City Council - Committee Of The Whole

all right let's move on to the next committee committee of the whole um we have two items before us the first is an ordinance uh relating to the establishment of identity theft prevention measures for registered Residential Properties throughout the city establishing a requirement for secure locking male receptacles in chapter 6.15.18 bills can have significant impact on the fin Financial well-being of an individual and or household an effort to support the need for safe and secure um housing for all residents the city is establishing a requirement for locking mail receptacles for all properties registered through the rental registration and safety inspection program and here to take take us through with details is our planning and Community Development director Blake lion good afternoon thank you for having me uh Blake L director for planning and Community Development this is the item that you saw at your uh July 15th meeting uh it was actually at the uh committee meeting and since council member Anderson wasn't able to attend that we wanted to ring this back for first and second reading today uh it does include the two amendments that you all considered at that uh which is the implementation uh which would take place um in the new year so there is a little bit of time uh for people to understand that and that we'll be coordinating that as part of the rental registration and safety inspection program so we wanted to add that to the existing kind of workload of that program

so we have the opportunity to go out and verify that those installations have been met but as the staff report and agenda Bill States for you um certainly one of the things that we're paying attention to and trying to help promote is the Safety and Security of Housing and we since we have a number of uh housing stock that in fact 54% of our community that's in the rental uh Marketplace we wanted to make sure that they had the opportunity to have safe and secure uh male receptacles and so we're adding this component to the overall requirements of that program so happy to answer any questions you have but it is substantially similar to what you saw last month ready Anderson I actually don't have any questions because I've been a big supporter of this and um was kind of part of the dialogue of bringing this forward this kind of the Genesis of this happened at my house that basically someone had stolen or taken a lot of mail out of mailboxes from the samish um mobile home park and um Mr lagy was at my house saw the mail returned it to the individuals there was bills there was uh credit card statements opened and the DI you know the conversation was the people who could be least able to afford identity theft are the ones that tend to get um most impacted because they don't have the secured mailboxes um be because they're renting not all people but quite a few and I find it really ironic because on Saturday having looked at this coming back from the packet on Odus Street not too

far from my house my husband picked up eight pieces of mail thrown into um the side of the property and took it back to the residents um up towards samish um kind of well up on sish drive and the the places were um unsecured mailboxes and there were bills um who knows if they had a credit card statement or something else um and anyway it just kind of struck me the timing of it that how much mail do people have stolen in this community and then discarded and then what do we do with that mail if we happen upon it I know um we've always made app point to try to return it or return it to the Postmaster General um or to the post office because often it's important pieces of items like you know utility statements that people can't afford to not pay because it didn't show up and then impacts their um you know they get a late fine or it impacts their credit statement um so I support this I don't see any changes I think it needs to be passed I know we've received communic ation from people in the community that um you know they're going to have to raise their rent and for those people who send that email saying they're going to have to raise the rent you really need to examine yourself because you're not taking care of your tenants and the fact that the cost is not that burdensome to be able to put this in and then to send us emails saying I'm going to R raise the rent of my tenant if you pass this um is really absurd and if that that's how you're looking at being a responsible land

or property owner who is renting in this community um I just want to say shame on you for that because we need to uh move forward with what's going to help protect um our community and this is a good example of that and sorry if I sound a little snippy but I read one of those emails the other day and I'm like really um it really kind of saddens me that people look at it in that way and that they haven't moved forward on this just on their own accord and that we have to legislate it but anyway I don't have any um questions to it and so with that I would uh move to approve motion has been made by council member Anderson second by council member List counc member go ahead uh yeah thank you I obviously support this as well um um you know homeowners can protect themselves but renters rely upon what the landlord provides and if you live in an apartment building that's been built anytime recently there are locking mailboxes already required so this is nothing new this is now standard practice but there are many smaller homes and older homes and older apartments that don't have locking mailboxes um talk about crazy timing uh my credit rating dropped this weekend I looked into it someone ran up $3,200 worth of charges in Canada under my name changed my mailing address to Florida and my email address was changed and U phone number was changed um and I was about to miss a bill and my credit rating was already dropping so luckily I think I got it taken care of but it was scary and you

