City Council - Regular Meeting

>> Okay, we'll get started. This is good. Good evening, everyone and members of the public that are at home joining us. This is the November 4th Bellingham City Council regular meeting. Before we begin, I'd like to read a land acknowledgment statement.

We acknowledge that we're gathered here on the traditional and unceded territory of the Lummi, Nooksack, Samish and Semiahmoo. People who have cared for and tended this land since time immemorial. Truth and acknowledgment are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference.

We begin this effort to acknowledge what has been buried. By honoring the truth, we pay respect to their elders, past and present. Please take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here today.

And please join us in uncovering such truths at any and all public meetings. I also want to mention that Bellingham City Council meets all requirements of the State of Washington. Open public Meetings Act, and I wanted to have the language access.

Statement. >> The Bellingham office interpretation interpretation al espanol en todas las reuniones ordinarias vespertinus as assistances presence interpretation por medio de Los corrales situados en la parte delantera de la sala X espectadores a distancia pueden conectarse a South Bay punto org se zoom e pusat al econo language idioma en la parte inferior de la pantalla para escuchar en espanol.

>> Thank you. And then final announcement is public comment has been temporarily suspended until the end of the year. We'll resume that coming up in January. There are, however, two public hearings tonight.

But before we get to those, I'd like to have a roll call. >> Hannah Stone here, Holly Huffman here. Skip Williams here. Lisa Anderson here. Michael Lilliquist here. Jace Cotton here. Dan Hamill here. All council members are present.

Thank you. >> So first public hearing is resolution. Pardon me. Public hearing and resolution on the proposed relinquishment of a surplus utility easement. Encumbering 701 and 705 North State Street. There's a resolution here in the packet that provides information on the relinquishment.

And this comes to City Council for decision on the application of the property owner to facilitate development of private property. Public Works Department has reviewed the request and determined that the portion of the easement that encumbers the subject property is surplus to the city's needs and not needed for utility service, and accordingly, the staff recommends that it be relinquished.

And here to take us through Mister Fund, our interim public works director, and other staff members. >> Good evening. Council president, Hamilton City Council. I'm going to turn it over to Assistant Director Mike Wilson to walk through a few of the details.

>> Thank you. Joel. The up on the map here. You'll see the yellow outlined area is the subject easement. And it's you'll notice that there's already structures built in the easement. And so just three things to point out before we go to the public hearing.

The condominium subdivision here was developed in the subdivided in April of 1992. The what's prompting this action is they put in a building permit application removing and replacing siding and doors and windows and the carport structure and the dollar value of that is prompted the permitting process.

And in that process, we're doing some housekeeping on the easement process. And that so that's that's what the, the prompt or the trigger has been for this easement relinquishment. So based on the agenda bill, we're recommending that it be approved and relinquished.

>> Okay. Thank you. Mister Wilson, any questions for staff here before I open up the public hearing? >> Okay. Seeing none, I think we have a at least one person signed up for this. Okay. And I want to put the guidelines back up real quick for on for public testimony.

Okay. And I'll just go I'll go through I'll buzz through these real quick. They're the same for both public hearings. So I'm not going to read them twice. So it's three minutes. The timer is right there on the on the big screen.

And then on the small screen we are I don't think it's up here tonight, but we are taking testimony from the upper balcony microphone unless accommodations are needed. If a person is unable to get up the stairs, we will open up this other microphone down here.

The sign up sheets were provided. There's no donation of time to another speaker and all remarks should be addressed to the Council as a whole, not to individual members or to, you know, for example, the mayor.

It's to the whole city. There's no disorderly speech or action, no name calling or personal attacks, obscene or indecent remarks, derogatory comments on personalities. No racist, homophobic or other forms of hate speech and no advertising.

The promotion of sale of products. For profit enterprises or for promoting candidates for public office. For or for upcoming ballot measures. And like I said, the microphones up there, top of the balcony.

I think he pushed the button and it turns red or green. It'll it'll it'll turn a color. And so you'll know it's on. Let's go ahead and read those speakers, please. >> All right. We had Dean Longwell signed up.

>> Hey, Dean, it's this microphone. Sorry about that. This one right here at the table. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. And then your timers right over here to your to your right. >> My name is Dean Longwell.

