City Council - Regular Meeting

good evening everyone uh welcome public uh welcome mayor council members and staff members um this is the uh June 3r meeting of the Bellingham city council I've got a few announcements here so just bear with me I've got four announcements uh Bellingham city council meets all requirements of the state of Washington open meetings act uh second uh land acknowledgement we before we begin we acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional and unseated territory of the Lumi nsac samish and seamu people who have cared for and tended this land since time and 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 the uh 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 all public events uh wanted to make an announcement regarding language access the Bellingham city council provides Spanish interpretation at all regular evening meetings interpretation can be accessed in person uh by inperson attendees by utilizing the headsets located at the front of the room they're right over there in the corner remote viewers can log into cob.org uhcc zoom and click on the language icon at the bottom of the screen to listen in Spanish and then a final

announcement on June 17th the city council will hold a public hearing on a proposed resolution providing for the city to relinquish relinquish a portion of a general utility easement retained within vacated portions of Taylor Avenue between between 10th and 29th Street as described in ordinance 6860 if adopted the resolution would then off authorize the relinquishment of that portion of the easement that encumbers real property commonly known as 8/19 14th Street the basis for the proposed relinquishment is that said easement is Surplus to the city's need and is not required for providing existing or future Public Utility Services council member I may [Music] yeah Cil thank you okay roll call please Hannah Stone here skip Williams here Lisa Anderson here Michael lillquist here jce cotton here Dan Hamill here all right six council members are present with uh council member huthman excused okay thank you okay our first item for this evening is a public hearing regarding the draft 2025 to 2030 Transportation Improvement plan um state law RCW 35.77 7.10 requires cities to annually adopt a comprehensive Transportation program for the ensuing uh six calendar years the draft 2025 to 2030 six-year Transportation Improvement plan or tip it's commonly referred to includes projects to construct new facilities for people walking and biking enhance uh Transit use repair and resurface streets and sidewalks replace Bridges make roadways safer and more convenient for everyone and facilitate

movement of freight project descriptions are intended to describe the general intent and purpose of the project the Transportation Commission endorsed the six-year tip at their uh May 14th 2024 meeting council's consideration for approval of the six-year tip will be at the June 17th 2024 city council meeting and here to take us through Eric Johnson mayor May first I asked for the privilege of uh asserting myself first because an update and a late breaking update in the mayor's report connects to an item that's in the six-year tip for your consideration and that update is that the city became aware just this evening late afternoon of a structural deficiency in the supports for the electric avenue bridge and that following the recommendations of the structural engineering firm that the city hired for the bridge inspection City staff are currently in the process of closing the bridge to all vehicular traffic notifications have been provided to BFD the fire department the police department WTA the school district sanitary collection and other departments to enable them to plan for the change in traffic patterns that this will necessitate detour enclosure signs are being put in place as we speak and the bridge will remain open to bicycle and pedestrian traffic as of now and staff will begin working with structural and Bridge Engineers to develop a plan for um to allow some traffic use while plans and funding are developed to replace the bridge and that the full replacement of the

electric avenue bridge is listed as a project in the tip that's before the public this evening and we applied in 2023 for funding to replace this bridge along Electric Avenue the state passed on the project previously but they encouraged us to reapply in 2025 in the 2025 cycle for funding in year 2026 and we will plan to do so thank you thank you mayor for the update recording in progress a little late but it's okay so so the six-year tip and uh Joel fun will walk us through the presentation tonight on the six-year tip we wanted to to uh do make a bit of a change in the format of the six-year tip and so you may have noticed in the packet some differences from how we've done things in the past uh we're likely to see some more changes in next year's tip as well what we're trying to do is make it uh more understandable for uh normal folks uh this the six-year tip is a requirement of the RCW but it's also used by the city of Bellingham as as is noted in the staff memo as the bridge between some of our long-term planning and our budget documents and it gives a window into how we're scheduling and timing and funding the Improvement projects that we have related to all of our transportation systems for pedestrians for bicycles for vehicles for Freight for all of the users of our of our roadway systems uh that includes Pathways and our non-motorized Trails if you will but try to driw that connection between the long-term planning and the short-term budgeting uh and these projects

that do take many years to develop and both design and permit and fund having the six-year document bridge that gap between them so we want to take a little bit of a different tack on how it's presented and Joel can walk us through that I will share that we have done a fair amount of Outreach this last go around this this current year including the development of some new project websites and that has generated more public input than we have seen in years past so we're seeing some little bit of a change there and we're excited about that and with that 'll turn it to Joel to walk us through the the sixe tip evening mayor uh city council yeah I'm Joel fun assistant Public Works director transportation and uh in advance of the public hearing just want to give you um and the community a little background on what the six-year tip is so I'm going to be talking a little bit about what it is how we went through project selection um the document concept how that has changed uh talk a little bit about project Maps it should actually say um the list and some of the um uh evaluation we went into and then uh wrap up with next next steps so um the six-year tip uh is required by the state uh we need to uh have a have a tip that is updated annually that we need to hold a public hearing which we're doing this evening uh the six-year tip is supposed to be consistent with our comprehensive plan and we need to submit it to the state by July 1st annually pretty much beyond that there's not a lot

of you know specific Direction uh we do use it uh actually the state uses it for a uh as a screen for Grant eligibility requirements it does we do use it at the city to enable spending uh Bellingham Transportation fund dollars and then as Eric mentioned it's a valuable tool in in being that bridge between our longrange plans and our budgeting pro pro process so um real quickly we have lots of Transportation plans and a lot of different documents we have you know projects and ideas in our comprehensive plan in our modal plans such as the recently adopted bike plan and pet plan we have Corridor plans sub area plans so they we have lots of um projects and ideas you know some more wealth out out than others but really what we do is through this kind of funnel as I Illustrated here we we take into consideration all of these different project selection uh ideas and Concepts and funnel that down to uh what we you know can contemplate we can Implement in the next six years so um when it comes to what is in the document what we were trying to do is try to create a document that is more transparent more understandable more clear and a little bit just more accessible to the to the community um part of the idea behind that is is that there's a lot in the past a lot of really valuable information on specific projects kind of buried in the six-year tip and it's not entirely um as much as I know what a six-year tip is for the the community members I'm not sure that they would know to even

Google six-year Transportation Improvement program if they knew what we were going to be investing in in the next next six years and so what we really did is try to um try to kind of distill the tip back down to its you know what it needs to be which is that uh list of projects and then use hyperlinks and create project pages for all the projects contemplated in the in the tip and uh which is really a valuable place for people to look and that's where people in the community are looking for projects and like Eric mentioned I think we saw some success with that um people you know reaching out and asking about particular projects um and then you know they they tell two friends and then we get a few more phone calls and this really is a valuable time for us to hear from the community about concerns about projects um support for projects and we we heard both so uh I also tried to in the pack it make it a little bit more um transparent about how we got from here to there and so there's three Maps included in the packet there's a adopted you just for reference the currently adopted tip a map that specifically identifies what changes we're proposing to make um and highlighting those and then a clean kind of proposed version of what the the draft tip would look like is all included in the uh in the packet uh and so so just really quickly I wanted to highlight some of the changes so you'll see that this particular year there not a lot of projects being removed from the tip usually

we're removing projects from the tip when we're completing things and one change that we've we're also implementing is kind of when we remove projects from the tip currently um what we're what we do is kind of when we when we're going out to construction or when things are getting started uh and so we're going to change that up a little bit so um we're going to basically remove projects when we anticipate them to be done so for example I think for folks in the community it's kind of in counterintuitive that the current 2429 tip doesn't include Telegraph Road it doesn't include the project on Illinois Street it doesn't include the park Parkview safe school project and that's just kind of confu adds to the confusion of what is this document really about so um we're the list of what we're getting done this year is kind of small but I think as we adjust we're just going to be a little bit more conservative about when we're taking things off the tip so this year we're moving the East Bak riew multimodal safety Improvement project because that's that was associated with the school um that uh that this the elementary school that the school district was going to build out there that's changed and then we're also just merging that phase two project with the phase one project so there's also some projects that we've um modified uh we're looking at um reflecting grant money that we've received for the Oldtown Urban Village Pro Street skate project uh grant funding that we received for

electric avenue bridge um and adjusting that we didn't receive uh grant funding in this last cycle for the electric avenue bridge at Lake watom but uh as has already been mentioned we think that that's going to be a very compe ative pro project in this next Go Round And then we're also reflecting uh it's a project that we're moving forward with but based on what we've learned from other projects uh we updated the James Street segment multimodal project segments one and two out between um Birchwood and Telegraph that cost estimate increased significantly um and uh we wanted to highlight that and reflect that in the project the project list some projects we're proposing to add uh is uh adding the neighborhood traffic safety program the Transportation Commission is uh is Now intent on getting that work done this year and bringing that back to council so we can Implement that in uh 20 in next year in 2025 uh we're looking at a project to improve signalization in downtown uh a project that would do some supporting infrastructure where we're partnering with the uh Western Washington University House of healing uh implementing more in a more permanent way uh the Holly Street Bike Lane project but that is would be comp contemplated and informed by the pilot we have going on currently um another project would be uh linking doing improvements to the meter Avenue Lincoln Street connection through I5 it's a really great low stress connection that doesn't involve an interchange and so

making uh making some um improvements there out of a corridor study that the city did a couple years ago uh improving Lighting on uh samish way and Maple Street in the samamish Urban Village to improve safety looking at uh re channelizing James Street in the Sunnyland neighborhood to make that uh Street safer for all users but also um add uh separated bike facilities to that to that section of Street and then also on Harris Street uh linking uh Happy Valley up with Fen would be making that a much more complete street with h with facilities it's a great Corridor uh that connects a lot of uh activities it has Transit on it and it really should be a complete street so that's what that project's about and then um some roundabouts on Potter Street near Civic field i5 and Carl koser so those are the projects that we're proposing to add to the tip we also did an evaluation of kind of you know there's a infinite number of six-year tip lists so what we decided to do is um is kind of look at the list we came up with it and um evaluate it based on uh the some of the priorities that the community has and see um you know this is one of many lists but does this list meet those priorities and what we found is that um there's 24 projects in the the tip 24 projects and programs and uh the majority of those met our um our the the goal of improving pedestrian um and bike and just multimodal Transportation safety promoting mode shift and then uh there was a smaller number of projects that

focused on maintenance and pres preservation but that those projects represented a significant investment and that's because those are mainly Bridges which are really expensive and then we also um using our uh social vulnerability index analyzed the projects that were selected and found that um a about a little less than half of those projects benefited those um those areas of the city and I will note that a project could uh meet zero to four of these criteria we didn't have any projects that met zero um they all met one or more and so next steps uh will be returning to Council on June 17th um for action by the council and all with the goal of meeting that July 1st deadline and then um being uh immediately moving forward with Grant applications and uh using this to guide um upcoming budget development and so with that I will turn it back over to council member I mean council president Hamill thank you for the presentation Council any questions before I open up the public hearing okay I don't see any so um Deputy clerk uh gets can you go ahead and uh it looks like we have six people signed up for the for this hearing and if you're um so when she calls your name if you can just uh she'll do it in batches of three if you can just line up over by the wall and we can make this process go quicker okay first up we have Adam bellingar Jerry Hunter and Christopher dial and just as a reminder um the comments uh to for this portion of the meeting need to be Germaine uh in relation to

the tip the transportation Improvement plan so oh Adam can you turn the microphone on please thank you okay right okay go ahead ad sorry about that good evening Council and mayor landland uh I appreciate the opportunity to talk about our transportation Improvement plan um I wanted to bring my perspective on this topic um as somebody who's lived his whole life here in Bellingham and used to ride my bike quite a bit until about 10 years ago I had children um it becomes a lot harder to when you have three kids to uh ride my bike as much as I used to um but one of the things that I've noticed is I've been getting into uh riding my bike more um with my kids is that the the conditions are actually worse now even though we have more bike Lanes uh for bicycle Riders uh I think that's a function of in my perspective the conditions of the roads and um one of the unintended consequences of the uh the way that some of the bike lanes are structured where they have barriers and things like that to uh prevent uh cars into intervening into the bike Lanes is that then those bike Lanes don't get cleaned by street sweepers that creates a bit of a a problem from my standpoint when it comes to um the overall condition of those bike Lanes um so I think it might be helpful to uh reassess you know how we look at those bike Lanes um and looking at a couple of the projects that were on the docket uh for the pilot whether it's the pilot program for going down Holly Street if you go down Holly Street on

