City Council - Regular Meeting
City Council - Regular Meeting
Mon, November 3, 2025
Agenda items
Vote records
Discussion summary
Transcript
Meeting summary
Summary not yet available.
Agenda items (32)
Council Business
1Council BusinessPotential Property Acquisition (Stamps, approx. 3 min.)
2Council BusinessPotential Property Acquisition (Stamps, approx. 3 min.) ITEM REMOVED 10.31.25
3Council BusinessPotential Property Acquisition (Stamps, approx. 5 min.)
6Council BusinessOld/New Business
24710Council BusinessA Contract Award for Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity Roofing Repair and
24711Council BusinessA Resolution Adding the Impact Fee Schedule for the Bellingham School District to the
24712Council BusinessBudget Work Session
24713Council BusinessRenewal of the Interlocal Agreement for Probation Services with the Whatcom
24714Council BusinessAn Ordinance Relating to the Levy of Taxes and Establishing the Amount to be Raised in 2026 on the Assessed Valuation of Property within the City
24719Council BusinessA Resolution Setting the Dates and Times of the 2026 City Council Meetings
Procedural (4)
4ProceduralA proposed ordinance extending and modifying interim zoning regulations to apply Infill Housing in all areas that are zoned predominantly for residential use, except on property regulated by Lake Whatcom Reservoir Regulatory Provisions, for an additional six months.
5ProceduralA draft ordinance to amend several regulations in the Bellingham Municipal Code to allow co-living housing in zoning designations that allow multi-family housing, update and add definitions relevant to co-living, and replace references to the word "family" with "household”
24720ProceduralApproval of the 10/13/2025 Special City Council Committee Minutes
24721ProceduralApproval of the 10/20/2025 City Council Committee and Regular Meeting Minutes
Adjournment
39AdjournmentTues. 12 p.m. – Repeat broadcast of Monday afternoon Committee meetings
40AdjournmentTues. 7 p.m. – Repeat broadcast of Monday night regular meeting
41AdjournmentWed. 8 a.m. – Repeat broadcast of Monday night regular meeting
42AdjournmentSat. 12 p.m. – Repeat broadcast of Monday afternoon Committee meetings
43AdjournmentSat. 7 p.m. – Repeat broadcast of Monday night regular meeting Online Streaming: The meetings are streamed live at https://cob.org/btv. Online viewers will see exactly what cable customers would see. Video: Video recordings of each meeting are available on the Internet at https://cob.org/meetings within five business days following each meeting.
Ordinance
24695OrdinanceAn Ordinance Regarding the Establishment and Operation of a Bellingham Mitigation
24707OrdinanceAn Ordinance Relating to the Vacation of a Portion of an Unimproved Alley Generally Located Between Iowa and Kentucky Streets and Pacific and Racine Streets in
24708OrdinanceAn Ordinance Relating to the Vacation of the Western One-Half of Iron Street Abutting Rock Hill Park Between Potter Street and Interstate-5 in Bellingham,
Public Hearing
24715Public HearingA Public Hearing for an Ordinance Relating to Land Use and Zoning, Extending Interim Zoning Regulations to Eliminate Minimum Automobile Parking Requirements and Establish Consistent Bicycle Parking Standards Citywide for an Additional Six Months
24716Public HearingA Public Hearing for an Ordinance Adopting the 2025 City of Bellingham Comprehensive Plan, Including the Future Land Use Map
24725Public HearingSecond Public Hearing on the 2026 Budget
Consent Calendar
24717Consent CalendarAuthorization of A/P Transactions Issued October 10, 2025 through October 16, 2025
24718Consent CalendarInteragency Agreement between the Washington Traffic Safety Commission and the
24722Consent Calendar2025 Interlocal Agreement between the Bellingham Housing Authority and the
24723Consent CalendarAuthorization of A/P Transactions Issued October 17, 2025 through October 23, 2025
24724Consent CalendarInterpreter Reimbursment
General Business
24726General BusinessMayor's Reappointment to the Civil Service Commission (Approval)
24727General BusinessMayor's Appointment to the Community Development Advisory Board (Information
Additional votes recorded in minutes
Schedule optional work session on comprehensive plan
aye 1
voice voteaye
Direct staff to include housing appendix in comprehensive plan
aye 1
voice voteaye
Amend interim parking ordinance to clarify ADA requirements (IBC language)
aye 1
voice voteaye
Approve extension of interim parking ordinance as amended, with work plan endorsement amendment
abstain 1 · aye 1
unknownabstain
voice voteaye
Approve extension of interim parking ordinance as amended (final vote)
aye 1
voice voteaye
Appoint Kathy Wakka to Civil Service Commission
aye 1
voice voteaye
Approve renewal of interlocal agreement for probation services with Watcom County District Court
aye 1
voice voteaye
Adopt resolution adding Bellingham School District impact fee schedule to capital facilities plan (Agenda Bill 24711)
aye 1
voice voteaye
Adopt ordinance establishing 2026 property tax levy (Agenda Bill 24714)
aye 1
voice voteaye
Adopt resolution setting 2026 city council meeting dates (Agenda Bill 24719)
aye 1
voice voteaye
Authorize mayor to close real estate transaction with BNSF Railway Company ($75,470.50)
aye 1
voice voteaye
Authorize mayor to close real estate transaction with James C. Steel ($227,500)
aye 1
voice voteaye
Award contract for roofing repair and maintenance services to SRS Roofing Company (Agenda Bill 24710)
aye 1
voice voteaye
Approve consent calendar
aye 1
voice voteaye
Adopt ordinance establishing Bellingham mitigation bank (Agenda Bill 24695) - third and final reading
aye 7
Dan Hammillaye
Hannah Stoneaye
Hollie Huthmanaye
Jace Cottonaye
Lisa Andersonaye
Michael Lilliquistaye
Skip Williamsaye
Adopt ordinance vacating portion of unimproved alley between Iowa and Kentucky streets (Agenda Bill 24707) - third and final reading
aye 7
Dan Hammillaye
Hannah Stoneaye
Hollie Huthmanaye
Jace Cottonaye
Lisa Andersonaye
Michael Lilliquistaye
Skip Williamsaye
Adopt ordinance vacating western half of Iron Street abutting Rockhill Park (Agenda Bill 24708) - third and final reading
aye 7
Dan Hammillaye
Hannah Stoneaye
Hollie Huthmanaye
Jace Cottonaye
Lisa Andersonaye
Michael Lilliquistaye
Skip Williamsaye
Verbatim transcript available
533 transcript segments indexed
All right, welcome everybody to the regular meeting of the Bellingham City Council this November 3rd, 2025. I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. Bellingham City Council meets all requirements of the state of Washington Open Meetings Act.
Before we begin, we acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional and unseated territory of the LMI, Nuksac, Samish, and Simyu people who have cared for and tended this land since time in memorial.
Truth and acknowledgement are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference. We begin this effort to acknowledge what has been buried by honoring the truth.
We pay respect to their elders past and present. Please take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here today. And please join us in uncovering such truths at any and all public events.
The Bellingham City Council provides Spanish interpretation at all regular evening meetings. Interpretation can be accessed by in-person attendees by utilizing the headsets located at the at the front of the room.
[clears throat] Remote viewers can log on to coop.org/cczoom and click on the language icon at the bottom of the screen to listen listen in Spanish. And I'll let our interpreter repeat that. language.
Thank you. Then I have quite a few announcements. The city council will hold five public hearings on November 17th, 2025 on the following topics. One, a proposed resolution providing for the city to relinquish a water main easement that encumbers a portion of the property commonly known as 404 Baker Street.
Two, a proposed resolution providing for the city to relinquish a portion of a general utility easement which encumbers a portion of the property commonly known as 92510th Street. Three, a proposed ordinance adopting interim zoning regulations for objective design standards, guidelines, and review process and superseding rules related to design review to align with recent state legislation for purposes of streamlining development regulations and the development review process.
Number four, a proposed ordinance extending and modifying interim zoning regulations to apply infill housing in all areas that are zone zoned predominantly for residential use except on property regulated by Lake Watcom reservoir regulatory provisions for an additional six months.
And number five, a draft ordinance to amend several regulations in the Bellingham Municipal Code to allow co-living housing and zoning designations that allow multif family housing, update and add definitions relevant to co-living, and replace references to the word family with household.
So, I'll see all of you next time, too. Sure. All right. Uh, roll call, please. >> Hannah Stone, >> here. Dan Hamill >> here. >> Skip Williams >> here. >> Lisa Anderson >> here. Michael Liiloquist >> here.
>> Jay Scott Cotton >> here. >> Holly Huffman >> here. >> All council members are present. >> Okay. So up first we have three public hearings and the first is bill number 24725, the second public hearing on the 2026 budget.
This is the second of two public hearings the city council will hold prior to the adoption of the 2026 budget. The 2026 proposed budget can be viewed at co.org/budget. It looks like uh we will have a presentation from uh deputy administrator Longman.
>> Yeah. Uh thank you. uh just have a brief presentation here to bring everybody up to speed on the 2026 proposed budget. I apologize to council and everyone else who has seen variations of this presentation many times over the last couple months.
Um so uh as we built our 2026 proposed budget, we were facing a $10 million budget shortfall in the general fund. And so the focus of this budget cycle was uh correcting that major shortfall and creating some financial stability.
So we approached it with three basic principles. Uh the first was to ensure financial stability because we no longer have the capacity in our reserves to wait for better outcomes. We have to live within our means now.
And we did that by focusing on the work only the city can do. uh prior prioritizing services the city must provide that we only we can provide and the vital internal functions that support that work and by leveraging our dedicated resources to continue our good work in those sources that are not impacted by the budget crunch we're experiencing in the general fund.
So the strategies we employed to get there uh we balanced new revenues with expense reductions. There were no programmatic expansions to speak of in the new 2026 proposed budget. We made targeted staffing reductions to areas with minimal impact on public facing services where possible and look for ways to continue providing services with those alternative funding sources.
Um you know this was not our our first effort to try and write the ship here. Uh going into 2025, we made a series of budget changes. Uh we increased sales tax allocation of the general fund from the street fund.
We diverted our fully funded pension uh property taxes for firefighter pensions into the general fund. And we used interest from our city's cash pool investments to support the general fund where appropriate.
And we implemented a mandatory review of all open positions prior to recruitment and made freezes for positions where possible. [snorts] And for 2026, to close that $10 million budget gap, um we recommended and council adopted a new onetenth of 1% sales tax.
We uh are eliminating over 40 positions, mostly vacant, um using using primarily those freezes that we accomplished throughout 2025. We evaluated and reduced budgets across the general fund and we will continue to evaluate positions prior to fill limit travel and other discretionary expenses.
But we'll be doing lots of great other things as well in this budget cycle. Um we have like I said the the budget issues are mostly constrained to the general fund. So we'll be continuing to make investments in our water and wastewater systems.
Uh we'll be doing a major environmental remediation on the Cornwall waterfront and doing phase one of the Salish Landing Park. Uh we'll spend over $15 million in affordable housing, homelessness, and human services.
And we'll begin construction of a new secure and resilient dispatch center among many other projects. The big budget uh picture looks like this. This is um a overview of the general funds. Total revenues of $128 million and total expenses of also $128 million just out of balance by $355,000.
So this reflects the changes uh that council made today at the budget work session. And so that should be our final number that we will see in the budget ordinance that we'll bring forward at the next council meeting.
Uh overall the citywide budget is $543 million including $155 million of capital. I will note that while the general fund is out of balance by $355,000 which means we're spending a bit more than we're bringing in or planning to.
Um there's also a $ 1.5 million one-time revenue that we're expecting. So really on balance uh we have nearly a $2 million ongoing deficit we're looking at next year. Um so this work is not over and we will continue to find ways to address that going forward.
Uh just the graphical representation I show this chart a lot. The blue area is revenues. The line is expenditures and the bars are our reserves. This is again just the general fund. uh with the darker blue and the yellow being the past and the lighter blue and the orange being the future and the various types of uh bars representing different types of reserves.
What we would draw attention to is in 2026 here this was prior this was our base budget prior to taking any actions. We see a large gap there with expenditures far above far exceeding revenues. And correspondingly, these hashed or mint green uh re reserve bars represent what the emergency reserve should be according to policy.
And we see that it would be um depleted uh at the end of 2027. Um and after the budget changes that we've made, we have this outlook where we can see our expenditures are much closer to our revenues. and uh and uh our reserves uh will make it to another day.
Just a look at the budget schedule. Uh we have we began this process uh at the end of September and all through October, we've been having budget work sessions with council. This is our final public hearing on the budget uh the second budget public hearing plus the revenue forecast public hearing.
And our target is to introduce the budget ordinance on the 17th for adoption on December 8th in time for the new year. People would like to learn more, I encourage them to go to co.org/budget uh where there's a lot more details, a lot more information um and a and a great video about how the city budget works.
>> Thank you, Mr. Longman. Any clarifying questions from the council? All right, I will go ahead and open up the public meeting. How many people are signed up? >> We have three individuals signed up for this hearing.
>> Okay. And reminder, um this is the public hearing just concerning the budget. Um we will have general public comment at the end of the meeting. And when you hear your name, if you could stand up and line up at either the microphone here on the floor or the microphone at the top of the stairs, it helps things move along a little bit more quickly.
Okay, go ahead and read our our first three names. >> All right, so we have Brian Armstrong, Adam Bellinger, and Brian Gas. I hit that button. I'm not used to being the first one up here. Wow. Okay. So, that's how the microphone works.
Um, yeah, just here to talk about the budget. I was unable to watch your budget work session today. I usually watch it after the meeting because like many of us, I have a job so I'm unable to follow you during the day.
So, my comments might be outdated hopefully. So when I was watching your budget work session though on uh last Monday from last Monday, I was talking about the parks budget and I had mentioned about the skate park using greenways funds and the artificial turf using greenways funds and the ball fields using greenways funds.
And I worry about that because the next time that that levy comes up, are we going to be able to get voters to approve it if we're not using the money how we voted for it? And what I mean by that is when I look at greenways, I think about like the trail connectivity, the habitat restoration, and using it for parks, but when I hear that it's being used for skate parks, astroturf or turf, and ball fields, I really wonder, are we spending it how it was designed to be spent?
