0:55
I'll call to order the Monday, December 5th, 2016 regular council meeting
1:01
and ask those in the audience who would like to join the
1:06
council and me in the pledge of allegiance to please stand. I
1:12
pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and
1:18
to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,
1:23
with liberty and justice for all.
1:29
- We have two items under special business
1:34
this evening. The first is agenda bill 7300,
1:40
tolerance awareness day proclamation. And I would
1:46
ask Don Burnett, a community outreach
1:52
coordinator for the YMCA, Dante Pollard
1:57
and family, Danita and Amira, Torquisha
2:03
Johnson, Xavier Ramira and family, and
2:08
Robin Kelly of our sister city commission and Elizabeth Maupin
2:14
of the Human Services Commission to join me at the
2:20
podium. And as I'm moving towards the podium, I'm delighted
2:26
that those names that I just announced are here to
2:31
accept this proclamation. Since 1984, the YMCA has
2:37
championed social justice issues and equal rights. Each
2:43
new facility, including ours here in Issaquah, reflects
2:48
the growing needs of our communities and our
2:54
region's diversity. So with that...
3:01
So I can
3:06
speak into the
3:11
microphone And
3:16
so, whereas the Issaquah City Council has passed resolution
3:22
number 2002-09 in April 2002 urging Issaquah City officials
3:27
and staff, the Issaquah School District, and all citizens
3:33
to work to reduce intolerance towards others of different
3:38
backgrounds and beliefs, And whereas in the wake of the
3:44
recent contentious national election, the City Council wishes to reaffirm our core
3:50
principles and values. And whereas as your city government, our job is
3:56
to bring people together and to be welcoming of all people and
4:02
all ideas with the belief that we are truly We truly
4:08
are smarter and stronger when we join together, and
4:13
whereas it is especially critical at this time to
4:19
reaffirm our stand against intolerance of another's race, sex,
4:25
religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity,
4:30
and whereas the city pledges to foster a community
4:36
that condemns all discrimination and racism and proclaims our
4:42
city a hate-free zone. Whereas our city leaders, we
4:48
also demand that our national, state, and regional leaders
4:54
uphold the same values. Now, therefore, the Mayor and City
5:00
Council of the City of Issaquah do hereby proclaim December 5th, 2016 to
5:06
be Tolerance Awareness Day in the City of Issaquah and encourage all citizens
5:12
to be mindful, tolerant, and accepting of others today and every day throughout
5:18
the year. In witness whereof I hereunto set my hand
5:23
and seal of the City of Issaquah this fifth day
5:29
of November 2016. This proclamation is signed not only by
5:34
myself, but each of our City Council members, Council Goodman,
5:40
Council President Goodman, Council Member Pauley, Barber, Martz, Winterstein, Ramos,
5:45
and Batiste. And with that, I want to thank you for
5:51
joining me up here. And I know that those were a lot of
5:57
words. We just want to treat everyone with respect and dignity and work
6:03
together. And that is the bottom line of all of it. So, sir,
6:09
thank you for being here this evening. Thank you for being here. Thank
6:15
you for being here. Thank you for being
6:20
here. And thank you for being here. Sir, thank you for
6:26
being here. Thank you for being here, Elizabeth. Thank you. Thank
6:31
you for the proclamation. And Robin, thank you very, very much.
6:37
And so with that, I would like to present this to you. And
6:43
I hope that finds a prominent place at the Y, up in the
6:49
Issaquah Highlands. And we gratefully accept this on behalf of Passage Point, the
6:55
YWCA outreach just outside of Issaquah, where we, our mission is to reunite
7:01
and reenter people. And thank you for your support this evening.
7:06
We gratefully accept it.
7:11
Thank you very, very
7:16
much. And thanks to
7:21
each of you all.
7:26
Our next item of
7:31
business under special reports
7:36
is Agenda Bill 7273,
7:41
Growth Education Series for
7:46
Terra. This is the second presentation in the City's Growth
7:52
Education Series. These presentations are intended to provide the Council and the
7:58
public the opportunity to learn more about regional growth management, including state
8:03
requirements and regional and local efforts. We are joined here this evening
8:09
by the Executive Director of Forterra, or the President of Forterra, Jean
8:15
Duvernoy. And Michael Benick will make a presentation on a livability survey that
8:21
was recently conducted for Puget Sound Millennials this evening. He has promised me
8:27
he will keep it to 20 minutes or less. And in order to
8:32
do that, he asked that you save your questions until the end. And
8:38
so, Michael, you can make your way. Are you going to kick it
8:44
off, Gene? Of course you can, but that counts against the 20 minutes. All right.
8:49
I am going to be, I'm going to be very quick. Thank you mayor for
8:53
allowing us to present. Uh, thank you council for allowing us to present. Good to
8:58
see you, Bob. Um, you all know us mostly as a conservation organs organization. In
9:03
fact, Mayor, we've done some great work together in terms of land conservation. But
9:08
over the last 10, 15, even 20 years, this organization, For Terra, has really totally
9:14
recognized that if we want to save our woods, if we want to save our
9:20
mountains, our wetlands, That's only half the battle. If you want to do that, you
9:26
need to make great livable places for our citizens. So we need to do both.
9:31
And Fort Terra has totally shifted its work and is committed to doing both, conserving
9:37
our great open spaces and making cities and communities second to none. Cities and communities
9:42
worthy of our children. So... Part of our job to really get that balance right
9:48
and to do our work correctly is constantly checking in with our public, with our
9:53
citizens. Over time, you see us do research into how our fellow citizens are considering
9:59
growth in our cities and how then this next generation of leaders, millennials look at
10:04
our future and growth. A year ago, we did a very broad-based
10:10
research poll on how our citizens across this region are looking at growth. We
10:16
learned some very interesting facts. First, our citizens, and I don't care where they
10:22
come from, Issaquah, Renton, even Seattle, Our citizens first and foremost appreciate the environment they
10:28
live in. There is an astounding response in our polling that indicates that our citizens
10:32
compared to anywhere else in America, anywhere else in the USA are very taken without
10:37
our outdoors with the beauty of our area. Our citizens recognize that to conserve that
10:42
beauty, we have to learn how to build within our cities and live within our
10:46
cities. They gave strong support for continuing to grow within our cities if we
10:52
do two things, just two things, solve the transportation mess and solve the affordability issue.
10:58
But the good news is that's what our citizens are looking for us to really
11:04
achieve is some real focus on transportation affordability. They want to see our landscape preserved
11:10
as a consequence. That was the research we did a year ago. that our citizens
11:16
are all in on helping us build our cities and to preserve our outdoors. We
11:20
thought it best to really check in now with the next generation of leaders, our
11:25
millennials, and are we in concert with their beliefs and values? So that's what we
11:29
did over the summer and that's what Michael talked to you about, is do our
11:34
citizens to our next generations of leaders have those same values? And I think he
11:38
has some very interesting information to bring to you tonight. Over the months ahead now,
11:43
we are going to be looking at how our citizens are looking more regionally at
11:48
our whole growth management structure and whether they see that -- how they see that
11:54
serving themselves and the quality of life. So we'll probably be reporting back to you
11:59
again shortly on that element of our continuing research into our community. So, Mayor, thank
12:04
you very much. I cede my -- rest of my time to my colleague. Thank
12:09
you, Gene, and Michael, welcome. Thank you very much. Great. All
12:15
right. So thanks, everybody, for having us. We really appreciate it.
12:20
My name is Michael Benecke. I'm the Director of Communications at
12:26
Portera. And we've had an interesting summer and fall of getting to
12:32
know more of the millennials that have become such a force and such a presence
12:37
in Seattle and for that matter in all of the surrounding communities as well. It's
12:43
a phenomenon of growth that has even captured the attention of the New York Times
12:48
on its front page back in August. You may have noticed this article. Calling attention
12:54
to the fact that this area has become one of the millennial magnets across the
13:00
country. Second only to Brooklyn in terms of the concentration of young people 18 to
13:06
34 who have chosen this as their place to live, whether because they've come here
13:12
or they were already here. Certainly there has been plenty of local attention to
13:17
the influx of millennials too. In Seattle, for example, there has been, frankly, a bit
13:22
of a backlash against some of the tech workers who have come in, especially to
13:27
work for places like Amazon or Facebook or Google, or for that matter, Microsoft, which
13:32
is developing a presence in South Lake Union. A lot of pushback against perceptions that
13:37
may or may not be true with regard to millennials and the
13:43
values that they hold and their willingness to be good citizens within
13:49
the community that we all share. Taking nothing for granted, we wanted to
13:54
dive in and really get to know the young adults in our midst and find
14:00
out what was accurate and what was perhaps not. So we thought about a survey,
14:06
hardly a novel idea when it comes to millennials, a generation that has invited an
14:12
incredible amount of scrutiny over the years. So we thought hard about whether we should
14:18
in fact undertake such a thing. did some Googling, as you might expect, and some
14:24
binging, and found that there was an incredible trove of existing research. 1.3 million hits
14:28
is what you get if you should put in millennial attitudes, research, say, into Bing.
14:33
So we began to read that stuff, frankly thinking that maybe we would find out
14:37
what we wanted to know just from stuff that had already been done with respect
14:42
to studying. you do find quite a trove of fascinating, even at times
14:48
amusing research. And as we got deeper into it, we started to see
14:54
things that made us feel like we really do need to focus in
15:00
on our local millennial population. For example, this is a telling set of
15:06
statistics that observes that we have an unusually, unusually highly educated millennial population
15:12
in the greater Seattle area with pushing on 60% of our 25 and ups having
15:18
a bachelor's degree. If you compare that to the national average, it's about 23%. So
15:23
we are blessed by having this incredibly well-educated population. And this, among other things, made
15:29
us think, you know, but we really do need to undertake some region-specific research. And
15:35
so we dived in with, yes, our own survey of millennials. And
15:41
here are some numbers that will give you a sense as to the scale of
15:46
the undertaking. We got 1,168 millennials to talk to us through a combination of a
15:51
phone survey, which was a randomized sample survey, and then a web survey, which was
15:56
more of an opt-in convenient survey. But in total, we had 1,168 people to take
16:01
it. 300 of them were phone respondents, to give you some sense
16:07
of scale, there's a very well-regarded, sort of gold standard survey done by
16:13
Pew of millennials that has 617 millennials that it talked to, so we
16:19
feel pretty gratified that we got 300. We feel like this is really
16:25
rich, robust information. 42,547, that's the number of phone calls that
16:31
we had to make to get to those 300. Just in
16:37
general, it's not easy to poll people these days. Millennials are
16:42
an especially elusive subspecies of people. But ultimately, we got our
16:48
sample of 300 and feel really pleased with the richness of
16:54
information that all of that yielded. Just very fast, here's a, don't
17:00
scrutinize this too closely, just to give you a sense as to the demographic attributes
17:06
of the phone sample that we did. as well as the web sample
17:11
that we did. The phone sample tracks quite closely to who we know millennials
17:17
to be in our community in terms of gender and racial and ethnic background
17:23
and ages. The web sample is actually pretty close in many respects to what
17:28
the phone sample was. Again, the web sample was that convenience sample. We did, though,
17:34
oversample, as it worked out, Seattle, and oversample Democrats as well by virtue of the
17:39
web sample. So I'll go back and forth a little bit between what we found
17:44
out from the phone respondents and from the web respondents, but most of the data
17:49
you'll be hearing is from that scientific sample done by phone. Here's a little bit
17:54
more with respect to demographics. People coming from that tech universe, they work in tech.
18:00
We know that overall in our local millennial population about 10% are working in tech,
18:06
so we feel good about having sampled that number and in fact getting even more
18:12
of them over the phone. We had a surprisingly high number of people tell us
18:18
that they are LGBTQ. We would have expected about 7% based upon what we know
18:23
nationally. to be how millennials identify, but 14% answering on the phone
18:29
said that that's their identity. We also found that yes, they do
18:35
live with their parents, which is a commonly held conception. And it
18:41
was in fact true for our phone respondents for certain with younger
18:46
millennials especially being folks who still live with their parents. we did
18:52
though find that newcomer millennials in our community don't live with their parents i suppose
18:57
the reason for that is sort of obvious they probably left their families behind in
19:01
order to move here so they are out on their own so these are generally
19:06
true statements with regard to the sample that we did those who took the phone
19:11
survey long established here those who took the phone survey newer to the area and
19:15
there are some interesting differences between those uh kinds of people that we'll go into
19:21
a little bit more. We asked about just in general looking at your community, do
19:26
you feel like we're on the right track, the wrong track? And overwhelmingly, millennials are
19:30
feeling upbeat about the direction of this community. We got interested in whether they are
19:35
more sanguine than millennials elsewhere in the country, and you know what? It's actually about
19:40
the same. Nationally, they're actually even more optimistic. 69% feel like their particular community is
19:45
on the right track. Anyway, we have a crop of standard issue, optimistic young people.
19:51
We inquired about what's the best thing about living here, and well, Jean kind of
19:57
already gave it away because wonder wonders it happens to be the same thing that
20:02
the broad population feels about this region, that this is a place of beauty, of
20:08
incredible natural richness and recreational opportunity. Unpacking it a little bit more, 37% had
20:14
an answer in that realm. And then these are the other things that popped out
20:19
with respect to those kinds of responses. People love that this is a diverse and
20:24
progressive community, and they are attracted by the job opportunities, but this is not maybe
20:30
as high a number as we might have thought. This actually holds even for people
20:35
who are new to the area. You might think, well, they came for jobs, wasn't
20:41
that the main thing for them? But actually not. It's the beauty. It's the diverse
20:47
and progressive community even for that population. We asked a question about what makes you
20:53
happiest, and here's the word cloud that describes those responses. Again, that theme of nature
20:59
and being outdoors. predominates along with the opportunity to be with
21:04
friends and family. Work comes up, but not very high here
21:10
either. This seems to be a group of people for whom
21:16
work matters, but it's not the predominant thing by any means.
21:22
And now a concerningly blank slide. I have no idea what
21:28
should be there. Yeah, oh, that's a video that I can't
21:34
show you, so we're moving on. So with respect to
21:40
concerns that people have, so we know that people overall, our millennials are overall content
21:46
with their life here, feel like the community's on the right track, but what are
21:51
their concerns? Here we're comparing their responses to a poll done of the broad community
21:58
actually by the same pollster EMC research that worked with us, giving us a chance
22:04
to compare the overall adult population with the millennial subgroup. And there's some interesting differences.
22:09
You see that affordable housing and homelessness are top of mind for virtually everybody, but
22:15
millennials' concern for inequality and racism pops out at number three. You know what, it
22:21
doesn't even make the top ten for everybody else, which is fascinating. This is a
22:27
recurring motif in the research. this concern about fairness and dealing with racism.
22:32
And you notice that traffic is a top five concern for everybody, but in
22:38
particular for the broad adult population, much less so for the millennials that we
22:43
spoke to. We asked our respondents about wanting to stay in the region, and
22:49
overwhelmingly, and this is for people who have been here for a long while
22:55
or maybe new here, do you want to stay? Emphatically, the answer is yes.