>> I live at six, two, one Linden Road. I personally don't have any problem with the relinquishing of the easement. However, I have a question of this. Electrical utility easement was granted to the public as part of an alley, and when the alley was vacated, that part was not vacated from the easement.

So the question that has to be asked is, did the applicant go through the alley vacation process to get rid of this electrical line easement? Because that requires a different set of protocols and procedures, unfortunately, which I find maybe not to the client's favor.

However, from the standpoint of the public interest, where the city can get half of fair market value for that, that issue is not being discussed by the council, and it's not within the resolution. So therefore, the question is, was this electrical easement part of the alley or not?

And whether it was vacated back in 57? So you know, it's the devils are in the detail. But if you don't go through the proper formal channels, procedures and criteria, then the public suffers. So I'm just asking the question is the easement separate from the alley or is it part of the alley?

Because if you go by 3579, the arc, the easement is part of the alley. Thank you. >> Thank you. Dean. Next speaker. >> That concludes our sign up for this hearing. >> All right. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

And bring it back to council. Council. Go ahead. Council member Lilliquist. >> I'm not certain, but I think Mr. Longwell is referring to a different piece of property, but with similar issues. But not this piece of property.

So I think that the issues he was bringing, he was bringing up, don't actually relate to this particular utility easement. And so I don't see any problem with going forward with this vacation. Other side of the removal of the easements.

>> Are you making a motion? Yeah. The resolution there. >> Yeah. So I would move the resolution which would relinquish the surplus utility easements encumber the properties at 775 North State Street. >> Second motion has been made by council member Lilliquist and seconded by council member Anderson.

City attorney, mariner and council member Anderson. I wanted to recognize you. Go ahead. >> I would just I think the speaker was referring to that alleyway was vacated by ordinance number 7125. So it was vacated a while ago.

And what normally would happen in that vacation ordinance would we would have reserved the utility easement. And that's what staff is requesting be relinquished at this time, because it's not needed. Okay.

>> Council member, he took my comments. >> So I'm good. I was just going to say that I don't think unless the alley was vacated, they would have been able to build upon it. This is housekeeping. We're obviously we're not going to be using it for utilities, so it's just best to relinquish it.

So anyway, I support it. Okay. >> Motion's been made by council member Lilliquist and seconded by Council member Anderson. Further discussion on this item. Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I.

I. Opposed. Abstentions. Recusals motion carries seven zero. That takes us to our next public hearing. And I did want to mention I failed to mention for the guidelines. It's not really up there. This is more for general public comment, but I did want to mention that all testimony that's collected this evening, oral testimony that's collected this evening during the public hearing, has to be germane or specific to the item here before us.

Whatever, whatever you signed up to speak to. So the next one we're going to be talking about is the second public hearing on the 2025 budget. And we have to contain our remarks to the budget. And here take us through his Deputy Administrator, Forrest Longman.

>> Thank you. Yes, this is our second public hearing on the 2025 budget. Our third public hearing in this series. And it will be our our briefest. We're just going to hit some highlights here. Since we've talked about this with council for over a month now.

The 2025 proposed budget leverages creative uses of existing resources to provide a short term relief of a structural general fund deficit. There are targeted reductions to allow for priority program expansions, and it uses Non-general fund resources to continue investments across the city.

Some of those strategic investments include two police officers to support the return of specialty units, a prosecutor for the new Therapeutic Therapeutic Community Court, contributing $1 million of opioid settlement funds to support the county's construction of a 23 hour crisis relief center and continuing to invest heavily in affordable housing, community development, and an alternative responses to close the budget gap.

We did some revenue switching to improve our general fund outlook. Some of our temporary and some are longer term. The first permanent change is to increase the sales allocation of the general fund to 68%, reducing the street fund allocation by 5%, and that will be backfilled by real estate, excise taxes and the street fund.

We're also proposing to temporarily divert property taxes from our fully funded pre firefighters pension. That's firefighters that were employed to with the city prior to the state pension coming into play to the General fund to support increased public safety costs.

That pension is funded at about 130 plus percent, and it uses interest from the city's cash pool and investments to support general fund. Consistent with CW, and finally proposes to increase the solid waste utility tax to 17.25% to support remediation efforts.

