Welcome. I'm going to call to order the Issaquah City Council budget deliberation meeting of
Tuesday, November 10th. on today's agenda. We're going to open up the meeting with
an opportunity for members of the public to make comments. I'll talk about that
in a moment. And then we're gonna move into actual council deliberation on a
list of items that we identified in our previous council meeting, budget meeting last
week on the fourth. And so this initial public comment period, it is,
I'm glad to be able to offer the opportunity. I think the very transparent and
very open and deliberative process by which we set our budget for coming years, it's
vital that we have these opportunities for members of the public to offer their comments
for the city council. As we mentioned last week as well,
when we opened for public comment, that items for comments
must be restricted to items under, related to the budget.
And so, you know, it's very specifically, we have a proposal from the mayor, the
council has been reviewing that and there are items, potential items on there that, you
know, that we're gonna be voting on this evening. And so items related, anything within
the scope of the budget. If you're a representative of an agency that has
been in the proposed budget for funding, we ask that your comments
be, we have a single representative from your agency to provide those
comments. This is, again, this is for the benefit of the council
as we make our deliberations on the 2016 budget. And so I don't
know is the we did not unlike our regular council meetings. I didn't provide a
list for sign up. So it's going to be all available. I'm going to ask
people to raise their hands. And so we're going to limit the comments to
five minutes. And again, I think a lot of you should be familiar,
I hope, with what our mayor usually announces about the purpose of the
comments and how they're supposed to be directed and respectful, directed to the
council and respectful of everyone. And so with that, I'm gonna open it
up for public comment. Is anybody who would wish to make address the council, sir,
please, when you come forward to the microphone, state your name and your relationship to
the city before you begin your comments. Thank you.
Evening, my name is Chris Hawkins. I'm a resident of Issaquah up in the Issaquah
Highlands neighborhood. And I'm here to talk about one item in the parks budget. One
of the items under consideration for next year in the parks budget is the addition
of all weather play fields and lighted areas in the city of Issaquah. Currently the
plan is to place those up in Issaquah Highlands, and while there are some issues
with that, I think that an important alternative has been overlooked in the Lakes of
Mamish State Park soccer fields. There are currently nine different soccer fields at Lakes of
Mamish State Park which are used by different soccer clubs but which could be used
by other facilities, but they're hampered by the lack of all-weather turf fields and lighting.
Obviously the monies that are set aside would not solve the problem for all those
fields, but the money that's being proposed, the $600,000 state bond measure and the money
that was, some of the money that was approved in the, I think, $10 million
bond issue could be used with those. It would obviously take some rethinking about the
relationship of how those fields are managed because they're not actually within the city parks
boundary, but I think that it's worthy of consideration. The item that I'm asking you
to consider tonight is to rethink the budget item for the soccer fields for next
year from implementing the existing plan to instead funding further study of these. While there's
a need for soccer fields, I don't think that there's such a pressing need that
we can't reconsider a decision under slightly different parameters. And I think that If the
budget item were to ask the parks department to work more closely with the state
parks department and understand what the management implications were, what the cost implications were, how
those fields are managed right now that we might benefit long term because those fields
are located in a much better location for all the citizens of Issaquah. They're very
central. They have much better transportation links. so again in terms of budget items i'm
not asking you to make a decision about where the soccer fields get to put
tonight but rather to say would it be wise to defer that a bit why
we put on some additional study on that and to focus on changing the budget
item to fund a study of an alternative at lake sammamish state park thank you
very much thank you would anybody else like to address the council
Good evening. I'm Karen Abel. I'm the executive director of Art East at 95 Front
Street North. And I have to say, after observing the thoughtfulness and thoroughness and often
intelligence I observed last week, As you deliberate, it's an honor and a
pleasure to be here addressing you tonight. I want to talk about our
request for funding for art programming from the general funds. Last year, your
funding helped us deliver five community programs and ten exhibitions, both at downtown
Front Street as well as our Blakely Hall exhibition space. And it included, I won't
go through all of them, but it included over a dozen free art making experiences
for families. It included field trips for every Grand Ridge second grader to our African
American quilt exhibition and it ended up the season with a successful attempt at the
Guinness Book of World Records for most people painting on a mural during salmon days.
And we plan to do all those sort of things again next year with the
exception of the Guinness Book of World Records. But we also plan to expand the
free art making activities at sort of almost a street level if you want to
talk Think of it that way. And we plan to partner with the Issaquah Schools
Foundation and Healthy Youth Initiative group on a program called The Incredible Intensity of Just
Being Human. And it is a series of art exhibitions and panel programs that address
the issue of youth mental health. We do all these things because we believe in
two key things. One, that nothing like the arts brings people together in a common
place. And as Issaquah continues to grow and become more culturally diverse, we think the
visual arts are particularly important in bringing neighbors together who wouldn't otherwise gather together. The
second thing is we honestly believe that the arts are a great way to open
dialogue on important subjects such as youth mental health. So going forward, you can expect
us to do those, the type of programs we've done in the past, plus more.
You can always expect us to partner. You will see that all our key programs
involve a community partner. We don't go at any of them alone. Downtown Issaquah Association,
Issaquah Highlands Council, Friends of Lake Sammamish, the list goes on, Eastside Rights. You can
expect us to engage whenever possible. We try to make programs that actively engage invite
people to get involved as compared to expect them to passively view the art. And
you can count on us to put our best foot forward with our best teachers,
great art materials, even a street level type programs, and ideas that push things a
little further 'cause that's just kind of in our DNA to do things that are
a little bit more fun and at times a little bit more zany. Your support
of these type of programs is absolutely critical Because to be honest, many of the
other funding partners we seek all year long, we seek them all year long,
have very specific missions that don't necessarily align with the type of community-based, family-friendly,
street-level, festival-level programs that we bring Issaquah. They have other missions and our programs
have to meet those specific other missions. So we absolutely count on local support
for these local programs. So thank you again for all the support you've given ArtEast
in the past and your belief in ArtEast. And we look forward to continuing
support, be as generous as possible, and we'll help build a healthy community together.
Thanks. Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to address the council?
Sir. Good evening. David Kapler, 255 Southeast Andrew Street. Four park items. There's
talk about a second park plan that the city might be looking into. I think
it's really necessary to really look at projects and figure out what projects we need
to be budgeting and working on in the near future. And bringing in the different
user groups and really have a comprehensive planning process and working with those different groups.
There's item in the budget for extra help in parks, especially I think Matt in
the open space could use extra help. I would hope that that would kind of
be tied in with some of that job. If we expand that, we need to
expand help there, but we're looking at somebody that's more on a Thursday to Sunday
type of job or something that covers weekends at least frequently is on weekends. So
they're available to work with volunteer groups and also be a person that would really
be a contact person for volunteers. I don't think we have the, they've taken advantage
of our volunteers as well as we could and should. And then there's the item
about brochures, which are really in need of being updated. But like the DNR is
working really hard on their mapping for all of Tiger Mountain. And we're getting it
down so it's all going to be on your phone. So you can just get
it right there. And the work I've done on truthing some of the maps that
DNR has done up there, they're unbelievably accurate and work so well on the phones.
So anything we do like that, or the-- There's hardly ever any of the brochures
up there about the bus. And so do you want to keep filling up, using
all the paper, filling the brochure thing, where you got those numbers up there, if
that was all on somebody's phone, that little program was on their phone, they could
get a lot more information than about the bus and why it might be there,
what it looked like originally, and that kind of thing. You could have really excellent
information and it's all an area where a good cell phone reception
occurs so people could really get a lot of information that way
and it could be updated. Whereas once you start printing these things
it gets out of date real quick, especially with trails. Thank you.
Thank you. Is there anybody else? Ma'am? I brought a couple pictures
to show you on a thumb drive. Can I do that? I
just don't know where to put it. Do
I, does my five
minutes counting down? It
is. Yeah. Okay. Thank
you, Paul, for helping
me. Okay. You know,
I can't talk without
showing you a couple
of pictures. Sure. Open
folder to review files.
And here we are. Good
evening everybody. Most of you know me. I am Chris Brandt. I'm the CEO of
At Work, which is located at 6690 Northwest Juniper Street here in Issaquah. I wanted
to give you a quick update about all the changes that have been happening at
At Work because you have a new and different proposal before you this year after
many years of supporting us at the recycling center. So back in 2006, AtWork served
200 people in three sheltered workshops, one of them here in Issaquah, one
in Bellevue, and one in Kenmore, and group supported employment, which was a
janitorial business, a landscaping business, and the recycling center that you see there
with bales of cardboard in the background. The city supported that recycling center
with $20,000 grant from this budget for seven years. and really made a difference in
us being able to provide that as a public service and to serve a number
of people with disabilities. At one time, there were 16 people with disabilities working there
and many have gone through that program. Work has really transformed in the last
nine years. We have gone away from segregated, isolated services, programs and businesses that
pay people with disabilities sub-minimum wages and have become a national leader in a
new model of integrated and community employment. And we're getting better results. And we're
asking in this new budget year for support of our new enterprise model,
and of Atwork University, which are the two components of how our sheltered workshops have
transformed into helping people with disabilities transform their lives through the power of having a
job that they love. So we closed our last sheltered workshop here in February of
2014. We closed our last group site here, the recycling center, in July of this
year. And when we did that, we ended sub minimum wages for everyone that we
employ and everyone we serve. One of the first organizations like that work to do
it in the country and on the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
So behind Ted right there, You see Mike's hat and here you see Mike and
Mike has a job at the Snoqualmie Casino. He likes cars but he's not working
at a car job. This is his first job. He may eventually work in an
auto body shop or somewhere but he really likes working at Snoqualmie Casino because he's
good at cleaning. He gets bacon before he starts his shift and he gets to
wear a uniform and those were two really important things about his work environment. Since
2006, we've been able to bring 282 people who have had no employment services
whatsoever into At Work and help them find jobs. 311 community job placements in
that time. 182 employers since 2008 have hired a person with a disability for
the first time and about 45 of those are here in Issaquah. And you
see Margaret and you see Mike. Margaret now works at the Seattle Goodwill Donation
Center. which is at the site where the recycling center was and continues to collect
e-cycle and household goods. And Mike is working at one of the cafeterias at Microsoft.
He's shown there learning new jobs while he's volunteering at Rite Aid as part of
his discovery process. Folks have earned seven and a half million dollars and the average
wage is $11.75. We used to pay some people 50 cents.
So our businesses have transformed too. We don't have a recycling business anymore. We
have a landscaping business. We have a document management business, which you can see
Ricky and Jing Jing in that business working, and a landscaping and packaging assembly
business, all of which now employ people at prevailing wages. Same benefits, same wages
as anyone doing that job was. Throughout at work, 28 people with disabilities are
employed. And together, our social enterprises and network university create jobs and opportunities for
learning and discovery. So we want to thank you because without you, we wouldn't have
had that miraculous transformation. Our success is this community's success. I am being asked to
go around the country to show other organizations how to do it. And what do
I talk about? I talk about the community support that Issaquah and other communities in
our region give us. And those organizations are going out and asking their communities to
become as inclusive as Issaquah. So please continue to support us in our new model
and continue to come by and see us as we change and grow. Thank you.
Thank you.
that's okay that's okay here we go you're fixed thank you
very much anybody else who would like to address the council
is there anybody else who would like to address the council
during this public comment period on matters of the budget third
and final call is there anybody else who would like to
address the council during this period of public comment okay not
seeing none public comment is closed
okay so now we're going to move on to
the next portion of our meeting where we are
going to so before we get started kind of
picking up where we left off i wanted to
ask bob if you had any other was there
anything that the staff had prepared in response did
you have any other action items at all coming
forward let's see yeah thank you
for i heard that eltac did you get a summary of that did
you get a report on that yes we'll have that a little later this
evening still this evening still i hope to have it yeah for you this evening
i think i just have to pull it up in the email and we should
have those recommendations there's nothing new other than what had already previously been presented so
i think um john trager is going to be coming a little bit because he
had asked for some information on office 365 regarding that admin proposal there was materials
submitted previously about those other projects. So other than
that, we don't have anything new. All right, thank
you. So in a moment here, I'm going to
bring the spreadsheet up on the screen so everybody
can see that.
So just as a reminder where we left off, so this is the exact same
file without being modified that we all looked at when we last looked on the
4th of this month. This is the tab. Let me scroll down a little bit
to make it a little bit more -- well, actually, that's it. So you can
see -- well, let me just kind of go through the structure first. Again, this
tab represents changes, potential changes that we're going to deliberate to the general fund. There
was one example of mitigation where the --
this is issue related to funding more funds for the skate park and of course
that's really um is something that requires a transfer over to the capital fund so
that's with this entry so the the mitigation fund tab and the capital fund here
really kind of work together they really just show the accounting but i want to
make it so perfectly clear that our finance department has no doubt about about what
the what it is that we are are going to be discussing so is anybody
um Okay, and there actually was one more, excuse me, and these did
not work their way in. So this is the last item that we discussed last
time. These were the projects proposed by the administration and that we agreed last time
that we would have more discussion about these. So I wanted to, first thing I
wanted to check, are these, Bob or Diane, funding for these from the general fund?
A portion of the installation of Office 365 would have based upon
the number of users and the utilities. So it would be allocated
on a per capita or per unit. So I would assume the
majority of Office 365 would be in the general fund with maybe
20% going to the other funds. OK. So I'm just
going to work these in here, just because what
this spreadsheet does is offer kind of a real-time
update to the actual-- You just typed over mine.
Control-C, Control-C. No worries. There's this thing called undo.
It's kind of hard to do this. Really? Yep.
Sorry, everybody. And
so you said about 20%. All right. Okay. So we'll
get these items in here. So sorry, I didn't really
mechanically put this together ahead of time. So please bear
with me. And you know what I'm going to do
is I'm going to do something different. And we'll get
the amounts for these here in a moment. Sorry, you
have to watch my, see my plumbing, but this is
what we're going to do.
And then the last one was, and I
think what we had agreed last time that
it was just four of those items that
we were discussing with, going to be discussing
this evening. And so, but the parks maintenance
worker, that's, is that general fund as well?
Okay. I missed that one. So bear with
me. And actually before I go, well, that's
not right. And
who knows off the top of their head what the real
estate was. Which one was? Sounds like 10,740 would be 20%
of the office 365. So, okay. All right. So let me
just. Real estate consultant makes you. There's 50, 22,
and 53, 7. CHRIS JERRAM: So Paul, we have a couple
addendums. PAUL SPIEGEL: Yep. CHRIS JERRAM: Go ahead. The first one.
In the mixed use-- developing the mixed use, we spent some
time between the council meeting and on Friday. And staff has
reduced that request to 25,000. i believe they can
get it accomplished within that dollar amount the second real estate consultant makes
use 25 so you're you're you're now for 22 500 25 000 25
000 yes but in half uh the last item that um you had
crossed out up there that we wanted to uh talk about was the
affordable housing strategy and so It unfortunately got framed around the multifamily tax exemption. And
so it was really supposed to be that was one piece of the overall housing
strategy. And so I wanted to give Emily at least an opportunity to talk about
that and what the plan was regarding the funding for next year as the MFTE
would-- what we were anticipating was going to be a portion of that overall strategy.
But we had talked about that at the committee the whole last year. So Emily?
All right, just a few words on that. All of you know that as part
of our comp plan development over this past year, we identified that we still need
to complete our housing strategy plan. And part of our ARCH work program for the
next year is to make some progress on that plan. It's actually been on our
work plan with ARCH for the last few years. And so we would like to
make some significant progress this year. In order to do that, we think one
of the things we need to study in depth is what are the best
strategies for preserving existing affordable housing and how might we stimulate the development of
more of those affordable housing units. Um in terms of carving them
out of projects that we anticipate are already going to be pursued by
the marketplace. And so one of those issues is studying multifamily tax exemption,
but that is only one of several strategies that we would look into,
research what other communities have done, what success they've had with those methods
and come up with some options for the council to then review and
decide which ones they want to work on policies for. So that would
be the plan. It's broader than MFT. I think our concern Around this
was one we had mentioned at the very first budget meeting, which was we had
over 2,000 housing units that were going through our DSD program for permanent approval, and
we had no affordable housing within that. And so obviously we have a disconnect between
existing policies and what we'd like to accomplish, what the council told us we'd like
to accomplish, what the mayor would like to accomplish, and then what we're actually seeing
out of the marketplace. So the hope was this study would help us develop some
strategies to be able to accomplish those goals that are in the comp
plan. - Okay. - So when I saw this item in the work
plan for the human services piece, I assumed it was already included in
the funding. It was part of the work plan. So this is, what
this is, this is the budget document and it's for the community services
and part of the 2016 work plan was support development of affordable housing
strategies and actions. How does this differ than that? We believe
there's probably a benefit from utilizing a consultant or purchasing some
market data. It may go so far as us pulling together
focus groups or getting some training for our staff around those
strategies. We certainly do anticipate that we will work with ARCH
our staff will perform a great portion of that housing strategy development
work. But we think there's some market research in particular that we
could use some external assistance with. Does anybody else have any questions?
Tola? Process. Is this the point where we're deciding yay or nay
on that item? Well, actually, this is the point where I'm deciding
whether or not we're going to deliberate it. Because it's
not, we did not end up the meeting last time. So this is a walk-on
request, more or less. We decided actually against to consider that further because it was
positioned a little bit differently and we got, you know, so this looked like a
decision on specifically whether or not to offer the multifamily tax exemption as incentive to
create more affordable housing. And I think the discussion was the context of that decision
is really within creating the housing strategy, which is something that we had a presentation
on earlier in this year. i i asked because uh as i had the
good fortune of being a growth management planning council uh uh last week and we
discussed affordable housing and i actually had a chance to ask seattle's uh representative there
about uh mfts and she was generally positive and i was going to talk to
her some more about it but i mean it it seems like seems
like there's opportunities to get some information on this without necessarily engaging consultant i may
be getting too far into the weeds here but i mean the thing that for
me the proof in the pudding for mfte is going to be when somebody comes
with a proposal to the city and says look here's what it looks like with
an mfte here's what it looks like without an mfte and the city gets a
chance to review it and you know maybe services gets a chance to look at
it but that's where you'll start to see like the the power of what is
or isn't in an MFTE and how it affects potential builders. So I don't
know until we have something like that in front of us. I don't know
how much a consultant can add versus just looking to other municipalities. So one
thing I'm trying to understand is this is labeled MFTE. What should it be
labeled? So the goal was to get market-based data that would enable us to
look at a variety of strategies that would help us achieve our affordable housing goals.
So you may remember the first time this came up when we developed the CIP
plan was around we may need to incentivize people just to build more dense housing
in the CIP. What we found very successfully is the market shows us that they
didn't need the MFTE to do that. But what we are seeing, what the data
is showing, is that we're not getting any affordable housing as part of that. So
the marketplace isn't supporting it. Conversations we've had with developers reflect that. the marketplace
isn't supporting it. And so then the question is, is there a place, is there
a role for the government to play in that? And so the consultant we were
hoping to assist us in looking at what the marketplace is and looking at the
tools, MFTE was one piece, was one tool in the toolbox that could be used.