And personally, I don't think that's how it was to be spent. I feel like it's for habitat restoration and for connectivity. So, it is kind of bothersome when I see that we're spending it on those other things that aren't greenways related.
And so, we're not spending on the heart of the bill. We have to convince the public when the next levy comes up, hey, we promise we're going to spend it on trail connectivity and these things. And so, when I hear also during that budget work session, we're talking about expanding the volunteer program.
And I I just kind of froze there for a second because I'm like, how can you say you're expanding it when we reduce staff and capacity and our work parties have, you know, not grown. So, we're not expanding.
So, I the word I thought of was kind of being gaslit to be told that we're being expanding a program when we're really not. You know, it's actually shrinking. The staff is less. and they still do an amazing job putting that on.
But I feel like we need to be honest when we're talking about the budget and how we're spending the money and what it's going for because if we're going to say, "Yeah, we're expanding things. We're we're growing, but when we're not, it just seems disingenuous to me." And I really hope that we start investing more of that money where it's supposed to go.
And I understand that it's a very tight budget year and we're looking to make cuts and that's understandable. But at the same time, the greenways fund is not a slush fund. It's not parks. I've heard parks is greenways, greenways is parks is yeah, that's true.
But greenways is specifically designed for a certain type of spending. And if we're going to spend it on things that aren't greenways, I worry about the next vote because I really support that program and I feel like it's a great program to have and I feel the volunteer program should be expanded, especially when we consider how much parks lands we have.
Nicole was saying that during the last hearing, during the budget work session, there's so much land we have and the resources that we have are limited, especially with staff capacity and things like that in the budget.
>> Thank you. Your time is up. >> I know. I'm sorry. Thank you, Brian. >> Good evening, council. My name is Adam Bellinger. Um, I uh want to express an appreciation for things like the video that presented the budget in a um format that was, you know, accessible for people because I think I'm a finance professional, but um a lot of folks have a hard time really understanding what it is.
uh we're doing right now. And um one of the things that I suggested last uh um hearing was that uh it would be helpful to uh provide a format for presentation of how the departments are doing so we can evaluate and when we when you do a a budget presentation it's usually helpful to understand how the performance has been to go along with that.
And so I my thinking on that is we need to look at things like you know cost per unit of service, number of employees in the department and and look at it over a longer period of time. So it helps us put it into context as to what's going on in the city over time.
Um, for example, I would look at say the planning department, not to pick on anybody, any department in particular, but like you know, how many permits are being issued each year, you know, and the timelines and it takes for permit issuance and and and the cost it takes to operate the the department and how quickly are denials occurring.
So, we can assess what it is we're doing with the funds that we're being asked to pay for. Um you know a similar thing would be like with public works you know how many miles of road are being repaved every year.
Um but how many and then put it in relation to how many miles of road should be repaved um to in order to maintain the quality of uh service that we're there that the department is being asked to to uh to do.
So, in in short, I just I don't want to belabor it, but I think there's some room there for some improvement on how to present this to the public because it's really hard to understand what's going on uh as for the average citizen.
Thank you. >> Thank you, Adam. >> Hello, everybody. Um I'm Brian Gas. I live here in Bellingham. When I think about the budget, I've said this before, is um I don't know if it's just a government thing, but I feel like there's never enough money.
They can always ask for more. It's it's something that I don't understand as much because I'm a simple person, but you know, I'm starting to think like what is what does a cancel council exist for? Like are they supposed to be like the what do you call it like the the board members of a company?
Like who's looking out for the interests of the residents of Bellingham? And I don't ever hear a whole lot about them. I hear a lot about like budgets and everybody rubber stamps everything I feel like.
But I'm just curious as to what this council does here because I don't think that when we're talking about the budget, there's things that don't get addressed, like do they have extra, you know, extra vacancies that just get cut or held there just in case they want to look like they're cutting a budget or is there a a way to do a a um performance review?
And can we get more out of the same the same people? We're paying more and more for government than we ever have. Okay. Yet we get fewer and fewer services. And who's responsible for checking that and making sure that the money that's being collected that it is spent properly and that is being used for the purpose it's supposed to and for things like the it's easy to beat up on the on the on the um planning department because they're the ones that really aren't doing as much as they could as far as our growth.
I mean, you guys want I feel like I always tell my wife whenever something happens, I can always sell my way out of it. So, whatever problem I've got me in myself in, I just sell myself out of it and and I solve the problem.
Why is Bellingham not talking about growing their way out of it, growing revenue? Uh, I was some of the people that are going for uh the budget or not the budget, the people who are running for um office at the port seems to be the only person that talks about jobs here.
Everybody wants to give handouts and subsidize rentals and and hide the fact that we don't really grow like we're supposed to. This is another different uh speech, but you know where where is the growth?
Like you want to grow your way out of this, start building some houses that people pay taxes instead of not paying taxes and get people to permit things more and faster. I have the worst experiences with our permit department and I can't believe I don't think that the like do the people at the permitting department do they serve the client or they are they there to destroy dreams for people because I feel like I'd like to see more honest what do you do for your citizens and hear more about what you can do for them rather than what you're not going to do for them.
Thank you. >> Thank you Brian. That was the end of our list. All right, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and turn it back to council. Any questions or comments from council? Okay, seeing none, we can move on to our next public hearing.
All right. This is agenda bill 24716, a public hearing for an ordinance adopting the 2025 city of Bellingham comprehensive plan, including the future land use map. The Bellingham City Council uh will hold a Bellingham uh will hold a public hearing on the the draft Bellingham plan, the city's 2025 periodic update to the comprehensive plan.
This plan provides goals and policies to guide growth over the next 20 years as required by the state's growth management act. And looks like we have senior planner Elizabeth Ericson here to present. Good evening.
Let me just pull this up for you all. [snorts] There we go. Good evening everyone. I'm Elizabeth Ericson. I'm a senior planner with the planning and community development department and we are here to hold a public hearing on the Bellingham plan which is the city's comprehensive plan for growth.
Just want to remind you all of kind of where we've been and where we're headed with a quick overview of the calendar here before I give a really brief um presentation before we hear from the community.
We've been coming to council for the last month and a half or so and giving a little bit of an overview on the plan, getting some initial feedback, um, adjusting a few things and going through each of the chapters with you as well.
And so I will allude to some of these presentations for the public as well. Um, but I'll keep this presentation fairly brief and I really encourage folks to visit any of these presentations that we have on the screen here for additional details.
you don't need the kind of three hours of presentation tonight, but there's a lot of good stuff in there. So, I recommend um visiting that if you have additional questions. Um and then we also have um our full team here tonight.
So, following um questions or or or or comments um we can um address those as well after we hear from from the community. Um I want to note we also have um work sessions with the city council scheduled coming up.
So, we have an optional work session next Monday. So, at the end of this um topic, we will ask the council to let us know whether you think you need that additional session or if you'd like to um have your next session be on the 17th with the consideration of the full ordinance.
So, that that's kind of a choice. You all can can let us know after the public hearing and hearing from the community. And then we intend to bring forward that full ordinance on the 17th for final consideration on December 8th.
So, very similar to the time frame you just heard on the budget as well. We also have been to the council over the last two years many times. Um so there's a lot of information as we've um developed this uh draft plan for you all.
We've heard from you along the way and really incorporated feedback. So just wanted to note all of those good conversations as well and have those dates on here. Again, all of these presentations and discussions are available um online for anybody who who would like to track those as well.
Um, a couple of the really, um, important ones I would note is this one from October of last year was a great joint session with the planning commission um, on our growth strategy and really those big picture topics.
And then we also had some great conversations in May and June of this year about the neighborhood plans and about our approach to residential zoning. So those are really um, great conversations that really informed this draft plan that you have before you.
So I'm going to go through a few highle slides that you all saw particularly in that overview presentation we did a couple weeks ago. Um but I won't dwell too much on this. The comprehensive plan is um a document that we have used for many years here in the city of Bellingham and it's based on the state growth management act and so it follows quite a few requirements from the state but it also has a lot of Bellingham flavor in it as well.
So, it's a great way for us to envision a future, look out 20 years, and then identify ways to work towards that that vision together. So, we call it a long range plan because it looks out 20 years, but we update it every 10 years so that it doesn't get out of date in that 20-year period.
There are a lot of different topics covered by this plan. Um, you'll see that there are um chapters all the way from housing and transportation to a new chapter, community well-being, um, as well as climate as as another new new chapter.
You can see how these really range a lot of different topics, but how they all intersect in how we envision Bellingham in the future. We also set policies forth in each of those chapters, which give a little bit more fine grain detail, but still um allow the the city a variety of ways to achieve each of those goals set forth and um really develop actions that can fall within th those policies that are defined in this plan over the years to come.
So, it's really how we we we look at how we're growing as a city and we work towards the that future. And this really provides a framework for a lot of implementation work that follows and an update to the plan.
Looking back over the last two years, really almost two and a half at this point. Um we launched this project in July of 2023. Um and went through a very extensive community engagement effort. We really want to thank everyone who's taken part throughout the this project.
So whether you were there from the very beginning or you're you're just kind of coming forward tonight at this public hearing, we really appreciate um how much the the community has been involved in in this project throughout.
We started with pretty high level engagement with the community, really identifying that vision and asking big picture questions about where folks wanted to be in 20 years. And then we honed in a little bit on some of those really specific questions we need to answer about how we want to grow, how we want to address some of the state legislation that's come forward and needed to be addressed in this update.
Um had a lot of open houses and really meaningful conversations with folks. Um again had some of those touch bases with city council and planning commission. And then um kind of in the fall of last year, we released an initial draft um of of the kind of basic topics to be covered in in each chapter as well as those um initial map amendments and really dove into those with the community as well.
Got feedback on those before we put it all together into a more formal um more beautiful plan that that was more complete that that we've been been looking at over the last few months with planning commission and then with with city council.
And so throughout 2025, we had a series of conversations with the planning commission where we dove in a lot of detail into each chapter um and ultimately got a recommendation from the planning commission on September 25th.
Since then, we've been here before the city council going through a lot of that that information as well, getting initial feedback and here we are with a full draft plan um to hear from from the community um on additional comments that they might have.
So you can kind of see starting at the very beginning with very high level feedback from the community all the way to this public hearing where we're um expecting a lot of kind of really specific information or kind of thoughts from folks.
You can see kind of a a progression in [laughter] in feedback from the community. Here are just some photos from that engagement that we've done. Um, we had a series of open houses throughout 2024 that really um got hundreds of folks um to come out, have meaningful conversations with each other as well as with staff.
Um, we also had several surveys with thousands of responses throughout so that folks could really engage in the way that worked best for them. We did outreach through local community organizations as well.
We had a community workg group of consistent folks from across the community um provide feedback throughout a year process of meetings once a month. So really trying to um hear from folks across Bellingham in a variety of different ways.
Um and there's some great reports online um that kind of describe everything that was done in each phase and what we heard as well. Um and that all kind of boiled down to these four thematic changes. We've gone into a little bit more detail in some of our previous presentations, but really just highlighting um the biggest changes that we are presenting and and proposing in this update to the current 2016 plan.
We expect that the 2025 plan will see more emphasis on these areas. So, um, one topic is really looking at Bellingham for all, um, and really welcoming folks, um, of of all backgrounds and perspectives and finding ways to integrate them into our our processes throughout um, and and bringing that into all chapters of the plan in particular, but also that new community well-being chapter really dives in into this topic.
We also of course all know that housing is a hot button topic right now and so more housing choice is a huge part of this update with a lot of updates to our housing chapter and our land use chapter as well.
Um really allowing more kind of middlecale housing types across the entire city both in alignment with state law but also in what we really heard overwhelmingly from the community about wanting more options for everyone.
We also are really focusing on sustainable growth and looking into the future, thinking ahead and making sure that the choices we're making now can be continued into the future and don't put us in a difficult spot.
Um, particularly when it comes to infrastructure and other really kind of more technical planning pieces. We want to make sure that all of those are incorporated um into the the decisions that we make today.
And then finally, there's climate resilience. We as a city have really prioritized climate action for many years. We've had a climate action protection plan for a long time that um is still um is still serving us well, but we also really want to focus on climate resilience and recognizing um the changes that are coming from climate change and being ready for those as well.
So that's been integrated into the plan and into a new chapter called climate as well. So those are sort of the overarching changes that we wanted to highlight. Um, again, a after we hear from the community, we're happy to answer more specific questions or or um follow discussions there as well.
[sighs] Um, we did want to note a couple really specific changes. These are all in the memo as well of things that we have changed since the last time we were before the the city council based on direction we received.
So, these are reflected in the draft plan in the packet. Um, and so there were a couple changes to some specific policies, one in housing, one in transportation, and one in economic development that you all voted on and sort of gave us um direction on in the last couple weeks.
Um, we also updated the reference to the water system plan. Um the the water system plan will be coming with an update very soon, but it looks like we probably won't be able to have that updated before the end of the year based on kind of a um a wait on some feedback from the from the state that we don't have any control over.
So we anticipate being able to update that plan very early next year. Um but in the meantime, we've updated that reference in this plan to the current document. I also want to note that in the version of the plan that was posted for this packet, um there are a number of different references to plans that we're adopting by reference.
Um and we simultaneous with posting this packet went through a pretty big update to the way that we post PDFs as a city. So a few of those links temporarily may have been broken. They've been fixed on the version online right now, but I just wanted to note if anyone followed a link and it was broken for a short time, we have have addressed that and you can look at the current version online right now to see any any questions you might have there.
Um, and then we did a little bit of cleanup throughout, a few minor updates, but nothing else um with significant um impacts. Um, we do want to note that in addition to the changes that we got directed from council, um, we would like to add a housing appendix to the document that we can bring forward in the packet for the 17th.
Um, that would address some of the state requirements and just show kind of the process we used to get to the proposed plan and really lay that out with a little bit more clarity so that folks can can see kind of how step one le led to the step two, step three, and then kind of what what we proposed with regard to housing.
So, um, we would appreciate some direction from council on that. Um, if that's a direction you would like to go. And so, finally, I'm going to wrap up with this slide. Just a reminder of that, um, kind of calendar and where we've been and where we're headed.