Overall, our five year outlook is reflected in this graph. It's a complicated graph, so I'll briefly describe it. The blue area is revenues. The line is expenses and the bars are our projected reserves in our general fund.

The revenues and expenditures use the left hand axis and the reserves use the right hand. There are different types of reserves, but going forward we see the green being the emergency reserve with the green hash area.

What the emergency reserve total should be to meet our 18% target for an emergency reserve. So as you can see over the past several years, our expenditures have far exceeded our revenues. Some of that was related to Arpa and some of it's related to the structural general fund deficit for 2025.

We've increased revenues some of them temporarily, you'll see as it clocks back down in 2026, some of them long term. And we've also reduced expenditures by a good amount. We will need to correct this gap going forward.

And so we'll be working over the course of 2025 to present a 2026 budget that begins to address that structural deficit in a longer term fashion. That is my presentation. >> Any questions from council before I turn it over to the public hearing?

Okay. Seeing none, I think we've got a few speakers lined up. And just as a reminder, any testimony tonight has to be specific to the public hearing. >> Okay. We have three individuals signed up Adam Bellinger, Rebecca Bunn and Natalie Chavez.

>> And just another reminder of the upper balcony is where we're going to be taking public testimony tonight. Thank you. I have one concern. >> So. >> One more comment. >> Good evening Council. My name is Adam Bellinger and I wanted to talk tonight about two parts of the budget.

The strategic investments. One of them was involving the police department and public safety and trying to get back our specialty units that help with things like the bike patrols and things like that.

One of the things that has been impacting the budget is, in my opinion, is retail theft, and we need to get back to the support of our retailers who are providing retail tax dollars to our budget. The retail theft has gotten out of control in a lot of ways.

And so these investing in our public safety is very important. My mom, for example, owned the sunset Beauty Supply. She closed it down last year because of retail theft, had gotten so onerous for her and her.

The employees that were working there that she decided that it was better to shut down than to let things continue. The second one I wanted to talk about is the affordable housing. And I think we need to look at affordable housing differently and a much more frugal way.

When I look at the affordable housing projects that we Lord here are they're very expensive projects and for example, the Millworks project cost a total of for phase one cost $37 million for 83 units.

That's $445,000 per unit. And yet you could. When I've looked at the tiny home villages and the cost per unit, it's about 10% of that. It's like $50,000 per unit. So in my opinion, we need to be looking at what is the most effective use of our tax dollars.

That can have a pretty big effect. We could do 750 tiny homes for what it costs for the millwork project phase one. So think about that. And I think we need to be looking at as we are, as you are going through the difficult process of deciding what to do, I think we need to look at particularly the affordable housing and the most cost effective manner.

And I'm also looking at the operational budgets of tiny home villages and they seem to be way less than things like 22 North and other projects. So thank you. >> Thank you Adam. Speaker. >> Rebecca. And then Natalie.

>> Hello. I'm Rebecca bunn. I live at 3625 18th Street in Bellingham, and I live on the other side of a bridge, which failed in 2021. And the solution to this may require funds from different pots in this future budget.

And so as these issues come to the council in the future, I ask you to consider deferred cost of not having a bridge that was a permanent bridge to begin with, to consider funds that may come from other sources like FEMA, which could consider reconstruction.

And when you are comparing costs to have careful estimates of the different alternatives. So I know this would fall into different pots. So there's not one pot that I am considering. Thank you. >> Thank you Rebecca.

Okay. Next speaker. >> I don't know. >> There you go. Hello. >> My name is Natalie Chavez. Thank you for listening to public comments. This evening in regards to the 2025 budget, I encourage you to allow adequate funds to ensure that you all feel safe and secure during council meetings so that community members can make public comments during open session.

And I'm wondering why you are allowing community members like me to make public comments during public hearings tonight, but not later on at the end of the meeting during open session. It makes no sense because it's nonsense and you need to be called out.

The reason, I believe, is because you can't do business as usual, because public hearings are required before you vote on specific agenda items. If security was really the issue, then you would have suspended public comments for public hearings as well.

And if security was really the issue, then you would have reinstated the zoom option for community members to make public comments like the Whatcom County Council did months ago without any issue. Your tech team could have even contacted the county's tech team for assistance, but you didn't.