You know, we've been successful with some other ones, but there was frameworks around that,
like the zoning requirement that we had in the two development agreements Taliesin and the
Highlands. And I think our concern is that we, you know, which is what Kirkland
is dealing with now, which is there's been so much development and very little affordable
housing that got provided that we get to the horses get out of the barn
and we're too far developed without an effective strategy in place. Because the proof is
in the pudding at this point, you know, over that many housing units with no
affordable housing coming in, I think we're, the existing policies just aren't working. So
this is an ask to complete our housing, affordable housing
strategy. Yes. Of which consideration of MFTE is still just
one of them, potential tools. Anybody have any comments? Yeah.
I would support that if it was a more broad conversation about the tools that
are in front of us rather than just burrowing down on one particular, you know,
choosing, burrowing down on the hammer versus the saw and the chisel and the plane
in the toolbox metaphor. I actually think I like this a lot better
because of the word strategy instead of just talking about this one exemption that is
that the lands that we are currently in the central area as things get built
there's more and more demand put upon those lands some of them already have affordable
housing in them so the strategy to me is just you have to have some
idea of how you might be able to preserve what you have as well
as incentive to grow the number of units. So I like this approach a
lot better than just talking about one thing. Just talking about MFT. Okay, so
I'm going to put this in the, it's made the list for deliberation. And
I think, and I'm going to title this as tell me if this is
accurate for your intent is to complete, nah. The center key is in the
wrong place. My apologies. it's kind of hard
to do both to look up
here oh the shift key's in
the wrong place it's really affordable
housing strategy yeah so oh this
keyboard is odd sorry all right
so um that amount was tell
me again 20. 20. okay all
right And someone had done the calculation. 1,740. Is it 20%
out of general or 80%? Opposite. Oh, so it's a number minus
1,740. You're going to make me do a second calculation. Yep. Or
you can let Excel do it. And I did the calculation. Ooh.
Okay, so this is quite a long list Josh I have a figure for you
now on the transportation project that I said I would meet with Sheldon and get
back to us on so Why don't you address that? Because that so this is
so this is something we discussed last time There was a couple comments from more
than one council member Council member Marta expressed support as well that if we were
to do other capital-based projects specifically for to address transportation you know
that would be something we'd be willing to discuss so I don't
know really now my spreadsheet might not work anymore because this is
probably funded at somewhere else where is it funded I'm proposing to
use a portion of the general fund ending balance okay so it
would be here okay all right All right, so I want
to get to this as soon as possible. So what are we going to call
this, Josh? Well, I have a specific proposal in mind. Public Works Engineering provided three
options, but I believe one of them is probably the best to pursue. So I
can explain if you want to give me a minute what those options are. Okay.
So I spoke with Sheldon Lynn, Public Works Engineering Director, and discussed the possibility of
using additional general fund dollars on projects that are listed in our TIP or other
transportation related projects in the city, given that that is a really high priority for
the public and the council. Sheldon came back to me with three potential projects and
And I'll work in reverse order to the one at the end that I think
is the one we should look at doing. So one is the Three Trails Crossing
project, which has been on the TIP as a high priority for a number of
years. And that's the intersection I'm sure you're familiar with over near Gilman and Rainier,
where there's some significant intersection alignment issues and additional needs for pedestrian crossing improvements. That
is forecasted to be designed in 2018 to 19 currently in the
CFP at $325,000, but it could be moved up to 2016 for
design. The second project that was discussed was the intersection or driveway at
Northwest Maple Street that you're probably more familiar with being the Target or Trader Joe's
intersection. That project is actually not on the TIP, but it came up in the
crossing study. And according to Sheldon, it would be possible for $300,000 to begin and
possibly complete the design of the project in eventually in 2017, but these funds would
get us started. The project, the third project, which I believe is the one we
should look at pursuing is Northwest Holly Street. This project will provide a pedestrian
connection along Northwest Holly between Fifth and Rainier, including a new pedestrian crossing
of Issaquah Creek. It's partially funded currently in the existing 2016 budget at
$150,000. The capital facilities plan shows the remainder, which is $265,000. I'll just
round it off. There's a couple hundred in there. $265,000 in design funds
to be expended in 2017. If those funds, the 2017 proposed funds,
were put into this 2016 budget, the city could contract with a
consultant for complete design in 2016 and likely apply for a TIB,
Transportation Improvement Board grant, in August of next year for construction funding
in 2017. So, why I believe the Holly Street project, which is $265,000, is
a good use of city dollars for 2016? For a number of reasons. First,
we can complete design in 2016 instead of bifurcating it between 2016 and 2017,
when we know we're going to have to spend those funds in 2017 anyway
to get us to 100% design, so the plans don't get left sitting on
a shelf somewhere. The completion of design in 2016 will better position us to leverage
getting Tibb grant funds for construction, which will overall reduce the city share of the
project so we can leverage those dollars better. This has also been a high priority
project in the CFP. Holly Street, I would say, if memory serves, has been somewhere
in the top 10 of our projects for many years. I think some of the
other projects, although they're extremely important, the Three Trails Crossing project in talking to Sheldon
may not score as highly for grant funding as Holly Street, at least in the
short term. And the Trader Joe's Target driveway, I think there's additional information that we're
gonna need on that. I mean, it's not even on the TIP yet. It just
came up as part of the crossing study and it may be more appropriate to
look at in terms of a bond package that might be put together next year.
We're already starting design work on Holly Street in 2016. And so getting the
design to 100%, again, allows us to leverage the funds and get the project
moving forward to construction an additional year faster than we otherwise would have. And
that's a net positive benefit to the city since I believe we do have
the 265 available to allocate. And this gets us that much closer to a
necessary important uh transportation project in the city that again we would otherwise be doing
in 2017 anyway according to our capital facilities plan so why not do it now
so I labeled this the Northwest Holly Street pedestrian improvements to lines with what it's
in the it's already in the but to complete design for the point we want
to be more specific on what's actually being accomplished it's not the construction That's correct.
That would enable us to get potentially TIB funds for construction in 2017
instead of waiting an extra year. Okay, thank you. Mary Lou? Yeah, I
actually have something I'd like to add as well. I had mentioned at
the last meeting that I would be working with staff between that session
and this one tonight. to come up with a proposal um for what we
were calling a post two plan which is parks recreation open space and trails plan
and just for a quick little um update this uh plan the first version of
this plan has already been at services and safety it is to
be or should be submitted to the state by the spring of next year in
order to make sure that we still qualify for funding for some of our projects.
I brought this up because in looking at the document and the information that we
have, I felt that there was still some large policy questions that we as a
council have not talked about and need to talk about in order to come up
with I called it pros to but a plan where residents businesses can look at
a document and see where we're headed in 20 years and how we're supposed to
pay for it so I put this up here and sad news is that it
was not that easy to actually come up with a number and figure out what
to do so I had worked with Emily on proposals back and forth this week,
but there really is a lot of discussion that has to happen to frame this
out and how it would work. I was going to make a recommendation that it
be included as a work item in your letter and potentially not have funding in
this budget, but I have been talking with some other council members and there seems
to be a lot of energy around getting this done. getting this part two of
the plan put together. So it's up there right now with $50,000 placeholder amount, but
I have no specific written proposal to go with it. So I can ask questions,
or I can answer questions about it. - But this line item captures that intent.
- It's going to stay. - Tola, do you have something to add? - Related
to that, I think that in discussing this, we would need to clarify. I think
that this would be, up to 50. If one doesn't need to
spend 50, one doesn't spend 50. But that also, the actual
spend would be contingent on the council approving a work uh
statement of work statement of work associated with what this would be understanding that there's
a lot of aspiration around what this document is and so i would want to
see that statement of work from the administration before we actually released the
50,000. So as a matter of process, if
the council were to proceed and accept that
and their intention to be for approval of
a statement of work, then that would be
reflected, an item that we would reflect in
the council, my letter to the administration. Okay.
Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Okay. So, okay.
So last time there had been some
questions around Office 365. And so John
made it back in and got through
traffic. So if there were any, he's
available now for-- those questions. If not, and there's clarity around that, then we
can release john and he can head home for the evening if he chose. I
think it's good to take advantage of our director of I. T. Here to get
some some staff input on this. This is an item that council will be deliberating.
Um, matter of fact, I'm gonna keep things interesting. This is after, John,
you have some statements to make or some information to share with us. And
then we're gonna take this item and our protocol is gonna be as usual.
Everybody's gonna have an opportunity to make their own comments about this item afterwards.
Go ahead. - Okay, well I think you saw the outline or the request
that was a response to the questions from last week. And so I'll go
over those briefly. So what we're looking for is to move from the
standard Microsoft Office Suite, which sits on every computer, to the Microsoft Office
365, which is a cloud-based service and has additional functionality that we don't
currently own. Right now we're on Office 2010, and so that's nearing the
end of life for the software licensing on that. And so it's about,
it's after implementation and then the, License fees it's about 53,000
next year and it would be about 51,000 subsequent years so you move
from a buy it once and Use it for a few years to
a rental model So it is a change in how we approach the
desktop software, but there's a lot of benefits from this Right now our
current Internal work processes are pretty far behind and So we don't
use any instant messaging. We don't have virtual meetings. We don't have an intranet
that really is useful that people go to. Most documents are exchanged either via
email attachments or in a very large shared drive that you can't find anything.
So we have a really kind of a primitive configuration for desktop interaction between
the employees in the city. So this implementing the system would be moving
away from that and using more sophisticated tools. We have four buildings in the city.
There are different locations to meet with somebody. You have to drive over there instead
of just doing a quick virtual meetings. Every little message has to be an email
instead of a short instant message. So there's a lot more email traffic than It
probably needs to be. We don't have video conferencing capability with outside entities, which more
and more are expecting that. And then we don't have a decent sort of document
management for working in progress documents. So we have a good document management system for
finished, completed documents and like the system we use to manage the agenda bills.
And we're implementing a really good system now for through munis, for contracts, and those
type of working documents. But for work in progress documents and collaboration, we don't have
a good system. And you end up with multiple copies of works in progress, which
can create problems down the road. So if we implement this product, and we're going--
we'd like to ask for the full suite of product that comes with it. So
it's the SharePoint. And the instant messaging is called Skype
for Business, which has audio as well as messaging capabilities.
And then the Office suite that's typical, which is your
Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and the Office standard package. So implementing
these more advanced features are kind of important for us
in the Long run as we modernize our desktop environment and work
environment, where the city is facing a demographic shift as most cities are,
where we'll be seeing a turnover in the workforce through retirement. And the
new workforce will expect these tools to be in place, and we don't
have them. So it will be an important recruiting tool to get our
work environment up to the modern standards. Any questions? Questions for John? Tola?
First question, does that include an Outlook server? - Yeah, so that's a hosted Outlook
email server. So the first step in the deployment is to migrate from our hosted
server, which is an Exchange Server 2010, and move it on to their server in
the cloud. And I know in the past with Outlook servers, there was a certain
amount of a la carte, like if you wanted to have, I once had a
situation where I wanted to add a conference room and I was told we didn't
have enough, you know, whatever resource tokens or whatever that's called. Do you project that
this will cover those aspects of an Outlook server sufficiently? Yeah. of course we've actually
already resolved that so the conference rooms are now in outlook and that's why i
didn't know this was actually a problem in the city i was talking about for
my job in general yeah so it's it's more advanced yep okay the second question
is um sharepoint is not an entirely trivial uh implementation as in terms of change
management is there a cost associated with implementing sharepoint So this does not include like
any consulting fees or any of that. So our plan for SharePoint is to do
a very incremental rollout. So we have some really immediate needs like HR. So how
do you get HR forums out? Consistent forums posted so people can get ahold of
them. So we'll do an internal stand up of the HR intranet site and a
document library there that can be controlled by them. I mean, I'll tell you for
us, for a comparably sized organization to the City of Issaquah, we were probably half
FTE times a year or a quarter FTE times two years to implement that. So
is that cost going to come back to the council at some point as an
ask? I don't know that. So it has to do with our internal communication strategy.
What do they want to do with it as a tool? The SharePoint is very,
very powerful, but it's not trivial to install. It's not as bad as an ERP
system, but it's approaching implementing an ERP system. If we just keep it to a
very limited use, some simple document libraries, it's an improvement over what we have. It's
not the best, but if you take it all the way, yeah, there's a lot
more you can do with it. And that does take time and energy. Thank you.
Naini, did you have a question? Thanks, John. So my question
last time regarded the change that you had mentioned going from a license purchase
to a software as a service. And do you have the details of the
increased cost or cost savings over time of making this change? Well, some of
the numbers are in the right up there. They price it so it's pretty
close. In our case, it's more expensive because we're buying more software we don't
have. more and getting more yeah yeah so we don't have the instant messaging we
don't have virtual meetings we don't have a bunch of other we don't sharepoint but
if we were to buy those separately and then re-buy them every three to five
years which is an industry recommendation it comes out pretty close but then you have
to also factor in the cost of managing the hardware on site and so there's
additional labor cost of running your own servers as opposed to a hosted service
And then as a term, the term of the agreement when you go to the
software as a service? The term? Are you committed for a certain number of years
and then what if you don't want to do it anymore and how much does
it cost to get out? No, it's an annual sign up. You don't sign up,
they turn it off. Any other questions for John? I'll just add that Not
the first. Noqualmie, Mercer Island, a lot of surrounding cities are already using the service.
Cities of our size, it's pretty typical because they're small shops, don't have a lot
of staff, trying to keep the number of physical servers or have to run down.
So it is a pretty standard path. And this is all on the state contract
pricing we've got for it as well. Josh, thank you. Quick question, John. Do
we have a policy with respect to private or personally identifiable information that would
be stored on a cloud-based server? Is that allowable? Do we have a policy
on that? So, yes. So these are through a different subservice from Microsoft. And
so they actually have federal government security certified data centers, and that's where this
stuff is hosted. So it meets those requirements for security. And people who go and
work in those data centers have to meet the federal FBI clearances. So it's different
than a commercial Office 365 you get for business or personal use. Thank you. Any
other questions? Okay, so what I'd like to do next -- thank you, John. You're
welcome to stay or not, if you like. But I actually -- now I want
to open up kind of to give every council member an opportunity to speak to
this item or not. This is your chance to indicate whether you support it
or not. We are gonna do like traditionally, we're gonna do thumbs up, thumbs
down on each one of these items. But the process is everybody's gonna get
a chance to speak on each line item and then we'll vote afterwards. And
so, Tola, I would like to actually open it up with you. We'll go down
to Josh through me and then we'll end up with Eileen for comments on this
item. So one is naturally cautious about moving everything to the cloud and whether that's
a money grab or not, but by software companies. But if you look at it,
you know, this works out to be approximately $200 per employee per year. A seat
of Microsoft Office Professional costs 250 bucks and you assume a three-year lifetime for any
particular piece of software and you're probably going to have to buy another one. So
it's really, is it worth $600 versus the old model. And this is why my
questions really revolved around the Outlook server and SharePoint. Outlook servers are absurdly expensive in
the old world. Just blindingly expensive compared to what they should cost, in my view.
So when you add SharePoint and you add the Outlook server, I think if it
doesn't exactly match cost-wise, it matches close enough that it resolves any question that I
have about the fiscal probity about moving to this model. Although I continue to be
concerned that SharePoint will cost more to implement than we might think. But that's a
topic for another day. All right. Thank you. Josh? um well i don't have the
same level of expertise that the tool does on these subjects but you know it
strikes me that that every few years or so software companies and i mean they
do like the cell phone companies they make you buy a new package of some
kind and so you know i have a feeling somewhere down the road the city
is going to be looking at replace if we approve this replacing office 365 with
the next best iteration of os uh that comes out for our needs and I
mean, that's just unfortunately the way it rolls. I mean, that's how technology is. It
progresses and the city has to keep pace for our systems and so forth. So,
you know, it's a price tag and it's one of these things that I feel
you just have to kind of do on an every so often half decade or
decade basis. And then they cut off support for these things too, you know, that
you're really forced to buy a new package. So I'm more supportive than not of
doing it. Okay, thank you. Mary Lou. No questions or comments. I'm supportive of it.
All right, thank you. Nina. Yeah, I was showing a little, not reluctance, but caution
because of the same reasons that Tola pointed. I don't want to get into something
that has a never-ending purchase, especially something that when sometimes you own it, you can
use it for quite a lot longer than the manufacturer recommends. But the last couple
things you said, John, contributed. convinced me about the special protocols for data management
that can be a great burden and a liability for us if not handled
carefully. And this has an investment in that that gives us a great deal
of protection. And the fact that we don't need to keep it for a period
of time, for any length of time. We can always change our mind and go
to the other model or whatever new model, as Josh says, comes up in the
future. So those are the things that convinced me that I was showing caution. Thank
you, John. Thank you, Nina. Stacy? I don't have any big concerns. I think if
I had comments, they'd be pretty closely aligned to Josh's comments. I'm supportive. So I
will add to that. Actually, this model means that we will get updates as the
supplier makes them available. So you're actually not buying into a single version. That's part
of it. And, John, you can confirm that. So as they come up with features
and enhancements, I have experience with a rollout one of these. There are definitely
productivity gains to be made, especially with messaging. And I think when you
said virtual meetings, you were talking about using the Skype capability. I think
that now I'm speaking to all city employees that sit at a desk
and would use this software that I'm going to personally ask you if you're using
that because it is definitely a productivity enhancement tool for the reasons that John talked
about. I have personal experience with using that. And also for all of us as
well, for OBMA considerations, the messaging capability is something that every one of us could
put on our smart phone. And then as we use the messaging capability to conduct
city business, all of that would be server based so it all becomes discoverable which
is actually one of the challenges with using text messaging today. So we get that
benefit of easier compliance with open records requests. It is, we are, if we do
this, we're talking about a yearly, we are buying into, I think John said 51,000
a year. So that becomes a reoccurring cost. I don't know if we would be
retiring machines, but it definitely would be one less item on the work plan for
staff to maintain that. We saw that in my company as well. We made a
similar cost-based decision to go from on-premise to cloud software for 365 over a year
ago, and I think it was definitely, it's proven to be the right move for
a company my size, so I'll be supporting this as well.
Eileen, do you have any comments? Just a couple quick ones. From reading through what
John has provided us with, there's just two quick simple things. I mean, if this
reduces our total costs and has the potential to provide staff productivity increases, I am
very much for it. And also instant messaging and a couple of other things that
are in here. But yes, definitely for the cost and hopefully for some cost savings
and productivity increases, I would approve with this. Okay. Thank you. So with that, and
if those of you who, and all council members are familiar with our process, for
those that aren't, as we discuss each of these items, it's up to my discretion
on whether or not to actually hold a vote on any one of those. So
this, and we do that, and this is not, this is on a line item
by line item basis. There is further formal action that the council takes by approving
agenda bill, which will happen during regular business. And that is the ultimate final approval
of any potential budget. So this is just the direction of what the pieces that
comprise the budget. And so that's what we're doing here. So are we ready to
vote on this item? So what we're gonna do, it's gonna be a thumbs up,
thumbs down. You're gonna hold your hand out and all in favor, thumbs up, thumbs
down if you're against it. So that is seven O in favor of this line
item, thank you. Now, I'm going to take this opportunity,
and Bob, before you sit down, I'm going to
call a very brief two-minute recess, and I need
a conversation with Bob. So we'll be right back.
