City Council - Committee Of The Whole

okay we'll go ahead and um get the meeting started here this is the September 30th meeting of Bellingham city council the first item this morning is committee of the whole uh for executive session before that I'm I'll do a roll call uh Hannah Stone here Holly Huffman here skip Williams here Lisa Anderson here nichel liquis here J cotton here Dan Hamill here everyone's here okay thank you um the first item is executive session we'll be um recessing into that in just in a moment here we have five items here this morning the first is potential property acquisition with cram for approximately 10 minutes the second item is also property uh potential property acquisition with Mariner for 10 minutes uh the third item is labor relations to discuss collective bargaining strategy with Sullivan approximately 10 minutes and the fourth item is and fifth items are potential property acquisition both with matte stamps and each for five minutes and I'll go ahead and recess us into executive session to uh come back in a Chambers at approximately 9:30 for the uh first um committee meeting this morning and that's Public Works and natural resources followed by Committee in Economic Development uh and then we'll take a a brief brunch brunch lunch break I think I'm still on the weekend here uh lunch break and we'll resume with committee the whole at 1 p.m.

[Music] okay we'll get it started here we're going to continue on with the committee meetings and the first one this afternoon is the committee of the whole we've got several items this afternoon the first one is a presentation of the 2025 proposed budget the mayor and staff will present an overview of the 2025 proposed budget this afternoon good afternoon Council well clearly the annual budget process is well underway and uh the 2025 proposed budget is a more responsible budget than the previously adopted banial it is one that seeks to arest our deficit spending and maintain Services while we develop strategies to put the city in a stronger financial position in the coming years and the draft budget that I've shared with all of you reflects some very hard decisions made in collaboration with the city's leadership team in fact in one of our off-site Retreat sessions with myself and the city's leadership team we arrived at adopting and approaching this year's budget process with a short-term goal of having a one city approach and that is what we have endeavored to do throughout this process and the budget that we've put forth for all of you to consider and give feedback on reflects that process the city's budget should reflect our community's values my proposed budget expresses my vision for our city being amongst one of the best cities in the nation with excellent government in service to our community and strong fiscal stewardship of public dollars this budget continues

broad investments in public safety including adding two new police officers to support to the return of our police specialty units including the downtown bike Patrol it adds a new fire inspector to increase our ability to proactively inspect and identify fire risks it commits to investing in a new Public Safety strategic plan to identify both the current and future needs for our level of service goals and an exploration of the long-term funding options that we will need to support those goals it fully funds our ongoing Investments to the Justice project implementation plan including support for our our alternative responses and Justice programs including the art or alternative response program Grace the homeless Outreach team the watom racial Equity commission and other existing interventions in addition earlier this year we added a strategic initiatives manager to fully support the Justice project implementation plan and to better coordinate the city's responses to Health and Human Services need in our community we are adding a prosecutor position to support a new Therapeutic Community Court that is currently under development we're making a $1 million contribution to watom County's 23-hour crisis Relief Center and we're making that possible through an investment in the city's opioid settlement funds as mayor I am truly committed to supporting the internal Services the systems and importantly the people that allow the city to effectively and efficiently deliver outstanding

services to the public and yet at this time of significant Revenue shortfalls we have a legacy of debt now coming due in these areas including critical technology needs compounding impacts from deferred investments in our facilities and aging infrastructure throughout the city as an engineer I have a focus on maintenance and continuing to invest in assets that we already have and support for the people who go to work here and I hope to work alongside you and this community to help create a culture that celebrates the nobility and value of Maintenance and Investments that we've already made and that you aren't just rewarded for creating new programs or building towards new shiny objects but that there's a nobility and a celebration of Maintenance and support for our ongoing Investments and to that end my budget includes maintenance maintaining high levels of funding for our facilities our Fleet and information technology Services it directs significant resources to fund the critical replacement of our essential but obsolete enterprise-wide Human Resources system implementing a modern system will be a powerful tool to streamline processes reduce organizational silos enhance engagement across the organization and increase access to meaningful data to better guide our decision I'll be adding or requesting to add a security position to support and enhance both employee and Public Safety at City Hall in the Central Library this budget creates a much needed capacity in the legal

department by shifting public records compliance to the city clerk and it adds a utility funded civil attorney it bolsters the general fund by reducing the percentage of General enal fund revenues that are currently diverted to the street fund from 37% to 32% and while the general fund is in a challenging situation other City resources retain the capacity for us to make meaningful investments in our priorities including making significant investments in housing our voter approved affordable housing level and the affordable housing sales tax will continue to allow us to invest Millions annually toward housing security across the Continuum of need in Bellingham we'll also be prioritizing moving our climate work forward by seeking and accepting grants to support this important work even with our limited resources it invests and stewards in our beloved parks and trails with our voter approved Greenways Levy fund it invests our voter approved trans Transportation fund resources and continued multimodal Investments for roads bikes and pedestrian infrastructure it applies state and federal grants along with the realise real estate excise tax to enable further investments in major infrastructure and it commits to cleaning up the legacy of pollution on our industrial Waterfront supporting the dramatic reshaping and increasing Public Access access to our Prime water front with funds from State and solid waste tax revenues my budget proposes an increase in the solid waste tax from 11

and a half% to 17 and a qu% to support this critical work and other Solid Waste funding needs my Administration began developing this budget with a multi-million dollar general fund deficit flattening and potentially declining Reven Vues have exasperated this Gap to produce a more balanced budget with minimal deficits this proposed budget leverages creative uses of existing resources and employs targeted reductions to provide shortterm budget relief while allowing for strategic investments in priority programs and minimally impacting the delivery of services however it is important to emphasize that this budget is but a temporary bridge to a more financially stable future many of the revenue strategies that it employs are not longterm Solutions there remains a disconnect between the city's level of service and our available resources going forward my Administration all of you on the council and the community will need to work together to establish new sustainable and flexible revenues or make the difficult decisions to reduce Services my vision is that we Endeavor to be an excellent government creating enduring public good and service to the community that we all love and right now excellence in government means being responsible stewards of our constrained public dollars while making progress on Key Community priorities and much needed investments in the people who work here you all have a crucial role to play in this and I invite you to be active Partners in this work and

with that I'll let Forest take it away thank you uh just have a brief presentation to go over um some of the details you might find it a little bit repetitive but we'll dive in here as the mayor said uh the 2025 proposed budget leverages creative uses of existing resources to provide short-term relief to a structural general fund deficit we did make some targeted reductions to ow for some program expansion and used non-general fre resources to continue Investments across the city um a brief look here at what we're looking at for 2024 revenues to provide a little bit of context of what uh how we are building the budget um this chart here shows sales tax revenues throughout the year um for a 4-year period 21 is in green 22 is in blue 23 is yellow and the larg red line is 2024 I want to draw your attention to how between 21 and 22 there's a nice jump between those lines that's what we traditionally see is a nice increase on a period over period and annualized basis when we got into 2023 we see growth starting to slow down getting a little mixed up and now in 2024 we've seen uh five of our nine tax periods have been less than the comparable period in 2023 um this Gap uh for September the latest data we got is is sizable but I will say you can see that September is typically usually flat in the context of August so there was probably some outlier here in 2023 but all the same uh we are likely to meet our Revenue targets by $2 to3 million for 2024 um and seeing relatively flat and

negative Revenue growth across the board this is our sales tax again just as a percent change in sales tax periods year-over-year so this is all the way back to 2007 and this is just to highlight above that green line that's positive growth period over period so one August to the next Positive Growth um if it's below the line it's negative growth so we see that back in 2008 obviously that financial crisis produced negative uh sales tax for for several periods a year uh covid-19 we saw this sort of Crazy Drop and then Spike well here we are in 2024 and we're seeing those periods below the line of uh sales tax constriction over um multiple periods you see we just haven't seen it in a sustained level like that since 2008 now it's not as deep it's not as dramatic um but it it does suggest that we're looking at some sort of slowdown now um from our Revenue projections we don't project uh recessions because we're not economists and we know that even economists don't do a very good job of projecting recessions but we do want to just be aware that we are seeing reduced revenues that we're going to miss Targets this year and that has impacted our forecasting for next year so uh one of the things that we did to change um to address the gaps that we are uh are seeing from both starting out with the structural deficit plus the increases in cost of living adjustments operational expenses and then those Revenue slowdowns as we're increasing the sales tax allocation to the general fund to

68% so our general our sales tax comes in a big stream and we give a portion to the street fund and a portion of the general fund we're increasing that general fund uh to 68% and reducing the sales tax allocation by to Street fund by 5% we are also uh temporarily diverting property taxes from our fully funded pre-f uh firefighter pension to general fund to support increased Public Safety costs now those pension those are firefighters who were um have been with the city were city employees none of them are active anymore prior to 1977 we have some obligations towards them that pension is uh funded at 136% but our last Actuarial report uh state law allows us to use those for any governmental purpose if the pension is fully funded and so we are proposing to temporarily divert those um to the general fund to cover some of those Public Safety costs we're also using the interest from the city's cash pool and Investments to support the general fund uh in the past we have divvied out investment interest to each individual fund based on its uh cash pool balance um we are leaving it with utilities will retain their interests some endowment funds a couple other funds will retain their interests um but most other interests will be swept into the general fund um and then we are proposing to increase our Solid Waste utility tax as the mayor mentioned from um 11 a half to 17 and a quarter percent to uh can be able to fund our Waterfront remediation and not have to dip into the general fund

to support those operations we are uh because we are found some revenues and we made some reductions across the board we're able to make some Target investments in public safety and diversion as the mayor mentioned we're adding two police officers to support the return of our specialty units adding a prosecutor uh for the new Therapeutic Community Court that is partially Grant funded we're contributing a million dollars of our opioid settlement dollars uh to support the County's 23-hour crisis Relief Center and adding a fire inspector to increase our ability to proactively inspect and reduce permitting timelines we're also investing in internal services to support staff and delivery of City programs that replacing that obsolete enterprise-wide Human Resources technology that's a big project uh that'll be a multi-year project uh we're adding capacity in the league Department by moving public records disclosure from the legal department to the city clerk and adding a utility funded civil attorney adding security staff and to support employees in p and Public Safety at City Hall and the library and continue investment in facilities maintenance Fleet and information technology we're also retaining or expanding funding for many existing programs expend including our support for downtown business district and that includes bringing back that bike police patrol we're elevating the city's Equity efforts by creating a new strategic initiatives manager in the mayor's office focused on

Equity inclusion we're investing heavily in affordable housing community development and Al alternative responses through those uh non-general fund sources but we did make targeted cuts to budgets where impacts uh to staff and services are minimal overall the HR picture looks like this one of the reductions we looked at was freezing FTE so the FTE count remains in the budget but those positions are unfunded for the budget year so as you can see that's across most departments and comes to 10.15 FTE we also reduced um some FTE one is moving the HR specialist from uh AAR into the mayor's office for that Equity work and we're also tapering off the park ambassador program eliminating positions as staff leave um and I'm not going to go into this table in great detail we can uh go through the changes Department dep by Department in the budget work sessions to come so overall uh the general fund budget impact um Citywide uh the budgeted expenditures are 543 million all told in the general fund itself we see expenditures of 121.5 million with a deficit uh of $ 1.5 million but it's worth noting that if we include one-time revenues and onetime expenditures that deficit is actually a $6 million ongoing deficit force can I interrupt you just for a second um the general fund over there does that include the internal transfers the 533 and 333 codes from one Department to another yeah that is uh in the budgeted expenses of it would be under other services and charges there so that's how we

pay for um how we fund Fleet facilities all those internal services are paid through the Departments that use them and if you remove the services we pay to ourselves what is the overall expenditures for the general fund um more or less yeah I can't say off the top of my head but a vast majority of that other services and charges is probably that um that's that uh sort of second to bottom lineur what's that around 90 million potentially okay that makes sense I was thinking we around 80 million but I guess I'm out of date um so yeah $6 million ongoing deficit after we account for those uh onetime and temporally diverted revenues it looks like this existing resources being the big circle and then we have the diverted revenues which is um the uh sales tax and the interest revenues and then the one-time and temporary revenues which includes some transfers in from other funds repaying the general fund for various things which we will get into in one of the work sessions and um and the use of that those pension dollars so overall our fiveyear general fund Outlook looks like this uh Council will be familiar with this chart but I'll explain it because it's complicated for uh folks that are watching potentially uh the big blue area are revenues the line is expenditures and the bars are our reserves and this is the general fund the expenses and the revenues use the uh axis on the left side the blue axis and the reserves use the axis on the right side the green AIS for the revenues and

expenses the the dark blue and the yellow are the past and the light blue and the orange are the future um as you can see here we've been budgeting and spending quite a bit more than we've been bringing in now a good chunk of that is arpa uh those onetime federal dollars um but we've we there is other things in there as well that have led us to this sort of unsustainable spot as you can see for 2025 we've brought our expenses down a bit but we've also found these extra revenues um to kind of Meet the moment but as we look towards 2026 we'll see some of those revenues drop off um we'll also see our reserves here so the this lighter green is our un emergency reserve the red is the economic reserve the dark green is the unrestricted reserve and then this hashed area is what the ending emergency Reserve should be if it was fully funded so we can see we've got the funds to make it through 2025 with a little bit of economic Reserve left but as we get into 2026 just with this current levels of service and the current levels of revenues as projected out we will be potentially dipping into the emergency Reserve so we need to find a solution for our revenue and expense um Gap going forward and I'd just like to take a moment to expand on that and and really that is that kind of existential crisis that we find ourselves in and what are the right levels of service that match our Revenue sources and if Council doesn't agree with some of the proposed um Revenue strategies to add to the P

that for outlined in the previous slide then we will be having those level of service conversations right away continued reductions will be necessary and to put a finer point on what it means for the city if we dip below our mergency reserves which we all just adopted in our new Financial policies that impacts the city's overall credit rating potentially it increases our cost to borrow and make in strategic Investments and it has considerable impact so while it appears just as a hash mark it really is a matter of significant import before the city so that we do not arrive and find ourselves in that situation absolutely uh so that's looking out five years as we get to 2029 you see we would have worked our our way through the emergency roof and and be totally out of money so uh we want to work to fix this structural deficit that we have so going forward we have budget work sessions planned uh for every Monday in October and the first Monday in November there is going to be a revenue forecast public hearing on October 2st and two budget public hearings one on October 7th and one on November 4th we hope to introduce the budget ordinance at the second meeting in November and have it passed in the first meeting in December if we can uh I will say that these work session dates the Department's listed somewhat subject to change depending on what we get through and if uh other things change but that's our tenative plan for now so with that I'm happy to answer any questions that you

might have question so I have a couple things I'd like to ask about uh first I want to kind of emphasize part of of the message I hope the public will understand uh we are facing dire uh economic pressures in the general fund but you will continue to see the city spend millions of dollars on other kinds of projects because they're funded out of other funds we will buy Parklands we will protect the Watershed we will invest in housing because they're coming from different sources of funds and the Utility Systems are fine are your the wastewater treatment plant is not under any threat it's on a separate Financial footing no risk there um so I was interested and surprised to see the shift in the um the sales tax being shifted going less to transportation in the street fund and more to the general fund the reason why I'm surprised is looking around this room I think I'm maybe the only person here that used to be more than 50% went to the street fund then it went down to like 42 or some other number now it's going lower and lower and lower Forest do you have any do you recall or have you been told about that long-term shift in the sales tax allocation well I I am aware that there has you know that it used to be more and that over time we have shifted um one of the other well few things on that uh first we've worked with the public works department to try and identify what these impacts are and we have a plan to mitigate it with our uh second quarter reate dollars so um the city

gets two4 forms of Reit uh the first is much more flexible uh and we tend to use those for City facilities projects uh the second is less flexible and when we looked and but can be used for transportation utilities those types of things and when we looked at what street fund dollars were being used for a fair amount or some was being roughly equivalent to what we're we're taking out uh were was being used for ongoing projects um that could be used uh Street excuse me re to could be used for those projects so we believe we can shift these dollars over and then we can um backfill them with re $2 I will also say there was also 3% of sales tax dollars that were going to our radio fund um we also put those in the general fund but we switched that over to an allocation model much as what you were talking about with Fleet and Facilities where departments are charged based on the number of radios they use and that effectively is a a a wash so that General the sales tax comes into the general fund now but it just gets paid out to the radio fund via an allocation which more accurately shows the cost of operating for the Departments I just close that one item so what you're saying is uh we are now allocating more of the sales tax to the general fund draw and not contributing to the street fund however the street fund is being backfilled from the Reed fund and my recollection of the Reed fund is that it was running a balance over $12 million or something like that long term is this is

this one of those not sustainable uh fixes or is this a sustainable strategy we think this is a one of the Fairly sustainable strategies um the the Reit dollars although they are based on the sale of homes there is generally a floor of what that is and and we think we can continue to contribute a reasonable amount of those re to2 Street Transportation projects um there is about it's not 12 anymore but there's over $8 million available in the second fund I would just to expand upon that answer in part this strategy is also made possible or we have more confidence in the strategy because of the city's historic success in receiving significant contributions at the state and federal level to support critical expensive infrastructure if that landscape at a future time were to change and those monies would not be available or the city's ability to procure some of those significant Investments um is not there then we would potentially have to go back but we have done a good job to date and we believe um that we'll continue to be successful in receiving state and federal monies for some of our critical infrastructure and expensive projects so mayor M Anderson um I don't expect this information now but when the budget comes forward just to make sure it's there so I don't um ask you a question and then it's not prepared um the budget increase uh the solid weights tax from the 11.5 to 17.25 if you'll bring the data like how much revenue is that going to be and what will be the average