I do also want to note that while we are following this, um, kind of calendar process, the county is also following their process on the comprehensive plan update um, as well. um they are on the same cycle as us, but they're a few months behind us.
And we want to note that um any updates to the urban growth area are officially designated by the county. Um and so they have been having conversations around that. They've recently shown support for our proposed urban growth area, but we just wanted to note that they're a little bit behind us.
So um so our proposed urban growth area is just a proposal until they officially adopt their plan. [snorts] And with that note, I will um open it up to the public. We look forward to hearing from them and staff will be here afterwards for any questions.
Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Ericson. Uh any clarifying questions from the council before we open up the public hearing. All right, Kelly, how many do we have signed up? >> All right, we have 17 individuals signed up.
>> Okay, thank you. And again, a reminder, if once your name is read, if you could please um get up from your seat and line up at either microphone to keep things moving along. Go ahead and begin. >> All right.
First up, we have Brian Armstrong, Adam Bellinger, Darcy Jones, and David Roberts. Lots of time to speak today, I guess. Uh, one thing I notic somebody didn't plan for though was that clock up there. It's still set.
Kind of freaked me out there for a moment. I was like, are we already at 8:30? Geez. Um, yeah, I love this document. The one thing I'd say it's a it's it's a large document and the amount of information that's in there is quite impressive.
I mean, there is just so much information. and just trying to get through the whole thing is quite quite a chore and you guys have to do it and I have to have to plan for it. So, thank you for all the work.
I guess the only thing I kind of think about is like uh it's it's really well written. There's a lot of great things in there, but are we going to hold ourselves to it? We we set a lot of ambitions and we set a lot of uh goals.
And I I I've seen plans before in Bellingham. look at certain park master plans and see that they haven't really been fulfilled over a decade. You see certain things that are in those plans, you're like, hm, when is this coming along?
And I think Mayor Lunie said one time at a committee meeting quoted Mike Tyson saying everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And sometimes I wonder how many people got punched in the face to where this didn't get accomplished.
And uh so when I look at the plan, I see I mean there's lots of great points. To me, I love the multimotal transportation. Big fan of that. I love the fact that parks, environment, and climate are all together.
The fact that we talk about stewardship and opportunities for the community to get involved to empower the community and uh get them to be able to do work within the community. And I look at relating kind of to the budget, but when we plan for the future, how are we going to be able to manage all the different things that we have if we don't involve the community more?
And again going back to that meeting where quotes from people talking about John F. Kennedy, what can't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And I know that Bellingham is really good at coming out and getting involved and helping their neighbors.
There's lots of nonprofits throughout the city, the city volunteer program. Even though we it was a deluge of rain, we still had people show up this last Saturday. So, I think we really need to focus on that empowering people and making sure that we're getting the community involved because they want to be involved.
I come here every week. Yes, Nicole, I still will be showing up um every week to make sure like our voices are kind of heard and let people know and I know that there's more people that just don't have the time to come here and I know that there's people that really do want to be participating.
So, when we grow bigger and we build like more condensed housing, how are we going to be able to incorporate nature into our living spaces? How are we going to be able to access or have everybody in public access those natural areas?
Because that's in the plan says we're going to have equity and connectivity to nature and parks. But how are we going to do that if we don't have that involvement with the community? I mean, I'd look at community gardens now as plots of land in certain spaces.
How is that going to be incorporated into our infrastructure and how can we do more of that and get the community involved? And I'll end at zero. Thank you. >> Thank you, Brian. >> Good evening, council.
My name is Adam Bellinger and um I view this in terms of uh the Bellingham plan in terms of is my life getting better or is it getting worse living here in Bellingham? and over a longer period of time because this is looking at longer periods of time, 10, 20 years.
And there's aspects of living here that have gotten better and then some aspects have gotten worse. And um I think one of the things that I would like to focus on for just this one little piece of this is um uh you know when we have a tradeoff where we have an existing piece of infrastructure say a road that has um predominantly uh vehicle traffic um and then we decide that we are going to prioritize another group.
Okay. and and I don't begrudge the fact that we need to look at adding more people to uh who are being uh helped in Bellingham, but I think there's probably a lot of room for uh better ways to do it. Um for example, like the putting the bike lanes through some of the major vehicle thoroughares.
Um um and we so we'll put take out a a lane of traffic to put in bike lanes that don't always get used and um meanwhile we have areas like where pedestrians are being pretty much ignored in like neighborhoods like Happy Valley where there's no sidewalks.
Um, and so I I view things as like um we need to maybe spend some more areas on adding where there's some pretty significant deficiencies and uh maybe focus less on areas where things are actually functionally were pretty good like on the Holly Street uh where I think there's other areas uh you know parallel um points of uh uh traffic where you could have bike lanes go through that would be less impactful for the vehicle traffic and it would overall lead to a better quality of life for everybody.
Um and so I just view making things less functional um for the majority as is a detriment to quality of life. So um I I would encourage the city to re-evaluate some of the um the ways in which they're looking at these things.
Not to say that I'm I I ride my bike and I, you know, enjoy uh uh doing that, but I don't enjoy riding down Holly Street on a bike. I don't enjoy riding down James Street on a bike when there's an adjacent street that's much less traffic or a greenways available.
That is a much better uh use case for my uh travels. Thank you. >> Thank you, Adam. Hi, I'm Darcy Jones with Jones Engineers 4164 Meridian uh suite 304 and I'm here um in behalf of Keitech USA and Larabe Springs as well as Jones Engineers, Brian Jones and Jasmine Fam Jones Engineers are here and we just wanted to really extend our thanks starting with planning staff um director Blake Lion, um Chris Bey, Elizabeth, Anya, and Sydney have created a great plan, and we support the Bellingham plan.
There's been a lot going into it. Um it's been a uh what, two and a half years, I guess. So, it's a it's an amazing process to be part of and um we we want to extend our thanks for engaging and indulging um our various comment letters and um suggestions.
So, and um we've learned a lot along the way. I want to thank the city council for immersing yourself in these issues. I know there's tremendous a lot of pressure on on coming from a lot of different um parts of our community for different issues and and I can't imagine being in your place sometimes honestly and um also really want to thank Mayor Lond for your leadership and taking a bold approach to a comprehensive plan update.
It happens every 10 years and um it's really been refreshing to see the approach that the city's taken. Um I do have a few specific issues I included in in a letter to you a few days ago. Uh first land use uh policy LU16.
Um we feel there should be some flexibility built into that particular um policy. Um the the annexation phasing plan process certainly should and must move forward. Um but there should be some flexibility and in certain instances or cases there could be the opportunity to to take uh certain phased projects.
We'd certainly like to participate in uh working with the city on on moving forward sooner rather than later. We've seen those annexation phasing plan processes take a long time. Um and we'd like to move forward with housing.
Second policy I we had some concern bit about with house was housing policy 16 um where it looks to develop a mandatory inclusionary zoning program where um we would suggest there's going to be a there's a lot of opportunity for interaction and discussion about um incentivized affordable housing options.
We, for example, would love to to have those discussions and so looking at more of an incentivized policy. Thirdly, we'd like to see some policy related to access to sunlight, solar access, natural sunlight.
Without that, without that policy, it'll be hard to enact um zoning regulations and land use regulations. >> Thank you, Darcy. >> To enforce the policy. So, we need that. Thank you. Thank you, Darcy. >> All right.
And then after David, we will have uh Peter Frasier, uh Doug Angel or Engel, David Still Stallheim, sorry. >> Good evening, council members and Maryland. Thank you all for being here tonight and hearing from us.
My name is David Roberts. I live at 2012 Edgefield Drive. Um, I'm here to speak to you tonight about the South Hill South U Street Reserve UG and the work undertaken by the people for Lake Paddent Citizen Science Group active between 2011 and 2013.
I [snorts] was the science adviser for that group throughout the study. We were also advised and supported by Robin Matthews and students from WWU Institute of Watershed Studies. also Western's GIS program, city staff here at Bellingham, and two retired microbiologists.
The group's studies from that time period of the lake and wershed are as relevant today as they were then and should be carefully considered in evaluating the future of the South Street Reserve, UG. >> [snorts] >> Given the well-known fact that development increases runoff and decreases water quality in streams and lakes, the P4LP team set out to answer three questions.
What is the current condition of Lake Padden and what are its threats? What are the characteristics of the Lake Padden watershed and its current land use? And what types of management of the Lake Paden wershed should be considered in the future?
First, a couple of observations. The geology of the Blake Padton wershed plays a crucial role in the runoff processes. Some areas, particularly north and west of the top of Governor Road, [snorts] exhibit complex terrain resulting in steep slopes and cliffs, numerous small streams, and a wide range of wetlands.
Second, phosphorus is the primary limiting factor controlling water quality and algae growth in Lake Paddent. The conditions in Lake Patton have changed as a result of past development. As with Lake Watcom, all efforts should be made to reduce current sources of phosphorus while also limiting future sources to Lake Paddent.
I provided you all with a map of Lake Paddent's watershed from our studies at that time. On this map, you'll see numerous subwaterheds we studied and the outline of the reserve UG. The yellow parts of the map show areas that are either already developed or are in the city's parklands or fall within the city and county's critical areas designations of steep slopes, streams, and wetlands.
The [snorts] green areas on the map show um that areas that could be potentially could potentially sustain additional development. Some of the green areas may at this point be part of the city's most recent park purchases.
As you can see, with these factors considered, there's very limit limited developable land available in the reserve UG. Our group came up with three important conclusions that should be key to your discussions of this UG.
[snorts] Lake Patton is under stress today due to past development. Secondly, to maintain natural surface water systems, new development should be avoided in areas designated as critical areas, including those with steep slopes, streams, and wetlands.
>> Thank you, David. Your time is up. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, David. [snorts] >> Good evening, council members. My name is Peter Frasier. I have two adult children who live here in town, a nurse and a public interest attorney.
They're the kind of people this community depends on. They both want to live their lives here in Bellingham, but even with good jobs, they're nowhere near close to being able to buy homes. That's not sustainable for a healthy community.
That's why I'm speaking in support of including the South U Street area in the city's UG. You may have been told this would be cost prohibitive. Yet, no financial analysis has been shared to support that claim.
Without transparency, it's impossible to know if the concern is real. Including South U in the UG doesn't annex a single acre or commit the city to spend a dollar. UG reserve isn't a real planning designation.
It has prevented the city from doing the long range work this area needs. Adding you South U simply allows the city to plan responsibly for an area that already functions as part of Bellingham with neighborhoods, a school, parklands, and streets tied to the urban grid.
Delaying again only kicks the can down the road and defers critical decisions about how Bellingham will grow. When annexation eventually does happen, nearly all infrastructure will be privately financed through impact fees and permit charges, about 35,000 per home.
Those fees fund roads, parks, utilities, and schools. The city isn't being asked to build, it's being asked to plan. Hundreds of existing homes already connected to city water and sewer would begin contributing property taxes and utility revenue.
Each household would add roughly $1,000 to $1,400 a year in a new property tax revenue plus affordable housing contributions. Lake Padden sits downhill from this area and much of its wershed remains on septic.
Modern storm water and sewer infrastructure planning that can only happen once the area is in the UG is essential to protecting the lakes's water quality. South U, North U, and Sam Michelle are interconnected.
Together, they represent thousands of future homes that will define how Bellingham grows. Keeping South U out keeps all three areas from developing efficiently. Including it allows coordinated planning, shared infrastructure, and a stronger fiscal position for the city.
Housing and job growth go hand in hand. If Bellingham wants to retain the people who make this community work, we need room for them to live. [snorts] Including South U Street in the UG costs nothing today, but it opens the door to a coherent, transparent, and fiscally sound plan for Bellingham's future.
Thank you. >> Thank you, Peter. >> Hi there. My name is Doug Angel. Uh our grandmother uh bought a uh a 38 acre parcel um up on the hill behind us about 70 years ago. And her dream was that our family and others were going to be able to enjoy this beautiful part of the world.
Uh we've um been working on this. We've honored that dream by hiring consultants, engineers, wetland specialists, by engaging with the city for years and in the meantime spending a lot of money uh with each uh each step.
Uh we are ready to work with the city and with the community to make her vision a reality with housing that reflects Bellingham's values, which is walkable, connected, and environmentally responsible.
uh as Peter mentioned in including uh the south view and the UG is critical. It's not uh just critical for us but it's really critical for the whole city of Bellingham. Uh our land is in the city limits.
Uh it has water right next to it. I walked up there this morning and the water is still there. Um, and [sighs and gasps] so, you know, the the opportunities are endless, but again, without inclusion in the UG, uh, that's going to really put a damper for our neighbors as well as for any opportunities that we might have in the future.
And essentially what we're doing if we don't get included is that we're orphaning a whole bunch of uh, property owners. Uh the city has made it clear that infrastructure extensions won't happen unless South U is in the UG.
This means our 38 anchors uh along with hundreds of others nearby cannot realistically be developed. Uh we want to be part of this solution. uh we can play a positive role in addressing Bellingham's housing needs, but only if the city and county make the decision to include us in that UG.
By including us, we can help to unlock housing across the south and east part of Bellingham. This isn't about one parcel. It's about creating thousands of homes where the city has already planned for growth rather than pushing uh further into the county.
Uh you could say that uh I'm the third angel at bat here uh with my grandma starting this process and then my dad took it over and so now it's my turn. And so my uh objective is that this will become a reality and I'll be able to go back and tell my grandmother in heaven we did it.
Uh so my goal is to finish with the win similar to the Dodgers did and uh my again I want to make Bellingham an even better place to live. Thank you. >> You right on time, huh? >> All right. Okay. And then after David, we have Brian Gas, Bill Guyire, Brian Heinrich, Brad Swanson, and Betsy Gross.
>> Thank you. Uh David Stalheim. Um I know all of you and uh are familiar with Sage Crest, one of the uh uh gems of our greenway system and park system here. Um and hopefully most of you have made it to the top.
Uh when you made it to the top, you looked out over the views to the west of the water and the mountains and the San Juan Islands and you saw this clearcut and you wondered perhaps when you saw that clearcut, what happened and can it happen again?