Thank you.
Okay, so we're
ready to get
started. Thank you.
Okay, we're back
on the air.
I'm not going to be calling
anybody Nigel. Okay, so let's continue. I do want to make a
comment. I've highlighted up on the screen in the revenue area. This is not something
we're deliberating. This just reflects an October 16 update from the county assessor on what
our likely collections will be around property tax for the regular levy that we issue.
So this is not a deliberation thing. This is just an update to... um it's
i'm sorry it's where the cursor is right now so it's this one right here
so this was just a later information that we got uh compared to the budget
that was prepared in the early october later in october there was an update from
the assessor's office and this indicated that the regular tax levy amount that we would
be collecting is it would be going up by this much so that this is
not for council deliberation so i just wanted to wanted to point that out okay
so um i'm now going to just go down the list and we took advantage
of one staff member being here. So yes, Diane. I was just going to quickly
add with regards to the property tax levy, that number can keep changing up until
the first week in December. And if you'll recall last year, we adopted the ordinance.
And then after we adopted, they gave us updated numbers. So we had to do
an amendment at the last minute. So you just never know with a We're required
to provide it by November 30th, but they do, if they come in with new
numbers, they'll allow us to amend as long as we get it in the beginning
of December. - Okay, so the next item to deliberate was on the, an actually
expenditure reduction side. And actually, I meant, I'm sorry, I wanted to do one thing
first. So just so you know what this does down here, you might recall, so
this bottom line here you can see the top line is what's been proposed
in the original budget. The bottom line is, would be the net effect of our
changes. Now, currently, it includes everything that we're gonna be deliberating. But you can keep
an eye on that to kind of see kind of a rolling amount as well.
And just so for all the ups and downs, the additions and the subtractions in
the general fund, you know, the net effect for the is, uh you know you
can see that it includes a reduction in the ending fund balance of 352 000
but the uh actual and there's the actual ratio of expenditures to ending fund balance
so that will just be updated in real time as we make changes so what
i'm going to be doing if we vote against something i'm going to zero it
out okay so that so that's just something that you can kind of keep an
eye on as you as we go through this So the next item on there
I want to have a conversation about is the classification and compensation study. This is
a proposal to actually not fund that work. And we discussed it last time. We
had some Q&A with staff. And I'm actually going to start now the deliberation, starting
off with who's making the proposal, and that was Josh. Okay. So I
did not support this for a number of reasons. Number one, my
first thought was that it just struck me as government funding, studying
government. And I was trying to figure out really the public benefit
of doing this particular study. Then we got some information in terms
of the need to look into salaries and class levels and such.
it was still unclear to me whether this was across the board or whether this
was non-union employees. I still don't think I fully understood that from our last conversation.
But what I heard is that there are certain positions that the city has had
difficulty recruiting for and or filling and it just struck me as a little too
overbroad to spend seventy five thousand dollars for it across the board study if we're
having issues in really certain departments or certain positions uh and that perhaps if we
were going to look at that it could be much more narrowly tailored the the
price tag to me just seems very very high uh And I understand that's what
it would cost if you did it across the board. I mean, I don't doubt
the number. It just seems high for what we need, which is a much more
limited analysis of positions we're having difficulty recruiting for. When I look at $75,000, I
think that's more than a lot of people earn in a year sometimes. And then
I think about just studying more government for that kind of money, it doesn't sit
well with me. So I would be willing to spend a little bit of money
to look at a much more narrowly tailored proposal or to just defer this altogether
for another year until we get more information. Okay, just to be sure, so the
question we're considering tonight is the amount that's on the screen. Right, but what I'm
saying is my recommendation is to delete it, but I'm throwing out there that if
there was a desire to fund it up to some level because of this issue,
I am supportive of some funding, just not $75,000. Okay, thank you. Mary Lou. I
actually think that every so many years we should be doing a study like this
because of the changes that you see in all different jobs within an organization. So
I think just pulling out a few outliers and setting them in isolation is not
the best business practice. So because of the length of time since they've done the
last study, I think this would be very beneficial to the organization. So I'm in
support of leaving it in any amount that it's in. All right, thank you. Nina.
I too am in support of leaving it in as the amount that's in it
based on the information that was presented by staff last time. There was a compelling
argument about the risk that we have when we don't do this and the costs
that are known and unknown when we don't do these. It's an investment in potential
savings and also in our ability to staff adequately to meet our objectives. I'm in
favor of putting it back. - Thank you, Stacy. - I agree, I would leave
it in. I don't see a whole lot of value in doing it piecemeal. One
of the positions could be vacated anytime and then you're maybe stuck without a classification
and compensation study in that area. So I would leave it in. - All right,
thank you. I have no additional comments to add. I will be supporting this item.
- I'll be supporting it also. as i mentioned last time i think this
sort of activity is uh is critical for organizations to find talented individuals and i'm
looking forward to the city poaching some good employees from less scenic and pleasant states
Got it. Okay, so this is an item that we are going
to, we're going to do a council vote on this right now.
So all of those in favor of retaining this item in the
budget, thumb up. Those who don't approve, thumb down. So this passes
six to one. So
again, I will, of course, zero these out
if we actually have any true change. If
we don't-- So isn't that the zero out
change? Yeah, you're right. You're right. Thank you. so
highlighting it means we're done we've considered it now this site and
this next item is a consideration of of the budget the mayor's
recommendation to fund 99 000 to isaac valley seniors And it also includes
the amount that was in the proposal to spend up to $65,000 for performance and
management audits during some early part of the term of the contract should we approve
that. So this line item amount is for approval or not of all of these.
Now, I'm going to, this is the first the council is hearing this as well,
is that this evening we're going to deliberate this, but I'm going to hold off
a vote on this line item this night. We are not going to be, as
a council, voting on this line item this evening because I believe that there is
more time needed to work through some of the issues and the considerations that are
in front of us. But we are going to have an opportunity to deliberate. And
just so everybody knows, there's going to be a when we'll actually vote on this.
There's an opportunity. It might be at our next make it an item as part
of our next regular council meeting. This is a tentative in the first council meeting
in December is the possibility. But OK, so with that, Mary Lou, because we're doing
a round robin, can we start with your comments? This is probably one of the
tougher decisions I think that I've even had to ponder in the two years that
I've been on council. But I spend a lot of time thinking about our comprehensive
plan and our vision for how the city funds the service providers for our human
services. And some of the words that really stuck out to me was that we
would provide integrated, effective human service delivery systems. Systems that support a
strong coordinated local response. And with those words in
mind, a couple of the actions of one of
our service providers for the senior center, in particular
the use of trespass notices and also lack of
coordination with other providers. I am not in favor of the
City granting money to the same service provider for the next year. That's
where I am. Okay, thank you. Nina? Yeah, thank you. I don't think
I have much to add to Mary Lou's. This has to do with
an application from a grant, grantee, and the, I have not also been
in favor of supplying the grant funds to that provider at this time.
Stacy? I don't think I have anything to add
to the previous comments I had. I, at this time, also wouldn't
support granting the money at this time. All right, thank you. So
I have also expressed my comments previously in public and yet I am hopeful
and hence the reason as I announced earlier we're not going to be voting
on this this evening that we will still have opportunity to for an outcome.
I support providing services to our seniors at the Senior Center. That is what
I want. I do not have confidence in the way
we would go forward with the current proposal from the mayor's
office, but I'm still optimistic that we can find a way
to do that. So that's where I stand. Eileen? This
has been a really difficult conversation and review for many of those in
Issaquah. I also strongly support the services to seniors. With an aging father
and the support that he receives from his organization, it's very important to
him. With that, there are issues that I'm seeing and observing and have
concerns in regards to that. So I think bringing this back again and having
further discussion not necessarily will be very beneficial. Thank you. Eileen Tola. Thank you. At
the October 19 City Council meeting, I had a number of questions for the Issaquah
Valley Senior Center regarding statements made in their prepared comments delivered at the October 13th
Council Services and Safety Committee. These questions revolved around the breakdown of a service partnership
between the Issaquah Valley Senior Center and the Issaquah Food and Clothing Bank. In response,
on November 2nd, the Issaquah Valley Senior Center Board of Directors and Executive Director sent
a letter to the Issaquah City Council. The two-page cover letter addressed the questions directly,
and then the following 49 pages were supporting materials. Except they weren't. Instead of satisfactorily
answering my questions, the materials presented by the Issaquah Valley Senior Center actually turned those
questions into serious, deep reservations as to the Issaquah Valley Senior Center's ability to partner
with other local social service organizations, which is absolutely critical in order to balance strengths
and weaknesses between different human service organizations and therefore maximize limited human service dollars delivering
services to our residents. Four issues that deeply concern me are a matter of public
record as I went through them at the last council meeting, so I won't go
through them in detail again unless the council would like me to do so. But
based on these issues, I do not feel comfortable voting to award any money to
the Issaquah Valley Senior Center this year. I do not make this decision lightly, but
by their own presented materials, the Issaquah Valley Senior Center board and executive director have
unfortunately shown that they are not competent stewards of our citizens' money. Tola, thank you.
Josh? So, a few points. One, if we're talking about not providing the 164, you
also need to build in the audit cost because it would seem to me that
there'd be no need to conduct the audit either, which is contingent on providing a
portion of those funds. That's what this represents. $65,000 of the 164 is the audit.
Is that included in there? Yes. Okay. So, If we're looking at doing
that, I also noticed there's a corresponding line item below and these are
obviously connected at 164. I think that not providing the funding, the 99,000
at this point, would cause short-term harm. I think it would result in
a reduction in programs and it would produce short-term harm to the users
of senior services in our community. I don't think that the city is
in a position to fulfill providing senior services at $164,000 for 2016. We simply
do not have a plan in place. That 164 may go towards hiring a
consultant or doing other things to develop that plan. but in the interim there would
be a significant and in my opinion harmful gap that's why i supported the
mayor's plan in committee i have not heard anything that necessarily changes my stance
from doing so i do think that it would be important to conduct the
financial audit and continue resolving many of the issues that have been raised in
the first quarter of 2016 as opposed to waiting six months. You know, let
me be clear, I am very concerned and I do not doubt that many
of the issues that have been raised, the allegations of misconduct and improper treatment
are extremely concerning to me. And I too lack confidence in the way that the
center is being managed at this time. But I also believe that we should not,
as a council, be inserting ourselves into the board decisions of a nonprofit organization, whether
we like them or we think they're reprehensible or not. and I think there is
legal recourse available to individuals who have been aggrieved by an organization such as this.
I don't think that eliminating funding without a long-term strategy in place and a decision
about how the city should provide senior services would be prudent at this time because
it simply cuts off the funding without anything really to replace it. And I think
that that's more harmful than beneficial at this point. um and i hope that as
this moves forward we can continue to look at ways to uh mend the rift
that's been created but again i i want to underscore i don't think it's being
managed very well but there's a clear division between providing grant funding and inserting ourselves
in decisions of a non-profit all right uh thank you josh Okay, so
again just to repeat myself we are not gonna vote on this and
we are looking at an opportunity at perhaps our next regular council meeting
to make a final call on this item. Okay, so moving forward.
The net now we're going to move down to new expenditure items that the council
is proposing that we make now this title on this one and Mary Lou, this
is your the sponsor behind this one and it's I pulled it the actual line
item in there has to do we tied the efforts to the council goal for
increased neighborhood engagement, but extending the scope of that effort
for communication efforts related to major projects and pushing
messages to the community. I think I got that right. You got it right. It's
the title that really doesn't work so well with it, but this was, uh, We
can work this. Let's actually correct that if we need to. If you suggest something,
I can update that. Because it's really not neighborhood engagement, but, uh, I understand why
it's come up as this line item because staff has proposed some additional labor resources
this year in order to work on our neighborhood engagement goal and there is some
extra availability. I think it's five hours, Emily? Five that was put in. Five to
eight hours a week of this particular position that could be used in this year
to work on Another task which is to make sure that we
are doing everything we can do to keep neighborhoods informed of construction
projects and impacts. So are we keeping up with the most, the
best available methods we can find to keep citizens and businesses notified
of those impacts as construction starts to really uptick again. So that's
the additional $35,000. Okay. Naino. I'm sorry, before I move on. So that was like
an introduction. Do you want to? And I am in support of that because I
feel like we are heading into an era of a lot of construction activity in
a short period of time and in particular in one area of the city. And
I think it needs to be managed. I think we really need to do everything
we can for those residents that live here, those businesses that work here to make
this work. So I think we have to put in some additional resources here and
make sure we're doing more. I just wanted to say that I would support it.
Glad you brought it up. I don't know what the price tag is on that.
Emily said a day a week or something. Is that what you're saying? But as
a council member, one of the critical things that I've learned this year, last year,
is that communication is the hardest thing to keep up on. There is a huge
demand, huge demand to learn and understand what's going on in the city. if this
is something that helps supply that. -Stacey. -I agree. I don't think
I have much to add. I do actually have a question. So
it's still unclear to me what these funds, what they would fund.
It's not a capital expenditure, it's labor hours. So we're stuffing something
into existing staff's work plan. And so why more money? So
our proposal, our recommendation, was to add hours to
a part-time position that was also newly included in
the 2016 proposed budget. And that position was as
a result of the council goal. adoption of the council
goal around neighborhood engagement. And then I think this new proposal from Council Member Pauley
was to really augment our level of communication in these particular areas and
having some additional hours to do that will enable a staff person to
spend more time sending out those electronic notifications, working with Public Works Engineering
or Ops as we do road projects to make sure messaging happens around
that to our business community, to our communers, and to our residents. Okay.
- Thank you for that. And so I'm really torn here because I think the
purpose and the aim for the goal is absolutely spot on. My belief is that
what has to be developed is a process that doesn't exist. So there's an upfront
cost, but ongoing kind of, it becomes something that then just runs. There will be
forms of communication that are made and that you're updating information. You have channels through
which you push it. um i'm just this amount um i mean this is that
we're basically we're up are we you know i i take this by your answer
to be that since we're we're adding a position and we're actually expanding the actual
funding for that position so this is something that now becomes part of our our
ongoing expenses Let me clarify that. Thank you. The initial
portion of this position that related to the original council goal
you look at the council goal language, it describes that position as sort of
a pilot position. So we are planning to fill it as a temporary position.
We expect we will have conversations throughout the year with council about how that
position is working, if it fulfilled the goal desires, and then I think there
will be a subsequent conversation during budget development next year as to whether or not
to make that a permanent position or pursue it in a different manner. All right.
Thank you very much for that. I mean, that actually helps quite a bit because
I can see... we've said it before it's very you don't legislate engagement right you
actually have to invest into it and and and you know with the the proper
use of tools and some creative problem solving and and and somebody who's an expert
in this establishing some practices that maybe we can inherit so Again, the objective is
absolutely spot on. And I think we've spot I've spot I've mentioned in maybe not
in these public meetings before, but in other in other opportunities when we meet that,
you know, we do our committee and regional committee updates every time. And and I
think that that that those even our regular council meetings are just yet another opportunity
where major project updates could be made not necessarily from us but from staff or
the mayor or something i mean this is this is really important information and that's
just yet another channel on which we can get the messages out and there are
multiple channels so so i i support the goal i supported the uh the the
engagement goal originally and this expansion of this I think is nice and it's sensitive
to an emerging need that's putting more of a focus on this. So knowing I
just heard that this is a temporary position and that we will be reconsidering it
and finding ways that we could bring the work in house through existing work plan
items for staff is a lot easier for me to support, thank you.
I think I
have a little
bit different information
because I always
was homing in on the neighborhood and understanding that this
was more of a neighborhood engagement projects that would be working in the neighborhoods
as opposed to the entire community and the business community as you were just
saying the idea that this is a partially funded and to be expanded is
the 35 would be the yearly expenditure for this particular line item and that
If you're asking me, I'm going to tell you what I just heard is that
this would be staffed with a temporary employee. The project space communication, traffic project based
communication would be added to the work plan and that will be making an assessment
whether or not that work can be brought in house with existing staff in future
years. So it's not going to automatically be a permanent position going forward. That was
what I heard, and I'm basing my decision partly on that information. Okay. So from
what I'm hearing you say, that this is a somewhat pilot project for this year,
not necessarily a project that we have great confidence in that would be a continual
project unless there's dollars available and the project has merit at the end of it.
I am originally was very supportive of it, but have concerns
in regards to expending the dollars right now and bringing forward something and then
there not being the continual follow through on it in next years. So I'm
on the fence. Thank you. Tola. um before i give my opinion a question
as i recall because i was involved with council member paulie on the discussion around
this item and being engineers we requiremented the heck out of this wasn't there um
there's a feedback loop on this isn't there as part of this larger position i
thought we put some elements in there around checking in i think halfway through the
year or something there was wasn't there i am failing to recall
but that's certainly been our intent was to because of its pilot nature
was to have periodic checks i can't remember the specifics but that's the
intent is to make sure that we are providing you with enough information
about how we're utilizing that position and our perceived effectiveness in doing that. Gather input
from you, gather input, of course, from the neighborhoods as we're engaging with them. So,
yes, there's feedback. Because wasn't it in total 18 months, not 12? I thought when
we actually mapped it out time-wise that it wound up being an 18-month, at least
the goal had an 18-month implementation all total. The goal may have in terms of
developing the scope of work, the job description. And as I recall, the idea was,
as we got to major milestones-- again, when you work with engineers, we just-- we're
all about requirements and milestones-- that we would see where we were at. So that
may address some of the questions around this new thing that's sort of-- this is
something new. And so we all are eager to see how it-- we'll check in
on it, right? Yes. So I'm supportive of this. I think that there's not too
long ago that this city, if you were a city council member, you might have,
you know, 1,000 people per council member, and we're at 5,000 now per council member.
And, you know, it's not like King County Council. It's not 300,000 per council member.
But the city's changing, and I hear on Squawk Mountain, I hear from neighbors who
say they don't see me often enough, and they don't. And so they feel a
little disconnected from the city, particularly the ones who have been here for a while.
And so in general, this effort to reach out to the neighborhoods, I think is
very important as we transition to being a larger city. Some of this is modeled
right on the Bellevue. Bellevue has a very successful program similar to this. They're obviously
a lot farther on that whole growing into a big city business. But for all
those reasons, I'll be supporting this this evening. Thank you, Tolan. Josh? You know, when
I lived in Bellevue when I was growing up, I was for a little while
the chair of an organization called the Bellevue Neighborhood Network. It was a citizens group
that came together to provide input to the city on significant issues in various neighborhoods.
