just a couple very influential individual officials. And those individuals are, going to regret this in the end. It's not a threat. It's going to be the frustration you're seeing in this room tonight is going to turn to anger if this, if this development turns out the way that potentially could and that anger is going to drive some officials out of this town. That's just an observation that's happened other places in the country and I see it for, I foresee it happening here if things aren't addressed properly. I like to have things open, honest, transparent. I'm a retired registered nurse and we work on a different level than a lot of the different professions out there. I have no tolerance for dishonesty. In the Reflector newspaper that came out Wednesday, Abby Russell, this is a quote, financially the boat launch operates at a loss. It generates roughly $120,000 a year in annual and daily use pass sales against about $180,000 a year in maintenance, staffing, and operating costs. I've heard this line before from the port that it's a money loser for them. They don't respect what the public wants down there, and that's an expansion and improvements of that facility. Steve Stewart, he's not here tonight. I wish he was because we had a conversation about this in the past.

Thank you, Mr. Grimes. Your time is up.

I'll finish it up later.

Thank you. Anybody else in the room before we go to online comments? Okay, Miss Julie, is there anybody online? I thought I saw a couple.

We do have one, Christine Posey.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, we can hear you.

Sorry. All right. Well, I'm here to state my opposition to the proposed development of the waterfront. Through all the growth and extraordinary changes that we've experienced in the last 10 to 15 years, our beautiful town of Ridgefield is still a very special place. A huge part of its appeal and charm is the waterfront. Aside from its access to Lake River, which boaters and kayakers enthusiastically appreciate, there's a whole nother aspect of the population that should be considered. There's no other place like the waterfront where people of any age and ability can enjoy the safe environment of a flat path, right next to so much beauty and wildlife, away from traffic, rocky dirt paths, and cracked sidewalks. You can put a dollar sign on the potential development of the waterfront and talk about how it will financially benefit Richfield, but to the people who live here, the waterfront as it is, is priceless. I'm asking for your help to help preserve the character, the beauty, and the connection to nature that makes Ridgefield so unique. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else wishing to speak online, Ms. Julie?

Not seeing anyone else, Mayor.

Okay. Okay. Thank you, everybody who came tonight, who provided public comment in a very important process. We're going to close public comment for the evening and move on with our meeting. And our next item is going to be the consent agenda. And, Council, with that, I would accept a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Motion to approve consent agenda as presented.

Moved by Davis, seconded by Wells. Any discussion on it? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you. Motion carries. And we will move on. We have a couple of presentations this evening. The first presentation we're going to go through tonight is the second quarter of 2026 budget to actual economic update. This will be presented by our finance director, Mr. Kirk Johnson. Mr. Johnson, over to you, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council and concerned citizens. So what we wanted to do tonight, we're at the very beginning of the 2027 budget process, is go over where we're at as of the second quarter, 2026, and then also go through an economic update specific to Ridgefield. So Julie, if we can jump to slide three first. For general fund revenue, and general fund for those that are here, that's the fund that has most of our tax revenues and flexible revenues that council can use for multiple different areas of support for the services provided by the city. So overall we're currently at about 38% of budget. Part of the reason why that shows lower, you'd think at a second quarter you'd be at 50% is a lot of our revenues come in on a staggered timeframe. Uh, for example, uh, retail sales tax, which is the majority of our revenues that come in for tax revenues are always on a two month lag. So we do see those a little bit later, um, in the year. When you compare to the same period in 2025, we've seen a 12.8% increase in revenues. The majority of our increase is in retail sales tax, a 25% increase compared to 2025. We'll talk about this a little bit more later when we get into the economic part of the revenues. Part of that is related to there was one month that we did receive a significant amount of retail sales tax that I do believe a majority of that was from one-time sales tax due to a specific transaction that looked like it was a new computer change at one of the businesses locally. So let's jump to the next slide, general fund revenue sources. And this is for our 2026 revenues just for comparison of Where our revenues come from, retail sales tax is 42.7% of our overall revenues, property tax is about 16.5%, and utility tax is about 13.9%. That's the three major revenue sources that we do get. So let's jump to the next slide, and that's just a graphical depiction of the different revenue sources that we get. Part of this, as we've talked about for quite some time now, we're going through a transition where Ridgefield was really dependent on one-time sales tax related to new construction. In 2018-2019 timeframe, we set up a plan to transition over to more ongoing retail sales tax, which is related to sales that you can expect year by year. It's not coming from construction that as soon as that construction's done, that revenue source is gone. And as you can see, we go back through 2015, you can see a pretty significant increase. The majority of that is an increase in retail sales tax with the commercial businesses that have come in to the city that was part of that transition plan. It's not just Ridgefield residents that are paying for the taxes that support all the services, but it's everybody who comes into Ridgefield and shops in Ridgefield as well. And that was a big part of the transition plan. So let's jump to the next slide. And this is going to kind of show our retail sales and construction comparison. At the beginning of the transition, the highest level that we were at one point was 65% of our retail sales tax came from one-time sales tax related to construction. You know, as you're looking at that, 65% is one time. When that's gone, that revenue source is gone. So we only had 35% of our retail sales tax to support all the services, street maintenance, public safety, parks, all of that type of stuff. So our plan was to really change that dynamic and make sure that we got to a more stable revenue structure that gets us to most of its ongoing type sales tax versus one time. At the end of 2025, we had switched that over where construction was 29% and 71% is now ongoing retail sales. So it's changed our revenue structure for the benefit so that we make sure that we do have that revenue to support all the services that we provide. So on the next slide, seven, this is gonna show our comparison to other cities in Clark County. If you look, and then also the state of Washington, if you look at the state of Washington, the average throughout the entire state is 21.7% is construction related. In Ridgefield, again, it was 29%, 29.3. The highest was 34 with the center. Our goal in the long term for this changeover to a better structure is between 20% and 25%, so that we're kind of matching what the average is. We do expect that we're going to be a little bit higher for a while because we do have a lot of land. We have a lot of commercial coming in. We have a lot of lots that can build for homes as well. But that shows that the transition is working and we're getting a better revenue structure. And again, we're bringing people in from outside of town that purchase in the city of Ridgefield so they're helping pay for a lot of the services that everybody in here gets on a daily basis.

Real quick, Mr. Johnson, a question from Councillor Davis.

Yeah, thank you. I'm curious, the Woodland statistics, is that just the Clark County portion of Woodland or is that Woodland all?

That is all of Woodland.

That's all of Woodland?

Yes. Thank you. So let's jump to the next slide. So this is going to show how many taxable retail sales happen in Ridgefield and then compared to all of the cities in Clark County and then again all of Woodland as well on a per capita basis. Why this is important is this shows how much revenue we're getting per person. But again, it's being padded a little bit by people coming into Ridgefield and spending here as well. If you look at Ridgefield, we're 37,850 per person. The largest amount is woodland, 52,170. They've got a much smaller population, but they do have a lot of commercial out there with the trailer sales and different things like that, which kind of brings that up. So when you compare us to everybody else in Clark County, We have the highest amount. Vancouver, then, is just about 33,000. And you compare us to more like cities, Battleground, 29,000, and Camas, 27,000. That shows that we have a little bit more diversification. So that helps us in the long term. So a couple of things I wanted to show tonight with the economic update is there are some headwinds that we're going to show here a little bit later. But our transition's working. Despite everything that we read in the papers with the economic issues in the state, nationally, you see a lot of cities that are having budgets that are underwater, school districts that are having some issues. We do have some positive things still happening here, but there are headwinds that we're not immune to. Everybody is seeing that because it's a national thing and regional thing. So I kind of want to point out, when you look at that per capita, construction in Ridgefield is just over $11,000 per person, and the ongoing is just about $27,000. So that's a big change from what we were seeing 10 years ago. So let's jump to the next slide. And this is our sales tax and how much we're receiving year to year. The highest amount that we've received was in 2025, and that was about 5.2 million. We're on track to be over 6 million this year. If you look at 2026 through June, it was 2.8 million compared to 2.3 million in 2025, and that's a 21% increase. Now, again, I mentioned earlier that we had one month that had a pretty significant amount that was a one time. So when you're looking at the ongoing, what I'm forecasting by the end of the year is about a 12% increase from last year. So overall through July is where we're looking right now at about a 12.3% increase. And we're going to keep that pretty level through the end of the year. So let's jump to our next slide, which just kind of compares us on property tax. This is property tax that's payable to the city. Property tax, as you see in your bills each year, there's things, there's the schools, there's the county, there's the state, There's the port. There's a whole bunch of different jurisdictions that receive property tax. Ridgefield is the lowest in the county when you compare cities. We're at 58 cents per thousand for assessed value. The closest to us is... Woodland at $0.66, and that is the Clark County amount. And then La Center at $0.77. You compare that to the highest, which is Vancouver, at $3.77. And that's just to the city. So jumping to the next slide, again, we're $0.58. This is kind of showing what our base levy is. Base levy is the amount of assessed value that keeps growing each year. Then in the green at the top is new construction. So that's the amount that comes in that's new each year. We'll have another slide, I believe, on the next one that will kind of show our new construction for 2026 is about 4.3% that's added to our assessed value. The more assessed value that we add, it spreads out the cost and that makes the levy amount for each taxpayer go down. So our next revenue source on slide 13 is our utility tax revenue budget. I'll just point out the highest amount is electricity, and then we have multiple different areas that we do receive revenue for that as well. So now let's jump to expense, unless there's any questions on revenue by council.

Council, any questions at this point? We're good.

OK. So our expense, if you compare our second quarter to the budget, we're at 45%. So we're slightly under where we would expect to be at this time. I do want to add one thing, though. We do have a lot of expenses that come at the very beginning of the year for larger things like our liability insurance and things like that. So all of that has already been counted in here as well. Overall, what I've seen from our staff is they're doing a really good job of holding the budget and making sure that we're being responsible with the taxpayer money. I do forecast at the end of the year that we're actually going to show a surplus this year where we did budget for using some reserves, but the majority of that is due to unfilled positions that we're starting to fill up now and hope to have filled by the end of the year. So if you compare our budget at this same point to last year, we're down about 1.5%. And that includes all of the contractual increases for COLAs for labor, contractual increases for things that are with other cities, you know, for public safety and that type of stuff. And each of those do have increases each year. So like I said, we're doing a really good job of maintaining the budget. So if we jump to the next slide, just to show our overall operating budget is a 14% increase in 2026 compared to 2025. But again, as you saw in that last slide, we're slightly under at this point in June compared to last year. Our largest amount of the budget does go to public safety. And then as you can see, it's kind of split out. This is all the general fund budget for where we go. We did also have some transfers planned for this year for some capital investment and then also street operations that it supports for maintaining our streets. So let's jump to the next one, our FTE count. This is our full-time equivalent positions. We did add four positions in 2026 compared to 2025, and we're at 90.75, which is 89 full-time staff and two part-time staff. And that kind of breaks it down to where they work within the city. So the next slide is kind of an important one that we kind of look at. This looks partly at our efficiencies and then also how we compare with how many staff we have to the population. So as the population grows, you want to make sure that you're maintaining your staff to the population. As you can see, back in 2020, we were 5.01 staff for every 1,000 employees. and currently we're at 5.4 so we're maintaining and over the last couple of years we've maintained really closely to that. That's thanks to council for adding a few positions and also the planning that we've done to make sure that we're adding those staff in the right positions. So personnel expense, that is the majority of our budget. Personnel expense tends to be about 54% to 55% of our overall operating budget. We have seen some increases, but that is as we've grown. Over the last six or so years, we've added quite a bit of staff as well. And this kind of just shows that increase. So our personnel expense comparison on the next one, and this is just for council to look at and the public to look at. Again, we're just over 54% of our budget is related personnel. So now general fund balance. We budgeted to use about $536,000 this year. Currently, it does show that we have a net of 1.2 million negative, but that is because of all those expenses that we had at the first of the year that are one time only and we have to get those done. Our revenues do come a little bit later. That's why we have fund balance and reserves set aside to cover that. We're actually down a little bit compared to last year on this, but we have had some higher one-time costs early on this year. Let's go to the next one. This will kind of show our fund balance currently. Currently, we are showing at a negative $730,000 that we have dipped into our reserves currently, and that is part of why those reserves are there is because we do have these costs come. We want to make sure that we're able to meet all of our requirements. But again, by the end of the year right now, we're forecasting that we will not dip into policy reserves at all. And we'll talk about that more as we get more into the budget process. We're meeting with the advisory committee next week. And then I believe it's the third, the first meeting, the first study session in September, we'll be meeting with all of council as well. So let's jump to the next slide. And this is just another slide showing the fund balance. The 4.1 million is what our policy reserve should be. And currently, 3.6 million is where we're at with our reserves. Again, we'll be receiving a lot of our revenue coming up to balance that out.