increased cost to household um that'll be important information for me to consider when the time comes yeah we'll pull that together Michael question Lisa so um the lake wcom Watershed fund is also a fund with a rather healthy balance I sent an email about that asking about that um it seems to be growing I mean we're we're we are using the monies well not only to buy property to in development which would degrade the lake but using those funds also for capital projects to treat the water that's entering the lake to reduce the ongoing harm nonetheless that seems to be growing long term is that because we haven't planned out tically in the capital expenditures but they're there and they're real or are we really actually growing a fund we don't need to grow we think it's a good discussion to have uh on our budget work session for Public Works to dive into that a bit more we are um based on your email we're going to have some internal conversations and we think that's a a very good question and a conversation we need to have also with all the property that we have purchased what the long-term costs of operational and maintenance for those and if we have thought out those appropriately and how that might reflect on what that fee needs to be questions go ahead dis a teeny one uh utility funded civil attorney is that a new position and which utilities uh it'll be joint funded by water sewer and storm and that is a new position but this is the work that that attorney would be doing

is work that's currently distributed to other attorneys that now would be focused and paid for and creating bandwidth and legal that's the intent yes and this is one of those sustainable budget moves yes thank you any other questions seeing none thank you for the present okay our next item is an ordinance of the city of Bingham relating to landlord tenant relations adopting a new chapter in title six of the Bellingham Municipal Code prohibiting landlords from charging tenants unfair or excessive fees in residential rental agreements and leases I'm going to ask council member cotton you want to read the summary statement since you're the one that has brought this forward and I can hand you my packet if you want to got sure council president um great so the um agenda bill um number is 24253 an ordinance did you already you read this danan subject okay summary statement is an increasing concern in our community and many others is a proliferation of various fees associated with residential rental unit applications lot rental rates leases Andor purchase agreements examples of such fees also referred to as junk fees including moving fees rental application fees pet fees and various administrative fees um some exceed the actual cost of a given service and are are not linked to an expense are not are misleading or not disclosed in advance federal state and local governments are tackling actions to support consumer interest regarding junk fees the proposed ordinance seeks to address

junk fees in Bellingham including defining fees that qualifies as un for excessive establishing fines and other civil penalties and prohibiting retaliation against those attempting to exercise the rights and thanks James for writing that summary um uh and if it's okay to just say a couple words to start um I just really want to first of all thank the members of the public who have um taken time over the last uh many months to provide feedback um we've received a lot of emails today even and I encourage the public to keep those coming um this process really emerged um out of conversations with tenants um I've only uh rented from uh smaller uh landlords in our community and so most of these fees um were were um were not ones that I personally experienced and um over the last year really investigating how this issue is um showing up in our community it's clear that there is a widespread need and also after surveying other jurisdictions actions we have some pretty um uh Broad and exciting opportunities to make a concrete difference in the lives of people who are struggling with housing cost burden um and uh I also just want to say huge thank you from the outset to director lion um James BB and our policy analyst Iris not for a lot of um excellent work to um get this Draft before you today so thank you all thank you um so I'm Iris not the legislative policy analyst and I'm going to be going over a brief presentation that kind of talks about the what and the why of uh junk fees and

then I will be passing it off to director lion and James herb um to talk about the actual ordinances so I'm going to go over the background um a little bit of what unfair and excessive fees are what types of rental junk fees are um there are and then what uh the impact is to Bellingham renters and a little bit about the demographics of Bellingham renters um and then briefly introduce the ordinances so as council member cotton said he's worked with the public to um find ways to address junk fees in rental housing and manufactured and mobile home parks um and then on August 12th of this year he asked and the council asked for research and legislation come to come forward to prohibit junk fees so first what are junk fees and um I guess what are unfair and excessive fees so there unfair and excessive fees are most commonly called Junk fees um they're you know I'll refer to them as junk fees I'll also say unfair and excessive fees throughout but they are excessive so they can be beyond the cost of an actual good or service um they could be unnecessary and a fee that is not actually linked to a cost they can be deceptive or misleading so they can imply that they're for something but they may or may not actually be for that service uh and they're often hidden so they're not very transparent and um you may or may not see them or know about them until you have finished uh um going through the process of making a purchase or signing a lease um so in terms of rentals these include

things that are uh um also you know previously considered part of rent and are now uh separate charge on top of rent for something that used to be provided they can also be a junk fee so if you have ever had um you've ever bought a concert ticket or you've ever tried to book an airline ticket or an Airbnb and you get through that process and the cost is completely different from what you were originally shopping for um those are related to this those those you've experienced junk fees so they're not disclosed UPF front they're hidden uh sometimes the fees are un unlined to anything in reality you know a shipping and handling fee for an online ticket that is sent to you by email could cost you $25 um that's not an actual expense that's linked to shipping and handling anymore so those are considered junk fees um others include things like if you've ever had cell phone service uh there were fees that were being misled um so people were thinking they were taxes from the government or fees that were government imposed they were written and implied that way but they were actually fees from the Service carrier so those are also junk fees um they are uh all over the place they are rampant in the the um consumer Industries so the White House has economic um Council of economic advisers has estimated that the top 10 junk fees uh that consumers face in America cost 90 billion annually um and then apartment application fees cost consumers $276 million um in 2023 so they're pervasive in a

lot of different Industries uh the federal government the state government and local governments have started to crack down on a variety of these uh the FTC the FCC HUD um and the White House have all gone after them as well as the National Consumer Law Center has published a lot of materials about um effective ways to combat junk fees so in rentals uh there there are two types of kind of junk fees one-time fees or once per incident kind of fees so these are things that happen once during a lease or once per occurrence they can happen more than once throughout a lease but typically they're not on a schedule so these are things like administrative fees at the beginning of a lease um move out fees January fees are one that uh the National Consumer Law Center has highlighted there're sort of fees that happen at the beginning of the year they're not necessarily linked to anything and they can happen mid lease uh and they're kind of tacked on at the beginning of the year as just an additional cost given that it's a new year new fee um late excessive late fees movein fees non-refundable pet fees these are all types of one-time fees that you experience late fees are per incidents right so they can be one time and you may not experience them um and you may experience them multiple times throughout your lease but they're based on An Occurrence so the other type of fee is a recurring fee and these are typically on a regular schedule it could be annually it could be every 6 months but

most of the time they're monthly these are things like convenience fees for paying your rent um Pest Control fees which are often not actually linked to an actual Pest Control um program or cost valet trash fees which are what they sound like there's someone Ving your garbage so you put it outside your door and someone else comes and picks it up and brings it to the dumpster or to the trash shoot down the hall um often times these are mandatory and they're not optional so you may not want to have valet trash um but it is required and it is not something you can opt out of so um these are fees that are mandatory often they are not something you can opt out of they are on top of your base rent um other fees like this include inunit Appliance fees so this is kind of one of the extreme cases where you're charged a separate fee to use the um equipment in the department so this is not the same as like going down the hall and using the communal laundry machine and doing a coin Opera machine this would be a fee for something like you have a washer and a dryer in your unit and you're paid a separate cost on top of your rent to use those washer and dryer uh maintenance fees can be a junk fee um they are not always linked to an actual maintenance cost so an example of this would be you pay a maintenance fee for your lawn but then you also are expected to mow the lawn yourself as the tenant so they can be not linked to a fee or they can be um misleading about what that is or they could

be you know charging you for something that is actually expected to be required already um another type of fee is a mail sorting fee so you know an apartment complex gets the mail and then they charge you a fee to actually sort it and put it into the right mailboxes uh tenant benefit package fees are kind of a a catch-all they are vague and they can include a variety of things but they're often considered benefits to the the tenant but they're also not optional so they're usually mandatory fees and the Tenant mayor may not want to um Prov have these services so examples include things like reporting your rent payments to a credit bureau or having access to emergency maintenance services um access to your online portal to pay your rent um things that maybe previously were included uh so we did have an anecdote of one person who said you know my first year on my lease uh my T there was no tenant benefit package I paid my rent online using the online portal my second year they had a $45 fee for me to access the online portal for also for late fee forgiveness and for um there was one other thing I think the credit bureau thing was also included in that and so they couldn't opt out of it but they also had not paid it the previous year for the things that they had already been using so this is a little bit about uh Bel Bellingham renters and the demographics so more than half of households in Bellingham are renters um over half of renter households are cost burden so they pay 30%

or more of their household income towards housing costs this includes utilities um and so this is a significant number more than half of the renters are cost burdened and having uh junk fees tacked onto rent is a challenge for people who are already strapped for the ability to pay their bills and have their housing um manufactured and mobile home parks are 2% of the total housing stock but there are 16% of affordable housing in the city this is notable because um this is a different type you know manufactured and mobile home park tenants often own their prop their house but they rent the lot so they have many they experience many of the similar um junk fees that renters do but they also have additional unique fees that they have experienced and they're particularly vulnerable because one it is you know considered an affordable housing location for many but they do not have the ability to very easily um relocate their house if they are ending up facing prohibitive junk fees they cannot easily relocate their mobile home to another Park um so here are some of the impacts to Bellingham renters so I did do a scan of online apartments.com uh apartment listings in the city so I found 44 apartment complexes and I found that I chose I chose apartments.com because actually the White House announced a couple years ago that they were going to start posting fees as part of their transparency effort to have more um consumer transparency and and the ability to shop and compare for consumers

so the the fees on the left are the local fees that I found in advertisements from apartments.com um and I what I found was out of the 44 apartment complexes most of them had these fees some variation of them um administrative fees R ranged from $100 to $300 per um per lease or per ass signing application fees range from $33 to $65 per person including for co-signers uh non-refundable pet fees ranged from $40 to $500 and so these are the fees that you pay upfront at the usually at the beginning of a lease or when you acquire your pet um and they are not refundable so you cannot get these back um they are often paired with pet rent which can be between 25 and as high as $100 per month per pet so you're looking at you know potentially 300 to $1,200 a a year in extra fees and cost to have a pet in your house uh in addition to a non-refundable pet fee and that's often paired with a um deposit for a pet as well so deposits ranged from as low as I think $40 to as high as $1,000 for a pet deposit which is separate from the regular deposit that people put when they uh rent their unit and then again valet trash I found one listing that did disclose valet trash um on their on their listing so we also had anecdotes from locals um um a number of people have come to the public comment and they've written in and emailed and communicated about fees that they've experienced so I've I've got a report in the uh packet that has more of this kind of information but this is just some of the

Snippets I wanted to keep this brief um but manufactured homeowners spoke about 50 $50 a day late fees um so if they had three days they were late on their rent they're actually behind $150 in addition to catching up on their rent um they're paying you know $150 for 3 days late uh $500 pet fees to have a pet in the home that they actually own and $65 Park violation fees um and parking fees for guests so uh you don't you can't charge for up to two weeks I think for a guest in a mobile home park but you the landlords are then saying hey we'll charge for their parking of their vehicle um and then of course the extreme case of the $50 a month for an inunit washer and dryer um multiple renters talked about how they were surprised by their fees uh they recharged for services that weren't provided examples included the maintenance for lawn care but actually being responsible for mowing the lawn themselves um and then they were charged many people reported about charging non-optional benefit package fees that they didn't want and couldn't opt out of so that's kind of the framework of what they are and why they're important um this is actually my last slide but I wanted to include a little bit of information about you know the state federal and local um multiple as I said the FTC the FCC um the White House have all gone after junk fees and a variety of ranges uh states have also started to act Colorado prohibited um or limited their pet rent and cap their pet fees um local government

local municipalities in Washington have also so Auburn Aberdine Seattle have all imposed uh prohibitions on junk fees and um so this is this is something that is happening in all levels of the government where they are going after um junk fees and realizing that they're a prohibitive and unnecessary and unfair cost so the way to address them is to prohibit the unfair fees cap and limit excessive fees and require disclosure and transparency which allows people to properly shop around make a sound decision and choose a place that would be suitable for them and not end up surprised mid leas that they have you know some sort of excessive fee that they weren't aware of and that puts them further behind so the ultimate goal is clear and fair and transparent rent agreements and rent advertisements so that's what these ordinances are attempting to address and I'm going to hand it over to James herb thank you Aris good afternoon everyone um so I just have a few comments and then I'd be happy to answer any questions that Council might have um so as you've already heard council member cotton worked on this ordinance uh for a matter of many months with some stakeholders in the community and delivered that ordinance to staff for a review um we conducted our review and provided our feedback uh both um to the ordinance itself and in a meeting we had last week um this is uh as you heard from Iris an emerging or Cutting Edge area of the law um so there's not a whole lot of authority one way

or the other particularly in the state of Washington uh with respect to this type of an ordinance or the ability of a local jurisdiction to prohibit the types of fees that would be prohibited under these ordinances uh so I just wanted to make sure that that was clear to everybody on the council um there is some case law from other jurisdictions that could be persuasive um but this is somewhat untested here in the state of Washington um if Council wants to discuss any specifics related to potential litigation if it adopts one or either or both of these ordinances then I would recommend that we schedule an executive session to have that discussion at a later date um and this afternoon we are here seeking to Direction um about how Council would like to proceed uh on these ordinances um I think that's all I've got unless you have questions for me uh Blake may also have some additional comments to share thank you and good afternoon um my role I think in this a little bit is uh thinking through the Dynamics of how we might seek to implement and or enforce this particular ordinance should it become effective and so happy to answer questions uh as James and Iris had alluded there is some emerging um elements to this piece and so there's uh some significant assumptions that kind of go into that effort happy to elaborate on those if you would like me to do so but uh at this point I'll just uh leave that as my introductory comments and then answer any questions you might have thank you

thanks to the staff uh committee SM Williams yeah um Blake if we were to pass this ordinance right now or soon um what would be the effect on the current workload in your department how would you set up the Staffing to enforce this well let me start by saying that um working off of you saw the mayor's budget proposal uh and if you recall the chart that Forest presented there are no new FTE being proposed within the existing uh request for the planning department so we will be looking at what is based on existing availability uh we have one code enforcement officer within the department right now uh that's working on a variety of other tasks associated with it the other piece that I'll mention is that um through the council's direction and guidance we were able to secure a couple positions in the 24 budget which we are now in the process of filling um that one of which includes the rental uh protection specialist that position was originally thought to be kind of the program lead for the rental registration and safety inspection but um given this potential thought process we actually wrote the job description with enough flexibility to accommodate this type of work so that wouldn't be the entirety of that person so effectively what you're talking about is a portion of two existing positions working on on some of this effort so um there there is some capacity I will say it's a very limited amount of capacity and then that begs the question of what that looks like uh and one of

the conversations that we've had uh with council member Cott and others working on this is given the number of community members that are in a rental uh situation I think 54% is where we're currently ly and the amount of those that are cost burden there's likely to be a number of folks that are going to come in and request uh us to evaluate this and that's the part where the speculation comes in I don't have a solid handle on how many people and uh and how urgent that uh demand would be on that staff so it's a little hard to uh forecast in its entirety uh but we know that if that is coming in and is significant we're going to have to think through kind of a rule making process uh on how we treat those that come in uh because we don't want to be arbitrary and capricious in terms of how we're addressing those so is it coming in on a first case first you know first coming in first served um or do we have some way of evaluating that and we just haven't had the time to build that into the program yet committee further questions council member requist well can I just start with a kind of a bidding question how much time do we have allotted for this today this seem I a lot I'd like to talk about I'm sure there's a lot more to talk about so just let me know how much time we can spend on it today and then how we can move this further if it's if if we move on more than a second day we have a half an hour allocated for this particular agenda item and another 15 minutes for the

manufactured uh home agenda item which has the same slide deck as the first one so I think that we can maybe move through that fairly um expeditiously um my recommendation would be to uh have this be more of a discovery phase today so we can talk about we get the presentation we understand what the the concepts are and we've had all had have had an opportunity to read the ordinance to understand what the request uh is being made um and then to come back on the 7th of October uh perhaps for a first and second and then the last meeting on October for a third and final if if if a council does want to move this forward I think there's um council member loest you had sent this um last night regarding some requests that you had had which uh that needs to be discussed I don't know if that if today is the right venue um but certainly on the 7th we we could come back and revisit this go ahead follow well so given that I think I will largely dispense or delay this and many of my other comments and stay at a higher conceptual level Miss not could you go back to your I think next to last slide that one was the three thing that one right there so um jce I appreciate you you you Tred to figure out how to organize these it came the ordinance came across a little bit confusing to me and it took me a while to figure out what was going on until I saw kind of an organizational structure that I think would be useful to frame our discussion and this is the organizational structure interleaved in

there you did in kind of chronical chronological order that makes sense but but conceptually this is sort of what i' like to talk about going to the bottom there requiring disclosure and transparency I've heard very little objection to that idea across the board and I'd like I think like to look at those transparency elements and I think there is a transparency element here that I suggested is got a problem in it but I think it's an easy fix um the uh prohibiting unfair fees um that's a different discussion like a fee that is outright unfair and should not be charged and I think some things which are prohibited like they're outright unfair maybe should be moved down into the other category an excessive fee um and so i' kind of like to separate those conceptually these are fees which you just shouldn't be able to charge for example any undisclosed fee you shouldn't be able to charge an undisclosed fee is an unfair fee right um I think there's a lot of discussion going to be going into the excessive fee and what it really means when a what it means when a tenant is charged by fee rather than by rent I think there there's a lot some fees I think are just rare and ridiculous and I'm surp they're charged but why not ban them who should object to them because they're rare and ridiculous but other fees aren't rare and ridiculous and then the question is how does the landlord adequately cover their costs or the property manager right well you can't make us give do this service for

free how do we make our money back my answer is the rent I mean I think there's a conceptual shift here when I was renting I wasn't nickel and dimed I paid rent and it covered a lot and so I think a lot of the issue with regard to excessive fees yeah you could I guess you can go ahead and charge cost recovery but isn't that what rent is for also isn't rent also cost recovery isn't rent where you factor in all your overhead costs and you figure out what your reasonable profit it and then you see if the market will bear that because you advertise your price transparently so I think I want to organize you know all the transparency Elements which I think we can move forward quickly on the unfair ones what is outright unfair and then I think the trickier conversation has to do with capping fees because then it gets into the whole philosophical question is should this be part of rent should this be a fee maybe we don't have the right to say what it is but we do have the right to demand transparency or require transparency because it lack of transparency is unfair in its own way so I guess I'd like to um organize them like that I was trying to figure out a way of doing it like you know one time recurring unfair versus excessive and then inside that mandatory versus optional right for the optional ones if someone can opt out and if that opt out is transparent and obvious or it has to be an optin well then that kind of goes to creating um getting rid of the issue of excessiveness or