23:01
We asked, can you afford to stay? And here, this is a very striking, maybe
23:06
one of the most striking findings in the survey, we think. Half are very worried
23:12
that they will not be able to afford to stay. This could have real implications
23:17
for the kind of community that we are perceived as and become unless we can
23:23
address this concern about affordability. Let's take a step back and look at whether our
23:29
local millennials are different in any notable ways from millennials nationally. we
23:34
started off by asking about party affiliation and you see that approximately the same
23:40
percentage of locals as nationals call themselves democrats fewer though call themselves republicans here
23:46
but they don't become democrats they become independents so that's a striking finding going
23:52
forward notice the orange and the apples distinguishing our locals who are apples from
23:58
the nationals who are oranges Here we compared what folks said
24:04
in a national Pew survey to what we learned in ours with respect to various
24:09
values, like are you an environmentalist, are you a person who considers yourself religious or
24:14
patriotic? And you can see some things that are pretty interesting, like our local millennials
24:20
are less inclined to call themselves environmentalists. This was a little bit jarring for us
24:25
to see as a sustainability organization. We'll talk more about that in a
24:31
minute. With respect to religiosity and patriotism, we haven't unpacked the implications of those
24:37
findings, but we do observe that our local millennials are clearly different.
24:43
Back to that issue about being an environmentalist or not, we asked another question, "Do
24:49
you feel a personal responsibility for the environment?" And here, our faith was restored. We
24:55
saw, "Okay, maybe you don't like the label for whatever reason, but you do still
25:00
subscribe to the values." And so this gave us some heart. We then went into
25:06
environmental concerns that millennials hold, and you see that climate change and global warming tops
25:12
out the list. This is interesting insofar as it used to be in past polls
25:17
that Fortera has done about public environmental concerns that water quality was topmost. You can
25:22
see the climate change has popped up to the top of the list, at least
25:27
with respect to millennials. And I have to tell you that while they are highly
25:32
concerned about it, they are not really at all optimistic that we're going to do
25:37
anything about it. which is a sobering finding. Here are some representative quotes from
25:43
a freeform part of the survey. And there were a lot in this
25:49
vein with the sense of feeling besieged and betrayed by earlier generations and
25:54
without a lot of optimism that we're actually going to do something meaningful
26:00
about it. Here we're comparing adults, all adults nationally versus local
26:06
millennials and you can see that these pessimistic responses about, yeah, it's
26:12
real, we know what we could do and we're not going to
26:17
do anything about it. I found this to be discouraging and I
26:23
hope that ultimately we can turn that around and recreate some optimism about
26:29
the possibility of doing something. And also it's worth saying this is pre-election. All of
26:35
this polling happened pre-election, so I don't know, though I have my suspicions about where
26:40
these attitudes might have gone since then. Here's how millennials pitch in in their personal
26:46
lives to help. Initially we were frankly a little bit underwhelmed by some of this
26:52
stuff, Like, is this the best you could do? But then we started to think
26:57
about our own lives and what we actually do in our own personal sphere of
27:01
day to day. And this really is the stuff that probably we all do. Bigger
27:06
things, you know, with respect to dealing with climate change, for example, or extinction of
27:10
species. Those are things that require a community, a whole society, even a whole planet
27:15
to take on. But these are the things that they do in their personal realms.
27:20
So let's narrow down the focus now and look at distinctions among purely local millennials,
27:26
because there are some very fascinating ones. We are depicting newcomers and homegrown millennials with
27:31
our icons here. Hopefully they make you chuckle a little bit. The premise being that
27:37
if you've been here for a while, you've learned to wear a raincoat and put
27:43
away your umbrella. So back to that question, are you an environmentalist?
27:50
the home grounds as we know um about a quarter of them embrace the term
27:55
but the newcomers to the region people who have been here for five years or
28:00
less are much more willing to wear that label and and proudly um and i
28:05
should point out much more even than millennials nationally if you remember that earlier slide
28:10
it was 32 percent of millennials nationally who liked the label 27% of
28:16
our homegrowns and now 51% of the newcomers. So it's like, wow,
28:22
the people newly coming here really have this value system, or at
28:27
least they really like the label quite a lot. We asked a
28:33
question about parks and green space, and here that difference sort of
28:39
went away, actually, mostly with the newcomers. and the long-timers feeling equally adam
28:45
equally ardent about wanting to have more more parks and green space in the region
28:50
um somebody equipped that maybe the newcomers just haven't haven't discovered all the parks and
28:55
green space yet and they won't see quite the same need um they'll be more
29:00
like the long timers here but regardless you can see that there is a very
29:05
high degree of enthusiasm for more parks and green space and in terms of using
29:10
that parks green space what we find is that, yeah, they are getting out
29:16
and enjoying it. They are not sitting at home and watching Netflix or getting obsessed
29:21
with work and staying late in their cubicles. No, they're actually getting out and recreating.
29:26
And that holds even for the farther off green space. They want to be out
29:32
there relishing the beauty and all that this incredible part of the world has to
29:37
offer in terms of nature and nature experiences. We
29:43
wondered whether screens are more interesting than nature. So we asked this
29:49
question and we found that, yeah, a third maybe would rather spend
29:55
a spare hour looking at a screen, but nonetheless two-thirds would like
30:01
to get out and do something else, potentially out enjoying nature. Sprawl.
30:07
This is a very emphatic finding. We asked, do you support policies that
30:12
will prevent us from spilling out of our cities and swallowing farmland and swallowing working
30:18
forests? And with great vehemence, folks said, yes, we support that. And this is a
30:23
finding that holds really across every single demographic. I know it's a little bit hard
30:28
to read this, but the carry away from this slide is whether you're a male
30:34
or female or a Democrat or a Republican or you live in Seattle, or
30:39
another part of King County, you are somebody who very much believes that we want
30:45
to keep our cities contained so that we can continue to have those green spaces
30:51
beyond, you know, for all that they provide in terms of food and fiber and
30:57
recreation. - So Michael? - Yes. We have the slide deck, and I'm just looking
31:03
at the progress that you're making and the number of slides to go. So you're
31:08
going to have to pick up the pace a bit more. Okay. And... I appreciate
31:13
the... Hands up, roll them. Okay, yep, okay, very good. So cars, let's look
31:18
at cars. We find that even though there is a common conception that millennials do
31:24
not own cars, here they do, actually. And it doesn't matter whether you are new
31:30
to the region or have been here for a long time, you own a car
31:36
and you're using them, yes? to drive, although worth saying that the extent
31:42
of driving by millennials is not as much as for the broad population. And
31:48
millennials are more inclined to do things like carpool and use public transit. Can
31:54
you see giving up your car, we asked. And we found that a lot
32:00
of millennials indeed were willing to do that, newcomers even more so than long
32:06
timers. And if you go to that web collection of respondents, these are the
32:12
people who are more from seattle and generally more new to the region those folks
32:17
are especially willing to give up their cars and perhaps it's because of the fact
32:22
that seattle has a very built-out public transit infrastructure that would seem to be the
32:27
logical reason and it's kind of confirmed by these break by this breakdown of that
32:32
question with respect to geography yes seattle lights very willing to give up their car
32:37
folks The farther out parts of King, no doubt including Issaquah, for very
32:43
good practical reasons, I would argue, less disposed to. But maybe that's surprising and
32:49
great that as many as 40% could see them giving up a car in
32:55
the outlying areas. Looking at this in a little bit more fine-grained way, a
33:01
willingness to use public transportation is something that People from across
33:07
the region are pretty disposed to do, even in places that are not
33:13
that well-seared by the mass transit infrastructure. Housing. We were curious
33:19
as to whether folks desired to have a great big house and the answer was
33:24
no. Although people who are longtime millennials, longtime residents and millennials, they are a little
33:30
bit more interested in having a big house, but still not that interested in having
33:35
a big house and broken down by geography. you can see that there is not,
33:41
this is a value for millennials pretty much anywhere in the three-county region. This is
33:47
a slide that asks about being a renter, whether you would do that if you
33:53
could stay close to the center of the city, or would you really rather own
33:58
a home even if it meant you had to drive a good distance to get
34:04
into the city. And you can see that there's a pretty interesting split
34:10
with the long-time millennials being much more disposed to wanting to have that
34:16
home and deal with the driving in. And the newcomers, even the older
34:22
newcomers, it's worth saying, being much more interested in staying within the center
34:28
city and even if that meant renting. Rent control.
34:33
was something we asked about and given the concern for affordability, there was quite
34:39
a bit of support that we learned about. I actually asked the pollster about
34:45
the east side feelings of millennials and there was actually a little bit less
34:51
interest among folks from the east side of the county. But nonetheless, it's a
34:57
pretty striking finding that there is such a high degree of interest rent
35:03
control. Values around housing, we were curious as to if you had to stack
35:09
up these four attributes of new housing, what would you say, Mr. and Ms.
35:14
Millennial? Maybe ponder that yourself for a second. Here's what they told us. Affordability,
35:20
maybe unsurprisingly, that most practical of things. Topmost, but then not displacing current residents
35:26
being a very important value. Going back to what we know about millennials and
35:31
their concern for RACIAL JUSTICE AND LIVING IN A DIVERSE SORT OF
35:37
SETTING. THIS WAS SOMETHING THAT THEY RANKED VERY HIGH. FIT WITH THE NEIGHBORHOOD AND
35:43
BEAUTY FOLLOWING UP ON THAT. MICHAEL, I'M GOING TO ASK YOU TO MOVE TO
35:49
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT. YES. AND IT WOULD BE HELPFUL, I THINK, IF YOU COULD just describe
35:55
in broad general terms the rest of your slide deck. I'd like to
36:01
leave a little bit of time for questions if you would. So if
36:07
you could wrap your portion up in five minutes or less, I think
36:13
that would provide an opportunity for questions. Yeah, I don't even think
36:19
I need five minutes actually for this last section. I notice there's a lot of
36:25
data which we'll have an opportunity to look at. Yeah, you can digest that offline,
36:31
great. So turning now to millennials and dealing with government and playing a part in
36:37
civil society, we asked questions about what do you feel like you can have influence?
36:43
Is it on the federal government? answer, no, not so much. But locally,
36:49
very much so. There's a strong sense that this is a place where, yeah,
36:54
I can get active and my voice can be heard. I would imagine that
37:00
this may be an intensifying feeling given the election. We went into questions about
37:06
just involvement with respect to giving and volunteering with nonprofits in the
37:12
community and found that there's a very high degree of philanthropic engagement that
37:18
is quite comparable to the adult population in general. And with respect to
37:24
giving and volunteering and where that gets directed, we found that there is
37:30
a very broad range of interests and this too stacks up and looks
37:36
like the broad adult population pretty closely. So that same sort of range
37:42
of of concerns and ways of giving back. I think I'll skip that. Let me
37:47
just wrap up on this slide that recaps what Jean said at the very top.
37:53
So this is what we found in the 2015 opinion research in terms of general
37:58
sentiment around direction of the community and growth and concerns. As Jean said, there's a
38:03
strong sense that this is a great place to live with the communities on the
38:09
right track. We found that as well with our millennials. What we like is
38:14
the beauty and the nature of our communities. That is strongly echoed again with
38:20
what the millennials have told us. What we don't like: traffic and affordability. Unaffordability
38:26
big time for the millennials. Traffic not so much a concern. Maybe the thing
38:31
to say next is yet. Maybe it will become more of a concern as
38:37
they move into later life stages. Definitely a desire to keep growth in
38:43
our cities and not sprawl out. That's something we found both with the
38:49
broad adult population and the millennials. And with respect to growth, clearly that's
38:55
going to take attention with respect to a well-articulated vision and a great
39:00
execution of plans that everybody understands and subscribes to. I think we can
39:06
say that's going to apply to our millennial population. So, summing it
39:12
up, we feel like our millennial population, including millennials who are new
39:18
arrivals here, are very much folks that we can relate to and
39:23
folks who share the kinds of value orientation that folks in general
39:29
have. And we look forward to welcoming them into our cause and
39:35
into the greater cause of sustainability for the community. Great. A lot of
39:41
information in a relatively short period of time. Are there questions of Michael?
39:47
Appreciate the fact that we have the slides. There's a lot more detailed information here
39:53
for those that want to delve into that. And this provides a pretty interesting picture
39:59
of a segment of our population. And so we appreciate you coming this evening, Jean.
40:05
Thank you very, very much for coming. And with that, we will now move to
40:11
audience comments.
40:21
Guidelines for public participation, citizen comments are an important part of the public process. We
40:26
take them seriously and factor them into the decisions we make. Anyone from the public
40:32
who wishes to comment will have the opportunity to do so. Please direct your comments
40:37
to the whole council and not individuals. This is not a question and answer session.
40:42
When recognized, please move to the lectern. State your name, address, and any relationship to
40:47
the city. Limit your comments to five minutes. If you have written comments, submit those
40:52
to the clerk. A visual timer has been placed on the lectern. When it turns
40:56
yellow, you're within the last minute of your comment period. If you use the full
41:01
five minutes, the timer will sound to indicate the end of your allotted time. Personal
41:06
attacks, obscene language, derogatory remarks, and disruptive behavior will not be permitted. Again, citizen comments,
41:12
written and verbal, are an important aspect of the public process. We take them seriously,
41:17
and we thank members of the public for taking the time to address us during
41:23
our meetings. And with that, I would ask if anyone has signed up to speak.
41:29
Yes, Mark Bloom? And then I would
41:34
ask also that someone turn off
41:40
the slide there. Good evening. My
41:45
name is Mark Bloom. I live
41:51
at 19222 Southeast May Valley Road.
41:56
I have lived on the May
42:02
Valley Road since 1970 for 40
42:07
years, and now I am retired.
42:13
My concern is... Now that you have
42:18
stopped the commercial trucks from coming through Issaquah, you have
42:24
created a truck noise that is unbearable on the May
42:30
Valley Road. There is literally one dump truck going by
42:35
every minute, coming and going. Some dump trucks are very
42:41
noisy. I can sit in my lunch room and eat
42:47
my lunch, and I actually vibrate. in my chair
42:52
because of the trucks. 400 plus trucks every day. 400 gallons
42:58
of diesel every day burned on the May Valley Road. The
43:04
trucks use their Jake brakes. I can hear them miles away.
43:09
I'm an outdoors person. I've always been an outdoors person. And
43:15
I just, you know, I don't know what's going to happen
43:21
to the May Valley Road. Like I say, it's very unbearable
43:27
to me. I was hoping to retire, live there, and be, you know, because May
43:33
Valley Road is a beautiful area. It always has been. And the road itself is
43:39
way too narrow for the trucks. One of these days, one of those trucks is
43:44
going to end up in the ditch if they don't run over a bicycle person.