And it was a highly successful organization. I think it's very important, as Tola mentioned,
as this city grows, hopefully not to the size of Bellevue, that we also further
our neighborhood engagement efforts. As was mentioned about people in the neighborhoods where each council
member resides coming forward with concerns, it's important to note that after the first of
the year, there are certain neighborhoods where there will be no council member who resides
in those particular neighborhoods. whether that be Talus or South Cove. And so, you know,
it's not to say that we represent districts or particular neighborhoods, but perhaps we are
a little more attuned to what's going on in our backyards and our neighbors that
talk to us and bend our ear about certain things. And so we might know
a little more about those types of issues. And so having that neighborhood engagement for
areas that do not have a direct council member that you can walk down the
street and talk to or see on a daily or weekly basis, I think is
very important. And what's compelling for me about this proposal is that it is aligned
with a 2016 goal. And I believe the budget should align itself with the council's
goals for that year. And this, in my mind, fits the bill. Thank
you, Josh. Mary Lou, you had another point? Thanks. So I just wanted to
check, Emily. When I envisioned that this task got added to this temporary position,
it was because the skill set to complete the first portion of it, the
neighborhood engagement, action plan and activities, It's the same skill set that you would
want if you were going to assign somebody to look into how is it best
to get the information out, what's the available technologies. But I wasn't thinking this was
actually creating necessarily 100% a city responsibility. I thought that if we have a person
with that kind of communication background, it may be that there are changes in the
permitting and in the IMC where we would put some of these requirements for public
notification onto those who are completing the work. So not that we're necessarily creating something
that is now going to be this position forever, but who's looking at those ideas
and it actually might be the builder who actually has to do some of
the stuff, not staff. We heard you. And we've already had staff meetings to
discuss some of those opportunities. And yes, that task would be part of this
person's work plan. OK, thank you. So are we prepared to vote on this
item? Looks like we are. So this is a
vote to increase spending by $35,000 for the reason given.
So a thumb up is in support of the increase.
Vote. That is 7-0 in favor of the increased. Thank
you very much. Okay. So I'm going to do it
again. So the next item is the... real
estate consultant mixed use. So this was a project that was not in
the original. It's one of the ones that wasn't in the original budget
proposal. And we've heard about it a little bit last week. And so...
Because we're around Robin, we're going to be starting with you, Nina, but if you
need any additional information or anything, free field, take advantage of the opportunity. Thank you.
I'm sure I could, but I can't think of anything right offhand because in Land
and Shore we've been dealing with this sort of thing quite a bit as we're
looking at the Phase I, Phase II, Central Issaquah Plan amendments, and one of the
real buggers is mixed use, which we wish we had and we don't yet. And
I for one have been visiting with staff and fellow council members and other people
to try to figure out how do we crack this nut. And I'm not a
real estate consultant. So I haven't done it. And this seems like a reasonable approach.
It's an investment in a tool and an understanding of a marketplace that's changing all
the time. I'm hoping that it's right time to bring this in now. I'm in
support of this, the price tag. Like the others, I don't know why it's $25,000.
That would be my question. Why is it $25,000? And how long does it take?
And can it be done by January 20th or something? But those would be my
only questions. How long does that take? Why is it $25,000? But let's do something.
Thank you. Stacy? This is long, long, long, long overdue, as in
three years. So I'm greatly supportive. I'm happy that this has finally
come to the top of the list so that we have, you
know, so we have the means by which to get this looked
at. We're not going to really probably get mixed use unless we
figure out some way to make it happen. So...
my additional thought would be that I hope that this continues to be a top
of the list work item and not just continue to be a we'll deal with
it next year thing. I think it's really important. So I will definitely be supporting
it. Okay, thank you. I'm going to start off my comments and just respond to
something Stacey just said is that I view this and really with the exception
of the parks maintenance worker that we're going to discuss in a little bit. I
see all of these are one-time expenditures. And so that
is a deep part of my consideration that as in generally, we're not using
excessive and funding fund balance to fund ongoing expenditures. So I do agree too
that we knew when we passed the Central Issaquah plan that adjustments would need
to be made and I view this as a critical fine tuning of the area
to help us assure, based upon the information that we've, the activities we've seen and
are in the pipeline, that we need to fine tune that part of the plan
to make sure we get the outcome as it relates to mixed use. So this
is a necessary one time spend to fine tune that plan, so I'll be supporting
this. Eileen? - I couldn't have said it better. It definitely is, it's this very
necessary piece right now to make sure that that area is design the way we
need it to be. It is as central as the clause is growing. We
definitely need to have this particular consultant and I am fine for it. Thank
you. Tola. Ditto. Thank you, Josh. Maybe it's too simplistic of an approach, but the
way I see it, if the city wants mixed-use development in the central area, we
can either one, legislatively mandate it as part of the design standards for the central
area plan, or two, we can let the market take care of it, and then
we're going to end up probably with no mixed use, like the weird-looking buildings near
the Safeway. So... i see those as kind of the two ways that this can
go and i'm honestly not convinced that hiring a consultant for 25 000 taxpayer dollars
is the best use of our money because one of those options letting the market
take care of it that doesn't require any expenditure the other option legislatively mandating it
that's a policy-based decision for the council that doesn't require 25 000 either If you
give me 10, I'll tell you how to do it. But I don't think we
need to spend a consultant for 25. So I understand the appeal in wanting to
do this to get more information and market data. I just don't think practically the
effect of it is going to provide any benefit to the city. All right. Thank
you, Josh. Mary Lou. Yeah, this one was a tough one for me. I'm on
the page with Josh that I think there's just two ways to do it. You
legislate it or you let the market take care of it. And I do have...
Some contacts in the building industry and I talked to them about this a lot
this is a regional problem of trying to get a developers performer to make sense
with mixed-use having retail or commercial on the bottom and residential above so I'm I
guess I'm a little I'm going to vote for it, but I'm unsure of exactly
what we're getting for that I've got to tell you, I'm not 100% in favor
of one of those outcomes, which is I don't think we should be legislating it
necessarily. And I haven't heard any creative ideas. So I'm on the fence on this
one, but I'm probably voting for it just because I think we need to get
some more information. But this was not so cut and dried for me. Thank you,
Mary Lou. sure is a follow-on that it's my understanding i've talked to city council
members in both redmond and kirkland who have had some success in getting mixed use
it's my understanding that both of those accomplished it through incentives which is the third
path but that it took a while It didn't happen overnight, but as those incentives
kind of percolated into the market, it resulted in the multi-use that you see downtown.
Thanks. All right, thank you. So I believe everybody's had an opportunity to comment. Are
we ready to vote on this item? Okay, all in favor of this item, thumb
up or thumb down if you're against. So that is six in favor and one
against. So that one passes as well.
So the next item on here is to discuss
are the Old Town Standards updates. Stacy, we're starting
with you. Can I have a brief reminder of
what this is? It looks self-explanatory, but...
Hopefully it is. So this would be to, again,
have some staffing assistance and expertise to help us
to update the sub area plan and to make
some recommendations about any possible code changes that would
enable us to carry out our vision for what
we want Old Town to be and also to help
us better execute, implement the Old Force Task Force recommendations.
So what we would envision those standards addressing is all
sorts of things related to street design, streetscape,
It could go as broad as signage and height and anything that's
code related that we think may be either outdated or not in
sync with the vision for Old Town or that has been recommended
through the task force. So it's just it's a general update. We
don't have any particular problem we're trying to solve. Well, I
think the task force recommendations are going to
outline quite a few things that they think
are problematic for the type of either new
development or retaining those characteristics we want to
retain. This one's a little harder for me.
Not because I don't think that it needs
to be done, just wondering how much we
can take on at one time, how much can we get
done with the list of things we're looking at. So I'm
on the fence. I'm gonna listen to my fellow council members.
- Okay, thank you. So I see this as a very
complimentary step that we need to take. The central Issaquah plan
clearly directs that you know our our growth
be concentrated in that in that core area and yet there's plenty
of opportunities based upon current land use and code in areas like
odetown that also there is incentive there is financial incentive for some
of that to be redeveloped under their existing standards and And I see
this might just be the first of, if we approve this, the first of
maybe a sequence of looks that we take to make sure, you know, where
there's an outcome that we want, and that is that the majority of growth
happen in the core area. But there is plenty of room already to actually
absorb, more of that growth outside into existing neighborhoods such as Old Town. We have
a sub area plan for Old Town and we did ask the task force to
take a look at it in terms of economic vitality. I think the scope of
their effort is grown a little bit and it's gonna give us some feedback related
actually, and I think as Emily just mentioned, maybe in something like Heights. And based
upon this past season, in these last few months and some conversations I had with
neighbors down there as well, um I think this is the perfect time to take
another look to make sure that the sub area plan for Old Town actually um
is in concert with our with our vision for how we want to see the
city grow so I'm going to be supporting this item I'm in support of
this, and I think there's a couple of things that we need to understand for
me as being a past merchant down there, that the restrictions that govern Old Town
are more restrictive than those that govern the rest of the town in regards to
design standards and land use codes. You're talking about heights that are different, signage that
is different, the use of your back door is different. pervious surface. There are a
number of other things that are hindering the competitiveness between the downtown area and
the other rest of the business district within Issaquah. I think it's time that
we review these standards and these land use codes and make sure that there
is no restrictions any longer on Old Town. Thank you. - Thank you, Tola.
- So I support where we're going with this. My problem is that it's a
line item in our budget, and here's why. I went and looked back at the
Central Issaquah plan. We did not line item out things from the Central Issaquah Plan.
They were part of the DSD work package. And so I want to be really
careful on consultants versus what we expect the city to have capability in. And I
don't understand if that could be part of core DSD work package for Central Issaquah
Plan, why it has to be a separate call out here. So can I? Not
to put you on the spot, but can you help me understand that? Sure. I
think we tried to lay out in one of the responses to this question that
a potential impact of not having the funding is simply that we will reincorporate this
into our staff's work plan. It may not be our highest DSD priority for the
year, and therefore, we may have to stretch it out a little bit may
extend into 2017 and we may take it more piecemeal at a
time as opposed to getting it all done um you know as
one project we might take the signage issue we might then analyze
parking okay um as part of the committee that authorized additional dsd
head count this year it's a it's a I struggle a
little bit with that. I just I think that my reflexively, I just feel
like this is something that staff should be able to do and hearing that
we can pay to up it in the priority is this seems it's a
Not entirely happy with that answer, to be honest. I understood. It's a choice. We're
putting that out as a choice. We certainly have had some conversations with you about
how we're going to go about prioritizing work during the year. We've had some conversations
tonight about which things seem to be top priority, and certainly we have a lot
of development activity. We have long-range planning efforts that are underway. And so this is
just an effort to put it into the mix in such a fashion that we
get it done as one complete project and ensure that it gets done wholly within
2016. Okay. I will not be supporting this one. Thank you. Tola? Josh? So I've
got the plan up here. It's about 76 pages. It has, strangely, a lot of
pages about coloring. color of buildings. But you know, this plan wasn't written in like
the 50s or 60s or something and you know, it's super outdated and we've got
to completely overhaul a look at these design standards for Old Town. This was written
in 2001 and adopted by the council in 2002. So you know, okay, it's been
over a decade. Do we need to spend over $20,000 reformulating it? It's a pretty
comprehensive plan. And I just sort of feel like if we're looking at updating standards
that obviously a lot of folks spend a lot of time going through and developing
in the first place, Either it can be done in-house through staff or, you know,
put together a citizens group, put together a citizens board of interested stakeholders who can
then look at, you know, the issues that Eileen raises about whether there's regulations that
are affecting the business community in Old Town that should be changed and have that
group make recommendations back to the council and the council can then change this document.
I guarantee that's going to cost us a lot less than $20,000 to proceed in
that manner if we're truly interested in looking and changing these standards, which you know
I'm not even sure how much of this would be subject to change or not.
So I don't particularly see the value in doing this type of study or update
for this kind of money. I think there's alternative methods that are far more cost
effective than this. And I'll just, the last thing I'll say is The general mantra
I'm using in looking at a lot of these is less planning, more doing. And
this falls under the planning as opposed to doing. If we were to put this
money towards pedestrian park, put an extra 20 into that, I'd probably be much more
supportive. Thank you, Josh. Mary Lou. I think this is part two of a bigger
question that we looked at. So I do see this as a natural progression from
last year where we gave Old Town some attention in the goal setting and had
a task force set up. And I think the update does have to happen. I
think Eileen is correct that There may be some things in those guidelines that are
the standards right now that may be inhibiting the kind of redevelopment that we are
expecting to see in that area. And I think because we're seeing development pressures in
other parts of the city, we should be looking at the other neighborhoods where we're
talking about maintaining the character of those neighborhoods. I think Old Town, I think that's
the time to update the standards. I think it's a, I'm in favor of doing
it. Thank you. Nina? well first of all i just want to
know how much it would cost to get rid of the e in old from
the beginning of the goal setting exercises in my first year in the council and
last year too i spent a lot of time concerned about old town and tried
to invest my efforts and goal setting process in this because Old Town is the
heart and soul of Issaquah and when we looked at the tourism plan, we look
at why do people move here? There are a lot of great things about Issaquah
but a real strong anchor is our Old Town. I think there couldn't be, Central
Issaquah is all jazzy and hot right now and it's got so many goals but
really if you didn't have Old Town to anchor it, what would you have? So
I think it's very important. The reason I think that the investment is important,
it's like two others. It's like real estate and consultant mixed use and I'm
sorry, the affordable housing one. These matters are urgent today. We are in a
We don't see the end of an upswing in development anytime soon. So matters that
are on the books today are going to continue to happen. Stacey had asked about
what are the problems. Well, if you remember back about 15 months ago, one of
our residents came in and said, I can't believe there's another three or four story
condominium building going in up in Old Town and it's out of character with my
neighborhood, don't you agree? And I would think, well, yeah, I do agree, but that's
part of the sub area plan is to allow that. Part of the sub area
plan is to have parking garages on the main floor without any retail facing sunset.
That was okay as long as you put a pretty design on it. These are
problems that if we don't handle them now, Up search of development, we're going to
miss an opportunity. There'll be a whole development cycle gone by us without us attending
to it. I'm glad for the frank planning of the development services saying, yeah, we
could do this, but we can't do it now unless we get a little support
from outside. So that's why I'm supporting it. I think it's urgent, and I think
they can get rid of it. Actually, I just did it for free.
It's free. Thank you. It's all electronic. Did you have something? Just to
supplement what Emily had said earlier, there's a couple things that are happening
on the outside that may influence this. One is the grant funding that
the DIA is getting from the State yeah the BID green Main
Street program and so one of the things they've talked about is a facade improvement
program So an incentive program that would allow improvements to be made So if those
happen those improvements will be made to the existing standards So if you're happy with
the existing standards, you know, they'll be made to that reflection if you want some
upgrades to meet the you know some of the recommendations out of Old Town and
you should look at funding this sooner the other item is the since the house
got demolished over at Confluence Park, there are funds available for improvements
of facades to restore to the historic structure, you know, the historic
facade of the of what was there. So again, those are natural
buildings, you'd think that would that could be available for those types
of grants. So Just to give you an idea, there's a couple
things going on in the universe that may or may not influence that. Thank you,
Bob, and that's your one opportunity to sell one of these items without being asked.
Is there any other questions or comments? Are we ready to vote on this item?
Stacey. I just, I understand it's important. I'm concerned about the number of times we
have to turn to consultants to get the work done. And we heard comments that,
you know, we could get the work done. And it just, if it's a priority,
it's a priority. But that's really what my concern is. Okay. Thank you. So are
we ready to vote? Okay. So all in favor, thumb up. Thumb down if you're
not in favor. Vote. Okay, there are four thumbs up and three funds down
that passes. Okay, so we're roughly halfway through and we spent some of the time
earlier just handling regular business. So at this time, I'm going to take a small
break. And when the big hand is on the two, I'm talking and we're going
again, people. So when that clock that big hand is on the two, we'll take
a break until that time.
Nine up. It's after the two. Council Member Milligan. Nine up. We're ready to
get started again. Thank you. Okay, we're ready. Oh, thank you. We're back on
the air after that short break. Parks Maintenance Manager. We're going to start with
the parks. Thank you. Yeah, we're going to be starting with the parks maintenance
manager. - Actually, Eileen, it's the parks maintenance worker. - Worker,
okay. - Not a manager position. - Totally different. - Okay.
- Okay, so this again was another one of those items
that was requested by the administration but not in the original
budget. And this is a, and I'm gonna look for some
acknowledgement. This is a position. It's already covered in
the job schedule, the position. This is authorizing funding for
the position. It's hiring into an existing job description and
a pay scale. And this is for a part-time. No,
I'm good. Full-time. Okay, and so like last time, I
asked is this about cutting grass or is it kind of the open space
steward type work? And I think the answer that I got that it was
for park maintenance. It's not intended to augment the services provided by our open
space steward. And so it's for the maintenance of our parks. And it is
very clear to me, we got a lot of work done
I think we could do better at maintaining our parks. I got evidence
of that, photographic evidence, in fact, that I submitted earlier in this year.
And I know it's... So, you know, this is... Adding a position is
always a big deal. Now, that's the fully burdened cost for a parks
maintenance worker. We're talking about a generally entry-level position, really kind of service-oriented
work that is... that is hopefully will free up existing staff,
other staff for more times. I generally agree that we are
just upon my own observations and comments that I've got from the public as well,
that we do not keep up with the maintenance of our parks, just even in
the mowing of the grass and clearing the brush. We have a good working example
of that. I think it's hard for us to do even on the one park
that we have up in Squawk Mountain. So I like the idea of adding that
capacity. And I'm leaning towards supporting this but I'm looking forward to hearing the
comments of the rest of my colleagues on the council. Eileen. -
For me, this is an easy one. 2001, we had nine full-time
employees. 2015, we have nine full-time employees. 2001, we had 57 park
acres. 2015, we have 197 park acres. 2001, we had 16, excuse
me, 619 open space. And in 2015, we have 1,390 acres
of open space, and we still have only nine full-time employees. So
I think that's my argument. How can we keep up? If there
is conversation in regards to the fact that we're not maintaining our
parks well, we still have only nine full-time employees. All right. Thank
you. Tola. It's hard to argue with those numbers. But the only question
I have is, why is this special? Why is this not being treated-- remind me
why it's not being treated like a regular additional head? No, it is. Oh, it
is? It's just-- but why wasn't it in the-- It wasn't in the original proposal
or ask from the administration. And we have elevated this to now-- we're considering adding
it to the budget. Oh, based on conversations since the budget was originally put together?
Was it-- submitted like this in the original budget? It was not submitted in the
original proposed budget. And the reason for that is we go through an internal process
after we look at early estimates of revenues and make determinations about which things
can be funded. We received additional information after we put the proposed
budget in print, and that allowed us to contemplate those high-priority items
that we had to leave out. Gotcha. So this was the next person
on the higher list, basically. Correct. I need a mechanical engineer like that in my
department. So I'll be supportive. Thank you, Tola. Josh? You know, I agree with everything
you said, Paul. And I agree with Eileen's comments as well about the additional acreage.
I do have concerns though, because this is an ongoing expense and this becomes not
just as I think while you've pointed out the one time type of things that
we're just taking out of the general fund ending balance. Um, but it becomes a
permanent in theory position. And so now you've got $70,000 That's going to go up
with COLAs and other adjustments. And so now you're taking on a burden on an
annualized basis of a pretty significant amount of money. Now, do we need a parks
maintenance worker? And do we need to spend $70,000 on an annualized basis? That's really
the question. And I think the PROST too, in some ways, feeds into this in
my mind because when I looked at the existing PROST plan that's being brought before
us that we talked about in committee last night, one of the things I noticed,
and I think it's chapter 13, if I remember correctly, talks about parks maintenance. and
i didn't see anything in that chapter that really informed me whether we have a
strategic need for additional maintenance workers or not i didn't see any of the the
information that tied the data that eileen gave us to the actual need for hiring
a maintenance worker and i i kind of thought that kind of stuff was going
to be in prost but maybe it's going to be part two that really deals
with the the strategic element so my preference is before we just start hiring people
on an annualized basis that we actually ensure that we have a more strategic part
of our parks plan, which is PROS 2, and that we decide through that process
how many maintenance workers do we need. Do we need just one? Do we shift
around responsibilities? Where is the need greatest? I just think before we jump to that
step and begin that snowball rolling in 2016, that it would be more prudent to
get the strategic parks plan completed and then decide before we start hiring more personnel.