Real quick on that, Mr. Johnson. So it sounds like, according to this, looking ahead to the next budget cycle, we will not be dipping into our policy reserves in the next year, but we won't be able to replenish them up to that 4.1 or whatever that will be at this time next year, right?

Actually, we will be able to replenish those by the end of this year, and really the reason for that is because of the unfilled positions, mainly in public safety. I'm forecasting that we're going to have a surplus this year, and that will get us back. We started the year with full policy reserves. and I'm forecasting that we will end the year with full policy reserves. And as we get into the next budget process, and I know a question came up earlier last year, we asked staff to do some haircuts in each of the funds. This year, we're not forecasting we have to do that.

Yeah, that's great. So the surplus that you're forecasting at the end of this year, Is it your intention that that would be funneled back in to replenish the policy reserve, and it wouldn't go not to new spending, but to replenish that reserve?

That's correct. We'll start with the policy reserves, and then council has the ability to make changes as to whether or not they want to use any of that or not.

Okay. A little piece of good news. Thank you. Any other questions at this point? Just making sure. Okay. Oh, real quick, Councilor Vivaldo.

I'm sorry, Mr. John. If you already said this and I was not hearing it, when we talk about being up for revenue at 12.8%, what part of that is a reoccurring versus a one-time?

On the sales tax?

Yeah, we're down 1.5 on the year-over-two-year expenses, and then revenue is up 12.8%.

So that's a combination of both. The majority of that, though, is coming from the retail sales tax. And our mix has changed to about 71%, 29%. So we're right in where we want to be. So for the next few years, I would expect that our one time related to construction would be a little bit higher because we do have a lot of commercial and we still have permits coming in. At some point, hopefully we'll start to see more single family and the mortgage rates will go down. We'll talk about that here in a little bit. But that's right where we want to be, and that is stuff that we can count on continuing.

We're good to go.

OK.

Thank you.

So next slide is street fund. Our revenue is at 46% of budget, just over 18.6% above the same time last year. The one thing that I think is a little bit of a concern in here is motor fuel tax that we received from the state has been going down. Part of that is cars have better fuel mileage. There's a lot more electric vehicles out there. But we just got the information from the state on what they're going to be giving us per capita next year. Our population is going up, but the per capita amount is going down. So I'm forecasting we're going to continue to get less motor vehicle fuel tax. What that does is that puts more – on the general fund because general fund's gonna have to transfer in for that work that's done to maintain the streets. So does that make sense? Did I?

Actually, real quick, just so I'm clear, too. That's not TBD funds. That's just street fund, right?

No, that's state-shared revenues. State-shared revenues are a combination of a few things in general fund and the motor vehicle fuel tax, which goes to the street fund to help with maintaining the streets, potholes, right-of-ways, lights, things like that. And that's going to go down.

Okay, thank you.

Expense, we're right at 49%, so we're right where we would expect to be on our street maintenance. 26% above last year. Part of that is due to, we did a labor allocation review And part of that is because we have moved more FTE allocation over to streets versus other areas because there's more work to be done in streets than what we've seen in the past. And that includes trails, sidewalks, streets. So there's quite a bit more work there versus some of the other areas that Public Works handles. So fund balance, we don't keep a fund balance in the street fund because general fund covers that and the majority of the revenue does come from general fund. So that's why you don't see a fund balance there. So jumping to our building and permitting fund, this is the fund that we've had a lot of conversations about and we're gonna talk about again with permitting fees and the expense to offer that service. Permitting fees are currently at 40, 4% roughly compared to budget. It is 21% above this time last year. When you look at expense, we're at 40% of budget. So they've done a great job of maintaining their budget. They've reduced professional service costs. They brought more stuff in-house. That's part of what we need to talk about with the fee structure. But revenue or expenses about 8% higher than last year. A majority of that's related to labor increases contractually and our class and comp study. We will need to talk about this fund as we get into the budget. So in that vein, we'll talk about the single family residential permitting. We're currently through May, and we do have a couple more. Why I'm doing through May is I'm comparing this to other cities here in a few minutes. And that's the information that was on the, I believe it was the census that we get this from. 86 permits there. We forecast 250 permits this year. Initially, earlier this year, we were having very few permits applied for, so we are looking that we are gonna be significantly below that forecast, which is part of that concern with that fund. The last couple of months, June and July, have been significantly higher, so it looks like we are gonna meet budget at this point. But new housing starts currently are down 2.3% nationally. in June compared to 2025. And if you compare June to May, it's down 2.4%. Big reason for that is mortgage rates are at the highest they've been in over a year. So we aren't seeing nearly as many sales as what we've seen in the past. So let's jump to the next.

Real quick on that one too, just out of curiosity. So like as that slows, right, we see like REIT, it looks like it's going down as well. Is that a macroeconomic factor or is that just due to kind of capacity and what we have for like existing inventory inside the city?

No, that's a national and regional issue. That's not specific to Ridgefield. We have plenty of lots available. We have about 1,500 in some form, whether it's pre-planning, up through ready for construction. But it's expensive to buy a house now. And we're seeing that everywhere. Permits are down nationwide. And when I look at the REIT and I get the reports from the county, sales are down. Prices are still up. But the mortgage rates, we'll talk about that. I have some slides on that here in a little bit. So next slide, I wanted to kind of point out commercial, and this is part of the transition. We're wanting to transition where we're not dependent on single family residential, but go into commercial because that affords us future revenues as well. We're at 21 permits through June. So we're definitely on task to meet what we did last year, but we won't meet 2020, which was the high point where we had 80 permits. But if you do look down below, I've got a note there. The commercial permits are down 12.5% compared to last year. And we're showing a 50% increase, though, when you compare it to 2024. So last year was a pretty good year. And they're kind of steady, but we're not seeing significant amounts of permits. We know that there's a lot of... so-called tire kickers out there right now. So I do expect there's some other lots and there's some other activity that we're hearing about, but just they haven't come in for permit yet.

What do you attribute that to?

Well, I think it's planning on the commercial side, and they want to make sure that the economy and their funding, you know, the cost of funding.

So that is more of a macroeconomic pressure that they're facing versus what is happening inside the city. Okay. Yeah.

What we're hearing from the developers and different entities is, Ridgefield's desirable right now. It's a growing community. There's land. We're close to the freeway. We're close to the airport. People want to build here, and they want to offer their services here, but they want to do it in a responsible way. So they're making sure they're watching the economy because there's tariffs. There's cost escalation and a lot of different things. So they want to make sure that they're timing it right. So next are our water and stormwater operating funds. Our revenue in water is down 21%, but it is up, well, excuse me, it's at 32% of budget, and I'm comparing it to the net revenue part was in minus 21. It's down slightly from last year. Part of that is we just haven't had as much of the water usage because we're heavily looking at that conservation plan. So on the revenue side, maybe that's not the greatest. But when you look at water availability and what we should be doing, that's the right thing. So we've really been working on that. And we do plan our expenses to what the revenues are as well. The expense is about 32%, so we are keeping that down. Part of our budget, though, does include some debt service for the new reservoir that we're building over on the east side. We just haven't been charged that yet. That should come in December.

Yeah, I've got a quick question. So when we talk about the lag, like especially with sales tax revenue, from a reporting standpoint, does that update back to when the spending occurred?

It does. So I hate to get into the technical accounting of what we need to do, but we'll account for that when it arrives in 2027 and carry it back as we're closing out the year okay and then it matches up what we need for our budget but when we're looking at it on just a cash flow basis we're counting the first two years that technically were the previous years to make sure that we're meeting bills and requirements and stuff okay all right that helps thank you So stormwater revenue is about 47% and expense about 45%. So both of those are up from last year. Revenue about 14.6% and expense about 32%. This again is a fund that we'll talk about a little bit more during the budget process, specifically with the reserves because Reserves are expanding very quickly in this fund because of the amount of assets we take on, and I wanna talk to you about the potential to use some of those for capital and repair plans. So if there isn't any questions about the operating funds there, jump over to the next slide. So this just shows our expenses compared from 2020 20 through 2026 budget in the water fund you see a big change in 2021 that's because we use 2.5 million of reserves to pay off our remaining debt in that fund so we were at zero debt at that time 2026 water fund budget shows a higher amount again that's because we're taking on new debt to build the reservoir and that'll be for that first payment And 2026 stormwater budget also shows an increase, and that's because of new debt as well for doing the downtown stormwater project and having our first debt payment on that. So next to our special revenue and debt service funds, I'm not gonna go over these significantly. Drug funds, very small, so... I'll go to the tax increment area. This is the one that we put in place when council approved the tax increment area to get funding for the pioneer widening and multiple projects that happened around the junction for transportation and a storm pond. Our revenue, we're at 103% already. The county did find that they had made a calculation error in how they were sending revenue to us, and so that's been corrected and will be corrected in the future. And it's right on task to what we were forecasting to be able to maintain that debt that we did to build Pioneer. Expense, we are, actually we're just about 100%, so that's not right at 0%, so I don't have the formula in there. The $300,000 was to help pay for some debt service, and then we have a payment to the county that will be coming up soon. With that, I am forecasting that, again, that's going to maintain as we expected, and that'll help pay the debt service for that particular project. So next one to the... Additional special revenue, affordable housing. This is something council approved a rental assistance program earlier this year. Through June, we had about $12,800. We have since had a couple more rental assistance that you'll see the next time. So that program is working excellently. I think we're at seven or eight now families we've helped. So I do expect that we're going to get very close to council's budget on that. Again, revenue, we only get about $24,000 a year. We haven't gotten anything this year because it won't start until our July payments because the state will only give us up to a certain amount. Once we reach that amount, we don't get any payments until the next fiscal year for them. So the debt service fund is just to account for the revenue and the expense for the debt service. I'm not gonna go over that one. So the important ones, as we're getting into the next slide, are real estate excise tax and TBD. Those are two of our funds that we use. Real estate excise tax right now, for the most part, we use that for debt service to pay for the bonds to build the Ridgefield Outdoor Recreation Complex. help pay part of the Pioneer widening until we get full revenues there, and then also pay for the operations center and some other things. We're at 39% revenue, about 27%. So that's, again, revenues coming in lower. That's because there's less sales this year. We did have a very good July, so I'm hoping that shows that we're going to see a few more houses selling or properties selling more. later this year. Fund balance, though, remains positive. Council did make some decisions to go below what our policy reserves were in that because of the debt service that we need to do, and we'll talk about that again as we get into the budget. Transportation benefit district, this is the sales tax that the public approved back in 2021 or two. And that goes to pavement preservation. It also helps us with being able to do street maintenance and then also trails and things like that. We're at 34% of budget, but again, that's because of the two-month lag. We're 15.5% higher than the same point last year. And this fund continues to grow and will support what council had directed us to do in an earlier study session to increase our pavement preservation program. So next slide, impact fees. These are the two that we've talked about a little bit. So there's a lot of public care that hasn't been here when we've talked about this. Both the park impact fee and traffic impact fee fund are paid by developers for the impacts they have on our parks and trails and our transportation network for those impacts. we have worked with developers to overbuild what they're required to build. They provide us with land. They give us the land with no charge to the city. They build out the parks. They build the trails, and they build roads for us, and we give them credits. So these particular funds right now, as you can see, the Park Impact Fee Fund is just about 18% of budget, and there is no lag on this one. And the traffic impact fee fund is about 26%. We forecast we would not get a lot of cash payments for impact fees really for the next six years because we have a lot of credits out there. But the benefit that they provided us over the last six to seven years is over 75 acres worth of parks that they've dedicated to the city. I want to say it was, I can't remember exactly, so I don't want to give an exact, but several miles worth of trails, several miles worth of roads that they built, the city would have had to build and wouldn't have been able to do it in the same timeframe. So as we've grown, we've been able to build out a lot of that infrastructure sooner than what we would have been able to do otherwise. So it was a really good plan that council agreed to back in the 2018-19 timeframe. Drawback now and as we get into budget is we don't have that funding to do our own projects We still work with the developers to help us do a lot of that But we're still getting new roads and new parks and trails So just kind of a idea for council as we get into the budget process our current credit balance is 12.2 million in traffic impact fees and and 5.8 million in park impact fees. So that's what's outstanding currently.