43:50
The other day, I came out and turned to go down towards Highway 900 on
43:56
the May Valley Road. And the two bicyclers just came out on
44:02
the road. There's not enough room. I stopped. And sure enough, here comes
44:08
a dump truck. If I hadn't have stopped and slowed way down, I
44:14
don't know what would have happened. But people are really, I don't know
44:20
how other people feel about that area. I can't imagine that there aren't
44:26
more people here. And, yeah. You know, I don't know
44:32
if the trucks coming from Seattle area or Bellevue or something, and I know
44:38
405 is a pretty bad corridor, but if they could take 405 to Highway
44:44
169, because you've got already a lot of trucks on 169, and I don't
44:50
know what quarry they're going to. I mean, I haven't literally followed them to
44:56
see where they're going, so... Anyway, I need some ideas. I don't know
45:02
what's going to happen. If you can slow down the speed limit on the May
45:07
Valley Road to 25, trucks go by there, they're doing 50 miles an hour. And
45:13
when they come by you, you can't hear yourself think. And one of these days,
45:19
something's going to happen. I don't know if you can fill in the rumble strips
45:25
because... They're so wide, they have to ride almost on the rumble strips. And then
45:30
when they go by, they hit the rumble strips. And their tires are noisy. So
45:35
I don't know if that's a possibility. I know over in the Squim area, if
45:40
they go by a residential area, they have actually filled in the rumble strips. And
45:45
then the rumble strips go on. I know it's a traffic-- for people that drive
45:50
that can't stay on the road, we have to protect them. Anyway, those
45:56
are my concerns. I don't know where I go
46:02
from here, but I want to thank you all
46:07
for listening to me. Mark, thank you very, very
46:13
much. Next is Robin Kelly. Robin Kelly, 445 Mountain
46:19
Park Boulevard, Southwest, Issaquah. Mayor and council members, the
46:24
Sister City Commission takes great pride in our work,
46:30
sharing our community, our citizens and our culture with two unique
46:36
cities located halfway around the world, Sundal, Norway, and Chefchaouen, Morocco. We've
46:41
shared elected officials, educators, students, business people, and artists. Those exchanges increasing our exposure and
46:47
our understanding of two very different governments and people with those different cultures and religions
46:53
finding we are still more alike than different and we are all richer for it.
46:59
So thank you for your support for those efforts. On behalf of the commission and
47:05
myself, we appreciate all that you do for us. Changing hats.
47:11
Robin Kelly, Executive Director at FISH, Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery. I apologize
47:17
when you reviewed nonprofit funding. I became ill that evening and wasn't able to
47:23
make my presentation. So without slides, I would just like to... Thank you for
47:28
your support of all nonprofits in Issaquah. I'm new at the Friends of the Issaquah
47:34
Salmon Hatchery. I've found it to be a very lively, invigorating center of activity in
47:40
Issaquah. And so your support was asked to help bridge a gap bringing on a
47:45
full-time executive director. They'd only had a part-time person before. With that comes a
47:51
lot of new opportunities and activities that I'm looking forward to being able
47:57
to research and bring to fruition. So thank you for your consideration of
48:03
that funding. Thank you, Robin. Christy Gerard, excuse me. Good evening, council members
48:09
and Mayor Butler. I am Christy Gerard. I'm the executive director at Issaquah
48:15
Highlands Council. I live at 2086 Northeast Noble Street in Issaquah. And
48:21
I just wanted to thank you in advance as well for considering
48:26
Esquire Highlands Council's grant application for nonprofits to improve the acoustics in
48:32
Blakely Hall as a community center by installing sound baffling panels. All
48:38
of you have attended meetings and events at Blakely Hall and already
48:43
clearly understand the acoustical challenges that we have in our very beautiful
48:49
facility. Just this year, we've hosted the city of Issaquah over 10 times for various
48:55
community events and meetings. And your funding support for this sound baffling project will ensure
49:00
that Blakely Hall is a valued community resource for many years to come. And I
49:06
just want to say thank you very much in advance for considering we are very
49:12
grateful to still be in the running. Thank you. - Thank you, Christy. - No
49:17
one further has signed up to speak? Is there anyone in?
49:23
Mr. Kapler. Dave? Good evening. David Kapler, 255 Southeast
49:29
Andrews Street. Affordability is definitely an issue we're facing.
49:34
And if a developer has 10 lots or ground
49:40
that can be into 10 lots, they can build
49:45
10 mansions or 10 two bedroom, one bath homes. Obviously in
49:51
this market, they're gonna choose the mansions. Perhaps we need to be looking at
49:57
some of our residential zonings and looking at how many square feet of usable
50:03
plus garages they can do on that property and get more units
50:09
and not so many of these very large homes that
50:14
supply, that take in a very small portion of the
50:20
population. Just a thought on that topic. Thank you. Thank
50:25
you. Is there anyone else? Mary. Catherine, you're after Mary.
50:31
My name is Mary Lynch and I reside at 2690
50:37
Northwest Oakcrest Drive, Issaquah, Washington. And I just want to thank the City Council
50:43
for taking most of the day on Saturday to go over the budget and I
50:48
think take a pretty positive step on getting control of spending and moving forward in
50:53
the right direction. And I want to thank you and applaud you for that. If
50:57
the public has not watched it, I would encourage you to go back and watch
51:02
it and see what's happening. So I just want to thank you on that. I
51:08
also want to just invite you on the 11th of January to the Northwest Newport
51:13
Way community meeting where we will engage again hopefully with some of the city staff
51:18
and officials on what's happening out there and trying to get a vision for what's
51:23
going to happen on Newport Way. And that will be on the 11th of January
51:28
at the King County Library Center because unfortunately Most of us HOAs out there
51:34
do not have a Blakely Hall to be able to meet.
51:40
So that's one of the few meeting places where we can
51:46
meet. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Elizabeth? I'm Elizabeth Mopin from
51:52
100 Big Bear Place Northwest in Issaquah. Been here quite a
51:57
number of years. I would like to address the question of
52:03
the trucks. And I know all of us have
52:09
concerns about the annoyance of the noise and the traffic, but
52:15
my concern is what they're hauling. I've gotten the impression that
52:21
we have a lot of truck traffic that's taking peat out
52:27
of Issaquah and bringing in fill. Peat is a sponge. Peat
52:33
absorbs a lot of the water. If we're taking away
52:38
a lot of the peat and filling in with
52:44
less absorbent material, we are setting ourselves up for
52:50
a lot of flooding. I just hope that somehow
52:56
as you're approving new development, you will take into
53:01
consideration that that peat is a resource that has
53:07
been saving us from a lot of flooding and it
53:13
will be a considerable economic damage to the community to continue
53:19
to haul away the peat thank you thank you Elizabeth is
53:25
there anyone else in the audience desiring to speak please
53:38
Hi, my name is Steve Pereira. I live at 170 Northeast Dogwood Street for about
53:43
nine years now. Sadly, I can no longer identify with the millennial trend, so it
53:47
was good to see all that information. I do like some of the things that
53:52
the squad does that are kind of community and average-based, so I maybe with that
53:56
agree with the millennial trend. So I want to see those things that the squad
54:01
does that reach out to community and involve community as continuing. The thing, though, that
54:06
I came to talk about was the... budget proposal that talks about borrowing $3 million
54:12
from one fund to another fund. That kind of concerns me in that if we
54:16
borrow it from the fund, it means at some point we're going to repay that
54:21
fund or it's just debt or borrowing that we have to repay. I think maybe
54:25
there's even some finer tuning of the budget that could be done. I don't have
54:30
a pair of magical scissors on what I would cut. I tend to continue looking
54:34
at the civil metal and bridge pedestrian is a cost that probably
54:40
should go on the chopping block that we can't afford. I think it's more important
54:45
we preserve the space than we have a big bridge on it that's not needed
54:50
or not as value added to the things that could add value to Issaquah. So
54:56
that's my input. Thank you. - Thank you, Steve. Anyone else in the audience desiring
55:01
to speak this evening? Anyone else? Third and final call, anyone else desiring to speak?
55:06
With that, audience comments are closed and we'll now move to committee and regional
55:12
reports beginning with Councilmember Patis. thank you mr mayor no report this evening that's a
55:18
member ramos uh yes i want to report on the regional transit committee um since
55:23
i missed the last meeting we met twice in november on the 10th and the
55:27
16th we have a call set up for tomorrow the 6th and another meeting for
55:32
the 14th which will be at king county council chambers as usual i'm still working
55:36
on metro connects that long range plan we're just diving really deep into it one
55:41
of the big issues um is King County passed their budget and in that budget
55:46
they allotted an increase of 300,000 service hours to Metro Transit. Now the plan says
55:52
that we're 600,000 hours short of where we should be, so 300,000 hours is 50%
55:57
which is a big chunk in a very short period of time. One of the
56:02
big things we're working on in that is if we're getting half of that service,
56:07
where is that service going to go? So SCA, the smaller cities all outside of
56:11
Seattle are very concerned of where that goes. And so a lot of this detail
56:15
is trying to figure out how that gets divvied up because we get half of
56:19
it now maybe. And that'll probably start rolling the latter half of 2017 with the
56:23
new fall schedule. And then when will it be when we get the other half?
56:27
It may be quite a while. So that's a lot of the nip and tucking
56:31
back and forth on trying to make sure we have a good handle on how
56:35
that's expanded. Eastside Transportation Partnership. There was a conference
56:41
last Friday on transportation technology, which was great. It dealt with a lot of the
56:46
new stuff coming in, everything from autonomous cars and a lot of the fancy technology
56:51
stuff, which was fun because it really helped look at different ways of what we
56:55
talk about often the first mile, last mile connection to get transit going. And so
57:00
there's a lot of new ideas on that, on how those things may work. The
57:05
other thing is finding out how much they already know and how much our cars
57:09
are actually talking to the internet as we go and don't even know that understanding
57:13
that some of the traffic reports are just they're coming because our cars are telling
57:18
them that we're going 10 miles an hour on 405 and so the other thousand
57:22
cars around us and that's being reported back and forth and that's how they're getting
57:26
traffic reports no longer a helicopter flying overhead and so a lot of things those
57:30
cars are really talking a lot and they're very advanced now to pay attention to
57:34
that that's what's coming the conference and then we have an ETP meeting this Friday.
57:39
I will be attending and also later on I'll do a little more within good
57:44
of the order but in that meeting this Friday is the legislative agenda for the
57:48
Eastside Transportation Partnership. So I sent it out to everybody just the other day. Take
57:52
a look at that and then go to the order. You can give me some
57:56
comments or anything if you have any concerns on that. Hopefully Friday we'll be able
58:01
to adopt that from the Eastside Transportation Partnership because the legislative agenda. And that's the
58:06
end of my report. Thank you. Council Member Winterson. Thank you. Not much to report.
58:11
There is a, for Eastside Fire and Rescue Board of Directors, our next meeting is
58:17
this Thursday, December 8th. The Council Infrastructure Committee hasn't met either since our last council
58:22
meeting. That next meeting is this Thursday, December, next Thursday, December 15th. and there was
58:28
no meeting of the puget town regional council growth management policy board in december so
58:33
if nothing to report there either that concludes my non-report thank you uh council member
58:39
mars thank you mr mayor uh the isaac city council services and safety committee will
58:44
be meeting next tuesday december 13th at 6 30 in the eel room and then
58:49
the agenda is still tbd on that Sound Cities Association Public Issues Committee has decided
58:55
not to meet in December. So that meeting will be in January. King County Growth
59:00
Management Planning Council, GMPC, is also meeting on Tuesday, December 13th, a little bit earlier
59:04
in the day at 4 o'clock in PSRC Chambers. And it will be the annual
59:09
panel on housing issues and affordable housing. then as I've mentioned the regional e911
59:15
strategic plan scoping leadership group meeting in January when hopefully we will
59:21
have a draft of the governance model for the e911 system next
59:27
generation this concludes my report you councilmember barber no report this evening
59:32
so member Polly mr. mayor City Council Land and Shore Committee met
59:38
on December 1st. We had too much on our agenda that night. The first
59:44
item was a moratorium update. It was just some general information and a review
59:50
of the work plan schedule again. The next item was AB7196. That is a
59:56
development agreement, a draft development agreement for Silverado. It is A request
1:00:02
to allow cluster housing on a property on SR 900 south of
1:00:08
90 and to allow for 20 homes. There was a request within
1:00:13
the draft language to provide an exemption from the moratorium so that the platting and
1:00:19
the building could continue during the moratorium. That did not get positive comments from the
1:00:24
committee members and likely will show up as a strikeout in the development agreement when
1:00:30
you see it. And there is some additional work that's being done on trail easement
1:00:36
language and then it should be ready to come to council. Next item
1:00:41
was AB7219, a proposal to enter into a development agreement for the Gilman Lofts property.
1:00:47
This property is on Newport Way. There's some building going on there right now for
1:00:53
a storage facility. This has to do with a building that would be constructed in
1:00:59
front of it. It's adjacent to the regional trail. It's coming back to the January
1:01:05
5th land and shore. And it also will have some draft language in there requesting
1:01:11
an exemption to the moratorium. So this project is in the central Issaquah area. It
1:01:16
would propose to provide some additional improvements to the Three Tails Crossing area, which is
1:01:22
one that's on our road project list right now. There were concerns expressed at
1:01:27
the meeting over staff's capacity to negotiate development agreements for the Central Issaquah area while
1:01:33
still reviewing design standards and working on moratorium work plan issues. But the discussion was
1:01:39
to have staff work with the developer and come back in January and talk with
1:01:45
us again. Next item was AB7215. It's the ninth major amendment
1:01:51
to the Issaquah Highlands two-party development agreement. Polygon Northwest is requesting a major modification
1:01:57
for a transfer of development rights. This Polygon owns the property next to Shelter
1:02:03
Holdings in Issaquah Highlands. It's the old Microsoft property. They have an assignment or
1:02:09
they have A number of housing residential units they are allowed to build on that
1:02:14
site and they are going to propose purchasing 100 additional units through the Transfer of
1:02:19
Development Rights Program. This would increase the number of units that could be built on
1:02:24
the site. A SEPA review would still be completed to ensure that the current infrastructure
1:02:29
in the Highlands can support the additional units. Of the 100 units that would be
1:02:34
added, staff is recommending that 30% or 30 be constructed as affordable. This is in
1:02:40
line with the original vision and requirements of the Issaquah Highlands Development Agreement. Polygon is
1:02:46
going to propose to construct those units on a city-owned parcel to the north of
1:02:51
the commercial zone in the Highlands. The committee did not support moving the units away
1:02:57
from the transit center. This amendment though is still under development and will
1:03:03
be coming back to Land and Shore. Next item, AB7001, amendments to wetland
1:03:08
rating system was pulled from the agenda and not discussed that evening and
1:03:14
that left four minutes to do AB7270 which is all of the amendments
1:03:20
to the comprehensive plan for 2016. So we did not finish our homework. We did
1:03:25
not get it done. Staff is going to be coming back to the meeting in
1:03:30
January, but potentially two meetings to break it out. It's a really large package of
1:03:34
amendments. So we didn't get very far with that. That's the end of my report.