a bike um you know it's very challenging to turn left if you're using the bike lane uh so and you can actually keep up with traffic on a bike going down Holly so in my P from my perspective I don't know that having a dedicated bike lane on the right hand side is actually very effective for the traffic and I've always felt that it was much better to be able to just go with traffic uh as a bicycle Rider um I I understand that there's some additional safety um considerations but I'd also note that you know if the bike lane is uh separated off again like I said if it doesn't have the access for the street sweepers then that bike lane doesn't get uh cleaned out very well so um and then the last thing I'd like to comment on is sometimes the order of operations in which we do the bike lane projects they tend to uh put the bike bike Lanes in first then there's a big construction project we saw this on samish way uh where they tear it all up they block all everything off and then uh the lanes never get repaved and the whole all of samish way could uh from the freeway to East Maple should be um uh repaved in my opinion and it would be far better for the bikers thank you I'm Jerry Hunter living in jamest Street estate since 2010 I speak only for my 84 yearold self I've examined tip documents for funding years 2010 to 24 as well as 2025 to 2030 16 pieces of paper and 16 tips with no funding for James Street south of telegraph 16 pieces of paper signifying nothing I'm not asking for the

council to change the 25 to 2030 tip because you will approve it as proposed in a meeting with no public con comment on June 17th in a March 18th 2024 King Mount neighborhood association meeting a Bellingham Public Works employee distribute a piece of paper showing jamest Street as funded in six-year tip I did it did not specify the tip years for funding so I have to guess that it will be 2026 to 2031 or later since James Street is unfunded in the proposed tip project 15 the front page of the 2025 2030 tip shows project 15 James Street south of telegraph as a 2025 2030 project even though the 2025 2030 tip project shows that $5,300,000 is unfunded for James Street improvements unfunded I don't understand these inconsistencies as a normal folk and I hope council members are more Adept than I on September 6 2023 I sent an email to each council member about in action on James Street south of telegraph I ask council members to acknowledge receipt of the email two members responded council member Hamill acknowledged the email with a thank you and council member lillquist cited multiple projects near and not so near to James Street costing many millions of dollars but none on James Street I'm asking the council to acknowledge that James Street south of McLoud Road the dangerous portion of James Street has been in the city limit since 1903 I also ask the council to consider in public session or sessions strategies to Abate James Street's danger reducing the speed limit to 25 miles

hour is a good starting point thank you for your consideration and for your service on behalf of all Belling hamsters J all right and then after Christopher we'll have action and sustainability Lyall Sorenson and uh Daniel [Music] B uh hi there my name is Christopher I'm homeless here in Bellingham um I I didn't there wasn't any mention of the wildli wildlife overpasses crosses and over passes um I want to refer to the 2018 watcom County report that was presented by Shannon cross and the conservation and transportation biologist and through ICF Jones and Stokes of Bellingham and that was the transportation ecology overview ecology connectivity barriers and mitigation um what what they pointed out was that the there are new technologies including driver car and animal detection and Warning Systems that are in testing and are forthcoming I'd like to hear more about that if it's if that would be feasible to U be part of the plan the transportation plan um they pointed out that there's surface surface Transportation effects on Wildlife are significant pervasive and Grim habitat loss Wildlife vehicle collisions fragmentation and mortality contributes significantly to many species declines including imperil species at least 1 to two million large animals a year struck by vehicles in the US total global scale of mortality across taxi is immense human safety and risk they addressed um the wildlife wildlife and vehicle collisions result in cost of at least 1 billion US per year 29,000

human injuries 211 human fatalities um and they what they presented was a coverts Bridges and underpasses overpasses Specialized or multi-use Crossings are highly effective at reducing wildlife and vehicle collisions when designed with Wildlife fencing um and finally they had the bridges and coverts can serve as roosting and nesting habitat for many bats and birds many existing structures provide some connectivity and ecological function to Wildlife and or and one last final point is that the solutions they gave examples of success would be the Washington I90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition in snow kwami and California Highway 89 steart team in Lake Tahoe um if I could back back up to the um also what what didn't mention was Railways was part of this as well and that's all important because the as most people know the federal government just recently uh approve the reintroduction of the Grizzlies into the North Cascades and the railways and the highways and the public transportation it all takes part in into uh trying to take this into consideration and it's not part of the plan and so the the um the Federal Transportation um highways Administration Pete budajudge last year they made available grant funding for the Wildlife Crossings um and nobody not wcom County nor Bellingham has applied for those grants they didn't apply it was open available from April of last year until October of last year and I don't know if they're available now but there's still a lot of money available

or that that's there in there there's grant funding for these Wildlife Crossings thank you very much thanks Christoper make it a little bit lower hi uh I'm speaking on behalf of acin and sustainability uh I'm Dr Susan TSH I have 30 years experience on the connections between land use water quality and health and I'm also a forest hydrologist which is where I got my PhD we've designed a lot of Roads we've worked with a lot of corridors and we have a lot of experience in understanding the impacts the environment of widening roads and of uh putting culverts maybe in areas that they shouldn't be the uh problems with corridors and in in particular the impact on the drinking water supply and as that's concerned we are concerned about the electric AV improvements and that are slotted as improvements uh what this might mean is widening of the roads uh for the congestion and anywhere that there's asphalt there's there's going to be impermeability which means a problem with filtration and runoff into our our public drinking water supply uh it um is quite concerning I've worked on road uh and health issues in particular where salt runoff and chemical runoffs from use on clearing the road has become a public health disaster uh given the moratorium hearing that was supposed to take place today it's a little concerning to wonder what has happened that would endorse uh the city paying for uh this Improvement of the electric AV and some of the areas around the Watershed in the roads uh as

maybe a way of you know people could wonder if it's not some sort of endorsement of development um what we're concerned about is the Watershed and also given that today is the high floods most of you might know uh in watcom County the rid rivers are overflowing so these kinds of issues need to be taken into consideration and on that regard we are proposing a watershed Bill of Rights in due diligence and one of the issues there uh and we'll go into that a little more but is establishing enforcable policies for full transparency and accountability for all negotiations and all decisions between any developers and between Council or any other public official and the use of our public funds so what we'd like to see is some uh ecologically sound way to improve our corridors that takes into consideration the watersheds and the impact of Road runoff the the and whatever chemicals are used and who in fact this is benefiting in a good cost benefit analysis that involves the community health and uh well-being so um we'd like to we will be uh presenting this also and we'll leave some also for council members I think you might be interested thank you thank you Doctor good evening Council Lyle senson I wasn't really planning to address this tonight but as a local business person in Bellingham um I've seen the impacts of the draft bicycle Lanes um down Holly Street uh at different times traffic back clear up on the sish way I think whatever benefit we're receiving from those the unintended

consequence is creating more congestion and less safety uh as a as a someone who's driving making a right-hand turn when you have a bicycle lane on your right um creates an interesting situation when you've got a low visibility vehicle that's actually kind of maybe in your blind spot so I think there are some hazards related to that also I think we need to do some studies on existing bike lanes and see how much those are actually being used um I drive the Barkley Boulevard or or not Barkley sorry Cordata Boulevard Parkway um used to be a Parkway now it's single Lane in each Direction with bicycle Lanes um and I have rarely ever seen anyone using that I have yet to see anyone riding up Chestnut Street you know I mean it's pretty steep um so I think I think it makes sense while I think it's well intended and you know having interconnected bicycle you know availability for people I think we should really take a hard look before we take up Lanes of vehicle traffic for bicycles and actually see how much those are used because I if you look around they aren't being used utilized and so why are we taking away lanes for you know intended and built for vehicular traffic and converting them to Bicycle use um I think that that just kind of makes good sense like I say they just aren't being utilized I know there are people who ride and they say well we use them that's great but how many people are using that compared to how much vehicular traffic what are the unintended consequences in

terms of congestion and Hazard so let's take a look at all those factors as well well and not just continue Merrily on our way uh eating up lanes that vehicles are using and increasing congestion thanks thank you L good evening all my name is Daniel blemker and I live in the Birchwood neighborhood I wanted to express my own personal support for the transportation Improvement plan and excitement at several multimodal projects to improve access for pedestrians and bikes these projects will improve some choke points that lead to high risk for more vulnerable Road users notably the Birchwood AV and Holly Street improvements as well as our first link through I5 in the Lincoln Street multiuse path to the best of my knowledge it's the first link we have seen a rapid increase in pedestrian and biking utilization since the p pandemic but sadly this has gone hand inand with a 33-year high in traffic fatalities for the state near toly doubling in the last 10 years alone these improvements will help save lives and I want to thank Council and staff for moving forward on them thank you very much council members my name is Steven Clark I am a resident of Bellingham and live in the lake wam shed Watershed I was originally going to talk just about the lake watom moratorium but now that I've learned that they're going to close the electric avenue bridge a major throughfare between Electric Avenue between Alabama Street and Lakeway Drive if you have any idea how much traffic is on that road you

would cringe at the idea of closing that bridge and at the same time lifting the moratorium of Lake Watkin building and allowing another 100 200 300 more Apartments next to the bdale Donan I urge you I urge you to continue maintaining the lake watom moratorium on building and the reason you should consider it even more now than just the drinking water and the building on the old industrial site going to cause major havoc and there will only be one other route around between between Lakeway Drive and Alabama Street and the rest of the Silver Beach area and that's going to be UST Street Road there are already enough traffic jams from construction in Bellingham to drive one crazy please consider the electric avenue bridge and maintaining the lake watom moratorium on building so that we can sort out this complete mess thank you Steve Mr Hamill can I please interrupt for just a minute just want to be clear the reason for the closure on Electric Avenue to avoid some confusion is not connected in any way to the Silver Beach ordinance it is related to a structural deficiency in the bridge that does not allow us to have traffic on that road for a period of time so that structural deficiency is makes it unsafe for people to drive on that road as of this evening we have every intent of making repairs both on a shortterm and a permanent basis to that bridge thank you than you director Johnston Aloha City Council Members mayor lond her wonderful Council and our fantastic constituency here

it's nice to see some young faces in the audience tonight I'm super stoked on that my name is Ryan Bowman to put my helmet on because I travel by bike on every single one of these roads in town and the sky is falling currently as we approach today's current climate with so many different things to address I'm going to go ahead and talk about Transportation unexpectedly but uh I want to look at some things in our expectations of how we're going to go about transportation in 1863 we started the Transcontinental railroad system 1863 before we had all these fancy technological things to help us Advance our society we finished the Transcontinental Railroad in six years six years across the whole country we're not able to finish things in five years it's hard to hard to stomach that in 2024 I think our expectations need to be elevated just just a little bit just a little bit uh for where we're going some of these projects that we have on the tip were put in process preco as everyone knows that was a reset for our entire Society we shut things down water levels went different places and we're still operating on that same thing as if those priorities are now the same we have to re re-evaluate those things maybe rep prioritize what we're taking our funds for because we're on shortages for schools we're on shortages for housing all across the board where are we putting our funds and our resources and does that make sense postco maybe put some time into that one um as far as the B icle

Lanes some of them are not very well thought out I don't know if everyone here rides those bike lanes and goes and you know has a experience with that to see some of the damages and the issues uh I commend uh one of our constituents for bringing up the fact those little barriers and not being able to sweep that area I I go through bike tires all the time because I'm running over broken glass from car accidents that's just getting swept off of the side then I run it over causes me to have to buy new tires and it's unsafe then you have the potholes and the drains that aren't being managed and you have to go through those bumps and some of them are pretty deep and on a bike that could cause other people that aren't so balanced to fall over into traffic causing traffic issues so some of those things I think would be uh proper to evaluate from on the bike not behind a table go ride the bike Lanes jump on a bike it's fun ebikes are great and they are the future and I think that's the idea behind the plan so going up steep hills on an ebike isn't that big of a deal and that is the future of what you guys are planning so I commend that as well because I think that's what the vision is is to have more people out there being active on bikes doing our part so thank you very much for your time hope you consider some of that you Ryan SC that conclude the list yeah okay all right I'm going to close the public hearing and bring it back to council Council any comments this is um for

information discussion only this will be coming back to oh sorry go go ahead maybe I I can't I believe so is the microphone on now we go yep you're ready thank you uh my name is Doug Rell uh my nickname is Yoshi um thank you all for being here audience members of Staff people watching at home city council Madame mayor uh I listen very closely to what people are saying and what came to mind was slow down we live like we're insane we're destroying the very planet that we live on because we're running around like crazy people I need to go faster I need to go faster I need to go faster destroying the air we breathe the water we drink the land that we grow our food on why it's insane I don't have a car I don't ride a bicycle my mother once told me the hardest thing in the world to do is to walk calmly I'm still learning how to walk calmly to genuinely absorb what's happening around me and seeing the insanity and seeing the insanity that I participated in and seeing the insanity that I still participate in I was trained to be insane to chase after things that are meaningless while destroying the air that I breathe and the water that I drink and the and the land that the food grows on we have the absolute wrong definition of success Chase in after cash and prizes mindlessly is not success self-destruction individually and communally as a human family is not success and the one thing that I found in slowing down to try and learn how to walk calmly is I'm going to cry because I've

been in pain for a long time living a very painful life because I was taught that living a painful life was successful I'm still learning how to walk calmly please join me thank you Yoshi that conclude the list okay all right I'm going to close the public hearing bring it back to council Council council member list yeah a a few questions um uh first of all are any vehicle travel Lanes being added as part of these projects I get the impression this isn't increasing Lane width or anything is it no so I mean there are certainly opportunities that we'll have to make sure we find efficient movement for vehicles and if we look at particular intersections there might be changes but take Electric Avenue as an example the replacement of that bridge would be in kind uh so the city's priorities when it comes to Transportation as are as are outlined in the comprehensive plan place the move of of pedestrians bicycles and Transit at a higher priority over single occupancy vehicles in that in that order uh and that is where the priorities are set so our goal here is to provide for that comprehensive use for all vehicles all all users Vehicles pedestrians bicycles safety for all of those users and not to put one necessarily above the other but we are not intending to add additional capacity by the improvements that we have out there there will there will be areas which as the James Street Corridor that would provide for appropriate safe turning movements which would result in left turning