Thank you, Josh. Mary Lou. Thanks, Josh. Actually, I appreciate what you said because for
me, the linkage between that and the PROS, I call it PROS because it sounds
funnier, PROS 2 plan, is very, very strong. However, I think the question is more
around do we need more than one parks maintenance worker. So at this point, even
without having that second document, I am okay with hiring the single maintenance worker. I
think we don't have enough, and I don't think one is enough. But in order
to make a decision beyond that, you need the data that shows where the needs
are in our park system and what the maintenance costs are. And we haven't had
that before. And that is one of the things we definitely need in order to
make decisions like this. However, I think it's the parks maintenance worker compliment right now
is grossly lacking. And I think this one needs to be added. Having said that,
thank you so much for making a big pitch for the post, too, though, on
your little thing. Because that is the framework I need to make decisions like this.
You're out of order. - I'm in favor of this. -
Thank you Mary Lou. Nina. - Without repeating the complexity of all the
comments that came before, they exemplify why this is a difficult decision to
make and I'm not as wholehearted about this. I'm cautious about it because
of the increasing future costs that a permanent employee brings. Is this the
right timing? Eileen's statistics were very compelling. And I don't have to vote
right this minute, but I'm leaning towards supporting it, though it is a cost burden
going forward, and I'm concerned about that. Thank you, Nina. Stacy? I support it. Thank
you. Are there any other questions or comments? Are we ready to vote on this
item? So again, a thumb up is in favor of this proposal. Thumb down is
not in favor. All those-- so vote. That passes with a six to one vote.
I'd like you to shade the old town standards update line.
I'd like him to add the E back. No. You want
to put the E on the end of town. I'm kidding.
I'm kidding. OK. So the next item to discuss is-- and
so let me fix this one. This is a complete affordable
housing strategy. The shift keys aren't working. And we'll start this
conversation with you, Eileen. And I'm going to need some
help on this. I know it's part of the housing strategy and
working with ARCH in regards to some of their strategies. But I
don't have quite all the details, so I'm going to lean over
to get some help here. So this would assist us in taking
a look at what methods we might be able to use to
preserve, incentivize, require, the development of affordable
housing in our community. There have been several methodologies
that we've discussed with the council as we've talked
about the use of ARCH's housing trust fund or
their work program or as we deliberated over the
comp plan. And this would enable us to
look into those strategies with greater detail, gather some
marketplace data as well, so that we could make
some solid recommendations on which methods we think will
be successful. So the housing strategy is a
task that's identified in the comprehensive plan. That's been
approved by council. In addition, development of the housing
strategy is part of Arches work plan. It's been
on the work plan for several years and we're
Desiring to make some progress on that task this year.
I'm thinking. All right. Is this the same one we were discussing earlier? OK.
So I'm going to support this. Why do I support this and not the
Old Town Standards Update? Because this one is complex and weird, and it's not
obvious that we have the internal skill set to do it. It involves some
very esoteric skills. And so I'll be supporting it. Thanks. Thank you. Josh?
We already have an affordable housing strategy in the central area plan. I'm looking at
it now at pages 70 through 73 of that plan that was adopted by the
council and a considerable amount of time and resources were put into it. The very
last page of the plan actually, page 73, says housing recommended implementation strategies. And it's
got five things under subsection one, dealing with locating the majority of housing growth in
central Issaquah by, and it lists a number of tools, policy tools that the council
can implement. If you look specifically on the issue of affordable housing, that's also addressed
in housing goal B at page 71. And that, again, discusses potential policy initiatives that
the Council can take, such as regulations requiring affordable housing for developers that wish
to build above the base FAR, or considering the MTFE as an incentive to
provide affordable housing, or using regulatory or other incentives such as bonus density and
lower parking requirements. pioneer projects, more relaxed definitions of housing affordability and regulations, local
incentives and public resources. So all the tools are there. And a considerable amount
of time was already spent on developing these policies and strategies. So I don't know
what the value of completing the strategy is when we've already assessed what the strategy
is and the policy is, and then it just becomes a question as to whether
we want to implement that policy through regulations and incentives. So again, under the mantra
of less planning, more doing, this is way more planning and far less doing. Spend
the money on something that actually gets done in the central area and not just
continuing to talk about things like policies that have already been developed. No way I
can support this. Thank you, Josh. Mary Lou. So having spent a lot of
time with the comp plan section that Josh was just talking about, maybe our wording
up there isn't completely describing what we're trying to accomplish. But I think that we
need to have some code changes, and I think the code changes are going to
come about because of policy decisions Council can make next year with this outside expertise
that Tola is referring to. We have great ideas in our comp plan, and we
have some vision. We don't have any really solid ideas teeth or code language or
really exciting incentives that are actually moving the market. So watching the progress report, seeing
that we're not getting it, I think this is an investment we need to make
before we are too far down the road in terms of the number of development
applications that are in. So I'm going to support this one. Well, just to be
clear, I was referring to the central area plan, not the comprehensive. Oh, sorry, sorry.
You're right. Central area plan. Yes. Which we were also looking at as well. Which
is part of the comprehensive plan. Thank you for that clarification. Thank you, Mary Lou.
Nina? Thank you, Mary Lou. Ditto to all you said. I have a
question about the source of funding for this. Diane's been sitting here so long, this
is a question I think that's for you. It has to do with the funds
that came back from At Work for affordable housing, the 965. Together Center. Pardon me?
Together Center. Together Center. Thank you. Together Center, located nearer. It would have been.
It would work. Can any of those funds be used for this? Yes. Okay, then
that's what I would have liked to do if we had that kind of flexibility
in the way we're doing this. And maybe we still, I believe in the funding
of this, but I've thought that maybe we could keep some of that money closer
to home to develop affordable housing here. I do wholeheartedly support participating with ARCH and
having a regional approach. But there is so much that we need to do right
here. So when that pot of money came around, I was hoping for an opportunity
to snag some and do something like this with it, and then it breezed by
me too quickly. I would suggest if we had an opportunity to talk about it
in that vein, I'd like to. And that would be how I would support it.
And I do think it has urgency, like Mary Lou has said, because a
lot of development is coming through our door. Market-based affordable housing is almost an
oxymoron. It needs government support. Thank you. Thank you. Stacey? I agree with the
comments that Mary Lou made. I also like, similar to
Ms. The mixed-use piece that I supported, I support this because when we adopted
the central iso-crop plan, we knew that there were going to be items that
we needed to further address, and this is one of those pieces. Mr. All
right. Thank you. I fully support the completion of the development of our
housing strategy, affordable housing strategy plan. I mean, that was part of that process has
started. It started with that presentation work session item. I think we had with Arch
earlier in this year where we looked at a number of different things. I honestly
was i'm kind of getting back to and i said this
earlier i thought this was in the work plan this idea that
we needed to spend more already i mean i looked at the
budget proposal and as i pointed out earlier in this document you
know it's it's in this very area where you know support development
of affordable housing strategies and actions so so i'm i'm i and
this is vital work I read the original proposal that saying that
it was in the plan. There it is in the work plan. And to see
now a kind of a line item to say, to call that out as requiring
additional funding, It's not the concept. It's as for the reason stated
earlier about that we do that, you know, the market is forces are what
creates housing affordability such as it is there do it's well understood science almost
that we have to create incentives to actually get the outcomes when it comes
to housing affordability. It's an issue. It's very important to me. I'm just
it's kind of this, we gotta spend some more to do something we said we
were already gonna do. So that is, that's where I'm stuck on that. I thought
this was, it didn't come up when we met a few months ago. It wasn't
in the original proposal. This is kind of a, it's brought on a little bit
later. So I'm, and also, it's, I think the issue goes beyond just having an
affordable housing strategy. I think it's, you know, it's a housing strategy with affordable being
part of that. And I think that there are other key objectives. If this were
to pass this evening and we're saying I would expect work still to progress, you
know, on development of the strategy if it doesn't pass. I mean, it would still
expect work to proceed on on this strategy because that was, I thought, what I
heard earlier this year. So I'm really kind of torn. I'm not sure
how I'm going to vote right yet. So it's going to be a last split
second decision for me. The outcome is desirable. Do we need to spend more to
get that outcome? That's what I'm not sure about. Are there any other-- do you
want to make another comment? No, you just pulled me back to the brink, though.
You're not quite as sure as I was. Do you want to make a comment,
Nina? Just about the funding source and whether it had merit to look at whether
the funding source made a difference. Thank you for the reminder. I'm not sure where
the earmark lived. Mitigation fund. It lived in the mitigation fund. It lives in the
mitigation fund. It lives in the mitigation fund. So what we're referring to is the
balance of the original million dollars, which had been earmarked for the establishment of a
human services campus, that balance is 965. So I want to do a quick little
poll here. If this was actually funded out of the mitigation
fund from that $965 allotment, I think this is what-- -
$965,000. - Yeah, $965,000. I mean, that is Nina's ask. Kind
of open up the floor for a little bit more conversation.
Does it make a difference to people if it's funded
out of those funds earmarked that we already have earmarked for affordable housing? Just
open up the floor for general comments. Stacy, then Mary Lou. Can I
ask a question about the follow-up on your comments about what -- I want to
make sure everybody's informed before you make a decision. Sure. So what would -- if
this didn't pass, what would be in the work plan? What would get done? So
it's like Paul pointed to, support development of affordable housing strategies and actions. What --
So it doesn't say finish. It says support. And so I think one of
the items that we had was-- and it didn't make the cut originally. That's why
this is on the table-- was over what period of time could we get this
done? And where's the knowledge gaps that we have on staff to support this? And
so we didn't put this in the original because we know we're going to be
able to make progress on this on the affordable housing strategy. But if
we can get closer to finishing it and be able to support the knowledge gap
that we've got on this, then we would, I mean, that, you know, I
think we'd make good progress on it. Our biggest concern was just that we've got
policies, as Josh identified, but they're broad-based. They're not specific tools. They don't define government
action. That's what we were hoping to get a little more specificity around so that
we can get that finalized. And we are a little concerned about where the marketplace
is going and continuing to see those applications come in. The question was really
around, you know, from our initial evaluation was that knowledge gap and then being able
to bring this to completion faster than it could potentially be. But they're still going
to be very active, as Paul identified, staff involvement in developing that. Can you go
back to the list? Paul, can I ask you a question? Hold on. I think
Stacey is still in mid-question. Okay, it was Mary Lou and then Tola and then
Eileen. You can ask a question because I'm commenting. My question is, and I should
probably know the answer to this, do we always, any time as we look at
the upcoming year and we're going to have consultants, are consultants always called out as
a line item or are there times where consultant costs are not explicitly called out?
So generally you'll see it under professional services. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. In
this case, there were these five requests that came in that didn't, they were just
below the cut line. Um, and so that's why you're getting the call out is
because it was that specific and not necessarily because it was a consultant. I didn't
understand the end of that. So when you go through the budget, you'll see in
there there's a professional services and sometimes it talks about, you know, what those professional
services are. It's not, you don't get into the, uh, 10 items that may or
may not be within the professional services. It's just within the overall work plan that
kind of gets spelled out over narrative. But in this case, it got called out
specifically because it didn't make the cut line. So we ended up with kind of
the special conversation under deliberations of items that we may want to be able to
fund on a one-off basis. Thank you. Eileen, then Mary Lou. OK. Bob, you were
talking-- We did not have the staff expertise to complete this, so this
is for a consultant to be hired to complete this. - Wanna answer something?
That's correct. This would allow us to talk to, get
some assistance from industry experts, perhaps allow us to purchase
additional market data, but also have the assistance of someone
who has developed these strategies in the past and knows
how to look at writing specific code or other policy
tools in such a fashion that they'll lead us to the
outcomes that we're looking for. We have some indication of some
of those things and then others. We think there's a research component to
this as well. We've identified a few of those potential strategies and various
plans. I'll throw out an example of something that's not explicitly listed in
our plan, but that might be researching the effectiveness of a demolition fee.
If we're concerned about the loss of older, smaller, more affordable housing.
Maybe that is one of the things that we need to
research a little bit more and develop some potential policies that
council can consider. So this $20,000 would complete this plan and
then the other half is what happens if this plan is
not completed? if the $20,000 is not put into the
pot and we can't complete this plan. Where are we? What happens?
Well, you know, the world goes on. You've got You just work
within the existing policies and the market's gonna do what the market's going to do.
So I think the uniqueness of this is in the past we had kind of
mechanisms to deal with it like the development agreements. And so they were, excuse me,
negotiated within the whole overall framework and the scope of that so you could take
into account the economics the developer and the city could take into scope under the
central area. It's a little it's a little different because there's other than the Raleigh
development agreement, there isn't necessarily a development agreement that exists that you've kind of got
to define economic arrangement that's getting made. So this is kind of where we are
dealing with a unique animal for us. Mary Lou. So my comment on Nina's suggestion
about perhaps using these mitigation funds to pay for the study, I would agree with
that. I guess my expectation for that money was that some of the potential code
changes or incentives we have, we may have to backfill in and I use the
MFT, the multifamily tax exemption as an example of where you would actually need to
find a source of money to pay those taxes during that ten-year period and that
actually gets us units on the ground and I've kind of got my vision locked
on, I would love to see that $900 and some thousand dollars actually go towards
the construction of units, not a study. So normally I would say good idea, but
now I'm thinking, no, I actually think if we can afford to do this out
of an ending fund balance, we should do it. We should use that money to
actually help. Okay. Is there any other comments or questions? So is the council ready
to vote on this item? Okay. So the question is, All
in favor of the proposal to spend $20,000 for
completing the affordable housing strategy, thumbs up, thumbs down
if you disagree. There are four thumbs up and
three down, it passes. Okay, the next item on
the list in no particular order is the one
that we put on, it was a walk on
today. It was the funding of the completion of
the design of the Holly Street project. It's already partially funded
at $150,000 in the 2016. So that initial 150 is actually not
up for deliberation. The council is implicitly saying we're supporting that. This
is a proposal to appropriate the rest of the monies to complete
design in 2016. And I'm going to actually, whose turn is it?
It's yours. Okay. So Tola, we'll start with you.
so the fundamental idea of putting some money towards uh something that improves uh mobility
within the city i think is a great idea my challenge here is that i
like josh's number two choice more than his number one choice here's why um there's
there's already a creek crossing a block north and in less than a block south
there will eventually be a creek crossing as part of confluence park so So I
feel like comparing that to the intersection in front of Trader Joe's, I think if
I, I'm pretty confident if I went out and talked to people in the community
that they would say making progress towards solving the intersection in front of Trader Joe's
is a bigger deal. So, I am not in favor of supporting this item as
currently written, but I would support it if it was changed to Josh's number two
choice, which was $300,000. And I don't know if it was complete to study in
front of Trader Joe's, but it's to make progress on that. That's where I'm at.
Thanks. All right. Thank you, Josh. So the Trader Joe's intersection is not on the
TIP. It came up in the crossing study. And there's, according to Sheldon, there
would need to be some interim improvements as well as a larger scale intersection control
project. He says it would be possible for approximately 300,000 to begin and possibly complete
the design using consultants of the larger scale project. Now he says in 2017. And
I didn't really get into that with him because I just noticed it doesn't actually
say 2016. So I'm a little unclear on what the 300,000 would go towards in
2016 for that particular project. I think I agree it's a significant intersection and it
needs to be addressed and the public is very concerned about that intersection. I also
tend to think that if it were part of a bond package that the city
puts out next year that it might improve the passability of the bond. because of
that very concern. And so I have to look at also not just the short
term game, but also the long game. And so, you know, is the public going
to be more excited about passing a bond that improves a pedestrian connection along Holly
Street? maybe some people are you know are people going to be really excited on
getting that driveway fixed absolutely and so when we look as a council at are
we creating a bond measure that's subject to pass which is one of the principal
concerns that we look at as as an entity um i think that's that's a
really big significant hook for getting that package passed um and so i'd like to
see that in that bond package you know in terms of holly street i'll just
reiterate something i said earlier In 2017, the CFP already projects that we will budget
$265,000 to complete design on Holly Street. So this is already projected for the 2017
budget. It's just a matter of moving the dollars up a year so that we
can complete the design instead of just getting us to 50% and having the plan
sit on a shelf for an entire year. It also puts us in a position
to leverage tib funds which can then cover a portion of the city cost and
ultimately save the city money and childen is very confident in our ability to get
tib funds being both pedestrian improvements and a safe routes to school corridor and so
this has been a high priority for the city on our cfp for many years
and i think since we're already going to probably do it in 2017 since
we're committing ourselves to completing design, I agree, it doesn't get us an actual lane.
It doesn't get us, you know, more signals or huge corridor improvements, but it gets
us one step closer to fulfilling a transportation project. And when you look at what
the community told us in that survey that we put out last year, transportation was
the number one issue. They didn't tell us they wanted maintenance workers and consultants and
standards updates. They told us they wanted transportation. So I feel like we just have
to do something more. And I have fought for eight years to improve transportation in
this city. And I really want as part of my legacy leaving this council to
say that we did one more thing to further our transportation efforts in the city
and improve our network. I fully support this. Thank you, Josh. Mary Lou. I have
no comments or questions on this one. I support Josh's rationale for adding this one
in. Thank you. Nina? Since we're looking at all of them, Tola's
looking at number two, I liked the trails crossing. Can you remind me, just give
me the little short thing what that was again? You bet. I just closed out,
but I'm going to do it from memory. The three trails crossing is the intersection
area near Gilman and Rainier where the streets are somewhat misaligned. And there's a need
for non-motorized improvements at that particular area. That project is slated, I believe, for the
2018 to 2019 biennium, according to our six-year TIP. And so in order
to put funds towards starting design on that project, you would essentially be
putting funds towards partial design of Three Trails Crossing and some funds towards partial
design of Holly Street. And so that's why I suggested Holly, because it puts it
all into getting one project moving forward instead of 50 here, 50 there. What was
the price tag on? $300,000. $325,000. So they're all about the same. OK. I'm looking
forward to hearing the rest of the table, because this is a complicated topic. And
the comments-- I've only added to my complicated approach to it. The spending dollars
now that may be fewer than the dollars that you spend in a few
years is part of your logic too. Maybe you said that something that cost
$265,000 this year in two years or three years or whenever it was that
we might have done it would likely cost more. So there would be a
savings. The capability of our public works engineering director and his team of
leveraging funds is well proven. So I have a lot of confidence that this would
manifest the way that you hope. I'm totally on the fence for those reasons. It's
a heck of a lot of money and it's in the plan and it'll get
done when we get there. But that value of the dollar today might be enough.
