Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Snohomish County Council Public Infrastructure and Conservation Committee for Tuesday, June 16th at 10 a.m. We are meeting in the Jackson boardroom and remotely this morning. Before we take public comment today, I do want to read the public comment script. We'll take public comment beginning with in-person and then remotely. In Zoom, click the hand icon to raise your hand. If calling by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. When called upon, press star six to unmute. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak, and please start your comment with your name and city of residence. With that, we'll go ahead and do roll call.

Committee Chair Lowe.

Present.

Committee Vice Chair Dunn. Here. Committee Member Neering.

Here.

Committee Member Mead.

Here.

Committee Member Peterson.

Here.

Chair, we have five members present.

Great, thanks. Before we do public comment, I do want to mention Action Item 1 is about the TBD. I'm going to move that one to after the discussion, so that way we can make a decision with everything out on the open. So item number two will be first, then the discussion, and then we'll move to other ordinance at the end. So with that, we'll go ahead and go to public comment today. Anybody in person wishing to do public comment? Don't all rush up at once. Okay. Is there anybody online with their hand raised?

There are no hands raised.

okay seeing no hands raised on line we'll go ahead and close public comment and move to our action items so first on our action items will be action item 2 motion 26-236 for the record Cynthia Foley council staff Snohomish County through the Department of facilities and fleet is seeking to contract with CCS facility services for janitorial services and facility cleaning

The area being cleaned includes 44 county sites and 837,000 square feet of building space. The total cost for all services is $2,247,195.76 per year. The contract is for three years and may be extended for two additional one-year terms. Expedited action is requested because the current janitorial services contract will expire soon. The request is to move motion 26-236 to the GLS agenda on June 17th for council consideration.

All right, any comments or questions from council members? All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move this to June 17th on consent and Lester's objection. Hearing none, we'll move that to consent on June 17th and move to our discussion item. And just to give a little background on the discussion item, Obviously, we had the TBD a few weeks ago during public hearing. There's other options that we could consider, so we went ahead and brought this back to our item number one back to committee to talk about the other options. I know King County just voted one through on Friday that's a little different than what this is, and so I just asked Deb to kind of put forward some things so council's prepared for all the different options, and then we can proceed based on council discussion today on how we want to potentially do this or other options. So I'll turn it over to you, Deb.

Great. Thank you for that introduction. This is Deb Bell, senior legislative analyst, Snohomish County Council. And today we're going to talk about public works and what their current needs are versus what their options are for funding. So there's been a lot of discussion regarding what mandatory, what monetary amount is needed for the road fund. And after reviewing the available documents, $9 million per year is needed to cover the existing functional abilities of the Public Works Road Fund. Please note that this means operating at the current low staffing numbers and the lower maintenance and operation levels. The reality is that $30 million per year is needed to fully fund the department to build back to the full staffing levels and return to normal transportation improvement plan project levels. This does not fully fund the needs identified in the recently adopted comprehensive plan, though. So how did we get here? The reason for this deficit has been compounded by rising costs and declining revenue. While some of the cost for projects has risen due to increased regulations, requirements, and permitting timelines, the majority comes from the 48% increase in the raw construction materials. Over the past six years, the cost of materials, construction costs, and operating expenses has outpaced the road levy and gas tax income, widening and exacerbating the gap, even though the department has made cuts at every turn. So, if you look at the lines here, you can see the black line is the road levy with its steady increase over the last six years, and then you can see the erratic behavior with the increase after the pandemic. So there are a few revenue options available. Number one is the increase of permit fees in Title 13, which the department requested and council approved in 2015. Institute a right-of-way use fee, which the department requested and council approved in 2025. Excuse me, that was 2025. I just misspoke. And that the council has received some public comment on this recently, and this is a long-term, slow trickle on revenue. As right-of-way contracts expire and get renewed, This allows the county to negotiate a rent for the use of the public right-of-way. King County started doing this in 2016, and it now earns approximately $10 million in revenue. Next is traffic mitigation fees. These were last updated in 2021, and these are currently being reviewed. The current revenue is approximately $4.5 million. That leaves three options going forward. One is to institute a funding mechanism for the transportation benefit district. a road levy lid lift, or REIT 1 and 2 funds. Car tabs, their base price is $20 per tab. This will generate approximately $6 million per year, or approximately $12 million, given the six-month delay for the February 2027 through February 2029 calendar year in which they can be instituted. After two years, that can go up to $40 per tab, which will generate approximately $20 $12 million for those two, or $24 million for the biennium, maxing out at $50 per tab, which will generate approximately $15 million per year. And this can be raised, but only with the approval from the voters. There are exemptions to this fee, such as campers, farm tractors, mopeds, off-road, non-highway vehicles, private single-axle trailers, snowmobiles, and those under RCW 46.87. sales and use tax up to 0.1 percent of which can generate between three to five million per year as council member loja said king county passed this as a consummatic on friday june 12 2026. jefferson county also has something similar rate one and two Historically, they've been used strictly for debt service. REIT 2 has $1 million in debt service. $1 million goes to the road fund capital projects, $1 million to swim capital, and the funding for projects. This also includes council projects for a total of about $8 million per year. The fund balance for REIT 1 at the end of 2025 was just over $8 million. REIT 2 was just under $8 million. There are more than 120 TBDs located within the state of Washington, Jefferson County, and now King County with their councilmatic revenue sources. Jefferson County started in 2025 and includes the entire unincorporated county. King County will start collecting on January 1st of 2027. Jefferson County also enacted the $20 vehicle license fee and the 0.10 sales tax in the summer of 2025. The options that require going to the voters for approval are CAR TABs, if you want to exceed the councilmanic authority, sales tax and use tax, which can go as high as 0.3 percent with voter approval, and a levy lid lift, in which the state allows for different ways in which to do this with voter approval. Two options recommended.