unfairness because if you tell me about it and I can say no then the problem goes away or if you tell me about it and I say yes then I've accepted it and that's fair so I think I'd like to organize the fees differently in conceptual categories I'm happy to try to do that um but I do think they're very different discussions and in some of the feedback I've seen people kind of talking cross purposes where they're talking about unfairness what they're really talking about is excessiveness and they're talking about unfairness they're really talking about transparency so if we can separate them conceptually maybe we could it won't be as confusing L if I might I wanted to just put some context because you're talking about the cost recovery piece and to elaborate on um and I don't want to make this all about Staffing Resources but I do want to give you kind of an order of magnitude when we start talking about those so if you're looking at I mentioned earlier kind of the code enforcement side and then the program staff uh both of those are um salary grade three and four respectively in our uh Teamsters Union and so if you think about that just in terms of the staff cost that's about 80 to $85,000 of annual salary per person uh for that when you think about our fully loaded cost that gets you a little closer to about 180,000 190,000 annually when you think about overhead and all the things that go into that so when you're talking about how many staff you need to implement something

like this you're talking in the range of about $200,000 annually per person so just to kind of give you an order of magnitude of what we're looking at Anderson and then Williams thank you um obviously we're not going to word Smith and fix it all today I assume at some point this will be motion to move to committee but I want to make sure that um when staff comes back there's some direction or areas that I need further clarification perhaps others too so um when we come back to this the um City enforcement I'm definitely going to need more information on that I wasn't entirely clear with um and this is where the word smithing will have to maybe be approved well first I should just State I I do support working on this I I think it's needed um rent in Bellingham is way too high and the thought that you have to pay a fee to mow your own lawn is absolutely ridiculous and there are costs that I mean in the day and I've was a renter for a long time administrative fees all of that that's the landlord and Company took care of the Staffing cost to do the work and that was incorporated in rent and um we kind of need to get back to that system to make sure it's transparent and that we're not just um you know a Thousand Cuts killing our rent renters here but I'm going to city enforcement where it states the director is authorized to enforce this chapter and it's unlawful to violate or fail to comply with any provision of this chapter My Clarity is does that mean it's unlawful to the

director are they in trouble if they don't assign staff to do the work so the clarification of that sentence isn't clear to me is it unlawful for the uh the organization or the landlord or is it unlaw to City staff and then that goes into the next sentence the director May investigate possible violations of this chapter but then the next one responsibility for violation subject to enforcement under this chapter is a joint um is joint and several so that to me indicates that um it is not optional so we would need to have Staffing to do enforcement whereas the citizen initiatives that made it um as at least it was interpreted that it was optional so I'd like a little more clarification there and then I also there's little things um for consistency under civil civil action remedy between the two manufacturer and the rental um under that um under number two c it has not more than 3,000 for any provision prohibited in this chapter in a new rental agreement and then if you go to the manufacturer same information almost verbatim on a through D except for C under the manufacturers no more than 10,000 so little things like that for detail um I would want staff to come back and tell me Well the reason why 10,000 was selected is because of a b c and d and that why that's the penalty is much higher or was it just a clerical oversight one was changed and the other wasn't because I think we should be consistent when it comes to fines and penalties unless there's a compelling reason not and

so I guess I would ask staff later not now but you know maybe be prepared to address something like that and as I find more of them I will um send that out I have a few more things but I also feel um for me the the some of the um the Caps are for how much could be charged I feel is too low and then some of the fines might be a little too high what I one of the Caps is the $10 late fee I don't want it to be necessarily compounded daily I don't want it to be $75 I think that's too high obviously people are late either one there's an an issue with their online payment I mean how many times have the internet gone down you could get that out um but $10 can be we always talk about with um fines you know the cost of doing business so when we start charging for infractions um and violations for health and safety one of the things that I've pushed is I don't want it so low that it's the cost of doing business um that they'd rather pay a small fee so I think In fairness to landlords I know several that that payment is how they pay the mortgage and if it's 2 weeks late um they're going to struggle you know the Mom and Pop level they don't have the Deep bank so I don't want $10 to be the cost of doing business because I decide not to make the payment now because it's such it's $10 and that's all I'm going to be charged so I'll be a month late um so I think we need to find a fair happy middle make sure the renters aren't being gouged but it's also not so low that um it's just an easy

decision to run really late and impact those M pops so I'll stop but I assume again this will go to committee and then we can fine-tune some of this it's Williams and stone then hman uh James has is go ahead sorry oh thank you I just want to respond ever so briefly to council member Anderson so um with respect to the city enforcement it certainly is is is there reading of it that it's unlawful for a landlord to violate any provision of the ordinance it's not applicable to staff um with respect to the differences between the two ordinances and really the the text of the ordinances the amounts of the fees the amounts of the Caps all that stuff this was not a staff generated uh ordinance neither one these were brought forward by council member cotton based on his work with community members so when it comes to any of those questions um we won't have any additional information to share about how different numbers were arrived at because we did not draft the ordinance um just a comment just because I do a lot of writing in my other professional job I always good to add a period and a capital and create two different sentences and then put the subject in the one because I really read that thinking I don't want Blake to be charged with something um so it's the word smithing and I I read that and I'm like I know that can't be the intent but you never know thank you uh you know um I want to thank council member cotton for delving into this issue and taking this issue on um because it

does seem to be a growing concern I'm a big advocate of um something that happens somewhere else and and we say we have to deal with it um I'm a big advocate of dealing with things based on the problems that we're seeing not the problems that Seattle is seeing or New York or Memphis do they have problems in Memphis yeah only on the music side um but um and based on the public comment session that we've had um last week or at at our last meeting and I know you have met with people is it possible for us to maybe put together a more um a more um uh to make an effort to get some solid data that reflects on both sides of this issue and what would that look like if we did go down that path I think there's certainly an opportunity to uh expand in terms of like a a feedback loop or a working group or something along those lines uh I certainly would want to benefit from understanding the totality of what council member Cotton's already done so we're not repeating efforts and being duplicative in that regard um but the opportunity then would be to work with either Iris or dve D it in the Council Office uh in terms of kind of pulling together some type of community engagement with I think a particular note of trying to see what that uh representative sample size is on the a range of the different issues in other words if there's a number of property management companies that have already been consulted again we don't necessarily need to be duplicative there but if we were trying to get

maybe some of the smaller scale uh scale landlords or some other folks in there we could certainly try to put together um an engagement process that would lay that out in Greater Clarity mer Stone so I have a number of things but I'll mention a couple sort of big picture things so looking at the ordinances themselves yeah just wanting um consistency in the code that things you know look the same so between the two you know noting in the in the next item that we'll discuss you know there wasn't a penalty section noted but verbatim I think the penalties were listed same as they are here so just again I struggled with just making my way through the um the document in some of those areas and the other person reference gives me pause as well when you're talking about Clarity I guess council member Anderson and wanting to know when you're looking at enforcement um right how you're going to discern that so there's reference to a landlord or other person and then sometimes a tenant prospective tenant or other person I'm unclear about who that other person could be and how they would be identified um you know is that a design of one of them or I don't know so that gives me some pause the other thing is it focuses again on enforcement and wanting to make sure that we have consistency and that we also have yeah in place the means to enforce whatever we pass because in situations like this my concern is that if there's not a strong enforcement mechanism in place that can be supported

then the Bad actors will continue to be bad actors because they know there's no enforcement and the good actors who are trying to you know comply are then trying to navigate this and maybe you know burden furthermore trying to to navigate that piece and so I know that in other discussions we've had about um some parts of our you know code or things being passed the city has point to the option for civil action right as a means of enforcement and I go back and forth because I feel like well civil action being on the books as a means of enforcement is one thing but it's also very unrealistic in my opinion when you're talking about you know members of our community who are already you know cost burdened and time burdened and other things and just navigating their lives to then put that onus on them to seek civil action to enforce something that's on our books doesn't sit well with me but then adding this city enforcement piece I mean the hope is is that that has teeth but if we're going to do that that for one provision I would hope that when we're talking about tenants rights and protections right that we're looking that like that holistically um so those are um first of all I want to thank council member cotton for putting the work into this uh it it is not easy doing this work um and you took a huge chunk um of material to to try to tackle here um and I know that that you've talked to lots and lots of different people to get input um and really appreciate that um and clearly

we're still getting input today in our our email um to consider so uh certainly we need we need some more time to consider that input as well as um refine what we've got here um I think uh so I look forward to having further discussions but uh just to highlight some of the points of importance for me uh I think that that third bullet point there I think really captures a lot of what I've been hearing um as a need um more so than playing whack-a-mole with certain fees I think um the disclosure and the transparency piece is is one of the more critical and probably will be one of the more effective ways to tackle some of this um we heard that there were a lot of surprise fees a lot of fees that weren't disclosed up front um I'm assuming fees that weren't advertised um UPF front as well and and if there is some fairness and consistency in that that that there's a requirement that those fees are disclosed uh tenants will be able to compare apples to apples more easily if they're looking at listings they can see this one bedroom is 1,500 a month and this one might be might be 1,200 a month but it's got these additional fees attached um rather than being surprised that oh in the end they're not they're not the same after all um and I think that that is that's important for the tenants um as well as important for the the property owners the landlords um I think you know when I talk to private landlords about this ordinance a lot of them would say oh I don't charge those fees anyways

this doesn't really apply to me um that was a really common response uh I you know I I've rented for over 15 years in this community and um I think anybody that you talked to that's tenant will say it's tends to be a different experience if you're renting from a private landlord versus uh a property manager and so some some consistency some uh transparency uh some leveling of the playing field there too I think I think will address a lot of these issues um but yes in terms of of some of the other specifics here in the in the in this in the specific fees I think we we probably do need quite a bit more input um there have been some really important things that have been uncovered for example um from some uh housing service providers about unintended consequences that were important to be able to address and there could be more of those out there um that would be really important to be aware of so um yeah this is this is a fantastic start I think it's clearly very very much needed um and I I think with some some refining uh we can get there cotton then Anderson Well thank you again everybody for your thoughtful consideration and um there's just a couple responses I thought I'd share now um I agree with council member liest that setting that threshold for when a fee becomes excessive is maybe our most challenging job and um I think we often start with kind of that gut reaction of oh that seems a bit much right and and I think that's a great starting point but I also think we can

be more rigorous in that to also think you know what are the costs and benefits as a matter of public policy for allowing fees to be charged at certain rates right and um and I think like in particular we've heard a lot about late fees and there just is no evidence right that a higher late fee leads to lower rates of non-payment um and I think there's there's some interesting um evidence that would suggest um that uh late fees do don't have that effect um so um with with uh you know rental payment rates during the uh eviction moratorium in which late fees could could not be charged and we still saw uh you know equivalent rates of ontime payment um so I think um we you know a lot of these fees right this is this is money from people who don't have a lot of money to spare so I think when making those judgment calls we should air on the side of um people in our community who are struggling the most um so I look forward to those discussions um just also on enforcement I know enforcement's discretionary and that's difficult and we're in a resource limited environment I think that is um why it's really important that we have strong right of private action provisions and that we really follow this closely in terms of what resource resourcing from us might be necessary um um but um and I also think the one of the really you know I've had eight separate meetings with small and large groups of landlords and I think this ordinance I think we all maybe experienced that uh is uh is is not

the easiest to get your head wrapped around on your first read and so I think those learning costs and bringing down those learning costs for landlords is really important I look forward to partnering with director lion to to help do that um I think the compliance cost of this ordinance are pretty pretty low in terms of the underlying regulation a lot of the you know the small landlords are the first people I call you know and I'm thinking about tenant protection you know don't aren't charging any of these fees already right so um and then um I just I know transparency is everybody's favorite thing I mean even talking to housing providers right um and transparency is great we also just I think need to be cognizant of the way that tenants don't have a structural Market power at this point to be able to shape the market through their preferences I mean administrative fees are all disclosed up front that has done nothing to stop their proliferation right it's a structural reason like we talked about of property management companies wanting to keep management fees low so separating out costs and passing it directly to tenants and setting New Market Norms that even self-managed landlords um may start to follow um so transparency is great and it's just going to work really well with our other two strategies too and then I guess in closing that you know we are in a housing crisis and I think moving Nimble on this is one way to to to act like it and um so I expect some really

concentrated effort to um make this as strong and as balanced as possible and return some balance to our housing market for um yeah people who are suffering from that imbalance so um I just really appreciate the time today and I know there'll be more discussion but um just thanks for thanks for the your partnership I'm honored to do this work with you or Anderson then Stone thank you I just want to say um thanks for bringing this forward and it's tough as council member Williams had mentioned you know sometimes we wait for other communities to do it first we often look towards Seattle because they have the really deep pockets and tons of staff that they can V something through and if it's challenged you know see it to the end until we know we've got the green light and so sometimes um it's okay for Bellingham to lead and be a little Brave to try to do what's best for the largest uh percent of our population in housing which is um the renters and um so Kudos because you didn't have a template I've brought it something forward but I had the luxury of it being vetted through courts already at another municipality um couple of us are working on something that we came to find out that the council County Council is working on so we're kind of now letting them we're the backseat drivers in a way like we're like oh maybe this someday we'll bring this to staff so they'll know what I'm talking about but um you know we're going to have the luxury of having something vetted through

another process to know um and have something cleaner to bring forward and tailor to us so that's an easier lift overall so this is a bigger lift so I appreciate the work um something that I would ask staff though um I've talked about this in the past and you know I'm hoping someday for my grandchildren's sake when they're renters that we have a an office of neighborhoods where we have that ability for enforcement we have a contact person when there's a violation and that they can refer to Services um we're not going to be there yet but I kind of see this as just another piece of that puzzle that is going to show eventually when the finances are there that there's a justification to pursue that um we have other we have bits and pieces so I guess what I'd want to know from Administration that is if we were to um enforce this have a contact person that you know someone in the community can say this is a violation but also maybe looking at a bigger lens because um you know the health and safety like we've got some staff coming in and they're going to be working on one part but if we add to this um and we're going to be doing enforcement what would that look like overall would it be in the planning department would it be under legal would it be a co-op between it would it be in the mayor's office and how much Staffing um taking the positions that we have to be able to enforce the rules that we're putting on our books for our tenants um just so that I kind of know where that Brass

Ring is for us to shoot towards eventually um yeah by all means feel free to jump in um I think the the initial response is that we're going to have to have some real open conversations about structurally how that's set up because there's and I'll be overly General but in my experience and in working in other organizations there's basically two different models you have the centralized model where you have a code enforcement department and they then are responsible for looking at the depth and breadth of all of the different relative code sections that are applicable um and then there's others where it's embedded within the department and it's a little decentralized and it each part has their own and so I think you have to start there and understand where structurally we want to be as an organization and then begin to build the model around that and begin to identify how you're going to Resource it how you're going to have funding it and how you're going to move forward in that construct but if if you don't make that initial determination then it then you can be kind of chasing the conversation as we have trees coming forward eventually too so it is a qu code enforcement parking and single plas perhaps conversation with the mayor's office the visioning of what that might look like um you know fivey year 10e plan would be really nice because this is going to fit into it um and I think to some degree that will be informed also by where we land on our comprehensive planning

process right now because the planning staff is going to have to think about what are the policy en code implications of what our vision is for how we grow over the next 20 years and that's considerable we know that we have a state mandate to add 18,000 units of housing uh within our community and so what are the Staffing Resources to support that mandate and the community's vision for how we're growing and so I think all of that is part of the landscape of what is the high and best use in service of Bellingham for how we grow right now and this is part of it right that's this is an important part of that conversation c m Stone yeah briefly just following of I I wonder whether you know the rental relocation um initiative that was passed and that cap on the 8% right increase within 12 months how much if we've seen any dramatic change um on the ground are these additional fees sort of a way to try and circumvent right a a rent increase by just tacking on these additional fees um but I know that was specifically stated that the you know the feedback received is sort of anecdotal and whether um there's any way to formalize right that data being collected to identify sort of the prevalence of um these things happening in our community and then having concern also with um property management companies when it might not be uniform even there right discrimination about who's renting a unit and how they're treated and what fees are charged and um so I think there are different right

layers to that but in thinking about transparency and how we move forward I guess in the packet under both items there's you know written public comment received by Council and it's not clear to me how that was identified right there's obviously a select um items included in the packet and so looking at you know is there support to have a public hearing and or to open a comment you know a comment period so that people can I mean we've been receiving a lot of of comment but I guess if there's a um set plan for how to collect that um that feedback and then make sure that that's being shared publicly and whether engage Bellingham right is there a separate um header to be able to um allow people to go online and and submit that comment also but how we move forward with that piece we're about a half hour over time I'll uh just add one more question here I just want to understand um how we are accounting for the public safety and educational assessment that is applied to all local and state infractions so anything that goes through the munique court um this would be it's 105% assessment so if you have a if the fine is $250 you have the PSA and the issued infraction is now $513 so just some clarity on it's not in the it's not in the ordinance I talked with council member cotton over a coffee about this and other um other items that are related to the ordinance and it's not in here I don't think it's statutorily um that we're obligated to put that in there but that if that um

infraction does go through our court system then that would be applied to that that goes to um largely goes to Indigent um defense um civil and criminal indig Indigent legal representation repres representation of parents in dependency and termination proceedings and contributions to district and M Municipal Court salaries for judges so just some clarity on what that looks like if this if that is indeed part of what we're talking about here for these uh fees and fines I'll do my best so so the PSA is a St State mandated fee on top of um the fine amount that is assessed as a civil infraction and so it it's not mentioned in this ordinance because it's dealt within state statute but um you're correct so if if the fine that's assessed by court at the end of a civil infraction process is $500 then the person actually is ordered to pay $150 and $550 is peeled off uh when the state receives the money and sent right or when the cityes the money and sent right to the state to be used for the purposes you identified so it's not mentioned anywhere in the ordinance but effectively what you can think about anytime you see a civil infraction amount that's coming before you for any ordinance what's ever if that amount is assessed it you really have to think the final amount to the The Violator in that circumstance is going to be twice whatever that figure is so if it's a $500 fine it's really ,50 fine if it's a $1,000 fine it's really a $2,100 fine if my math correct I'm not a mathematician