I want to hear what the other folks have to say. Thank you. Well, Josh,
I appreciate you making the proposals. I would prefer, however, that this be a different
process. This feels like this should be going to one of our committees, probably infrastructure,
to look at to give the public more of an opportunity to weigh in on
how maybe we should be spending spending this money if we
want to make a decision about what we're going to move to the top
of the list. So it's not that I oppose a project, but I would
prefer to see it be a different process, our regular process. - Thank you.
And actually really thank you for those comments. I was thinking I wanted to
add to Josh's legacy and support it since he brought it up. I mean,
it's a really good realization that I mean, I've been saying this for a
couple years, that if we're going to use ending fund balance, let's make sure it's
either one time or we create an asset of lasting value for the community for
immediate benefit. And this certainly fits within that. One of the things, we had a
council goal to develop kind of a citywide master mobility plan, and we parked that
once we completed the project. the concurrency study and said, "We've got a pretty good
list of things that we know needs to be done." It's not comprehensive because it's
largely capacity related issues and mobility needs greater things than that. But it's really a
very comprehensive and well vetted list of projects for well known reasons. And
so let's continue down that line and that's why we're now, the call
has been out to convene for applications for the citizens task force for transportation
funding strategy and but i mentioned that because what we didn't do what we kind
of parked is completing the city-wide mobility plan which i which i would think when
it comes to non-capacity related projects would really whether they you know mobility not just
motorized not just pedestrian but also potentially parking that you know working within that framework
would be my preference So I have reasons to support it because
of what it aspires to do and we have the capability to
do that. And just so you know, even if we were to
fund this, just so you know where we are, this needs a
little fine tuning, but our budget would be at about a 20,
if we approve everything that's on here and don't make any other
changes, we're still at about a 20% ratio of expenditure to end-to-client
balance. Eileen. way to pass it um for me
this is as i'm understanding it this is for the completion
of it and currently design just design just the design and
potentially construction in 2017. but yes But even with just talking about
the completion of the design, it is to start and propose to start
this year with its completion of the design next year and then the
actual construction of it. So we are only delaying this by a limited
amount of time. I'm not sure for the 265 that pushing it
into this year's budget just to complete the design. I do understand that this, by
completing it this year, that gives us the ability to move forward with the actual
construction of it next year. I think I will be not
supporting this this year. Thank you. I'm going to follow up. Absolutely.
Everybody's had a chance, please. So if this fails, I intend to
propose an alternate way to use this money in line with what
Stacey's comments. I'm not sure I understood that. If we should
choose not to spend it on Holly Street, I think we should set aside
an amount of money for the purpose of making a mobility improvement and then
allow the public to be engaged in how to spend that money. Okay. I
have no idea if it'll pass or not. I'm just telling you a...
Yeah, that's an alternate idea. You're telling us that you would actually a budget proposal
this evening, an appropriation or a budget item this evening to just strike the specificity
on this one around the idea of public engagement. I think Josh's fundamental idea is
great, but I agree with Stacy that this bears further investigation before you decide where
to put the money. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Josh? So this
has been investigated. It's on our TIP. You will be asked next year to approve
$265,000 to complete design on Holly Street. I'm just asking you to do it one
year sooner. I don't see any reason to delay the implementation of 100% design on
a project that you will already be committing yourselves to by funding half of it
in the budget this year already and the ability to then leverage those funds to
get a TIB grant to complete this. I think after all the things this council
has just approved, to not approve a transportation item here is simply absurd And I
wouldn't be proposing this if this brought our debt coverage ratio below 20 down to
15, which is the adopted financial policy. And I appreciate Paul, you mentioning that because
this does not take as significant of a hit out of the general fund as
you know, a multimillion dollar type of project would. You know, I'd like to maybe
hear from the administration on this because we haven't, Sheldon had a good conversation with
me, but I think the administration may be able to offer the reasons why this
is a valuable project. Sure. With that invitation, thank you. So, you
know, many times my comments are based on conversations I've had with the mayor,
and we also have the advantage of having the mayor over my shoulder tonight,
too. So he may want to throw in some comments as well. I think this
would have been a recommended project to include in the budget. We were being very
cognizant of not spending any fund balance and then as we developed the budget and
then as we kind of went through this conversation, it was like, "Oh, well, there
is this opportunity for us to get this project." And it would move up. It
would make the project much more competitive if we had the design done for the
TIB and submitted that for the 2017 funding cycle. year. It
is, you know, a pet improvement, part of our walk and roll. So we would
be actually making some good progress on getting that first kind of project done in
that area as well. The administration's in complete support of getting this project completed. You
know, I will say that Stacy laid out an interesting concept, which there is a
process question here that if that was a desire to do, you know, we do
have a process through the normal you know, agenda bill process that this would come
to council, it would go and get reviewed, and then it would come back to
council for final decision. And then it would get amended mid-year. So there's kind of
a two-step process. Alternatively, I think you're hearing our perspective right now, which is we
think it's a good project. And if you chose to just kind of expedite it
and include it as part of this evaluation, we wouldn't have any complaints. Okay, thank
you. Are there any other questions or comments? Is the council
ready to vote on this? Okay, so a thumb up is
in favor of doing the project of approving $265,000 for expenditure
in 2016. Okay, you don't have to look. I don't like
to look. Everybody must vote. Okay, vote. There are five thumbs
in favor and two against. So that passes. Wow.
Just let me use the count. Okay,
the next item on here is Prost
2. Oh, I mean Prost 2. Excuse
me? You're German, aren't you? Prost.
Where do we start? I've lost track. Is it you, Josh? I think it's starting
with you. Tola started with the previous one. I'm trying to keep the same word
on. So we talked about, I guess I'll steal your thunder since now you're last.
We talked about this at services yesterday. um and and so fill in any gaps
that i miss here but um there there was concern i think from
us on committee um that the the current plan the pros plan that's
before us now um is not strategic enough and it doesn't contain really
A plan and the comment I made last night is there's plan with a little
P and then there's plan with a big P. And the document that we have
that we're going to be asked to approve at a future council meeting on regular
business that it was referred to is really a good inventory of the items we
have. It provides some good statistics and direction, but it doesn't really tell us how
to get there. And that I think was a significant concern. We heard public comments
on it at the meeting last night, you know, that this sort of thing has
been in development year after year after year. 15 years, I think, was the number
we heard that this has gone by, and we still don't really have the plan
with a capital P. And I think, Tola, you pointed out last night that as
part of the comp plan process, that a lot of the comp plan elements pointed
people towards PROST as a way of addressing some of these issues, but the PROST
that's before us doesn't really contain all the information we need. So I think it's
very, very critical that this council moves forward on authorizing an expenditure to do PROST
B, part two, whatever you want to call it, the strategic planning part of the
parks, recreation, open space, and trails document and then part one can be approved for
getting funding and grant purposes and so forth, but you really have to have part
two to make it all worthwhile and come together. And so, you know, I know
the number is maybe not quite there, but it gives at least a cap to
spend up to. So I'm fully supportive for those reasons. Thank you. Mary Lou? Yeah,
so I introduced this one earlier and actually Josh did a really good job capturing
some of the why do this plan and I kind of like that analogy of
the big P and the little p but I found that it's been hard over
the last two years to make decisions because some of those big policy questions around
parks and purchases and all and funding for maintenance position seems a little bit I
can't really see the context of where we're trying to go to understand if I'm
making a good decision or not on something that's in front of us. So I
think we need to have those questions answered. We have to discuss them, decide what
the vision looks like. And I see this document really as a vision piece. something
that guides us in our future direction and also something that a resident or business
owner could read and themselves picture what our city looks like, our park system and
open space will look like in 20 years. Also, I think there's some leveraging opportunities
with capacity improvements with some partners like the school district and the state park and
we need to have those conversations and not when people come to us. We need
to have the conversation. We need to have the discussions of policy before these things
show up in agenda bill. We're just being asked to approve them in isolation. So
I am completely in support of this one. Thank you. Nina. Yeah, thank you. Well,
I'm in support of getting extra help in finalizing the PROST plan. It's been
frustrating on the Land and Shore Committee to look at this and other decisions, some
public comment earlier today was revealing some of the things that pop up when you
don't have a good PROST like Central Park. Things like parking and traffic and other
things could have a basis and guidance if we had a solid PROST plan. So
I think we need one. But I don't like the price tag and I don't
like saying spend whatever you think is right up until 50,000 when two other very
similar things, hiring a consultant to come in and help our current staff, which is
what this is about, I think. The others are 20 and $22,000. So why is
this 150? I want to vote for it, but I don't want to vote at
that cap. That seems excessive, especially when it's a similar story. service, it's a similar
time frame. And so I don't want to vote no. I want
somebody to change the price tag down to 25. Stacey? I, too,
want to support this. I have the same concern that Nina does
about the price tag. So my support of it is not supporting
$50,000. My support of it would be as a--
having sufficient funding to do the work, but also not sure specifically
what we would be getting for that besides a plan. So maybe
additional information about when the administration figures out exactly what that scope
of work would be, like that to come back to council so we
can look at that and get a final number. I also continue to
be concerned about the number of items that we are, the reliance on
consultants to get much of the work done that I would think we
could do in-house. With those comments, at this point, I'm going to support
it. Okay, thank you. I like Nina's
comments. I'm actually not going to support this
as presented and I'm going to, if it
fails, I'm going to propose half the amount.
Eileen? I'm having difficulties with this. A couple of things. I'm not sure
what we're going to get. This came about so fast. I mean, literally, it came
out of services and safety, and all of a sudden, it's here before us this
evening. We don't even have an outline of what it is we're looking for at
this time. Is it consultant versus in-house? If it's in-house, their work program for next
year is already set. And where do we find-- I mean, we still have only
nine park employees. So who is going to be doing this work if it's
in-house, if it's a consultant? I'm not sure the dollars amount that's there. I'm having
trouble with it because we haven't had an opportunity to talk about it. We haven't
had any feedback. It just literally is something that sort of popped up as we
were discussing in services and safety. I'm on the fence and would like to hear
some more conversation. Thank you. Tola? Thanks. This discussion around post to or post B
or whatever we want to call it did start a couple of months ago in
various places as we were looking at the post document that was in front of
us and wanted to see some more of the aspirational side of where we're headed.
I think we need to do this because it's in our comp plan. The comp
plan talks about short and long term planning. We don't have it. I think that
writing eltac okay wrong keyboard sorry continue ignore the
address from my eloquence it is consulting is expensive
updating old town standards is a much smaller effort
than than interviewing lots of different stakeholders and finding
the common ground between all those different stakeholders
So I don't think that it's fair to say, and the affordable housing
strategy is something that's already been started and has a very clearly defined
goal. I think that it's important for this council to give guidance to next year's
council that this is important. And that's why I think 50,000, I think it will
cost 50,000. I mean, I think when we looked at Klahani, some of the even
small pieces of Klahani, the consulting documents that were associated with that, We're very expensive
on some of the land use pieces. And so I get that this is more
than the other two consulting pieces, but it gives us more if we get what
we need to meet the comp plan or to complete what's called out in the
comp plan. And by making it conditional on seeing a statement of work that next
year's council agrees to, I think that we ensure that we won't spend money for
something that isn't what we're looking for. So I'll be supporting this. Thank you. Is
there anything you started with you, Josh? I would just like maybe again to hear
the administration's perspective, especially on the cost issue, because it is kind of ephemeral, you
know, in terms of what the 50,000 buys us. you know so how
how close are you aligned on that number um thanks again for the invitation um
the um so i first of all i want to say that i want to
i take full responsibility for where this is at because mary lou had a very
detailed and substantive proposal that she had worked on over several days and the issue
that it came down to that we had a fairly long discussion around was the
fact that we have We are lacking a combination of either the capacity or the
capability to get this work done in-house for a variety of reasons. And so we
need to hire a consultant to get the work done. What we haven't had the
time to do was develop a full scope And actually, I think what Mary Lou
put together is a good basis to start to put that scope together and go
out and then get some preliminary numbers. And a lot of times what we do
when we develop the budget, we'll talk to two or three consultants, get a kind
of a preliminary estimate on what it would cost, and that is what would drive
that number. And then we go through what we call a request
for qualifications process. And so we go through, we get the proposals that come in.
They're not based on price. They're based on qualifications. And then you turn around and
negotiate the actual contract with them. So the scope of the budget provides a groundwork
or basis for negotiating the contract based on qualifications. In this case, $50,000 hasn't
been tested. We haven't gone out and gotten surveys from the marketplace
yet in terms of what this cost would be because we had
just started to finalize the scope of services. I think that's why I
had heard earlier someone say, "Well, the council wants to come back and see," in
the letter from the council president, "what the scope is going to be and have
an idea of what the final cost would be." This appropriation gives us a ballpark
Now the other alternative is to come back with, as Stacy said earlier, an agenda
bill with a scope. We'd go out, we'd have that done, and in the first
quarter we'd come back with a recommendation, and then it would be dealt with in
a mid-year budget review process. So I just wanted to make sure that you understood.
There would have been a lot more work that Mary Lou had done into this
and shared with you, but based on that earlier conversation, we were... very concerned about
the amount that staff would be able to do in-house. And so having
a consultant do most of this work would, you know, managing contracts very
different than actually doing some production. But that's where we're at. Okay, thank
you. Is there any other, you guys, any other comments or questions? Okay, are you
ready to vote? Oh, Eileen, excuse me. Okay, I'm ready to get off the fence.
I think for me right now, I can't, approve this, but I agree with what
I've just heard from Bob, was talking about a mid-year budget process and bringing it
back as an agenda bill so that we really do understand what it is we're
looking for and what we want to get back and then bring it back mid-year
and we've had time to really sort it. I mean, it's a good idea, but
it just came about so fast and I don't remember two months ago. I only
remember, yeah. So anyway, I'll be voting no on this, but if
it's brought back as an agenda bill and looking at mid-year budget
process, I will support it. - Okay, are we ready to vote?
So you know the drill, up is in support of the proposal,
down is against it. Vote. There are four in support and three
against. So that passes. Make sure I get the right keyboard. The
wrong key sequence. oh fine okay so the next item on here
let's see if i can uh we have on here is senior services now
um um we had a conversation earlier this evening about not funding the the
nonprofit isaac valley seniors including the this is 65 000 for the performance
and financial audit when the council put this next line item on here
it really it was it was a very strong signal that we want
to fund senior services and i think given that that question has not
yet been answered I don't unless somebody was to make a real argument I don't
think that this is in the line item we need to deliberate tonight because we're
gonna be addressing it again in a future meeting I'm getting a kind of consensus
with that okay very good so let's move on to our East and and oh
well before we start this and it's gonna start with Mary Lou we still have
the funding out of the mitigation fund for the for the skate park to consider
and I'm going to bring up LTAC as with you as well. So there's two
other items not on this screen we're still going to talk about if you're counting
how many we had left. Mary Lou starting with you. This item for $10,000 in
addition to the the the budget proposal was for $10,000. This is to actually fund
an additional $10,000 which matches the original request from Artiste. so i'm gonna pass until
i get a little history on this one this one is not on my radar
right now so somebody familiar with it go ahead okay you'll have to start with
the next one then okay somebody's gonna explain it well i'm just wondering if you
want because this came out of committee yeah um if you wanted to start with
one of the committee members okay so we discussed it last time but um if
everybody agrees that would be a good review go um all right mr committee
chair i think that this is in recognition of the ongoing
work that we see collaboration downtown you know i mentioned earlier
human services and the benefit of collaboration between organizations this is
true in sort of I don't want to say booster because that's not the
right word but the partnership between downtown Issaquah Association and Art East and the
Historical Society it seems like it's bearing a particular amount of fruit and we were
convinced in the application that art east was going to use the money
wisely and so i think the administration was being reflexively cautious with dollars
but we thought this one rose to the level of uh being worth
uh giving the amount the applicant requested okay now i'm gonna go back
to sequence do you want to start okay yeah i'm in support of
this one Thank you. Mary Lou, Nina. Yeah, I'm
in support of it too, especially the leverage that this provides to Old
Town and the fulfillment of the standards of being a multi-organizational collaborative effort.
They do prove that in the past and they have it in their
application for future work. I agree. I support it. And I think
the visual arts is just growing tremendously. I think we're seeing a tremendous response from
not only our residents, but from people within the region and the creativity and the
quality and the true engagement, interactive, hands on touch. I've seen it myself. I think
it's one of the more powerful features or forces within the community. And I enthusiastically
support the programs of ArtEast and I'm gonna support this as well.
Eileen? Tola? Josh? Shocking as it may be to some, I concurred with the majority
recommendation of the committee to support the 10,000. I only wish that Chris Brandt could
have put us over the top in supporting Atwork University tonight, but I'll support this
line item. Are you ready to vote on this item? All those in favor, thumb
up. Thumb down if you disagree. Seven, oh, in favor. Okay. The final item on
the general fund are the parks department brochures. And I'm going to ask,
so this is one you talk about coming up late and having no information about.
This one is top of the list. So you're getting your machine ready. Like you're
going to, do you need permission to present something? Okay. Eileen, can you have... Can
you, this was your proposal, your ask. - It was. - So I'm gonna ask
you to brief the council before we begin deliberation. - Okay, I think the dollar
amount may be a bit higher than true needs. And again, it is a fairly
recent, So it hasn't been fleshed out really well. But it is one of those
pieces that, as I am involved with the Chamber of Commerce and down there quite
often, it's always amazing how many people come in still looking for something in hand,
especially a lot of the senior citizens that come in that are visiting our area.
And there isn't anything left as far as brochures. Everything that we've been doing basically
has been photocopies of old ones. and they're looking pretty rough. So
this would be to provide walking maps within the
city, within Tiger Mountain, Lake Tradition area. There's a
number of different other maps that we The one that is
always used and always asked for is the edible, what's the name of it? Edible
landscaping. Edible landscaping. Yeah, the Edible, Gilman Boulevard Edible Landscaping Tour. That one is just
always asked for and it's just always out of print, out of photocopied. um it
doesn't look well for the city if this is the only way that we can
provide and this would also be providing maps in a digital format that is available
on the website so that would help promote produce that and also print a run
of some of the maps probably as many as we possibly could for the dollar
amounts available There's needs to be probably some of them redesigned. I think
a lot of them are still probably effective in the design that they're
in, but just definitely need to make a better looking more and put
the city branding and the fact that this is a trailhead for the
city. So it's a, a piece that brings people into our community
we have a lot of visitors and a lot of guests a lot of people
that go through they stop and spend time and so tourism dollars are very important
to us and making sure that they spend a little bit more time walking around
our community and seeing what we have to offer thank you okay so that was
kind of the intro uh rotation wise we would be moving over and starting with
nino Thank you. When I heard about this last week, I was a little skeptical,
but I learned more about it and then more even this evening during public comment.