Okay.

Two options are recommended. This would be a slow increase starting at 9% for the red lily and walking it down 2% over four years. This is slow and does not meet the immediate needs, but might be a bit more palatable for voters. The other one is a one-time 23% one-year increase, which brings in the higher revenue needs to stabilize the fund while the other in-place mechanisms start to generate revenue, such as the right-of-way fees, the Title 13 fees, and the traffic mitigation fees. A road levy lid lift, though, is no easy task. There are several specific rules attached to this process, which you can see here. So there are a lot of things that the county can do, and there's also a lot of things that the county can't do as far as advocacy for this. These rules include what the county can do, such as hiring an independent external stakeholder group that would need to manage this campaign. And then with the levy lid lift, it is not without direct cost to the department. It is figured that up to $1 million just for county expenses, like putting the levy on the ballot and doing some information and community research would be needed. This does not include any funds an external stakeholder group would fundraise and use to support the levy campaign. So as a recap, this is where we are to date. There's a $30 million shortfall with four possible solutions and only one that is councilmatic on the table before you today. Are there any questions?

Thanks, Deb. Can you back up to slide three? Because I think it's important that we understand exactly how we got here. I think it was slide three, if I remember. Yeah, so that's the one. So obviously, our road levy goes up 1% every year. It's a fixed 1%. The issue, though, is maintenance and materials have gone up 48%. Construction costs have gone up 36%. Operating expenses have gone up 26%. And so that's kind of why we're in this particular hole is my understanding. And we're only limited at the 1%. So obviously, something needs to be addressed or we're going to see some significant road situations. So I think that was important to highlight. So thank you for having that slide in there. I'll turn it to other council members. And Doug and Kelly, we might have questions for you. So maybe if you want to join up front here just in case, that would be good too. So

turn it to any of the council members first uh we heard different options so uh council um council member done um under so the the options before vote any of the voter approved options is that only an unincorporated so both the tbd the sales tax and the levy lid lift is that are any of those county wide or are they all unincorporated it's my understanding they would be all unincorporated okay however

defer to kelly and doug correct can i piggyback on that a second maybe kelly might know king county voted last weekend but there seemed to be county-wide because there was some money going back to the cities through that so is that an option for us too potentially or do we not know for the record kelly snyder public works director snowmish county so um in king county

only one it's our understanding that only one city had already enacted a sales tax tbd and that was the city of kirkland since that was the case the cities and the county entered into a discussion about what what would be the right approach what could be a possibility so they were able to go countywide minus kirkland from a governance standpoint and they also agreed to um number of amount of money that would go back by percentage to the other jurisdictions from a countywide collection now in this county there are more cities that have taken a sales tax TBD option I believe it's seven I'd have to go back and confirm but I think it's seven so if did you bring that up oh great thank you so much in that case then if that is the direction of the council we could investigate a countywide option like King County minus the cities for which it's that have already taken that as an option because you can't double tax in that case. We'd also want to work with the prosecuting attorney's office to evaluate that as an option as well.

Thanks for letting me cut you off. Go ahead.

That would only be for the sales tax.

Correct.