What is the anticipated timeline in which those would be applied to various projects, parks, trails?

Well, they're using them pretty quickly. So all of our development, they're using impact fees right now. As you can see with the revenue that I mentioned, 18% and 25%, we're not getting a lot. I'm expecting around 20% to 30% max that's paid in cash. The rest of it will be credits. Each of the credits that we issue, they have 10 years to use them. If they don't use them, then they expire.

Yeah, so it's not one of those things where we're looking at a $5.7 million essentially credit balance that is gonna be applied to new parks anytime soon, it's just gonna be over the next 10 years?

It's probably gonna be over the next 10 years. Probably closer to the next three to five, I would think. But we are gonna get also everything that they have to do as a requirement of their development built as well. So the next couple of funds, they're just capital funds. Again, that's just how we account for our capital, the revenue, and the expense. So that's not something to really go over right now. The Equipment Replacement Fund, that one I'll mention just for the fact that as part of our budget This year in 2026, we chose not to put money into that fund. That's for replacement of our fleet and heavy equipment. That was one of the ways to reduce how much we had to cut in our operating funds for 2026. I am forecasting that we're going to be able to start to put money in there from the general fund again next year, both building and permitting and storm. I'm suggesting that we don't, and we'll talk with council about that later for a final decision. And then finally, our Water SDC. This is our other capital fund that can be used for water. That one, we have very limited credit, so that's not impacted. It's just impacted by the amount of building we have going on. We're about 35% of what our budget was, and that's a relation to through June. We just had not gotten a lot of permits in at that time, and we're 21% down from last year. The other two were capital projects, and again, those are just tracking the revenues and the expenses that come in for those projects. So finally, for our cash and city investments, total cash on hand was about $4.2 million. Our investment portfolio, about $19.5 million. Everything's within policy. And our current yield on investment is about 3.6%. Our goal historically was 1%. Currently, it's 2% because of the elevated yields that we're getting out there. and our weighted average maturity is just over 15.8 months, which is kind of right in where we want to be. That way we're not having things that the rates may be too low for too long, and we're kind of turning things over and making it available for all of the uses that we need. So that's the update on the 2026 stuff. Then we'll get into some of the indicators that are specific a little bit more to Ridgefield.

Okay, so we'll pause here for questions for staff. I'll look to council, anybody have any questions? Okay, just one more for me then, I guess. We've been talking for the last several years about this transition period between construction-related revenue versus the non-construction-related revenue. So has that non-construction revenue grown enough to cover what we're essentially losing in construction-related revenue? Has it replaced that over time? Or we still have some work there?

Yeah, we've gone. So I'll just go back to when I got here in 2012. We were getting between $300,000 and $600,000 a year in sales tax. We're now getting $6 million. Right. Yeah, it's replaced it.

Pretty good. But does that dollar-for-dollar offset what we got from construction-related revenues?

Yeah, yeah. The ongoing is significantly higher, and it's definitely replaced that. We're not going to... not receive any construction related, we'll still get between 20 and 25% minimum. I think we're still okay if we got up to 30% ongoing for another four or five years because of the amount of land we have. But the transition has really worked. So that's an ongoing, that'll cover the services and the staffing and the things that we've had to increase for the population growth. the growth of the city and the amount of infrastructure we have and things like that.

Go ahead, Mr. So city managers

Stewart shared with us, you know, the top 10 companies that we get sales tax from. And I think most people do not realize how much money we get from all the Amazon deliveries that come into the zip code, right? I mean, amazing, amazing amount of sales tax that comes from every Amazon delivery that's made. I was just, I was shocked because it was what, the third highest next to Costco and

Yeah, I think they actually were second and fourth.

Yeah, second and fourth, yeah.

So if you combine – because there's two different Amazons. There's one that's the Prime stuff and one that's like all their other vendors that sell on them. Yes. We get a lot. So for those that are here – It's destination base of wherever the service or the good is delivered. That's where you get the sales tax So anything that's delivered here we get sales tax for and yeah Amazon kind of controls a lot of things It's a little scary, but you know, we do like to see the revenue from them And then how much has Costco added in this last year to our sales tax revenue? It's between about 60 and 65 a month and So.

60 and 65 what?

60 and 65,000 per month.

Okay.

Yeah, so that's definitely our top.

Great, okay, thank you.

Great, other questions at this point before we get into some of the other questions? economic issues. Okay, we can move on for this portion of the presentation.

So next slide. So just to kind of go over Ridgefield jobs, one of our goals in the 2015 comp plan was to become a job center in North Clark County. We started tracking officially jobs in 2019 when we asked for that information on business licenses. And at that time we had just over 2,900 jobs in Ridgefield. In 2025, we had over 5,200. So we have seen a significant increase. That does not necessarily include those that work from home. That's a hard one to track. So we're trying to figure out how to do that. But that would be a significant increase as well if you included those. Then Clark County unemployment rate, they only do the unemployment rate on a county basis. In May, we were at 4.8%. They just released that here recently for June, and it's down to 4.4% Clark County. When you compare that, Clark County tends to be a little bit behind the state. If things go up, it tends to take longer for us to go up. If we go down, it tends to take a little bit longer. We're really tied to the Portland area. But historically, as you can see, other than 21 and 22, that's pretty good in comparison. So next slide, population percentage of change. For several years, we were the highest percentage growth in population in the state. We're now down to a much more moderate growth rate. Part of that is because it's a You have more people, the percentage changes. We went from 16,290 officially in 2025 to 16,820 this year. We're right now considered the 16th fastest growing city in Washington. And like I said before that, we were typically the first. And Clark County is the second fastest growing county in the state behind King County. This year we had about a 3.3% increase in our population. As you can see, there for a while we were at 16%. So pretty significant changes over the last several years. So the next one is just to kind of show the difference. We have a statutory increase that we can do in property tax of 1% each year, not including new construction. And if you look at our CPI, which is the inflationary index, currently in June, we're at 3.2%. That amount is important because that's what we would use for our COLAs in our contractual agreements that are negotiated. And then that's our increases for indexing for impact fees, SDCs, building fees and things like that. They just came out today with the new numbers and it was down for our area. We use the West region. It was down to 3%. More importantly, the core producer index, which is, it kind of shows the wholesale amount. So it gives you an idea of what prices are gonna be in the future. That was up 0.2% compared to last month. And it's a 4.2% annual, but that's down from 4.7% in June. So that's a good sign, but it still is an elevated amount for what we'd like to see. So it shows that there still is the possibility that prices are going to continue to go up or they're going to stay the same. We're not going to see them go down, but hopefully the increases start to reduce. So next, we kind of get to the real estate sales. In June of 2026, for the year, we had 225, which is slightly better than where we would be compared to 2025. We saw 31 in July. So that's a good sign, but that was a little bit down from June. Real estate sales are up 16% compared to last year. Now, this is the concern. And this was July 21. Mortgage rates have gone up since then. The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage per Freddie Mac was 6.55%. And one year ago, it was 6.75%. had since gone up to over 6.8. When you look at, actually I'll have that here in a minute. So the median list price in Ridgefield in July of 2026 was over 690,000 for a new home. 154 homes were listed for sale and 59 homes were under contract. In July, and that was the June numbers in the July report. In the August report for July, it showed now 69 homes under contract. Median sale price was $665,000, which is up about 5% from the previous month and matched the previous year. And currently it shows 4.2 months. That was the July showing June numbers. Now it's showing 4.5 months of inventory, which is a good thing. That shows a more balanced market. So it's a little bit better for buyers and sellers. But for the most part, it's still considered a seller's market. And currently in the newest report that I pulled today, 23% of homes in Ridgefield have sold for over the asking price. So as we go to the next slide, this kind of shows our home values and sales prices compared to all the other cities in our area. Just kind of a snapshot. Price per square foot in Ridgefield, $319. In Camas, $338, which was the highest priced average homes. Clark County is $309. The Portland area, $324. Now here's where mortgage payments. So for the median sale price of $651,000 with a 20% down payment, which would require somebody to come up with over $130,000 down, would be $3,657 per month with excellent credit. So that's why real estate sales are down. And finally, rental expenses. Averages in Ridgefield, 1949 in 2026. But if you're looking specifically for a house, the average price is $2,615. The average in the graph is including everything, including apartments. And then our final slide, Clark County median household income. This goes back to why the per capita retail sales is so much higher in Ridgefield. In Clark County, the median household income is just over 105,000. In Ridgefield, it's over 116,000. So, you know, a little bit that helps us out, but, you know, it still doesn't change the fact that things have gotten a little bit higher and prices have gone up. So that's the... Economic indicators, so if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer great.

Thank you for the presentation We'll look the council again for additional questions. I think counselor Wells has a question.

So we'll start with you The only question I have occurred it's all oh I turn it off. I'm sorry The only question I have hurt is the prime sales you said it goes by address so anybody that lives in the city of Ridgefield gets charged a nine percent and where if they live in corporate Clark County down the street, then they'd be the 7.9 or whatever it is for Clark County.

That's correct, and they're required. They have to submit to the Department of Revenue, so they verify that they're collecting the right amount of sales tax.

Okay, thank you.

Other questions? All right, I asked all mine along the way, so... Yeah, I think we're good. Thank you for that presentation. Thanks. Yeah, this is a great way to kick off the budget cycle, like you said, and I know that starts next week, so it'll be helpful to have this information went into that. So thanks again. Yeah. Okay. My notes here. We have another presentation this evening. We're going to go, this is going to be a presentation on the Clark County Commission on Aging and a report. Ms. Lutz, we'll start with you and let you introduce our guests, and we'll go from there.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, council members of the public. I'm really just here to introduce our guests from the Clark County Commission on Aging. Tonight, we have Ellen Rogers and Julie Donovan with us. And with that, I'll hand it over to you two to present.