And I want to make a suggestion that we change the name to rather brochures
to say media, because I think that the electronic versions of these is one of
the most important value added. Not that the print is to be neglected, but I
think that that makes a really strong justification for the price tag. We'd be lucky
to get media. online media and print for that price
tag, but let's try. Thank you. Nina, Stacey? I
guess my comments about this one are similar to
other comments about PROST or PROST2, whatever you call
it, in that 25 seems like a lot.
and not sure if this is, is this in-house, is this consultant,
is it a combination? I think based on the comment I heard
it from a resident during public comment tonight, I'm interested in a
little bit more information about how we can get the information out
there, you know, a little differently on phones and whatnot. And so
I'm not, really excited about spending $25,000 on some print materials and I don't
know why it would be so difficult to include those maps on our website if
we don't already. So, not really convinced yet. All right, thank you. Do you have
an example I can see or we can show? Of a finished product? No. No,
no, of what's the current state. I mean, the basis of this is that we
have poor quality right now. If we had a
couple minute break, I could pull it up. It's on the R drive. It was
in the email that was sent to Council. It's on the R drive? So if
we had a couple minutes, we could probably pull it up for you if you
want to take a break. Okay. I'm seeing other indications that we need a break.
And so in the middle of this item, we're going to take a break. And
when that big hand's on the five, we're starting again.
Bob,
are
these
them?
Yes.
But
I
think
we
have
it
on
that.
We
can
pull
his
email
that
you
sent.
Okay,
welcome
to
the
final
act
of
the
2016
budget
deliberation
meeting,
at
least
for
this
evening.
Okay,
so
I
had
asked
if
I
could
see
a
copy.
I
actually
thought
I
was
going
to
see
a
hard
copy.
This
is
an
electronic
copy,
right?
That's
because
they're...
We
need
to
have
them
printed. Well, so
this is the PDF of this. So I think just to refresh. Print this. It's
going to look pretty good. So our goal was to go ahead and look at
the design of this. So using a design consultant, using our existing GIS and cartographers
to update the maps that we have and then put them in a format that's
going to work digitally, both on mobile devices and off the website. Yeah, some of
these things we could just go ahead and take out to print and it wouldn't
cost $25,000 to do, but if we wanted to go ahead and update it and
have it work with QR codes and all the rest, then you'd be able to,
and that was kind of what the concept was. You said QR codes? Yeah. That's
pretty good, Bob. Okay, so as it was presented, Eileen, I mean, we had copies
of copies of copies and they were faded and not good. I mean, I'm looking
at here, we got an original and then like, go ahead and print this. It's
going to look really good. But I don't think that's, the need from what I
just heard. It was more -- it was -- you talked about an actual update.
You're talking about a redesign where not only whether it be on a monitor or
a tablet, so using responsive design -- that's another phrase you should learn -- that
it -- the formatting is good and appropriate depending on the device that's being used.
So So that's a different ask than I originally understood it. I remember,
that's why I asked about a copy. I mean, how faded are these
things? And so I'm just, just, just, I think, and, and, but I
don't understand why this didn't come through the regular process. I mean,
i am how did you discover this i mean where did this do you talk
about something that came out of the blue this one came out of the blue
i was not on my radar so we had a conversation with council member barber
and one of the things we've heard from the chamber on a regular basis is
the fact of what she just said we have these existing maps they take them
out they either photocopy them or they print them and they're not very good quality
and the issue has been um this actually went to funding for LTAC in 2010.
It wasn't funded by the LTAC. So it hasn't been of the most significant priority,
but I know that Eileen had talked about the fact that this has been one
of those items that could certainly be improved. And so I think when the direction
from council leadership back to the council members was, if you have something you want
added to the list to look at that could be considered, this is one of
those items that is a gap. It's something that we do. It fits with our
brand for outdoor Issaquah and could be upgraded and improved. We just haven't allocated the
funds necessary to do this. Is that fair? I don't want to put words in
your mouth. That's very fair. And they are used, I mean, we need
them in all formats, all from the digital. They need to be
updated some. A lot of the graphics can probably use a little
updating, factual updating on them, but they are still used, some print,
probably not a great deal of print, but there is definitely the
need for print. and also bringing them forward in electronic formats so that we
can carry them with us wherever we go. It's the piece that sells and hopefully
we'll be able to have our people that pass through stop at the chambers, stop
at other locations in town where we could place these and spend a little bit
more time, encourage them to stay here in Issaquah and see what we have to
offer. Okay, so this this document actually has multiple in them.
Yeah, those are all the maps that we talked about. It's
got the updated logo in this one. So there are seven
pages of maps here, so I'm not sure. Oh, this is
the edible garden one. Edible landscape tour. Okay, so okay, so
the ask is it's to redo all of these pieces and
why and we have to outsource it. for design? So there's three
components. Some of this our cartographer could do, some of it our GIS coordinator can
do, some of it our communications department can do. There you go. And then the...
Put it on their work plan. Yeah, and then, well, there's some graphic design work
that a graphic design consultant would be utilized to do that. So...
So, yeah, I mean, most of it would be done in-house, some of it would
be done, and then some of that $25,000 includes, you know, printing costs if we're
depending on what we're going to do. So we just don't envision the same print
run on this because the goal would be to have more mobile, but there still
are a lot of people that come in and ask for print brochures. Okay, I'm
undecided. I'm still thinking it through. Pass. I'll be supporting it. Okay, go on.
so i i actually like this i think that uh properly done maps i'm actually
i'm actually glad we don't have a graphic designer on staff because they wouldn't be
very busy but when the time comes to need a graphic designer i was i
was lucky enough to find somebody who was willing to do gratis work when i
ran six years ago and they did a sign that was like a million times
better than anything i could have come up with and so i'm eager to see
what um proper modern graphic design would do to integrate this information. I also think
that there's opportunities now that we have a fully functioning GIS system that it may
allow rapid addition of data and overlaying of data. And I think if done right,
this is a good use of $25,000. Thanks. Thank you. Josh? So...
During the summer, I was interested in taking my daughter on a hike in Tallis.
And so I went on the city website just to see what trails would be
around our house. And it's actually really hard to find trails in the city when
you look on our city website. If you go to the page under Parks and
Rec for parks and trails, there's three links for trail maps. And one is Family
Forest Walks, which is a map that appears to be the highlands. There's Lake Tradition
Trails, which is Lake Tradition. And then there's an urban walking map. And actually, you've
got the Family Forest Walk thing up there. Some of the stuff that you're showing
us on the screen is actually already on the website. The exact document is already
there. But it doesn't really tell you where to link up with the trailhead. It
doesn't have a lot of detail. It just kind of gives you this sort of
10,000 foot map. And so I definitely see the need for improving information about our
parks and trails. And the issue for me is, Is right now at
the budget process the best way to do this? And I sort of feel like
this is an item that needs to come to the Services Committee and be vetted
in terms of understanding what information the Council believes is important for inclusion in these
types of brochures. What types of media opportunities do we want to utilize? Just look
at this from a very broad perspective. And right now it's just sort of looked
at as well. We'll update the design and we'll print the documents and we'll spend
money to do that. But I'd rather see this come back to the council by
way of agenda bill and then perhaps consider a midyear budget adjustment to do some
of this. The other thing I'll add is I think there can actually be part
of a broader effort when it comes to updating parks and rec information. Because if
you go, for instance, to the recreation guide on the city website, right now what's
up is the winter recreation guide. And there's a little box that says spring recreation
guide available online Wednesday, February 3rd. Registration begins Wednesday, February 17th. That doesn't give a
lot of time for members of the public to make decisions about signing up their
children for sports or camps classes. It basically comes online in early February. You have
two weeks to figure out your schedule before the registration begins. And then some of
those classes begin right after that. And so I just think maybe a broader effort
of getting information out to the public sooner, getting more detailed information something a little
bit broader than just printing brochures would be very valuable and then i would support
something i won't get the chance but i would have supported an expenditure to do
that sort of effort but i think this should come via agenda bill thank you
mary lou um sure i guess a question for staff first while i'm thinking about
this so um are are there other funding sources for this such as partnerships or
other groups that we should be working with where their information and our information would
be all together. And so we wouldn't be paying $25,000 to design it? Well,
so I'm thinking of like the Iskua Alps Club. They've got some walking maps,
but they're not really kind of like these that we've got produced. In the
past, this was funded out of LTAC funds. And with changes in state law
now, it's no longer eligible to be funded out of LTAC. might
be able to get something out of 4Culture. I'd have to, you know, really kind
of research that and see what we might get. But I think it's going to
just end up being on us. And other jurisdictions don't do this in conjunction with
the Chamber and include advertising on it or other means to pay for it itself?
So I've seen chambers do that, go out and make money off of a project
like this where it gets incorporated with a band around it. But again, that's print,
so I don't know how much-- the legacy is the city did create these things,
and so we got ownership on them. So I guess where I'm landing with it
is I really want them redone. I'm stuck on the funding, that there
isn't a more creative way or a different way to fund it. So I'm
kind of stuck right now. Well, can I comment? OK, now. It's not just
chamber. I mean, the chamber does supply these two visitors, but so does the
downtown. The DIA does. So there's other places. So for the chamber to go
out and get advertisement on the back of it, would be for
the chamber. So it wouldn't be city used. It wouldn't
be more available for everybody, kind of. All right, thank
you. Nina? Yeah, I think I already talked. Wasn't I
first? I said, yeah, let's change the name to Printed Maps
Media rather than brochures. OK. Is there any other-- thank you for the reminder.
Sorry, I lost track. Stacy. I appreciate this coming forward, Eileen. And I support
it generally. But I think I prefer the agenda bill idea because we've had
such a good discussion about different ideas that I think it could be more
fully talked about and with some public input I think it
could be probably a greater than that thing that we're even envisioning so
that's so I'm probably gonna vote no but that's the reason it's not
because I don't support this it's because I think it maybe could be
a greater thing if it came out of mention about I think questions
who would own this what department communications
Okay. Question. I'm just waiting if we get opportunities to follow up after. Yeah, no,
so everybody's had an initial comment. So, Eddie, do you have any other comments or
questions to make? Just subsequent to these comments about whether it should be a council
action or not, this seems administrative to me. There is a lot of work to
do as council members, and this is a reprint and update of current media that
already exists. present its more opportunities when they get into the work of that that
might need some policy input. But this isn't a policy input. I find this
more of an administrative task. And for my benefit, that means are you going
to support it? I'm supporting it. All right. So I'll just say again, I
like the idea of having updated materials, but I'm
I think Josh's recommendation kind of threw the agenda bill,
but this is, I feel that there's still too much
conversation to be had on what's possible. I think we're
adding something to a work plan for communications that, I
mean, you were saying that there's some graphic design. I
think that's the principle piece, oh boy. I'm
really having a hard time with this one. So, okay, I'll call a vote and
I'll figure it out which way my thumb goes. Yes? So there is a suggestion
that said, and I do this before we vote just to make sure that the
idea itself does not get lost after. If it is voted down, but there is
this much interest in seeing it come back, is that something you would include in
your letter? where you talk about budget recommendations, can you talk about budget
recommendations, non-monitory? - Come back with a new proposal? - Yeah, you could do that
in the letter. - Updated proposal, I mean, yeah, absolutely, that would be an opportunity
to do that. Okay, so is council ready to vote on this? Okay, so in
favor of, oops, make sure it's up on the screen, sorry. The $25,000
for, I put down Parks Department collateral. It said brochures before I changed the word
collateral. So, thumb up if you're in favor, thumb down if you disapprove. Vote. It's
three in favor, four disapprove. So that one does not pass. And Paul, I would
support Mary Lou's suggestion of including in your letter a request for consideration of an
agenda bill on the issue. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. So it can move forward.
Okay, so we've completed our deliberation of the items that we did not vote on
two of them. So where we stand, you can see the raw numbers on the
general fund. It's not the full funding for Office 365. There's still 20% of the
original amount that comes from somewhere else. where where that is i don't know
but utilities utilities thank you very much okay the last item uh for a deliberation
this evening and um before i go for eltac is the um is the request
to fund out of the mitigation parks mitigation fund amount remember the information up here
is the entire mitigation account not just the balance from parks impact fees
And this is currently calculated based upon existing approval of 350,000,
$75,000 grant, funds raised by external parties, which is roughly $10,000,
and the final cost, which is currently estimated at around $510,000,
if I'm remembering that all correctly. So this is an item
to fund out of mitigation the remaining balance. Tola, you proposed
this originally. I'm going to ask you to start this off. Sure. So I was
also one of the people who was most in favor of keeping it to $350,000,
not $500,000. So why do I want to do this now? Because I don't think
that we... I don't think I personally expected the community to pony up $85,000. I
was hoping that some of that remaining 85 would come from in-kind donations from various
places. That hasn't happened. However, the fact that the community has put in $10,000 to
me is a significant and good faith effort that the community is engaged You could
argue that it should be some larger number. I don't think it should be
85,000, but it rises to the level for me of significant community contribution. And
so between having gotten a grant or presupposing we get the grant, that's why
today I would be okay with doing this amount. It's really all
about the community engagement and the approximately 10 grand they've raised already. Okay. Thank
you so much. Josh, I'll just go right with you. What? You're next. Oh,
okay. I was telling you earlier. Yeah, I said it's a state park to
address our growing vampire problem in Issaquah, apparently. State park. But anyway, to be
more serious, you know, i i heard at the last budget meeting for the first
time that we may be retaining the existing skate park as an asset and and
now this this concerns me very much because one of the justifications for building the
new facility was that we had real problems at the existing one and that it
needed to be demolished and um Now I'm sort of questioning this entire operation in
terms of the need to build something new and spend all this money on it
when we're gonna apparently retain the existing asset and continue to maintain it. So I
think that issue might be coming back to services for further conversation. at least as
to the demolition piece of the old one. But I'm just really hesitant to keep
throwing more money into this project when we've already spent a considerable amount of time
vetting it and determining a dollar amount and being able to get an actual new
facility for $350,000. Now, granted, there's a lot of additional bells and whistles and capacity
that can come with spending more money on this. But I do think that there
can still be opportunities for further efforts. And, you know, it didn't fare so well
last night, but I still think public-private partnerships are an avenue for exploring opportunities within
the city. And that may be a possibility with the skate park as well. So
I don't really see the justification at this point for diving in to spend $90,000
additional on this project. Thank you. Mary Lou? I do support spending the
$90,000 in additional funds. I agree with what Tola had said about why he
changed his mind on now it's appropriate when before he was having concerns. But
I also agree with what Josh said. It's sort of hard to...
look at a project like this when we haven't really talked about things like private
public partnerships we haven't really talked about uh yes this adds a lot of capacity
but was this the kind of capacity we wanted to add does this serve a
regional population versus just our local population should citizens be paying for regional capacity in
a facility so i'm in favor of a approving it because I do want to
see it built and I think this is an appropriate place for the funds to
come. But I think we have to start answering some of these other questions. It's
really hard just to look at projects like this. Anyway, for tonight, I'm supporting this
one. Thank you. Nina. I want to agree with those who have said that I
wish there were a more sincere effort to engage public-private partnership. We had a great
opportunity here and it looks like now we're just going to give up on it.
We didn't have enough time, maybe didn't have enough support, but I wish there would
have been public-private. I chipped in on GoFundMe. That's the private part. I know others
here did too. I have a question for somebody down there. Grateful. Not the same
as Josh's opinion of the old skate park. I'm grateful that we are planning at
this time to not destroy the old park because of the improvements that have been
made, the changes with the new schools coming in, all of the things that have
shown that that park is usable and an asset that can be enhanced much more
cheaply than it can be destroyed. How does that $50,000, if you're looking
at the whole project, so say this was going to be, it was a $350,000,
now it's a $500,000, but it was $550,000 for the whole thing, right? So it's
$500,000 for the new park, and then there was $50,000 to remove the old park.
The original $350,000 had $50,000 for removal. Had $50,000 in it. Well, that was the
original original. Right. It was two iterations back. My point is that
The increased $90,000 can be considered to be partly
offset by not spending the $50,000 on re-destroying the
old park. Is that fair to say that?
It's tricky math, but-- Well, no, I think what you're-- yes, it's fair to say
that. I think the concern is that materials costs have increased a lot over the
last two years, particularly concrete. And this is a significant amount of concrete involved in
the project. So I think the design, if we get that bid, We'll have a
very good idea of where the final number is going to be and we're still
going to try and raise more funds from the city. So if we can actually
get a contract that ends up being below that number then yeah, we'd be able
to return that to the general fund. I'd recommend you spend the mitigation funds first
and save it to the general fund if you can. Okay, I'm gonna finish. This
is hard for me to vote to spend more because I was part of the
original cheer team for the $350,000. This park has already suffered from inflation and Bob
reveals that it may suffer from some more and I don't want this to drag
on forever for lack of funding and get even more expensive. But please don't ask
me to spend another $50,000 to destroy the old park. and i'm gonna vote yes
for this thank you stacy we don't have a separate line item for the
fifty thousand dollars no it's just gone right just making that clear uh i
uh with a little reservation about the cost of the overall project i'm still
going to support this uh for the reasons that tola and mary lou laid
out you know again so this is calculated based upon what we think the
price is going to be and it's the it's the unfunded portion and um
I mean, I -- though on this spreadsheet is a very specific amount, and I
think, you know, my -- if this were to pass, I would want to write
this into the letter where it was -- this is an up to additional funds
out of mitigation. I also think I heard the general fund portion of any funding
of this skate park right now, actually, it's -- we get it from REIT and
we're getting it from mitigation. none of that's general fund. And
Diane's nodding her head. So gotcha on that one, Bob. You're
right. Thank you for correcting me. And so yes, it is
adding kind of that capacity. thing and um I you know
and when and so last year when we said hey hey you know the the
ask was for an additional 150 during this time last year we said no and
go take another year find other sources such as County Parks that was successful in
my mind however okay you only got halfway there I mean don't stop what
other means, and I've never heard anything that other means were really explored. If they
were, I haven't heard that. And so I know that the community did come together
and actually part of that 10,000 is a donation that I made myself toward this
because, so just so you know, I think this is important. But I'm disappointed that
it's kind of like we did the 75 and stopped. I made an application to
King County for grant money and stopped. And that wasn't my expectation when we went
into this last year. We haven't stopped trying to raise money. So I mean, the
mayor, as a matter of fact, has gone out and made several personal asks that
have resulted in funds being donated to the city on this. So I think we've
raised more than-- i'd have to check but i'm pretty sure we're over ten thousand
dollars so far at least and at least are we yeah so i mean our
intent is to continue to try and raise funds from different individuals uh corporations and
the community to close that gap so as you said it's gap funding is what
we kind of view it as get the project out to bid we'll know what
that number ends up being and then we've got the opportunity to to close the
gap based out of the mitigation funds OK, so it
would be a little act of faith there. OK. OK. So again,
I do support the skate park. This has been back and forth in ways I
didn't anticipate and really like either. I do agree, retaining the existing asset and see
if there can be some value to the community and is, I'm totally fine with
that. And I think there's been enough changes in the Rainier Trail area that that
is less of a liability to the community than it was when we first raised
this issue a couple years ago. So in total, with those expressed disappointments on
how we got to this, with the hope and the intent that the actual
amount, this allows us to go out to bid, but if we actually expend
less than this because we raise additional funds, that would be my expectation. So
I will support this, thank you. Eileen? - I'm in support of this. It
has been some time. We really need to move forward with this, get this out
to bid, start construction this summer and complete this project. Also, the preserving of the
old skate park for the time being, I think is important. There's no need to
go through and demolish it at this moment in time. Maybe in the future if
that piece of property is used for something else, but right now the area has
been cleaned up. um the fence has been taken down and there are kids using
it um because we don't have the other one done yet so we need to
move forward and we need to get this project done and get the kids skating
down there i'm for it okay thank you i think we have gone around is
there any comments or questions about this item the council ready to vote okay a
thumb up is in uh support of the proposal on the screen what's your vote
this is six in favor one against so that passes So fantastic
work and we have one more
item that I'm going to want
to bring up and let's see
if I can use the right
keyboard and it has, oh man
you changed the directory, I got
to re-navigate. Is there another one?