1:03:39
Thank you. Council President Goodman. No report. Thank you. For the Mayor's report, there will
1:03:45
be an executive session this evening for the purpose of discussing property acquisition
1:03:51
per RCW 42.30.110, per N1, per NB. The item is expected to take
1:03:56
approximately 20 minutes. No action is anticipated to follow in open session.
1:04:03
Just to let you know that city staff has met several times
1:04:08
with Issaquah Valley senior staff and board members to discuss transition of
1:04:14
senior services operations. These meetings will continue over the coming weeks. One
1:04:20
item that will be addressed is the assessment and confirmation of what
1:04:26
property items, furniture, supplies, equipment, and vehicles will remain. The initial
1:04:32
Senior Center Program schedule is being finalized this week. A new Senior Center
1:04:38
Program and Service Guide is being produced and will be ready for circulation
1:04:43
next week. As I've mentioned before, our staff is hard at work. Several
1:04:49
were over for the Tuesday meal and The acting
1:04:54
director from Parks and Rec, Katie, was
1:05:00
there and introduced, and there will be
1:05:06
two other opportunities this month to meet
1:05:12
new staff and to gather information about
1:05:17
what Where
1:05:23
was I? Anyway, we're continuing to meet. Thank you, Tish.
1:05:29
I want to correct something that I said earlier, that
1:05:35
no action would be taken. Action is anticipated and will
1:05:41
be taken in open session following our executive session.
1:05:46
As you know, or most people, well, you do know that November
1:05:52
22nd, the city hosted a regional transportation summit. A lot of different
1:05:58
people attended, both elected and not. The total attendance was about 130
1:06:04
to 150. What you might not know, the summit is now available
1:06:10
to watch via Zoom. YouTube channel. Written
1:06:16
comments submitted from audience members are also available on our
1:06:21
website. Next steps include bringing technical staff together from each city
1:06:27
in King County in early 2017 to identify issues and potential
1:06:33
solutions. And we are in the process now of trying to
1:06:38
identify smaller coalitions of agencies and jurisdictions to work on certain
1:06:44
corridors. An example of that would be the Esquahoma Road as
1:06:50
a corridor. The city recently received the latest report from
1:06:56
our consultant, Geotech, concerning PFCs in our water system. This report includes updated
1:07:02
data and analysis. A representative from Geotech will present the findings of this
1:07:08
report and answer questions during the city council's December 19th meeting.
1:07:14
Moving forward the City of Issaquah will continue to partner with both
1:07:20
Sammamish Plateau Water and Eastside Fire and Rescue on next steps including
1:07:25
a memorandum of agreement. The design for the Southeast 62nd Street
1:07:31
Extension project is complete and has been advertised for construction bids.
1:07:37
To date, 12 general contractors have picked up plans. The bid
1:07:43
opening is scheduled for December the 20th.
1:07:49
With a certain amount of sadness that I announced that November 13th, Ed
1:07:55
Swiflett Sr. passed away at the age of 88. Ed was a long
1:08:01
time Issaquah resident and active in the Issaquah community. Ed served on the
1:08:06
Issaquah City Council from 1966 to 1973 and the Civil Services Commission for
1:08:12
more than 30 years. He was a life member of Kiwanis and
1:08:18
served on the Issaquah Food Bank Board. He also volunteered as
1:08:24
a reading aid in Issaquah Elementary Schools for nearly a decade.
1:08:29
Just for the viewing public's interest and your interest, ridership continues
1:08:35
to grow on Sound Transit Express Route 554, which is the
1:08:41
route that goes from Issaquah into Seattle. It
1:08:46
increased 12% from the third quarter in 2015 to
1:08:52
the same period in 2016 with a year-to-date ridership
1:08:58
of a little less than 900,000 riders. That was
1:09:04
the fastest-growing route of all of the Sound Transit
1:09:10
routes. express routes and was highlighted in their
1:09:16
quarterly report. Issaquah Police Department, I'm happy to report,
1:09:21
received official re-accreditation last month at the Washington Association
1:09:27
of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs Conference. The purpose of accreditation
1:09:32
is to professionalize the law enforcement industry by providing
1:09:38
a review of process for agencies to be certified
1:09:44
as operating under industry best practices and standards. This
1:09:49
is an achievement that only 25% of police agencies in
1:09:55
Washington have obtained and is a testament to the professionalism
1:10:01
of our Issaquah Police Department employees. And I
1:10:06
attended a Lake Sammamish State Park Stakeholders Group meeting
1:10:12
on November 29th along with 25 other interested attendees
1:10:18
representing 16 different groups. Five work groups were formed
1:10:23
that will focus on trails, athletic fields, water trails,
1:10:29
EIS feasibility, and will be helped by the Washington
1:10:35
State Parks personnel. And with that, that concludes my report and
1:10:41
we'll now move to the consent calendar. Have the accounts payable
1:10:47
in payroll for December 5th, 2016 been reviewed? They have. They
1:10:52
have. Thank you. I would ask the clerk to read into
1:10:58
the record the consent calendar. The consent calendar was distributed to Council
1:11:04
in advance for study. If authorized, Council action will occur by single motion regarding the
1:11:09
following items. Item A seeks approval of the accounts, payables, and payroll of December 5th.
1:11:14
Items B through E seeks approval of the minutes of the committee work session of
1:11:20
November 14th, the regular meeting of November 21st, and the special meetings of November 22nd
1:11:25
and 28th. Item F, AB 7183, Water Treatment Long-Term Options
1:11:30
Study, seeks to postpone authorization. Item G, AB 7230, 2016 Budget
1:11:36
Amendments, has been or will be moved to regular business. Item
1:11:42
H, AB 7269, First Amendment to South Cove Greenwood Point Assumption
1:11:48
Interlocal Agreement with Bellevue, seeks authorization. This concludes the reading. Thank
1:11:54
you. There's been a request to move Agenda
1:12:00
Bill 7230 to 2016, budget amendments down to regular
1:12:05
business. That will become item 9D. With that amendment
1:12:11
-- I have a question first. Okay. The AB
1:12:16
7230 moving down to 9D, is it -- would
1:12:21
it make more sense to have it as an
1:12:27
8B because it's a budget?
1:12:36
perhaps would. We can put it, why don't we put
1:12:41
that under, make that 8B and have that in conjunction
1:12:47
with the public hearing and the discussion following. Great, thanks.
1:12:52
Thank you. Council President Goodman. Thank
1:12:58
you. And with that, I would move to adopt the consent
1:13:04
calendar as presented as amended. Second. Moved and seconded. All those
1:13:10
in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, that carries
1:13:15
unanimously. Moving now to our continuation of our public hearing on
1:13:21
the 2017 budget. brief presentation
1:13:27
by our finance director and
1:13:32
who's pulling that up now.
1:13:37
Jennifer Olson, our finance director
1:13:42
for a staff report. Thank
1:13:47
you Mayor Butler, City Council
1:13:52
members. Tonight's agenda item is
1:13:57
a public hearing continuation from
1:14:02
the November 21st public hearing.
1:14:08
I'm just going to do a very brief overview of the 2017 budget
1:14:14
process. And then there is a recommendation to, again, continue the public hearing
1:14:20
after taking public testimony to the December 19th city council meeting. So the
1:14:26
2017 budget has been developed and is being discussed. The budget overview essentially
1:14:32
has been investing capital, talking about capital investments, the operating impacts that are
1:14:38
proposed for a transitioning community. The budget includes the current level of
1:14:43
services to be maintained while important challenges are being addressed. The budget
1:14:49
is published at issaquahwashington.gov. 2017 budget for those who want to see
1:14:55
the recommended budget. The total proposed funds for all sources
1:15:00
is $126,513,000. There is a breakout of the types of revenues that
1:15:06
are anticipated for 2017 with the largest portion coming from charges for
1:15:12
services, 29% of all sources coming from taxes, and then a variety
1:15:18
of sources coming from licenses, permits, inter-fund transfers, and intergovernmental or shared
1:15:24
revenues. On the spending side, there is
1:15:30
a proposed total appropriations of $133,651,000. The biggest largest category
1:15:36
would be the general fund at 33% of those appropriations
1:15:42
and then utility operations being second with regards to enterprise
1:15:48
funds. The City Council deliberated the 2017 proposed
1:15:53
budget during the December 3rd, the Saturday workshop. The final deliberations list of budgetary cuts
1:15:59
and additional proposed allocations is being prepared and had been distributed to the City Council
1:16:05
prior to the meeting for your review. So with that, I
1:16:11
will end my very brief presentation and the agenda bill identifies an
1:16:17
update of a proposal to continue the public hearing to the December
1:16:22
19th meeting. Thank you, Jen. Are there questions of Jen before we
1:16:28
open the public hearing? With that, Just a
1:16:34
reminder for those desiring to testify, the same rules that
1:16:40
I outlined under audience comments a while ago still apply.
1:16:45
And with that, I'll open the public hearing at 8:18
1:16:51
and ask, has anyone signed up to speak? Yes. Melissa
1:16:57
King?
1:17:03
Melissa, welcome. Hi, thank you so much. And thank you City Council of Issaquah for
1:17:09
hearing me and Mayor Fred Butler. I'm here tonight for two reasons. First and foremost,
1:17:14
to thank all of you for funding Athletes for Kids for the last eight years.
1:17:19
We have been serving the Issaquah community since we began our program 15 years
1:17:25
ago. And in 2005, we opened the third Athletes for Kids chapter following Skyline
1:17:31
and Eastlake at Issaquah High School. Since that time, we have provided services to
1:17:36
over 250 Issaquah youth, both mentors and children who have special needs and disabilities.
1:17:45
Our services benefit children who are in first through ninth grades who have physical, emotional,
1:17:50
and learning disabilities of all kinds. These children often feel isolated and lonely, which leads
1:17:55
to all sorts of mental and behavioral issues. Our services also benefit high school athletes.
1:18:00
We see high schoolers who are so stressed and anxious and sometimes at the point
1:18:06
of breaking and our program has proven to a lot of these high school mentors
1:18:12
that by serving another human being and impacting their life, it gives them such fulfillment.
1:18:18
It helps them gain perspective on the world, When they begin to mentor a child,
1:18:23
they see the impact they are having on their life and it just gives them
1:18:28
such joy and gratification and an overall sense of well-being that propels them to persevere
1:18:32
with all of their other commitments. We've had kids that are in IB programs, AP
1:18:37
programs that come to us at first and think, "I don't know if I have
1:18:42
enough time." But they tend to make that hour and a half every single week
1:18:46
because it allows them to disengage from all of their stresses and pressures and allows
1:18:51
them to be a kid again. And again, by working with a child that has
1:18:55
a disability, it opens their minds to different ways of thinking. So most of our
1:19:01
mentors when they graduate I would say 95% have had a very positive effect and
1:19:05
just recently I received a LinkedIn request from a mentor who's at Chapman University who
1:19:10
wants to start a mentoring program like ours at his college. I checked my text
1:19:15
right before I came. I have a high schooler at Skyline who just wanted to
1:19:19
pick my brain about starting a program for seniors and upperclassmen to mentor incoming freshmen
1:19:24
and sophomores and that's for kids of all abilities. Our program also touches those families
1:19:29
who have children with special needs as well as community members. A lot of these
1:19:34
families are stressed, exhausted from parenting a child with special needs and we provide them
1:19:40
with 90 minutes of respite every single week. Over the last
1:19:46
11 years, Athletes for Kids Issaquah mentors have recorded over 14,000 hours of time
1:19:51
spent. When I was writing these things, I thought of the song from Rent,
1:19:57
565,600 minutes or whatever I was going to sing for you, and I thought
1:20:03
better. But that translates to about 840,000 minutes or moments. when you think about
1:20:08
it, those are moments of pure joy and love that it's coming from the hearts
1:20:14
of these mentors and also is impacting their lives. It improves the child's self-esteem and
1:20:20
social skills. It improves their attitude towards school, and it also increases their happiness and
1:20:26
sense of well-being. It gives them hope for life through the power of having someone
1:20:32
there for them despite their disability, despite their isolation despite their differences and for
1:20:38
many these first experiences for these buddies is having a friend. So it's sometimes oftentimes
1:20:44
their first time having a friendship. This also may sound a little dramatic but in
1:20:49
the last two years since I've become the executive director I have also seen our
1:20:55
mentorships save lives. I've had two cases where parents have told us that their seven-year-old
1:21:01
and 11-year-old were so depressed that they didn't want to live. Following being matched
1:21:06
with a mentor, their overall life and desire to continue on has
1:21:12
improved. So we're focusing and we're helping in the mental health realm
1:21:18
as well. We applied for supportive relationships, and I think over the
1:21:23
last 11 years, we have done a great job of doing that.
1:21:30
With your support, we've been growing our program substantially and have opened new chapters and
1:21:36
we've also added new programs, one of which is we try to have a community
1:21:41
building event for mentors to do with their buddies every month. For the longest time,
1:21:48
Mentors go to the buddies house. It's kind of siloed. It's isolated. But in the
1:21:53
summer of 2015, we had a non-paid intern who put together some programs where we
1:21:59
saw mentors meeting other mentors. In fact, Paul Winterstein's daughter Emily was a mentor in
1:22:04
our program going to Oregon State. She showed up at an event wearing her sweatshirt.
1:22:10
close and was able to talk with a younger mentor about the possibility of attending
1:22:15
that he actually chose you a vote which as a dog as a husky that
1:22:21
was disappointing so I am just asking you to please reconsider the funding for athletes
1:22:27
for kids because the impact of five thousand dollars on a small nonprofit like ours
1:22:32
is huge and it's gonna take a lot to make that deficit
1:22:38
up. So thank you. - Thank you, Melissa. - No one further
1:22:44
has signed up to speak. - Is there anyone else desiring to
1:22:49
speak? Anyone else desiring to speak? Third and final call. Seeing no
1:22:55
one, then the public hearing is closed at, excuse me. - Do
1:23:01
I wanna continue it? Do we close it or continue it? -
1:23:07
No. I said closed. This iteration is closed at 8:25.
1:23:12
And Council Member Goodman. - Thank you. I would move
1:23:18
to continue the public hearing to December 19th, 2016 for
1:23:24
final budget adoption. - Second. - Moved and seconded. Any
1:23:30
discussion? Seeing none, oh. - So I have a question
1:23:35
about the budget process. If we, I don't want to
1:23:41
entertain any additional information coming out of our work session on Sunday.
1:23:47
How does that relate to this process? - I missed the one
1:23:53
on Sunday, sorry. - Saturday. - Did I say Sunday? I'm sorry,
1:23:58
Saturday. The budget session on Saturday. How would any discussion or review
1:24:04
like that fit into this context?