Good evening, I'm Ellen Rogers. I am the chair of the Commission on Aging, and I wanna say thank you for having us today. I've been a Ridgefield resident for 27 years, so that's what everybody else, when they gave public comment, told you, so I've been here for a while. Still not born here, so still, you know, somebody from out of town. So I am also the chair of the Commission on Aging. The Commission on Aging, also known as the COA, or C-O-A, is in its second decade of providing leadership, developing community awareness, and guiding positive change toward an all-age friendly, livable community. We are pleased to be able to share a brief annual update with you today. Next slide. Okay. Um, the purpose of this work session is to update the city council on the commission on aging's work in 2025. So today we will be sharing some background information about the commission on aging. We will be giving you a high level overview of our aging readiness plan or the ARP or ARP and providing an outline of the commission's 2025 focused on healthy communities and civic involvement. And then we will acquaint you with the 2025 Silver Citizen Award winner, and then we will share a summary of a few additional commission achievements that we had in 2025. Next slide, please. So to start off, we will give you some background on the commission and review the work completed by the commission in 2025. You should all have an annual report, and we left a couple if anybody else wants to take one with you. So, Clark County, as everywhere in the country, is anticipating a surge in the number of residents 60 or better. By 2035, one in four Clark County residents will be 60 or older. With the knowledge of this coming change, the County Council approved the original Aging Readiness Plan in 2012 and formed a nine-member volunteer commission on aging. The commission's charge is to provide leadership in addressing the special needs of the aging population to manage and assist with the implementation of the county's aging readiness plan and to update the plan as needs change. Next slide please. So the Aging Readiness Plan is a long range planning document that assesses the county's readiness to serve as a home for a growing number of older residents. The recommendation in the ARP focus on topics such as missing or lacking public infrastructure, support for social services and zoning and planning standards that encourage an age-friendly community that older adults can thrive in. And I would also note that any community where older adults can thrive is also a community where anyone can thrive. The 10-year update in the ARP was adopted by the County Council in September 2023. To ensure that the plan reflected the community's needs, public engagement was a focus of the update of the ARP. It centered on what makes Clark County an age-friendly place and what opportunities and hurdles there are for making improvements. Engagement activities included a survey of older adults, focus group meetings with service providers and agencies, online input opportunities, and three public workshops to evaluate existing strategies, brainstorm ideas for new strategies, and prioritize the strategies for improvements in the community. Next slide, please. The Commission was honored to learn that the updated plan was awarded a 2024 Governor's Smart Communities Award from the Washington State Department of Commerce. The Governor's Smart Communities Awards highlight effective implementation of the state's Growth Management Act and other local or regional planning procedures. The plan received the Judge's Merit Award, which recognizes success in one or more of the judged categories. So next I'm gonna talk a little bit about the Aging Readiness Plan, the different chapters of it. Next slide, please. Oh, you're already there. It's hard to do both. So the Aging Readiness Plan includes 18 goals that are implemented through 67 strategies. These strategies are intended to improve the community's capacity to support its growing older population and ultimately benefit all ages. The housing chapter provides strategies to address the various housing needs of the aging community, such as multi-generational living options and affordable units. It also supports construction that enables people to age in place, which generally means staying in their own home or community if their abilities change. The mobility chapter includes strategies based on the transportation and mobility needs of older adults. It outlines ways that older adults tend to travel and areas that could use improvements such as public transit, ADA, accessibility and others. The final chapter is on emergency preparedness which was added to the ARP during the update process of 2023. This chapter provides strategies that outline how older adults might be affected by natural and human-caused hazards and outlines ways the county can improve the health and safety of older adults and methods to prepare them for these hazards. Next slide, please. And I'm going to turn this over to Julie to go through some of the other accomplishments we had in 2025.

So the aging readiness plan implementation efforts in 2025 focused on healthy communities and civic involvement. The healthy communities chapter provides strategies that encourage opportunities in Clark County related to access to healthy foods, parks and recreation, and goods and services related to healthy living. It includes strategies to improve and expand access to resources by creating a welcoming an age-friendly built environment that serves all ages and abilities. The civic involvement chapter establishes strategies based on increasing older adults' civic involvement within the county. It reviews ways that older adults can engage with their communities, like working, volunteering, attending community events, participating in local government or advocacy work. The next slide, please. The commission began their forum series which the COA calls fireside chats, to guests and experts focused on providing access to healthy food resources, which included information related to food and other resources offered by our local food banks and community gardens. Next slide, please. They continued by hosting a meeting with experts from Clark Cowlitz Fire and Rescue, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Hope Dementia Support to find better ways to raise awareness of available services and support for those experiencing mental illness and those in a caring role. The partnership with Hope flourished in 2025, and the Commission on Aging is looking forward to fostering this connection in the future. Next slide, please. The Commission on Aging invited staff from the City of Vancouver to discuss opportunities for social connection and fitness. They shared resources and information about opportunities for older adults at the Marshall-Loopke and Fristenberg Community Centers.

Next slide.

The commission also partnered with staff from the Area Agency on Aging and Disabilities of Southwest Washington, we call them ADSWA for short, for a discussion about wraparound care options for older adults who wish to maintain independence and age in place. This discussion included input from design doctors that included information on how older adults can continue to live in their homes comfortably and safely. Next slide, please. The commission also explores social connection through a special joint meeting with the Clark County Youth Commission. The two commissions discuss cross-generational challenges around health and form relationships that carried through the school year and concluded with the youth commission art show. Next slide. In partnership with Adsois neighborhood associations and other partner agencies, They shared and distributed best practices for reaching older adults. The Commission on Aging also hosted the fireside chat with members from the Humane Society of Southwest Washington and explored the value of social connection between people and animals. Commission members also teamed with Hope to Mention Support and participated in the Stand Down event in October. These events occur locally all around the US and are meant to connect homeless and at-risk veterans with comprehensive support services in one location. The local event is organized by the Clark County Veterans Assistance Center and is open to all veterans and their families. Commission members connected with the visitors, providing a listening ear and gathering feedback about the challenges facing veterans today.

Next slide.

Early in the year, Commission on Aging welcomed area experts from both the private and public sector to discuss housing options for low income individuals. And in the fall, commission members benefited from a presentation provided by the Clark County Assessor's Office regarding the special tax exemption option for seniors. Next slide. In addition to the focus on healthy communities and civic involvement, the Commission on Aging presented its annual Silver Citizen Award. To encourage and support older adults for their contributions, the Clark County Commission on Aging established a Silver Citizen Program to recognize older adults who go above and beyond in service. The award recognizes the valuable contributions older adults make to the vitality of the community, and it's open to any county resident 60 years or older who has enhanced the community through their life's work, engagement of others, volunteerism, and other impactful acts of service to the community for any age group. Recognition for 2025 was awarded to Sharon Wodke, President of the Board of Directors for the Battlegrounds Senior Citizens Inc. She has actively served this group since 2018, and under her leadership, the group has expanded their roster from 900 to over 700 participants, and actually that's over 900 now, I believe, and serves up to 200 lunches to area seniors each month.

Did you want to continue? so the actually the applications for the senior citizen our award are currently open so if you know anybody that you would like to nominate it's open on our website so I'd like to conclude talking about some of the additional Commission work that we've done in 2025 other Commission work included members and staff giving presentations at several local community meetings in 2025 This included city and town council meetings, neighborhood groups, and advisory bodies. Commission members also provided a presence at meetings for the Washington State Council on Aging, or SCOA, the Community Health Access Resource Team, CHART, formerly known as ADRN, and the Area Agency on Aging and Disabilities of Southwest Washington, ADSWA's Advisory Council. They also co-sponsored a county council proclamation for Older Americans Month. Next slide. This is the end of our formal presentation. I'd like to say thank you for taking the time to listen to us. I know it's been a long night for you all. If we are now open to any discussion or any questions that you may have or topics that you're discussing of interest to you, our meetings, finally, one last pitch, our meetings are held on the third Monday of the month, and they are usually, the fireside chats are usually very informative and educational, and those are held at, I think, 4.30 in the afternoon down at the Clark County Public Service Center, and they're also on CVTV. So if anybody has any questions, we're happy to answer them now or talk.

Thank you for your presentation. Counsel, any questions for the commission? Councilor Fevella.

Thank you so much. I'm wondering if your organization also works with, like, advocating for insurance companies, specifically, like, Medicare for elderly and the benefits that they are not able to receive.

So that is not... That doesn't kind of fall within the boundaries of our organization. We're more of an advisory organization to the... County Council and then we do these presentations to the cities Do you know anyone within your circle that does advocacy? I know a few people who are insurance agents personally and who sell Medicare plans, but I I mean, that's a tough topic.

Yeah, if it ever comes across your purview or you find an advocacy area, that would be one. There is a high need in Clark County for the Medicare population to receive mental health services. But in order to be contracted with Medicare, you have to be a licensed therapist. You can't be an associate and you can't be an intern. which significantly reduces the amount of providers that are eligible to provide services to this population. We've seen advocacy go in directions where other insurance companies are changing that, and I think it would be beneficial if attention was brought to this population with Medicare to have them reconsider.

The NAMI, have you spoken with them, NAMI? Have you worked with them? Yes. That's off the top of my head. They came and spoke at one of our meetings, but I'm not sure that was necessarily a topic.

No, absolutely, but the more people that you bring awareness to and the more people that are able to talk about this and bring that to light, the better those advocacy efforts go. Okay, thank you.

Council, other questions? Councillor Hamilton.

Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. I'm learning a lot, so I'm curious. I was thinking about successfully aging in place and what that looks like. Is there something that, as a city, as we continue to develop, something that we should be keeping in mind through our development that we are looking for? And then also, do you guys have any measurable indicators that you can use to determine how age-friendly, tools that we can utilize to kind of gauge how friendly we are for people aging in place.

So this year we talked about transportation and housing, and I'd say transportation and mobility are two huge areas. create a more age-friendly place. We talked with, we're talking with CTRAN on Monday. They're coming and speaking. And we've talked to other service providers. So I'd say transportation and access to community facilities where seniors can go to, like the place, like Battleground Senior Citizens Inc. Those are two things that I would say off the top of my head. And then your second question was?

It was more just about, like, if you have a measurable indicator that cities can use to figure out how, like, age-friendly we are in that process.

So AARP has Friendly Citizens Index Program, Senior Citizen Friendly Cities, I think it's called. And that information is available on their website. That is potentially a topic we'll be looking at this year. But right now, we're still finishing out 26 and looking forward to planning for 27. But AARP has some indicators there. And I think a lot of those have informed our aging readiness plan. OK.

Cool, and then I just wanted to say I think it's really cool that you paired up with the Youth Commission, too. I thought that was a really neat...

It was really cool.

You know, partnership. I think that's a really cool opportunity.

Met some kids from our community.

It was great. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you.

Other questions, Council? Okay. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much.

Have a good night.

Okay, we have... A couple of items of business this evening. The first item of business will be a motion to approve the Greeley Farms phase four final plat, and for that, we'll go to Ms. Lust.

Thank you again, Mayor. This business item is a final plat for phase 4A of the Greeley Farms development. Next slide, please. For orientation or reorientation, this development is in the northeastern most corner of the city. And phase 4A is one of the last two phases, 4A and 4B, which are in the northeast corner of the project. That's 279th Street to the north and the Helensview neighborhood to the west. The proposal for the final plot, moving to the next slide, It's a lot more vertically oriented than a PowerPoint slide, but that is what it looks like. The final plot is 24 lots on just under 12 acres. The lots range from 4,000 square feet to 15,545 square feet with an average of about 8,600. And the larger lots are oriented adjacent to that existing Helen's View development to the west, as was planned through the Greeley Farms master plan and development agreement. If we move to the next slide, north is on your left now, which allows us to zoom in a bit. This shows areas of open space. There's a large stormwater facility in the northern part of the project, and then some open spaces throughout, some picnic amenities, and then just the start of a trail that is going to connect through Phase 4B, which will complete the trail system that loops throughout the project when Phase 4B comes through. As usual, staff complete survey, engineering, and land use review when these final plots come in. All the requirements have been met. There are no performance bonds for this final plot. And with that, I will go ahead and hand it back to you, Mayor and Council, for any questions.