Lanes as one example but not necessarily adding uh you know four lanes in each in Direction on the roadway as opposed to the current two good followup um actually is a different line go ahead um Equity so uh I appreciate the fact that we're being driven by climate safety concerns basic preservation maintenance and Equity concerns and that over uh 40% of the projects involve an equity component and that's about over 30% of the actual dollar value however I didn't click through to the most of the project I can't tell which one of these have an equity component or what that Equity component is so before the next hearing can I just know where to look to figure out which of these progress projects hit on the equity score and and what that Equity score is I assume most of the non-motorized things are Equity projects but it' be nice to see where that ranking came from counc other questions cons member Anderson um just for the benefit of uh some of the community members uh regarding James Street uh since some of those projects are unfunded could you give us a little bit of a preview or update what we might be expecting over the tip plan are we just trying to get the funding for it um is there some projects that could be worked on without having to redo it when more comes along and then also I noticed there's uh quite a bit of money for resurfacing and maintaining um of the roadway itself um do we expect any of that to be happening out towards um James Street with resurfacing or

repairing um like gradings my one issue is if you're a pedestrian until we get our sidewalks and the the wide Lane done um the roads surface from asphalt to gravel sometimes will be especially after um heavy rains or winter it's uh it's uneven and so it can make things difficult for someone on a bike to move off to the side if they're being crowded I'm just wondering if there's any shoulder work and stuff happening out in that area um so for the uh James Street Corridor um that is the the corridor study we did a number of years ago broke that into four segments and it's shown in the tip as as two projects and segments three and four which are tgraph up to you know beyond Kellogg like up into King Mountain that project is shown in the tip as funded it's currently a funded project and design is underway for that North half um that of course ties in with the roundabout project at uh Baker viiew and James Street that is um going to be going out to add later this year and is in design um so that North half of the corridor is is you know fully funded and actively in design and moving forward um the the South half which is Birchwood up to Telegraph um is shown in the tip as partially funded uh but part of the challenges there is that there are two uh stream cross in there that are fish barriers and what we've learned through you know we have you increasingly amount of experience and building um replacing you know removing fish barriers and Building Bridges and those are um expensive

projects and so that project is you know the city is uh City staff is working you know diligently to try to fund that project there may be some opportunities to partner with our natural resources to to remove those and fund parts of the project that way but that's what we're working towards the tip is intended to show a a significant down payment on that I can't remember exactly what the you know what it's exactly shown but um that's a great way for us to start looking at using that money to leverage other you know in other sources whether they be um state or federal grants or um those types of things so that's what we're moving towards cons further questions just follow also the question about the paving and where we at with resurfacing so we do have a number of projects that are underway for this year to think about Paving projects uh the council may recall that the majority of our funding for Paving of our arterior roadways is from the Transportation fund so this the sales tax that was approved by the voters a third of that is dedicated to resurfacing of our materials uh we are very much aware that the condition of our roadways has deteriorated much faster in the last two or or two years in particular over the prior couple years and that's uh due to many factors we can talk about maybe in another time but uh we did see an increase in this in the last two years in the tip dedicated towards uh Paving and preservation of our arterial arterial roadways we do have a system

where we go through and rank the condition of those roadways then apply it through the through the lens of where are we dealing with all of the utilities and the concepts of where things come into play for that so do we have a rather internal robust technical analysis of when and where we would do those overlays uh but we do see that as a need to see an increased effort to do uh we are working on that that's one of the reasons why we requested the council approved uh two new engineers in the budget for 2024 and those are now being hired C Ron goe um I'm glad a gentleman um had brought up samish way because it's a perfect example where when we have new development happening they cut into the roadway in order to do utilities and do the work that they need to do and then in areas of samish it's almost like they use cold patch um to do a a 10 or 20 foot section and in time it's no longer even and it's not necessarily flushed and it doesn't always have the right um grade to it does the um Public Works go back later like 6 months later eight months later to do a check and if the quality of that patch is not good um have the developer kind of readdress it and clean it up a little bit we we've had some good patching done um I'll say on the west side but there's some new development that is recently happened on the east side um closer to Boomers um where the patching is a bit bumpy and I'm just kind of wondering do we have a mechanism to go back for those inspections not just on

samish but in other locations of Bellingham yes and I might take two two stabs that this so one is yes we have procedures and produ policies in place and bonding requirements for uh when anyone cuts into a public roadway and and needs to repair that roadway both temporary and longterm uh and sometimes we do use steel plating or cold patch to do things on a short-term basis and we do have the ability to come back when they do the permanent repair if it's not meeting City standards to cause that to be to be redone at their cost not at the city's expense for that uh about samish way in particular uh may recall that that when the Urban Village plan was approved for sshe uh several years ago one of the projects was identified for that was to convert that from a four-lane roadway two lanes each direction to a three lane roadway Center left turn lane additional pedestrian Crossings and temper and bike LS along that section of the roadway uh and we we anticipated as a city and this was called out in the six-year tip that that the change to the Urban Village and the change in that roadway would in be and the city's efforts for the Aloha project in particular would be a motivator and for to create the type of development that we W wanting to see we also knew that that was going to cause major damage to the roadway and so moving forward with the change to Old s to samish way not s to samish way that changed it from four lanes to two lanes uh we did not choose to Overlay the roadway at

that particular time uh so that is a road that does need to be overlaid and there would be some changes that be made to that we do have in the project in this year's tip to add additional overhead lighting to incre improve the uh the the safety for pedestrians we've had some serious collisions on that roadway uh and so the need to add some additional overhead lighting on those particular corridors but we do take into consideration where the roadway is at what will that look like as the development occurs what we have trying to avoid is is Paving a road and having it being a new relatively new road be be damaged by by construction so we are taking trying to take into that into consideration uh overlay and Paving projects are significantly more difficult than they used to be uh in the Transcontinental railroad days but even even in my career they've become much more difficult to undertake uh and we generally these days are about 30 40% of the cost of the overlay is to the pavement itself and the rest of the things that come into that are for storm water and for Ada accessibility all things that are very important but it's very difficult to put these things together in our Turner environment than than things used to be so it does take more time it takes more money uh you're seeing a corresponding uh action of that by the City by increasing the dollars to overlays and increasing increasing Staffing to pay more closer attention to those overlays Council further questions just by

way of a reminder um this will be coming back to us on June 17th uh and this uh presentation and the public hearing tonight was for information and discussion only so I have further um opportunities to discuss on the 17th on the public record will be will remain open until that time okay thank you staff members all right I'm going to move us along here uh we have two more public hearings I'm going to combine them into one um so I'm going to go ahead and read the summary statements for both um both of the council member Hamil y um if I may um stay law sets a high standard of conduct for elected officials and on these next two matters um I am recusing myself from the public hearings tonight that pertain to development rules for certain properties in the Fair Haven Urban Village and pertain to a development agreement for the project on those same properties I own and live in a condo located across the street from the properties affected by these actions and I want to avoid any conflict of entrance or appearance of conflict of interest in order to recuse myself I will actually have to leave the room I'll be watching remotely um thank you for holding off on further discussion and you bet okay thank you Council M okay thank you all right so I'll go ahead and um this is agenda bill 24136 this is a public hearing to consider an ordinance amending Bellingham Municipal Code uh 330 specifically allowing an increase in height on certain properties within the Fair Haven Urban Village area

public hearing to consider an ordinance amending the development regulations in the Fair Haven Urban Village um the proposed amendment would increase the maximum allowable height for the property generally located the northwest corner of M Avenue and 11th Street commonly referred to as the pit the increase in height would only be allowed with the separate approval of a negotiated development agreement that Ina contains or includes certain public benefits that's the first summary statement for the agenda bill 24137 this is a public hearing to consider a resolution authorizing the mayor into that development agreement that I just mentioned with Dominion sustainable development Corporation for a mixed use project in the Fair Fair Haven Urban Village Dominion sustainable development Corporation a contract purchaser requested the planning and Community Development director initiate a review of an increase in the height regulations for certain property within the Fair Haven Urban Village it was agreed that the proposed increase in height would be initiated only if certain public benefits were included in a development agreement the developer and the city staff have since negotiated a development agreement to ensure that public benefits are provided should the city council approve the requested height increase for the property council is required to hold a public hearing and pass a resolution prior to executing the development agreement under rcd W 36.

or 70 b.2 and we have Kurt Abel from planning and Community Development to walk us through this afternoon Council uh mayor lond and members of the community uh it's interesting after reading those or hearing those I always go okay my presentation's done I can go home now right uh we do such a comprehensive overview of that um as you mentioned tonight uh we're conducting two hearings tonight a bit unique we're doing them together though uh those one as mentioned is uh looking at a zoning code change uh the development regulations the second is authorizing the mayor to enter into a development agreement uh this is a bit unique um in a situation in the fact that the the contract purchaser of the property um actually asked to initiate this um uh zoning request because of that um we will be allowing u a small amount of time for the applicant to present um prior to or after the city after staff does their pres presentation and before the public hearing is actually open so with that I wanted to take the time to First Orient you to where we're at um as you can see up on the left here we've got the Fair Haven Urban Village uh in this red area is the commercial core um and then kind of this is the specific specific site that we're actually looking at in the commercial core we're kind of up in this general area uh we've got 11th Street with Fair Haven Gardens over here Mill Avenue um you've got Village books The Fair Haven Village Green 10th Street South Bay Suites and then obviously

the South Bay Trail the property that we're talking about the pit uh what it's commonly referred to is here but it also extends all the way up to Knox Avenue and down this way so if you can see my cursor um this is the entire property that we're we're looking at um site does drop off from the the trail the slope here quite an extensive slope we also have um two uh sewer Mains that run through the site uh one very very large one it essentially is the main pipe that drains everything from North Bellingham so that sewer main runs kind of through this property um along here uh now that you know where we're at maybe just a additional background here uh the city council adopted the Fair Haven Neighborhood Urban Village plan back in 2012 after an extensive process was one of the I think the the third Fair uh Urban Village that we adopted Urban Village plan that we adopted part of those Fair Haven or those Urban Villages also include development regulations and so that's why we're going back and looking at this one specifically because we're changing the height um as the as the contract purchaser had entered into uh development options with the site they started looking at different ways to develop this site um and as you'll see in a couple later photos it really kind of said hey we can develop under the current code or we can do something a little bit different which takes that code change requirement um in initiating that code change the we really felt that we needed to have a good

understanding of the public benefits that would be associated with going through the process of the code change um so we worked with the um the applicant to Define certain parameters um we also looked within all of our city departments as well uh came up with several components that we thought were very important for us to go through with this change um generally those were affordable housing uh public parking and making sure that we had a dedicated easement for the South Bay Trail um if you recall we brought that memorandum of understanding back to council for their review um kind of got your confirmation that yes this is these are some some good public benefits so let's start with that process um I I'll just let you know that the that thatou didn't say that this is what we were going to approve it just said if we are going to go through this process these are the things that need to be included with that um so once once we got that Council confirmation we continued to work with the the developer uh and we drafted up a development agreement which they have signed um that's in the packet uh for the the resolution um once getting the final development agreement drafted uh the planning community development director initiated that process the type seven or type six legislative process which includes the public hearing with the Planning Commission and the public hearing t T yep I'll get a little bit closer and try to project a little bit more thank you uh on in March of this

year the Planning Commission held a public hearing and after receiving testimony and reviewing uh the The Proposal they recommended 60 to approve the height increase um now kind of we're going to get into the specifics of this proposal uh existing you can see the the project site that we're talking about a b and c the existing height rules and regulations actually split the property in half so there's two different height regulations for or height standards for the the property U we've got 42 feet and three stories down here uh up in this site we've got 35 ft and three stories and what's being proposed is 48 ft in four stories for sites A and B and then 35 ft in three stories for site c one key um change is currently we have two different ways of measuring height height definition number one and height definition number two height definition number one measures that the lowest existing grade so the low point of the property and height definition two measures at the higher point of it and one of the main reasons that we're um we're looking to use height definition number two in this case is because in Fair Haven and most um our our other Urban villages is you take the height based on the mean average of the sidewalk well with this property the site C up here um as we we'll get into there there's going to be no 10th Street won't be constructed all the way through um because we've got the trail Corridor through there so you'll have no public sidewalk that actually fronts on site