1:24:14
I'm dialing a friend right now. We have the formal hearing coming up
1:24:19
and the final budget adoption. We do have one more council meeting next
1:24:25
week, Monday. A work session. A work session. If there was anything that
1:24:31
the council would like to take up in advance of that, but it's
1:24:36
not a scheduled work session. But I guess we finalize the agenda on
1:24:42
Friday of each week. And then I'd like to ask for that meeting
1:24:48
that the city draw up information on I guess there's been some question about for
1:24:53
the amount of money that we authorized for the Central Park what that would actually
1:24:58
build if anything and so what I'd like to see is what can we build
1:25:03
with the money that we authorized if the answer is nothing what is the minimum
1:25:09
set of of money that would be required to do the baseline, which is the
1:25:14
two pads themselves drained with whatever minimal additional facilities. And I guess those two, for
1:25:20
me personally, those are the two options that I'd want to understand and have a
1:25:26
conversation about. If that's okay with Council leadership. - The December 12th work session right
1:25:32
now is scheduled to have three hours of DSD fee discussion, just as an FYI.
1:25:39
So that would need to be talked about. - I guess one thought that
1:25:45
I appreciate that you asked that process question, 'cause I was confused as well,
1:25:51
what we would do. I guess that if now that you brought up the
1:25:56
Central Park, the piece that I would add to that discussion is that that
1:26:02
set of improvements that was in the original budget included increased parking and lighting
1:26:08
because it's a capacity project. and for me I guess any sort of discussion of
1:26:13
what is going to be built should come with an operational discussion you don't build
1:26:17
you don't add lights then you don't have games at night that kind of thing
1:26:22
and so I kind of like to understand what we can actually how the park
1:26:27
actually functions if we build something less than what was in the original budget. That
1:26:32
may mean that we're not renting out to sports teams if we don't have lights
1:26:37
or we're not renting out to clubs and tournaments if we don't have parking spots
1:26:43
for them. I'd like to have that lens on the discussion as well. And we
1:26:48
can provide that information to the council prior to the meeting. Thank you. You're welcome.
1:26:54
Any additional discussion? All those in favor
1:26:59
of continuing the public hearing to the
1:27:05
December 19th City Council meeting, signify by
1:27:10
saying aye. - Aye. - Those opposed,
1:27:16
that carries unanimously. Moving now to agenda
1:27:22
bill 7230, 2016 budget amendments. Jen Olsen
1:27:27
for brief discussion of to put that one
1:27:33
in context please. Thank you Mayor. Agenda Bill
1:27:39
7-2-3-0 is a budget appropriation adjustment. This is for
1:27:45
the 2016 budget that was originally adopted in the
1:27:50
latter part of 2015. There is an exhibit A
1:27:56
that was updated and some information changed on that
1:28:02
particular exhibit.
1:28:07
The changes that were made to exhibit A of the ordinance were the
1:28:13
2016 beginning fund balance. That number was changed to reflect the audited financial
1:28:19
statement 2015 end balance, which automatically then rolls to the 2016 beginning fund
1:28:25
balance. So that was change number one. Change number two to
1:28:31
Exhibit A and to the information detail to the agenda bill
1:28:36
was the removal of a proposed allocation for a position that
1:28:42
was authorized in 2016 but is vacant. That's the Intergovernmental Relations
1:28:48
Manager position. That position for the budget amendments in
1:28:53
2016 was proposing to add 70,000 to the 2016
1:28:59
budget. However, based on the budget deliberations this Saturday
1:29:04
with that position, discussed as remaining vacant and not be
1:29:10
filled and no allocation for that position, then administration felt that
1:29:16
this expenditure for the budget adjustment would just need to be
1:29:22
removed. And so those were the two changes to Exhibit A
1:29:28
for the ordinance for your consideration. Are there questions of Jen?
1:29:35
Councilmember Winterstein. It's more of a process question. Thank
1:29:40
you, Jen. So what we have in that item
1:29:46
is an ordinance with whereas clauses. So are you
1:29:51
basically suggesting that we remove or alter those? So
1:29:56
we have to do that by formal action, I
1:30:02
assume, because the packet actually includes, like, you know,
1:30:07
language. Do we have to come up with these specific changes and
1:30:13
amend this packet before we adopt it, before we take action on it?
1:30:19
My understanding is that because a revised ordinance was provided to Council in
1:30:24
advance for review that we could designate the ordinance as revised, which includes
1:30:30
the changes that Jennifer spoke to. The revised version has removed those portions.
1:30:48
Yes, if you have the revised ordinance in front of you,
1:30:54
you can simply move the revised ordinance and approve it. And
1:31:00
that was provided to the council in advance. So that would
1:31:05
be the appropriate procedure rather than having to move the initial
1:31:11
ordinance and then make specific amendments to it. OK, thank you.
1:31:17
OK. So do we want to-- I actually want to make
1:31:22
some comments about the content. So-- I'll make a motion then.
1:31:28
All right. Correct me if I've got this wrong, but
1:31:34
I have moved to adopt revised ordinance number? 2789. Amending the
1:31:40
2016 budget adopted by ordinance number 2752, amended by ordinance number
1:31:46
2763, and ordinance number 2765, authorizing the finance director to make
1:31:52
the necessary adjustments and approving prior expenditures. Second. Moved and seconded.
1:31:58
Discussion? So, One of the whereases
1:32:03
that deals, if you just get an electronic copy of
1:32:09
the amended one, or even the original one, if you
1:32:14
just search on the word mitigation, it's the- On page
1:32:20
two. It's the one, two, three, fourth whereas. So when
1:32:26
I read this, I've been studying the mitigation fund a
1:32:31
bit, and it mentions the amount, but- it doesn't at all
1:32:37
ever mention um the purpose of that uh it just says it's going to the
1:32:43
park instruction file um and so um i just think then you know for house
1:32:48
cleaning and for clarity purposes when we we have language that describes that movement it
1:32:54
wasn't it was wasn't exactly clear to me on what that would be for i
1:32:59
guess i could compare numbers elsewhere in the ordinance But I
1:33:05
sent an email to Jen earlier today
1:33:10
and I think she clarified that more
1:33:16
recently that that transfer of 305,246 was
1:33:21
related to construction of Confluence Park. So
1:33:26
I just think that, and it didn't,
1:33:32
so, I just want to make sure everybody knows that. We talked about the mitigation
1:33:37
fund a bit on Saturday, not on Sunday. I missed that meeting as well. And
1:33:42
so that got my attention. I wanted to make sure that we weren't taking some
1:33:46
action now that maybe we were actually going to undo later. Jen clarified for me
1:33:51
it was all about the confluence parking. And when you look at other areas in
1:33:55
this ordinance, you can line up the numbers and maybe figure that out. I just
1:34:00
didn't want to leave it. to any ambiguity there and just make sure that everybody
1:34:05
knows. I guess we could change the language and just make sure everybody knows that
1:34:10
that has to do with Confluence Park and not Central Park. OK. Other questions or
1:34:16
discussion? Well, I just agree with that. And I followed it because the next whereas
1:34:22
dealt with Confluence Park and had the exact same total dollars in there. So I
1:34:27
had to make that assumption there, which I did. But it would be nice to
1:34:33
be a little clearer on that.
1:34:38
Other questions or discussion? Seeing none,
1:34:44
all those in favor of approving
1:34:49
resolution, our ordinance number 2789, amending
1:34:55
the 2016 budget as revised. No,
1:35:00
wait, it was adopt ordinance number
1:35:05
2789 as revised, amending the 2016
1:35:11
budget adopted by ordinance Number 2752 amended
1:35:17
by ordinance 2763 and ordinance number 2765, authorizing the
1:35:22
finance director to make the necessary adjustments and approving
1:35:28
prior expenditures. Signify by saying aye. - Aye. -
1:35:34
Opposed? That carries unanimously. Moving now
1:35:39
to regular business, Agenda
1:35:44
Bill 7253. This is
1:35:49
coming back from Services
1:35:54
and Safety with a
1:35:59
summary of all expenditures
1:36:03
for human services and
1:36:08
the community fund. Correct.
1:36:14
That has been been provided to council a week or so ago or. And it
1:36:20
is in fact in this packet. So it's the public can see it as well.
1:36:26
Perfect. So I guess I will, to kick this
1:36:31
conversation along, I will move to approve the Human Services
1:36:37
Grant recommendations at the increased funding level pursuant to the
1:36:43
adopted funding target of $371,500 and as recommended by the
1:36:48
Human Services Commission. Second. Moved and seconded. Discussion? So we had
1:36:54
this agenda bill and our last agenda bill at our last regular council meeting. And
1:36:59
I requested that we defer those two items, those two agenda bills to this meeting
1:37:05
specifically for the purpose of obtaining the information that we have on page 173 of
1:37:10
the packet and also in the next agenda bill as well, the spreadsheet is included.
1:37:16
And I asked for it for transparency reasons. And if you
1:37:22
take a look at the spreadsheet, it's now very transparent. It
1:37:27
shows that we have a total of 70-- if I counted
1:37:33
right-- 73 grants. and 10 organizations receiving money from more than one
1:37:39
source. And if you look at across the top, the sources are human services grants,
1:37:44
art fund, capacity grants, service contracts, Main Street, Main Street POD program. And there just
1:37:49
isn't any way for anyone to go through the budget or gather all these agenda
1:37:55
bills together and try to figure out who's getting what and from where. So I
1:38:00
would, first of all, thank you very much for providing the spreadsheet. And I would
1:38:05
request that this be included in the budget. So it is, nobody has to
1:38:11
go look forward to an agenda bill and I'm thrilled with it. - Thank
1:38:17
you. - Exactly what I wanted. - You're welcome. - So I, at the
1:38:22
risk of repeating myself from last council meeting, I've got a couple of things
1:38:28
that I'd like to say. First of all, I just really want to thank
1:38:34
the Human Services Commission and the city staff who worked on the grant
1:38:39
recommendations. It's a very in-depth, time-consuming process and there's a lot of thoughtful
1:38:45
deliberation that goes into looking at all of these grants. And I want
1:38:51
to say that I'm in full support of the identified funding targets, getting
1:38:56
the city to the goal of the $10 per capita. That's very important
1:39:02
with the additional allocation for homeless services. I wanted to point out
1:39:08
again that some of the larger agencies that are funding things regionally
1:39:13
are now using some targeted funding and that's leaving certain groups and
1:39:19
programs without funding for the first time this year and it really
1:39:24
is having an impact. I I know how difficult the deliberations can be
1:39:30
going through all of the grants and I'm in complete agreement with
1:39:36
the way the group, the commission went about this by setting goals
1:39:42
and having goal areas and what they've decided would be a good
1:39:48
funding recommendation and I'm in support of that. I do want
1:39:53
to bring up one thing and would love to hear back
1:39:59
from council members. There are a couple of programs and agencies
1:40:05
that in my review of this that are long-term grantee recipients from
1:40:11
the city of Issaquah and those are athletes for kids. We heard
1:40:17
from athletes for kids tonight and life enrichment options that were not
1:40:22
funded and I would like to discuss the potential possibility of putting
1:40:28
$10,000 in the budget to cover athletes for kids and life enrichment
1:40:34
options. I'd like
1:40:40
to actually, I guess, make a formal motion on that. Well, it
1:40:46
would be an amendment to the motion, I believe. There's a motion.
1:40:52
Amendment to the motion, excuse me. Correct. So I would like to
1:40:58
amend the motion to include $5,000 for both athletes for kids and
1:41:04
life enrichment options added to this. Second. Moved and seconded. Discussion on
1:41:10
the amendments. I
1:41:16
really appreciate you speaking to these issues because I don't, I've never sat on the
1:41:21
Human Services Commission and I don't sit on safety and services. But if you've gone
1:41:26
through an extensive process and you believe in the process, is it the painful outcome
1:41:32
of that very first year of the new process that somebody who has received funding
1:41:37
is really left in the lurch? And so this is an exception year, why we'd
1:41:43
be doing this? Well, I think that there are a few things going
1:41:49
on in terms of some of the targeted funding that's happening, but it is
1:41:54
a new process. Just taking a look through, those were two of the agencies
1:42:00
and groups that really stuck out to me as groups that have been funded through
1:42:06
the years by the City of Issaquah, and that's very tough for them to go
1:42:11
forward. So is this recommendation, I guess I look at both you and Bill at
1:42:17
the same time, is this recommendation to do this as an outlier for one year?
1:42:23
in that or is it an expectation that we may go
1:42:28
through the evaluation process every year and after the evaluation process
1:42:34
is done look at adding i think it's for this year
1:42:40
okay thanks other questions or discussion so do is anybody familiar
1:42:46
with um why both organizations life enrichment options or leo and
1:42:52
athletes for kids were not recommended for funding do we know
1:42:58
discussion or did you guys was did services and safety get to
1:43:03
um you have anything you can help us with understanding how this
1:43:09
what how the commission came to these conclusions
1:43:15
we did not ask why some recommendations were made and uh when
1:43:21
some organizations there was a administration recommendation in favor versus not in
1:43:27
favor we primarily looked at amounts for organizations that were recommended and
1:43:32
we also had the higher level conversation of how much money did
1:43:38
we want to uh on the On the previous one, actually, the amount of
1:43:44
money that we wanted to put in this one was different. But no, we did
1:43:49
not ask why some organizations were recommended for and others were not. Seems like that
1:43:54
would be a challenging conversation to have at a council committee level. There's a lot
1:43:59
of organizations, I think, didn't get funded, both organizations that had previously been funded and
1:44:04
organizations that hadn't previously been funded. so david fujimoto director of our
1:44:10
office of sustainability can speak to the uh to the process
1:44:16
and uh any information you have on those two organizations i
1:44:22
think would be helpful absolutely um thank you um so they
1:44:27
I think overall, as has been mentioned, there was a different approach in terms of
1:44:33
categorizing and grouping the proposals that were brought forward. That was actually to improve the
1:44:38
process so that the Commission could have more focus on the specific objectives of each
1:44:43
of the proposals. And the reality is that there was a very competitive process and
1:44:49
we had applications which I think were over nearly $700,000 in total value for
1:44:54
a very large number of worthy programs. And our commission had a very challenging
1:45:00
job of sorting through all those proposals and identifying the needs and the ones
1:45:06
that stood out and had the most in terms of kind of the potential and
1:45:12
that was I know a difficult very difficult job to do and many agonizing hours
1:45:17
of weighing a number of different services and in the end the recommendations that they
1:45:23
brought forward to the council are those in considering the different service proposals there are
1:45:29
a number of mentoring programs that were proposed athletes for kids is one one mentoring
1:45:34
program that's out there there's others that are funded as well and leo is a
1:45:39
program that serves in individuals with disabilities and there are other programs that serve individuals
1:45:45
not in the same exact kind of program style but there are there's that those
1:45:50
individuals are being covered but i think in the short story is that there you
1:45:55
know it was really challenging to make some of those decisions as a commission took
1:46:00
a look at all those applications Thank you.
1:46:06
So this is a tough question because one would think that the
1:46:11
decision would be based on or the decision to vote tonight would
1:46:17
be based on the merits of the organization or whether the organization
1:46:23
deserved the funding or should have the funding. And that's certainly not
1:46:28
how I see it. What I'm having a tough time is that
1:46:34
we have a Human Services Commission that works several months to
1:46:40
go through this process and I would have a, I have a tough
1:46:45
time ending that process a little bit. It has nothing to do with
1:46:51
the those valuable organizations that, you know, I'm sure there are more in
1:46:57
here that didn't get money. But that's tough for me. It says, has
1:47:03
a well-developed, Human Services Commission has a well-developed process for reviewing human services
1:47:09
grant applications that benefited from a process improvements exercise following the previous application
1:47:14
cycle. It talks about their thoughtful review and deliberation spanning May through September.