And what was there? You might have asked the question, what was there before? Because what was there before was a primary wildlife habitat defined by the city studied in 2015 as one of the highest biodiverse forest in the city and because of it because of that it also was ranked the highest for habitat protection regulatory protection but it ended up getting cut.
How did it happen? I detailed that in a letter to you going through uh all the steps. It started with an application to the city and the city went through the process. that reviewed its development regulations uh and applied uh the application was for a 30% cut.
The city applied all of its development regulations, condition it, and they went forward. One year later, they terminated that application. They went to the state department of natural resources and filed a different application and cut 95% of the timber and had no buffers around the forested wetland.
And that's what happened is the process broke down. So part of your question is how does this relate to the Bellingham plan? So plans are your policy documents that get implemented through development regulations.
If you don't have them implemented through development regulations, all they are is a pretty plan that sits on the shelf or these days sits in the cloud and that's all they are. And so what you have to do is you have to make sure that your plan has um has actions [snorts] in it that you can do something about.
So we've identified a few things that you could do. first off is include another policy that says forest practices in the city have to comply with the city's development regulations. If you don't do that, history will repeat itself and more forested lands within the city um will go down without uh meeting the city's standards.
Um we recommend also um that you know first off another thing is that 40% of of Bellingham is covered by trees right now. The tree canopy is 40% cover. Of that, uh, 54% of the tree canopy is in private lands.
The Bellingham plan does not identify any of your urban forest policies to include private lands. So, none of the policies in your plan right now are explicitly will pertain to private lands. And so when you get to actions and development regulations, there's no direct nexus that private lands will be included as part of that.
So it has to be clear in your plan to include private lands as part of your urban forest uh within the plan. And so uh to uh so we're recommending uh amending the definition of that. Um, so finally we have some recommendations about community forest and the mapping and hopefully you take a look at that.
>> Uh, and thank you. >> Thank you, David. >> All right. Hello again. This is Brian Gas from Bellingham. Hey, I would think I was coming here and I thought consequences. I think that's John Wick's little term.
And I think what we're seeing now is the consequences of 20 years of really dishonest planning. [clears throat] And I'm just going to tell you that I know it sound nobody wants to admit this, but in 2003 they said they had 10,000 homes, a room for 10,000 units and that didn't include King Mountain.
And so add King Mountain and you get probably a thousand more maybe. So we're like 11,000 of these units. And what happens is, nobody wants you to remember that they only permitted, they don't want you to know they only permitted 2400 detached single family homes during the last 20 years.
I'm not going to blame you, but I know that there was a planning meeting that started my depth and, you know, spiral into hell planning of saying that, you know, there was a a a slide presented by the count by the planning department that said exclusionary housing policies.
And I was thinking, what the heck is an exclusionary housing policy? Because I know there's some crazy stuff out there still. But what they said was that the detached single family home that's in the 25 neighborhoods in Bellingham is considered the the uh that exclusionary housing policy because quote, "Not everybody could afford them." Now, the self-awareness lacking of the fact the planning department is the reason why things aren't affordable here is that they're not taking into consideration that people need to build lives here and they're [clears throat] not going to build lives renting.
And the reality is in 2003 there was plenty of places to live and build. And for some reason, the same planning department wants to wants us to believe that they know what they're saying going forward.
And I'm here to say I don't think they do because no offense to the guy here from Keitech who was like a North Korean prisoner giving a speech uh how great the ruler is. They've been trying to build on that place for like 15 years and they've delayed it.
And so what's what's happening now is you're talking about going forward. They think this great plan has this has better growth going forward than we've had over the last 20 years after we're the most expensive city in the whole country of our size.
And they think that those people are going to come with a 0.04% job growth rate. And I can't believe that you guys actually looked at that and didn't laugh at how could you present that to us and say that somehow being the most expensive place with no job outlooks and nobody talks about jobs and and and actually you know working and living here other than you're already here and they really in a straight face thought they were going to grow faster now than they did 20 years ago with us having no land.
They have not annexed the in 2023 they said they're going to annex all 15 UAS by this time. It's in the it's in the paperwork. They didn't access actu annex a single one like 150 acres from King Mountain.
We're supposed to believe that they're going to annex North Bellingham or all these other places. Don't trust what they say. Trust what they did. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Brian. >> Evening council.
Bill Guyer Guy Associates and a 40-year resident of Bellingham. I am certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners and I have over 50 years in the profession. I wanted to uh speak to the U community well-being section.
It's going to be image number 80 in your draft ordinance. That'd be very helpful for you to turn to that. And we know that the community well-being section is focused on fostering strong communities. But the section lacks facilities that predate Bellingham's incorporation.
Facilities that are supported by a large portion of the population. Facilities that provide critical services for care and well-being for anyone. Churches, synagogues, temples, religious institutions.
It must be included in the community well-being section because as we know as we spoke earlier Bellingham plan provides the aspirational goals for subsequent municipal codes. Okay. Today's code defines all churches as conditional uses except for downtown.
And as you know, that's a leftover provision that predates the 1980 zoning code when you couldn't really identify nor quantify development impacts. Since then, we've adopted codes for traffic impacts, water services delivery, sewer delivery, storm water delivery.
We have environmental codes that deal with steep slopes, wetlands, streams, protection of forest, etc. Specific codes. So any development can go to those metrics to be built. Residential, commercial, and districtal and institutional uses are permitted uses that comply with those specific codes that I just enumerated.
But churches have an extra hurdle to go over to obtain a costly conditional use permit. That's a discretionary permit. Discretion means the city can deny it. Okay. Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act of 2000 was passed by Congress and signed by the president which specifically prohibits zoning laws that these three things.
Number one, treats churches or other religious assemblies or institutions on less than equal terms with non-religious assemblies or institutions. Two, discriminates against any assemblies or institutions on the basis of religious or religious determin denomination.
or three unreasonably limit religious assemblies, institution or structures within a jurisdiction. A condition use permit I believe opens the door for those three prohibitions to occur needs to be changed.
So just as much as that we are removing barriers to infill housing and residential components, thank you for doing that. You've heard me speak to that many times. We need to do the same for churches and religious institutions.
So, in your community well-being section, council, mayor, staff, please recognize their existence, adopt policies supporting their continued role in Bellingham, direct zoning reforms to define churches and religious institutions as permitted uses.
>> Thank you. >> Let's give them the same opportunity to provide that's provided to all of the uses in Bellingham. And I thank you for your time. >> Thank you, Bill. Good evening, Brian Hinrich Sound Energy, 1110 Kentucky Street here in Bellingham.
Um, first I want to thank uh thank you for the opportunity to comment on the comprehensive plan tonight and also thanks to the staff for their excellent work they've put in the plan making it incredibly accessible and easy to to navigate through.
It's very appreciated. I I I do want to reference a couple of things that I sent um sent you all in a letter um late last week. First of which is uh looking for you to consider language around energy storage systems and I think that could probably live in either the land use section or in the climate chapter.
Um that's a technology that I think we're going to need as we seek to continue reliability um and and meet demand uh as that grows in the coming years. So ask that you consider inclusion of energy storage systems in the plan.
And then I just wanted to quickly acknowledge and thank you for your inclusion of or maybe I should thank staff uh for uh wildfire wildfire mitigation and wildfire smoke mitigation. Uh that's a going to be a in increasingly important topic certainly for the utility but also as we look at the interface between you know homes and and the forested uh forested land.
So consider PSSE a partner in those discussions and I'd be happy to speak with you further about it anytime. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. >> Uh, good evening, council. Uh, Brad Swanson, Belchure Swanson Law Firm, 900 Dupont Street, U represent Derek Bu and Matt Connor, who are property owners in the South Street UG reserve.
But first, I'd like to thank the council for your service and especially the hard work on this plan. And it's um I tend to agree with Mr. Jones. Uh it's a good plan. And I also want to extend my thanks to the staff.
They've worked really hard uh and got what I believe to be a good plan. But I do have one grievance and it's with regard to the South UT Street U Reserve. Um our clients and many folks believe it should be included as uh part of Bellingham's urban growth area.
In 2008, the city council denied an application for, excuse me, a petition for an annexation. The stated reasons at that time were too expensive and not enough time to plan. And here we are and we're hearing the same thing.
And as Mr. Frasier indicated, putting the South UT Street U reserve into the UG costs nothing. That's not the cost that we're worried about. The perceived too expensive has to do with the construction of the infrastructure for the UST Street UG reserve.
That's not going to happen until until after annexation. So you've got this time frame between input into the UG or inclusion in the UG to annexation where the city and all of the stakeholders have an opportunity to determine the viability of infrastructure construction and uh development in that area.
Specifically, the city can work with the private sector to determine a cost sharing plan to construct the infrastructure that adequately serves not only the south street UG area, but the north street UG area and the existing city limits to the west which are undeveloped and to be served.
But the worry here is that if you're not in the UG, the GMA, I know too many too many acronyms, doesn't require you doesn't require the city to plan. And it's kind of like homework when you were in high school.
Planning for G for UG is required. Planning for reserves because they're not UG is like extra credit. And when I was in high school, I did the UG. I did the homework first. I got to the e the extra credit when I could get to it.
And [snorts] Chris and Elizabeth are work really really hard to do this, but I fear that if the reserve for South UG is is retains its reserve status as extra credit, we'll never get back to it for another who knows how long.
So, um I ask the council on behalf of my clients and many folks in the US street UG reserve to to uh include it in the UG. Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it. >> Thank you, Brad. >> All right.
And then after Betsy, we have Derek Bu, Bridget Brick, Lane Davis, Kore Perry, Escridge, and John McGlaclin. Hello, my name is Betsy Gross and I live at 1949 South Hills Place and uh I'm joining the legion of people who are here to talk about the South uh Samish Crest UG reserve status that um a lot of people have opinions about and as do I.
Um the other two Davids have already spoken to you about um the scientific studies that have been done uh in the uh in that area. It's in the Lake Paden watershed. And I'd like to also say I we invited a bunch of elected officials to go on walkabouts this summer with us into the uh Sam Crest open space area and several of you came and we were we loved your we loved that that you came and we're very grateful to you for your interest.
So thank you again. I'm here to re strongly recommend that you remove UG reserve status from the south uh UG. So you have some people saying put UG on. We're saying no UG at all, not even UG reserve. And the reason for that is that uh these scientific studies that were done uh over 12 years ago demonstrated that uh that the geology of the lake padden watershed is uh you know replete with multiple limestone steep slopes and wetlands and making a very scant expensive amount of development that's possible in that area in the first place place.
But even more importantly, it's kind of like when you think about it, it's dumb to develop in a watershed in which um and you've taken UG status away from Lake Watcom wershed. Lake Patton has the same environmental protection overlay that Lake Watcom has.
And it's uh not smart to um decide to degrade one of our most beautiful parks. Uh Lake Paddton is arguably the jewel in the crown and tens of thousands of Bellingham sters uh enjoy Lake Paddent all the time throughout the year.
So why should we make a decision that further degrades the water quality of that lake? By uh saying this area east of Samish Crest and in the Lake Pen wershed should remain as an urban growth area reserve.
You're basically saying that this is an area likely to be urban in the future. But time is not going to change the ge the geology of the area and it's not going to improve the lakes's water quality. So, uh, holding the reserve, holding it in reserve status is just kicking the can down the road.
10 years from now, it will >> you will have the same problem. >> Thank you. Time is up. >> Thank you, Betsy. >> Uh, good evening. My name is Derek Buucy and um I'm at 1812 Samish Lane down at um Lake Samish.
And first of all, I just wanted to uh start out by thanking the council for the hard work on this comp plan, the update, and the Bellingham plan. I appreciate the dedication and all the hard work to everybody.
I know it's uh it's been a process in a long time coming. I own property in the South U Street UG reserve and I urge the council to redesate the South Street UG reserve. Couple points here. The city thinks that it is too expensive to develop that Ust Street into the UG.
And I think that a lot of that cost and we don't we've heard that it's expensive. We don't we've never seen a budget. Um but a lot of that cost can be deferred um to the developers. As a property owner in the South UT street UG reserve, I'm ready to help.
South Ust Street uh area is urban but with rural levels of services. This is not fair to the residents that live there. Infrastructure from the south UT Street area is also needed to adequately serve both the Samish Hill area and North U Street UG.
Until planning occurs in the South Street area, it will be difficult to develop either the Sam Hill area or the North Ust Street UG. Thus, I request that the city council reddes designate South Ust Street UG reserve into a proper UG.
Thank you for your time. >> Thank you, Derek. >> Good evening, Council members. First, I'd like to thank you and the city's planning staff for the hard work and care that's gone into this comprehensive plan update and for the opportunity to speak here tonight.
My name is Bridget Reich and I'm an attorney with Carmichael Clark. We represent Keitech and Larvy Springs, the majority owner of the property in what is currently the North Bellingham UG Reserve. I apologize if you couldn't hear me.
I'm a bit shorter than the last gentleman. Um, North I'm here tonight on behalf of my client to express support for including North Bellingham in the city's UG as proposed in the Bellingham plan. North Bellingham offers the best opportunity for Bellingham's future growth.
Its flat developable topography makes it one of the few areas where urban infrastructure can be extended efficiently and cost-effectively. This landscape combined with Keitech's majority ownership of contiguous land provides a rare opportunity to plan a complete connected neighborhood instead of relying on peacemeal development.
Laravey Springs has already demonstrated what that can look like in the northern area of the Cordata neighborhood. Their approach has delivered a diverse mix of housing types. family-sized homes, senior housing, duplexes, town homes, and small singlestory homes, all built to high envir environmental standards with local partnerships.
Over the past several years, more than 2/3 of these homes have sold at prices affordable to households earning between 80 and 120% of area median income, and about 85% have been purchased by Watcom County residents.
Larabe Spring's track record shows how middle housing can meaningfully expand home ownership opportunities for local working families, providing attainable, high-quality homes without sacrificing environmental values.
I would also like to encourage the council to revise land use policy 16. As currently written, it would prevent annexations from moving forward until a separate phasing plan is complete. The policy as written destroys the city's flexibility, ties its hands, and will likely delay housing production at a time when Bellingham is already struggling with a housing shortage.