Great, thanks, Ms. Lust. Council, any questions for staff on this final plat item? Counselor Davis.

Yeah more just curious You talked about the average lot size. It seems pretty big but there's one at least that's like 15 5 What would be maybe like the median? I don't expect you to do the math like right off the top of your head but is it like is the average being offset by a couple of just weird sized big lots and

Sorry, that's a great question. I think in this particular phase, the outlier is actually the smallest lot. There are a lot of larger lots in the like 12, 13 range in this one.

Okay.

Councilor Wells.

Yeah, just a little precursor here. There was a lot of public comment when this development was being proposed, and Helen's View, which was next door, and they had large lots, so that's a reason. They had large lots adjoining them, and then they come down in size as they got away. So that's the reasoning behind it. Okay, I appreciate that.

Any other questions or comments at this point council? All right, it's pretty straightforward. So There's no other comments or no discussion we have I'd entertain a motion to approve the final plot Second Okay, it's been moved by Chipman and seconded by Hamilton. Any remaining discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you, council. Motion carries. Okay, our second item of business this evening will be the second reading of ordinance number 1484. This is our critical areas ordinance amendments, and for that, we'll go back to Ms. Lust.

Thanks again, Mayor Cole. So for this presentation, it's less of a presentation, more of a follow-up, because on your July 23rd meeting, we had a full presentation, discussion, and then public hearing on the critical areas ordinance update. answered some clarifying questions during that, but didn't hear a lot of need for change in direction. So what's coming back to you is what you saw last time, all in your packet. The slides from last time are in your packet as well, if you needed any refreshers there on kind of the major themes and topics. But given that there haven't been major changes made since that last presentation, I am just gonna turn it back for any additional questions, comments, fixes you would like me to hear.

Sounds good, okay. Thank you, Council. Any questions? We'll go to Councillor Davis.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. It was on the second page in the packet. There was one... and I think my guess is that maybe it was a typo, because it was a buffer increase, and the top two were bumping up to 150, and then the third one, which is the lowest impact, was going to 150, and it seemed like 50 might have been the more appropriate number. Is that accurate?

Yes, I know which table you're talking about. Councilor Wells kindly pointed it out as well. So I'll go back and make sure that's correct. It looks like it was just the order got flipped on two of those. So thank you.

We were looking at it together. Oh, good. He just beat me to the punch. Perfect. All right.

Other questions or comments? All right. If there's none, then Mr. Lee, would you please read the ordinance into the record?

Thank you, Mayor. Ordinance number 1484, Ordinance of the City of Richland, Washington, amending chapters 18.280 of the Richland Municipal Code related to the regulations of critical areas within the city.

Great. Thank you. And with that, I would accept the motion.

Motion to approve Ordinance 1484 as presented.

Moved by Davis, seconded by Fevella. Any remaining comments? Seeing none. Oh, one from Councillor Wells.

The normal, okay. No, I would like to amend the motion.

Okay.

And the normal delay time is 30 days on it. after it passes? I'd like to make a comment. The normal passing time is 30 days before it becomes official. And I'd like to delay the implementation. Got the word all twisted. Delay of having it take an effect until January 1st, 2027. That's the, when it takes effect. That's a word I, there's that word that I, I've got it wrote down, huh?

Implementation.

Implementation, yeah. I was twisting that one.

Okay, so there is... Councilor Wells is moving to amend the motion.

To pass.

To go from the Senate 30 days where it takes effect to the first of the year, 2027, correct?

Yeah. And the reason for that is so that we can turn around and really scrutinize some more of these... Okay, there's a there's a motion to amend do I have a second I'll ask one more time. Is there a second?

I'll second. Okay.

Okay. It's been moved to second to amend a motion to extend the implementation period to the first of the year in 2027. Discussion. Councilor Davis. Oh, Councilor Davis or Pavela?

Oh, well I was more a question for staff about if we were gonna pursue delaying implementation to January 1st, what would be the impact of that?

I think I'll defer to Ms. Parker to take that question.

Generally, when you're doing an ordinance like this, there are not any issues with delaying implementation, but this has some particular things that I think does have an impact. One of which, this is a part of your comprehensive plan and a required update as associated with that plan. I think delaying that has some potential to affect the other pieces of the comprehensive plan that are happening. The second piece I will note is the city did receive an appeal of the underlying ordinance that has been stayed until such time as the final action, at which time we would proceed with that appeal if it has not been withdrawn. extending that time then complicates that appeal process if the council were to change it in the interim or do anything unexpected with that. So there are a couple of issues that are not normally present when you're adopting a development regulation like this is that I would caution you against doing that.

Gotcha. So just a point of clarification then. So are you saying that we would not be able to finalize our comprehensive plan until this went into effect?

One moment. I'm not sure that we can answer that this evening. We would need a chance to look at that and come back to you on that. So if it's your intention to consider this a little further, then I think the best action would be just to table it until the next meeting. And that would give us some time to answer those questions and determine the true impact of a delayed effective date.

Okay, I might have a couple of follow-up questions, but I want to give the floor to Councilor Fevella. It sounds like you had a question.

Hi, Jay. For Ms. Parker, if we were to approve this and delay, hypothetically, would we even be allowed to make changes in that interim if we've already approved it?

Well, just as you've... Well, normally you can make amendments to an ordinance. However, this has been through some process with the Planning Commission and some process set out in the Growth Management Act. So, yes, it would be much more difficult to make those changes.

OK, thank you.

Other questions or comments as we consider this one before we vote on the amendment? I got to say that I'm a little less intent on this one. to delay this only because You know, I I personally have been on record about not wanting to delay the comp plan any further and I don't want to jeopardize that we you know, we get a lot of scrutiny over our efforts to further our D designation request to to that kind of push back the timeline a little bit. So I want to be sensitive to that. I also want to be cognizant of applying the proper scrutiny that Councilor Wells is talking about. So maybe you can share a little bit more, Councilor, what you're thinking of and what might still need to be addressed in the future.

I would not want to jeopardize the comprehensive plan. That isn't the intent. The intent is maybe possibly, and I don't know how we can do it, but we could pass it, but not implement it until the first of the year. When is the comp plan going to be implemented? with the county and with the state. The state is involved in it for the final blessing and so I was trying to just buy a little bit of time.

The comp plan should be wrapped up by the end of the year.

That's what I thought too.

I guess I still need to understand why you want to hold off on this.

Because just like the one glitch that I found today, there may be other ones in some of these other graphs, and we would have the opportunity to turn around and rectify it before it's put into law.

I want to recognize a couple staff members who messed on errors. Did you have something?

So the errors along the lines of what you had identified, the city has some discretion to address things such as Scrivener's errors. So if there was a draft and then there was an error or an interruption, interposing of numbers like what appears to be in this case. The city clerk does have the discretion within the ordinance. There's a section within the ordinance that allows us to update section numbers, update scrivener's errors, and correct those smaller things when it's clear from the intent and the staff report and all of the other materials that that was the intent of the council. So there is some authority to fix those smaller things. And then to the extent, I think I heard something about kind of just making sure people were aware of it. I think we can also do that sort of public outreach piece as well during whatever period of time you designate.

My comment is the last meeting, when we had the last meeting, I had questions of what the different buffers were or how they had changed. And that would be brought back to us, which it was brought back on a graph. I've got a paper where it comes from. I got today. And I did see one glitch. But I think as a council, we need to discuss them in a workshop, site-specific, of different things and see what it adds up, what it means, and then turn around and pass the ordinance. I'm not against it 100%. But I still think that we need to scrutinize it a little tighter and take a look at it.

Mayor, if I could just address that. Rather than adopting something and delaying the effective date, to the extent that I think you're asking for additional time to review and consider whether additional changes are to be made, that some sort of a tabling of it or a delaying of final adoption until you've had the workshop or you've had all of your questions and concerns answered, would be appropriate rather than adopting it with a delayed date. Because if there are issues that the council has that need to be addressed, I absolutely, we want to address those and make sure that everybody is comfortable with what we're doing. So I'm gonna just look to Claire to see if there's any reason why we couldn't table it and bring it back at one of the next meetings for further consideration at that time. Okay, so that would be my recommendation based on Council Member Wells' comments about what he's trying

Well, so it has been there's a second so it is a live amendment so unless you want to withdraw Is that what you know?

I think you can Can't you turn around and table it? even with with a motion on the floor I

Oh, you're going to challenge my knowledge of Robert's rules. I think you actually can table it at any point. So you can table it with both motions active. It would come back to the floor. And if I'm wrong, I apologize to the gods of Robert's rules. But I think that you can actually table anything at that particular stage. So it would come back. with the motion and the amendment, unless somebody else has higher authority than they can.

I could rescind my amendment. I'll take that off. And then I'll move to table it to a work session. And I don't know time specific.

So withdrawing a motion would still require a second, correct? And then a vote. So we'd have to go through that process if you want to draw it. If you want to table it, then you can make a motion to table it any time with a second.

I have to friendly approve. Since I was on the second day amendment, I have to take care of this. Yeah. And I, yeah, that's fine.

But you can table it any time. They put the other ones on the floor.

Right. There's currently a motion and an amendment on the floor. If there was a new motion with enough second and approved to table it, we can do that at this time. But you'd have to have a friendly, oh, to withdraw.

To withdraw. Yeah, I offered the friendly second for his withdrawal since I was the one that seconded the original.

And I'll take my amendment off. I'll withdraw that also. And I'll move that we table this till it's normally better to table it to a time specific rather than table it because then it's tabled and gone forever.

Okay.

So till a work session can be set up to discuss it.

Okay, so the amendment has been withdrawn There's a new motion to table this item to a second to another do a later date. Do I hear a second? I Do not hear a second and so we will return to the original motion Which is to approve the ordinance as presented. I Council any remaining discussion Okay here in no remaining discussion, mr. Lee, would you please call the roll councillor Davis?

All right Councilmember Favella. Yes councilmember Wells. No Councilmember Hamilton. Yes, mayor proton shipment. Yes miracle.

Yes. Thank you council the motion carries and I know ordinances opted Okay. Thank you. Council will spirit contribution to that. I Okay, we are going to move into a couple of public hearings this evening. Our first public hearing is the approval of resolution number 681 from 2026 and a resolution number 682 from 2027. This is our transportation improvement plans. And for that, we're going to go to our city engineer, Mr. Brian Kast, who I thought was online. Looks like, oh, there you are. Okay.

I am here. Can you hear me all right, Mr. Mayor?

We sure can. Thank you, sir.