1:47:20
I just have a hard time, you know, I'm, I'm having that that
1:47:26
would be the reason I would have a tough time supporting that. So and I
1:47:31
just want to provide a little background for people beyond beyond the debt dies here.
1:47:37
You know, this year we were really trying hard to telegraph a goal early on.
1:47:43
You know, we came up with this 371 number. And so, you know, to further
1:47:49
this idea, further this idea that the Human Services Commission had a very comprehensive process
1:47:54
and to hit this number presentation talks about the five major
1:48:00
areas that these grantees were in and so they really tried to
1:48:06
balance between the five areas given the $371,000 target. My challenge tonight
1:48:12
is that I'm not ready tonight to make a decision on organizations
1:48:18
that I haven't seen any information on specifically and you know part of the challenges
1:48:23
that we have as a council had this information for I think about a month
1:48:28
and so I think if if we want it if next year if we want
1:48:33
to have something where the full council wants to have a review after the Human
1:48:38
Services Commission I think that the time to do it would be in planning next
1:48:43
year's activities not trying to amend it to the end of this year's activities. Thanks.
1:48:49
Yes. I'm just also following in on the
1:48:55
same area. I've sat on this organization and worked through these before.
1:49:00
It is very, very difficult to go through. That the Human Services Committee
1:49:06
has taken all of their time and thoughtfully and very diligently deliberated this,
1:49:12
it is a very difficult spot for anyone to be in to say
1:49:18
one particular organization will not receive funding. I think we need to honor
1:49:24
the definite difficult work. And I will be supporting the amendment as it's here
1:49:30
tonight before me. Even though I have some resistance, I mean, LEO for me
1:49:35
is a very special organization and they are not receiving funding, but I honestly
1:49:41
have to honor the process that has gone through to get us to where
1:49:47
we are this evening. I thought Mariah had her hand up earlier. - Paul?
1:49:53
- Yeah, so I appreciate it and the, the suggested amendment. It
1:49:58
certainly touches on some sensibilities that I have. Similarly, I'm familiar with
1:50:04
both organizations. And I think this is one of the very difficult
1:50:10
things we're called to do as council members. I think sometimes
1:50:16
We have to make choices, though we like the option, but for, in the
1:50:22
comprehensive picture, and I think in this case, honoring the work that's already been
1:50:27
done, I would, this is tough for me, because like I said, I know
1:50:33
both organizations, and I have personally assisted both organizations, but I think the, I'm
1:50:39
gonna put the integrity of the process that we have through the
1:50:45
commission in front of my own personal wishes. I don't have enough information
1:50:50
and I wasn't party to their conversations. I'm gonna put the integrity of
1:50:56
that process in front of my own references and I'm not gonna support
1:51:02
the amendment. - So I just wanted to reiterate that I very
1:51:08
much believe in the integrity of the process for the Human Services
1:51:13
Commission. And I think that the new process as it turned out
1:51:19
this year, and I've had a chance to talk with both David
1:51:25
and Martha about the process afterwards, that it really has improved. the
1:51:30
way the Human Services Commission can look and have a vision for the
1:51:36
different goals. And that's so important and I don't want to take away
1:51:42
from any of the work that the Human Services Commission has done in
1:51:48
any way. I think that with the changes, there were some long-term
1:51:53
groups that when I took a look through and those were
1:51:59
two that really stood out to me and that was the
1:52:05
purpose and what I felt was behind the amendment. But I
1:52:11
really want to have everyone know that I am very focused
1:52:17
on and I think that the Human Services Commission and all of their
1:52:23
thoughtful deliberation is so important and I do want to retain that integrity.
1:52:31
Other questions or discussion on the amendment? Mary Lou? Quick question then a comment.
1:52:37
So we're hearing, for those of us that don't sit on services, we're hearing
1:52:43
from the recommendations covering two organizations who didn't get funded. out of how
1:52:49
many organizations that used to get funding, is it we didn't fund 10 that we
1:52:55
normally funded or just two or five? I would have to run through them. So
1:53:00
there's more though? There are more. As David said, there was almost 700,000 in total
1:53:06
ask. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I guess the hard thing for me is that I
1:53:12
think when we I went through all that work to come up with what
1:53:18
sounds like a huge process improvement. It's really hard in that transition year to go
1:53:23
from your old process to your new process without making very hard choices. I'm not
1:53:29
really sure how I'm going to vote right now. Other questions or discussion on the
1:53:34
amendment? I'll just mention it looks like from the material
1:53:40
there were somewhere between 15 and 20 organizations that requested money.
1:53:46
Normally got money. I don't know about normally. That's what I
1:53:51
meant in past. Okay. Are you ready to act on the
1:53:57
amendment? All those in favor of amending the Human Services
1:54:03
grants by adding $5,000 for Athletes for Kids and $5,000 for
1:54:09
Leo. Signify by saying aye. - Aye. - Those opposed? -
1:54:14
Nay. - So the amendment fails by a vote of 4-3.
1:54:20
Do I need to identify? I did not think so. Back
1:54:25
to the original amendment then. - The initial motion, I wanted
1:54:31
to mention that Council has, well, I think
1:54:37
we completed our deliberation process sometime before Sunday. And we did not--
1:54:43
- Not going to forget it, Toler. - We did not make
1:54:49
any changes to the recommendation from the administration, which means that we
1:54:54
are proceeding forward to final approval of the budget at the higher
1:55:00
amount. So I just wanted, because the, The recommendations as given
1:55:06
have two different numbers in it and I appreciate the commission working that
1:55:12
out for us, but we did not deliberate and didn't discuss. We're moving
1:55:17
forward with the administration's recommendation in the spending amount. Additional discussion or questions?
1:55:24
And I'll just mention that those numbers were derived around
1:55:30
how you define $10,000 per resident, or sorry, $10 per
1:55:36
resident, and including, you know, How you define that is how we arrived
1:55:41
at an option A of 321 and option B of 371. I just have to
1:55:46
say, I was thinking of Sunday because I was just so fixated on the Seahawks
1:55:51
win over North Carolina that Sunday is just sticking around. - Again, I'd like to
1:55:57
thank the commission for all their work. It is a lot. I've done it before
1:56:02
in the past. I'd like to thank the administration for finally reaching that $10 per
1:56:07
capita. That's been a big dollar mark that for my previous 10 years we've been
1:56:12
working towards. So we've actually hit that now finally. It only took us about 10
1:56:17
years to get there. So I'm very glad we at least hit that mark this
1:56:23
year. And thank you. All those in favor of approving
1:56:28
the Human Service Grant recommendations at the increased funding
1:56:34
level pursuant to the adopted funding target of $371,500
1:56:39
as recommended by the Human Services Commission signify by
1:56:45
saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? That carries unanimously. Moving
1:56:51
now to agenda bill, the next one.
1:56:57
7265, non-profit funding. This is coming back from services and
1:57:03
safety. There was a request as pointed out and that
1:57:08
is included in your packet to show all of the
1:57:14
funding to the different groups that we fund.
1:57:21
- Are you ready to make a motion? - Sure, I will move to approve
1:57:27
the nonprofit funding as recommended by the Council Services and Safety Committee. - Second. -
1:57:32
It's moved and seconded, discussion. So I think really that the question
1:57:38
here and to point out for folks at home, this one didn't go
1:57:44
through the Human Services Commission, right? This one, services and safety effectively had
1:57:49
that role. And so we had presentations from each of the organizations that
1:57:55
the city was recommending funding for. and two of the three of
1:58:01
us recommended an increase in the amount for at work. There was to
1:58:06
be a focus this year of, oh, help me out, the word was
1:58:12
capacity building? And so we felt that... at work's interest in building
1:58:18
a customer relations management capability would absolutely hit that on the head. And so
1:58:24
they had asked for 20,000. The administration had recommended 10, which is still nice.
1:58:30
But as I said, two of the three of us recommended going with the
1:58:36
full ask of 20. And that was the only potential change we made to
1:58:42
the administration's recommendation. - Okay, other questions or discussion? - Just
1:58:47
for the record, those who may be, who, as it was, unlike it
1:58:53
was, as it was suggested earlier tonight that people can go watch the
1:58:59
record, the five hour recording of our meeting on Saturday. We did, we
1:59:04
did deliberate this item on Saturday. And the majority of the
1:59:10
council did accept the committee's recommendation to increase above the
1:59:16
administration's recommendation funding and add $10,000 additional to at work.
1:59:22
So I just wanted to make sure we had a
1:59:28
lengthy discussion. We had a discussion about it Saturday. -
1:59:34
Additional discussions or questions? Seeing none, then all those
1:59:39
in favor of approving the nonprofit funding as recommended by
1:59:45
the council services and safety committee signify by saying aye.
1:59:51
- Aye. - Those opposed? That carries unanimously. Moving now
1:59:56
to agenda bill 7280, King County Alternative Services Pilot Proposal.
2:00:02
David Fujimoto. Office of Sustainability Director for a staff
2:00:08
presentation on this item. Good evening Council Members. I
2:00:13
have a quick slide presentation about this. We also
2:00:19
had some presentations at both the Services and safety and infrastructure
2:00:24
committees earlier this month anticipating this proposal simply because of the timing and short
2:00:30
time frame for which they were the county was requesting turn around. And I'm
2:00:36
here on the behalf of we have an internal transportation mobility team which includes
2:00:41
multiple departments includes OS office of sustainability economic development. the executive department as well
2:00:47
as public works engineering to work on interdepartmental transportation issues. In this
2:00:53
agenda bill, the administration is seeking authorization for a partnership proposal to
2:00:59
King County Department of Transportation. The goal is to develop and implement
2:01:04
mobility solutions or transportation solutions for two neighborhoods in Issaquah.
2:01:10
But first, what is alternative services? It's a little bit of an ambiguous term.
2:01:16
But as described here on the screen, there are innovative solutions, innovative alternatives, really
2:01:22
to fixed route transit solutions. Some of this has some origins. back several years
2:01:28
when King County was anticipating making some significant service reductions and they were looking at
2:01:33
alternative services to help meet some of those kind of missing links and some of
2:01:38
those needs. But at the same time, they also recognize that there are potential opportunities
2:01:44
for applying these kinds of solutions in other areas of the county as well. So
2:01:49
they've already set into place some initial projects. The vast majority of those are shuttle-based
2:01:54
services. but there are looking at some other options that they want to test
2:02:00
and assess in different communities to see how they perform. And so some of
2:02:06
the goals are to link to existing services such as regional transit services, employment
2:02:12
centers or major employers, as well as community services such as healthcare and groceries
2:02:18
and some other services like that. And so you think about Issaquah and there's a
2:02:23
limited number of fixed route services is potentially very useful for our community. So
2:02:29
the county in their pilot partnership program is really looking to identify candidate communities that
2:02:35
are not interested so much at this stage in identifying specific solutions. In fact, they
2:02:41
were very specific about asking us not to propose specific solutions, whether it be a
2:02:46
community van or a shuttle or kind of real-time ride sharing. They were asking more
2:02:52
about kind of who are the communities we're trying to address. And so the They
2:02:58
kind of laid out some of these elements as potential candidate communities in which they
2:03:03
could test some of these services through a partnership with the local community.
2:03:11
In late October, they had sent out an RFP, a request for proposals, seeking pilot
2:03:16
partnerships. And as I had stated, they were looking for specific communities. They're anticipating funding
2:03:22
about eight pilot communities starting in 2017. And they would go through a two-year pilot
2:03:27
phase and then follow up with some evaluation. Some of the first work would include
2:03:33
some engagement work with the community, understanding a little bit more about trip patterns and
2:03:39
opportunities, and then kind of designing solutions around those and going forward. They also spoke
2:03:44
about this is not just being an opportunity to justify a service, but to really
2:03:49
look at a community and the population and their transportation needs, and also looking at
2:03:55
equity. And so equity as they consider kind of populations being served and the diversity
2:04:00
and income levels as also being an important consideration.
2:04:06
So what we are proposing for the application is to focus on our squawk and
2:04:12
talus neighborhoods and thinking about kind of the hill to valley mobility. Our mountainous areas
2:04:17
are a great contributor to the character of the community, but at the same time
2:04:23
that topography creates some challenges in terms of how people connect from the hills or
2:04:28
the mountains down to the valley. This is also It's an area that the council
2:04:34
has had some interest in. The city has had some interest in trying to find
2:04:39
some other solutions for how do we improve connections and mobility within those neighborhoods. And
2:04:44
they're approximate too, but they're not directly served by transit. So Squawk Mountain has transit
2:04:49
that kind of goes around the valley, but doesn't go up top. And then Tallis
2:04:54
doesn't actually have any direct service, but it's within about two miles in kind of
2:04:59
direct distance from it. Although there have been plans for providing things like transit turnaround
2:05:05
spots and things like that, we haven't been successful in getting fixed route transit service
2:05:10
to those neighborhoods. So the focus here would be on the topographic and
2:05:16
kind of geographic mobility challenges and finding some solutions. We include both commuters as
2:05:22
well as daytime populations. There are kind of needs across the spectrum, whether it's
2:05:28
seniors or residents in some of our affordable housing communities or even shift workers
2:05:34
at Timber Ridge, as an example, that could be served by some of these
2:05:40
solutions. And as part of this, we're also proposing that the city would be pretty
2:05:45
active participant in this. We would want to work closely with King County in looking
2:05:51
at the communities and assessing kind of needs and opportunities, would work with them on
2:05:57
engagement and communication, marketing, and the overall approach. And then within the 2017 budget, we
2:06:03
had anticipated about $15,000 that would go towards assessment work related to this, so we're
2:06:08
proposing to put that towards this proposal as well so that we can combine those
2:06:13
efforts. Just in terms of timing going
2:06:19
forward as I mentioned we had made a couple of updates to services and safety
2:06:24
and infrastructure the application deadline actually came and passed we did submit a preliminary application
2:06:30
as a holding place to the county subject to the authorization to proceed the county
2:06:36
has said that they anticipate making a notice of award fairly quickly they've said mid-December
2:06:42
and we'll hopefully see that happen and then the if we're selected there would actually
2:06:47
be an agreement that we'd anticipate coming back where council could review and choose to
2:06:52
take action at that point in time and then depending on the timing of the
2:06:56
the different proposals they receive we would know more about schedule in the first quarter
2:07:01
of next year at this point in time we don't know when the actual project
2:07:05
would start the county said that they want to do kind of a rolling start
2:07:10
to projects over 2017. Thank you, David.