There are ways to move forward sooner, particularly for properties like Keiteex, where utilities can be extended efficiently and where some services are already available. We strongly support the revised language proposed by Jones Engineers in their October 28th memo.
This reasonable update to land use policy 16 preserves the city's flexibility to approve or deny annexations while creating a clear practical path forward for contiguous properties that are well positioned to support infrastructure extensions and meaningful housing production through a development or annexation agreement.
It maintains full city discretion and oversight while still allowing progress on muchneeded housing production. The North Bellingham UGA represents a chance to build on what's already working. Environmentally responsible, locally built, and attainable housing that strengthens the community.
Thank you again for your time and for your continued work guiding Bellingham's future. >> Thank you, Bridget. >> Okay. And online, we've got Lane Davis Corey. Um Lane, you should be able to turn on your camera and unmute your microphone.
Thank you. My name is Lane Davis Corey. I'm a resident of the Roosevelt neighborhood and tonight I'd like to speak about infill housing uh specifically as it relates to pedestrian safety. Uh, I'm absolutely in favor of increasing middle housing, but right now I don't see any steps listed in the planning process to assess the impact of infill units that increase traffic on narrow streets, especially those without sidewalks.
For me, this relates directly to a project at 310 St. Clair Street. Uh the plan adds nine homes plus 980US. So that makes 18 units whose residents will access Clare St. Clair Street. Um they're including 40 stalls for parking to give you an idea of the number of potential additional vehicles.
Uh this segment of St. Clair Street runs north from Alabama at the bottom of Alabama Hill and the street ends uh actually on the rail trail at the other end with Barkley Boulevard about another block or so past that.
Uh the segment is about a mile and it's quite narrow. There's actually only one block that has a sidewalk. There are minimal or no shoulders and there are series of drainage ditches uh along the road.
In other words, pedestrians on St. Clair Street have little choice other than walking in the road. Uh, local children living along St. Clair walk and bike to nearby Roosevelt Elementary School. That's less than half a mile from the project site.
Uh, many people walk, they bike, they run, they push strollers, they walk dogs. Um, because there's several ways you can reach the rail trail from St. Clair Street. Um, a neighbor recently suggested that we look at a shared streets concept.
Uh, this was passed by Washington state legislation in just April of this year, SB5595 for those who want to look it up. Uh, shared streets enable neighborhoods without sidewalks to lower speed limits so we can share the road more safely.
Um, I've emailed a presentation to all of you uh with a visual tour of the street to illustrate these issues and um thank you for all your hard work and I look forward to discussing a process to be sure that increased middle housing also incorporates strategies to ensure safe shared use of our roadways.
Thank you. >> Thank you, Lane. Okay, Perry, you should be able to um unmute and turn on your camera if you'd like. >> Can everybody hear me? >> Yes, we can hear you. >> Great. Thank you. Good evening, council members.
R Perry Ess representing both the realtors and the builders. Um I just have two major points tonight. Um uh I can't believe this will probably be the last time involved with the comprehensive planning process.
I've been doing this for 19 years and um honestly I can say you know we've worked really hard for those years. Two major points though I want to make. Um we started this process with the buildable lands report.
Um at that time the city of Bellingham proudly proclaimed in the buildable lands report that it had entirely complied with the GMA and had 3,000 surplus housing units. And I remember many of us that were reading that report kind of chuckled to ourselves and thought, well, if there's 3,000 surplus housing units, why is there a crisis then?
And the answer is the housing units that were being allowed to be built in the city were frankly not what the residents wanted. If you go to the 2023 housing preference survey, you see clearly that 87% of the city residents said that they wanted the opportunity to own their home.
If you look at the document and take the intent from the u plain language of the of the document, you're going to realize that ownership does not seem to be a top priority in this plan. The word ownership only appears in seven instances in the entire that's being liberal in the entire housing section.
Several of those are carried over from previous plans. One of them talks about trying to avoid displacement when apartments go condo. History tells us that doesn't happen. But I just I just am a little bit surprised that if we're trying to do what the residents want to do, this plan I don't think quite gets us there.
The other second point is I really urge you to do the math. Bellingham anticipates needing almost 18,000 housing units in the next 20 years with the exception of the North Bellingham UG. The city is not proposing to add by my count nearly a single acre of land which means that you know in in high-tech is is pretty much planned.
The Jones brothers have done a really good job telling you how many units are going to get in there. And let's throw in the Barkley PUB that you just approved. That's another 3,000 units in 20 years. That means that in the next 20 years, you have to find 13,000 housing units in the existing city limits.
That is over four more Barkley PUDs that you need to find. This plan and its heavy reliance on middle housing caters to renters, not homeowners. The last thing I point out, um, Bellingham's aiming to get 10% of middle housing.
Thanks to AI, I've been able to research the universe, and the best plans with middle housing achieve 4%. Everybody else gets about one, well, it's anywhere from 210 to 4/10 of a%. Your >> time is up.
>> Bellingham proposes to double that. [snorts] >> Thank you, Perry. Okay, John, you should be able to turn on your camera and unmute. >> Thank you. Can you hear me? >> We can hear you. Yes. >> Thank you.
My name is John McLaclin and I want to thank you for the opportunity to comment on the draft comprehensive plan. The plan guides you in decisions in shaping the future of our home and supports community faith in your leadership.
Um, despite impressive community engagement numbers on page 14, I'm concerned the public input did not make meaningful difference in the plan in particular detailed recommendations from the Wakom Environmental Council in seven letters to the city and seven more at county level with CO city relevance.
That input is not reflected in the draft plan. This is similar to my experience participating in comprehensive planning process since 2002. I think that's longer than Perry. I urge you to work with us genuinely to secure a better future and to restore our trust in your leadership.
I urge you to receive all of the council's letters, but due to time, I'll focus on three issues. First, population growth projections, the foundation for the plan. I've reviewed projections at a professional level since 2002.
Every cycle, the projections have been erroneous based on faulty methods and assumptions. Last time, I calculated forecast accuracy of your projections, determined that they were worse than useless. Then I developed projections using credible population models with high accuracy and you ignored my work.
This time the council welcome environmental council informed you that your projections again are inflated. The consequences will be include excessive infrastructure spending and irreversible environmental damage that will plunge us in debt and foreclose on our future.
I urge you to read the council's population letter and reconsider resulting decisions about growth and zoning. Issue number two, building affordable housing capacity. Continued reliance on market-based supplyside housing development will continue to fail the imperatives of providing housing and opportunity with equity and inclusivity.
This is a really big topic, so I'll illustrate with a recent example. Recently, you approved development of the pit in Fair Haven, which involved relinquishing several city controlled restrictions on that property.
City planners lobbyed you to approve this deal. In exchange, the developer promised 20% of units that would go for 20% below market value for 12 years. That time frame is shorter than this comprehensive plan and much less time than it takes to raise a child.
This is not genuine affordable housing, even as a city promoted as such. When the city relinquishes its leverage for so little, the community loses confidence that you really care about affordable housing.
And then finally, trees and environmental stewardship. Um, I have personal experience with the city's failure to enforce tree protection laws. On two properties adjacent to mine, large, healthy trees were removed from steep slopes or within 10 ft of them.
Those trees were protected by the citical city's critical areas ordinance, but they were cut anyway. In both cases, I noticed the city's code enforcement officer regarding trees on city- owned property.
The code enforcement officer informed my ignored my report for a year. And then he replied that in such cases, they typically issue after the fact authorization, which is what he intended to do in this case.
Then a neighbor cut down several very large trees without a permit. And I got a similar response from the a code enforcement officer. So basically code enforcement officers don't enforce code. My goal here is not to criticize but rather to urge you engage in more collaborative leadership with the community, particularly people with deep knowledge and experience.
You can begin by reading and incorporating wisdom contained in letters from the Wakom Environmental Council. Thank you. >> Thank you, John. Sounds like that's everybody. So I will bring it back to council.
Council member Liquist, >> I'm hoping we can um refer this to a work session for further discussion. Um I will be flagging probably four or more issues this evening I'd like to discuss and I don't think I can do that tonight and I don't think I'm ready to vote for tonight.
So I would move that we schedule the um optional work session that the staff referred to. >> Second >> motion by council member Liquist and a second by council member Hamill. Further discussion on this motion?
Seeing none, all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed or abstensions? That passes 70. Again, that will be November 10th for further discussion. Then we have two more meetings on the comprehensive plan after that as well.
Council member Loquin. >> Yeah. So, I spoke uh earlier this evening with the planning director uh about several of the letters that were discussed by uh people today. Um, I just would like some, um, what I would like is, I suppose, a staff's reaction to touch upon those letters and those requests.
Um, in particular, I'm also interested in looking at land use policies 15 and 16 on annexation. Um, I I don't think we adequately plan for annexation and I think the language is too soft. We've heard both U.J.
applicants talk about how they see barriers in the way of annexation and they're suggesting that there might be development agreements or cost sharing arrangements or something to make those UGS move forward.
Uh I'm going back to a previous planning director, Mr. Rick Zeppeler, in a presentation that was given to this council. It seemed like no UG was ever going to work. And so the conclusion not that we shouldn't you we shouldn't annex anything ever but that we need to figure out how to annex things if we are ever to grow.
So I would like to see some stronger policy language because I fear that even good UGS face difficulties and not all UGs are going to be easy. So I would like that to be a a topic of conversation in our work session.
>> Council member Anderson. >> Thank you. Um I had not had a chance to talk to the planning director. Um, but I'm was very supportive of moving this um forward to a work session. I also have and I'm sure staff have received the letters too.
I think we received one on Friday and then one Sunday from the Wakom Environmental Council and there's without going through probably 10 items right now um that I would like to have more information I would like to request uh that they review it.
There are some um statements in here that um we're not meeting on several fronts the GMA requirements when it comes to some of the the climate. Um there's also suggested changes that I think help strengthen um some of the goals here.
So if staff have the opportunity to review it, if it would help, I can forward an email over tomorrow specifying specifically which ones that I have interest in. Um, but in courtesy to council, I don't think it's in our best interest that I start reciting a whole bunch right now and reading it, unless people want to spend their evening that way.
So, would it be sufficient that I send you an email specifically of ones that um either through email or through the session to get further information on? Okay. Thank you. Any further questions or comments?
Council member Cotton. Um >> I'll just voice support for the um mention at the beginning during the presentation for the housing appendix and I don't know if looking for a motion on that or just head nods but we need a motion.
Um can I so moved? >> Second. Okay. We have a motion to adopt the recommendations from staff uh to include a housing appendix. Any further discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all in favor say I. >> I.
Any opposed or abstensions? Passes 70. >> Council member L. >> Um I would also like to take up the issue that was mentioned by Mr. Heinrich from PSSE about uh maybe some policy language on uh energy storage systems.
Um, this is particularly relevant. It's actually on the city's work plan for next year is to look at the regulations. There are there's a state workg group right now looking at the exact same issue. It seems to me it would be prudent to create a policy which points to the work that we're going to do and basically gives it direction and states some values to be achieved.
So that's one thing I would like to um look for in the work session, some kind of policy language on that. And in addition, um I'm looking at the housing for all income section and I'm not seeing uh I think a viable thing worthy of exploring.
Again, um Mr. Lion and I had a conversation about um possible policy language which I would like the council to consider that has to do with exploring the use of public development authorities and other entities to create another me uh mechanism for production of below market housing because we know that the majority of our need is below market and that the majority of what the market can deliver of course is above average income.
So um I would like to bring that forward and I'm going to talk with Blake about coming up with an idea. This is my idea. It's not Blake, but I'm going to I'm going to rely on him maybe help me fashion some language that's reasonable.
>> Council member Anderson. >> Thank you. Um I'd also like a little more information on Mr. Guyire's um suggestion as far as um churches not being mentioned under community wellness. Um, my first thought was perhaps because churches often don't pay tax once they're cited and I didn't know if there is a reason why or if it was just an oversight.
Um, but I would be kind of interested in um more information on the pros and cons of inclusion of that or if there's a way to include it that still meets the needs of um our community members of faith.
>> Member Hamill. >> Yeah, I just wanted to um bring up LU16 and H16. Those were brought up uh tonight a couple times and wanted to just get some more information flush that out out on our next discussion.
And of course, I'm sure that the staff would appreciate any other questions or points of interest that um individual council members might have before the upcoming meeting being uh prepared with the information for that.
Okay, with that, um, we've been at it for an hour and a half and the next public hearing has nine people signed up. So, I think we will take a break. 10-minute break. Everybody back in your seats in 10 minutes.
We will start again at 8:45. Okay, thanks everybody. We have our third public hearing up next. It's agenda bill 24715. Public hearing for for an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, extending interim zoning regulations to eliminate minimum automobile parking requirements and establish consistent bicycle parking standards citywide for an additional 6 months.
Staff is requesting a six-month extension of the interim parking ordinance with a proposed end date of July 28th, 2026. Concurrent with this extension, staff is recommending exploring the feasibility of implementing various parking management tools outlined in the proposed work plan.
Ultimately, this extension will allow staff to refine the city's interim zoning and work towards a permanent set of parking regulations that meet state law and reflect the community's values. Additional council meetings to discuss and vote on this item are scheduled for November 17th and December 8th, 2025.
And uh looks like I will turn it over to you again, Elizabeth, our uh senior planner. >> I'm going to have uh director Blake Lion say a few words to start us off. >> Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity.
Again, Blake Lion, director of planning and community development. Yes. Elizabeth and Ana are going to walk us through, but the thing I wanted to note for you all is um we have the opportunity to extend the interim to both look at the uh detailed analysis of what we see coming in in terms of uh our proposals.
We have a number of different anecdotes that we can walk you through in terms of what we've seen take shape in the last 10 months or so. Uh but we also want the opportunity to uh for the council and for the public to think about how this interplays with some of the other pieces that we have coming up in front of you both for the remainder of this year and the early part of next year.
And so the intent behind extending this was to give us the opportunity as a community to kind of see how all that stuff works together. So I'll turn it over to both Elizabeth and Anya to walk you through some of the details and then we're happy to answer any questions you may have.
All right, here we are. Um, thank you and good evening yet again. Um, today we are having a third public hearing and this one is on the interim parking ordinance and extending that. Um, as Blake noted, this is really has a lot of interplay with several other ordinances that are coming forward.