So what is this about? It's definitely not about security because I'm sitting here right now making a public comment. What is it that you don't want to hear during open session? Is it the comments regarding the 22 North debacle, the homelessness crisis, the fentanyl crisis?

Or perhaps about all the lawsuits that have been filed against the city of Bellingham? This is a serious issue in regards to the budget. How much of taxpayer money are you going to spend on security measures in the 2025 budget?

You already have two police officers, and security cameras are you going to hire six more, one for each of you and one for the mayor? Metal, metal detectors, bulletproof glass. When is this going to end?

I have a proposal. One that will save the taxpayers a lot of money. How about you all stay at home or in a conference room and attend the meeting that way? And community members can come into chambers and attend the meeting and make public comments at the podium like normal human beings.

The other issue that I wanted to address regarding the budget proposal of 2025 is regarding legal. And I hope, and I encourage you to a lot, $50 million in the budget for potential lawsuits that plaintiffs may win, either via settlement or by court order after a jury trial.

You know, in San Francisco on October 23rd, last month, the San Francisco Bay Area Area Rapid Transit Bart, they've given multi-million dollars to plaintiffs, 35 employees that were terminated over the Covid vaccine, not getting it.

>> Thank you. Natalie, your time is up. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for your time. >> Okay, I'll close the public hearing. Bring it back to council. This was for information discussion only. Do any comments here.

There's no vote required this evening. Okay. All right. Seeing none, we'll close that public hearing as well. That will take us to the mayor's report. I believe mayor has some at least one approval for us here.

And maybe some other information. >> Good evening. Members of council, staff and members of the community that are here this evening. I do have an appointment for council's approval tonight. It's to the historic preservation Commission, and I am seeking to reappoint Colby LaBrie to a third term on the historic preservation Commission.

>> Commission move approval. >> Second motion has been made by Council Member Hoffman and second by Councilmember Lilliquist. Any further discussion on this approval? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I.

I. Opposed. Abstentions. Motion carries seven zero. >> Thank you. The next updates are about two important opportunities for community engagement, and one is helping to shape Bellingham's recreational future and that is that there is an update to our long term vision for the future of the Civic Athletic Complex master planning for our community, central recreation and athletic destination is currently underway.

It considers two exciting and important ideas. One is the possibility of relocating the Carl Kosior Elementary School within the complex, and it considers potential locations for a new indoor community, recreation and expanded aquatics center.

You can join us at public Open Houses this Wednesday, November 6th from 6 to 8 p.m. At the Community Building at Bloedel Donovan Park. To share your feedback on how the civic complex should grow. There will be a formal presentation at 6:30 p.m.

We will have Spanish language interpreters and snacks will be provided. It's an all ages event and we hope to see the community there. The next engagement opportunity is in regards to the Bellingham plan.

The Bellingham Plan team has spent the past year gathering input from the community to shape our comprehensive plan for the future. The Bellingham Plan will guide the city's growth for the next 20 years.

Addressing housing, housing, transportation, climate resilience along with other essential topics. The plan will then establish the high level goals and policies to address how we grow in the community, into the community that we envision.

The team has developed a growth strategy based on what they've heard over the last year, balanced alongside state law, and now we are ready to hear the community's thoughts on those ideas. There are three chances to meet with staff to give feedback in person this month at open houses.

The first will be on November 14th from 1130 to 1 p.m. At the Viking Union at Western Washington University. The next is later that evening on November 14th, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. At Options High School.

And then we will be having public house on November 20th, 5 to 630 at the Cordova Park Pavilion. And you can also weigh in online at Engage bellingham.org. As has been noted throughout the day, council has suspended open public comment at the ends of its meetings, while measures to improve council chamber security are being considered, safety is an important consideration at all of our facilities.

But City Hall, however, is unique. It is the heart of our city government and has a unique role. And in the 85 years since this building has been designed and construction and constructed, Bellingham has changed a lot and our needs have evolved.

No one incident or concern led President Hamel to take this step. Rather, there have been several incidents in recent years and indeed throughout my first year as mayor here, that have highlighted some of the vulnerabilities and escalated concerns more broadly.

I see this as an opportunity for us to reflect and evaluate options for improvements. We are examining these chambers as part of a larger body of work to make City Hall more safe and welcoming, while balancing concerns that have been raised by City of Bellingham employees.