2:07:16
Are there questions of David? Mary Lou? Thanks. David, this is really exciting to hear
2:07:21
this. I was wondering if, since we've done our application, one of the biggest things
2:07:26
that would really help ISSAQUAH would be if outlying jurisdictions also were able to take
2:07:31
advantage of this program such that they had an alternate way to get to one
2:07:36
of the transit centers instead of driving and parking themselves. Have you heard of anything
2:07:41
about other jurisdictions also applying for this grant money that may actually help our congestion
2:07:46
from a pass-through traffic point of view? We haven't gotten any information back from the
2:07:51
county on what other proposals have been submitted. I do know that Sammamish was considering
2:07:57
something. It was in dialogue with the county. The other part is some of what
2:08:03
comes out of these pilot projects can be applied to other communities, and so there's
2:08:08
some benefit there as well. Thank you. Paul? - Yeah, I'd like to
2:08:14
move to authorize submission of the alternative services pilot participation proposal to
2:08:20
King County Metro. - Second. - Moved and seconded discussion or additional
2:08:26
questions. Paul? - Yeah, I wanna thank you, David. I think the
2:08:32
Hill to Valley is a creative way to label this. It's absolutely
2:08:38
true that those two, residential areas are underserved if served at
2:08:44
all by public transit. And I'm also pleased to, you know, I
2:08:49
hope it, I hope we're very competitive. i we've all known for a long
2:08:55
time the fact that squawk mountain residents really don't have any choices other than to
2:09:00
get in their car to come and go there's very very limited choices and so
2:09:06
not only does that would that help them but if if members of either of
2:09:11
these communities can say get to other transit regional transit say at the transit center
2:09:16
And I like the way you pointed out earlier, you know, reduce demand for parking
2:09:22
at the transit center. It'll just reduce trips in town. I appreciate Councilmember Pauley's comment
2:09:28
about, hey, is this another way to maybe reduce pass-through? We never want to miss
2:09:33
those opportunities. And we don't know, but it still, I think, would be a benefit
2:09:39
to our residents and even with their fewer trips on the road. So I'm really
2:09:44
glad that we did this application and I'm really pleased to see the focus you
2:09:49
put on that. I think it would be very deserving should we get an award.
2:09:54
Thank you. Yeah, I just want to mention when I talk about RTC, the Regional
2:09:59
Transit Committee, this project and this proposal comes a lot from that metro working particularly
2:10:05
with the SCA caucus and tying into the Regional Transit Committee. A lot of work
2:10:10
went into this to work on the details. to make sure everybody gets a fair
2:10:15
shot and try to have some creativity and see how not just our community, but
2:10:20
other ones that have similar concerns to ours could possibly get some help and assistance
2:10:24
to get some things going and people moving. So this is kind of the fruition
2:10:29
of that. There's $6 million, $12 million that will go for this. And that's a
2:10:34
start. And so hopefully we can, as you say, be successful and keep pushing at
2:10:38
it from the city standpoint. To my knowledge, Sammamish, I believe, has been talking about
2:10:42
this. But I don't think they're as ready as we are to submit a proposal.
2:10:47
There'll be more coming. And some other cities are the same way. So I hope
2:10:51
we're one of the first ones in there that will help us get in there
2:10:55
quickly. Thank you. CHAIRMAN BRYANT: Other questions or discussion? Mariah. It just looks like, David,
2:11:00
a lot of great work that's gone into this and that was great to
2:11:06
see Squawk Mountain and TALIS mobility. And so I just wanted to say that
2:11:12
I hope everything can go forward and it was exciting to read about this.
2:11:17
Other questions or discussion? Seeing none then, all those in favor of authorizing the
2:11:23
submission of the alternate Alternative Services Pilot Participation Proposal to King
2:11:29
County Metro signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? That carries
2:11:34
unanimously. Moving now to good of the order.
2:11:42
I have two items. I'll do one at a time, see if anybody else has
2:11:47
anything else. First of all, for information, some of you may or may not be
2:11:52
familiar with the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, MAPS, commonly called MAPS. They suffered some
2:11:57
vandalism a few weeks back, and to support that community, many folks went there to
2:12:03
help support them. Folks that were there included our mayor, Councilmember Martz, myself, Human Services
2:12:08
Commissioner Maupin, and others from Issaquah. And we went on a Friday and they were
2:12:13
great at open house, brought everybody in, really shared with everyone what they do in
2:12:19
the community, which is amazing. Their association has about 5,000 families, not members, but 5,000
2:12:24
families. It's really huge. They do a lot of community work. To culminate that process
2:12:29
this Friday at one o'clock, they will be replacing that sign that was vandalized. So
2:12:34
I will be going. I think Council Member Marks is going to join me for
2:12:40
sure again. If anybody else wants to, they can carpool with me. This is located
2:12:45
right at the north end, top end of Marymoor Park. And so please do so
2:12:50
if you can. Thank you. Other questions? I want to take two. I'll give somebody
2:12:56
else a shot. I've got some too, so go right ahead. Go ahead. All right.
2:13:01
The other thing I mentioned earlier with the Eastside Transportation Partnership, I sent out a
2:13:07
little two-page Eastside Transportation Partnership legislative priorities. I hope everybody got a chance to take
2:13:12
a look at those and see if there's any questions on any of those or
2:13:17
any comments, concerns this Friday at ETP meeting. Hopefully they will be accepting this. It's
2:13:22
gone through a number of iterations and a lot of different communities have a lot
2:13:27
of different points of view. This is a difficult thing to get done from that
2:13:32
Eastside Transportation Partnership as a whole because it's large and everybody has different uh anyway
2:13:38
different concerns so i think this has come out pretty well and just want to
2:13:42
get some comment on it and see if i can go back and support this
2:13:47
on friday with uh the council behind me good comment thanks for bringing that bill
2:13:51
that that was great it was really interesting um I had two questions. One was,
2:13:57
I mean this is very self-centered question, but Highway 18 and 90
2:14:03
interchange, it was hard to tell if that's their number one priority
2:14:08
or just a priority. Which one? Highway 18 and 90 interchange and
2:14:14
Highway 18 itself. It's on there, but not attending those meetings. Is
2:14:19
that their top priority or a priority? these are not in priority order. All of
2:14:25
these are priorities of things. - Just your sense of how that group is feeling.
2:14:30
Like I say, it would depend a little bit if you're up in Bothell, it
2:14:35
probably wouldn't be on your list, right? So I think that a lot of people
2:14:40
that are affected by that, which is around here, Sammamish, Upper Snoqualmie Valley, those folks,
2:14:45
it'd be obviously a higher priority for. But I think the group overall definitely supports
2:14:50
it. This tried to look at, like I say, the whole regional network, and this
2:14:55
seemed to have, nobody was, attracted on this one. It was his supporter like, okay,
2:15:00
that doesn't really bother me so much. You know, it's not in our neighborhood kind
2:15:04
of thing, but it had a lot of support. And then the second question had
2:15:09
to do with the T word. You guys ever talk about tolling? Not on... 405
2:15:13
tolling gets talked about a lot. Not on 405 tolling, tolling on city roads and
2:15:18
county roads. Is that a subject that's ever discussed at ETP? Not that I, in
2:15:22
the time I've been there, has ever been talked about to my knowledge. And looking
2:15:27
at the mayor, he's been on there longer than I have, no. It would be
2:15:31
the answer on that. The one thing I'll throw out there is a thing that
2:15:37
I think that should be just thought about more so is item number three on
2:15:42
there, which is a road usage charge. That's fairly hot potato politically. I'll put my
2:15:48
two cents in on that. If you look at our gas tax model, historically it's
2:15:54
been a great model. It's worked very well. As times have changed, that model has
2:16:00
become less and less effective. So the one thing I'd say on that issue is
2:16:05
it's not trying to add to that. It's trying to work towards something to replace
2:16:09
that. That is again, an efficient, fair model across as the gas tax has been
2:16:14
for decades. So that's the one thing people get, get afraid on that, that it's
2:16:19
going to be in addition to, but it's trying, it's, this is for, uh, the
2:16:24
pilot program to go through and which is already set up with WSDOT
2:16:30
to set up a pilot program this year in 2017 to start actually
2:16:35
trying to see how you can make that work. That's probably one of
2:16:41
the big controversial ones on there. Thanks. Other questions on ETP's legislative agenda
2:16:47
for 2017? I would say the road usage charge study You know,
2:16:53
this council probably doesn't have a position to take back to ETP because
2:16:59
we haven't studied that. We hadn't had any conversation about that. So you
2:17:05
might want to report that back. Just the fact that we haven't talked
2:17:10
about it. Okay, thank you. Other questions or, so Bill, I think you
2:17:16
have council in back, feedback and go forth and do great things for Issaquah and
2:17:22
King County. And I was actually on the legislative committee that worked on this, so
2:17:26
just as a side note. So thank you very much. Thank you. Other items for
2:17:31
good of the order, Stacy. - Yeah, thanks, I have three. The first is
2:17:36
something that I sort of missed on Saturday and that was that at our
2:17:42
budget work session, a Downtown Issaquah Association, as you've seen in an email requested
2:17:48
the council consider including funds in the 2017 budget for actually implementing the streetscape
2:17:53
plan downtown and I think, We didn't actually, my fault, I didn't bring it
2:17:59
up to talk about it. But what we heard from the administration is that we
2:18:04
don't have a figure yet because we don't actually have a plan. And so we
2:18:10
don't know what the, what it would cost to implement that plan. But we did
2:18:15
on Saturday talk a lot about the items that could be included in, you know,
2:18:20
considering mid-year and there is a letter from the council president after the
2:18:26
budget is adopted that could include a reference to council, like
2:18:31
some other items we talked about, you know, maybe willing to
2:18:37
entertain funds during the year, an additional, an allocation of funds.
2:18:43
for that implementation plan. And if I get sort of head
2:18:49
nods, I would include that in the letter. Yes. I'm
2:18:54
seeing-- Head nods. Head nods. Mm-hmm. Yes. The second item I have is we have--
2:19:00
we are creating a special fund for camera revenue, as we've talked about before. And
2:19:06
one of the things that we talked about is-- or discussed a couple of council
2:19:12
meetings ago is what the-- the definition use of those
2:19:17
funds, what that actual language would be in that
2:19:23
fund in the budget. And we haven't seen that
2:19:29
yet. So I had asked Bob to let us
2:19:35
know what that process is, when we will be
2:19:40
seeing that. The actual language for the new special
2:19:46
fund for the camera revenue. - Sheldon, are you
2:19:52
back there or Jen?
2:19:58
CHRISTIE WOOD: Thank you, Mayor. The description of that fund will be included in
2:20:03
the final 2017 adopted budget book. And it will define what those revenues are,
2:20:09
where they come from, and the purpose of that fund. So that is planned
2:20:15
to be in the final 2017 adopted budget for year review and adoption on
2:20:21
December 19. So I think when we talked about this initially, I think the
2:20:26
council was indicated that we would have a little more time than that, than just
2:20:32
put in the final budget. So just as a heads up that we could be
2:20:38
in a sausage making session again if we don't see it until then.
2:20:44
If it's okay with you, I think I do recall that you had indicated you
2:20:50
wanted like kind of an intent statement that would go with the fund. And so
2:20:55
if we do have some time at the work session next week, if by your
2:21:01
leave, if you'd like to add that description, we could spend a little time on
2:21:07
that on Monday, if you so choose. Okay, I have that down for consideration at
2:21:12
leadership. Thanks. And then the third item was a little, thank you, Jen.
2:21:18
I had given you a little heads up on Saturday about the notion that
2:21:24
we might want to consider or that I was considering bringing forward a few
2:21:29
proposed agenda bills. And there were several that I, that some, and some that
2:21:35
I had mentioned. And so what I'm looking for tonight is feedback on
2:21:41
some agenda bills. They all have to do with transportation. And one of
2:21:47
the ways that we can show our legislative, interest in legislative actions is
2:21:53
to direct the preparation of certain agenda bills. And so for tonight, I
2:21:59
just, I would like to say lists that I'm thinking
2:22:05
about and get your feedback to see which ones my intent would
2:22:11
be to work on them for another couple of weeks, talk to
2:22:16
appropriate folks in administration and bring back some proposed actions, hopefully in
2:22:22
a couple of weeks. That's so it's just feedback to I don't
2:22:28
have any I don't have any motions to make. So I
2:22:35
One of the reasons that I'm bringing these forward is because, as I mentioned on
2:22:40
Saturday, we've known that transportation has been the number one issue in our community for
2:22:45
many, many, many, many years. And as I mentioned on Saturday, I don't think we
2:22:51
quite got us there in this proposed budget. And I want to see if there
2:22:56
are some things that we can do to ensure that we get some additional transportation
2:23:01
items addressed. sooner rather than later and also for transparency and accountability purposes, put
2:23:07
some items in agenda bills. So the first one that I will bring up
2:23:13
is the Trader Joe's Target intersection and an improvement there that we have talked
2:23:19
about many, many times and what we heard on Saturday was that there was
2:23:25
a proposal, maybe not sure it's a, back of the napkin
2:23:31
kind of thing. I'm hearing, I'm seeing head nods
2:23:36
about people who are thinking that that's something I
2:23:42
should, yeah? I'll take feedback, comment. Okay. Okay. Look
2:23:48
at Paul's like looking at me. Okay. Another one
2:23:54
I will bring up is Providence Point. And that
2:24:00
is a, In terms of road improvements,
2:24:06
it looks like maybe we would have the financial capacity to do that. And
2:24:12
so I would be looking at just an agenda bill that would ask the
2:24:17
administration to review financing options and also in light of some new information we
2:24:23
had about a downhill development, look at that as well and see if we
2:24:29
have maybe some design updating that we need to do.
2:24:35
- Very much in favor of taking, especially as a result
2:24:41
of our bond not getting the level of support that was
2:24:46
required. We have, I think that we may have the resources
2:24:52
to do something there and I definitely in favor of looking
2:24:58
at that in favor of Providence Point. - Agreed. - The
2:25:04
next one I'm looking at or I'm thinking about is the
2:25:10
capital. special projects fund over the camera revenue, do we want to look at
2:25:15
agenda bill that would consider projects to actually spend that money on? It would be
2:25:21
a little over $200,000. Or do we want to skip that right now and accumulate
2:25:27
a little bit and then look at it? - So skip and accumulate. We wouldn't
2:25:33
have until the end of the year anyway, right? - Yep. - So, end of
2:25:39
the year. - Right, and we also, indicated or approved an additional
2:25:45
300,000 in spending for complete streets. So that's, I think, yeah, since we're only,
2:25:50
we can't spend it until we have it. - Okay. - That's kind of
2:25:56
like, yeah, let's, we might have to wait a year. - Okay. And then
2:26:02
the Street Improvement Fund has two, I don't know, line
2:26:07
items in, I don't know how you say that, line items
2:26:13
in it? Projects? Well, one's a program, one's a project. Complete
2:26:18
streets/traffic calming has $476,000 in it. And... Plus 300. Plus 300.