C for the for that building and so there's no way to utilize the the average height of the sidewalk grade um we considered using making the trail the average grade but felt like that was something completely different than what we typically do and because we've got this height definition to which is an option throughout the city felt that that was the more appropriate way um to review the height um as a part of the kind of drafting the site plan and the proposal um the the applicant really wanted to present what can I do under existing zoning and really why should why should the city approve something higher um on this top photo here this is the existing zoning so you've got that 42 foot height limit and the 35- foot height limit um this is taken from 11th Street and you can see that any any sort of building that will be built here will have potential view blockage um from surrounding properties um as a part of again that public benefit of moving this forward we said well maybe Maybe by allowing that we should look at some view corridors through there so we're not completely eliminating those views and we get this is the old Columbia Street right away that's been vacated um so keeping that view corridor open and then keeping this View Corridor um as a part of the proposal and that's a requirement of the development agreement we felt that we broke up the buildings and the massing a little bit here um and made it a little more desirable than what can be built under the existing

rules and regulations as a part of the development process uh design review is a component of it um design review has not been started that's a completely separate process however uh the applicant did go to the historic preservation commission early on um in Fair Haven we've got a historic district this property is not located in that historic district but it is across the street from the historic district so um we suggested that they go talk to the historic preservation commission about that at that time they presented some very basic drawings here again showing from 11th Street what the existing rules and regulations would allow um and what the proposed rules and regulations would allow this is 11th Street you've got Village books up here the triple I building here and then on Mill Avenue this again is the existing rules and regulations what could be built and this is the proposed um you can see there's a pedestrian Corridor that opens up and connects to the Village Green on the adjacent site so we can look at these photos and um try to think we get a good idea oh sorry I'm jumping ahead of myself um this is just some additional drawings that that show what the existing development in that view corridor would allow and then also what the proposed um view corridors would allow as a part of the development agreement not only are we getting a dedicated South Bay Trail um easement uh we're also getting a public Overlook to be constructed out here so the you get the The View

corridors as well as this Overlook that is kind of a nice stopping point for folks on on the trail um you you can see the slope that we're talking about this is the the 10th Street right away here and so you can see why you're not going to get sidewalks and such all the way in Street all the way through here because of this pretty steep slope there now um again getting back to what does this really look like um you know when when we do increase height what what what's the change and how how do we feel how does it feel to us um as pedestrians and people in the the the community um this is not exactly the same but it's it's relatively close and I thought it was a good example um this property here on uh development on the left is built at 36 feet and this property is built at 44 ft um so you can see from a a bulk and a scale and a Mass these additional feet are really not that difference um in in scale when it when you're talking buildings um I know it's not 8 ft you we're looking at um six feet on one end and then 13 feet on the other end for the existing site but when you try to put it in context how the building feels in relationship to height and the other standards um you can really tell that it's it's not a significant impact so the big question that we're here to to ask ourselves tonight is why we increase the height um clearly there's a a public benefit component that's associated with the development agreement um and and really those public benefits and what the

Public's receiving is we're getting affordable housing um 20% of the uh total amount of units for the project would be um affordable housing um that's being proposed through our multif family tax exemption which is a 12year um component on there uh there's the total number of units has not been completely determined yet but roughly we're talking about 200 units for the site uh so that's 40 units of affordable housing for a guaranteed 12 years um one of the things that always comes up when you talk about park or talking about Fair Haven is parking um both perceived um impacts and real impacts of that so one of the things that we felt was um vital to include in this is some sort of component of public parking uh this property is actually located in the Fair Haven parking district and according to that parking District they only need to provide the amount of parking for the number of residential units all commercial component that's associated with this project is exempt from providing parking um as a as a component of the The Proposal there'll be a a two kind of a two- layer parking garage parking pedestal and then you'll have buildings that sit on top of that the parking garage and one of the things that we are requiring is a minimum 80 stalls of public parking to be provided on site versus um just the around around the site so um this is something that is not required public parking is not required throughout our development standards and this is an addition to what they

would have to provide um and then obviously the South Bay Trail is it's an immense gem for us um and the the community members uh we wanted to make sure that we preserve that uh through a dedicated easement uh so we're getting both the the trail Corridor through a dedicated easement that would be relocated and rebuilt by the the developer um we're getting view preservation um and then we're also getting pedestrian Corridor that links uh the the trail Corridor as well as through the the actual development pit development and that will align with The Fair Haven Village Green on the opposite side then and finally um it's an Urban Village um in our comprehensive plan uh we really talk about uh con or one of our growth strategies is through Urban Villages and urban Villages are intended to um have high concentrations of people we usually have taller buildings in these areas um it it makes a lot of sense to put more development more intense development in these Urban Villages and I I'll just uh add one of the things we during the public the Planning Commission public hearing one of the comments that we heard was if not here where um so I think that's a really good idea where do we want our intense development we want those in our Urban Villages uh so this is a a good opportunity for that uh The Proposal complies with our comprehensive plan it implements that Urban Village strategy and incorporating people here uh so that leads me to the staff recommendation uh as I mentioned

there's two different thing two different topics tonight the first uh staff recommends adopting the planning commission's recommendations findings of fact and conclusions and approving the zoning text Amendment um and then secondly we also uh recommend that staff approve the development agreement resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into that development agreement um with that I think I'll turn it now over to the applicant uh to talk a little bit about their uh vision of this area said cataract surgery so I need my up classes well like Kurt just said uh you gave his presentation and he just gave mine to certain exent but my name is David Christensen I'm a local architect been many years here in Bellingham I've been a member of the Bellingham historic preservation commission for over 25 years my office is located in Fair Haven and I've received 49 National and Regional Design Awards buildings have include Village books Orca buildings and this developers completed several other projects in this Urban Village Pete dorin uh attorney is also here if there's any technical questions I've looked at this property for many many years over for a lot of developers and none of them could make the economics worth with the zones the way it was our city is changing and growing zoning regulations are usually written for most situations and rarely take into account unique situations and there are a lot of them I am sure you've seen your share we all want to meet the intent of good project

development the long-term health of our community so what do you do here what would you do if this was your property sometimes a development agreement is needed to make the right thing happen because we cannot cover all situations with generic regulations we've been working on this particular project for over four years and and two years working on the development agreement in that time building costs and interest rates have continued to rise making this even more difficult to finance and make affordable as you know Washington State needs to build 1.1 million housing units over the next 20 years available land with infrastructure is limited and too expensive for affordable housing taxes Insurance maintenance material costs continue to rise garage parking is much more costly although I understand eliminating parking requirements are being discussed now to help increase density so one of the few ways to create permanently affordable housing is by just subsidy funding from nonprofits and even that Federal funding is being reduced lately I heard but if we could find a way to help a private developer create a affordable housing that should be embraced because it is never done in this city it's never been done and as you can see why it takes longer costs more and it's fraught with risk you know to be a good architect you just have to be a good listener we have had over six Community meetings and additional one-on-one meetings with others in the Fair Haven Community including being

Up on the Rooftop of fairen Gardens of course not only do we listen to the Community but I listen to City staff Builders Engineers code officials Bankers appraisers property managers lawyers it's a balance just like your decision tonight now on to the specifics the existing zoning as Kurt demonstrated is a full block long development wall no net Community benefits that's it nothing special exciting or net Community benefit of anything Now put on my community hat do I hear we need after listening actually uh in process of listening I was asked to run for counsel and went considering it until my spouse vetoed it thank goodness so what did we hear one public parking as Yogi Bara said no one goes there anymore it's too crowded well that's not true I have facilitated Community meetings over for many years here and it is easily the number one issue number one they don't want to talk about my architecture they want to talk about barking we are still a suburban community and many people still have a car and people who work in Fair Haven have nowhere to go affordable housing this is big and a huge challenge for all of us as a public official you cannot affect the cost of a toilet or land so what can you do you only think the city can control its permit fees and entitlements so how can we amend regulations to get more affordable housing and public amenities another thing I heard was public views and plazas Fair Haven Urban Village is not a view production area as a matter of fact the

fairen garden sales brochure in 2005 says partial Bay views are temporary it is meant to be a dense live work well Urban Village it would be good to provide some open space view corridors and pedestrian access through the property Co has shown the outdoor commercial areas are important now a great uh urban planning book I read recently cities for people boils it all down to what happens at The Pedestrian and street level is what is most important to Great urban areas for people last thing I heard was about the South Bay Trail this is a biggie currently the trail easement is on private property was revoked back in 2009 this is an important connection used by a lot of people this Trail needs a permanent Perpetual easement this is the south end of the trail as it enters the Urban Village Any Trail views to the West are mostly blocked by existing native trees and shrubs at eye level as you entering the Urban Village so how can we try and meet the goals of the community we have listened to to all the items I just discussed takes away valuable Development Area on the ground so how do we make up for that loss and still get what we want to happen so here's what we propos as you've seen and Kurt Nai described development unit has number one public parking 80s structured public available parking stalls beyond what is required for the structures the community and City desire number two affordable housing 20% of all residential homes are affordable housing as defined by Bellingham

Municipal Code that follows state requirements three view corridors we have a 50ft wide open View Corridor to the West aligned with the common rooftop area at Fair Haven Gardens condominium we'd also have pedestrian connectivity in a north south Direction aligned with Village Green area to the South and triple ey building to the North many people don't know that's not an alley open plazas for commercial areas to expand into at the ground floor as well as a rooftop Terrace area for restaurant of public Al access wouldn't that be cool South Bay Trail a permanent Perpetual South Bay Trail easement acrosses private property with landscaped open areas and as Mr nafil described a public Overlook structure to provide views West from South Bay Trail so all this sounds great how can we the city help facilitate this without spending public funds simply by allowing the remaining buildings on 11th Street to have a maximum 48t height and four stories this only adds 6 feet to the South half and 13 ft to the north half this whole area was originally zoned for a 56 feet five stories to match the zoning height across the street on M Avenue where I did Village books currently there are 10 four-story and three five-story buildings in Fair Haven now zoning allows many more five stories to 56 ft four or five stories is not an imposing towering structure it matches historic scale so as a public official we understand that it could be a hard decision to try and make everyone happy it always easier

to get opponents to these public hearings than the silent majority and proponents as you know you know I remember the the former mayor of Milwaukee John nordik said that all new buildings should pass the picture postcard test although now it' probably be the selfie test placemaking as they call it a big full block building with existing zoning Heights will not do that we're looking at this project to maintain the unique Fair Haven character for everyone public officials have to decide what is best for the long-term benefit to all as we get more and more people moving here it will not stay as it is we can preserve and enhance what we have we've been in a very tough two-year negotiation with staff going back and forth on development agreement specifics we would like an approval as written to proceed before costs rise even more any changes at this point May jeopardize the entire project planning Public Works and legal departments have recommended approval the Planning Commission had a unanimous approval and as the staff recommendation States proposed amendments Implement goals and policies of the Bellingham comprehensive plan we should do the right thing and approve this proposal thank [Music] you there presentation from the from staff no okay um before I open up the public hearing any any comments here with a note that it is pushing 8:30 and we still have we have 25 speakers that are lined up for 12 for this and 13 for public comment so I just want to make sure that we all

understand what the time obligation is tonight all right I will go ahead and open up the um the public hearing uh Miss G our Deputy clerk she'll read the name same as before so if you can just she'll read three at a time if you can line up over there and then we'll have a clock if you're if you're upstairs in the gallery there's a clock there on the big TV screen as well okay first up we have uh David Carlson Sandy Pratt and Doug Robertson David Carlson Sandy Pratt and Doug Robertson and speakers if you can just repeat your name when you get up up to the mic that'd be great thank you excuse me council president I'm David Carlson and I have would I seek a clarification on the uh hearing here there's two public hearings tonight that's correct are we beginning with the hearing on the uh zoning Amendment or the hearing we're combining the two together so we'll be we'll be making two separate votes but the hearing the hearings tonight are combined because they're on the same subject property and does each speaker get three minutes for each if that's your if that's what you prepared for let go ahead thank you y I'll begin with I'll begin with my testimony on the zoning text Amendment thank you my name is David Carlson and I reside at 1104 11 Street thank you for this time the zoning text Amendment application is nearly as offensive to the public and neighbors as the development agreement both bring material harm to the neighbors subsidize the applicant with public funds and require