know if it happens to anybody else uh if if I hadn't noticed that dropping credit rating because you know the bottom of you know when I look at my bank it says like your credit rating is dropped like what the heck um that was scary so this is a really important way of protecting people um and we to do that we need the landlords who are actually own the property to take responsibility this is a one-time expense um you shouldn't be raising rents significantly over a one-time expense could be50 80 $100 depending how many units you have 150 if you have a one stand alone you want to get a good box um spread that over a year or over 10 years it's not much landlords do definitely have over costs and you should charge rent to cover your overhead that's that's not the issue but this should not be a significant driver um by it by itself and it should return great benefits so um thank you to Mr Legacy as you said for bringing it up and thank you for staff for finally finding time in your work plan to get this this work done um the last meeting we uh set a um a start date to give people plenty of time to um comply and so I think we're ready to go hopefully we can pass it tonight okay sounds good um further discussion seeing none motion's been made and seconded all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed extensions recusals motion carries five with two excused okay that'll take us to the next item thank you uh and that is an interlocal agreement for the management of the remedial

actions of Cornwall Avenue landfill cleanup and modifications to existing inter locals between the Port of Bellingham City Bellingham um related to the cleanup pursuant to a consent decree the Port of Bellingham uh referred to as port in the city of Bellingham referred to as a city are jointly uh responsible for the cleanup of Cornwall Avenue landfill site uh the port has been the lead Agency for the cleanup effort and the city has reimbursed the port pursuant uh to the 2006 inter local agreement for the acquisition of the Chevron and Colony Warf properties and the re remediation of the Cornwall Avenue landfill site and the central waterfront Land or pardon me Central Waterfront site over time the city acquired the non-state-owned portion of the site and plans to develop the area into the Salish landing park because of the city ownership the plan Park and the city's adjacent concurrent cleanup of the RG Haley site the city will cont will conduct all three the c or the port has agreed to transfer its cleanup management to the role or role rather to the city since various agreements describe the ports management role they too need to be amended and that is the purpose of today's discussion and here to take us through is Amy cram from our legal department good afternoon Amy cram legal department and I am happy to tell you that the construction of the cleanup of the cormal Avenue cleanup along with the Argie Haley cleanup and phase one of the sish landing park Park uh scheduled

to begin in very early 2025 usually when I'm here before you I say two more years so I'm happy not to be saying that today um and this is really a procedural uh interlocal uh that we need to have authorized um the port in the city have a cost sharing agreement from back in 2006 that I've called the remediation agreement um and under that agreement the city pays 75% of the cost of the construction of the the cleanup um Port pays 25% and that agreement is not changing um this agreement that we're looking at today um basically uh ex explains and outlines how the process between the city and the port will occur during the construction um the port has grants uh through the remedial action grant program from the Department of ecology to fund uh the 50% of the the Cornwall Avenue landfill uh there are some uh gaps in that funding that they've applied for about 2.73 million dollar is still outstanding and will be uh decided upon in this upcoming budget in the past the port has been able to get all of the funding that they've needed for the Cornwall landfill we have no reason to believe that that's going to be different this year the city and the porter both obligated to conduct this cleanup under a consent decree that we signed with the Department of ecology and since two of the projects are adjoining the Haley site and the Cornwall site and the land use is going to be a city park it made sense for the city to conduct the construction rather than the port to conduct half the city to

conduct half and then for us to put a park on top of on top of it so we ask the port uh if they'd be willing to give up their management role as it's outlined in several agreements and they agreed to that uh it took us a while to figure out we were going to fund all of the the grant payments and the insurance payments that the port has coming into and how to get that back to the city but this interlocal if you look through it takes us through those steps uh there are several other interlocal agreements that we've had with the port over the past decade or two that happened to mention that the port is the lead Agency for the Cornwall Avenue cleanup so we needed to modify those interlocs as well um really those interlocal if you looked at your packet are just really the sentence that says the port is the lead it now says the city is the lead um so uh we're looking for a motion to authorize the mayor to enter into the uh interlocal for the management of the um remedial actions the Cornwall Avenue landfill site and the first modifications to both the interlocal for the exchange of real property and for the remediation agreement thank you thank you M Anderson then lqu nope makes sense um but mine is more of a um I don't know how to phrase this question is what it's uh anyway on page 64 um the first modification um inter local agreement uh three excuse me 2.3 it actually lists the names of um the director of environmental and planning services and then also the project coordinator