So, we'll mention that in the presentation. Um, but I will kick us off a little bit and then hand it off to Anya to walk through that work plan that was mentioned as well. So, we we'll talk a little bit about the background, what's um happened so far, how that interplays with the legislation um that has come forward at the state level over the past few years.
Um and kind of what the current interim ordinance and our proposed extension really means for parking minimums and the parking market. Um and then we'll go through a proposed work plan of related items that we would like um council to kind of be thinking about alongside the parking ordinance itself.
So a little bit of background here. Um we have the um existing parking interim ordinance was adopted um almost a year ago and that's why we are here but here before you asking to extend it. You can see that in the January 2025 it was approved.
Um but even before that there was conversation around this topic particularly as it relates to housing. And so you can see in May um we as staff brought forward a variety of opportunities around parking.
And then in November of 2024 um Mayor Lond had an executive order that directly called for an interim ordinance of this kind to remove parking minimums across the city. And so what that means is that the existing interim ordinance um no longer requires parking to be provided alongside private development.
It still allows that. Many developments are doing so, but that's the gist of the existing interim ordinance. So that's been in effect since January and it currently expires in this coming January. It's a 12-month ordinance.
So we're here before you tonight to extend that by six months. As Blake noted, there are several other planning related um ordinances coming forward um on the 17th. There are two public hearings scheduled on interim ordinances that relate to um a middle housing development and design review and those overlapping with this ordinance will be really important to look at how all three of those work together over the coming months.
So that's a big part of why we're asking for this extension. So we are are recommending um an extension and we are also bringing forward a work plan of items that relate um we are not saying that this full work plan will be completed over this six-month period but more that we will explore a variety of opportunities um on that list um and Anya will go through those in more detail at the end of the presentation.
Um, a little bit of background. There have been quite a few bills at the state level passed just over the last five years or so that relate to parking minimums and what we can and cannot require of private development.
Um, this slide goes through quite a few of them. I'm not going to describe each of them in detail. Um, but a lot of them relate to housing production and ensuring that we're removing barriers to affordability.
Um, a lot of them relate to kind of the location of the developments and if it's near transit, not requiring as much uh, parking, things like that. Um, there's also some legislation that has really specific parking requirements around size of stalls and things like that.
So, all of this has has been part of this interim ordinance and thinking about what the permanent regulations will look like. But we want to note a particular bill that was actually only passed this year since this existing interim ordinance went into effect.
Um at the state level, Senate Bill 5184 was passed in the spring. Um and this bill um both limits how much parking we can require in residential and commercial spaces. Um but it also has a slew of types of projects where we are not allowed to require any parking um other than potentially ADA stalls.
Um, and so we wanted to note that this is a new bill since the existing interim ordinance went into effect and that um, we are awaiting guidance from the state department of commerce on exactly what this means.
Um, and they're planning to release in the spring um, some guidance on what this means, but also um, their sort of recommended parking management strategies and associated um, recommendations. So, we're looking forward to that coming as part of this extension as well.
So, we do want to note that because this has been in effect for almost a year now, um we want to talk a little bit about what it means to remove parking minimums and how that impacts projects and the city as a whole.
Um there's a lot of good information in those previous presentations that I noted um occurred with the original adoption of this ordinance. So, we're not going to dive into a lot of detail there, but definitely visit that uh packet material and presentation if you want more details, but they do note um a variety of studies that um have occurred with other cities that have reduced or removed parking minimums.
Um there's a lot to be learned from that, but there's also a lot of unknowns. Um a lot of this movement has been fairly recent and a lot of it is in cities that are larger than Bellingham or have u more established transit structures.
So, um, seeing what it means for us is a really great part of this interim ordinance. Seeing what kind of development the market really provides because at its heart when you remove parking minimums, what you're doing is relying on the market to drive how much parking private developers provide.
Um, so it's very rare that they would provide no parking just because we're not requiring it. They generally will provide the amount of parking that they believe the market demands for that particular project.
Um we have noted a few um examples of what has come through the pipeline since this interim went into effect. So we wanted to note a few of those to give you a of um an idea of the variety of what we've seen.
We still continue to see quite a few projects that come in and park significantly more stalls than um we even required before this interim went into effect. those often um are at the north side of the city where um there is less transit access and less um amenities and so they often park maybe one stall per bedroom which is significantly more than our code used to require.
Um we also see a fair number of projects such as infill housing projects um that are in kind of higher density multif family areas that are providing about the same amount of parking that would have been required under our existing code before the interim went into effect.
And then we're also seeing some projects particularly infill housing projects that are in urban villages that are providing less maybe about half of what would have been required under our previous code.
So you can see there's quite a variety of what we're seeing proposed, but that it varies significantly based on the geography or the project type in particular. We also want to note that since the ordinance went into effect in January, um a lot has changed.
I already noted that Senate bill that passed that that changes what we are able to implement in our permanent regulations. Um but there's also um a current middle housing interim ordinance in effect as I noted that is also on the docket for a public hearing to be um amended um and extended uh in in two weeks time as well.
But that middle housing ordinance has also changed what types of projects can be proposed. So we only have about five six months of time where these two have overlapped and that's not a lot of time for folks to develop project design concepts and bring those forward.
So, we're looking forward to seeing how these intersect over the the next six months to to see what types of projects we get um proposed and what types of parking are proposed as part of those. Um we also have quite a bit of code work coming up as as we mentioned.
So, um these interims kind of all work together, but ultimately we we will be developing permanent regulations next year and we want to make sure that parking is part of that um kind of holistic comprehensive view.
We also included a little bit of information in the packet just about what that market demand might look like. Um these are two little charts that kind of show how folks are commuting to work um based on um their incomes.
And so for individuals that are earning less than 50,000 a year, that's on the left. And 64% of them are relying on driving alone to work. Um and on the right, a very similar number. 62% of those earning more than 50,000 a year rely on a car to get to work today.
Um you can see that the rest of the chart varies quite a bit but that that drive alone rate is actually very similar across demographics and we want to note that because that really shows that in today there's quite a bit of demand for parking.
Um that doesn't mean that we aren't working towards decreasing that that number. Um you've seen in in our comprehensive plan in particular mode shift is is a big piece of this. So we are definitely working towards that but today this is kind of what that that demand just for driving to work looks like.
Um we also know that there are a lot of different influences on what that market demand looks like um for individual projects. So as I noted when you remove the requirements to provide parking it really becomes um a unique kind of market analysis for individual projects to determine how much that developer will propose.
Um, and that might be based on a variety of contextual factors. Sometimes that might be based on the residence of the building. So, we've heard examples of projects that under the interim ordinance are actually able to um adjust what type of project they are proposing because for their tenants, perhaps they're transitioning out of homelessness.
um they might not need as many cars, but previously under our um parking parking requirements, they would have been required to provide parking, and that's very expensive. And so being able to kind of look at what your expected tenants are um and adjust accordingly is really important.
Um but also, as I noted with the examples, the geographic location is um a big part of that context. if folks are near transit access or are more walkable to more destinations and amenities and services, um they're more likely to see less market demand for parking.
So, it it varies quite a bit there. Um, we also really see that as the individual sites propose how much parking they would like to provide, we also want to think about how that intersects with um the public infrastructure, street parking and and other public parking opportunities and see th those two working together as a comprehensive strategy.
So, you'll see when Anya goes through our proposed work plan how we really want to look at those things in tandem and not as siloed conversations. Um, and as I noted, really wanting to um, incorporate the vision for reducing single occupancy vehicle use over time and seeing how all of these things fit towards that that goal and really supporting our climate goals as a city.
So, with that, I'm going to hand it over to Ana Gurath to walk through our proposed work plan. Hi everyone, Ana Gedrath, planner 2 with the city of Bellingham's planning department. Um, so I'll just take it from here.
Uh, so I'm going to walk through the management to tools that were outlined in the proposed work plan. The work plan was organized as a chart and included in the packet for today. Um, it includes approaches organized into five different categories that cover those interconnected parts of parking management.
Um, some of those items were like to we would like to investigate alongside the development of a permanent parking code update. um other items are included in the list but items that we don't necessarily recommend exploring for at this time.
So I'll make a note of these and talk through some of the reasons why. Um and the additional details can also be found in the meeting materials. So the five C categories are the private parking realm, the management of public parking, um the encouragement of mode shift and then um ADA parking and EV charging as those topics relate to parking.
Before I walk through these different categories, it's important to acknowledge that a lot of this work is cross-dep departmental work, meaning that it touches a lot of different work groups. Um, so some of this work is already ongoing or underway.
Um, it's not necessarily new, but it's listed here as it would benefit from further discussion and collaboration across the city as we work on those permanent parking regulations. So our intent with this work plan is to be begin to investigate some of those approaches for feasibility.
Um this will help us better understand and prioritize how we address parking management and mode shift holistically. And so with that I'll share a little bit about each of these categories. So if we look at the first category we recognize that we generally want to encourage developers or property owners to provide the right amount of private parking.
Um, we also recognize that the state legislation greatly limits our ability um to require parking, but there may be other ways to encourage desired behaviors or outcomes. So, this might include encouraging more use of shared parking.
Um, that might be between commercial and residential uses on the same site, things like that. It could also include revisiting our bike parking requirements and making sure they're adequate. and includes a general concept for exploring measures to prevent um severely underparked projects.
So in that second category of managing public parking, we were able to work really closely with the public works department to better understand our existing approach to public parking management. We understand that a number of those these items that are listed here are already underway and wouldn't include any major changes at this time.
However, we recommend the city continue to monitor the impacts of parking reform on various things including the pricing of paid parking, um how it's enforced, um and whether it's appropriate to expand the areas in which park paid parking is required.
Um some of these things might just become more important um as parking availability changes over time. Additionally, we're not proposing any expansion to the residential parking zones at this time. Um so we don't propose investigating this approach further and that's primarily because we know that enforcement um and management of these zones is very staff intensive and resource intensive.
Um another item in this category is parking management guidelines. So what this [snorts] means is that we'd like to explore how best to educate and better inform the community about parking. Um, a lot of people in the community might not understand the limits of street parking and that it's not just a free resource, so to speak.
Um, this educational component could also help ensure more street parking remains available for higher turner turnover or shorter term uses um rather than a permanent parking um stall. So, also in the second category is the idea of integrating any lessons learned from an upcoming um plan 2026 downtown transportation plan.
Um so that would be things related to short-term use of parking and curb management. Uh we also suggest continuing to monitor and improve the enforcement of parking time limits in free street parking areas.
And then finally, one item we don't recommend exploring further but we included in this list um is providing more public lots. Um this would definitely be cost prohibited and further some that or autoor oriented design which we're trying to move away from in our community.
Um and then in the category of mode shift, these approaches provide opportunities to help further our city goals and policies to move away from single occupancy vehicles and embrace alternative modes of transportation including walking, rolling, and transit.
Um there are a few approaches that we think are worthy of further exploration. These might include looking internally at our policies and ways of influencing city employees travel behavior. We also want to continue to promote a service that we already provide in which we um offer to install bike racks in the right of way if requested by a business.
We also remain open to new micromobility solutions as well as other external partnerships to encourage behavior change generally across the city and community. And then next is that category of ADA parking.
This was specifically flagged by council during previous meetings for further investigation. Um, currently ADA ADA parking is only required as a ratio if parking stalls are proposed with a development.
And those legislative requirements do actually provide a carveout which would allow us to require ADO park ADA parking with private development even if no other parking is required or priv provided on site.
We would also like to better understand um our current supply and demand of public ADA parking stalls in addition to looking at um private parking requirements. And then finally, we have the category of EV charging.
So this relates to parking management in a couple ways. First, we want to continue to evaluate and optimize the location of public EV charging. We also recognize that on street parking is often used at um used for at home charging.
So, the city is currently working on some policies to address safe cross sidewalk charging. So, with that, I'll remind you that our request today is to extend the interim ordinance and approve the work plan as discussed and described in the packet of materials.
Um, and we also have a request to change the ordinance um on page 265 of the packet to clarify um what ADA parking is required by the international building code. Um, so it's just a minor clarification to make it clear that the IBC has ADA parking requirements.
Um, and development with six or fewer units in an existing single building would be [clears throat] exempt. Um, so council can vote to direct staff to incorporate those changes into the next packet for the November 17th meeting.
And I also want to reiterate that the intent of the work plan is to explore options and we expect to come forward with more specific recommendations of which items to pursue further um and what that might look like.
All of this will ultimately help inform the development of permanent parking regulations um which will take into account the lessons that we learned from our community um and will meet the legislative requirements.
and our next two regularly scheduled council meetings will allow time for discussion and consideration of the extension of this interim ordinance. Uh we also want to note that we received about 40 written comments prior to tonight's public hearing supporting the extension of the interim ordinance.
Um and we look forward to hearing additional comments from the public at this time. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh clarifying questions from council. Council member Liloquist. >> Anya, you said at the very end there about something on page 265 that you that we needed to change the interim ordinance to further clarify the ADA rules.
Is that already included in the draft in front of me or is that need to be added to the draft in front of me? Okay. And if it needs to be added then can you show us some underlying language somewhere?
>> Yeah, thank you. Sorry. Um I asked onion to make that comment as well. So, our plans examiners were concerned that in um section one item E subsection B uh it currently reads that uh development with six or fewer units in a single building is not required to provide ADA spaces.
And the concern is that's fine if it's an existing building. If you're building new, then the IBC regulates and the IBC would require an an addition. That's when ADA becomes applicable. So, we wanted to add some language that says development within six or fewer with six or fewer units in an existing building where the international building code requirements are not applicable.
That's when you're exempt from ADA. Would that be like A B and then a new one at between B and C or how would you how would you >> No, I would I would recommend that uh subsection B read development with six or fewer units in an existing single building where the international building code requirements are not applicable.
Semicolon or. So it would just be adding in an existing before the word single building and then after that parenthetically you could say where the international building code requirements are not applicable.
>> Council member Stone >> I would so move >> second motion by council member Stone and a second by council member Lilloquist. Any further discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all in favor say I. I.