the public to pay for any reported public benefits neighbors deserve to have have their property interests protected when discretionary favors are applied for and under review the zoning text Amendment and the development agreement will degrade the neighbors's enjoyment of their property and will reduce nearby property values it is only 12 years since the carefully considered 20112 be Haven Neighborhood Urban Village was approved and implemented and new development bonuses for Area Properties were put in place to fulfill comprehensive plan goals are already included the seller of the property under review perhaps was the largest Fair Haven private property holder prior to 20112 and concurrently founded and served as the board of directors of the Fair Haven parking District the city partner agency responsible for providing required parking in the 13 block Fair Haven Corps there was plenty of time and influence to address Planning and Zoning issues regarding Trail access and parking for this one and a half block property at that time it is disingenous for City staff and officials to pretend now that Fair Haven parking requirements are unenforceable and that the critical South Bay Trail is being held hostage to rationalize more favors and development bonuses to the applicant while imposing material harm to both the neighbors and the public alike it would waste resources to recommend this doomed zoning text amendment to be placed on the trail toward type 6 approval without

substantial change briefly addressing the non-existent self-serving public benefits implied and the substantial Financial benefit ACC crewing instead to the seller and contract purchaser the city fails to require improvements of adjacent 10th Street infrastructure contrary to policy substantial cost savings result for the developer City fails to enforce the numerical requirements for commercial parking space in the legislated Fair Haven parking District instead waving even more required parking in an area already experiencing a deficit of 1,000 plus spaces this not only saves money but enables any development on this property property that should have been secured by the city as collateral in 1997 to assure parking District parking requirements remain current substantial financial gain results for the purchaser and seller of the property the city pretends the South Bay Trail is held hostage on the corresponding sewer reeman is not paid for and granted in perpetuity the public is already hiking on publicly controlled land owned by the public for perpetuity substantial Financial benefit is resulting again for the developer the applicant wishes to create a p private parking garage for 80 additional private priced controlled access and possibly reserved parking spaces City staff brand this public benefit to enable its Creation in the small zoning envelope while the applicant derives the financial gain from parking fees your first three minutes are up that is not all but my time

has expired thank you were you speaking on both subjects i' I'd like a chance to catch my dress breath before the uh next testimony thank you all right Sandy or uh David or Doug excuse me good evening Council mayor constituents my name is Doug Robertson my residence is at 20605 Sunset Drive my wife and I have been owners of the Bellingham training and Tennis Club in Bellingham for 24 years the good news is we've got a general manager so we will not be there fixing the toilet on a daily basis shortly which is good news I also represented the previous property owner no offense Dave I've been involved with this property longer than he has this is an almost impossible site to develop between the steep slopes the uh sewer easements the other uh factors that make this very hard very hard if not impossible and I'm here to support the increase in the height limit and the associated uh manager agreement that goes with it I'm not going to go through the details of why it meets the statutory code because the applicant staff did that instead I'm going to approach the real reasons why you should do it first is to correct a grievous error in 2000 this was zoned at 56 feet Ken Herz my client Ken Herz Ken Imus and I looked at broad development of this worked with the city and there was not much success at that time once the height was raised to 50 to drop to 35 ft it was an unworkable site given the increase in development requirements instruction cost lawyers fees I think it would be even

more impossible now the only way we can make this an effective site is to return the height to what it was 56 ft there was an error made when the Urban Village plan was made that error needs be corrected somebody asked earlier why should we do this I've changed I'm no longer a development lawyer and I now teach economics and political science and the reason why is in every decision we make as a public body we have to be worried about climate change this is something my kids will have to face our kids will have to face this is not something we can vote on once every four years it has to be included in every incremental decision we make do I walk to the city council meeting do I ride my bike here we have the ability where do we put it we put development here this property has everything it has all the infrastructure all the utilities you can walk to almost everything you need as a citizen in Fair Haven if we put more units there it means people will not be turning to their cars that's what we need to plan for and if we don't put the units here we're going to put it out in the outskirts there's no other feasible land that we can develop to include plus the 20% accessible anywhere else that isn't going to increase trips which means to your first thing if we increase trips we're going to have to have more tiffs you can see the negative cycle we get into so I would strongly recommend that you adopt both the uh developers agreement and the increase the height limit so we can have

infill that was the purpose of the growth management act in 1998 we need to fill it let's have the infill here here so it's effective by the way thank you for all the staff and uh all the council for serving thank you very much okay and then after Sandy we will have uh Brian gas uh Michael chistowski and action and sustainability hello uh my name is Sandy Pratt and uh I've lived in the Fair Haven area for 35 years uh the last 14 years I've owned uh a condo at Fair Haven Gardens kind of surprised me about this whole process is uh we have not really been involved um I did not see receive a notice for the what do I need to do with it oh okay is that better all right um I did not receive a notice for the Planning Commission meeting uh and I didn't find out about it until a few days before so we didn't really have an opportunity and no one from the planning department has been over to our building to see how we would be affected um so I don't know why they think it's appropriate to put a 48t building uh down towards water uh across from us anyway um since I've lived in Fair Haven for a very long time uh I've seen lots of changes from the 80s when it was rather funky to uh a turning into a Charming uh tourist attraction it's it's a village literally uh not your uh definition of an Urban Village but a community Village in the 1990s I met uh had a meeting with Ken Imus and the village concept uh was discussed and ALS so he was planning a vintage hotel but that never came to fruition

it was an interesting discussion in 2005 Fair Haven Gardens was built to the height of 35 ft um to the city code um in 2012 several of um the residents uh in Fair Heaven Gardens participated with the Planning Commission and the city council to develop the current Fair Haven Neighborhood plan that plant is only 12 years old and there was a lot of consideration about um the height because we wanted to maintain a village atmosphere so that's why the corner from across from uh Village books uh is was 42 feet now you want 48 ft but you know I can understand that and the rest was 35 to keep it in line with the buildings around it um so the that's that's what we decided and so the the residents of Fair Haven Gardens would like you to maintain the current uh zoning on that ft thank you hello um my name is Brian gas I live at uh 5200 Guide Meridian here in Bellingham president of one real estate here in Bellingham I'm here to speak in favor of the project today you might think that uh because I'm in real estate that uh I would naturally uh be for it and you are correct it's uh not because entirely because of economic reasons I support this project because because I I honestly it's because I'm not I would say I'm not so selfish in my core to deny anybody the ability to live in Bellingham and enjoy what we live in and I would extend that to wam County um and the sad reality is we don't have enough homes for the number of people that want to live here everybody here knows that everybody

everybody has a horror story of somebody who lives here that has been rent raised out of the current Place they've been or seven IND indvidual young people living in a single house two or three bedroom home or God forbid apartment or um can't get a house because they've been raised out of their price range or interest rates and uh I can tell you that I don't know how you think that problem is going to solve Itself by building or having fewer homes available to live in it's like when someone it's like you march down to a Podium like this and everybody seems to have their words close in concerns about traffic and congestion and neighborhood character but I found that these things only hide their selfishness and I don't really care it seems harsh and it's okay because you just should say I don't want you to live here I've I'm here I don't want you to live here I like it here and it's okay you should say that but I'll tell you what the only people that want to live in this godforsaken hole in the ground that hole they call it the hole right is cuz they're getting free park working they get to see a free view they get uh everybody gets to trespass on this part this uh path that we all get to love walking on right and so I don't think it's really entirely fair to have someone want to be able to uh benefit from that on someone else's you know property right it's kind of like too when you talk about housing Amnesia I might take my other three minutes if I run along it's like I call

it housing Amnesia it's almost like that little device at the that movie Men in Black they a little device that makes you forget you saw an alien and that's what it's like when people moved to Bellingham they forget how their house got developed the place that they live in how they got there it's like once you move here you forget it's just kind of like Fair Haven Gardens in 2006 how that place got developed or somebody's view got blocked when Fair Haven Gardens got built or well hell how Fair Haven or uh Village books got built you know that where that used to be or where um Fair Haven Towers is now in that stupid that crappy little um broke down uh gas station that was there on the corner where the the hot dog guy was there for the longest time um anyway so what happens is you talk about this like this this it's almost like housing Amnesia right so what we have to remember is you know I was at that planning meeting it was a unanimous decision and you have this thing where you have 200 places where people are going to live now and work and play and have a place to live in place of what a big old hole in the ground and where would how would somebody be against that to have somewhere where they can where someone can live because really it's the perfect location for anybody in Bellingham we're not cutting down a single tree right that was everybody's against that no trees being killed right you have a place now where reduces the Urban Spa uh sprawl you got the uh uh affordable

housing that people can live now so the way I look at is there's two groups in this in this building right now that are making a difference in trying to keep uh the housing crisis under control the city council if they approve this this this uh project then the developer who's been spending four years trying to get this thing completed under all the odds so I applaud both groups today in helping Bellingham get 200 people into this building or into into a home thank you my name is Michael chistowski I live in the South Hill Neighborhood I have two points to share this evening first I want to address parking in the pit for years the owner of the property Mr Brad Imus has allowed free par uh public access to the pit parking at capacity about 85 Vehicles can park there most our workers in the restaurant stores spas and offices in Fair Haven Mr Imus has provided a public service that is priceless he has carried on a fair family tradition of dedication to the viability of Fair Haven he is truly worthy of community recognition and gratitude second we are addressing the height for the proposed development at the pit it's easy to focus on the height and ignore what is driving the need the architect could have designed a single massive building that filled the entire property this would assure the square footage needed to econ for economic viability it would not require a height Amendment Instead The Proposal is multiple build buildings with Vistas and pedestrian Pathways between the

structures this design will have a genuine Village feel and would be inviting and Visually appealing but to be economically viable the footprint requires the height of Amendment My Hope Is that Council focuses on the community benefit of the open space of The multi-building Proposal this design will surely be a treasured attribute for Fair Haven and add to the de facto alleys that give an intimate feel behind skylarks and along the west side of Village Brooks books the added height creates a win-win opportunity for the developer and the city and meets the goals and policies of the Bellingham comprehensive plan future Generations will surely be grateful for the Aesthetics of the o Open Space footprint thank you and I will uh use my time later for the second meeting thank you I think it was action and sustainability was up next and then after Susan uh we'll have Ray Edwards um Joan Pickins and Jeremy Beck say small as beautiful I have to keep moving the mic down when I speak um thank you uh I already gave you kind of a Litany of my credentials but that includes 30 years experience on the um connections between land use water quality and health and um I also have a planning degree and I work my way through school as a medic and with a planning maps and documents on the table by day and picking people up as it turns out in the same areas by night for medical crises that occurred as a result of what the uh some of the development had imposed on these people's lives it made me very

humble to say the least and uh thus uh some of what is happening here has to do with um a development agreement and now what hasn't been discussed yet since we weren't uh many of us weren't privy to the meeting that took place before this meeting uh that put aside the overwhelming support for moratorium um is that uh the tolerance for development agreements which are are approved by the state allows the city to be able to develop these multi-level multi-unit uh Parcels even in areas that are zoned for example as a low density which is what they're saying it basically opens up the door for medium and high density in areas that still to date have not been uh assessed ecologically or for the human health impacts that might occur now part of our uh Watershed Bill of Rights is because land and water we're going by land rights but water is a different animal it moves quite differently and what we have proposed and the reason that we wanted to extend Mor I need to interrupt you this public hearing is germine only to the Fair Haven property talk Fair Haven I'm talking about the five-story or the four story actually in Fair Haven that has been proposed the multi height and that is part of a development agreement which is plotted to be replicated in our community drinking water supply it is actually a model thus the lawyer F Mill has been here listening ATT ly um and so what I'm trying to add uh before if I could have those few more seconds is that our moratorium was was uh asked for

to assess the ecological hydrologic Zone that encompasses our entire community that means that water flows underground overground and both Fair Haven and our drinking water supply are are in in the same hydrologic Basin we need to consider all the effect of all the development in our community before we allow any sort of development or any sort of development agreements to occur and that was the reasoning to extend the moratorium that people came to hear thank you my name is Ray Edwards and I live in Fair Haven I live in a complex that is one block and has three buildings and we have open corridors between the buildings I have lived there for 5 years and I have seen the value of not having one giant block so I applaud the development plan to have separated buildings and to have corridors um because I've I started out living in the county building my house and I've moved into town trying to make less of an impact as where I live and how I live so I'm going to do both of mine in three minutes so I really hope the development agreement focuses on the items that being proposed when I listen to the public hearing the 80 public parking spots there seem to be some debate about if they would really be public I'd like to make sure they really are public we've lost we'll be losing everything in the pit and if you work in Fair Haven um at a minimum or barely above minimum wage job you can't afford to pay for parking and go to work so if we're going to keep having businesses in that area