I'm a lawyer any other questions any any further questions committee okay council president may I speak to uh council member Stone question so a couple of us have been talking about the potential for additional public engagement around uh both ordinances and I think we'll take your feedback from the conversation today and uh talk further about putting up an engage Bingham page and some other um Community involvement activities I would just ask that you give us enough time to do that authentically and not ask us to have it finished and back to you by next week okay next week is our next council meeting so we can um I think we can come up with a way to make it so it um that staff has enough time to go through the evaluation components okay so then moving along here um our next ordinance is our next par pardon me our next agenda bill is a related ordinance to manufactured mobile home uh landlord tenant uh relations adopting a new chapter in title six of the Bellingham Municipal Code prohibiting landlords from charging unfair or excessive fees in manufactured mobile home lease agreements um the slide deck is the exact same one that's that's that we just went through the summary statement is the exact same summary statement so I don't think we need to spend a whole lot of time with those two items but are there items that you wanted to highlight uh cons member cotton yeah and um I think one just want to speak to what people are noticing as some differences between the two some of

that is just our legal review process we did a lot of work on the first one and there's just some some work that we'll need to bring over to the second one just to bring those in alignment um the other um some of the divergences um are just um as a result of the different kinds of fees that are common in manufactured home communities in Bellingham um and then the third I think is just uh the reality that manufactured homeowners rent their dirt but own their home and moving that home is not a feasible option and so I think in terms of enforcement we want to perhaps be even more protective of um manufactured home owners um yeah I'm happy to speak to it more but um our discussion the previous item is largely parallel here so okay committee any further questions go ahead counc randerson and this does come back to us I'd like to have a little more information on fine structure um because if um not more than 10 ,000 if 10,000 was charged does that keep it um at a lower level or does that move it up to you know felony or like like how much can a fine be without elevating it in court status I I know there's thresholds and I can't remember off the top of my head so I'd like to have a little bit more breakdown so that um that was a yeah 275 was where that fine was um was stated um because I know we can Elevate fines quite a bit per infraction so um which keeps it within a certain area because each one is separate so when we had a landlord that was charged like 40,000 fines they got it

dropped but it still kept it more in a municipal court because there's a whole bunch of fines that added up to that higher amount so I'd like to know where those thresholds are okay further questions I think we covered a lot of ground in the first discussion some of it's related to what we're what we're talking about here go ahead counc member so uh we just kind of provided Direction and question but we didn't make any type of motion requesting this to come back or work to be done I'm just wondering if Administration has enough information from us and that once they're ready with um a communication Outreach plan and some of these other questions what what are we going to expect and for the public to be aware of next steps I don't want to make a motion and force a hand with a date that it's not ready Alan marer City attorney um with I think we got clear Direction on looking at engage Bellingham and doing some Outreach um other than that we we heard individual concerns about in from Individual council members um I don't I'm not sure that and Blake and James chime in but I'm not sure what we do with that um so I I'm I feel like more direction would be would be appropriate um outside of the just doing the Outreach through um uh from the public cquest I move that we hold these last two items in Committee of the whole and continue them at the next convenient meeting which may might be the next meeting I mean I think that's the only direction we need we need to be clear we're going

to continue discussion and hold them in committee made as our second second okay motion's been made by counc liist second by council member Williams further discussion to this motion so it's really direction to you Dan I think to look at the agenda to bring It Forward when when you know soon as we can sure okay go ahead I would just ask for if there's things other other than engage Bellingham that you want staff to do and be prepared for it next when this does come forward it' be helpful to know okay expressly what that is did you have a comment okay council member Anderson I was hoping to clarify or slightly expand before we have a vote so um perhaps bring forward a communication Outreach plan uh it's going to go on engage Bellingham but who else will be perhaps contacted uh rental companies Bellingham Tenants Union basically how are we going to collect information and then also um some of the questions that we requested but I think a work session where we can kind of get into um the more specific questions that we have because I didn't want to spend an hour with all of mine um but perhaps maybe not next week because I would imagine there's a pretty full agenda already but perhaps the session after that information could come forward in a work session and we can dive a little more deeper to give staff um direction for rewrites Williams yeah I think that the format of the effort has to have many prongs or at least two or three one of which is some sort of face Toof face

engagement process with um a mix of people maybe uh representatives from the property owner side or a rep and and a a um session with uh tenants or maybe a session with both I don't know but maybe a format could be like at at our next meeting if if a if a plan I don't like that word plan if a presentation could be made on what you see as a an effective step forward to engage people more on a more structured basis that would be fine because because there's got to be face to face I think doing the engage uh piece is another way sending us emails is another way um all of the above would be helpful may you want to comment sure I agree with what council member Williams um has said and what council member Anderson is driving towards here I think we'll work closely with council member cotton to understand what his engagement looks like because where we're at so far has been driven largely outside of administration's purviews so we need to do kind of an understanding of what has that engagement looked like you know if we've talked to had nine different conversations with landlords what is that look like and so that will help inform the plan that will come back and umut I just wanted to add on behalf of some of my other colleagues here that I think there's more than just the public engagement pieces I think it will require some additional work with the policy analyst and legal and the planning department so I just want to be realistic about resources we we all have very full plates

and I want to make sure that we give this important topic enough time to come back and answer your substantive questions about all of the things that you've raised Mo's been made in second come Stone I guess that's my question for clarity is um sort of where this document currently lives um because I think based on feedback or questions today I would imagine there's a new draft that would be coming forward but I don't know yeah where that works going to be coming from um and then when I think about something like a you know public hearing I don't believe that I don't know whether there's would be one legally required in connection with these changes or not um if not but still in good form wanting to have a public hearing I think about that usually being you know before there was a we at the time when it's being brought up for consideration for a vote and at that point having a more um finalized document but and so I don't know that we'd be ready you know for that at this point um but yeah wondering I think in response to the questions and comments from um Janice and mayor L is sort of confirmation about where this document lives and who's going to be responsible for um yeah considering what's been raised today CC Williams I think that any any revisions to the documents we have now um for it in large part will be based on the information we get from from the process and then um and um fitting in other pieces that might that might influence it but at least what we have now is a

good start or a start and then we can f tune it based on the information that we get from the process I would imagine or somebody would um modify what what what has been presented along along with our input into things but hopefully getting that information would show would really show us what the re where where the problem is and how it should be addressed in some way I would imagine follow um so in followup I think I don't want to have to recreate the work that council member cotton has undertaken I mean I think that's huge and commendable and I'm appreciative right of all those conversations for me wanting to figure out a way sort of like your at request for a you know a plan a more formalized representation of what right Outreach has been completed um and having that formalized but I feel like there's been some significant feedback provided just from Council today that would need to be incorporated into some amendments to the ordinance separate and apart from any additional you know Community engagement um so I think about those separately okay further discussion gu C cotton go sure just that um uh I agree I think a public heing is a great idea um I think um I'm beginning to hear some Rhymes in the feedback that I'm I'm hearing so I think um look forward to y'all um hearing more of that as well um but I think um the the question like where the document lives I I've really appreciate the feedback over the last few weeks and um we'll be happy to work on amendments to

address some of those concerns and I just want to make sure Administration has the the real draft and I'm happy to just collaborate if that sounds good to to hear those amendments um your way uh thank you I just want to make sure the expectation is clear there were a lot of concerns expressed this afternoon there were questions asked I I did not hear specific direction to redraft the ordinance from what is in the packet today I think as council member Williams stated there's additional engagement to be done with all stakeholders additional information to be provided Ed to council and some important policy decisions to be made by Council before we receive direction to make specific edits to the ordinance so we will not be engaging any sort of a wholesale rewrite before the next time uh you have eyes on this ordinance discussion SC did you get the motion I just understand it that you guys are postponing action today and we'll return for future discussions the actions to hold in committee all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed extensions recusals uh motion carry 70 okay moving on the next item is a renew thank you for the presentation and thanks everyone for this discussion um the next item is renewal of interlocal agreement for inmate housing at South Correctional entity uh commonly known as score Bellingham Police Department would like to continue its relationship with self Correctional entity for inmate housing this contract will allow the Bellingham Police

Department to transport arrestes that have that will not be booked in our local Jail uh to South Correctional entity in De Moine for Correctional Services essential to the preservation of public health safety and Welfare of our community and I have uh Chief merzig presenting on this good afternoon Chief Mig with the police department I don't have a whole lot of information other than just a continuation of our current score contract this this is a renewal right okay all right move approval second motion's been made by council member Williams second by council member Huffman any further discussion on this renewal for the contract go ahead C member Anderson I'm just and if you don't have this perhaps you could email it to us because it's I know it's a just a side question um it would be nice to know like how many people we are utilizing um as far as um how many beds um annually and what the expectation is because I know the new jail is still going to be several years out which is why we have this contract um but uh knowing a little bit more about the data for expectation it's much needed and I definitely support it but um I was asked by somebody how many people do we transport per year and I couldn't tell them so perhaps just a quick email so that I'm a little more prepared to give some data to folks if they ask happy to provide that thank you C question yeah I just noticed that on exhibit a there's a different rate for guaranteed beds and non-guaranteed beds and the amount of

beds that are supposed to be guaranteed and it's blank do we have a certain number of non-g guaranteed bed guaranteed beds the lower rate I have to look into that so it's blank on exhibit a technical matter it'd be nice to have the correct number and the actual signed document okay I'll look into that before tonight hand go up motion's been made in second in all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed abstentions recusals motion carries one abstention I'm sorry one abion one exstension okay motion carries what is that 60 one okay all right moving on to the next item this is the multif family tax exemption thank you Chief um program evaluation city's been evaluating the current multif family tax exemption program in an effort to help balance the city's goals for targeted Housing Development and affordable housing production with the goal of better understanding the challenges and constraints in the local housing market in overall economic conditions City staff is considering several modifications the mfte program is requesting policy direction from the city council before completing additional analysis and drafting code revisions this is a provide Direction and we have uh our planning and Community Development director Blake lion here to provide the presentation this afternoon thank you council president haml we also have uh with me Scott Pelton from sustainable Connections in the Wacom housing Alliance as well as our colleagues that you see on the screen there from go

Northwest that will be able to present to us um I'll keep my opening comments really brief I do have one request of you all um as we get into the presentation by EA Northwest and going through the details we ask that we um hold any comments to the end there's a lot of details in this and we want to make sure that everybody has a common level of understanding before we go into any particular one area of Interest so if I could ask for your Indulgence in that that would be greatly appreciated so with that I'll turn it over to Scott Council uh my name is Scott Pelton I'm the manager of the Wacom housing Alliance the Wacom housing Alliance a collective action organization of sustainable connections recognize the need for increased education in our County about the multif family tax exemption a vital tool for boosting affordable housing units State officials acknowledged the importance of this effort and in late 2023 we received funding from the Department of Commerce to do a countywide analysis we identified Echo North West as a consultant's most skilled in performing the analysis the wh used its existing relationships with officials in Bellingham Ferndale and Blaine to facilitate meetings and that gathered information for each City's analysis recommendations for Ferndale and bla are coming soon Now Cadence Petro Project Director at Echo Northwest will present bellingham's mfte analysis and findings Cadence thanks Scott and Blake Council my name is name is Cadence Petro um as

Scott said I'm a Project Director at Echo Northwest we're a policy research firm that is headquartered in Portland Oregon we've got offices in Seattle Boise Bend and La as well we do a lot of work in the housing uh field as well as others and mfte is one of our favorite programs to uh provide analysis and recommendations for as Scott mentioned uh we've been looking at Wat County um specifically at Bellingham Ferndale and Blaine and today we'd like to talk with you about some of our findings and general recommendations and then staff will return with more specific staff recommendations based on this analysis next slide please so today we're going to talk to you about mfte generally uh just so you get the acronyms it's multifamily tax exemption um we'll talk about uh some of our findings and current and improved market conditions that we're hoping to see soon some program options and then as I mentioned City staff will come back and talk about their specific recommendations and direction from you so what is the mfte uh as many of you likely know since uh Bellingham has had its mfte program for a couple decades um this is a program that's enabled by state statute uh and it has to be adopted locally that allows for an exemption on certain property taxes the residential Improvement value on new construction or rehabs um in certain year increments eight-year 12E or 20e for our purposes we're really focusing on the 8 and 12E and the 8-year exemption really focuses on um not having

an affordability requirement usually and the 12-year mandates some affordability requirement and local jurisdictions can have additional requirements the state essentially sets the floor and then local jurisdictions can add additional public policy benefit as they desire next slide so why would you use an mfte program it's actually able to do a few different things and that kind of plays into how calibrate and where you use it so uh it can be used to Target Redevelopment in certain areas of town it can help you meet your housing targets and it can also help meet some of your mixed income and affordability targets and so depending on where you want to lean in more heavily uh you might make certain uh policy decisions based on how you calibrate those programs and we'll get into that a little bit more in the following slides so here are some additional considerations as you're thinking about where to place uh your program how to calibrate it what additional requirements if any to use do you choose an eight-year do you TW choose the 12E do you choose them both and some of these uh considerations are market-based and some of them are policy based so um certain program options are more feasible in certain locations and in different markets conditions so for example in a high rent area it may perform differently than in a lower rent area um also the impact of the program will vary depending on what it is your building is it Town Homes is it three-story Garden Apartments is it mixed

use buildings depending on what you're building the impact of that tax exemption will be different and then as I mentioned you can calibrate by adding additional public policy benefit an example is the 12year program requires um a minimum of 115% a area median income affordability Bellingham has elected to reduce that affordability down to 60 and 80% Ami depending on the bedroom size that was an that was a local election that you did because you wanted additional public policy benefit of deeper affordability and you can do uh things like that and other um requirements as you desire so long as you meet that minimum State threshold and as you're doing this calibration you really need to think about what are your public policy goals your needs um and your housing objectives and then finally as you're considering different areas of town to utilize the mfte you can you can calibrate within sub areas if you'd like but the more nuanced you get the more tricky and complex implementation can become and so there's a trade-off there that will also talk about next slide so bellingham's existing multif family tax exemption program you have uh the eight-year program in three of the five areas um and the 12year program is allowed in each of the five areas in Barkley and Fair Haven you only have the 12-year program and as I mentioned that requires 60% uh Ami uh for 20% of the units except for two bedroom units which is 80% area median income and we're not focused our analysis didn't focus on

the ownership project but you also have some requirements there and I'd like to note that um you've had fantastic success with the eight-year program over the what almost 25y year history that you've had the mfte program with um 1,800 units 14 of 100 have been established and 400 more are in the pipeline that's a pretty amazing track record however um as of this summer and I think as of today too um none of the projects have used the 12-year program and so that was one of the things that we wanted to take a look at to see why that might be happening next slide so our scope of work uh we did a kickoff with the city and wh and we started digging in right looking into your um your Maps your existing requirements we interviewed developers affordable housing providers and other locals to understand what the market considerations were and some of the challenges of the existing program we looked at your program and we also looked at potential changes to see as we tested different things how how did feasibility for the program actually increase or decrease and then we've uh created a report um that we can uh ensure you receive as well next slide so we tested a few different scenarios we tested the existing 8-year and the existing 12-year program we also uh did some sensitivity analysis to test what a a a recalibrated 12-year program might look like this is particularly uh Salient because nobody has used the existing 12 year and so we wanted to see how how that might shift how

feasibility might increase if we uh increase the Ami requirements to see if if that would uh increase uptake in the program next slide we also tested current market conditions compared to improved market conditions as most of you may know um today is not a great time to try and get something financed and built uh interest rates are high construction costs are high labor costs are high uh land prices are high uh that's not a great uh recipe for getting stuff built um and if you see stuff coming out of the ground many times um that might be because they got financing earlier and it's just now making its way through the pipeline but new starts uh in most cases are pretty slow if they're happening at all and we have some modeling that will uh confirm that so what we what we did instead of just stopping and saying well there's not anything anybody can do now so let's just go home uh what we did is we also looked at improved market conditions and uh as many of you might have seen the FED started making our way towards those improved conditions by lowering interest rates here just last week um and we think that uh successive interest rate reductions should be in the future maybe not to to where they were when the market was super hot a few years ago but more in alignment with historical conditions we also modeled three different kinds of buildings um because as I said the incentive impact varies depending on um what it is that you're building and so you can see in those pictures

down below some comps that we looked at so we did Town Homes uh midrise apartments and then uh Podium with retail a mixed juice building just so that we could test and see how uh feasibility uh shifted depending on what it was that we were modeling um and we also tested some expansion possibilities in a few different areas of town next slide so we're going to skip in here in a minute to the analysis results and these slides have a lot of information so we'll sit here for a second at the next slide and uh the next couple slides and and talk through some of those pieces uh but first some some key findings so as I said in the current market um multi-unit development is not currently feasible there may be a oneoff where they already had the land they've got a ton of money under the sofa um institutional investors or other things that that make them uh sort of the lucky ones out of the bunch but generally speaking uh development is not really feasible at the moment uh although we're hoping that it will improve um under the current and improved market conditions uh bellingham's existing 12year program really decreases development feasibility by requiring a such a significant reduction in rent to the 60% area median income and 80% area median income for two bedrooms um it cuts into uh net operating income so much that it the development is not feasible under improved Market um market rate development becomes feasible uh especially in your higher rent neighborhoods um that's good

news Bellingham is a wonderful place to to do business and live and be uh and so as market conditions turn more favorable you can expect uh an uptake in in development starts um if you modify the 12-year program to be more in alignment with the State minimums uh calibration TBD that's a little spoiler alert there for you um it will improve development feasibility for the higher density prototypes which is what you're trying to do in most cases is to get as dense as you can especially in these Urban centers and of course if you lower your parking minimums and you increase maximum uh lot coverage you increase development feasibility because you're housing people and not cars uh and you can you can fit more units in and therefore attain more rent and net operating income next slide so here's here's where we'll sit for a minute um and I'll break the the slide down a bit so in the middle of the screen you'll see a a gray box and that's essentially um the threshold Point uh where where if you are in it or above it that's good and that's where you want the bars to go above that line and that's we're able to test different kinds of um development types and and to to compare their relative feasibility and as you can see in this slide this is the existing market with the existing mfte programs um it looks like nothing is in that gray box which is indicative that nothing is feasible at the moment essentially developers can't afford to pay the cost to buy the land uh given what their

return will be after they uh build the build the development uh and you can see here that on the far left town homes are the the most likely trying to do it uh they can pay 27 bucks a square foot for land uh but that is far below uh land values so at this point everything's looking pretty sad next slide so we said okay today it's not looking great but tomorrow is like to look better and so we didn't say let's make it look fantastic we're not going back to 2019 um but instead of saying a 7% permanent loan rate let's drop that down to 6% and the construction loan down to 7% um both um reasonable reasonable reductions to assume can happen in the you know medium term let's say and then let's also reduce the debt service coverage ratio that percentage that must be earned over the the loan payment each month from 130% of the loan to 125% again very much within the historical Norms so if all of that happens then you get the following results all right thank you uh so now lots of stuff is inside that gray box and above and you can see um the various different programs so in in Orange you've got the current market rate that's still bad right uh the eight-year with in changed conditions so now we've got the improved you can see town homes midrise and Podium all perform but you can see that the podium doesn't perform the best um with you with you look at um the 12 12 year um Bellingham so that darker teal um it's still below the gray box so even if the conditions improve that that