And then we can do a combination of a tab and a sales tax. That's correct. And that at this point, because we established the structure for the TBD in a previous vote, that would only be for unincorporated as well.

And these are all great questions for which we'll need to do some more homework if that's the direction of the council.

Council Member Mead. So, well, first, thanks for the presentation. It's good information. The sales, if we go back to page five or go to page five, the sales and use tax, the one tenth one. The sales tax, one tenth one percent, it raised more than five million dollars.

In the way that we've.

So the countywide one was like $20-something million. But the one that we would do councilmatically that is just unincorporated would still raise maybe Jim Cannell, but it was like $12 or $13 million, was it not, per year?

I can tell you that when we calculate, and feel free, while Jim's coming up, I can tell you for the license fee or the sales tax associated with the TBD that our calculation was about $4 million.

But one-tenth, one percent is one-tenth, one percent, regardless of if it's for transportation or public safety.

The difference being the public safety sales tax would be collected countywide, where the transportation would only be in an unincorporated Snohomish County. Okay.

I am talking about the one that's just unincorporated. There was two options. One that we went to the voters with that was voted down. That was countywide. Then there's one that we can councilmatically consider.

For the public safety sales tax?

Correct.

That is still countywide, though.

not just the one that we would do councilmatically is countywide that's my understanding yes oh all right but it raises significantly less because it's one tenth one percent instead of what we went out to the voters with which was correct tenths one percent correct correct yeah it was a different different amount that went out to the voters okay thank you sorry jim martin council staff for the record and

I asked Jim to be here today because I think part of this process for me personally is I'd like to put forward an audit. And I've talked with Kelly about that already. I've talked with the exec's office, so it's not a surprise to them. Not really going to discuss the audit today unless council members have a quick question or two, but Jim will be bringing something forward through Heidi here in the next couple weeks to have it as part of the process because I think it's Although we see all the rates going up and everything going up, I think it's important that voters see everything too, our constituents see everything. So that's why I asked Jim to be here today. Any other comments or questions, Council Member Nery?

Yeah, thank you. So we're in June of 26 now. What's the earliest that we could go to the ballot for a levy lid lift?

I think the answer to that question is it depends. So the earliest we could go is this November. With Deb, we suggested that it will take a good solid year to get out, do the appropriate engagement, to have an external stakeholder group activate themselves and engage in the public so that people better understand in talking with people out in the community myself, I think there's a lot of hesitation about more taxes. I absolutely get that. When we drill down a little bit more and help people understand what part of the dollars that they pay now go to transportation, they have much better understanding. So part of the work the county needs to do is help get that word out, but also what a stakeholder group needs to do is get that out. So What you see, I assume that it's up yet. One is August of 27, November of 27. And then we gave an outside version of November of 2028. There's a lot of people who are really smart about elections and when to put things out. I am not one of those people. But those who advise have some thoughts about that. And that's something that will need to be wrestled with in the coming days.

Okay, thank you. So technically, we could go out this November, understanding that that's not the recommendation. Is there a recommendation on one of these three timelines from the department or the exec's office?

I have no specific recommendation. I have thoughts, but I don't have a specific recommendation. Okay, thank you.

Follow-up? So I don't see February or April on this table, but those are special elections that we could or is there something prohibiting us from using the special election schedule and that's why February and April are not on this?

I think the question that I just answered was how soon. Every election between now and the time it actually goes on is a possibility. I think the question is, what is more likely to have passage? We want to make sure when you put it on and it goes on for the first time, it has the highest degree of possibility of success. 12 months is the most logical amount of time. More could be better, but February and April of 2027 is within that 12-month window, and I think it would have a lower degree of success for passage.

Okay, and we've We're doing some consulting, I'm assuming, to give us that perspective? Yes. Okay. When do we collect after, let's say it passes, you run it in August of 2027 and it passes, when do we collect?

On the bottom line of this in highlighted yellow is when collection would begin.