we have to have that public parking or something um the 20% affordability I don't even have to go there every anybody who's looked for housing in this area knows how hard it is to find and of course the trail that's going to keep people walking now the one thing with the trail that um I remember from Dave's earlier um um design um shows all the access to parking being off 10th Street and the trail that would put the trail and the parking kind of in Conflict so finding a safe way for that to happen where we don't have walkers Riders and drivers in conflict is really important and the one thing that Kurt mentioned and I wanted to say is the west building is going to be right over the sewer had never heard of that before so that's going to be challenging too um most of the city buildings aren't over the sewer the sewer comes to the building so those are all the concerns I have for the um development agreement um and the other thing is that the value I saw in the complex I live in is having four different ways for people to move through the complex was really good and in um the plan it showed the um North South one um but I think the E the open Corridor hope that'll also be an East West Connection thank you Joan or uh Jeremy hello city council and mayor lond I appreciate being able to speak here it's been a little bit of an exhausting night I think to take in all this information um um I've sent letters to the uh by the way I live in Fair Haven Gardens across the uh street from

the pit development and I'm also the president of the homeowners association uh I've sent letters to the Planning Commission and the city council where I've laid out a lot of concerns about the development agreement just specific things and I we can't go over it here in in detail but I encourage you to really pencil out everything what is the developer getting what is the community getting another comment I want to make from the previous conversations are that it's not that we're not going to have housing in the project it's just the affordable housing added on to that we're talking about so housing could be built on this parcel within the zoning requirements that are here we could have housing it's just that we're wanting a little bit more housing and the affordable housing is the 20% for 12 years as we've gone over to it's not forever it's just for a while and uh so I've posed the questions in my letters about the development agreement also I've posed the question about the Integrity of the developer and heed warning uh to the city and it's described in the letter to the city council that I've sent however I'd like to more talk about my objection to this project uh as a result of being the direct neighbor to the East and uh it this leads on some of the uh conversation that's already Happ happened the 2012 uh urban planning agreement these these uh heights were carefully set at that time during the time the zoning committee visited uh Fair Haven Gardens they walked out on

the common area decks discussed what looked appropriate by looking at the height of the buildings decided to set the zoning Heights that are being reconsidered today the chosen heights were comparable to our building the chosen Heights did not allow a building to be out of proportion with the surrounding building that would fit in it worked for everyone and everyone agreed on these Heights and I I I'm feeling this like desperation in in the community and in this room more more more more it's like the gentleman that spoke earlier about we got to go faster we got to build more we got to do it all at one time and you know this Fair Haven Village I move there because it's so beautiful and peaceful and our building and I would invite anyone to come up to Fair Haven Gardens and see what we have up there it's not the view it's just the area and to build a tall building in front of our building is to me not fair to us it's taking away from us from our community and we have a wonderful Community I've never met so many nice people that live in my building they're great and um to add to this too I'd like I feel like we weren't in uh involved in the process it seems like it's been rushed through and we haven't been included when I first heard about the project I emailed the planning department July 22nd 2022 and I presented myself as a president of Fair Haven Gardens and I really wanted to be involved in this so I knew what was going on so we'd have a chance to comment and I was told I

would receive uh any kind of announcements and I never did I never heard even about the Planning Commission meeting which I just found out happen stance so I was able to get involved the week before so I strongly believe that you need to consider this carefully for Fair Haven I don't think we should be in such a rush to build build build build build just let's build carefully and let's build in the right places and I don't think this is the right place and and and please pencil out what the developer is getting I think there are a lot of issues there that don't make sense to me when I read the development agreement I read every line over and over so there were a lot of questions I had but I never had a chance to get them answered thank you very much okay and then after um Jeremy we will have Lou Schmidt online and then we'll Circle back to David uh Michael and action and sustainability thank you hi good evening my name is Jeremy Beck I reside at 473 West Lake Samus Drive in Bellingham been a citizen of Belling for about 25 years so thank you members and mayor for having us and uh thank you for the work you're doing downtown to get that turn back around uh I was able to take my daughter to begy for the first time in probably 18 months this weekend so the work you're doing on there is to be commended and we thank you very much for that building into that what I would like to bring everyone's attention is I think most people been to Fair Haven recently that most people have

probably enjoyed their time there and what I'd like to Dove tail on that is the fact that most of what you're seeing now there a large part of that is brought to you by the same Builder and developer who's going to be building this building and the aesthetic the quality of craftsmanship the attention to detail for really the historic manner has really been displayed over a 20 plus year window of time with this developer and and uh I'd like you to take that in consideration as you go see the walren the young the 808 some of the different B are probably not the 808 the 800 billion down on uh I believe it's Harris you'll see that sort of true commitment to what we're looking for as a community and that's Quality Construction built by good crafts people who are earning a fair and reasonable wage in our community now I graduated from Western in 2001 with a degree in economics and literature I purchased a cond the time I graduated for $60,000 that condo today just sold for $300,000 now that's a 5x increase in price in 24 years now what does basic economics tell you the market is a law of supply and demand I don't care who wants to keep people out they're coming to this part of the world from the globe we are the largest economic driver of the entire globee the Pacific Northwest the West Coast down to California now you can try to De bait that away you could try to deny that whatever the case may be that's not the truth the fact is we are generating more economic Vitality in this

region clearer to San Diego than anywhere in the globe so what does that mean that means kids young people educated young kids are coming where they're coming here so or their families so what do we need we need housing units we need workable housing units for people graduates from Western can't afford a $300,000 one bedroom one bath 600t condo when they graduate from Western anymore what do we need we need housing units this unit is committed to 20% approximately 40 housing units it will be fair and affordable based on I believe it's AGI which is set by fan here Freddy um so that's a that's a national fig no one's manipulating that I'll take my extra 3 minutes of a can so where does that lead us well that leads us to 40 extra housing units for fair and affordable housing I can tell you after having spent 20 plus years working housing myself working with Habitat for Humanity they're not building anywhere near that many housing units on a parandom basis as the largest developer for nonprofit in our region you're talking about a for-profit developer bringing that to our local local community and not only they're not putting them out Northwest of cordada where people can't bicycle to their activities or walk we're talking core unit affordable housing un I've not seen it in 20 plus years of doing this at a private basis so based on that I would take you to the next part of that which is workable wages for our local community members we're talking people who are making livable

wages who will be building this building developing it running the machine Machinery putting up the sheetrock putting on the roof Etc we need those jobs here we need working wage jobs we have not developed the technology jobs some of the other things that we've done in King and SN homish County we need those jobs here this job will this building will provide those jobs for local workers at I think you know really probably 125% if you were to look at it to Affordable wages you know so these are good jobs for folks this is sustainable wages for families so the last thing I'd leave you with is that yes it is a little taller but if you look at historically speaking there are a number of buildings that go back probably in the late 1800s that you know are on the same size it's semantics but I'll leave you with this too is that the natural grade of that pit isn't where it sits today like you can clearly tell it's been moved right so if we're looking back a 100 years or whatever it might be like the graphy is not where it's at I think if you bring it up to 40 some feet that's workable and reasonable it provides for the extra 20% of housing I know this uh presenter before that said you'll move those people out I don't think that necessarily is the case it's agreeable it's workable a community put some affordable housing there have some nice Villas and some Vistas that you know people can see and use have those corridors and provide some good working wages to our local community

members last but not least you'll be left with a great property that's set to you know be there for 100 Years it'll look beautiful for the long our community and I think it's a win-win for everybody and last but not least you'll get the nice Parkway the nice view easement uh and the walkway I think it's just a win for everybody so I stand here before you as a business owner and a 25y year uh citizen of Bellingham uh to uh of my stamp of hopefully approval on this building and uh we thank you very much for your time we're going to go to Louise who is online um Louise you should be able to turn on your camera un mute um and just for a reminder um online comments are only available for those who request an accommodation due to disability hi I'm uh Dr Louise Schmid a retired disabled physician who's worked with uh assisting other people with disabilities for 20 years uh there is a crisis in bellingham's mounting homelessness and a crisis in the drinking water source and the direct uh destruction of the watersheds for Bellingham um I have um it has contributed to both there's been a spiraling downtrend that threatens the health and safety of all Bellingham residents we need transparency in all dealings that occur with watersheds affecting public drinking water and accountability for anyone that threatens bellingham's community health and safety uh theyve not the projects have not uh even addressed any of the current materials submitted by City staff in their evaluation of zoning

requirements and development of planning documents which should be coordinated to assess uh the connection between the local violations and Regional water quality concerns uh add to this there's been no on the ground sampling testing of Wells uh in sensitive wetlands and aquifer zones there needs to be uh preservation of affordable housing without the need to further develop within sensitive watersheds this is a possibility with raising the height one should be checking to make sure that it's not impinging on the uh freshwater Supply in watom Lake um also when there are problems there need to be whistleblower Protections in place so that law bying citizen cens who report problems are not being forced into the streets which they are being at other places uh to join ever growing homeless population without recourse this is why we propose The Watershed Bill of Rights which the first point is to extend current city moratorium to ex coincide with County General plan criterian timelines to make it make it coordinated and Preserve speaker speaker I think you're you might be addressing a topic that we're not that we're not on here uh currently this is the public hearing for the Fair Haven uh parcel the subject property um that is my concern is with with the development have you considered uh how the increased density in that location uh will affect uh the local environment okay all right thank you all right um we have David Carlson Michael chistowski and action and sustainability

evening Council andham St St but this time I'd like to talk about the development agreement thank you again for this time my name is David Carlson development agreements provide reduce development costs by providing regulatory certainty and sight specific development standards usually municipalities increase development standards for development agreements in this case development standards are relaxed to the extent that the development agreement must be changed or rejected it would be more appropriate to have separate development agreement for the pit property on Block 19 and the separate Trail toop condominium complex proposed for the west side of block 12 as the projects are not related except by the financial benefit that future development will confer to the owner the west side of block 12 is substandard property the applicant plans to purchase it is encumbered by two East for sewer granted to the city for public utility and perpetuity the plat map for Lots 5 to8 also displays TI land encroachment approximately where the trail crosses the applicant is requesting and the city will be granting much speal dispensation to the applicant should the ill-conceived development agreement be approved new development will be enabled where it previously was not possible on top of the present South Bay Trail placing the public in a back row alley behind the new condominium complex that will privatize the scenic Vista possibly the the development agreement is not even conditioned to

require development of the pit before changes to block 12 occur no public benefits are included with the trail toop development scheme unless we count moving the hiking public into a dark alley as beneficial the applicant can develop the block 12 Trail toop and abandoned pit development and the corollary public benefit before any dirt is turn for the creation of any affordable dwellings at the pit site the result would be a new condominium ruining the South Bay Trail zero affordable housing units no increased privately controlled parking no public Overlook and a broken agreement to develop the pit property in retail a contrived development agreement like this one would be called Smash and grab including the issue of easement relinquishment that enables development on block 12 in the development agreement for the pit zoning Amendment proposal is hiding the ball there are City policies against granting the easement relinquishment buried in the development agreement that should require conscientious council members to reject an agreement like this one making this presently substandard land full developable without condition in addition to City policy requiring Street Improvement adjacent to new development like 10th Street which is not being improved the 20112 Fair Haven Neighborhood Urban Village plan includes policy 212 quoting the distinction between the Upland and the Tiel land area should be maintained and enhanced to Foster the experience of moving between the two levels

and to maintain visual connection to and from the bay thank you should follow the slope of the land property owners own actions have filled the slope at this Junction of Upland and tiand thank you David your is up thank you thank you my name is Michael chistowski and I wish to address the proposed agreement between the city and the contract p purchaser of the pit property the proposed City and developer agreement will assure the following seven highlights one guarantee a minimum of 80 public parking stalls which is essentially equal to the present public parking in the pit this known net loss and public parking space two introduce at least five public stalls for electrical Vehicles three Reserve public access to the South Bay Trail before during and after cons construction four Grant to the city a new 20ft wide Trail easement at no cost to city taxpayers five build a landmark type Outlook structure adjacent adjacent to the trail to be granted to the city and maintained by the parks department six assure at least 20% of the dwelling units will be affordable housing for the next 12 years and seven Implement a project design that will provide view corridors and pedestrian connectivity the proposed development of the pit will surely be a beneficial addition to the fair hav Fair Haven Urban Village and the proposed design has the potential of being a commercial and recreational destination for locals and visitors City Planning Commission made findings of fact conclusions and

recommendations for approval of the proposed height Amendment and the proposed development agreement it is my hope that city council indeed approves this proposal we can then continue to move forward making Fair hav Fair Haven Urban Village one of the crown jewels among the treasured places in Bellingham thank you to the council for allowing me to speak on both issues tonight I appreciate it thank you Aloha again thank you for your time uh just a few notes I'm not going to need two three minute sections um had some concerns that just didn't quite pan out the developer was saying there's going to be 200 units um but it seemed like some of those were going to be commercial so it'd be interesting to understand the percentage of affordable housing is that going to be from the housing part of it and is that going to be 40 units or is it going to be a different number because it sounds like there's 200 units available and a percentage would have been 40 and affordable housing in Fair Haven so we're going to have $600 a month with utilities affordable housing as according to the HUD definition of affordable housing that seems like a great opportunity in Fair Haven that I'm sure people would take advantage of but the idea of affordable housing has a lot of different variances are we going to establish that this is what affordable housing is for that area and how does that play out um the sustainability of the building um one we are trying to go for 45% tree canopy that is something