Our labor leaders and members of the public, and it is our sincere desire to foster a more inclusive and welcoming City Hall, along with improved safety measures. And the last topic for the mayor's report tonight is about the budget.

Tonight's public hearing and the work session this morning are among the final steps in the 2025 budget process, and I want to take a moment to thank the city's department head team, alongside with council members for all of our thoughtful engagement and collaboration while we work through this proposed budget.

We've had difficult decisions to make and we may have more ahead. We will need to adopt a shared commitment to vigilance as we move into the coming year. On November 18th, we will bring to Council a final proposed budget that is more responsible, reflective of our community's values and supports the internal services systems and critically, the people who work here.

That deliver outstanding services to the public. And that's the end of mayor's report this evening. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mayor. >> All right. That will take us to our Committee of the whole first item that we had this morning was, as the mayor indicated, budget work session, we had two broad items.

The first was some budget corrections and adjustments. I'll just I'll highlight a few of these here. There was some cleanup of some of the preliminary budget, but in addition to that we had some new operational proposals.

And like I said, I'll highlight a few of those. Add to the public facilities district budget to support professional services $100,000 Information Technology Service Department remove one FTE Technical services and Support Specialist and replace with 1.0 Systems Analyst.

Police fund remove one traffic officer and replace with one sergeant. Move 3.5ft. Security and information attendance to the facilities of Public Works Department and increase by a half of FTE. Transfer $30,000 from Police Department to Fire Department for Mental Health services.

Add one environmental coordinator, coordinator and 4.0 FTE crew to manage the extensive property holdings in the Lake Whatcom watershed. I want to just highlight that. I want to stop on that one for a second.

So the City council purchases watershed properties fairly frequently. And that is to protect the drinking water supply, which is Lake Whatcom. And when we do that, we don't want to leave the properties just sitting there.

We want to make sure that they're maintained that that people aren't people are not camping on them or otherwise degrading them. So we there is a significant budget item of about 732,000. And for that item and then I'll touch on the capital projects here.

Feasibility planning and design for proposed new skate park under the Bay Street Bridge for $100,000. That's coming out of the REIT fund. So REIT is real estate excise tax, Pan Creek Fish Passage project modification for 675,000 Harris Avenue.

Multimodal improvements for 820,000 Edgemoor sewer improvements for 2.3 million sewer system. Annual improvements for 1 million. Lower Patten Creek water quality for $224,000, and the Lower Squalicum Creek Enhanced treatment for 23,000 and Little Squalicum Creek Water retrofits.

Phase three for 607 or pardon me, 769,000. This morning, a motion was made to adopt these changes, and I so move. >> Second. >> Okay. Motion's been made by the chair. And second by council member Williams.

Council member. Lilliquist. >> Yeah. I just want to make a comment. To make it really clear, in case you didn't catch this from Council president Hamel's remarks, these are significant budget changes.

And increases, but only 37,000 of it, by my calculations, is in the general fund. If you looked at the city's budget, we are doing fine in most areas, but we're doing not fine in the most important area, which is the general fund.

So all these increases are drawing from different funds, utility funds, real estate, excise tax funds. They're grant supported and so all that spending, if we didn't do all that spending on, say, Lake Whatcom, that wouldn't help out with our budget woes because there are different pots of money.

We actually run numerous kind of independent silos by law, these silos are created. So it may seem strange that we're talking about great budget pressures and still spending millions. We're going to be spending over 100 million or 200 million, and we're still going to have budget woes because they're drawing from different pots of money.

And I just I just thought it really important for the public to understand that others might be really confusing why we're increasing the budget and complaining about not having enough money. >> Thank you, Council Member, for clarification.

>> Further discussion of the motion. Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed. Abstentions. Recusals motion carries seven zero. And then the final item for or the final piece of that item was a presentation by Tammy Bennett, who's our new court administrator.

And so we talked all about municipal court needs and the things that they'll be doing in 2025 and things that they accomplished this year. I would encourage anyone who's interested in in that work to go back.

It was recorded. It was in the mayor's board boardroom, but it was recorded then I'll move on to the annual report from the hearing examiner. Give me a second here. So hearing examiner, examiner for the City of Bellingham makes determinations on a variety of land use applications and acts upon several other quasi judicial matters as needed, per Bellingham Municipal Code 2.560.060.