All right, well, thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. And Julie, if I could get the PowerPoint presentation pulled up for the six-year tip, please. So before council this evening is the city's six-year transportation improvement program, or TIP. This is a program that is required to be adopted annually. However, it turns out we missed the last couple of years. So actually, before you this evening is last year's and this year's. So if I could go to the next slide, please. So the Transportation Improvement Program is a list of significant transportation projects that the city intends to complete over the next six years. This list includes not only the projects, but also their costs, our anticipated funding sources, and the estimated years that the work will take place, including design and construction. As I mentioned, we're required to adopt this list annually, and then once this list is adopted, projects are forwarded to RTC to include in the Southwest Regions Transportation Improvement Program, as well as to the STIP, State Transportation Improvement Program. And projects must be on this list to receive state and federal funding, so that's why it's important that we keep this list active and up to date. Next slide, please. So this year, there have been a few different changes to the tips. First, we have added different funding categories, categorizing projects as either reasonably funded, CDBG or Community Development Block Grant funded, TBD, Transportation Benefit District funded projects, future funded projects, which basically mean they're important, but we don't know quite how we're going to fund them, what grants or means. and then projects that are anticipated to be constructed by development previously we just had a big list of all the projects we did include details in each project about you know grant funds or developer funds or similar but now we've actually broken them out to a little bit more level of detail in addition we have removed completed projects from the list as well as i think there was one project that was removed from the list that funding was not received for and that was not anticipated to be seek for in the future. And then we have added a new project and carried forward projects from the past temp. We've also revised project costs and scopes based on recent information or design that we have had over the last couple of years. Next slide, please. So a brief summary of these changes. Removed from the 2026 TIP would be Royal Road, which is completed. The Hillhurst School Zone, also complete. 11th and Tim Road safety improvements. The Horizontal Curve Safety Improvement Project, those were all completed. And Maple Street Main Trail Road was removed due to funding not being received. Projects that were completed and removed from the 2027 TIP include the Pioneer Widening and Discovery Drive 50-place roundabout project, which is now complete. Next slide. We also have sort of broken up and added a project to the list. That is the Carty Road Multipurpose Trail. And then we've also added the South Railroad Corridor project to the 2027 project list. Next slide, please. So this is a map that shows the list of all the projects, where they physically are located within the city. And just for sort of a key here, the red projects are those future funded projects that we're still working on identifying all the funding sources for. Blue are CDBG funded projects. And the orange are projects that are reasonably funded, meaning that we pretty much have all the funding lined up for those projects. With that, I'm going to pause here at the back to see if there's any questions. And I'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Council at this point, any questions from Mr. Cast on this presentation so far? Right. It looks like you are one from Mr. Davis.

Yeah, I'm just, I guess, curious. I'm just noticing all these projects are on the west side. Have we What's the difference, I guess, with, you know, because there's a lot of activity on the east side. And so I'm talking about like the reasonably funded stuff, CDBG. Is it just stuff that doesn't qualify or is that just kind of how it shook out?

I think it's kind of just how it shook out. I mean, obviously, our capital facilities plan has projects over on the east side of the freeway, but by and large, all the projects that we're really looking at seeking grant funding for or that are considered sort of regionally significant and qualify to be on this list happen to be over on the west side right now.

Okay, thank you. On that note, wasn't there, I thought we talked about a project to improve South 5th over there. off of Union Ridge Parkway. That was being discussed at one point. Is that going to be part of a CFP or is it going to be part of this plan?

I do recall that discussion. I'm not sure where exactly we are on seeking funding for that project, but I will note that the city can update the TIP at any time. So even if we have a change and say we have a grant opportunity that comes along for that project that we want to seek, we can amend this TIP. and add that project.

Okay.

I got a comment. Go ahead. I got a comment on that project.

On that project, I think.

It's on, okay. On that project, is there some feedback? Yeah, on that project over there, I think we dedicated a little over $200,000 for a consultant to do some testing on Union Ridge Parkway on what needed to be done for revitalizing that section of roadway here about two meetings ago. Anybody recollect that?

I don't recall that, yeah.

Because I know I had asked the question whether Lakeside themselves could do it and it's come back with that a consultant needed to do it. They did not perform those duties. Ryan may have something.

So I'm just referring to project summaries that I have from our deputy director. It says Union Ridge Parkway Rehab is in design and there were onsite boardings that occurred in mid to late July.

Okay, so I know we've got that project moving forward.

Okay. Any other questions at this point? From Council Vervello.

Yeah. Sorry. Thank you, Mr. Cass. Um, when I look at the projects extended, I just want clarification. It says that Royal road to South 19th street to Hillhurst, like Hillhurst to Hayfield would be in construction, but how would we be in construction when we're not even ready to do the culvert replacement?

I believe that the South Royal Road project in this iteration was broken. Originally, it was just one sort of long project and was broken into several different segments. And I believe that the culvert project is near the completion of design. Ryan's list may have some additional information on exactly the status of that. i'm not 100 up to date but i know that i did see some plans here recently that were pretty close to approval and getting ready for construction on that project okay thank you other questions okay we can continue oh well one one second i guess uh one more comment from counselor davis oh i'm sorry i missed that okay

I can add to that. For the Royal Road project, it is broken into three different parts. The first part that is currently well into design and ready to go to construction or will be ready to go to construction next year is the Hillhurst to Hayfield plus the water line section. So it's the southern part of the project going down the hill from the recreation complex. and then we'll be moving to the culvert and then eventually the final road corridor project.

That makes much more sense. Thank you so much.

Make sure I captured everything. Okay, we're good.

So that's really pretty much the end of the presentation here. So again, there are two resolutions before council this evening for consideration. One is the 2026 six-year tip, and then the next is the 2027. They have to be two separate motions because they're two separate lists. But with that, thank you very much.

Great. And as we go into discussion, can you go back to that project? There's a slide with the project list on there. That's all. Okay, great.

I've got a question. It's got the tentative cost for the Cardi Road improvement from 25 million to 75 million. What is that going to do to our TIF? Well, that I see is covered. That's covered.

That will be our next presentation this evening.

Oh, that will be the next presentation. Okay, I do have another question for you, Brian. Our TIF fees are 253, 250 something? Per?

Let me see, I have our current fee schedule up. Our current citywide TIF fee, and again, this maybe is more relevant for the next conversation, but just, I got it up here real quick. So our current citywide TIF, impact fee per trip is just under $600, $599.06. Okay.

I've got something that says something contrary to that. Hang on here.

Okay. I think we can cover that on the next one, which is the traffic impact fee update.

Okay.

Okay.

Council, any remaining questions for staff on this one? Seeing none, we're going to open the public hearing to receive testimony. The public hearing is now open. If you sign up with a city clerk before the meeting, your name will be called and you will receive permission to unmute your microphone or step up to the podium. If you did not sign up in advance but would like to speak, please use the raise hand feature on your toolbar. If you're joined by phone, press star nine for raise your hand and press star six to mute or unmute. The city clerk will grant you permission to speak. And when speaking, please state your name and keep your comments to three minutes. And as a reminder, this is comments related specifically to this item on the public hearing. There will be no back and forth as usual between the speaker and the council. So with that, this public hearing is hereby open. Is there anybody who signed up to speak, Miss Julie?

I do not have anyone sign up.

Okay. Is there anybody in the room who would like to speak on this public hearing? I don't see anybody. We will go online. Is there anybody online who is wishing to speak at this public hearing?

Not seeing anyone online, Mayor.

Okay. And just for good measure, we'll go back one more time to the room. There is nobody in the room. Going once, going twice, and this public hearing is closed. Thank you very much. All right, and with that, okay, I would accept a motion. So we have to do two separate motions for 681 and 682. Okay.

Motion to approve resolution number 681 as presented.

I'll second.

Go ahead. A motion by Davis. We'll go second by Wells. Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you, council. Motion carries. I would accept a motion for 682.

Motion to approve resolution number 682 as presented.

Second.

OK. Motion moved by Davis, seconded by Hamilton. Any remaining discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you, council. 682 passes. All right. That will conclude that public hearing for the evening. Thank you, council. And with that, we're going to go to our second public hearing of the evening. This is public hearing and first reading of ordinance number 1485, amending the transportation impact fee project list. And for that, Mr. Cass, thanks for sticking around. We'll go back to you.

Thank you again, Mr. Mayor. So this action is to update the traffic impact fee project list. Back in February of 2020, the city adopted Ordinance 1320, establishing a separate TIF project list and sort of separating the TIF list from the capital facilities plan. This allows the city to have a little bit more flexibility and to more frequently update our TIF list. It was most recently updated on June 23rd of last year. and we are now proposing to update it again here, primarily to amend the Carty Road project. So over the past six to 12 months or so, actually it started before I came on as city engineer, the city has been working with property owners along the Carty Road corridor developers and other interested parties to take a look at that corridor and to complete a preliminary design and cost estimates and also model traffic patterns. Based on the preliminary design, the Cardi Road corridor cost, which is currently listed as $25 million in the TIP, was updated to $75 million. A lot of times when a project is being put on the capital facilities plan, there's sort of a average, you know, per linear foot cost that is used to kind of get a rough estimate. And then as you get farther into design, obviously that cost is refined and made more accurate. In the case of Cardi Road, there's quite a bit of topography, creek crossings and bends on that road. And as we got through the preliminary design, we found that the $25 million sort of high level cost estimate in the capital facilities plan was quite a bit low. So with the 10% design that was completed, the Cardi Road will be widened to the section that is included in the subarea plan. I believe that's a 24-foot paved width with gravel shoulders and then a multimodal trail. However, with all the slopes and the creek corridors and critical areas, that trail and this widening of the road requires significant grading and retaining walls. And actually, as part of the preliminary design, the engineers evaluated straightening out the curves down at the bottom where the road crosses Gee Creek. And we found that for not very high amount of um additional expenditure the roads could the road be straightened out and that dangerous curve down there could be improved for safety so the 75 million dollar cost includes straightening out sort of the bends down there as the creek crosses the road there'd be a couple of bridges that sort of get you onto that peninsula that sort of juts up to the north where the road currently bends around and then another one to get you back down to the existing level

Let's see.

In addition to the cost increase, we also modeled traffic flows on the corridor to try and get a better idea of what percentage of traffic in the corridor is generated from that subarea and should be reflected in the TIF overlay that is paid by that subarea and what shares are paid by sort of the rest of the city and the surrounding area that's using the roadway. and because cardi is one of the main east west connections on the south side of the city the modeling showed that uh current uh funding split which was i believe 50 to the sub area and 50 um surrounding traffic was a little skewed it's more like 80 um surrounding traffic and 20 from the sub area so With this TIF list update, we've adjusted the cost of the corridor as well as the cost of the roundabout. And then we've also adjusted the funding splits between basically the subarea share and other funding sources. And so the bottom line of all these changes is that the Cardi Road TIF overlay would increase. And I apologize. I believe this is what Mr. Wells was referring to earlier. The current Carty Road TIF overlay amount is $613.97, not 256 as was included in the staff report, but we are proposing to increase that to $1,073 per trip. to reflect the updated project costs and funding shares. And this would actually put this Cardi Road TIF overlay rate in the same sort of ballpark as the Gee Creek Plateau TIF overlay rate, which is $1,141 per trip. um we have presented all this information to the uh the cardi road consortium as it came to be known that group of property owners and developers um you know they weren't thrilled about the cost increase but um this figuring out that the funding for this roadway is one of the key items to allow development to move forward there and to lift urban holding on projects as they come forward and so with that in mind they were supportive of the proposed TIF increase for those projects, assuming that we could get this before Council and get the projects moving forward once this TIF increase is adopted. So with that, I'm going to take a pause and happy to answer any questions before Council opens the public hearing.

Okay, great. We're going to go to Council questions. First, we'll go to Mayor Pro Tem Chipman, and I'll run some other questions as well.

So how far east Does this road improvement, does it go clear out to the freeway?

Yes, so the project in the TIP and the capital facilities plan goes out all the way out to the freeway. The preliminary design that was completed goes out, I believe it was Eklund Road. And so we basically took those costs for the rest of the corridor and sort of extrapolated them for the rest of the corridor because we didn't look at the segment from basically Eklund out to the freeway with the engineering design that was completed.

But we haven't yet annexed in the rest of that property, right, clear out to the freeway? No, we haven't yet. Okay.

Yeah, I believe it's in the urban growth boundary, but not necessarily all annexed at this time.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Councilor Wells. Oh my gosh, Councillor Davis, my bad.

Thank you. So I guess just to look ahead, I mean, we're updating the overall total cost to 75 million for 25 million. Obviously it's a big jump, but the TIF rate increase, Their share would be 30% of the overall project cost. Are we thinking the other 70%, which is roughly 50 million? Is that going to be city? Is that going to be grant? Is that going to be future development? If we're talking about, you know, as maybe properties annex in to the east, that goes into paying for all that. Is that the plan or what's the other 50 million look like?