that is established in our Bellingham plan and we're looking to advance that we've talked about it recently um that area is a fantastic area with no trees that could be developed into a park that would be fantastic for that area in you know looking at how we use that because it's right across from the little area for viewing movies and that we use as a public space so there's other options for how we can use this area that is more in line with sustainability um we were talking about the p that goes through and how I believe someone mentioned there was trees that were blocking the view the trees are part of the view you know we we value trees and nature here you know being able to look through the trees at the view is is part of the beauty for some of us here um and the effect on small businesses uh if you've been down to Fair Haven and you've been over to the black cat building and whatnot there's a lot of vacant available business space down there um we have a lot of small business people that are struggling to maintain their businesses in that area and now we are going to after we've just recently developed more business space that is still vacant we're again going to put more business space in that area that's going to create a competitive uh situation for our small business owners who are already struggling especially with the economic situation we're in currently so I I'd like to just see a little bit more discussion on some of these points um and how this is actually

going to affect us not only from an environmental standpoint but from a small business standpoint I know quite a lot of people down there that have small businesses that would be greatly impacted by having a building like this go in and having other commercial entities there to compete with so thank you very much hello again um I just want to make clear that we're not speaking against development we're speaking about sustainable development and knowing where to develop how to develop and when to develop for example when you're looking at the height in the Fair Haven you need to assess the sto the soil stability some areas for example pits may be overlying aquifer zones and that would affect the entire Community for example on Old Mill property they are wanting to propose five stories of development on buildings that are already sinking below the drinking water level below the lake this can happen anywhere in the community because we still do not have in place an e ecological assessment of our entire hydrologic Basin I have seen the sampling that has been proposed that has been outlined even in overlay maps that that the Commissioners have been able to see I've also talked with many of the agencies and work with them and I know for a fact that those sampling sites are theoretical they are not on the ground sampling s it makes it very difficult when you have private lands that are developing areas and then they have full access to those areas because they can claim private

landowner rights and not allow sampling on the ground sampling to happen on those properties what's necessary is to have uh to have access for public health through easements that allow us to be able to assess Monitor and be able to follow what the impct s are we need a baseline study of our entire hydrologic Basin to have an ecologically sound idea of where to Zone what to Zone and how to to develop in certain areas certain areas are great for for having more uh development and of course we need housing but the risk is that we're pitting our need for affordable housing in contrast to our need for sustainable watersheds and we cannot have them fight one against the other we can actually have them work together and in this Watershed Bill of Rights one of the ideas is to explore Alternatives and current housing sources for community housing needs and establish a study on the underlying issues of homelessness in watom County the underlying issues would reveal where we can improve the areas and allow for affordable housing in areas um where we do not need to impact our sensitive protected areas to do so if we is destroy our drinking water if we destroy our our groundwater we will have no cause for development we have a lot of push for people to move here without water we will not have any means to sustain them or ourselves so this is a Red Flag Warning we need to work together and not allow variances without having the underlying Baseline da data to support due diligent decisions

in our community ecosystems and our development thanks that concludes my my sign up S right I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council council members go coun member Anderson I do have a couple of questions um I don't know if they're substantial enough that we would have to move this to a work session um but if there's some nods that it might be good to move it to a work session um I'll make that request um so I propose that we move this to uh a work session and do you anybody have an opinion if it should go to planning or Committee of the whole probably Committee of the whole okay I move that we move this uh to a work session for committee of the whole for a second second unless people are ready to ask questions and vote tonight motion uh motion fails CC M Williams I move that we accept the planning commission's finding the facts and inclusions and recommend oh my mistake sorry I move that we accept the planning commission's finding of fact conclusion and recommendations and adopt the ordinance relative to the piece of property call The Pit as presented second motions have been made by council member Williams and second by council member cotton uh council member Williams to clarify are you referring to agenda bill 24136 I am uh yes I am okay uh council member Anderson I'll ask my questions um I just wanted to uh clarify or verify uh one of our speakers made a comment that the building would be on our um our large sewer pipe and when I looked at

the map I assumed that the trail was over the sewer pipe and you can see on one of the diagrams where the trail is and where the new building would be could you clarify or verify is the building actually going to be built on our sewer line and if so is there a precedent for that and how do we do maintenance on it if we do yeah uh no the the building would not be located over the SE line we definitely don't want to do that on that big pipe um what would actually happen is the the two e the two sewer lines kind of run through the property and what you'd have to the west of the sewer line you would have the proposed building and then that the new Trail would be relocated most likely over that easement so that we can have them combined thank you good and this is just the way my brain works it's I get into these weird little details um and something didn't it made me think what if so under um the parking public Improvement and right away um page three of the um presentation but page 135 of our packet um I'll just the scenario would be that we have street parking and because of the 10- foot rway there may be the possibility not all the street parking will come back in and so there's an example that there may be like three parking stalls short but that would mean the three parking stalls would be added to the 80 for the public parking I assume the public parking would be charged a fee um perhaps I didn't see anything in here it was free parking and there may be a discrepancy between

the two costs of public parking versus what we would typically collect on the street versus what they collect in the interior of the building and I'm just kind of wondering not that it's like huge dollars but it does make a little bit of a difference for Access um and cost so was that at all um looked at how that kind of agreement would come out uh yes it it definitely was considered um the way that we we talked about should we have specific requirements in them that says it you know can't be more than what the city um or can't be less than what the city um and and we felt that in order for it to fill up the developer is going to charge the appropriate price right um if he's not going to they're not going to charge something that no one will use because they won't make any money off of it so um it's really kind of basic economics there so we believe it prob be very consistent with what the existing city is charging for parking down there now one more followup um this is why I would go to a session um for the public parking is there anything in this agreement and I didn't identify it that would prohibit a situation that they just decide to rent out longterm by the month the parking spots to perhaps people who live in other condos that are short on parking and therefore we don't really have the access or turnover for the employees is there anything that really stipulates how the parking is going to work for this so er Eric Johnson Public Works so talk a little bit about parking

and uh I think it's important to go back to the parking management plan that was adopted by the city council following much of the concerns about parking in Fair Haven over many years and and and this development agreement as it's laid out and the terms of the use of those public spaces and how the owner would be able to charge and manage their use of the on-site public parking ispell that the development agreement and staff's in interpretation of that proposed agreement is consistent with the recommendations that were adopted by the Fair Haven parking adopted when the Fair Haven parking management plan was adopted which envisioned that there would be this uh that stru structured off street parking would be a combination or provided through a a public private arrangement of sub sorts um in terms of the prices that would be charged for parking the city doesn't make a lot of money off of our parking cost and and we would not anticipate that the developer the owner of this would would make a lot of money off of parking either but there's not a lot of limitations on how they would provide for those the intent is that that would be publicly available to the public During certain hours of the day but they could be used by different teams at different times but but the use of those and the way that was structured uh was beneficial to the owner of the property but is also consistent with the strategies and implementation measures that were laid out at the fairen parking plan more um

taking a look at the three buildings uh I'm thinking of phasing because all three buildings I would assume won't be built at the same time and given that um one building will get about 99.5% affordable housing the other one um 10.5 and I'm assuming there will be something put on the property itself so should economic downturn happen and one building is done and another building is done at the the height increase but maybe the third doesn't come in because things go Belly Up um is how are we going to be is it something going to be put on the deed of the property so that that eventually when it does get developed by somebody else that the expectation would be is there would be that percentage of affordable housing I mean there's not a sunset to that agreement or anything it will travel with the property itself or is it just an agreement with the developer and if the developer doesn't come through then we've increased the height without the gain Allan may be able to chime in a little bit help with this uh but the way that it the agreement is set up is that that the the benefit is not received until it's already built so they they won't get um any sort of tax relief or anything like that for the affordable housing unless all of it's built so we kind of built that into it um and the the agreement also has a specific time period associated with it so it's not something that goes on and on and on forever just to clarify my my concern would be is that all three buildings are not

built but one of the buildings at the extend height would get built which would give us a partial um amount of affordable housing and then the other building does not happen for a period of Time how are we guaranteed when that parcel gets sold or it gets built that we're going to be able to have that additional amount of affordable housing because I'm I'm sold on the idea of getting 20% but not 9.5 um because I look at it as the full package and not a parcel package and so I'm just wondering how do we secure that we'll eventually get it if it's not on the deed of the property itself to transition to a new purchaser that agreement the agreement is specifically with the developer not any future um developer okay uh the discussion was just about whether or not it would be built in phases and that it is likely that it will be built somewhat in phases uh the way that it'll first happen is you'll have one building uh kind of to the north that will will be established um that then then kind of simultaneously with that you're going to have the the public parking the kind of that the the podium constructed and then once you get that Podium constructed the buildings will come up will come up as well should be noted that the the podium that Kurt's referring to is essentially subgrade and it's all it's a super structure it's one structure so you're you're not going to build the parking and then have the buildings I mean you you'll have vertical construction above that but the parking is

all one superstructure do that Mak sense so the three buildings are sitting on one superstructure underneath it the the building to the north is is at grade but the but the basically what Kurt showed there was a B and C A and B are under one superstructure okay so then you'll have the building parking is the largest cost and then the other portion that Kurt was alluding to was that the multif family tax exemption if I got that wrong did I get it wrong right um the multif family tax exemption is a process by which the the property owner would apply for that program so what Kurt's referring to is that we can go through the development agreement structures it all out but they have to they have to have the units built before they can apply for that that exemption and I understand that but my concern is is if they don't apply for that and we've gone to the elevated height then one of the motivations factors for me to prove an additional height is that we are going to get that um affordability and I just want to be assured that will actually happen and that we have a lever to make sure it does happen that the developer just doesn't decide I'm not going to apply for the um tax exemption anymore but I now have my height we can we if can we pull back that height if they don't do that I mean the building's built so how does that that work we we could we can enforce the development agreement so if if they just fail to meet the conditions of development agreement including the affordable

housing and as they agreed to we could enforce that the way the affordable uh the multif family tax exemption works is they apply for a building permitter design review and then at that time they're applying for the multi family tax exemption so it it's really happening simultaneously so when we issue the per MIT um it will include those units so they they don't get to build it and then come back and say oh these are going to be the affordable units it's all kind of happening at the same time if that helps okay one more last one um so thank you and I just wanted to explain why I support this because I know it's really hard when you hear your community voice and there will be definitely impacts um that will make some people unhappy but you have to look at the totality of um what's best for the community and we don't have a lot of lovers to create affordable housing there's not enough out there and I've been pushing inclusionary Zoning for a long time and a lot of times with inclusionary zoning it's giving something in order to get something and this is an opportunity for us to give something to get something that the community really needs and the view corridor is the other selling point for me um because we just have to go down State Street and look at that huge block of building with no views or natural light streaming through a feels like a two block section of Bellingham that is just such a horrible design that we don't have view corridors right there so I think for Fair