I. Any opposed or abstensions? That passes 70. Okay. Any further clarifying questions before we open up the public comment hearing. Okay. I think we have nine signed up if that's correct. Okay. And again, this is just comment on this specific topic.
>> All right. First up, we have Adam Bellinger, followed by Owen Begley Collier, Katie Chase, and Brian Gas. Good evening, council. My name is Adam Bellinger. Um, I just um in general I have a a skepticism about uh completely removing uh parking requirements.
Uh while I think there's plenty of room to make adjustments in the policy, um I don't feel that trusting the market on all things uh particularly for um in respect to providing economic um possibilities for our lowincome uh uh community members.
Um as the graph showed um the two graphs showing the different uh income sets, the lower uh uh income uh uh uh folks had uh higher reliance on their vehicles. And that kind of that corresponds to my own experience when uh I was making less money um living in Bellingham.
I was really needed to have a car and I needed to have e access to parking and it was just an absolute necessity for my uh ability to uh drive out of town to work at a job where I could get paid enough to live afford to live here.
Um so mobility is really important not just in a physical sense but in a economic sense. Um a couple of comments on the work plan. Um there was um talking about managing public uh parking and one of the things that I've noticed as uh when we've expanded our parking uh paid parking uh um requirements, I tend to go to those places less.
So for example, I don't take my family down to Fair Haven as much as once they implemented paid parking. So it there's a cost to that and I think it should be acknowledged as well. Um and then one thought I had um is that uh on the u places where you know there's there's an aversion to you know having parking uh lots.
Um you might consider areas where there's environmental contamination because that might be the very best use for that those lots because otherwise the cost to uh deal with that contamination might be prohibitive and it's probably better to just have parking there.
Thank you. >> Thank you, Adam. >> Hello. My name is Owen Begley Collier and I'm here because Bellingham has the most unaffordable housing market relative to income of all US cities. It has become more and more unaffordable to live here for the average person.
Bellingham is expected to accommodate 30,310 new residents over the next 20 years. Bellingham is growing and it will continue to grow. There's no question about that. Um the question is will we tackle this housing crisis headon or or will we hide from the problem out of a fear of change?
Bellingham must choose between growing in such a way that contributes to the climate crisis, fills wersheds with imperous surfaces and leads to endless traffic, or growing in a way that through embracing density and public transit is resilient against the climate crisis and livable for its people.
As a student, renter, transit rider, and environmental advocate, I strongly support the extension of minimum parking requirements citywide. Um, I ask that the city council please extend this ordinance.
And I would also like to offer my strong support for the city making large investment in government funded affordable housing and to follow through with WTA's proposal for a bus rapid transit system. Um, we must embrace bold actions that will combat both the housing and climate crisis.
Thank you for your time. >> Thank you, Owen. Hello, my name is Katie Chase and I am a student at Western Washington University. Um, as you are all aware, the Bellingham housing crisis is um becoming increasingly um worse and um because rent is high and there is not enough affordable housing.
Um a factor of this is parking which often increases cost and takes up space that could be used for building more affordable housing. Um, reducing the amount of new parking spots allows for more actual housing to be built.
Um, and extending the removal of parking minimums in Bellingham would be a step in the right direction towards facing this crisis. Um, I'm aware that some people do need parking, but there are also a lot of people who don't have a need for parking.
And um I feel like making sure that the housing in Bellingham meets the needs of the citizens is should be an important priority and that is why I think that this um ordinance should be extended. Thank you for your time.
Thank you Katie. >> All right. Okay. And then after Brian, we have uh Jam Aosti, Rick Agger, Daniel Blumur, and Alexander Ross. >> Hello again. Brian Gas here from Bellingham. Um here's the thing about parking is that you guys I think what they're doing is you're taking like this oneizefits-all and thinking that's the solution to the problem.
And I think that getting rid of when you look at the pictures that the planners show now, one of them are showing pictures of a single family house or a duplex in the, you know, lettered streets. They're showing apartment complexes and they're showing big developments that could absorb fewer uh spots and have homes, right?
But the problem is is that you can't just say there's no parking in these smaller neighborhoods. You're going to create nothing but tragedy. some kids going to get run over running between the streets in any of any of our smaller older neighborhoods.
Now, also the the when they say, "Oh, it saves housing." That's disingenuous and it's not even uh provable that cutting a parking spot saves money. The mayor's uh proclamation has a has a link to the sighteline institute which is a 100% uh not nonpartisan but all they do is talk about no parking and living in you know the dark ages or something but the reality is is that you you know you say oh it cost 20 you know it's going to save 20 grand for a parking spot.
Well the reality is it's a one-time cost. you can't qu you can't quantify what the savings are and you can't prove that it saved the the um you know that it makes housing cheaper or that it it goes to the tenant.
And I'm going to use the mayor's only fa the mayor's own all the mayor's all the mayor's proclamation FAQ of her own words that came from there that says well why can't you cut what are the things the city can't do well we can't cut building fees and the her response or the response on that FAQ is well cutting building fees doesn't necessarily make housing cheaper the market dictates that and it doesn't always go back to the tenants and the problem is is that it can't be just good for one that just happens to satisfy the city's need for fees and another one and all of a sudden it makes it cheaper.
It doesn't. Every one of those development or every one of those surveys or those studies are they are like matrix mated. They're they're estimates and they're all four big apartment complexes who could absorb those extra parking spots.
So, I'm not saying you can't like the urban growth area or places that are designated for spots where housing, but you can't just arbitrarily jack out the parking minimums for people who are going to try and put six plexes in a 6,000 foot lot in Sunnyland and think that it's going to be okay.
Now, I also believe that the planning department is kind of dancing around the issue and not really owning that they're planning on everybody parking on the street. So, wherever you're at, I have a development.
I have a apartment. My office is in a near an apartment complex over in Ridgemont. They think that people are going to park in Ridgemont for this place that's on the other side. They did a parking study for that.
And so if you don't think that on 40th Street up there or if you go into these uh different neighborhoods, they're going to put people on the street to park. That's how you're going to solve the problem.
That's wrong. >> Thank you, Brian. My name is Jam Nagosti and I'm a board member at Walk and Roll Bell Bellingham, Bellingham's only nonprofit focused on transportation advocacy for people outside of cars.
Um, people who walk, bike, and roll around town. Um, and we urge you, strongly urge you to renew the January ordinance and make this reform permanent by kicking off the type six process as soon as possible.
Uh, as you saw in written com uh, public comment, this is an important issue to our community and we'd like to thank you for taking bold action in January. Parking reform by eliminating mandates allows development to focus on people instead of cars, making housing more affordable, our streets safer, and our neighborhoods more vibrant.
Since Bellingham took this step in January, cities across Washington like Breton, Shoreline, and both have taken have followed our lead uh recognizing that parking reform is a necessary step to uh addressing our many important state and local goals.
Uh the state legislature also reinforced this by passing SB5184, a bipartisan bill limiting excessive parking mandates like the very mandates that are in code and currently preempted by this emergency ordinance.
Uh renewing this ordinance and making it permanent ensures Bellingham stays aligned with state law, avoids backsliding into costly carentric regulations, and continues to lead on important transportation and climate action.
Um, strong support also for the work plan on modernizing our outdated bike parking requirements, especially in our urban villages and modernizing our parking management strategies for public parking, which I know has been discussed in this room many, many times before.
Um, we're a little concerned about discussion in the work plan about encouraging right-size parking. If you heard um from staff in the presentation, eliminating mandates allowed sightspecific and usep specific uh allocation of parking things that can't be easily easily be changed after a building is built.
Um and allowing flexibility and simplicity is the very benefit of eliminating these mandates and allowing property owners and developers to meet the specific needs of a site, the specific needs of the community using that building.
um whether it's more ADA parking, less ADA parking, more parking in the northern parts of town and less parking in urban villages. As you heard from staff, the outcomes from this ordinance are exactly what we are so far are exactly what we were hoping would happen.
Uh just to follow up, walk Bellingham urges you to renew this ordinance and make it permanent as soon as possible. Thank you. >> Thank you, Jamon. Good evening. Thank you members of the council and mayor.
Um my name is Rick Edgar. I'm on the board of the Mount Baker Group Sierra Club and um back in January when the interim ordinance was a only a proposed interim ordinance, we uh submitted a comments letter to the council regarding our position on that that apparently created some confusion within the council.
Um I want to clear that up. Our position was and still is that we applaud the elimination of no parking minimums. We thought and still do think that it could be implemented better than simply a straight elimination.
So it was with great satisfaction that I see that a reason for the extension being sought is so as to look at uh tools that could be used to help implement the no parking minimums in a fair and reasonable way especially with regard to trying to implement affordable housing.
One of the tools that we thought was very very much worth using or trying to use was um using uh no parking minimums as an incentive to developers so that they could get that if they included affordable housing in their development.
And we thought that was still available an available tool until today when I read something in the report by PDS and I'll quote here. This is with regard to SB5184 that's already been the subject of discussion.
SB5184 must be implemented implemented by January 27, 2027. In spring 2026, the Department of Congress of Commerce is expected to release guidance about this new state law, parking management strategies and best practices.
This guidance will be used to clear up some existing ambiguity about interpreting the legislative requirements. It will help ensure Bellingham's compliance with SB5184 and inform staff's recommendations for permanent parking regulations.
So far so good. However, three paragraphs later, previous council discussions have highlighted the potential for parking reductions to be used as leverage for incentivizing affordable housing. However, SB 5184 now greatly limits the city's ability to require parking, removing the choice to use parking reductions as a carrot for providing affordable housing options in most cases.
Now, I haven't read SB 5184. I don't know if that's what it says or not. My concern is that with very conclusory and unsupported language, it appears that that tool is being tossed to the wayside. And so I urge the council when you're reviewing this, ask to see the exact language in that statute that is admittedly ambiguous and uncertain.
That that does eliminate that tool. And look for very specific language to be given to you by staff so that you know for sure whether or not it is eliminated or if it's still in the toolbox. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Rick. Good evening all. My name is Dan Blumer. I'm a resident of the Birchwood neighborhood. I'm here to back the extension of this parking ordinance. Parking mandates are relatively expensive with unneeded spots costing, as mentioned in the FAQ, at least $20,000 per spot.
That equates at a 7% ROI to about $115 per unit per spot. or if structured per month, that is more if structured and even more if underground is required. Mandates contribute to a decrease in walkability and pedestrian safety by requiring more space for vehicles and increasing walking travel times by increasing distance between destinations.
Mandates create design limitations for housing by requiring that housing for cars be considered spatially before housing for people. That is just how you set out a lot. Extending the interim ordinance is an excellent choice for Bellingham as we continue to continue to evolve as a city.
However, this ordinance has a difference from its two differences from its previous iteration. First, by requiring accessible parking even in zero parking projects, it puts a floor of one spot on some projects.
This adds right ofway uh curb cuts and conflict points that would previously not have been added on zero parking projects. I would personally be interested in removing section one party or otherwise somehow exempting zero spot projects until a final ordinance compliant with SP 5184 is presented in the summer.
Additionally, the work plan provided after the ordinance includes at the bottom devotees significant effort to trying to find ways to incentivize additional parking to avoid underparking buildings and overparking public streets while completely removing the possibility of utilizing what has traditionally been the most effective strategy residential parking zones.
This normally this nominally removes parking mandates while adding in the possibility of concreting creating more Byzantine incentives further from public eye. I would like to note that we have uh a meeting in two weeks on reducing the amount of subjectivity in design review.
This kind of falls into the same thing of adding complexivity complexity to the problem. I want to be clear, I do believe Bellingham should definitely extend the interimm ordinance. This is a grand improvement, but I want to be mindful of the additions contained within and I am excited to have us continue.
Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Dan. Hello, my name is Alexander Roth. Uh, I had a whole thing written today that I was excited to talk about, but then uh I swear like two hours ago, is that how long we've been here?
Someone was speaking and they mentioned churches and then they mentioned the word synagogue. Uh, and so I threw out everything I've written because I would like to talk about my experience with my synagogue and how it relates to parking.
I am a regular attendant at Congregation Beth Israel, Bellingham's only synagogue. It was established as a congregation in the year 1908 and in 1924 they built their first synagogue in the lettered streets.
Now between 1908 and 1924 there was a mass wave of Eastern European Jewish refugees coming to America. That is where my family came from. It resulted in a lot of changes to how land use policies were done across America.
For example, in response to Eastern European Jewish refugees coming to New York, New York decided to implement its first ever zoning laws in between 1908 and 1924. Now, sorry, this is a little personal for me.
Now, since then, since 1924, my congregation moved. We built a new synagogue starting in 2012 that was completed in 2018. It is up at the top of Samish Hill. I bike that way three times every single week.
My ebike on full throttle gets a whopping 4 miles per hour when climbing up that hill because of how steeper how steep it is. I swear by Hashem that that hill is literally steeper than Mount Si. I looked up the gradings.
It is a long way. As a matter of fact, my rabbi's husband oftentimes does not attend services on Fridays or Saturdays there because you may not know this, but observant Jews refuse to drive on Fridays or Saturdays as we are legally religiously prohibited from doing so.
Similarly, I have known several students who cannot attend services because they cannot drive that far. Now, why is that synagogue so far away? Well, it is because it has 134 parking spaces because it is legally required to have one per every 100 square ft in its congregation.
It had to move to a place where no longer could it serve the majority of the Jews in Bellingham because parking minimums dictated that it was impossible to build a new bigger synagogue in the lettered streets where our congregation began.
For that reason, I would like to see the complete and total elimination of parking minimums in this city that have been historically used to break apart minority communities. Thank you. >> Thank you, Alex.
All right, we're switching online. So, first up, we'll have Carrie Burnside and then R. Perry Escridge. >> Good evening, council, mayor, and city staff. My name is Carrie Burnside. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening.
I'd like to um echo the statements by Rick Edgar and the Sierra Club and also clarify my earlier comments. There's a lot of misunderstanding. Um [clears throat] both the myself and the tenant union support the removal of parking minimums.
It's a necessary step. um in our climate goals and also in helping to make development more affordable. Um I'd [clears throat] also like to ask that uh you approve the staff's recommendation for or request for the extension and look at every possibility to include affordability within this ordinance.