Hearing examiner is required to make an annual report for the purpose of reviewing the administration of land use policies and regulatory ordinances, and any amendments to city ordinances or other policies or procedures which would improve the performance of the hearing examiner process.

Our hearing examiner is Sharon Rice and she presented her report. This afternoon, I believe there's a motion. Councilmember Lilliquist, you made a motion. If I'm not mistaken, to provide for an extension under BMC 21.010.260.

C one. Is that correct? >> Yes. There are two kinds of variances that when they're approved, one of them can be extended by the director and the other one, it just wasn't that ability to extend, even though they should both extend for the same reasons.

We gave direction to staff. I don't know if we need to give additional votes this evening or not. >> City Attorney Marriner. >> That's that's up to council. We will bring forward an ordinance making that change.

Okay. >> So you need us to codify that tonight. Do not need that. >> That's okay. >> Okay. All right. >> Okay. >> All right. So that was the hearing examiner presentation. The next item was an ordinance of the city of Bellingham, Washington, relating to the levy of taxes and establishing the amount to be raised in 2025 on the assessed valuation of property within the city.

There's an ordinance in the packet here this afternoon that sets the property tax for 2025. State law requires this ordinance to be passed and transmitted to the Whatcom County Council by November 30th of this year.

It increases the property tax levy of the city by the statutorily allowed 1%. This afternoon, the committee voted for approval and I so move second motion made by the chair, seconded by Council Member Williams.

Any further discussion on this one? Okay. Seeing none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. Recusals. That motion carries seven zero. Takes us to the next item. There is a resolution supporting increased funding for the Bellingham Food Bank in the mayor's 2025 budget.

Bellingham Food Bank has seen steadily increasing usage over over the past several years, with the number of clients visiting tripling since 2021. As economic hardship due to a number of factors grows in our community, so too does the importance of the food bank's work to create access to high quality, desirable food and other essentials.

Mayor's 2025 proposed budget includes an increase of city funding for the Bellingham Food Bank by 100,000in 2025, for a total contribution of 250,000. The resolution contained in the packet affirms Council support and commits to continuing the work to address the underlying issues of food security.

I just want to point out that this is not typically something we would do. We wouldn't typically have a resolution to support a line item within the budget. However, the food insecurity in our community is it's gone up to 124% in the past several years.

And I so I'll be there tomorrow in the line working the line as I, as I do every week. And the, the number of cars that are present when I get there at 230 in the afternoon, it's about 50 plus households that are represented.

And the line really does never it never slows down. It just keeps going right until 6:00. At the end of the day, and we typically run out of food. So this would provide some level of assistance. It's not going to help completely, but it does amplify.

I think the need that's out there. And it also helps with the purchase of food, which is how the food bank now obtains its food. Not just food, but diapers and feminine products and such. This council has a there are there are precedents.

This council has done a resolution declaring racism as a public health crisis, homeless as a public health crisis, and then council manically, which means that we voted here as council to make a decision to provide for a one tenth of 1% sales tax to help folks with mental health illness and to provide for affordable housing.

This afternoon, the council voted to approve this resolution. This was done by Council member Williams and seconded by Council Member Hoffman and I. So move. Second motion made by the chair and seconded by Council Member Williams.

Any further discussion on this one? Okay. Seeing none. All those in favor signify by saying I opposed. Abstentions. Motion carries seven zero. And then the last item that we had before us was a resolution setting the dates and times of the 2025 City Council meetings.

And basically this provides like essentially a public notice for members of the public to let people know when it is we're going to have our regularly scheduled meetings. There was discussion around trying to set a date for a retreat, but I think that that process will come later this this afternoon.

The committee voted to approve 6 to 1 and I so move. Second motion made by the chair and second by council member Anderson. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I, I opposed. No. Okay.

The motion carries 601 old new business. Okay. Council member Stone so speaking of the retreat, I'm not certain if there's if the topics and what's going to transpire during the retreat has been finalized or not, but with the with your recent decision to suspend public comment and noting the, you know, security concerns that that you've raised, and I understand that the safety committee which so, Jackie Weller serves as the chair of for City Hall obviously that work, you know, will continue.