Yeah, so that is the plan I have. Let me pull up the spreadsheet here on my screen so I can take a look at it here. Scroll all the way over here so. The. Sorry. So the tip overlay percent so that if the Cardi Road sub area would be responsible for 25% of the project costs, we're anticipating 25% grant funding. 10% public share, 10% traffic citywide TIF share, and then 30% private share, which would be directly from developers.

So really, we're anticipating the city's share on that to really only be 10%.

That's correct. For the sort of overall public share. The rest would be from, you know, TIF, I guess you could consider to be city funds as well, but also paid by developers. All right. You saw the floor.

Yeah. So I guess is it, is reaching all the way to the freeway, is that going to be a phased approach or... How's that going to work?

Yeah. We anticipate that the corridor will sort of develop from west to east. So, you know, the first segment will be the roundabout there or that segment that's adjacent to Hillhurst and then, you know, sort of the central piece and then out towards the freeway.

Yeah, I mean, I would imagine that the most expensive components of that improvement are going to be to the west. You know, when you look at the traffic circle and then that big bend where, you know, you can only go like 15 miles an hour around it or else you're not in a good spot. I would assume that's going to be the most expensive. So I guess I'm curious. to know about how that's gonna flow, if we're gonna require that sort of improvement. 75 million, I wouldn't be surprised if 50 of that was just the first half mile of it.

Yeah, that central piece there in the vicinity of the creek is definitely the most expensive piece of the roadway. Sort of the east and west sides are a little more straightforward, topography-wise and critical areas-wise.

So are we gonna get delays on the development? i'm glad we're gonna we're gonna be assuming this approves that we're gonna be providing some predictability to the developers as they keep this going but in terms of actually realizing the infrastructure improvement if it's that expensive how are we going to bridge the difference between their share and what the total project cost is so currently all the developments that we have sort of

knocking at the door, looking, taking tires, I guess, in the corridor or over on that west side. And so the hope is, and we're continuing to work with those developers, but the hope is that we could work with them to provide TIFF credits to build sort of that western segment. You're correct that the center segment is going to be the most technically complex. That's probably maybe where those grants and other funding sources that we have come into play. And then on the east side, again, it's a little simpler and a little less costly. So that's probably where we might anticipate that the developers, as development comes in in that area, we might be able to work with them to complete that segment of the roadway.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Other questions? I want to piggyback on that, but I want to get other questions in there. Go ahead and piggyback. Okay. When we talk about having those be grant funded, I would say that they'd be grant contingent, but as we go back to our previous presentation, we look at the traffic improvement plan and we identified a bunch of projects. A lot of those are still waiting funding. I think of the 10th Street overpass, for example, which we have been lobbying the federal government for for a number of years now. I think for the most of the time I've been on council, we still have not received the funding that we need to for that. along with South Royal Road and among others. And so I see those as higher in the priority list for us because we've been lobbying for those funds longer. But to Councilor Davis's point, These property owners have annexed in here. There's developers who are waiting to develop those properties, but in order to develop it, they need to have that infrastructure built out. That's an enormous number, and so I just wonder how that ever gets done if we're kinda backlog on the grant contingencies, and then we have this massive $50 million bill that we're gonna have to accommodate. It's gonna be front loaded at the beginning of the project. Because it's the most important portion. So is there a consideration about how we get that done? In a way that is feasible for both the city and for the development interest involved.

So all of the projects in the cardi road sub area also have urban holding over them. And so, as these projects come in for development, they'll have to demonstrate that they have adequate. infrastructure, including transportation, to serve the projects so that council lifts that urban holding. We had previously told these projects that again are kind of kicking tires in the area that we needed to figure out this Carty Road cost and funding before we would even let them go to the public hearing. And so by updating this TIF list, that would allow them to sort of now go to public hearing. But again, they still also have to fulfill their duty to show that the projects are able to be served adequately by transportation and other infrastructure to have that urban holding lifted.

Okay. Okay. Councillor Wells.

Yeah, I've got two questions. Probably Kurt would probably answer this one. How many TIFs is it required per resident, residential parcel? Is it 10?

It's around 10. It's 10 point something.

Okay. That was what I was using for my basis here. So if they have 10 TIF credits, so it'll be $10,730 per house. tacked onto the house as far as for TIF fees for that house, correct?

That's correct.

Okay. That answers my question.

Yeah, and as a reminder, this is first reading only, so if there's any questions we have for staff to come back on this, I think that'd be helpful. I think my questions don't necessarily inhibit my support of passing this. I just, I kind of wonder how this pencil is for a developer, so. Yeah. Because it looks like it could be years out before they get anything they see as recovering their costs on that. Okay, with that, council, any remaining questions? All right. I will now open the public hearing to receive testimony. The public hearing is now open. If you sign up with city clerk before the meeting, your name will be called and you'll receive permission to unmute your microphone or step up to the podium. If you did not sign up in advance but would like to speak, please use the raise hand feature on your toolbar. If you're joined by phone, press star nine to raise your hand and press star six to mute or unmute. The city clerk will grant you permission to speak and when speaking, please state your name and keep your comments to three minutes and as a reminder, no back and forth between the speaker and the council. With that, this public hearing is now open. Mr. Lee, is there anybody sign up to speak on this one?

I do not have anyone sign up.

Okay. Nobody signed up. So is there anybody in the room who is wishing to speak on this one? I don't see any hands. Mr. Lee, anybody online?

No one online, Mayor.

Okay. Just for due diligence, we'll go back to the room to make sure there's nobody who had an opportunity that was eager to speak and didn't get to. It does not look like that. So with that, this public hearing is now closed. Thank you, everybody else. All right. Where are my notes here? Miss Julie, would you please read the ordinance into the record?

Income Mayor Ordinance Number 1485, Ordinance of the City of Richland, Washington, amending the Traffic Impact Fee Project List.

Great. Thank you. And again, this is first reading only. It'll come back to Council at a later date. Okay. That concludes all of the action items for this evening. We're going to go back into public comment. Anybody wishing to address the City Council regarding the items not subject to a specific public hearing may come forward at this time to the podium or to use the raise hand feature located at the toolbar at the bottom of your Zoom screen. For controls of the phone, press star nine to raise your hand and press star six to mute or unmute. Please state your name and limit your comments to three minutes.

My name is Michael Jennings. I suggest that Excuse me, I'm having problems with mucus here. I suggest that the city not provide decorations anywhere, because when people see a decoration, they may be distracted from driving and get into an accident. And then there's that stuff that's on the bridge. And then recently you put something on the street. So I suggest that those things act as distractions for safe driving. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Jennings. Mr. Hess.

Hi, I'm Dion Hess. I went out and thanked Commissioner Melroy for being here. I just want to recognize the fact that he had the courage to show up, and I wish I could say I would have had as much, take as much criticism as they've been taking, and I've been giving a lot of it too, but I do think it needs to be recognized, the fact that he did have the courage to show up tonight, and I do notice that and appreciate that. So thank you.

Yep.

I'm Rick Renz. I'm going to try to finish what I started here earlier. When Abby Russell made this statement in the Reflector yesterday's paper, she stated financially the boat launch operates at a loss, and then she goes ahead and it's about $60,000 is what she's saying. Steve Stewart and I had this conversation about the operation of the boat launch a couple, three years ago, and he looked at me and it was just like, The boat launch is not a money loser like they've been saying in the past. And I would say that Steve is correct on that, and I believe I'm correct on it. In the port minutes from May 26th of 2010, Brent Greening is quoted in the port minutes here. He stated that the port closed on several pieces of properties that increased the port's assets. He commented briefly on the port's $2 million in reserve and working capital. He stated the port's revenue is ahead of this year and is generated from the boat launch profits. And that's pretty much the way I would see it. And the last time that that boat launch had any improvement project was back in 2002 with grant money from the Washington State Recreation Conservation Office. The port did put some money into it, but they've been more than repaid on that. And the only thing that I see getting done down there is the restroom getting painted and the parking lot getting striped. So I don't know where they come up with that kind of loss in revenue, but I disagree with it. Steve Stewart disagreed with it, and if he was here tonight, we'd agree together on it. But anyway, I wanted to say something about the article here with former Mayor Ron Onslow stating the need for high-density housing down there. That was back in 2013 when that statement was made by Mr. Onslow, Mayor Onslow. And things have changed a lot in 13 years. This community has got a lot of subdivisions. We need open space. We need areas to kind of decompress. That's why that waterfront is so desirable. It's pretty much the only place here in Richfield that I can think of that there's public property to go out and enjoy something like that. It's our only Richfield, the only waterfront we have. And that's why people are so protective of it. In 2014, I hear that this has been the plan for housing and all this. I disagree with that. Back in 2014, the city put out the notice of decision. There was no housing proposed in that notice of decision. That was Joe Turner was the hearing examiner that approved it on February 26th. There was potential upstairs residential. That's as far as it went. I'm not aware of anything that has said they were going to have housing down there. It's an option under the waterfront mixed use, but that's not an option that the community wants today. And I think it's important that that be honored.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Grants.

You're welcome.

Anybody else wishing to give a comment?

Hello, Shawna Fisher. It's not about the waterfront, so there you go. You're going to be surprised. So two things I just wanted to address. So you guys talking about the new developments going in, and it was cool that the people from that senior, doing the senior work were here. I think it would be great if Ridgefield considered not just big 4,000 square foot houses, but what about maybe single people, or maybe people that are downsizing, and maybe they want maybe not a huge house, maybe like a two-bedroom house or something like that, right? So I think that might be good for you guys to consider, right? Not everybody wants a 4,000-square-foot house to clean. And the other thing that I wanted to talk to you guys about is I know a couple of you may know, but maybe not all of you do. I know Mayor Cole does. And I know Lee knows over there. So I wanted to talk to you guys about sidewalks and the importance of being able to walk down a sidewalk and just enjoy with nothing happening. As you can see my, at least I don't have to have a cast, but I was walking on the Ridgefield Heritage Society walk, walking in front of the post office. There's an uneven piece of sidewalk and crash, boom, bam. And my fifth metacarpal, I fractured that. It's not fun, you know, weird feeling in my fingers and my hand, and they had to pull gravel out of my hand. Not so fun, right? Not so fun. It wasn't on my bingo card. So anyway, at least I didn't crack my head open. And I do have to say, I called the city the same day. Mia was awesome. i did see her at paddle for life along with mayor cole and they did grind down that piece of sidewalk which is great and they did market but i would invite you as you guys are rebuilding the town and all of that like to look at the look at the sidewalks and maybe make that a priority to make sure that the sidewalks are you know walkable for people that are able-bodied, people that are not able-bodied, you know, young kids or older people, because it's, you know, I think it's important just to be able to walk down the sidewalk and not fall, right? So I would just invite you guys to look at that, and I know, I think Mayor, I know you guys can't answer, but I know there was something about, like, sidewalk improvements, so I just think that that's important, because I noticed in doing some canvassing, there was some new paving on a like a pretty new neighborhood like where you're repaving the street and it's like well wait a minute what about like we're doing some work on some of the sidewalks especially especially um some of those downtown ones i think that would be kind of a good a good priority so people don't have that um have that injury and so i hope you guys um look at that and look at sidewalk improvements and thank you for listening and thank you for always being so receptive and kind it's appreciated and i do want to thank you know i mean even though he's not here commissioner melroy he did acknowledge me and say good night when he was leaving so that is you know that is nice i have you know respect for respect for that because i know they're not in a easy position right now with everything so thank you for all you guys do thank you