12year program as it currently stands with the 60% and 80% affordability it just can't get above that gray box which is the primary reason you haven't seen it uh been utilized to date and so the question is how do you get uh how do you right size your 12E to ensure that you get some affordability and also you get units because um you know 20% of zero is going to be zero and so you want to calibrate it enough so that you're within that gray box um but not necessarily too far above that gray box all right next slide please so that brings us to some of our general recommendations um because everything is uh a little bit tricky to develop right now uh our general recommendation is keep the eight-year if somebody has land if they have um money to to make this development come together and the eight-year helps get it over the Finish Line that's good more units is good um consider reducing parking minimum minimums in your RM zones to match the Urban Village standards you could increase minimum loot coverage also so um these are just small tweaks or additions that you could do to uh in the short term to make things more viable and that will also set you up for the longer term and then consider providing administrative support for the 12year so we heard in our interviews that PE developers and their property managers are just a little nervous about what the um screening for income um eligibility looks like and so um who can help them with that and would that be staff would that be

others um if there are if there's technical assistance to help folks do that uh you might be able to get some more uptake especially if you recalibrate the affordability requirements next slide please um offer the 12-year extension be Beyond what's uh currently allowed um so one of the nuances of the state program is there's the 12E and then there's a 12E extension with which requires a little bit more affordability and it's sort of a no harm no foul if folks think that they can use that and it's beneficial to them let's put um all the options on the table and then as a best practice we recommend that you Monitor and recalibrate the mfte program with some regularity um your policy objectives may change market conditions might change where you need it where you want to focus development might also shift and so taking um a a a review and reconfirmation of how you want to use the mfte program with some regularity uh is something the state recommends and we also recommend and then we also uh suggest that you implement anti-displacement measures um currently Bellingham has a a one-year vacancy requirement where uh if a a a redevelop site so you you have some um house or a small apartment on the site and somebody and a developer wants to Redevelopment re redevelop it currently the the property needs to be vacant for one year before they can move forward with that Redevelopment um but that doesn't really help anyone uh the the renter still has to go and then the developer has to sit

on the property for one year and so one way that you could tailor that your uh displacement measures is consider a relocation benefit so if you want to make use of the mfte program and the property that you uh are going to use had a tenant in it and you're that and a building that you're going to demolish then you could require that they pay relocation to those tenants so that those specific people are given um some assistance in in moving to their next home there are all sorts of different ways that you could uh Implement some anti-displacement measures but that was one that we thought made some sense next slide okay so this goes back to what what are your goals so for example if you wanted to Simply direct development into very specific areas you would keep the eight-year there for sure because that you've had great success doing that you would modify the 12E potentially to um increase uptake so uh increase the Ami requirements um in those areas specifically if you wanted to increase Housing Development all over the place you might just keep the eight-year in all the different places uh and again and change the 12E to be more viable and expand Program locations because you're just trying to get more development and more places and if you were really just mostly trying to to Target mixed income and get those affordable units you would likely Sunset the 8year because the 8year almost always outperforms the 12year and you would expand that 12-year program all over the place so

that you could um maximize the affordability and if you wanted to really super Target it then you would consider a a tearing of it so you would have lower rents in some you lower Ami um in some places and higher Ami and others just so that you can make sure that you're uh getting the uptake that you want and also not um essentially targeting affordability um which what is really basically at market rate because we've noticed in some of your your areas market rate is closer to 100% Ami or 115 than um than in other areas and so if you if you set the threshold there uh it might be too high and you could could Target a little bit lower to still make it a viable program that it would be actually an incentive but wouldn't um you know set the target higher than the the market rents already are and now um we will turn it over to staff so they can talk to you about their recommendations after they heard all of this analysis and then we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have thank you Cadence uh back and front of you again to represent a little bit of the staff recommendation and I should be uh take a minute and also say that there are a number of folks in our um planning staff that have really been instrumental in doing all of this uh additional work and so I wanted to thank them for the efforts that they've put into this as we begin to think through um what those recommendations are this is really where we're going to put together um some some comments for you all but

then look for the direction from Council because as uh Cadence mentioned earlier there are some policy driven choices that can come as a result of this so if we go to the next slide one of the things that you'll begin to see is that we know um as as was mentioned earlier that our existing ordinance is going to need some revisions we did through our election process when we put the initial ordinance in place we intentionally moved it below the state recommendation of 80 to 115 % area of median income down to 60% and as was mentioned we aren't seeing any uptake of that the only project that um has been considering in that is one that we were able to negotiate for that 12E through a development agreement process and that project hasn't come to fruition yet it's the one that you may be recalling uh that we did through called the pit project down in the Fair Haven area and so we know we want to make some uh adjustments to to the existing code and to do that we do feel like that continuing the 8-year program is appropriate is it is um you know we are are receiving quite a bit of adoption of that and implementation we're we've seen over 1,400 units come as a result of that tool and so given the fact that we are in a housing crisis we know that it's not a silver bullet or a one-size fits-all solution but Supply is an element to that and so we need to be honest about the fact that we need to continue to encourage that Supply um of various different housing forms at various different

components of the market in terms of the kind of the payband um we reference up here in that second bullet um the four different areas cace Cadence had mentioned three the only reason the difference between three and four is because in the earlier map that was shown Oldtown and downtown are because they're contiguous look like they're one but it actually is the the four Urban Villages so we would continue to use the 8-year program uh in the four that you see listed up there as we begin to think through okay how do we want to apply the 12y year one of the things that we're talking about is is taking advantage of that extension that the state offers and partly because um many of those projects that came in and exercised the utilization of the 8-year program are getting close to that 8-year uh and so what we want to see is we have the benefit of those units now being in our community um but if there's an opportunity to take some of those and move them into the affordable ranks uh then we can potentially get up to 20% of those existing units moving into that and we would do that at kind of the 80% Mark that you're seeing up there on the screen uh as we look into the the following slide and we think about continuing kind of to stay in the 12year uh program um one of the things that we think about is we know we need to look at um yeah if you can go one more slide please thank you um as we look at the um 12E we think that the 60 is uh is too low we think that we need to based on

what we heard from Echo Northwest um but based on where we are in the marketplace we want to look at whether or not that um affordability component really would be better served in terms of producing units at something greater than 60 we're not prepared today to kind of lay that out for you we want to do a little bit more analysis and we want to be a little bit more uh intentional about whether we think that should be in particular areas uh as we talk about this and as we start to Think Through the comprehensive plan effort one of the things that we're looking at is our growth strategies we know and we've continued to be committed to that growth in the urban Villages but we now have the opportunity to think about that in a broader context do we want some of that along our Transit corters as we begin to think through the imple the future implementation of House Bill 1110 does it make sense to allow for some of those affordability components uh in expanded areas Beyond just the urban Villages so that's certainly something we want to get your feedback on and certainly something we want to ruminate on a little bit more ourselves um and the last piece is as as it says up there you know looking at the displacement issues uh Cadence me mentioned the kind of one-year component we also have to look at that that under house bill 1220 if you recall that one there's a there's a lot of discussion about the different uh level of units at different income bands and one of the components

that comes along with that is the displacement so as we go through kind of our comprehensive plan process and bring that to fruition we want to do this with some real intent behind it uh as as far as the mfte program as well so I'm going to stop there with those recommendations and then we're here to answer any questions that you might have thank you for your time uh thanks for the presentation uh and as a quick update council president Hamill's excused for the remainder of the afternoon and so as Council uh president protm I will be substituting for the rest of the meeting uh questions and comments Council presid council member list um thank you Holly uh thank you Blake and Cadence um as some of you may know I have a strong interest in the mfte program um probably the only person around who voted for the original version where we tried to strengthen those affordability requirements and I'm going to say we were wrong uh we we tightened it so much we got no benefit so I I I'm in support of that one recommendation I'd rather have an effective program uh delivering moderate affordability than a program which delivers no affordability so let's do that I also agree with recommendation of keeping the 8-year program in certain areas we exclude it in two areas which are already high income areas who don't need any help um so we've already kind of half sus seted it and I think what we did is still valid I'm I'm wondering about the expanding of the target areas and in general I think

that'd be a good idea we have an sucessful program let's figure out where it can be successful but then it kind of goes to the idea of displacement risk and I think I'm misunderstanding displacement risk or maybe I'm not misunderstanding displacement risk when I look at these map of the prob expansion areas like in Roosevelt area and seol those are what I would call displacement risk areas those are areas that are naturally affordable modest income uh ordinary parts of town um I see displacement risk there and I don't know if relocation assistance actually gets you around displacement risk what that really does is it just makes displacement happen more quickly and you know happily but it's still displacement um I've done a fair amount of reading into um govern policies that have to do with promoting development and whether or not that leads to displacement um and I think there's a lot of kind of misunderstanding confusion between two ideas and one is Urban Development and gentrification and the other is displacement and what you see in studies is you can get so-called gentrification without displacement and you can get displacement with without great development it it really depends upon the details there areas for example I think was in in DC where they had significant new development higher end units a lot of people moved in but the rent and existing units that were naturally affordable didn't appreciably budge it's a bit of a miracle I'd like that kind of a miracle so I

want to talk about the displacement issue so I want to expand the applicable areas but I want to really think about what it means to resist displacement which is exactly why I look at Roosevelt and wonder um unless those units were replaced by affordable units like you know like like and that brings you to the final thing yes yes yes yes yes administrative support for developers who would want to take advantage of the 12year mfte program said this over and over and over and over again developers do not know generally do not know how to do compliance with government regulations on qualifying income and measuring continued compliance with income but we do that and there are certain nonprofit organizations who live and breathe like Housing Authority or others who live and breathe compliance with red tape and and I really do think that it's an appropriate use of public funds or housing funds to take over that administrative Bion either directly or through contracted services and I think that would also increase the uptake and the utilization well not increase at zero but create uptake and utilization of the 12-year mfte so I think I pretty much agreed with 80% maybe 100 of the recommendations so let's keep talking about it and do it council member Stone and then Anderson yeah just I'm in support of the the recommendations and um particular you know expansion of the residential target areas just thinking that we need to do what we can to right increase the um possibility of

affordable housing in all areas of our city um one of my questions again I have concerns similar to council member Lilo Quist regarding displacement but that issue about the property needing to be empty for one year before development so as I understand is that state that's nothing we can change that is something that that the city has in its current program okay so we have the opportunity to re-evaluate how we how we codify that so as we go into the uh change in the in the ordinance we can look at that in Greater Clarity I guess I'm just missing what the in what the intended benefit was of that year because if people have already been displaced on day one of that year and developers hands are tied to yeah and I I don't know that I'm going to be the best one to speak to that because I wasn't here when was originally crafted um so if council member liquis or other staff members can I welcome some interjection I think just generally speaking um and having dealt with um different aspects of it in different parts of my career it really is trying to not uh promote somebody coming in buying a unit kicking everybody out and and you know doing that that there's a holding cost to doing that and so it just just kind of expands out they really have to be committed to doing something uh in that way but what we see now is that the you know kind of speed to Market and the amount of holding costs can be uh a very difficult thing to to make a project pencil when you're having to carry it so

much further council member Anderson thank you a little bit to that the one year um I do remember a bit of that conversation back on the comp plan days um that also gave 12 months for someone to be able to find a place especially if their rent is cheaper um to just be given moving cost to something more expensive that they can't afford may not be the right vehicle so if a developer came in and bought and notified intention of development at least the tenants of that location would have a year to find someplace else to go so it was giving them sufficient advanced notice for that um and also to dissuade someone from coming in and buying inexpensive places that inherently are more affordable um so going on uh the recommendations um I understand that 60% hasn't yielded anything I do support um exploring the moving the 12E into those that are about to expire um I understand the 80% I don't necessarily agree with the Consultants 115 um keep in mind that Ami for one individual is over $76,000 I know a lot of people in our community that are Workforce um that would be doing cartwheels if they made that amount um Council doesn't get paid that amount so um and that was looking at the Washington State Ami report where a family of four is 108,000 so to be at 100% of the Ami so my concern um I don't want to go too high because when we look at the data the number one housing we need is for those renters who are you know 60% or lower that's going to be our largest growth in housing need um

we know housing is always going to be developed at market rate and that is not meeting the needs of our current Community or future community and that's going to have to be housing that us and our partners tend to develop so I don't want to go too low but I understand 60% is not making it I'd like to explore further the 20 um year um put some effort into that um I know that Council and I was the the one vote that didn't support it but Council requested staff to look at um elimination all parking minimums and I'll continue to say this until I'm no longer sitting here it is a tool that we could be using to lower the cost and get some Buy in so what I would like to see is perhaps um a lower parking minimum and along with that 80% to make the ability for them to be able to pencil out so if we in order to entice because down at the pit we used an enticement to get the buy in for the 12 year is that if we use lowering parking minimums um at the 12E or the 20-year in order to be able to help them pencil out in order to get what we most need which is affordable housing um I would be in support of that that way it's not a wholesale giveaway and externalizing the cost onto our streets hopefully we can get some affordable housing out of that um I have great reservation about opening up Roosevelt because that is one of our last affordable um areas if we just open that up like an Urban Village to use the 8year I think it would have a lot of unintended consequences um and I can't remember

this I don't think was Council but I thought it was the Planning Commission when I was there when we W worked on the comp plan we discussed um the arterial roads to be able to connect for a higher density so probably a refresher on that um I thought it passed but is it being utilized if it didn't pass it probably needs to be Revisited because we do need to utilize those artial roads um higher um not just density but I'd also like to look at height um the Urban Village plans I know what um samish way is and um we're kind of on some of those buildings meeting that height maybe uh take a look at um the arterial roads like the height limits or our Urban Villages could we would we have had higher development of some of those buildings going in if the height was higher so that would be a conversation with maybe some of the developers who have put in had it gone up another 2 Fe would they have gone another layer um to bring that in and then I would like more information on when I think of samish we had conversations a while ago that there's a certain point of saturation we would use the 8% until we reached a certain amount of development and then we would get rid of the 8% because we were able to meet the goal of um building the Urban Village enough that it was an enticement for other developers to come come in and when I look at samish way we've had a lot of investment on there um are we looking at just maximizing it all out and there's nothing left buildable land and we've kept

the 8% the whole time or do we look at that we've reached a 60% capacity and now it's time to pull the 8% so I'd like more information if we're going to have a trigger in our Urban Villages that at this point um even though we have some projects coming in still we've met that commitment now it sunsets automatically so that's something I would like to try to explore as we look at this and I'm sure there's more but that might be for when it comes back council member lillquist yeah I want to support and react to two things that uh Lisa said um the first thing is your comment on reducing parking minimums that's one of the things that I've also been saying is that if waving parking minimums is really an enormous Financial benefit to Dev velopment then let's try to get some genuine affordability out of it one of my regrets and what the legislature did in the last few years is they gave away massive entitlements to development with no guarantee of affordability um we have a chance to think about this in a way that advantages affordable housing so I I I do I if we see our goals affordability let's make it explicit rather than just a hop for benefit um the other thing has to do with um areas like sish way or Barkley or Fair Haven and I mentioned Barkley and Fair Haven because they are areas where the 8ye is not allowed um because we need some affordability there but in in each of these locations we have achieved um a mixed income environment by other means um it's historical accent

but Fair Haven has a large building in the middle of it owned by the housing authorities there's affordable housing right in the middle of Fair Haven in Barkley Village there's um what's it called Trail View Trail View is a new affordable housing project right there in the middle of one of the ritziest parts of our town um similarly samish way with a Swank new places like kurf can I say Swank and CF Swank new places like kurf is was right across the street from samish Commons there are other ways to build mixed income communities and we should do exactly that our goal should be mixed income communities because the research shows that there's enormous social and economic benefits to that kind of richness geographically Geographic adjacency so yeah let's let's use the mfte tools to try to create some of that but keep in mind um also selective location of permanent affordable like eternally affordable not affordable for the lifetime of the program but eternally affordable programs like uh Chuckanut square like samish Commons and like Trail View remember cotton I'm new to thinking about the mft um deeply and so this has been edifying um I I'll just mention by side you know thank God interest rates are coming down and um the Delta between the housing we need to be building every year and the housing we're getting is is huge so I'm supportive of looking at how this can be a tool to drive drive that development I also think you know just we're talking about parking minimums um the