Haven being able to have the three buildings and having the plaza and having the view corridors um aesthetically is a much better design than the example that we were given that they legally could be doing so um it's it's a good alternative and I do hope the people who are impacted in the housing they're lined up with some of those view corridors and they won't be as impacted but that could only be a wish okay I'm going to move us along here it's after 9:30 and we have we still we still have a vote on the on the table we have another vote pertaining to this matter and we have yet to begin our business meeting so if you're here for public comment you should expect to speak around 10:30 or so Cil M Stone so just to confirm right now we're just discussing 24 136 right we're doing the development agreement is second we're doing the first one first and we'll do the second one second okay all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed abstentions recusals motion carries uh 5 Z 5 Z okay yep C my room oh Williams goad yeah your Mike I would further move that we authorize a mayor to enter into a development agreement with Dominion sustainable development Corporation relative to the properly property commonly known as the pit as presented in agenda Bill 24137 second motion's been made by Council M Williams second by council member cotton further discussion to this one council member Stone so I just wanted to confirm with respect to the affordable housing um as You' mentioned so

this is in accordance with the um municipal code 17.82% the win in addition to um just wanting to highlight then when people are asking what does that mean as far as affordable right and where that those numbers come from if you can just speak briefly to to that point certainly the um multif Family tax exemption that you're referring to identify as affordable housing and it says that households um that have 60% below the median income is what is considered to be unless you're talking about two bedrooms or more then you can then you can use the 80% Mark associated with that okay and my understanding from the development agreement these are all Studios so those would be at the 60% correct thank motion's been made and seconded um made by Williams seconded by cotton any further discussion seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed exensions recusals motion carries 5 Z okay that concludes the votes on that and let's take a five minute break here it's 9:34 so we'll get back at at 9:40 what's Happ [Music] n [Music] for n [Music] [Applause] [Music] e okay we're going to go ahead and get uh back uh into gear here so the next item on the agenda is um the mayor's report good evening to council and good evening to members of the community and staff that are still here this evening uh I'm going to try and make this quick so first up is an appointment to the Community Development Advisory board for information only and that is that I will be pointing Jasmine fast H to her

first full term on the seab board I gave an update earlier on Electric Avenue the second update I have tonight is also about transportation and it's about the Holly Street Bike Lane which we have already heard some comment about this evening there's a lot of community conversation about the recent CH changes on Holly Street and we want our downtown to be vibrant and people centered Ed Holly Street as a critical connector through our downtown has long been a missing link noted in both the 2014 and 2024 bicycle Master plans we implemented the bike lane earlier this spring and are actively Gathering data and the community's feedback before making any permanent changes this datadriven approach involved collaboration across various City departments and Community groups to dat we've received over 800 comments on engage Bellingham and as a result we have already made important adjustments based on this feedback iterations so far include optimizing the traffic signal timing to improve the traffic flow removal of a parking spot at the end of each City Block to improve visibility especially for right-and turns and we've enhanced the signage to clarify changes for all users and I really want to commend staff for the actively listening and their willingness to iterate quickly in the spirit of continuous Improvement and our commitment to finding the best solution for Holly Street continues I also wanted to share an update about all hands watcom council member Stone brought this matter up

and I want to reinforce that it's an important engagement opportunity for all members of the community to learn more about our community comm's responses to the opioid and synthetic drug crisis and I invite Council the community to join in this year's All Hands Summit which will be hosted by the Chuckanut Health foundation in collaboration with the city wam County Health and many other organizations fostering community and collaboration to address the opioid crisis this year Summit will be Tuesday June 25th and Wednesday the 26th at Bellingham high school they're all day events and the um the theme of this year's Summit will be how the opioid inventional crisis is impacting Youth and Young adults in our community and last up I want to share some news about police accreditation um last week the Washington Association of sheriffs and police Chiefs waspic their executive board voted to renew knew the Bellingham Police Department's accreditation for another four years this is essentially the gold standard for of approval from industry leaders there are 147 standards that an agency must meet to receive their accreditation everything from Department Records management information technology recruiting practices and training practices we opened our department up for a complete review an arduous process that many staff members have worked for the better part of a year to realize and earn accredited agencies are meeting or exceeding industry standards for law enforcement in Washington

state and we are very proud to be among them congratulations BPD end of mayor's report thank you mayor we now turn to our committee um we had two committees meeting this afternoon first was Public Works and natural resources and that is chaired by council member ham Stone thank you very much president Hamill um this afternoon on the public works and natural resources committee I was joined by council members Anderson and lillquist we had one item before us this was agenda Bill 24143 an interlocal agreement with Western Washington University for Lake watcom water quality monitoring program so beginning in the 1980s a lake watcom monitoring program was initiated by the city and Western Washington University to measure and track long-term Lake data for temperature pH dissolved oxygen conduci turbidity and nutrients including nitrogen and phosphorus over the years this program has expanded to include the testing and monitoring of waterways that feed Lake watcom the work of the monitoring program is performed by Western Washington University Institute for Watershed studies and funded by the city the partnership between Western Washington University and the city for Lake WKA monitoring is a key component to the lake watcom Management program this afternoon um we acknowledge that the council action is required to renew this interlocal agreement and to continue this vital water quality monitoring program the contract has a maximum payable amount of 1 M1 2016,2017 Olinger um assistant

Public Works director and this afternoon the committee unanimously recommended approval and I so move second motions been made by the chair and second by council member Lilo Quist any further discussion seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed exensions recusals motion carries 60 thank you very much um that was the only item before us this afternoon so with that we adjourn and I'll turn it back to you president Hamill okay so I'm going to go to the committee the whole and although with our first item was an executive session I'm just going to I'm going to wait and package that up with the other executive session items when my when I do my report on on that so that'll go to um our second item which was the ordinance relating to multif family development in the Silver Beach neighborhood I'm now going to turn this over to City attorney Alan Mariner um so the the committee of the whole made a uh favorable um recommendation for motion approving the first ordinance in the pack on page 190 um which is the one that change uh changes the density to uh low density and I I have five changes that we need to make to that ordinance based on the motion from uh Committee of the whole and I'll just read those into the record and then you can uh vote on the vote on whether to approve it or not and vote on all five at once the changes yeah they're they're all capturing your your motion um from uh this this afternoon okay sounds good so the title I'm going to read the title

of the ordinance as as amended an ordinance of the city of Bellingham Washington relating to multif family development in the Silver Beach neighborhood amending the Silver Beach neighborhood plan and the zoning table in Title 20 of the Bellingham municipal code to reduce the density of multifam areas 8 913 from from high density to low density and then this is the addition to the title in Area 18 from medium density to low density the next change is the the second to last whereas on on the first page of the ordinance uh to read whereas there may be an inherent conflict between the high and medium and medium is added because of Area 18 density zoned areas in the Silver Beach neighbor neighborhood and the comprehensive plan goals and policies calling for the protection of Lake wacom's water quality then on section one section two of the ordinance which um amends the various areas the Silver Beach neighborhood plan is hereby amended as follows it we're adding Area 18 land use designation multif family residential and showing a low density then in section four of the ordinance uh make several changes uh that is the section that deals with the Silver Beach neighborhood zoning table um first we add Area 18 into that table um and provide for for that area 18 a low density and then for all areas that are listed there that's area 8 9 13 and 18 in the special conditions column we add the following language to the existing language in that column the total unit count may be increased

beyond the low density maximum up to the medium density maximum subject to adoption of a de development agreement and that's all the changes I'll now entertain a motion to uh approve the um the ordinance as amended as the City attorney just read move approval second motion's been made by council member Williams second by council member cotton further discussion on this one council member list well this took a little bit of surprising turn at the end here um but I can I can live with it as I see things our main public interest here is in protecting water quality from increased development um not housing everywhere um not housing here um which hence us why I support our move here to down Zone all of them to low density um however the majority of my colleagues have decided to allow one possible route to Greater development only if the land owners agree in writing to terms that the council believes add to the public benefit the council remain in the driver seat they need to convince us and this is the only way we can get them to go above and beyond um what they wouldn't otherwise be required to do so it's not a terrible idea and the fact that the public Still Remains in the driver's seat we don't have to agree to anything the underlying zoning is low density means I think we've made uh the right move in the right direction and I'll be supporting Cil or Anderson rather thank you I was one of the council members who originally was supporting the loow density and this does achieve

it because it is being zoned low density but it also opens up a pathway if we should deem that um it becomes a winwin to increase that density that the wind for us would be um for the public benefit and that could be meeting our climate goals that could be meeting affordable housing that could be meeting um Wildlife corridors or open space or whatever ever it is that we deem as Council and also by hearing from Community um what is a value that we would not typically have um if it was just low density um what a value could we maybe achieve that would be of great public benefit but also keeping in mind that there's an exchange for that because of cost and so the developer would get an increase um it doesn't guarantee it but the hope is that it brings them to the table to talk with us about what our wants and needs are and that we can create a win-win and perhaps have something better overall um there's no guarantee that the storm water would be worked on if there's no development and we know that and so it is something um dealing with the phosphorus that we need to look at and so um anyway I didn't support it initially but um anyway with the second vote for it um I'm just hoping that through that development agreement we can create a win-win for the community and the developer okay motion's been made and seconded Miss SK did you get the motion or in the second Williams and cotton okay all right all those in favor signifi by saying I I opposed abstentions recusals motion carries

60 next item we had a resolution extending the exemption for the exist existing shelter at 1522 and 1530 Cornwall Avenue from compliance with State Building Code requirements until November 17th of this year um this is base camp and so the the idea here is that the the mission um over on Holly the new construction is still taking a little bit more time and so they just need an extension I think it's a 5- Monon extension and this afternoon the uh committee um voted to approve an ISO move second motion's been made by the chair and second by council member Williams any further discussion on this one seeing none all those in favor signifi by saying I I I opposed extensions recusals motion carry 60 next up a resolution declaring an OP opioid opioid and synthetic drug crisis in Bellingham and recognizing that addressing the crisis is one of the highest priorities uh for the city of Bellingham so this will resol resolution it's a statement of values and this was put together by my colleague uh council member skip Williams and thank you for putting in all the the time in energy and also like to thank uh Iris not who is our uh policy analyst for doing a lot of the heavy lifting on this one this afternoon the committee voted to approve this resolution and I so move second motion's been made by the chair and seconded by council member Williams uh council member list so again I'll thanks skip for bringing this forward um I think is a important and I want to steal actually your comments

Dan uh when you reminded people that this is not the beginning of a process to respond to the fentanyl crisis we're in the middle of the process there's a long list of things we have been doing and this serves as sort of like putting a stake on the ground to justify further action we don't make this statement a walk away and feel good we keep doing the work so this is an important Milestone it's the middle of our action and I really appreciate uh skip you bringing forward for us now coun Williams thank you um you know this puts us in line with all of the other governmental jurisdictions well not all of them but the major ones in watcom county and just know that we are pursuing options to develop in intervention and Recovery Services um and doing it in a way that is approp apprpriate to our role as a city it also gives the mayor the foundation to also put together a work plan for us on the implementation side and where we are more than happy to work with the mayor to get to that point so it it's been a long time coming and we're ready to roll up our sleeves and get to it so thank you council member um I just want to point out to the public that uh this is um this is one part of a a much broader effort that is being made by both the city of Bellingham wam County Health Department Lum Nation uh and and others we do have an alternate response team that we've deployed for about a year or so year and a half um that can respond to behavioral health uh crisis um for people

experiencing crisis we have a community Paramedic program our police and fire um are well trained to address um these overdoses that we are seeing way too way too frequently um but I think that this is an important policy component that the the council um is undertaking so there's been a motion and a second any further discussion on this one seeing now all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed abstentions recusals motion carries six zero uh the last item was a briefing on the Bellingham plan this is a two a 2025 periodic update to the comprehens ensive plan we had a a presentation that I will not try to encapsulate it took it was an O over an hour it's very well done got to commend the staff for um putting together a very detailed look at the next several years for what Bellingham will will look like um I would encourage folks I would encourage everybody to to go back and and watch the video I think it'll be posted by tomorrow I think is usually takes a data to get him to get him up there um but I would I would definitely uh take a look at it it really is very inform ative um old new business seeing none um I'll go to Executive session report out we had um we had four items today first one was potential litigation with Mariner staff provided information on a potential litigation matter this was for information discussion no action was taken second item was a potential property acquisition also with Mariner staff provided information on a potential property acquisition

I will now entertain a motion to authorize the mayor to close the real estate transaction described in the city's purchase and sale agreement with the Department of Natural Resources or DNR for the four DNR properties located within the city and north of Mount Baker Highway with a purchase price of 2,190 th000 some moved uh I'll give that one to uh council member Anderson second and the second to council member Williams go ahead this is just just a little public information thing these are some pretty large Parcels but if you look at them in the past purchases we've done recently you'll find one thing in common we are buying up riparian areas where Rivers and Creeks run through our community why they're lousy places to do development they usually you can't develop them they've got things like wetlands in them but they're beautiful perfect places for public ownership for parks and for Trails so it's a nice Synergy there we buy places we don't want to develop so they stay green for the public public um and luckily in this case the DNR did not Bend us over on the price even though it's expensive I think it's a a great public benefit but you will notice we've been buying at acreage like pretty consistently for a while and the common element is these are spaces that have rivers and streams running through them and we don't want to pollute them we don't want to put buildings or bridges over them but we do want them in public ownership for everyone to enjoy motion's been made in

second and further discussion seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed ions recusals motion carries uh 6 our third item for executive session was also potential property acquisition also with Mariner uh staff provided information on a potential property acquisition this was for information and discussion and no action was taken the last item for executive session was um also property potential property acquisition this was with attorney Matt stamps staff provided information on a potential property acquisition this was for information and discussion and and no action was taken that concludes my uh executive uh executive session report consent agenda approval second motion's been made by council member lillquist and seconded by council member Williams any discussion on this one seeing none all those in favor signified by saying I I I opposed extensions recusal motion carries 60 final consideration of ordinances agenda Bill 24118 an ordinance of the city of Bellingham Washington relating to stormw water management requirements and multif family zones in the Silver Beach neighborhood amending Bellingham Municipal Code chapter 16.80 the Lake watom Reservoir regulatory chapter move third and final second uh third and final by council member Stone second by council member Williams roll call please Hannah Stone hi Skip Williams hi Lisa Anderson hi Michael liquis hi Jayce cotton hi Dan Hamill hi motion carries 60 okay all right we will now conclude the business