>> But I my concern is that at the beginning of the year, right during the reorganization meeting, we will have potentially new leadership of the council. And so hoping that we can use this time to hopefully have a discussion, because I feel like beyond the safety measures, there's other items regarding public comment that maybe could deserve some discussion by the council.

You know, we've discussed before whether it happens at the beginning of the meeting or the end of the meeting. You know, how long is allotted, whether it's an off Monday or the same time, but really trying to look at what's going to be most beneficial to members of the public who are coming to share their comments with the council, as well as the council receiving that information.

Right. To me, it never feels good to receive comments from community members after we've voted right? Something's come up for discussion and we've taken a vote, and now people are expressing their concern or support, right?

For an issue. So I just feel like with respect to public comment in general, I would request that we either have a work session during a public, you know, a regular meeting and or have that discussion during the retreat.

I don't know what's already on the agenda for that day, but I'd just like to have some further discussion before the close of the year. >> Any objection to the council members request? Okay, I don't I don't know that we need a motion.

I think just hands are fine. Go ahead. Councilmember Williams. >> I think it would be very appropriate to have that conversation at the retreat so that we can take the time to really have a thorough and honest discussion about that topic and really get down to what are the operating principles that we're going to be doing from that point forward?

I mean, right now, the way that I see it is that it has been suspended for three meetings for a very specific reason. And then it comes back. So any modifications to having public comment, I feel, would be more would be better served.

Having it at the retreat rather than now, because we have public comment, but we've only suspended it for our public safety needs and then it'll be back. >> So okay, so I retreat is fine with me. I don't know if.

Are there any objections from other council members to talk about it at the retreat? Okay. All right. >> Is that meet your expectations okay. >> All right then that will take us to Public Works and natural Resources.

That's chaired by council member, Council president Hamill, can you please do the executive session report? >> I'm sorry? The executive session report. Oh. >> Okay. Sorry. It wasn't in the packet anyway.

So I'll do the executive session report. We had one item this morning. Litigation city of Bellingham versus Fong with my good staff, provided information on a litigation matter for information discussion.

No action was taken. I will now turn it over to public Works natural resources. >> Thank you. President Hamill. So this afternoon, the public works and Natural Resources Committee met. I was joined by council members Anderson and Lilliquist.

We had two items before us this afternoon. The first was agenda Bill 24295. This was regarding recycling and single use plastics. Update. So in support of the City of Bellingham's Climate Action Plan and House Bill 1799, City Council previously approved modifications to the Sanitary Services Company known as SSC, and that contract requiring the expansion of organics management services known as Food Plus for all residential customers and the transition of single stream recycling.

Additionally, the council adopted a single use plastics ordinance to align with state laws and reduce plastic waste. These initiatives aim to minimize landfill contributions, enhance recycling participation, and encourage the use of reusable materials.

The City of Bellingham is making significant progress. The single stream recycling system has been adopted by nearly 100% of customers, while preparations for mandatory organics management are well underway.

Compliance with the Single Use Plastics Ordinance has also improved, driven by education and outreach efforts. Staff provided updates on these initiatives and their contribution to the city's sustainability goals.

We were joined this afternoon by our Co-Directors of Public Works and Natural Resources, Joel Funt and Mike Olinger, in addition to a presentation by Sean O'Neil, who's the sanitation and solid waste manager for Public works and just wanting to highlight a couple of items one, with respect to the single stream recycling, just noting that this change, in addition to the frequency.

So we've noted the larger totes and the frequency of pickup going to every other week across the city results in a 50% reduction in trucks on the road. So that's pretty significant when we think about the CO2 and emissions reductions within the city, reducing the number of trips those vehicles had been making in addition, there's ongoing discussion about the size of the Toter.

As you may have noticed, they're quite large. So that discussion continues. But being large and the ability to hold a large amount of recyclables, hopefully you notice some benefits. During the last windstorm, which we experienced last night, which was on the eve of my pickup for recycling and not having the small bins and recyclables all up and down the alley was was appreciated.

So that work continues and there has been minimum contamination levels detected so far. Feeling like users are doing a good job of making sure that those recyclables are clean and dry when placed into the Toter with respect to organics, just wanting to note that the this being added then as a baseline level of service right throughout the city, that that rollout will start in January of 2025.