the how the units we're losing to parking minimums uh we we can never get back right like we don't have a parking crisis we have a housing crisis so just I I think the that's a freebie to make this program work a lot better and get a lot more housing and that's a really good policy trade-off I think in our housing crisis so um but yeah this has been edifying and I look forward to further um uh yeah work from staff um so the staff's asking for direction um I'll just add I'm I'm very very happy to see that this this tool is being reviewed and and some changes are being um potentially proposed I I like the direction that staff is going in with the recommendations is there any more specific direction that staff needs at this time from Council I'll just simply add that I was remiss and not mentioning it earlier uh as kadence mentioned uh the 20year program is not Su um supported right now by the current economic conditions one of the thoughts that we were going to explore from the staff perspective is putting something codifying it so that if the market conditions were to change we would have that ability as well and so that would be an opportunity for us to respond a little more timely than we you know we could uh otherwise so uh I've got a lot of direction that you provided so thank you for that and happy to continue answering your questions council member Anderson I'm always this is going to be a Perpetual question so if it gets front loaded in the future it'll save my voice

but I know with a comp plan coming and staff being squeezed in a million directions are we going to expect something to come back before the comp plan gets introduced or will this be after or during I think they inform one another I think we would I think it's appropriate for us to look at our grow projections that we're anticipating through the comp plan and begin to be very intentional about how these uh work hand and glove so I think that's really what what we're targeting is trying to make sure that we understand where we as a community are and where we want to be with the development and implementation of the comp plan and we'll try to to weave mfte into that I kind of assumed that but I just wanted it to be verbalized that it's not going to be coming back in 6 months it'll be part of the the wrap up of the comp plans so and I think it also I I alluded to it earlier but House Bill 1110 uh you know there's a number of kind of housing policy things that we're uh exploring and working through and so to see how all those complement one another is going to be critically important you guys have such a big job over the next few years thank you councilman Mist you know it may make your life harder but I think I might disagree with the sequencing here I think we need to adopt the policy changes and the enablement for the new development programs and new development incentives before we finish the comp plan because the comp plan should affect that new reality so if indeed we wave

all parking minimums and residential multis zones where we have the mft available we should know that ahead of time so we can run the numbers appropriately to see what we're going to get so I I think sequence-- wise important policy changes that affect capacity and location need to be finished Midway in the compline process not at the end and maybe I can clarify in terms of my thoughts uh you know we've done a substantial amount of work uh in the comp plan already so so having us go through that getting into the um SEO right documentation getting through the kind of the public discussion in terms of what's going into the comp plan we'll begin to inform that work it doesn't necessarily have to be as you see with like House Bill 1110 within 6 months after the adoption of the comp plan we might be able to be a little bit ahead of that I just want to be mindful that they do as we're shaping and and developing the comp plan we want to make sure that this is part of that consideration i' kind of like to see this mft work before 2026 okay pleas okay um thanks to our consultants for the presentation director lion um we have about an hour and a half at least left of this commit meeting so I would propose a short break 5 minutes uh be back at 3:42 [Music] for [Music] n [Music] e e e and we're back from break council members next on the agenda we have agenda Bill 24256 a resolution directing the administration to create a limited term keep Washington Working act kww advisory work group

to study the ACT advise the city on compliance and recommend related policy considerations city leaders are committed to ensuring that Bellingham is a place where the rights and dignity of all residents are maintained and protected this item proposes the creation of a limited ter term advisory work group to examine the city's compliance with the keep Washington Working Act established in 2019 to honor the vital role of immigrants in the workplace and our state's economy and ensure Washington remains a place where the rights of and dignity of all are protected the purpose of the proposed work group is to research discuss and arve at a shared understanding of the city's actions to achieve and maintain ongoing compliance with the kww and report findings and recommendations to the city the work group would include community members with lived experience and or connections to the Immigrant community in Bellingham and people with experience and training in specified Fields relating to the goals and requirements of the kww and I believe I I'll be turning this over to council member Stone thank you very much um president protm hman so for this item um before reviewing just the proposed resolution I just wanted to go back and um reference so back in January when the um proposal was brought forward to suspend the IAB meetings um at that time the administration presented an outline of next steps um that the administration was going to take on some of that was related to more um broad

approach Citywide with respect to boards and commissions and sort of that um broader work and along those same lines um one of the things that was most important to me having just witnessed what had transpired over the years while the IAB was meeting was wanting to find um and identify what the administration could right commit to with respect to time and staff um and other resources and engagement um surrounding you know the work and concerns and things that have been brought forward by the IAB and also thinking about um the numerous you know concerns and recommendations that the IAB had brought forward um during the years of work that had not received a response either at all or that there hadn't been um the the action steps right going forward from that and so this um initially was thinking about well how how do you then how would I present right a redrafting of the establishing ordinance for the IAB to Encompass this work and it really didn't fit because the work of this work group um is different in a few respects that I hope will better serve um The Immigrant Community as well as you know what members of the IAB had brought forward um as well as the city and trying to reach um goals that have been out lined in policy by us um but we haven't necessarily seen right that the next steps um and so with respect to this proposal um one of the things to think about is that it's a it's outlining and referencing you know some of the work that was outlined in the establishing

ordinance and some of that is highlighted in the whereas Clauses um and wanting to specifically highlight right areas of um concern or Rec recommendations that had been brought forward by the IAB and thankful for um the work that the IAB put into you know sort of outlining all the work that's taken place over the last couple of years and um specific areas that had been noted but then maybe there hadn't been a full followup on so those in particular being the recommendation that the city collect more comprehensive data regarding contacts between BPD watcom and federal immigration agencies such as ice and CBP to include data regarding the final outcome of these contacts so I'd heard that come up time and time again that okay right watcom is staffed by the Bellingham Police Department um but then we're working with multiple agencies throughout the county um in delivering 911 dispatch services and concerns about if then a BP BPD employee is then dispatching a call to connect another jurisdiction with Federal authorities what happens right how do we track that and how do we know what the impact was and similarly what um what is our role then operating 911 dispatch um to then the the actions of you know our partners um in those um in those actions and so the next couple of where houses speak further to that the IAB recommendation that watcom Contracting partner agencies be required to adhere to BPD standards of conduct practice and procedure and the I Rec recommendation that watcom

interlocal agreement require Contracting partner agencies to comply with keep Washington Working act pursuant to state law so the one thing is is that the keep Washington Working Act is state law um and so all jurisdictions should be in compliance with that but noting that the policies that we've clearly written here in Bellingham um may not be as clearly stated in other in other jurisdictions um another point that I just want to highlight is the um one of the warehouses is discussing the presence of CBP border patrol during the encampment cleanup that took place on January 28th 2021 raised some questions regarding City policy for inner agency responses and so although as part of this I'm not looking to go back right and sort of rehash what happened on that day but I think it's very clear from you know photos and things that happened um and were documented on that day wanting to have clear policy about how we handle in agency response to things that are happening within our city and what are we going to do differently um in the future if anything to make sure that um that we're in compliance with keep Washington working and more so that we're um we're meeting the underlying you know um spirit and intent of keep Washington working and then also the whereas about the IAB recommendation that City policy require language access for all emergency response so continuing to work on um you know language access as well so some of these pieces thinking about the the policy work I think

in a lot of respects the council has provided policy Direction and even internally we have some policy documents that speak to um just our position on not wanting to be involved or furthering you know civil immigration enforcement and wanting to ensure that members of our community um who may not be US citizens you know are protected under the law and that their access to services and protection um you know whether that be calling 911 for assistance if they're the victim of a crime that there's no hesitation or concern about that based on their their immigration status here but going forward from those policies then you think about in practice right what are the practices and procedures that we see happening on the ground and wanting to make sure that there's um that there's some fluidity there and direct connection between the policies and what was happening on the ground and so in this work group what I was thinking is that the formation of this work group is really to address a couple of things one is as I'd outlined right recommendations that came forward that we haven't um really reached um any formal you know work product from on the on the um in response to in some cases and also wanting to make sure that there are is an opportunity to have members of the administration members of the council key City staff members from different departments present in the same room um in a work group where there there's a commitment to you know a work plan coming forward and work

product in the end looking at those policies practices and procedures and so I think it is really an internal you know City function more than you know Council policy Direction it's about sort of those next steps and how we um ensure that that we're meeting again that intent and so in the um document it outlines the makeup of the work group as proposed and just wanting to note that it's not less than five but not more than nine excuse me Community me members and comprising that of lived experience as well as Community connections and legal education and so that those people would be um really serving as you know voting members of that work group and then there in addition would be elected officials and other ex official members from the city who would be present at those work group meetings um to engage again in the scope of work that's outlined in the resolution and so with respect to the scope of work um just want to also highlight that this work group commits to having a facilitator that would be a contract position with um the city but a neutral facilitator to help move through the the work um presented in the scope of work and I know that through the um one Retreat that that was completed with the IAB I believe it was Victor Rodriguez um who facilitated that and I think did a a good job and so um wanting to make sure again that there's a neutral facilitator to help um help the city and the work group navigate navigate the scope of work and So within the scope of work

section that starts on 379 I did have one um proposed amendment which was to include a review of city policies and procedures for it says commendations and complaints because that's how it's written on City documents um basically compliments and complaints um to be brought forward by community members and so adding that as a subsection um to the scope of work and that would be a I'm proposing a bullet eight so little VI I I and then renumbering the next one as um as nine right so that would be little iix so just adding again review of city policies and procedures for commendations and complaints to be brought forward by community members because one of the other issues is again with respect to the complaint system so for a period of time right we looked at safe spaces and concerns about are there right other ways for community members to bring forward complaints or concerns that they may have and especially if you're talking about a potential violation of keep Washington working act um I think about if a Community member said well a BPD officer asked me about my immigration status that's of concern to me and I'd want to know that that's happening but I think it's um it's unfair to be asking them that Community member to go directly to the police department to share that concern because that right that may not be a comfortable space but I don't know that the safe spaces feels a little disconnected from the city and so looking at what you know what can those doors look like

whether that's through my thought was the um the legal department and or the mayor's office or the council office but are there other you know places where those reports could be taken so within legal department I think about you know the victim um support person who's in the prose um in the prosecutor's office or on the Civil side I think about Sarah chaplain and you know her work with records as well as um yeah her multilanguage ability I mean other pieces but wanting to make sure that that's accessible um and continued concerns about the complaint system and forms that we have that sort of reference you know citizen which is something else I note in the scope of work is really wanting to be mindful about when we're addressing this work as a council and as a city um beyond the scope of this work group that there's a lot of right legal meaning behind the term citizen some people say oh I didn't mean that I meant Community member and I saying encouraging you to then say that right because otherwise it excludes a large um or you know a segment of our population um in that specific sense and so I know that with the complaint forms the instructions say you know citizen complaint and so wanting to make sure that we're digging in deep right to every step of that process to make sure that you know the forms are available in different languages and that the um wording used encourages people to you know to share their story in a safe space so um that would be one and the other

proposed amendment was under the work group member roles and responsibilities on is so there's some concern about the the link referenced to obtain a copy of that document facilitating successful Community engagement with City advisory groups expectations of Advisory Group members and city of Bellingham officials um that next little section references right web pages and a link that may or may not be active long term and so just wanting to make sure that it's um accessible in the future so it was amended just to strike that second paragraph in section five and instead just state that this document is also available on the city's website at cob.org and then in parentheses see boards and commissions web pages it would be listed there as well um so so those are two proposed amendments that I have at this time but also just wanting and I'll put those up on the overhead so that you can see them and then wanting to open it up for discussion and feedback from council members and our Administration about about this specific um proposal for the the work group specifically CC M cartton um I guess I'm wondering council member St if um you think we should go ahead and pass the resolution today or if you feel like there could be benefits I know our next meeting's in just a week so I don't I just I haven't been a part of any kind of stakeholder that might have happened around this or if there might be we have I know there are community members who' have dedicated a lot of time to this

issue already and um yeah so I just curious if we um yeah any thoughts about adopting this resolution today or waiting a week sorry to ask you a question while you're working on projectors but um I don't know if the Administration has any um you know response to to that as well obviously it's in the packet for um yeah for consideration and passage but sorry um could you restate your concern about uh delaying the recommendation sorry to do it back and forth Lisa um uh yeah I guess my if it had been an ordinance right we'd have three readings and some more opportunity for the public to engage I know this is a a resolution but kind of has the same function as a short-term Advisory board so um I'm I'm not I haven't heard heard anyone who's asked for this to not be voted on today so I but I just was curious so one of the things um for training the mayor is wanting this work to yeah forward quickly and being something new to address concerns that have been raised previously and being in direct response right to those um pieces and then obviously there would be much more um work to you know looking at Outreach to the community with respect to membership um as well as identifying you know ex officios and so I think this is a much broader outline to I mean not drilling into too much specific anybody an outline on you know the goals and objectives for this work group um which could certainly be somewhat valuable as the as the group is is working through right that scope um but Marilyn

um well a couple things I'd like to weigh in on one about this coming forward it felt important to have this update come in September and um our communication to a current members of the IAB whose terms have been paused I had indicated in a previous mayor's comment that we were endeavoring to do that this summer and so that is ideally that would have been at the end of last month but we're here now and I do think that this um the working group proposal really reflects months of careful conversation and consideration um with both council members Stone and cotton about what is the work how are we moving this forward and I'll be honest in that in January and February when we were talking about the pause for the IAB and there was a motion for um the formation of an ad hoc workg group when I committed to that work group process in my mind at that time it did not reflect the working group that we're coming forward today I think um as I have gone deeper in this work and knowing what I know now versus what I knew just 30 some days into my term I think this proposal and this vehicle to move some of this critical work forward reflects that Learning Journey that I've been on and the conversations that I've had and I expressed in my email to the current IAB members an optimism I have a sincere hope that this is the right structure this is the structure that I'm personally committed to it reflects a budget proposal to have facilitation supports around it I also made a commitment in

January to um um continue to explore how do we create clear expectations for board members um or for Advisory Group members across the city and we began that with the um the document as it exists right now about trying to clarify those expectations for both members of the community and for staff but that's just a beginning of what that work looks like and one of the things that was highlighted in the budget proposal earlier today was trying to elevate the city's efforts and particularly my administration's efforts around accessibility and diversifying inclusion in our boards and commissions broadly and so that strategic initiatives manager position that we're proposing within the mayor's office that will be a large portion of their work is continuing to explore how do we remove roadblocks to engagement and diversifying and measuring our participation on our advisory bodies and so my sincere hope is is that if this isn't a conversation that existing members are really wanting to explore and go deep on right now that we're continuing to remove roadblocks for them to be able to do that work and advise us and help make informed choices on our advisory bodies broadly as a city and um the budget proposal also includes some direct supports for members of the immigration and I think those the the working group as we've proposed to put forward in this resolution the supports for facilitation my commitment to this working group direct supports and this broader commitment to

diversifying engagement across boards and commissions I I am hopeful that these are are um the right things that will need to do better for members of The Immigrant community so council member Anderson thank you um just to kind of address um as far as a resolution um I think if unless there's major wordsmithing or concerns about the content um or who's going to form the group or resources um whether there's more exploratory needed um I think it's okay to pass if there's the support um because it's setting up a work group so if it was like if it was something else like when we did the resolution for um a ceasefire there was a lot more exploratory because of the content of what was written there was concern so we wanted to vet it more talk to um the rabbis and stuff to make sure that the wording um wasn't um egregious and offensive so something like that could be delayed but unless the content written here is um concerning in the sense of being offensive or you know we need outside expertise to weigh in to um specifically the where at has then if it's written well and we can support the goal I think we could pass it if there's a support and not necessarily have to delay it um council member list yeah I I think compliance with keep washing working Act is important it was one of the first things that the I uh dove into and there's been a Hiatus um it remains important work and I I don't I don't think we should delay on this especially because this resolution the formation of a

work group is is the beginning of something right that's like kind of what you were saying is that this resolution doesn't just execute and we're done this it starts a process in motion um this we've used work groups as kind of foundational Tools in a lot of important efforts that are ongoing and continuing for example we used uh we we created the climate action task force and that was an you know 18-month process it turned into two-year process but it it resulted in a major revision to our climate action plan and Mr vidon will be here talking about it the work is ongoing it was foundational uh we created the Broadband advisory work group I think again we set an 18mon deadline and it was still two years uh that work has been foundational we just had a very long report today that is continuation of that work so I mean creating a work group is a foundational and important effort on an important topic so I'm in support of this resolution and getting this moving forward and and a final reason has to do with what I saw happen with the IAB as soon as they started meeting I was confused by what they were doing because they were not acting like an Advisory board that I knew and expected and it matched what what the city did they were acting in a different capacity it had to do with capacity that I would describe as oversight and compliance related which is not what our advisory boards do our advisory boards usually have to do with discretionary policies and goals that the city can

choose to do or not do like do we want to uh have greater investment in parks and trails around our community not required by state law but we chose to do it we have an advisory boards that have to do with our Greenways plan but oversight is different and compliance is different these are necessary activities that every jurisdiction has to do and the question is not whether or not you're going to do it or how you want to do it but whether or not you're doing it and doing it right so right away saw the IAB playing a role which didn't make sense okay it's not that the activity didn't make sense but that the mechanism didn't make sense this is a mechanism about compliance and it makes more sense so this is I think the better mechanism to deal with this particular kind of issue um that's why I I I support the creation of of this work group and I'm I'm happy to support amendments uh to it that just you know on these points that that hand has raised council member Williams yeah I just want to Echo some of the uh things that have already been said in a way upon reading this this is well thought out it's very well defined the scope is well defined and I think it will lay the foundation for future work and we've had nine months to get here and I I think it's time to vote on it so um has it been amended yet no counc stone so I'll make a motion to um amend the proposed resolution to include the Amendments outlined in section three and section five second second motion for an amendment