2:26:24
Okay. Sorry, I wasn't listening. And, you know, do we want
2:26:30
to have a say in what those projects are, what projects
2:26:35
get designated? So that was a thought I had about that fund. So one
2:26:41
of my questions on that, since we put that extra $300,000 there, and we're also
2:26:46
looking at probably complete streets needed with the skate park, I think we definitely need
2:26:51
to talk more about where that money is going, because we're going to need some
2:26:56
money there too. We kind of did that, the $300,000 first, and then we did
2:27:02
the second half. So I felt like we needed to bring that conversation back to
2:27:07
look at those two together. And this, if we do
2:27:12
that, this will be, I don't recall council doing
2:27:18
a detailed review of the Complete Streets work. And
2:27:24
I think as a, if the ask is, you
2:27:30
know, can we get a chance to review the
2:27:36
proposed plan, maybe in committee, infrastructure committee for comment?
2:27:43
I think that would be appropriate. I'm not yet at that point where
2:27:48
I want to take the full step that we would require council legislative
2:27:54
action to approve the list of projects, if that's what you're considering. -
2:28:00
It would be a question that I would have. So if you're interested
2:28:05
in any of these becoming legislative action, then I would be looking at
2:28:11
them and they may or may not end up in an agenda bill.
2:28:18
based on further exploration by me, probably Mary Lou. I think what you would
2:28:23
be getting there is I don't believe the intent was to have council approval
2:28:29
of some projects. It was to give council or committee an opportunity to look
2:28:35
at whatever priorities you set for how to spend that money and the list
2:28:41
of projects that qualify so that there is It's a review to make sure that
2:28:47
we are spending the complete street money in accordance with priorities that council has, whatever
2:28:51
that is. And right now, I don't know what it is because we don't see
2:28:55
it. So it's that kind of conversation. It's not to say this one should be
2:28:59
one and that one should be three. It's more about is our priority to... work
2:29:04
on capital projects we have ongoing and use the money to do bike lanes and
2:29:10
sidewalks and supplement those budgets or is our intent to look at where we want
2:29:15
priority missing trail connections and missing bike lanes and spend the money on that. It's
2:29:21
that level of conversation and then you see the list of projects. What about priorities?
2:29:26
I wasn't necessarily proposing that. I have it written down as way
2:29:32
to go about it. Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps we can
2:29:37
have a conversation and infrastructure with administration around the
2:29:43
topic and see where that takes us. And then
2:29:49
we talked about on Saturday, the Gilman Boulevard safety
2:29:54
improvements and put an agenda bill. And then the
2:30:00
last one I have is Newport Way west of
2:30:06
SR 900. It's a The question is, do
2:30:11
we want that project potentially in Agenda Bill, or the possibility
2:30:17
of, I don't know if speeding up is the right word,
2:30:23
but having a-- - Acceleration. - Acceleration. - In the projects.
2:30:29
- A comprehensive public conversation about what we do with that
2:30:34
section of road. - Newport Way West? - Yeah. - Or
2:30:40
is it really called-- - Newport Way Cougar? - Cougar.
2:30:46
So there's clearly, I mean, some of us participated in a
2:30:51
public meeting last week. So, I mean, there's beyond what's currently
2:30:57
planned for engagement. Is it more of an engagement ask or
2:31:02
are you looking at more of a identification ask? Yeah, so
2:31:08
I don't have specifics. These are the things that I thought
2:31:14
rose to the top of potential legislative action. I have been
2:31:19
struck by the amount of activity over in that area and we
2:31:25
have $250,000 in the budget for next year. And a lot of
2:31:31
mitigation fees are being paid to the city for those projects over
2:31:37
there. And it seems like it's time for us to have a
2:31:43
conversation about that road. I don't have any specific personal agenda.
2:31:49
or ideas other than just that so if you're looking to say should we have
2:31:54
a conversation about that road and that's an absolute yes and that's what you're asking
2:31:59
for and that's negative yeah i don't have an answer either but yes again it
2:32:04
was a bond project that was listed in the bond but it happens to be
2:32:09
one of the busiest areas for new development in town and so it should just
2:32:14
get a discussion yeah so well i'm sorry no go ahead i was just i
2:32:19
agree - Yeah, and I think since we are kind of the,
2:32:25
you are initiating these agenda bills, I wonder too, I mean, that
2:32:30
if this would be one that we can start as a conversation
2:32:36
again at infrastructure committee and 'cause I think there was some, with
2:32:42
some type of kind of knowledge transfer, kind of analysis and conversation
2:32:47
back and forth, especially about funding options then we might be
2:32:53
in a good, better position to guide the administration's preparation of
2:32:59
a more you know, of at least a somewhat vetted bill as opposed to not
2:33:05
having that chance to talk with them first. So I'd like the opportunity to go
2:33:09
through infrastructure first and-- Sure. None of them are proposed to be agenda bills without
2:33:14
any conversation with the administration. Just to be clear. Oh, of course, of course. I
2:33:18
wasn't going to go off and write them and come back. Oh. I understood that.
2:33:23
I understood that. I was just thinking that, Oftentimes bills, you know, they come to
2:33:29
us the first time almost fully formed. Right, and you want a conversation. So let's
2:33:35
help with that formation prior to becoming a bill. So I think that that's the
2:33:41
list I have, and I actually lied. I have four. Yeah, there's one. Oh,
2:33:46
sorry. You missed one on the list we talked about earlier, which is a front
2:33:51
street streetscape, right? That would be on that list also? No. No. That was, I
2:33:56
was proposing that earlier to be in the letter. The letter. So we'll do a
2:34:01
little later. We need a little more information before we do that, but. Yes. Okay.
2:34:05
Gotcha. All right. Well, the fourth thing I have, This is a completely separate topic.
2:34:11
You know, we've heard a lot from, it was fairly timely that we heard from
2:34:15
somebody in the public comment tonight, Mark Bloom, I believe his name is, who lives...
2:34:20
down in May Valley and we've heard a lot from the folks in May Valley
2:34:25
who are concerned about the truck traffic and rightfully so. And I think sometimes it's
2:34:30
not clear exactly who has jurisdiction or owns those roads and it's King County. But
2:34:36
one of the things that I talked to Mary Lou about a couple of weeks
2:34:41
ago is the notion that we might want to show a little bit of support
2:34:47
for our neighbors in the unincorporated area. because I don't think that we certainly
2:34:52
didn't want to cause any harm, although we knew that was going to be
2:34:58
the result that they were going to endure increased truck traffic. I wondered if
2:35:04
the council would be interested in transmitting a letter to our counterparts on the
2:35:10
King County Council asking them to engaged our fellow Issaquah community folks,
2:35:16
because a lot of them have Issaquah addresses, even though they don't live
2:35:21
in the city limits. And just a letter asking them to, that we
2:35:27
hope that they work with those folks on finding some, I don't know
2:35:33
if relief is the right word. I haven't thought about any kind of
2:35:38
language. Just thought maybe it was an opportunity for us to
2:35:44
send a message to the King County Council that we support and hope
2:35:50
that they work with those folks in the South End. Just an idea.
2:35:55
- I'm unsure. The reason I'm unsure is because I know that council
2:36:01
member, County Council Member Lambert spends a lot of time with that community
2:36:07
and really considers them key constituents of hers. The problem to me seems
2:36:12
more, uh of communicating to the folks there that the county council is there are
2:36:17
there elected officials i mean people are asking us to make changes to may valley
2:36:22
road and that's not that's not isaac that's not even our paa as we all
2:36:27
know at the dais so to me if there's communication and engagement that needs to
2:36:31
occur I really think Councilmember Lambert is extremely aware of the transportation issues down there.
2:36:37
She sees herself as having the majority of unincorporated King County in her district. But
2:36:42
it's the folks down there understanding how to engage the county government. It seems like
2:36:47
there would be value in communication there, and I don't know exactly how that would
2:36:52
happen. But I was struck by the fact that people came tonight thinking we could
2:36:57
make changes to May Valley Road. Ms. Ann Marie Buerkle: Comment
2:37:03
as well, Fred, if that's okay? I kind of like two, two texts. One is
2:37:08
that I think, and I'm not sure, clarify with the Mayor, would, would he get
2:37:12
a response from us saying that it's not our jurisdiction? Is that something we respond
2:37:17
to or not through public hearing? Mr. Oh, well, there's a lot of misinformation and
2:37:22
stuff like that. I believe the appropriate thing would be for me to engage Reagan
2:37:27
Dunn and Kathy Lambert who have an interest in that area and share
2:37:32
with them what we're hearing at our council meeting because they're not at
2:37:38
the King County Council. council meetings expressing these concerns. Do we get, for the people
2:37:44
that come here though, do we close the loop with them at all? No.
2:37:50
Not really, unless there's a specific request or they have a specific question of
2:37:56
us. But then the second part for me is that I actually support doing
2:38:02
two things. One is when we do have opportunities to work with residents who live
2:38:07
in what I call South Issaquah, I think we should be clearly letting them know
2:38:12
where we are, what we do. But we have one of the biggest issues coming
2:38:18
up on the whole east side in terms of a non-highway that is congested. And
2:38:23
so for For me, I think this is the time to begin developing a relationship
2:38:28
with that valley and work with them because Issaquah-Holbert Road, South Front Street, that's one
2:38:33
thing. And so it's probably our biggest thing. And so I do think we need
2:38:38
to start developing some sort of relationship that's a little different with that part of
2:38:43
the valley. I agree with that comment and that's one of the
2:38:49
reasons we invited the mayor of Covington and the mayor of Maple Valley to come
2:38:55
to hear our concerns and for us to hear their concerns. And so in looking
2:39:00
at a coalition, I've already identified those who I believe ought
2:39:06
to be involved in that effort. And that includes Covington and
2:39:12
Maple Valley and perhaps even Black Diamond. But Seattle Times had
2:39:18
a very interesting article on Black Diamond and the 6,000 potential
2:39:23
homes that may go in there. How many of those are
2:39:29
going to be coming this way? And by the way, the mayor
2:39:35
of Black Diamond was at the transportation summit. She wasn't invited, but I'm glad
2:39:41
she was interested in enough to come. And I do plan to do some
2:39:46
outreach with her and try to foster that relationship. And I hope it's in
2:39:52
Black Diamond because it's been many, many, many years since I've been there. It
2:39:58
seems to me that the mayor letting do county council
2:40:04
members know of the traffic we're getting about this the truck traffic has
2:40:09
be sufficient we have already done that and um i think the idea
2:40:15
was just to show them some support that we um and i think
2:40:21
that carries some weight that that's what i was going to say i
2:40:27
think the question is You started the transportation summit. We're going to be moving
2:40:33
on that. We've got the Issaquah-Hobart Road Study. There's things happening. So that's happening, but
2:40:38
I think the question that the President is asking is, should we put something in
2:40:42
writing that really shows that we were wanting to do those kinds of things that
2:40:47
you mentioned there? And I think it's worth it. I think it does have weight,
2:40:52
and I think putting something in writing like that does add to that and strengthens
2:40:58
the conversations to say hey yes we want to work together on
2:41:03
that that's my thoughts and i'm more than more than happy to
2:41:09
do that it's been a good conversation and that is a good
2:41:15
next step uh just as a reminder kathy lambert will be at
2:41:21
our council meeting 19th on the 19th to provide a report on
2:41:27
the state of king county so i think mariah had a comment
2:41:33
I was just going to say I agree with the idea of the letter and
2:41:39
I think it's important just to show our neighbors that we're hearing what they're saying
2:41:44
and then to also let the county council members know that we are getting people
2:41:50
coming in and talking to us about that. So I think it's important on both
2:41:55
fronts. I just got to say, All good points, but I want to signal to
2:42:00
anybody that we're like going to maybe roll back the change we just made about
2:42:05
the truck routes, right? So it's so to, so... I mean, I'm not sure what
2:42:11
our conversation would be about truck routes that people are now using May Valley Road.
2:42:16
So, I mean, making, you know, the fact that there are people who live there,
2:42:21
I used to live there, I'm very aware of it. I know there are a
2:42:26
couple HOAs in that corridor, South Furs, High Valley, probably one others, you know, making
2:42:31
sure that they know who to contact, not us, to talk about, you know, mitigating
2:42:36
impacts of truck routes. it doesn't mean we're going to entertain a conversation about
2:42:41
going rolling back what we just did. That just needs to be perfectly clear.
2:42:47
Nope. Agreed. Yeah, so the question I had didn't have anything to do with
2:42:52
a letter about coming together and talking about changes in the valley, about any
2:42:58
working together on, you know, future road projects. It was only to lend an
2:43:04
air of support for our Issaquah/May Valley residents who
2:43:09
are feeling the burden of our new code and
2:43:15
that's all it was. It was very simple. -
2:43:21
Anything else for the order? - Stacey, so where
2:43:27
did signalization at Park Drive and the Central Park
2:43:33
Access Road fall? - In terms of? - I
2:43:39
think we just have to continue the Central Park
2:43:44
conversation. That's not a, It wasn't on the potential list for
2:43:50
a separate agenda bill? I didn't have it for tonight. It-- Because it was something
2:43:56
we considered to add funding to do the design, but then we chose not to
2:44:02
add the funding. And we talked about it being handled because the plan that was--
2:44:08
the administration did have include both signalization and the roundabout with the intersection of the
2:44:13
Park Access Road with College Drive. And we had a conversation. We might need to
2:44:19
break that down. - I don't remember. - It might be premature. I mean, I
2:44:24
have my notes from talking about that. If so, if you didn't, we have plenty
2:44:29
of time to follow up. The work plan you're creating is significant already. - Yeah,
2:44:33
I just can't remember what the, I don't have my Saturday notes with me. -
2:44:38
That's from, I wrote that to myself on Saturdays. Okay, I don't have anything else
2:44:43
for good of the order. - Does anyone else have anything for good of the
2:44:47
order?
2:44:49
Seeing
2:45:25
none
2:46:01
then,
2:46:37
we
2:47:13
will
2:47:49
now
2:48:25
move
2:49:01
to
2:49:37
executive
2:50:13
session
2:50:49
for
2:51:25
the
2:52:01
purpose
2:52:37
of
2:53:13
discussion,
2:53:49
discussing
2:54:24
property
2:55:00
acquisition
2:55:36
for
2:56:12
the
2:56:48
RCW
2:57:24
that
2:58:00
I
2:58:36
quoted
2:59:12
during
2:59:48
the
3:00:24
mayor's
3:01:00
report.
3:01:36
And
3:02:12
so
3:02:48
I
3:03:24
would
3:04:00
ask
3:04:36
that
3:05:12
those
3:05:48
who
3:06:24
are
3:07:00
not
3:07:36
directly
3:08:12
related
3:08:48
to--
3:09:24
Good
3:09:59
night,
3:10:35
Steve.
3:11:11
We
3:11:47
are
3:12:23
back
3:12:59
in
3:13:35
open
3:14:11
session.
3:14:48
Mr. Mayor, I move that we give the city
3:14:54
attorney settlement authority in the Bass condemnation action as
3:14:59
discussed in executive session. Second. Moved and seconded. Any
3:15:05
discussion? Seeing none, then all those in favor signify
3:15:11
by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? That carries unanimously. We
3:15:17
are adjourned.