Hello again, Suki. I would like to continue speaking about our waterfront. I attended Friday's port workshop, and I feel it's important to share that our waterfront was compared to that of Spokane and Hood River. The Ridgefield waterfront will unfortunately never be the next Hood River. Hood River is one of the top windsurfing and kite surfing destinations in the world. Comparing the two is unrealistic. The development of the waterfront in Hood River works because it's a top destination and it's right off of I-84. It also has multiple access points and the supporting infrastructure required for a waterfront of that scale. Traffic and the lack of infrastructure continue to be in the front of people's minds and we lack any solid information or answers about our questions. I was told by port staff that the traffic impact study was currently being conducted. Right now, when school's out of session and there's a break in prime fishing season, that's convenient. As I look at the proposed development, I'm left baffled at the idea that there could be 500 plus additional vehicles on Pioneer Street multiple times a day. How is little downtown Pioneer Street going to be able to support that kind of traffic? Why am I bringing this up here? Well, because there are going to be a lot of necessary changes and updates needed on Pioneer Street. I imagine that the city will be responsible for at least some of the infrastructure improvements. We know that things take time. Just look at the condition of our downtown sidewalks and crosswalks. I've mentioned it over and over that I want a flashing pedestrian light for one of the only crosswalks on Pioneer Street. While the addition of the crossing flags is appreciated, truly appreciated, it's a band-aid for a broader issue in downtown, and that's the lack of safe sidewalks and crosswalks. Safety should be a top priority, especially right next to an elementary school. If a pedestrian light will take years to install, I'm curious how long necessary improvements for a project at this scale will take. Will safety be prioritized by palindrome? How can parents feel comfortable with their children walking and riding bikes and scooters downtown? The last several months have been so stressful and emotional for those of us who love and use our waterfront. Again, I'm here asking for you, our elected council, to listen to your community. Please hear us and understand we do not want this. We do not want the additional housing and a hotel that's apparently required to financially support the overdeveloped park that we never asked for. Let's scale it back. Let's think this through. I've said it before. I think we all share one thing in common, and that's the love for our waterfront. We may have different visions of what it will look like in 10 years, but wouldn't it be great if we could work together to responsibly develop a space that we want to visit and share with our loved ones? A waterfront that we can be proud of. People over profit. Thank you again for your time. Truly, truly thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? Come on up.

I'm Nancy Freeman and I'm a resident here. Both my husband and I are astounded at the density of this design. I don't know if any of you have really looked at the size of the buildings and the impact that would have on the waterfront. We like to go down there and walk. It's a nice flat area. The park area, though, is being designed on more of the rampy area, the slanted area down. I don't understand how what was once believed to be the area that would be less dense has become a very dense design. It's supposed to be more dance up by the freeway is what I understood was the vision for a long time. And it doesn't seem to be that anymore. There are lots of issues with parking and with traffic. I can't imagine all that traffic on Pioneer. It just, I mean, already it's busy. All in all, I just hope that you will consider looking at this more seriously and working with the port, who doesn't seem to want to work with us, and really look at this as a sacred space, an important place for all of us as residents. I think we really don't have another place like that. We feel it's really a treasured place. And once it's built up, that's it. We can't get it back.

Thank you very much. Anybody else wishing to give comment in the room? All right, is there anybody online, Ms. Julie?

No one online, Mayor.

Okay, hearing none, we will close out public comment for the evening, and we're going to go to council and staff reports. Starting with council reports, is there anybody here who would like to go first who's really itching for an update? I'll just go down the line, Councilor Hamilton.

Great, thank you. Thank you for everyone coming again. We do appreciate your feedback, and it is an active conversation that we have on our end, just so you know. I made notes here. Okay, so I'll try to keep this brief since we've all been here a minute. I did a C-Tran tour with fellow elected officials and Councillor Davis, which was cool. And we learned a lot of things about C-Tran. I wanted to thank city staff too for the city days, the council booth and all the effort that goes into putting on things like that. I think one of the cool things I've learned working with the city is that there's so many things that happen that take a lot of work, that nobody recognizes behind the scenes how much incredible work goes in to just you're having a day that doesn't even resonate. I actually went down to the city of Vancouver, to Esther Short last weekend, and I was looking around and I had such a different appreciation for the event that was going on, just thinking about how many people put their hands in that and knowing how much care and intentionality goes into that. And so the street mural that was also revealed, I want to thank our deputy city mayor, Lena Neres, I know you put a lot of effort into a lot of things and don't need the credit, but you deserve a lot. So I just wanted to say that. And I went to a bunch of board meetings and coffee connections and city updates and all kinds of stuff, but it's 9.30, so I'm going to call it quits.

Great. Councillor Wells, we'll go to you next, sir.

Okay. I attended last Thursday visioning Ridgefield in the future. Actually, a port meeting yesterday for part of the day. I didn't stay there for the whole thing because I wore out. I had to get back home to my wife. But this evening, I just have one comment. We had 5, 10, 15, 20, one people making a presentation in front of the council tonight. I kept the numbers down. Also, off the wall, Mr. Davis and I took a little tour this afternoon. And we were looking at potential road sites and things. Also, we went to Sanderling Park and The culvert that Kennedy's had for crossing across the creek, they had a 24 inch diameter culvert, which has served for the last 50 years or before. The cities happened to put in a culvert due to the agency's requests, which I was concerned about some of the other things that we have as far as buffers and that. I agree on buffers. The culvert they're having to put in now is 13 and a half feet in diameter. And a 24 inch one took care of it in the past. We couldn't believe what we saw. Yeah, so that's some of where my concerns were at. Not that some of them aren't justified, but you need to turn around and scrutinize them rather than rubber stamping what the request is. I'll just leave that with you, that's it.

Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Davis, what are you next?

Yeah, so I guess on that note, I did enjoy, I guess, an informal tour with Councilor Wells and tried to pick up some of the vast institutional knowledge that he has about why certain decisions are made and things of that nature. And I got to leave with a bag of plums. which is awesome, and I ate probably four of them when I got home. Anyway, I thought the staff did a fantastic job with City Days. Kudos for another successful event. Our C-Tran tour, I thought, was fantastic. We came to the Ridgefield Park and Ride and talked about a lot of the growth in North County, which is of particular importance to us. So that was great to learn about. Congrats to the Raptors for wrapping up a successful season. I enjoyed heading to the game the other night and sitting next to Mayor Pro Tem Chipman and Herm. And, you know, I just think it was a great night for a ball game and looking forward to farm to table on Saturday.

thank you um i appreciate everybody showing up tonight i know we can't talk back and forth and i said that it's the last meeting but i read every single email i stop and talk to every single person on the side of the sidewalk who wants to talk um i'm here i'm available we're listening there is nothing in motion right now and as soon as something is actively in motion you will all be here to watch it unfold And you will all get to hear all of us use our voice, which we are really good at doing I also want to thank this city for city days. That was incredible I had a late flight in but made sure I was there bright and early with Miss Hamilton. We did our counselor Hamilton. We did our booth together And also want to shout out to the Raptors. I get the honor of seeing the back end of the Raptors I got two players this summer who got to live with me and dropped a couple of extra players off at the airport. They happened to be on the same flight, so we did a field trip to the airport. And having their families come into town and meet them and hear people talk about Ridgefield and what a special place this is. Both of our players, they had never heard of Ridgefield before, and their parents came here to visit them, and we're just in awe of our city. And I really appreciate hearing that and getting to share that with other people across the United States. And that's all I got.

Great. Thank you. Mayor Patel.

I was sorry that we had to miss National Night Out because of the smoke that was so bad that day. What was it? The worst in the world or something? Yeah. Yeah. Really bad. So that was too bad that we had to miss that because that is always a really fun evening. Other than that, I've been at a lot of Raptor games too, and I'm sad the season's over. It's a really fun thing to do. We all went to a study session last Thursday, which is always good. These study sessions give us an opportunity to really interact about the subject that we're talking about when we do the study. And so it's very helpful for the council to be able to do that instead of only being able to meet, you know, when everyone, the public's invited to those if they want to listen in, and some people come, but But it's a great time for us to be able to just talk things through. I worked at the fair booth. with the Lions Club. We had a ribbon cutting yesterday morning. So they had a 9.30 ribbon cutting for Jersey Mike's. They'd already had their grand opening anyway, and so people weren't that excited. So nobody came to the ribbon cutting except us and yeah, hey, and the people that worked there. But anyway, it was very nice. They're very excited to have their store open there. So that's going to be a fun addition for us. That's about it for me.

Great. Okay. Thank you, counsel. From my end, I'll be very, very brief because I'm just returning from a week away on vacation, a much-needed vacation. So I flew in early this morning, got a couple hours of sleep, and I actually got to wake up to a message that was sent to me by Jesse Jimenez of Police Activities League. He's the executive director, and he let me know that Officer Kaelin Dibiak of RPD has just received an award. She has been awarded the law enforcement volunteer, law enforcement officer volunteer of the Corps for PAL. So pretty cool recognition. There's an article on her in the Reflector this week as well. So I just want to thank Officer Dibiak for that. I hope I didn't steal Lieutenant's thunder on that. But we're sure proud of every time we hear something that's happening with our law enforcement community because we are very proud of the work that they do. Thank you to them and thank you for all the work that Powell does. If you don't know, go look them up. I mean, they're a fantastic organization. They do a lot of great work to create familiarity and positive relationships between law enforcement and the public, especially amongst youth. So that's great. Also, for the remaining here this evening, thank you again for showing up. Thank you for your commentary. I know that we've been doing this since April and it's like every meeting since April. And sometimes I'm like, okay, more public comment. But you know what? That's what this is about. That's what this forum is for. And you guys keep doing it. And it shows that it really is a big issue that you're forcing your public officials to listen to. And as I sit here and listen to all of that, I think, you know, there's certainly worse things that I can think of the public storming a city council chamber and talking about public, giving public comment too. And I'm glad that we are able to do that with positively and with, you know, you guys have been very constructive. I've been able to talk to you every time I see you all in public just to talk about the issues and we have kind of conversations. So thank you. We'll keep the conversation going. As Councilor Vivala mentioned, like we, once there's something before us, You will hear us give vocal on him. We will be ready to speak to it as it crosses our desks as well So thanks again, and with that I'll close that council reports and we'll go to miss not an heiress because city manager Stewart's out this night I Don't think I have anything to report tonight. That's easy. Okay. Great. Okay go over there.

Mr. Thamer in public works I don't have anything either but happy to answer questions any questions for BW.

All right, mr. Johnson

Just one quick reminder for those that are on the budget advisory committee that the first meeting's next Tuesday, four o'clock at TMI. Other than that, if you have any questions.

Great, thank you. No questions for you, city attorney.

No report, just happy to answer questions.

Any questions for Ms. Barker? Okay, great. Ms. Lust in community development.

Thank you, Mayor, on my fourth microphone. But I do want to share that something my staff have been working on a lot over the past several months, and particularly the last couple weeks, is reviewing and inspecting construction at the new elementary school. And I'm happy to report that they were able to get temporary occupancy this morning, which means that their staff are able to start getting in the building safely. to start getting prepped for the closely approaching school year. So, big kudos to my staff who really buckled down and helped them do that in a safe way.

Great. Thanks for being a good partner on that as well. I know it's been a sprint to get it done. Go to Lieutenant Marvitz.

Thank you, Mayor. Now that's the report. You talked about it with Officer Dibak. We're extremely proud. The article's in the Reflector this week. I'm extremely proud of what she represents. She's very dedicated to PAL. We have a few officers that are dedicated, and PAL's been fortunate enough to highlight a lot of the work they do this past year. So Officer Dibiak is definitely one of our star PAL officers, so we're proud of her as well. Nothing else to report, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

All right. Any questions for RPD? All right. Seeing none, with that, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.