So January 2028, if we did it as early as is on this table, is when we would be collecting. the scenario we just laid out about the budget and doomsday and layoffs and project delays and all that how does that play into this if we pass the car tab that we can do councilmatically it's only six million dollars still have to wait till January 2028 does that even get us there or are we still in this doomsday we're gonna have to make layoffs at the end of the next year

So I want to make sure I'm being super consistent about this. The car tabs in the form of a license fee, and I'm just going to focus on that particular piece, allows us to not do layoffs. It allows us to keep the maintenance and operation levels the way we have today, which is reduced overall. Our capital is still reduced. What a levy does, separate from the TBD, What a levy does is help start buying back those capital projects that we have delayed and deferred. Those are larger numbers. We can't do that with a car tab. That's just keeping the lights on, so to speak, and the grass mode and the striping happening. That's what that does without diminishing further. Barring any sort of other crazy budgetary circumstances, which I do not foresee, but let's just say status quo for now. The levy helps buy that back. It doesn't buy it back immediately because the hole is deep still. We're going to dig ourselves out of that. It'll start accumulating, start getting bigger, and then we can start adding back projects, you know, maybe three at a time and then 10 at a time and then get back to our stabilized space. This is not an on or off switch, right? It is a dial that we keep adjusting and continue to improve over time.

And so that answer would be the same answer you'd give if we passed the November 2028 option. which is an entire additional year before we would be collecting, that car tab $6 million would keep us afloat as far as we get into 2028. That's right. We still could avoid layoffs.

Barring any sort of large natural disaster.

I hear the caveat, but it's just basically delaying when we can start doing the buyback. Start buying back. That's correct. Okay.

That's right.

And I just wanted to mention that

An audit, as a department, we welcome any sort of audit you want to have, right? Time is always of essence, but we get audited all the time. Every federal dollar that comes in the door requires multiple audits. We are in a constant state of audit in our department, so bring it on.

Deb, can you bring up the city slide where the cities that are doing this? Some of the early emails I received from my constituents were, It's unfair only doing unincorporated. And what I want to be able to send is this slide showing that most every city in the county is already doing one or the other. This is just really bringing us up to what most of our cities are already doing in the county. And so I think that's important to highlight.

Yes. My understanding, Bothell's the only city that doesn't have some version of

a sales tax or a car tab well sounds like they're kind of getting one uh as of friday from king county the portion will have to start start on that so correct uh any other council member done yeah um is this a doomsday scenario or is this the reality right now well it feels like doomsday every day to be honest with you it's a little stressful um uh i i think we're gonna if

let's say the license, TBD license fee does not pass, then everything that I've shared with you, we're going to have to make more cuts. That's going to come in the form of layoffs. At this point, I sort of shudder at what other deeper cuts we're going to have to make and what kind of risk that means to our traveling public.

And then I have a question on the election. So on slide 11, I'm sorry, we keep making you go back and forth. But it has a cost to the county of up to $1 million. That's a direct cost to the county for having an election. If it's on other elections, that cost is shared?

Correct. That's right.

So if we have a special election, we incur the total cost of the election.

Yeah, it depends how many things are on the ballot, right? So we have no idea. The closer we get, we'll have a better sense of what that looks like. But it will cost something. We just don't know how much it is. So On the outside or the upper end of the ceiling, it's about a million dollars. So we wouldn't recommend being the only thing on the ballot, but perhaps there'll be other things as well.

And then one other comment. So I know we have, the council has a budget for the performance audit. We decided not to move forward with an audit in the past year, maybe two years. We just did one this morning for the sheriff's department. I'm concerned about vacancies on the performance audit committee. So I would would appreciate maybe some time to appoint members because I believe there's a number of vacancies on that committee since we kind of suspended moving forward with audits.

Jim, you want to address that a little bit because I think you and I were talking about something different potentially.

Typically audits that are requested by the county council don't always go through the performance audit committee. Typically what will happen is we'll get a recommendation from the performance audit committee and from the performance auditor I should say from the performance auditor of recommended audits that the performance audit committee will then also either endorse or recommend different ones. It's certainly within council's purview to deviate from that and authorize an audit that's not in that on that schedule. I don't know what the last schedule recommended audits was and what the performance audit committee recommended in that case. It's certainly also within council's purview to request that the performance audit committee, you know, endorse a recommended audit. So it's really, it's council direction.

So I'll just share where I'm leaning on this. I'm leaning because I've had these conversations. I see our chief of staff coming in. So before I perjure myself anymore, I'll let Heidi say something. Then I'll say what I want to say.

So let me just give Jim some grace. This isn't normally his area that he works with. So just to correct the record. When we do a performance audit and we utilize our designated performance auditor to do that work, the contract does specify that that audit does need to be reviewed by the performance audit committee prior to its final outcomes being presented at the county council. So the performance audit committee is a part of the process. Where they would not come in at this point is typically when the audit plan is completed. It's done in consultation with county electeds, department heads, and the performance audit committee. They create the audit plan, and then council at times selects an audit specifically from that audit plan. The deviation in this case is council would be issuing a notice to proceed that is outside of that audit plan. So it is not recommended by the performance audit committee, but it would go to them at its conclusion prior to being presented to the council. So they do have some involvement.