uh any further discussion seeing none all those in favor say I I I any opposed engs second the amendment passes 61 excused so I guess I would just follow up briefly in response to um council member Cotton's um questions raised is thinking about this as a new work group um and highlighting work that the IAB already completed as well as you know language outlined in the initial establishing ordinance as well as specific recommendations that came from the IAB um is what gives me you know competence wanting to move forward with this work to ensure that we're able to um really have some more profound engagement on those concerns that were were raised and and that commitment from the administration to have um you know the administration as well as Council and key staff people in the room all working together because I feel like those are right some of the pieces of what we saw that was was missing and the um inability to reach what I am similarly very optimistic that this work group will be able to accomplish inability to do that in the other structure I tend to agree with council member list that it was just the it was the wrong right sort of vehicle or mechanism to accomplish that and that that wasn't anybody you know particulars you know fault but in identifying and noting what sort of points of tension were and being able to sort of pull you know constructive pieces out that were highlighted by the IAB and coupling that with the commitment from the administration to really move

this work forward um to me feels like a a good path forward council member Williams I'd like to move adoption of this um resolution as amended second we've got a motion and a second Is there further discussion um I'll just add that um appreciate the work that's that's gone into this you know one thing about advisory boards for the city is is um in my experience those that I've sat on um or or witnessed um they're quite specific to needs of of City work and I I appreciate this is really focused on the needs of some City work um that that we do need some some advice on uh as it's new relatively new territory 2019 but um but I think that this has been very thoughtfully structured um and set up for success and so I I look forward to seeing how this work progresses um any further conversation with that all in favor say I I any opposed that passes as amended 601 excused still not there we go oh skipped one agenda Bill 24257 an ordinance of the city of Bellingham Washington do olving the immigration Advisory Board and repealing Bellingham Municipal Code chapter 2.26 Bellingham city council is considering just considered a proposal to form a keep Washington Working act work group the proposed purpose of this group is to research discuss and arrive at a shared understanding of the city's actions to achieve and maintain compliance with the kww which was an area of interest and original intention for examination when the immigration Advisory Board was formed the related proposal

recommends dissolving the IAB and repealing its enabling ordinance BMC 2.26 this action would provide definitive clarity about the status of the IAB especially for current members rather than leaving the IAB on pause until 2026 this allows members to apply to participate on the kww working group another city Advisory Group or lend their support to the community in other ways and again I will turn it back to council member Stone thank you very much um president proam huthman so in discussions with the administration regarding the proposal of this workg group and additional discussion and consideration about how to amend the establishing ordinance that was initially passed to form the IAB um there were real struggles in in making um or even propose you know forming amendments or changes to the um establishing ordinance that would get us to a place where the administration in the city would you know be able to to sign on to not only that work but the work of the IAB but supporting that work actively right through engagement and resources and and what that would require so feeling like the scope of work outlined in the keep Washington Working work group um is a is a narrow scope but important scope that could lead to some really significant um impacts for the better in our community to benefit um and help protect and ensure safety for members of The Immigrant Community here in Bellingham and so um as a matter of course I think about it as the formation of the work group like if

this ordinance could be amended to form a work group that's likely what I would have proposed but logistically that didn't match and it wasn't possible to sort of make sufficient amendments to to move that over um and so this agenda bill is proposing you know the um it is proposing the dissolution of the IAB and repealing of Bellingham Municipal Code 2.26 but I want to be very clear that in this proposal it's not proposing that the work that the IAB brought to the table initially would stop I mean one of the things that I feel passionate about is the fact that the council and administration often will say yes this is important work these are important members of our community and we support this but then not you know feeling like we see the action on the other side and my concern is that the work of the IAB ended up sort of siloed in a space where there was a lot of time and energy um put forward but really to no avail for anybody I mean it it wasn't satisfying from what I gleaned from iib Members nor from the city and so it felt like like it was um it wasn't the right vehicle for the work that was being presented and I've heard strong commitment from the administration the new Administration coming in to move forward on work related to you know language access as well as ways to support you know Partners in the community and consideration for other work groups right if there are areas of of work that the city needs to take on um considering that as we move forward but

wanting to make sure that this isn't in my opinion this isn't no it's more of a mandate on the Council of yes the requirement if this goes away is that you engage more actively with the Immigrant community so that it's not siloed in the IAB and that we have more members of the community coming to public comment here not in an IAB meeting but that we've developed you know and built a space that feels safe where we have interpretation and we're you know allotting sufficient time and and Grace for for that process to feel safe um but making commitments to engage in that work and that involves you know reaching out to broader members of the community thinking about our comp plan and making sure that we're you know engaging in really sincere and meaningful ways with the broader immigrant Community The Immigrant Community is very diverse and so there's not I mean thinking about being able to appoint even if the board you know was ever full with 12 members whether that's you know representative of the entire Community when the Administration has said well there are times when you think about the vi and ped plan or our comprehensive plan and wanting that feedback I don't think that's you know um necessarily the appro place to put that on you know that small segment are you know are those members of The Immigrant Community who are invested in the bike infrastructure or are there right should we be reaching out to other members of The Immigrant Community for that specific feedback and

then it dobes tailes with our language access and making sure are the documents that we're presenting you know members of the community for review um of available and the language is needed and so I see multiple stages of um of the silver lining of what the IAB to me did was to shine a bright light on some of our right deficiencies as a community um in not seeing you know immigrant community and the call is on the council to make sure that in our daily work right and the work that we do in the community that we're mindful of the need to um include and engage really where people are at um on these particular issues and topics and so um what I'd heard from the administration is that there's not you know um really a path forward for the IAB to be you know resurrected in its current form we haven't been able to make any changes that would you know um would really make it viable and struggling to find right a common ground on where this could be reconciled within this document right within the establishing ordinance but wanting to be very clear that that um this action would not stop the work um I don't know mayor L if you have anything to add or I'll open it up to the rest of council Merson thank you um I support this I will say I struggled because when I got on Council um having conversations with council member Stone Administration uh being relatively new having been on a commission kind of feeling what an advisory role was that was my mental imprint of what the IAB would be

accomplishing um staff bring things but we also when I was on the Planning Commission had the ability within certain framework be able to say what about this how are we deal with that um I think the IAB did a lot of great work and I'm thankful for the stuff that we were able to put into uh the the work group um some of the highlights I in the evening we have language interpreters and things that um were suggestions and um that were extremely valuable But as time went on with the a IAB and hearing from community members past members Administration um there was such Discord and it wasn't functioning as well as I hoped it would but it also a lot of information started coming in um and proposals that were very external to the city and and I kept kept feeling like well this should be something the county works on with us or why isn't there an Advisory Group for County because the some of the things that I think community members of Greater County was looking to Bellingham to fix wasn't our place to do and that was frustrating because we don't have authority on some of the things that people thought that because of the IAB we were going to help cure and it was outside of our jurisdiction and ability to do it let alone Financial I mean it got very unwieldy and when it became not fully functional um I think Council remember Lilo Quist really kind of pegged that it was really the wrong vehicle for what we needed to accomplish and I agree that rewriting the um the ordinance as it was

previously written I don't think there's that ability I would like to be able to revisit it at some point um and be able to have that hindsight 2020 Vision to say this isn't what worked this is what we really need to frame I see the work group as being being a vehicle as to be able to get there but I don't think we're going to be able to resurrect and have a fully functioning IAB in the next year and I don't feel comfortable extending a Hiatus and then extending it again until we can get there I think that's a disservice to the community I think it sets up expectations that might not be achievable and because of that I'm not comfortable continuing a Hiatus to say we're going to be working on that when I hope the work group will be able to meet some of the more direct needs that the city can work together to address the state law and look inward What policies do we need to change how do we make things more accessible I wanted to be very task oriented and focus how can the city and services do a better job for um individuals in our community who are immigrants and um English is not their first language and if we can get a good handle on that and then look at a higher level outside of city services and function how do we make things better at a community level I've mentioned again this will be my second time today like an office of neighborhoods because we have needs across our low income our renters and and people who are immigrant could be a member of that population or not

but if we're going to establish a resource center and spend Millions I want to make sure that it really is addressing more segments of the community that would include um The Immigrant Community but also include other members who would benefit by that work and that resource so I've done a lot of thinking about when we were talking about um an immigrant resource center and I I did second the motion in good faith to set money aside in the budget a few years ago that didn't happen um but it wasn't defined the services but I was hoping that we could further Define and bring in more parts of the community but I think what transpired the lack of support from the previous administration um the lack of definition about what the group would you know be focused on and the ability to kind of formulate that work to make sure it was fully beneficial didn't happen and and we all take responsibility who were elected and part of that process um and those who are no longer with us um in leadership but it doesn't undo the damage of um hurt feelings and disappointment and confusion but under that old um under that previous context I don't want to carry that forward and try to reshape it I if we're going to do something in the future I think the work group is a good vehicle to get us there we will have time to assess if we are going to have something like the IAB come back but if we do that it's I don't want to put a Time light on it by extending a moratorium I want to make sure it's done

thoughtful and would be successful in functioning so I think continuing a moratorium is um is a disservice and I don't think we're ready in a year to be able to do the work that some of the community members hope so I do support um the vote to um disband it um but the side comment is I hope the work group will be able to fulfill that function if not I hope I'm in this seat when um a new version of the IAB comes forward a little bit better thought out and better supported to make sure that it's successful council member Williams well the way I see it is this the the actual body is going to be disbanded but the actual ual work is going to be expanded and uh and maybe expanded in a way that that in uh cludes a larger portion of the Immigrant community that will hopefully come out with some um decisions and recommendations that will endure and be meaningful to the whole community and uh based on what I've just said I'm going to move that we approve this bill second second okay motion by council member Williams second by council member Stone mayor thanks um I think council member Stone has done a a good job explaining how we got to hear and behind the reasoning and I think that Clarity is best achieved um which is why I worked with council member Stone to to think this through and how we put this forward that Clarity is best achieved by the work that we put in to defining the work group structure and some of the other elements that we're putting into into place and making

commitment to but I also think it's important that I've spent a lot of time thinking about what is the work of the city in service to community right now and I spoke um in my email to the current IAB members that my vision is that we're all involved in creating actions that support the fullest version of equity in service to all all members of our community that's an economy it's it's one another in the way that we engage with each other it's local government that's in service to all and so when I think about what comes next I don't want it to be a Zer some game where I don't know what that answer is as I'm speaking to you right now I feel incredibly vulnerable saying these um these things because I don't have a clear I know what the vision is I don't know exactly what follows next and um I think that I want to be in service of all and so I know that I hear from our tribal partners that we're not doing our work as well alongside them as we should be I hear from members of the black community that we're not doing our work as well as we should be and so so as I'm committed to continuing my engagement in the racial Equity commission and other matters um I'm I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how does local government support everyone and be in full service um to achieving um opportunity and engaging in local governments and so um yeah little quone cotton up next uh okay thank you so I struggled with this too I mean my reflex is always more input the better they going to

be a community meeting I'll show up I mean that's just my reflex and I really hope that we could reach uh common expectations and revise accordingly and begin a new um I'm having a hard time giving up on that hope uh I spoke with someone I respect who's worked closely on this issue and she didn't see any hope in revising the body and that was really disappointing to me um I've heard it said that that maybe the the body should be reconstituted more broadly makes a lot of sense I really dealt with it at a county level um to the extent that these things really don't Center in Bellingham particularly um and I've been told that many county officials believe that the racial Equity commission is a natural vehicle for many of these issues um I'm not so sure about that I mean to the extent that many immigrants are people of color or from minoritized communities yes then racial Equity is an important lens but immigration is about more than just whether or not you're perceived as brown and a minority so you know so maybe there's hope there at the county level um uh I've been told that there is a farm worker resource center opening in lynon um which I don't know what it is but it sounds like it might be similar and overlapping with the Immigrant Resource Center um I'm trying to figure out what it is we would what it is we had with the IAB and what it is we might lose with disolving the iibb well one issue is uh compliance with keep Washington working act well we're keeping that part

alive okay good another issue is was highlighted early on by the IAB had to do with language access and we've made significant progress on language access and the small internal ways to the big technological ways to the ways that it's now become a reflex in all of our public engagement programs and our Outreach to consider underrepresented communities to consider language access um you know I've I I've advocated for years that an organization of our size should have a chief diversity officer um we never quite got there but we're getting there by steps uh we have a diversity analyst that will be initi elevated I'm going to call it elevation to uh a strategic position having to do with implementation running out of the mayor's office um that's good moving beyond analysis into actions on diversity so those are other pieces that uh I I think uh were properly inspired and shepherded by the IAB that I think we're not losing um as I said the The Immigrant Resource Center was an important idea um it again like many things it kind of made more sense to be done at the county level maybe what's going on in in Lyndon fills some of those Community needs um but then I also heard a bunch of issues that were dealt with by the IAB and I wasn't directly involved uh with the IAB but they had to do with issues like workplace rights and farm worker conditions and educational programs to advise immigrants of their civil rights a civil legal aid um resources and access to Services none of which

were provided by the city there was a lot of things that were discussed by the IAB that had nothing to do with what the city has done or probably could do so that's sort of being lost and I don't even know if that is there's a home for that um because those are still issues workplace rights are still issues Farm working conditions are important um access to you know uh services that are provided to anyone in the community those are important and if you someone who has English as your second language you may not know where to turn you may not know they even exist to find let alone find them so those are some unmet needs but I didn't I don't think the IAB and advisory body is the same as a service provision organization so I worry there are things that are being lost I am conflicted um I have I had hope for Reviving this um I've talked myself into a corner I really don't know what the right thing is to docil M Stone so one of other things I want to talk about with respect to this particular um right proposal to the council is my hope is that this creates space for new work as well like you mentioned language access it's like okay if there's a deep dive that's needed and we need a work group on language access you know having the space because I don't think right the vehicle as it was um is going to meet that need and I also have the weight of an impending election in November that is real I mean the the palpable fear that exists right now in the immigrant Community um and not

you know people want to say oh it's you know maybe wanting to polarize it or make it um political you know whether someone's undocumented or documented across the board right naturalize citizens permanent residents but you know has obviously members who are undocumented as well that fear is palpable and and I want to make sure also that that it's heard that if and when if and when that were to come to fruition in November you've heard loud and clear that there are members of our community that will be targeted and threatened and you might say oh it's not like it's not our job we're not they're members of our community and I'm hoping that we're going to hear that loud and clear that I don't think the IAB is going to be would be the mechanism to meet that need but I want to make sure that we are poised to do something right to stand up um for members of our community who may be impacted by that because as an immigration attorney right now hearing from US CIS US citizenship and Immigration Services talking about policies that are on the books but will sunset set on January 19th because the current Administration can't give any guarantee that they will continue that hits home and thinking things could dramatically change and just wanting to be clear there are times when you know some of the things that council member liist you've raised saying well there's no place for it here I mean the reality is is that as long as they are members of our community who are immigrants and

impacted that there is a place because it's it's happening and it's on our doorstep but I think that's why it's also important that although the IRC right right now thinking about you know we don't have money to commit to building an immigrant Resource Center in the way that you know I think many community members would like to Envision it but at the same time there's other work that needs to be done in the interim while we consider that work long term so thinking about are there ways to make um more profound um build more profound Partnerships and also to provide potentially financial support to organizations in our community that are doing work that the IAB has highlighted and some of which you've referenced I think about you know law Advocates and others which advocates for a long time was very hands-off on immigration work and there's been a huge shift right where now they're engaged um more actively in that work and a number of nonprofit organizations in the community that are stepping up and wanting to help and so are there ways to help you know those organizations leverage their resources and are there ways through we've talked a little bit about through you know um sort of the idea of small and simple grants or project neighborly of you know are there ways to put money in the hands of you know Community groups and um and neighborhoods in our community to focus on you know this type of work that would have a more direct impact on the ground um in the short term while

other things are considered and so I understand that this is hard and this is heavy and this is not what anybody wanted to hear and I know that I will continue to be you know demonized for bringing this forward and if I didn't um if I had faith that this could be um reconciled in the way that it was to move forward and be productive and meaningful for members of the IAB as well as the city and the community members that we're hoping to represent I would be doing that instead council member cotton thanks um I'll be consistent with my vote on the ordinance to suspend and vote no today but I'll echo echo council member Stone and that the our charge um to further justice for immigrant members of the community goes so much farther than the tools we use um working groups are a tool I'm excited to see they keep watching it working at compliance task force um uh develops um the IAB was a tool and um we have many other tools that are disposal and I think I'm I'm um uh kind of grateful I think for this moment of um being able to hear that public recommitment and um I benefited a lot from the discussions where we have differences of perspective and alignments and values and um I look forward to um yeah um finding opportunities to continue to do good work together so um and yeah thank you um yeah for your leadership council member Stone on all of this over many years so appreciate it um so we do have a motion on the table but I'll add my two cents before I call the vote but um I don't

know that I was completely sure the way I was going to vote on this and until I heard the conversation that that this group would have and he from the mayor as well um to get a fuller understanding of where where everybody's at with this and the process um that got us to this point I think what I'm certainly hearing from each of the council members is that the needs and concerns of uh our immigrant communities in Bellingham are um are certainly uh certainly um still at the Forefront of of uh our mind um they they're not they're very true and real now they are not going away in the future um you know when the Immigrant Advisory Board was dreamed up um that was that was still true it was a brand new idea um the thing about local government is especially with brand new ideas sometimes we get wrong that while we recognize the need um we know that there are needs that need to be addressed we we we don't necessarily get addressing those needs right the first time around um and you know the the person one of the people that was most passionate about addressing those needs is still on on this St here with council member Stone um and is recognizing that this was not the right vehicle to to address those needs um I'm very encouraged by the uh the work group that we just voted to approve in addressing some of those needs um in a way that that is within the scope of the work that the city does um and the scope of the work that the city does does not address all of the needs in our