No there isn't. Budget questions. Executive
department. Sorry everybody. 2016 budget docs.
Ha! There's that LTAC word. Where did that come from? That I typed
earlier. Okay, so last, on the 4th, prior to our budget meeting on
the 4th, we had our second LTAC meeting. And I'm chairing that committee
and there's other, there's four other members from the community, two hoteliers,
or a chamber representative who's also a hotelier and a member, executive
director of the History Museum. And what you see here, the
applications list everything that was applied for. You can see the funding
that they requested. The next column is the funding that's approved. So
there was $174,000 in requests. The committee approved $107,500 of that, if
I can read it correctly. You can see the vote tally there
as well. A couple comments. The committee expressed some surprise that, it was my first
year on the committee, some surprise that the actual request for funding, the RFP, if
I may call it, RFP process, surprised them because they had thought that at the
end of last year that they, it was clear that there was gonna be There
was going to be more of a development of the adoption of a plan as
somewhat proposed by the Roger Brooks. You might remember the Roger Brooks Tourism Plan. Really
no progress was made along this, along that way. And so this year's LTAC application
and funding consideration really fell into the same model as it had been done years
previously. And the majority of the legacy members on the committee unanimously expressed that that
wasn't what they expected to happen and that they really did expect that there was
going to be more of an alignment along those recommendations. Well, a couple of things
that didn't happen to cause that alignment. There really was no more forward motion on
movement on developing kind of like the Central Tourism Bureau and a kind of a
restatement of the overall strategy and kind of guidelines for how they're gonna
use LTAC funds going forward toward a more comprehensive tourism plan. So we
had quite a bit of conversation about that. And so what you see reflected in
the vote is the third item on there is actually, it's actually a program to
be run by the city. And I think it's been positioned as almost like a
gap fill as well to do event recruitment. So this was a new type proposal.
I don't think the LTAC committee had seen anything like an event recruitment engine before.
So it's actually funding work out of our economic development organization to do
specific event recruitment. A good example, one that came up many times was
the volleyball tournament at the state park was a good example of absolutely
an event that drives heads and beds. And LTAC, of course, is funds
collected for hotel stays. And there is strong state law about how that
money should be reused and to foster and create more economic activity for
hotels within communities. But also to general fund the marketing events of other
organizations within those communities that could benefit and also help and partially drive
more heads and beds as well. And so the committee was very strong in
the support of the event recruitment process. So it will probably be outsourced,
not actually done by city employees. The other two that were approved were
really kind of a refactoring of the visitor information center. So VIC stands
for visitor information center. So this includes some improvement in the area
of the chamber actually obtaining and operating a mobile unit.
and it had not just static display and not just print copy display, but also
electronic display of information for people seeking it. Mobile meaning it could be taken to
events. It's not gonna be a static sitting in one place. There could be events
around town strategically placed, and so taking it to where visitors are to give them
more information about the city. And the second item in there is actually to create
some type of rack and capacity for flyers actually at the, at the Hailstone location
that DIA uses up here on Front Street. And that's where the mobile unit
would be stored as well. So the mobile unit would be there at other
times when it wasn't rolled out to be where visitors are for that information.
The rest of all the programs were specific marketing programs. the services of those
various nonprofits. And the committee was pretty firm. It wasn't 5-0 all the time,
but in general, there were some abstains, general feeling that this kind of one-off
of funding marketing programs is inconsistent with the direction that they thought that they
had at the end of last year. It's inconsistent with and then the instruction
that they thought they had given and that it was also not really consistent with
the intended use for the LTCH funds. Having said all that, there's a strong support
for all of these and so for those agencies and for their recognizing that they
have their need as well, uh, to, to, uh, for their program. It's beneficial to
them when they get these marketing dollars. So these last two lines on here, so
the committee is not done meeting. Um, um, they agreed that the continue the L
tech committee would commit and continue to me to develop a strategy and guidelines going
forward, like this is what we want to achieve. And so there's a lot of
guidance given in that Roger Brooks study that they want to make a very clear
policy and directional statements of what we want to accomplish with LTAC funds going forward.
So lacking that, and I think that's what created some of the confusion for this
year. further um if the events committee obviously if they recruit events there's opportunities for
all of these various agencies to be part of the marketing material that put together
for event recruitment so we're also going to get back together and talk about how
to continue to work with a number of these agencies to be part of the
advertisement and the marketing material packages that are putting together as part of the event
recruitment process So there's a general consensus that rather than kind of these one off
programs that there would be a more coordinated kind of holistic city kind of wide
tourism plan and that every agency would be a benefit. Even those that are listed
here that applied and even some that didn't could benefit from a more from a
citywide tourism plan. And that's what LTAC committees intention is going forward and to actually
put some structure to that by completing more of this strategy and guidance work before
the next funding cycle. So this was the recommendation and what we have as a
committee, as a council, we can either accept this in total or reject it in
total. We cannot pick it apart.
Starting with Josh. Okay. So I looked that up. Then Nina and then Mary Lou.
Because I'd always been told that and I looked it up and the municipal code
actually says in the event the city council in its sole discretion terms it appropriate
to amend the proposal, it is not required to resubmit such proposal to the committee.
The code apparently vests the council with discretion to amend LTAC's proposal. Are we compliant
with the state? No, so that's old code. There was a change in state law
two years ago that eliminated that exactly, which is the city council only has the
option to vote up or down, and if they want to make a change to
it, they have to refer the whole thing back to the LTAC committee. So we
have a code issue. The The other thing that the code that apparently is no
good anymore says is that LTAC should consider the extent to which the proposal will
accommodate activities for tourists or increased tourism and the extent to which the proposal will
affect the long-term stability of the lodging tax fund. So I have two questions. There's
the only two that I have. The first one is in terms of the decision-making
process to not approve funding. When I look at this list, I look and see,
wow, you know, there's some things on here that might increase tourism. You know, the
Cougar Mountain Zoo, I think, is an example. undertold, undersold, whatever you want to call
it, it's late, it doesn't get enough recognition. And the Ranger Festival is a great
way to bring in tourists and tourist dollars. And so then I start thinking about,
well, how was it decided that some people voted, one person voted yes, four voted
no, what are the criteria by which that was rejected, for instance? And then the
second part is, the funding approved is far less than the funding requested. So do
we have essentially a very healthy Lodging tax fund and so we do you know
or did we need to worry about it? And that's why the funding request no
I think with the beginning fund balance and the estimated what would be collecting the
revenues available were $180,000 so with this appropriation Approval of funding for 107 it would
begin next year with you know $93,000 roughly as a beginning balance and And I
think the committee's sentiment, again, we haven't formalized this 'cause it hasn't been
voted upon, was that that was the kind of basis that was needed
to actually get this tourism organization funded and off the ground. So as
to the criteria, can you address that? Like what was used to determine that certain
things should be rejected that weren't? Well, every one of these was some type of
promotion of an individual event or program for each of those agencies. And so there
was this general kind of this one-off of an individual event or program was, again,
I'm just repeating what I was told, is that the committee members were very adamant
that they were, like last year was supposed to be the last year they were
gonna do any funding like that. And that's what I meant about the fact that
the RFPs went out for the same kind of thing was a little bit of
a surprise to the committee members. And so it was really, yes, it wasn't unanimous
everywhere. You can see by the vote tally that's there. But clearly, it was a
majority on these. Instead of funding individual programs and events, is that a centralized strategy
that first, again, to drive events into the area and to do marketing and campaigns
around those events, which these are not structured to do, and that's what the second
line of my theory is test, that that would be a better strategy. And there
seemed to be real general agreement among the nonprofit representatives that were there that, yeah,
this type of, that type, that's okay. I mean, you know, and we'll see. We're
gonna have to continue to work with them. There seemed to be general agreement that,
that being part of that campaign and helping actually recruit events is still a
very strong, strong programs for them. - Can I supplement that too? 'Cause I
think your answer was awesome. Just on the criterion, it's overnight stays that you
mentioned right at the front end that's driving that. The other piece is return
on investment. There's a lot of conversation around what's the ROI for that investment.
Yeah, and it's very difficult to actually measure a dollar spent on marketing here, actually
what that turns into, and whether or not that actually drives hotel stays, or what
they would call heads in beds. And at best, the claims seem to translate into,
I spend a dollar, we get a dollar. So it's not really leveraging. and actually
getting a return on the investment. It was one for one. So there was a
couple first. There was Mary Lou, Nina, Nina, Mary Lou, and Eileen. So Nina, then
Mary Lou, then Eileen. Am I looking in the right place here? Launching tax fund?
Perhaps. So I got one of my questions answered about the fund, and it seems
that you can roll it over into future years if you don't need to spend
it all this year. But the... The work plan in here, this
was aspirational on behalf of the administration and then the LTAC
makes its own decisions. I'm looking at page 513. And so
what I'm getting at is that the event recruitment contract is
one way of doing things, but the really top
Suggestion help with the form of the Destination Marketing Organization
visit, ESACWHA board, and the big overarching tourism effort that
came out of the Roger Brooks would have been another
choice too, and maybe more overarching than just event recruitment.
That's right, that's right. Event recruitment is just is not considered the be all end
all. It was viewed as of all the proposals the most the best use for
LTAC funds to drive hotel stays. Nobody proposed something that we were looking for and
we have in our tourism strategy there wasn't a party that came forward and said
I want to do that for you and I want you to give me LTAC
funds to do it. Is that what we're waiting for is somebody to and I
think you know that that's probably a pretty good statement. And though we didn't that
wasn't made specifically by any committee members while I was there is either. But and
so I think the committee wants to be much more directional. And then rather than
just residing in a city budget document, it's very clear that the LTAC committee has
very clear guidelines, strategies, and what they would like to achieve. It's gonna align with
the Roger Brooks proposal in many ways and actually also state priorities. And that guidance
didn't exist. It doesn't exist right now from the committee. - That proactive is new.
- Yes, yeah, drive it directionally. - Thank you. Mary Lou, then Eileen. Question. Yeah,
so the ones that fell below the line from Chamber, Salmon Days, all the way
down to Village Theater Marketing, were those annual requests from those organizations? So now that
LTAC is not going to fund them, are Are they having all those organizations having
to go find that money elsewhere? You know, some of it was new funding for
something they weren't due before. Some of it was to augment some programs. So I
think the answer was... It didn't shut down things completely. If they wanted to do
the same amount of marketing, they would have to find other sources or they were
gonna have to scale back it or they wouldn't scale back what their plans were
if they'd have got this funds or it was they just wouldn't market a particular
event or program. And I don't remember, I don't have the details in front of
me and how they lined up there. In previous years, there were similar requests for
similar amounts that were granted. This is the first year that...
That's my understanding, yes. $64,000. Eileen. Just to follow up on
that a little bit, these dollars that are the unfunded dollars
definitely were organizations and programs that we had funded with LTAC
dollars in previous years. I've got to go back to the
$80,000 for the city events recruitment contract. And first of all, what
is it? And then you said it's going to be outsourced. So
I need information on this. Do you have it? So I think
the intent is that the city would act as the agency to
issue a request for qualifications and proposals. on behalf of the
LTAC committee and then there would be a joint city LTAC review panel that
would work on evaluating the proposals that come in. And so, you know,
this is the, got the potential to be kind of the initial acorn of
the DMO, the Destination Management Organization. But I think as Paul talked about, a
big significant part of this was gonna be around event recruitment. So there was
still, you know, that opportunity for agencies to apply for this if the Chamber
chose to, There's other professional organizations that have been approached that could also
apply for this. So this agency or organization that would apply for
this contract, for this outsourced $80,000, would then take those dollars and
do what with them? Are they then going to grant them out?
So I... So no, I think this
would fund the initial agency in the organization. And then what we
had talked about, but as Paul said, it hadn't been finalized, was
an opportunity in the future to perhaps find opportunities for collaboration with
the new new organization and partner with some of these other agencies to build
on our tourism infrastructure and industry. What are we gonna get for $80,000? What are
we gonna see? So let me read from the project description in the application. The
funds would be used to contract out for event recruitment services as stated in the
Roger Brooks recommendations The successful firm or individual would actively recruit events such
as sports tournaments or small conferences, trade shows, etc. and create package
deals or cross-promote existing Issaquah tourism amenities such as BOMS, Village Theater,
the zoo, etc. The Lodging Tax Advisory Committee would be a partner
in the contract process. LTAC would be would be on the selection
committee to hire the firm or individuals to perform the work, be involved in creating
the scope of the work and receive quarterly reports on the progress of events of
the firm and provide input accordingly. So it is the outcome sought is to bring
more events like sports events, small conferences and to the city. And the example that
was cited again was like the volleyball tournament was held at the state park. So
that the committee was very, very strong that this is
the kind of use of the dollars that will drive
hotel and tourism. I felt very strongly about that. How
do we know what success is with this? Events. Events.
And overnight stays. Yeah, events. And that's what it is.
Yeah. And this may be way off the wall because it is like
10:15 at night. We are going to look at a proposal at some point in
the future that's coming back with some new graphics and ways to look at city
trails, series of maps or whatever it is, they're electronic. And I'm wondering if I
feel bad looking up here and seeing that we used to support these organizations
and we're not able to do that because of the changing of the rules and
a change in approach of how to use these funds. But I'm wondering if there's
some sort of linkage that we can have with perhaps an agenda bill that Eileen
is working on that as a way to include some of these within the graphics
works that we're doing, either include dates of festivals, dates of events or something so
that we can leverage those other dollars that we're using to spend on graphics so
that it's not just picking up a trail map but now there's a sidebar that
lists a whole bunch of events through town throughout the year or something i don't
know yeah and so so um the thing that i liked about the uh um
the the idea is so recruitment process uh package so imagine um so i think
the volleyball group has like signed up to come back for example but the the
the fly-in that happened at Tiger Mountain with that. That is, what are they
gonna do? Let's say they went out and they said, let's recruit, let's make
that even better. So the package will be put together. And what the committee
is saying with that second comment below, I realize that's hard to read, is
that they're willing, we should make money available to assist, the
various nonprofits such as the ones listed here and perhaps others to create materials to
be part of this package that goes out as part of the recruitment. So a
good example would be if you want to hold this conference here, what else is
in the area? Well, we've got a zoo, you know, you've got and here's information
about the zoo. We've got, you know, we've got the village theater and here's information
about village theater. We've got RDS and here's other information about RDS. We've got the
fish, we got the salmon hatchery. As opposed to each of them doing individual kind
of campaigns on these programs, it was, these campaigns are gonna be tied to this
event recruitment that we're gonna do. And there seemed to be a very general consensus
that with this event recruitment, that's actually is marketing of their services, their availability of
their programs and the like. So there seemed to be a general acceptance that, you
know, that was a really good alternative to what they were asking for up here.
But it's not, that isn't the end all yet. That was just kind of what
we could still do in 2016 to support these organizations. Does that help? - It
does help actually, that's good. That is one way of doing marketing for them to
an event that might want to come. And obviously by looking at what they're looking
for in terms of brochures, they're looking at a broader audience. I just feel like
if there's some way with the city initiative that we're already working in a direction
like this, as much as we can leverage effort we're already putting in to assist
them with their marketing would be great. I just wasn't sure how to do it.
So anyway, if that helps. It just doesn't go as far as I wanted. Okay.
Josh. Eileen's point though about return on investment, it's still hard to measure and so
I'm sort of wondering is there going to be a report produced that says we
had six more conferences this year than we had last year or is it just
by virtue of the LTAC fund is going to go up in dollars so therefore
we must have had more heads in beds? How do we, you know, I'm still
confused about how success is measured. I get everything you said about the recruitment contract
and the intent of it and what it I don't have an issue with any
of that. I just want to make sure that there's some check in to measure
whether this was a successful initiative. Okay, and yes, the actual, I'm just reading here,
it just says contract firm will track this, but in terms of the number of
lodging stays and the project will generate, that will be tracked. So for example, we
talked about this. I went on a recent conference and part of the conference registration
was I had to tell them what hotel I was staying in. It's like, you
know, that's a direct correlation between an event and an actual hotel stay. So that
type of, and that's a well-deployed, well-understood strategy to create a really strong linkage between
some event that came to town and what impact it had on the tourism industry
'cause someone spent overnight with that. And so tracking those, tracking the distance that they
came from, including whether they came from other counties or states, that would all be
part of the criteria that would be put into the contract with the firm that's
hired. So I would just recommend that perhaps the Services Committee next year get
an update from perhaps the LTAC Committee on the successful implementation of this so that
the committee members understand better the success. Well, the LTAC dollars are based on heads
and beds, but that doesn't necessarily distinguish between they came here as a tourist to
see a site versus they came here to meet with Costco to sell a good.
So there's no other numbers or hotel stays may be going up But what's
the correlation between why they are coming here to the community? So the good
news is the hoteliers could tell you pretty quick pretty quickly what they're what their
overnight stays are. And they can tell you where the gaps are. So during the
summer months, they were getting full price, no discounts on a lot of their hotels.
And so you look at the additional hotels that are coming in, they all hit
different niches. You just hit on one. Some are focused on the business traveler doing
business with Costco. The Motel 6 is more focused on the people that may be
driving through and visiting the Puget Sound region. I think there are times though that
they would say that their overall bookings are lower than what they would typically be
and that's the time that they'd like to get additional bookings and people to come
into town to fill their spaces. - Yeah, that was actually part of the discussion
as well. I mean, they have good history of what their occupancy rates are and
so part of the strategy would be in that event recruitment would be to fill
in those gaps. Tola. I'd like to request that next year we get
some sort of little presentation on this. I realize that we're not going to line
item veto this. We're not going to pick nits piece by piece, but it's over
$100,000. So it'd be nice to have some of this information in a little presentation.
Okay. Any other questions or discussion? Okay. Is the council ready to vote on this?
Okay. So remember, this is the whole thing, and if we say no, it goes
back to LTAC. So thumb up to support the recommendation for the committee, thumb down
to not support it. Okay, that's in favor six, six in favor, one against. So
we adopt the recommendation of the LTAC committee. That's all the line items I have
for tonight. - Four more sheets or anything? - You sure about that? - I
don't know. - Oh, but we're not done. we're that's all we have
for tonight now there is um you know as as we saw here
you know the the issue of um funding for the senior center or
senior services in general is still out in front of us um
I appreciate everybody's comments along those lines, and I think they will help inform the
process as we go forward, continuing to seek some type of solution. But also everybody's
investment tonight. Lots of great comments, lots of great insight. I'm extremely proud of the
work that we do and how we do it so out in public. Hopefully for
everybody it's getting a little bit more comfortable to do it this way out in
public and with a lot of detail recorded for posterity's sake. But the vast majority
of our work has been completed with the exception of the senior services funding, and
we'll be taking that up at a regular business meeting in the future. So for
tonight, our meeting is adjourned. Thank you. You didn't ask
if anybody would make speeches. Yeah, I forgot.