But important to note that organics has amounted to about 30% of the contributions to our waste stream. So making sure to divert that from the landfill hopes that that will further our climate action action goals.

And also looking at, again, with respect to the Compostables and the single use plastics continued work on again, education and outreach and coordination with sustainable connections and SSC to ensure that local businesses are aware of the requirements and then also helping to identify what what resources are available that are in compliance.

And so wanting to make sure that there's effort made to one support the more than 500 businesses in the community who are trying to comply with those efforts. But also wanting to make sure that, you know, when we think about the products available, that they are, in fact compostable and or meeting the needs and the underlying intent of that of that legislation, and that it's actually going to be able to be composted and diverted from from the landfill in the end.

So that work continues. And we looked at the data regarding compliance going forward or what we're looking at right now. So just encouraging people, if you have additional interest in this topic, go back and watch the meeting, which is recorded and the presentation that again was provided by Sean O'Neil.

So that presentation was for information and discussion only. There was no action taken this afternoon. The next item before the committee was agenda Bill 24315. This was an update regarding Eldridge Avenue non-motorized pilot Project.

So as you may recall, on October third, 2022, Bellingham City Council held a public hearing to consider removal of on street parking to install bike lanes on several arterial streets. This included Eldridge Avenue, in accordance with the adopted Bicycle Master Plan, so council subsequently voted to approve parking removal on October 24th, 2022, and Eldridge Avenue parking removal was subject to a one year pilot or pilot period, and so project construction was completed in April of this year, 2024.

And although the one year pilot is still ongoing at this time, staff provided a briefing to council and to the public this afternoon on the results of the data collected to date. And this was also to provide an update on the expected timeline for final results and recommendations from the pilot study.

So as we noted, you know that initial construction was completed in April of 2024 this year. So it's a one year pilot. That pilot will run until the spring of this coming year, 2025. But in the interim or wanting to report out just to provide an update, since some community members had been interested as well, we were joined this afternoon by Joel Funt, one of our co-directors for Public Works, as well as Mike Wilson, assistant public works director for engineering, and then Jessica Bennett, who for public Public Works, one of our project engineers provided the presentation about Eldridge Avenue and the updates and the data that's been collected so far.

So one of the things that we've noticed is the increase, you know, obviously with the bike lanes as well as the sidewalks and removal of parking, really increased usage with respect to the traffic not seeing a significant any significant reduction in speeds, but certainly nothing that speeds haven't increased, but it hasn't decreased as much as we had hoped, even though there was attention drawn to the fact that this wasn't specifically related to a calming measure as much as it was increasing access and carrying out the what was adopted in our bicycle master plan.

So putting in the bike lanes so just wanting to note that the collection of feedback from the public will continue and that if people have feedback specifically related to that pilot project, that feedback can be provided directly to Jessica Bennett.

If you provide feedback to the council, we'll certainly forward that along. But you can find that information and contact information on the city's website as well. With respect to that project. So again, the pilot will be ongoing.

We'll continue to collect data for continued review. But at this point it was for information and discussion only, and there was no action taken. So with that, that was end of committee and I will send it back to you, President Hamill.

>> Thank you, Councilmember Suen. Next on the agenda is consent agenda move approval. Second motion's been made by Councilmember Williams and seconded by Council Member Hoffman. All those in favor signify by saying I.

I pardon me, opposed. Abstentions. Recusals motion carries seven zero will take us to a final consideration of ordinances. >> Agenda. Bill 24282, an ordinance relating to the preservation of landmark trees and extending the interim Development Regulations with respect to landmark trees throughout the city.

>> Move third and final, second, third and final by Council member Lilliquist, seconded by Council member Anderson. >> Roll call please. >> Anna Stone. Hi, Holly Huffman. Hi, Skip Williams. Hi, Lisa Anderson.

Hi, Michael. Lilliquist. Hi, Jace. Cotton. Hi. Dan Hamel a motion carries seven zero. And next up, we have agenda bill 24289. An ordinance amending the 2023 2024 biennial budget. Increasing expenditures in the general fund.

>> The third and final, second, third and final by Councilmember Anderson, second by Council member Hoffman. Roll call please. Dan Hamill. >> Hi, Jace. >> Cotton. Hi, Michael. Lilliquist. Hi, Lisa. Anderson.