community that's why we have nonprofit agencies other organizations why we have um a a myriad of other ways to address needs in our community um local government is just a slice of of addressing those needs so um but we we still need to tackle what we can that is within our scope so I appreciate that work group um so but I I will be voting to support this motion um but it is not closing the door on understanding the needs and it doesn't mean that there won't be other ways that we can address those needs in the future as well so I will call the question all in favor say I I any opposed no any abstentions all right that is that passes 4 two Zer 421 math okay thank you and we will move on to our last second to last agenda Bill item uh 24258 an all City climate work plan 2025 in 2007 the city adopted the city of Bellingham climate protection action plan as official policy in response to the growing awareness of the global climate crisis in May 2018 city council adopted the updated 2018 climate action plan as policy with new emission emissions regul reductions targets the mayor's climate office will be updating Council on the All City climate work plan for 2025 specifically the portion of the plan dealing with carbon emissions reductions and here to present to us we have climate and energy manager Seth vidna e e e oh thank you the weight of the topics that our community is dealing with and our Administration is working on you're listening to and helping us work through so thanks

for that I wish I had a lighter uh topic to bring you than um global climate change but that's what we're talking about here today I am from the mayor's climate office and here to talk about the All City climate work plan and a portion of that work plan that has to do with Mission reduction actions specifically so reducing the community's carbon emissions later on we'll bring you a portion of that work plan that has to do with the uh our our adaptation efforts that'll come and uh in a bit but today is just our emission reduction actions and we're calling this the All City climate work plan to illum illuminate the fact that this is not just a plan by uh climate staff for climate staff but is the breath of the city operations and we have directors from um a number of different departments here today to answer questions about elements of that that workpl plan should you have them so the uh the Genesis for this uh this work plan really started in 2022 with uh uh climate staff working out of Natural Resources at the time looking at our our missions inventories those are the blue dots over time and asking the question whether or not we could reach our our climate action plan targets we were seeing that in by uh 2020 we had missed our Target by quite a bit and we're looking at targets for 2030 and for 2050 and those were feeling sort of Out Of Reach and at the same time we were considering adopting more stringent science-based targets that would even further uh put us put those

targets Out Of Reach that would have to um require us to drop emissions even further by by 2030 and this should say 2050 but by by 2050 and with that we decided to reach out to the Consulting Community to ask the best and the brightest in uh in North America to help us with this topic of how do we get to these these these targets and what actions can we can we actually take on we found a consultant SSG who this uh this group has listened to before canel heard from them a year ago ago almost a year ago and uh we charged them with a couple uh three different items the first was to focus in on where emissions were coming from that's the combustion of gas and Diesel our combustion of natural gas and also the desire to increase our use of renewable electricity to do all the good work that that folks here in Bellingham want to get done and uh we charge them with with that as well as making sure that the action list they put together for us was reflective of what the community was saying they would need in order to adopt the low carbon Lifestyle on a residential level on a business level uh commercial level and other levels to bring us to our to our targets we also wanted to make sure that we were using this momentum for for reducing our carbon emissions and climate action to uh help us meet our Equity initiative here at the at the city as well there's uh that so we went out to the community put together a number of uh of working groups uh City staff working group and a community

working group had some some uh uh other other groups having uh listening from our our bipac and renter populations and used that input to create a a report and that report had a couple of different products the first product was a model that showed us how we might get to our our targets our mission targets and the second one second uh product was a list of actions that would help us to to get to that point there's a number of different ways to look at that model and surprisingly this is one of the easiest ways and uh this is a what we call a wedge diagram and these colored wedges here show us the anticipated carbon emission reductions from a certain Factor that factor could be State legislation like our clean energy transformation act which is requiring power plants in Washington state to reduce their their emissions it could be things like our own mode shift goals for getting people to bike bus and walk and if all of these items go as planned as projected we see not the business as usual scenario which is this top line here but a pretty drastic decrease down all along the business as planned scenario if all of those things go as planned even with all of this legislation it still doesn't get us to our goal for 2050 which is this dotted line here an 85% reduction from from 2000 and we have a gap here and this is really the focus of the work that our consultant did and the city did together in the report that we put together and we looked at a number of different actions that

could get us to uh to bridge that bridge that Gap a couple things that this this uh graph doesn't say and you might be thinking is relying on all of this legislation to happen as planned is a big if and there are uh uh precedent for things like uh these these factors over here Washington State Building Codes CA those things potentially being repealed we have in November the climate commitment act in Washington state coming up on the ballot so that's to say that we need to be nimble with our uh our climate action planning and make sure that we're diversifying what we're what we're working on here at the city such that if there is a change in state legislation that we can we can pivot to to make use of that so with that we'll move on to U that's the that's the model move on to the action list and the actions are split up into four different categories the pie chart that we looked at has three of those that's uh Diesel and gas our our electrifying buildings and uh also working on sorry uh uh dieseling gas electrifying buildings and renewable energy there is a fourth chapter fourth area of the plan cross- sector actions and those actions touch two or more of those those those other categories so uh the uh sort of first order business for our cross- sector actions is really providing information to the public on the resources they need to be partners in the city's pursuit of climate action this includes connecting them to final re financial resources that we have at the local

state and federal level through the inflation reduction act and through the climate commitment act at at the at the state level and to do this we are partnering with watom County on a grant to fund the creation of a home and Business electrification campaign with the idea that this campaign would funnel people to Central Al's website and show them a number of resources that they can make use of including our own home electrification pilot program to expand the work of that pilot program we're pursuing a $1 million Grant from Commerce that will help us to do more work in the homes of low and income uh low low and moderate income uh residence and Commercial spaces with a particular focus on on nonprofit organizations also on the uh on the information front we'd like to make sure that the city is a resource for folks that are building and operating buildings and help them to save money and carbon with the structures that they're responsible for connected to and we'll do this through some educational efforts that we're putting together for for 2025 last on the list for for information we're looking to ramp up efforts to tell the community about the good work that's already in progress here at the city and in the community to increase momentum CommunityWide for for climate action another cross- sector action topic is creating cooperatives during our Outreach sessions with the with the community at working groups and our our community groups we heard from from folks uh a a real

strong desire to make sure that we're allowing for folks of all income ranges to be connected to and benefit from the the financial benefits of lowc carbon technology and creating cooperatives is one way to do that we want to begin with a hybrid electric uh electric car and uh hybrid car uh um Cooperative that is going to help us to get folks uh behind the the wheel of an EV in a much easier way than than it is now moving on to our low uh oh sorry a little bit more on the um the the buildings front here so um we have uh uh two two additional cross- sector actions have to do with our our city permits and and planning our permit Center has done a ton of work to make things easier for Builders to install things like solar panels and we're hearing from our construction Community through this process that they want us to go even further so we're looking for ways to streamline that that per perit process for our our climate related work also on uh planning level we're looking to increase density along our our Transit corridors continuing that work recognizing that getting people out of their cars is going to lower our emissions for transportation and create energy efficient buildings so we'll move on to low carbon transportation and uh we're really looking to uh build out our bike and network as fast as is possible modernize our parking requirements which this this uh council's heard about quite a bit over the past year and we're also working we'll be working with WTA to make it as

easy as possible to use the bus and specifically with bus bike trip combos where you want to get something like a heavy ebike onto a bus and take that to your destination for those trips that are uh needing a personal vehicle we want to make it easier to install EV charging equipment across the city and we're now working with wam County on a study that will identify the codes and policies that'll help us to do just that we hope to have that report complete this next spring and bring that information to you on the buildings front we we know that retrofitting and uh making buildings more uh uh efficient is expensive and we made some progress on the single family home of of single family home end of things we really want to work into uh the multif family and Commercial aspect of of buildings here and we'll be looking into our uh uh grant opportunities for providing funding for those those two areas of buildings we also want to make sure that our our renters and our tenants understand uh what the utility costs are associated with the buildings that they're considering renting or using for business practices and will be investing a reporting framework for for that purpose finally on uh on renewable energy we're conducting a commun Community solar study right now that's helping us to understand exactly how to connect residents to the financial and environmental benefits of solar power through a clean energy Grant from Commerce and we're looking at connecting government buildings

like this one and the watom county courthouse in some sort of application of of District energy that study is funded by Commerce as well as another study that we're partnering with Western on that'll be looking at how to use the abandoned mines beneath the city as a source for geothermal power that's the model these are the actions that we'll be we'll be looking at over uh 2025 and look forward to your your questions and comments on on our plan thank you SE uh mayor I just wanted to spend a minute to talk a little bit more about the process that led to these actions because as Seth mentioned um the list of recommended actions to help Us close that Gap was long and formidable and we had to acknowledge our our ability to do that work and also prioritize amongst those 60 plus actions we have to we have to do this work but we we have to have some sort of framework and criteria to know where to start where the most impact is so this list of it it it's a greatly edited list and I want to compliment the climate team for their it's it's been I think a process of grieving that we can't do all things at once because it all feels important that all of these actions but we have to acknowledge that's not practical it's not operational to do it and so uh this edited list reflects a process that we underwent and also a city-wide conversation that we've been having um across all departments and hours of conversation about how do we embed climate work in every Department to support these

efforts and so how do we take a climate office of two and bring that to scale to do this work and so I just wanted to share a little bit more about what's gone on behind the scenes to arrive at this work planc members council member list um thank you for this presentation uh Seth I have a couple kind specific questions you had a slide that mentioned um ways of encouraging EV infrastructure charging infrastructure um yeah I'm not sure quite what it said um removing code bearers evb so I mean I've mentioned this over and over again I'm a broken record on it um I I think one of the best opportunities is EV charging in public rights of way uh I say this for a number of reasons recognizing its complexity um one thing that lesson was learned years ago in China when they put in thousands of EV charging stations they put them in the wrong place most of them weren't used and some were really heavily used so I like the idea not so much of us like thinking we should put an EV charging station here but enabling EV charging stations to go in many places kind of and reducing any code and administrative and legal barriers to this and then invite EV charging stations to be put in or not and removed if unsuccessful um do any of these efforts have to do with the uh permitting and uh other issues with regard to EV charging stations going because right now they primarily go in private parking lots right uh any any discussion on um changing the administrative and legal barriers from permitting

barriers to EV charging in public rights of way or similar locations yeah great question council member and that's really the primary purpose of the work that we're doing with wam County there's a little bit there on sighting in terms of here are general areas where we might want to put charging due to traffic flow but I would say the the majority of that work 3ars of it is really about what are the the code and policy barriers that are existing right now that are preventing us from rolling out EV charging easier than it's been I I think I can't speak for our our public work staff but working with them on our own EV charging program it's uh it's it's it's difficult work I mean it's take takes long much it's taken much longer than we thought it would and part of that has to do with some of the the the barriers that are out there that this study will will identify so that's really one of the I'd say the primary target for the for the study no different remember yes so I want to talk about two forms of renewable energy I'm I always focus on transportation and energy production because on your wedge chart those were the big sectors um some communities many communities have great success with waste heat and in our case the biggest waste heat potential has to do with uh uh sewage because it it's naturally several degrees warmer than other sources of water um and it's been talked on on and off in the current discussions is waste heat on the table I think that was looked at for the

Waterfront and yeah that had that to do Prime well it was Micro Hydro but yeah through the Waterfront I'm I'm actually thinking more like some of our large like 24 in or larger sewage pipes run towards post Point that's where you could capture a lot of waste heat and some of these waste heat facilities are not that large right um You need a half an acre or quarter acre and you you know I'm just wondering if waste heat some communities have great success with way it's seen as a free cheap way of using energy you already got turning into electricity is there any chance that the city of Bellingham will be able to capture some waste heat I think the last time we looked at that was maybe four or five years ago relative to the Waterfront MH and that it didn't pencil out at that time a lot of that has to do the penciling out has to do with what's the cost of the technology and over time that goes that goes down I don't have that on the work plan we don't have that on the work plan for the rest of 20 24 and 2025 but it's something that we're always looking at potential advancements in Technologies making that technology cheaper but no that's not on the what about something like an RFQ process where we basically say to the world you know we'll run some math and figure out how many gigles of waste heat we got going down those pipes and say hey does anybody want to have a chance take advantage of these Mega jeels of energy that we're dumping into the bay I would say that there's several

creative conversations happening in the community about how we can perhaps even employ the coal mines that are underneath our city and use those as an asset UBC has a small Scale Pilot project where they're generating energy from water in their coal mines so that is work that's happening happening um so I think at maybe the climate committee level we could explore what are some of those creative conversations including your suggestion council member list to see if those make sense to explore or not okay uh last one Community solar um I've got a roof I can't put a community solar on it it's just due to practical reasons and political reasons and a lot of other things um but if there was a turnkey Community solar operation I'm not the only one with the roof there's a lot of and I I've got a flat roof I'm live in a condominium right there's probably a lot of other flat roofs around here and the owners don't have the expertise or the courage to put in a solar system um but if there's a turnkey Community solar operation we we could let them know that there's I don't know 57 rooftops greater than 10,000 square fet in the city of Bellingham do you want to whack at it could we create kind of a turnkey opportunity for someone and they would come in and they would do the community solar but we provide the opportunity and we would reduce the barriers to finding those opportunities is I don't know um we've had a few Comm solar projects but they they don't they they seem to be kind of

like oneoff is there a way we could make it more systematic and and broaden the the possibility the the intent of the community solar study that we be engaging in is to look at publicly owned buildings and seeing what potentials are there part of partly because they're they're owned by us we have control over them and they tend to be a lot bigger than a than a residential building so be looking at sighting or sorry uh than your normal uh Residential Building we'll be looking at sighting and also what's the economic model for getting people connected to this power supply that don't have a roof that's appropriate for solar or they they're renters that's a big part of the community as well as we know how do we connect them with the with the benefits of of community Sol so fun fact many farmers across the country in Texas and many other places have a enormous second income in Wind power and it's not because the farmer suddenly decided they were going to build a wind farm it's because someone came in who knows how to build wind farms and said may I lease your property I'm thinking something similar here you may own a r Aid building you're not going to get into solar but if someone came in and said I'd like to lease your building and I know how to do and I've got all the documents and here's my funding right I'm I'm looking for that sort of mechanism where not Farmers become solar power generators but Farmers Fields become the site for a wind farm I'm not looking for every R Aid to

become a solar power producer but every R Aid's roof could be an opportunity for econ economically environmentally beneficial relationship so when I think of community solar I'm trying to figure out ways of unlocking its possibilities so it isn't just a city looking for a big roof we own but it's like many roofs all of which become opportunities yeah we can certainly add that into our conversations with the with the consultant anything further from Council okay this uh item was for information and discussion only thank you so much for the presentation and with that we will move on to our final agenda item old and new council member Anderson thank you try to make this somewhat quick so that might be a dinner break um I sent an email to council recently and just to give a little um back background to this um at the onset of Co the previous mayor had enacted the um BMC 2.57 point0 60 also known as emergency powers of mayor or director and when that evening came we had a very large protest show up and it had to do with um several of the emergency powers that revolved around um sale distribution or giving away Firearms ammunition and such and it was admitted that the um the the emergency Powers was kind of a boiler plate that a lot of municipalities utilized and it was generated in 1977 is and around the emergency Powers regarding firearms and ammunition it is more than likely preempted by state law and so staff and the mayor had several emails with community members that I was

included on that said that they would not enact them because again it went against state law and I've been in periodic contact with multiple members of the community who have been looking for someone to propose to take those um emergency Powers off the books um because they're not constitutional and I've had a conversation with the mayor um regarding this and a couple other council members who also kind of agreed why do we have something on the books knowingly that it's against the con you know state constitution probably I guess fully the Constitution that we're not going to enact so it's basically housekeeping I'm not making a motion but I'm going to request uh of the mayor and staff to review the emergency powers and if if correct in conversation um Iris had done a lot of Investigation already and I included that in the email to you folks and had also spoken with legal who suggested I bring this forward asking for those um content around firearms and ammunition to be struck um so I'm going to be asking the mayor if uh she is willing to work with staff to strike um those segments of the emergency powers that we cannot enact because it's against the law I'm wondering if since you're requesting something of Staff it should be a motion by the um I spoke with the mayor regarding that and maybe if she takes a moment to speak you'll know why I'm not making an actual motion so I'm happy to take council member Anderson's Direction and I want to work um receive that direction and

then work alongside staff so that we're taking a look at emergency powers and other areas where there might be PR preemption for state and federal um laws that we should be looking at let's just kind of a code scrub if you would and just look freshly for other areas that don't make sense so that'll be the scope of the work so I didn't make a motion because the scope of work may have to be expanded or amended um given the conversation so I didn't want to hem in on just one element when it could actually include possibly more and I didn't want it to necessarily I mean this has been four years in the works um I didn't have support previously so um I figured that there's not a really strong timeline but I had support from uh Maron to take a look at it and then eventually bring something forward um the emergency powers are the mayor's area so I don't want to be so prescriptive on one aspect when perhaps there's a good policy out there that we don't have in our emergency pow so it really is kind of an opportunity to put on um public record um the examination so that those community members who have been in conversation know that um it is being supported to make that change um but also given the leeway to um expand the scope as the mayor sees been so it's more of a uh Public Announcement so that uh those members of the community know that they've been heard and that it is being worked on council member list well I certainly support removing any part of the municipal code which is in

Conflict uh with existing law so that's that's fine just to remind people the context this was the hot and heavy first days of covid and at the time it's like okay we recognize that there might be an issue here but now is not the time to get into it we have a pandemic to respond to and so I'm also a fan of acting when the heat is off well the heat is off and so now it's a nice quiet time we can we can take the time it takes to make any necessary changes calmly and rationally um then wasn't the time to talk about it now is a perfect time to take to go at it and and and fix it calmly and I'd like to thank the mayor for the openness and the conversations we've had in the support um to basically clean house and clean up the books a little bit so that we're um we know the laws that we have we can actually enact them so I appreciate your um partnership and um willingness it's uh much appreciated and I've expressed this to members of the community and they were also very thankful for it so in case they don't have an opportunity to send you an email I'll just let you know that it's been seen and heard and it's appreciated anything else for old new seeing none uh end of committee we will be back here at 7 o'clock tonight [Music]