Um, we hear a lot of people talking about the housing crisis. However, what we have is an affordability crisis. Um, that continues to get worse. Without [snorts] targeted measures, looking at increasing affordable housing, our affordability crisis will just continue to do what it's doing, getting worse.
So, I hope it's still a possibility that you can continue collecting data and look at how saving developers money, if that is actually transferred to their customers, transferred to renters. Um, and additionally look for ways to incentivize increasing affordable units because that's really where our greatest need is is affordable housing.
Thank you for your time and have a great evening. >> Thank you, Carrie. >> Good evening again, Council Perry Escridge representing the Realtors and Building Industry Association. I just want to add the organization's voices to the chorus of people asking you to extend this interim ordinance.
Uh speaking primarily from builders that I've talked to, the ability to rightsize parking for developments based on the research that they have um regarding the tenants, the the individuals that will be living in these buildings and car ownership habits.
um has really given builders the flexibility that they have sought to make sure that parking fits the needs of the individuals living at the various developments and allow them to not overbuild. Um just you know just really really excited about this this um this step forward on the parking.
to sort of tie into my previous comments on the comp plan. This is the type of leadership that we've really been seeking. Um I applaud the council staff, the mayor's office for moving forward with these types of of um ordinances.
I know this is not without controversy, but the ability to bring this up, have honest discussions about it, and end up with an ordinance that we can all live with and work with um is the the type of leadership we need to see in a lot of facets.
So, I'm excited to see this stuff taken forward and I'm looking forward to the next few public hearings as well. >> Thank you, Perry. and we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council.
Council member Hamill. >> Yeah, this is um this is an extension of something that we've already voted on. We've had a pretty thorough presentation this evening and we've had uh presentations before. So, I'm going to move to approve the ordinance as um as amended by council member Stone and adopt pardon [clears throat] me and adopted by the the council uh pursuant to um item E sub section B on page 265 of the packet.
>> Second motion by council [clears throat] member Hamill, second by council member Williams. Uh council member Cotton and then Liquist. Nope. Oh, okay. Council member Lillquist. >> Move to amend a motion to add also endorsement for the uh staff working on the work plan as outlined in the presentation.
>> Second it. >> Okay. >> Motion by council member Liiloquist and a second by council member Hamill on the amendment. Further discussion on the amendment. >> Seeing none, all in favor say I. >> I. Any opposed or abstensions?
That amendment passes 70. >> Oh, one abstension. Six with one abstension. Okay. Any further discussion on the original motion? Seeing none, all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Abstensions. Passes.
70. Okay. Went much quicker than I thought it would. All right. With that, we are done with public hearings. Yes. Yes. Okay, now we can move on to the mayor's report. >> Good evening, council, staff, and members of the community.
Going to keep mayor's report very brief tonight. Do our part to keep this moving. Uh, and so it's appointments only this evening for mayor's report. Uh the first is for council's approval and it's an appointment to the civil service commission and I am seeking to reappoint Kathy Wakka to a fourth term on the civil service commission.
>> Move approval. >> Second >> motion by council member Anderson, second by council member Williams. Further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say I. I. >> Any opposed or abstensions? Passes 70. >> Thank you.
[clears throat] And the next appointment is for council's information and it's an appointment to the community development advisory board and I am appointing Bernice Portivvent to a first term on that advisory board and that concludes mayor's report tonight.
>> All right. Thank you mayor. Next up we have committee report out. We started this morning with committee of the whole. We had five agenda items. First was a budget work session. That was agenda bill 24712.
The budget work sessions are an opportunity for city council to learn more details about specific departmental budgets. In this session, staff presented the proposed budgets of the municipal court, the mayor's office, and the city council office.
The 2026 proposed budget can be viewed at co.org/budget. So we started with municipal court. There was quite a bit of conversation about municipal court. There's a lot of interest um about court operations.
So there were a lot of good updates. Um some interesting points are that uh the proposal is to add a second municipal court judge. Uh as the workload of our judges our judge has increased, we have also have a commissioner.
So, we would move the commissioner position to a judge position. Um, and there would be some funds received from the state for that. And so, the additional cost would actually only be $10,000 to the city to do so.
Uh, we would freeze one court clerk position and a commissioner position for a total of two FTEEs. Um, there's some reductions in office supplies, printing, those sorts of things. Um, one creative solution proposed was also to create a mobile fully ver virtual courtroom, which would have a small expense, but um could be a big timesaver as well.
Um, getting through the calendar a little bit more quickly by having um the virtual option. Uh there was quite a bit of discussion about community court as well and that it has been an effective and very popular um program, [snorts] but it does take a little bit more resources in terms of time because um community court participants meet with the court over many months um bi-weekly I believe it was.
So that does take a bit more resources, but the um the outcomes have been um really positive on that. with that program. Uh next up we had the city council and city council budget is comparatively quite small at 1.4 million and a total of 10 FTEES but most of that budget is salaries and benefits.
So there's not a lot of of shaving off of that budget to do. [clears throat] But we did we did decide as a council to freeze a position that uh is is currently open and not filled a position for a legislative assistant for a savings of about $105,000 for the year.
Um, and we also went through some some cuts to travel expenses, uh, supply, office supplies, printing, that sort of thing as well. Um and the mayor the mayor's uh budget couple points of interest eliminating two FTEEs including a receptionist which is currently v vacant.5 FTE for special projects manager which is currently vacant and eliminating a currently filled position uh the climate adaptation manager.
Um and we had some discussion about current work and ongoing work which uh kind of touches all departments of course and um was is a lot of the work that we consistently talk about ongoing basis. Um, but we had we also had a a request to have a longer list request from Council Member Loquist to have a longer list of of that work, which I think would also be of interest to the to the public to see um just [snorts] all of the items that are on that list and all the work that is done through the mayor's office.
But um okay, and moving on this afternoon, we had four more agenda items that we went through very quickly. General bill 24713, the renewal of the interlocal agreement for probate probation services with the Watcom County District Court probation department.
The interlocal agreement for probation services is a continuation of the probation services that have been provided by Watcom County District Court probation department for two decades. Documents included with this item list, the amount of funds the city has paid annually since 2014.
Each year, the city is given an estimated cost based on the previous year, including refunding the city for any overpayment or paying an amount owing if the amount paid was insufficient. The cost for probation has historically seen an average of a 20% increase annually.
Um the court director Tammy Bennett u mentioned that the last two years we have received a refund but uh the cost of probation does increase year-over-year just based on need and number of participants.
That was for Nope. We app yeah there was a motion. Uh there was a we we voted to recommend approval. The committee voted to recommend approval. I gota readjust where I'm going here. Uh, and I so move >> second >> motion by the chair.
Uh, second by council member Williams. Any further discussion? >> Seeing none, all in favor say I. >> I. >> I. Any opposed or abstensions? That passes 70. All right. It's already been a long night. Agenda Bill 24711, a resolution adding the impact fee schedule for the Bellingham School District to the capital facilities plan.
On September 29th, the Bellingham City Council adopted the Capitol Facilities Plan by resolution. This document guides both city- managed and other facility and service needs over the next 20 years. The Bellingham School District's uh plan capital improvements were included in this document in order to guide the city's collection of impact fees on their behalf.
However, the impact fee schedule adopted by the district was omitted from the capital facilities plan adopted by council in September. The plan has since been corrected to include the impact fee schedule for the school district as required by BMC Title 19.
There was a recommendation made by the committee to approve and I so move. >> Second. >> Motion by the chair and a second by council member Williams. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say I.
>> I. >> I. Any opposed representions? That passes 70. Next up, we had agenda bill 24714, an ordinance relating to the levy of taxes and establishing the amount to be raised in 2026 on the assessed valuation of property within the city.
The proposed ordinance sets the city's property tax levy for 2026. State law requires this ordinance to be passed and transmitted to the to the Watcom County Council by November 3rd, 2025. It increases the property tax levby of the city by the statutory allowed 1%.
Uh and this is something that uh has already had a public hearing uh previously as well. So uh recommendation was made by the committee to approve and I so move. >> Second >> motion by the chair, second by council member Hamill.
Any further discussion? See none. All in favor say I. I. >> I. Any opposed or abstensions? That passes 70. And finally, we had agenda bill 24719, a resolution setting the dates and times of the 2026 city council meetings.
This resolution establishes the official calendar dates for city council meetings in the year 2026. Uh there was a recommendation to a unanimous recommendation to approve and I so move. >> Second. >> Motion by the chair, second by council member Lilloquist.
Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed or abstensions? That passes 70. Old and new. Okay. Fantastic. Next up this afternoon, uh we had an executive session. There were two items.
The first was a potential property acquisition with stamps. staff brief council on the city's pending agreement to purchase a49 acre property from BNSF Railway Company. The property is being acquired for street improvements.
The property is located on Warf Street near the State Street roundabout and is identified by assessor's parcel number 007469. The purchase price is $75,470.50. Clos closing is set to occur in the first quarter of 2026 subject to council approval.
I will now entertain a motion to authorize the mayor to close the real estate transaction described in the city's executed purchase and sale agreement with the property owner BNSF Railway Company with a purchase price of $75,470.50.
>> So moved. >> Motion by council member Williams and a second by council member Hamill. Any further discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed or abstensions? That passes 70. And then just for some more information, um this is purchase is intended to uh be able to facilitate a multi-use pathway down um the side of of Warf Street there from the roundabout down to Cornwall um and do some street improvements uh as well during that project.
A uh next up we had a potential property acquisition with Stamps. Staff briefed council on the city's pending agreement to purchase a 4.62 acre property from James C. Steel. The property is located in the Lake Walom wershed and is identified by assessor's parcel number 370428218518.
The purchase price is $227,500. Closing is set to occur on or before November 14th, 2025, subject to council approval. The property will be acquired through the city's Lake Wacom wershed land acquisition and preservation program using restricted funds dedicated to that purpose.
The program is funded by city water customers through a watershed watershed search charge on their utility bill. I will now entertain a motion to authorize the mayor to close the real estate transaction described in the city's executed purchase and sale agreement with the property owner James C.
Steel with a purchase price of $227,500. >> Move approval. >> Second. >> Motion by Council Member Williams, second by Council Member Anderson. Further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say I. >> I.
>> Any opposed? That passes 70. All right. And next up we had public works natural resources and that was chaired by council member Stone. >> Thank you very much. This afternoon I was joined on the public works and natural resources committee by council members Anderson and Cotton.
We had one item before us. This was agenda bill 24710. It's a contract award for indefinite delivery indefinite quantity roofing repair and maintenance services. This is bid number 72B-2025. The city issued a request for bids for roofing repair and maintenance services to be performed under an indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract.
An Idiq contract is an on call contract that allows the city to procure work efficiently as needs arise by issuing individual work orders for each discrete project. So each work order is priced based on the labor and material markups provided in contractor's bid proposal.
The city received three bids that were publicly opened on October 8th, 2025. SRS Roofing Company was the responsible bidder who submitted the lowest responsive bid of $115,185.75. The bid amount again is based on a hypothetical set of jobs for bid comparison purposes only and does not establish a contract maximum.
The contract, however, does provide a three-year term and a not to exceed amount of $1 million. It's important to note that in this contract, there is no apprenticeship hours because no single project or job is expected to reach that $1 million threshold since the entire contract um is capped at the not to exceed amount of $1 million.
We were joined by Carol Rothgar this afternoon. That's the assistant public works director for internal services within the public works department. And there was a unanimous re recommendation from the committee to award the contract for bid number 72B-2025 to SRS roofing company.
And I so move >> motion by the chair and a second by council member Anderson. Further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed or abstensions? That passes 70. That was the end of committee and I'll send it back to you.
>> Thank you, Council Member Stone. Consent agenda. Move >> approve. >> Second. >> Motion by Council Member Hamill, second by Council Member Williams. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say I.
>> I. >> I. Any opposed or abstensions? Passes 70. [snorts] All right. Uh, [clears throat] final consideration of ordinances. Agenda Bill 24695, an ordinance of the city of Bellingham, Washington, regarding the establishment and operation of a Bellingham mitigation bank.
>> Third and final. >> Second. >> Motion by Council Member Hamill, second by Council Member Lilloquist. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. >> Anna Stone. >> I. >> Dan Hamill. >> Hi. >> Skip Williams.
>> Hi. >> Lisa Anderson. >> Hi. >> Michael Lilloquist. >> Hi. >> Jace Cotton. >> Sorry. Hi. I don't know where my voice went. [laughter] >> And Holly Huffman, >> I >> The motion carries 70. >> Thank you, Jace.
I think you're catching whatever I've got. Sorry. Um, >> next up, we have agenda bill 24707, an ordinance relating to the vacation of a portion of an unimproved unimproved alley generally located between Iowa and Kentucky streets and Pacific and Racine Streets in Bellingham, Watcom County, Washington.
>> Move third and final. Second. >> Motion by council member Williams and a second by council member Hamill. Any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call, please. >> Hannah Stone. >> I. >> Dan Hamill.
>> Hi. >> Skip Williams. >> I. >> Lisa Anderson. >> Hi. >> Michael Liiloquist. >> I. >> Jace Cotton. >> I. >> Holly Huffman. >> Hi. >> Motion passes 70. And finally, we have agenda bill 24708, an ordinance relating to the vacation of the western 1/2 of Iron Street abuing Rockhill Park between Potter Street and Interstate 5 and Bellingham, Watcom County, Washington.
>> Move third and final. >> Second. >> Motion by Council Member Anderson and a second by Council Member Williams. Further discussion? >> Seeing none, roll call, please. >> Hannah Stone, >> I. >> Dan Hamill.
>> Hi. >> Skip Williams. >> I. >> Lisa Anderson. Hi, >> Michael Loquiz. >> Hi, >> Jay Cotton. >> Holly Huffman. >> Hi. >> The motion passes 70. >> That's it. All right. Thank you. We got through it. Luckily, I don't have to talk very much anymore after this.
So, that concludes the regular business of the meeting, and we will now move to the public comment session. If you're watching live online or on BTV, the broadcast will now end. However, you can continue watching via Zoom at co.org/cczoom or listen via phone by dialing 253-2158782 and entering meeting ID 896-98012044 and password 9.
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