your name and I'm just wondering in an interlocal agreement actually listing listing employees names versus maybe their position if for some reason you win the lottery tomorrow and decide on early retirement do we need would that agreement then have to be modified again because that person's no longer employed in that position um no I would say it wouldn't need to be modified it would come to the city attorney's office and whoever was succeeding me in this job if indeed somebody in the city attorney's office was succeeding me in this uh role um I I agree with you that oftentimes we don't put the names in for that very reason this uh agreement comes up quite a bit and we get a lot of um contact from ecology and other places about this and so we wanted to put our names in here okay I was just checking because I haven't noticed that in other agreements so it kind of just jumped out at me and made me wonder like are we going to revisit after you win the lottery um but thank you any further questions is there a motion move approval second motion's been made by council member Huffman and seconded by council member cotton any further discussion okay I just want to mention that um one of the first things I did uh when I got appointed in 2014 was to go with uh Amy crem and Renee lroy from natural resources to the site that we're talking about right now and um for folks that just need a little bit more orientation it's all the way down at the end of Cornwall and if you were to keep

going which you shouldn't because it's behind a fence um there's the giant tarps that you can see from the South Bay Trail if you look look down and um that to soon ish will be a world class um Park that the public can enjoy for you know many different uses I would assume for the you know Fourth of July celebration concerts things like that or just to go with your with your family um so I'm glad that we're still tracking towards getting to the point where that will be the reality but that's really where we're going today so forther discussion questions okay seeing none all those in favor signified by saying I I opposed Oben recusals motion carries five with two excused thank you appreciate it um next item is old and new business see anything from Council mayor go ahead I just wanted to share there's been some interest on we're approaching the six-month Mark since Council voted to suspend the immigration Advisory Board and I just wanted to share that since that time council members cotton and stone have been meeting with myself and Deputy Keller we met in May in June and July and we meet again next week and we'd like to come back administration's requesting to come back in September with a comprehensive update on where that stands okay go ahead counc Mar um I'm glad to hear about the steady work on this coming back in September will there be any report on the Immigrant Resource Center ID in September as well we could come prepared to speak to that to some degree I think what

we like and the focus of the conversations is really what does it look like to move forward with the immigration Advisory Board I think the immigration Resource Center is a somewhat separate matter but we could speak with a little bit of if we Council wanted to pursue that what those next steps would look like it is separate but I it would be nice to re-engage with the IAB on that when the IAB is ready okay okay committee further questions pursuant to that or any new items or under old and new um I just want to uh thank Chief huitt um for uh letting me right along with uh Captain Steve Larson and Hadley Prentice so Captain Steve Larson is one of our he's the head of the community Paramedic program and um Hadley Apprentice is uh Grace So ground level response and coordinated engagement um case manager and uh about a week and a half ago I rode with them and um just what a good reminder to um of the of the things that our that our um fire department and our Police Department see every day on the street and the folks that are um some thankfully housed some not um and the in the level of um of care that is provided and compassion there was an article in one of the the local papers I think it was like the next day um that that featured both of the those individuals and went uh over Ju Just their days they're they're very long very uh case intensive days and they they go through the community they take people to the hospital they make sure that their medication is managed properly

they visit them um in their homes and um and just provide it's just very that level of care to me is reflective of of our city and I just wanted to to thank both our police and our and our fire um our First Responders for the for the work that they do so thank you all right next um our is executive session and I'll just read the the items here I think we may may have had one added but I'll go through the ones that we have here so the first one is litigation South Bay Suites LLC Jean Shannon and Connie Shannon versus city of Bellingham that's with herb for 15 minutes second one is potential ation with chaplain 15 minutes third is potential litigation cram for 10 minutes and fourth is potential litigation with herb for 10 minutes and the fifth is potential property acquisition with Mariner for five minutes uh Miss Scher was there another item added or is that is that it that's it to my knowledge okay is that you're understanding okay great okay we'll go ahead and uh recess and uh I'll be back and count up here I should have done that um um 30 40 55 minutes I'll be back in 55 minutes to either adjourn us until this evening or put more time on the clock thank you