So what I wanted to say to this is I do want to put forward an audit for the council to consider outside of that process. That would be in front of the council in the next week or two, depending on when it's drawn up. That would be through the committee of the whole. I'm not saying how council is going to vote on that. I'm not telling council how they should vote on that, but I do want to put that proposal forward. So I'm, and authorize Jim and or Heidi to put that forward for council to consider in the next week or two. I think that needs to be part of this process, especially if we're going to go with a councilmatic process to potentially fix the situation that we're in now. I'm also going to put forward the sales tax TBD that Deb's working on right now, and that should be ready in the next week or two for the council to consider. That does not mean we are going to vote through the sales tax one, but I want that option to be in front of the council to consider and for the public to have the opportunity to weigh in on the sales tax one, to weigh in on the tab one, like they've already been doing. So that's the process that I'm trying to lay out. But I'm obviously open to other council members and their suggestions on that, but that's kind of the process I'm laying out and then hopefully get, in front of the council for a vote in the next month at the latest or so, give or take, depending on our recess schedule and everything. So any other comments or questions to that, Council Member Nehring?

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate all the work that's been done from the department and council staff and Council Member Lowe on these different options and making sure they're all able to be considered. I think the audit's a good idea just to be public-facing and I think can help give credibility to it. I've shared this with Public Works, but I just want to make sure I share it on the record. One of my concerns is with some of these options, whether it's the tabs or the sales tax, is I view the levy lid lift as sort of the big ticket item, right? That's a large dollar amount that's needed for a lot of these projects. And I do have a concern that moving forward with one of these councilmanic measures harms the greater chances at the levy lift, which is the larger item. So I just wanted to make sure I share that on the record. I think that's a discussion we should have at some point. But anyway.

Anyone else? All right. So I think we're finished with that portion of it, which brings us back to our action item number one, which is to move 26009 to July 1st to set time and date for a hearing. I think we can still do that. And I'll have you say whatever comments you want on that in a second. But it is going to be concurrent with some other stuff that's coming forward. So I just want to say that. Anything you want to say on ordinance 26009, Deb?

I was just going to give a brief staff report, uh, regarding where we are with it. So, um, your permission, the proposed ordinance 26-009 was first introduced at the March 17th public infrastructure and conservation committee and would amend Snohomish County code section 2.85 relating to the Snohomish County transportation benefit district. Uh, the ordinance has four parts. It would add a new section of code, uh, which is 20, excuse me, 2.85.035, which is for the vehicle license fee. It would amend section 2.85.010, the transportation benefit district, which would change the geographic boundaries of the benefit district to coincide with the unincorporated limits of the county. It would also amend section 2.85.020, the governing board, making the county council the governing body in deleting the line regarding the acting as an ex-officio in independent capacity. And lastly, it would amend 2.85.040, which is the use of the road funds, and it would allow for funds generated by the Transportation Benefit District to be used for any purpose allowed under law, meaning RCW 36.73.015, and eliminating any previous exhibits and unincorporated county transportation planning developed documents that are approved by the county council. So basically it's saying that anything that's been approved with the annual construction plan and the transportation improvement plan and the comprehensive plan is eligible for those funds. And lastly, the requested action is to move this ordinance to GLS on June 24th to set time and date for public hearing with the requested date of August 12th, 2026. Due to the upcoming holidays and the summer recesses, that's why it's being pushed out. And this concludes my staff report. I'm available for any questions.

Council Member Dunn.

So the $20 car tab goes through the auditor's office. That's who issues vehicle registration fees. And that's where those dollars are collected and sales tax is at the state level and it comes back as like a rebate basically? Correct. That's my understanding.

Any other comments or questions on this? All right. So we'll go ahead and move this to July 1st to set time and date for a public hearing on Ordinance 26-009 unless there's any objections. Hearing none, we'll go ahead and move that to July 1st. That brings us to the conclusion of our meeting.

Chair, do you want it on regular agenda or on admin matters on July 1st?

Which one do you recommend?

If it goes on regular agenda, there's another staff report given. If it goes on admin matters, then it's just a motion with them.

Yeah, admin's fine.

Admin's fine.

Okay.

Thank you.

And you'll have the amendments?

And then they'll be working on the other ones. All right, with that, we'll go ahead and be in recess until our planning and community development meeting at 11 a.m. Thank you.