City Council - Committee Of The Whole

all right go ahead and get started here uh our next committee this afternoon is committee of the whole we have several items before us here today uh the first item is an annual update on the Bellingham watom County Commission on sexual and domestic violence the Bellingham wam County Commission on sexual and domestic violence was formed jointly by the city of Bellingham and wam County in 1998 the commission inspires and coordinates our community's efforts to address sexual and domes violence each year staff from domestic violence commission provides an update to inform the Council of their work as well as provide education about the impact of domestic violence on our in our community and here to take us through is Susan marks DV commission director welcome sus for a long introduction it gave me time I said I knew what I was doing I was like no I don't need to come early but I think I did it okay yeah so Susan marks I she her pronouns I'm the director of the commission on sexual and domestic violence yeah and I appreciate having this time every year to come and talk about our commission and the work we're doing actually your commission and the work we're doing um I'll do a little background some of you have heard me do the Spiel but I think it's nice to have a reminder some of you have not and then I'll talk about some of the specific projects we're working on um so our commission was formed in 1998 the city of Bellingham and wam County formed it together um our setup is very

similar to the racial Equity commission they were somewhat modeled on the way we are a quasi governmental organization with paid staff house outside of the city or the county um and working together um for all the governments really of wam County to improve a large um issue that's affecting people who live in this community our purpose is to improve systems we want systems to work better for survivors in the community we don't do Direct Services we provide support to the agencies that do the Direct Services whatever that looks like and are leading projects to improve systems change um we have are made up of government and Community leaders who um their role is to work together collectively to effectively respond and prevent to domestic violence and sexual assault really this is a way of our community um coming together to fulfill that responsibility that we have to all of our community members um you have the full roster in your packets these are the people who represent the city of Bellingham either through staff or through Community appointments um yeah and everyone comes to we have meetings every other month or they're a part of different committees or projects that we're trying to move forward to uh to move our to make our work effective um our funding so we are funded our general operating support is from the city of Bellingham wam County currently we get 90,000 a year from each of those um city and county and then we get a small contribution this year from the city of

fale is $4,000 um we are I know going into new bium we'll be looking at um increasing our budget request one of our current things in our work plan is to stabilize our funding um so we are wanting to make sure that we can do our general operating work we also are in the past we've had a number of Department of Justice grants which will be be pursuing a couple of those again we submit an application in March to work with district and Superior Courts on access in family court and uh civil court when their domestic violence is happening in a family um that's a huge gap is parenting plans divorce dissolution and then civil protection orders getting the support you need and there's a particular focus on language access and that Grant we're also right now working on a grant uh for our restorative justice pilot to the Department of Justice and um in the fall we're going to be starting to partner with Wacom Community College on another Department of Justice grants so one of the things I say is our commission does make us competitive for these federal grants that so the restorative justice one is a pilot that the Department of Justice is doing there's going to be 15 sites and one of the reasons we're competitive is because we have all the people that we need are already at the table I've been on calls where they'll it's kind of an introduction to the Grant and people say well like how am I supposed to get a hold of the sheriff you know just having those connections actually makes us

really competitive we have the trust and ability to connect with each other um to be able to be competitive for some of these large um their multi-year funding that also been funded fund multiple agencies so we're kind of trying to stabilize our funding in that way as well and be competitive again nationally I want to provide a picture of some of the things um that's happening with domestic violence in this County so um we have a full data report online which you can access um these are just some of the highlights from it so in 2022 which is the most recent year for which we have cross discipline data um one in four homeless households in Wacom County were fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence or other d dangerous conditions those include things like sexual assault um trafficking uh other dangerous conditions in their household so things that are really related to domestic violence we also found in 2022 the reports of sexual assault to law enforcement continue to fall uh we have no evidence that inative sexual assaults have decreased so one of the things that again working with um local law enforcement helps to hopefully make it so that people understand that they can come forward and make a report when they want to use the legal system um fewer than a third of sexual assault and domestic violence protection order requests were granted a final order in watom County uh we for many years in a row have been we're kind of below the state average and getting uh final

orders granted uh this is one of the things that hopefully if we get that Grant we'll be able to work together on it will provide some training for judges it will provide training for attorneys to be able to support survivors through the process um funds for interpreters and lots of things that would hopefully help the process go more smoothly so more people could get their final order we also have very few people petitioning for a sexual assault protection order when I say few it's like 5 to seven a year which is really not as many people as who could use that so again hopefully that's a process that we can make um reduce some barriers to make it more accessible for people these order they're like prosay processes where people are supposed to do it on their own and they're ex I still find them completely complicated and so um we just want to make it as easy as possible for people to get those orders and to have access to attorneys who can provide that support either Pro Bon or low Bono uh nurses at peace health um spent 66 hours conducting sexual assault and domestic violence forensic exams in 2022 this is one of the ways that we know that sexual assault is not decreasing is their hours keep going up every year um and then we have some qualitative data on what healing and Justice Means to survivors and I'll speak to that in a moment so all of this there's a specific report that gives all of this feedback about survivors and healing Injustice and there's a part of that also

in our full data report which I said is online and we'll release another one usually every October is we get all the data and can release that report um and I know some of people are data people and numbers people and those numbers mean something and for some people I think it's really important to understand the effect of what it means for survivors so I'm going to read a few of the things that survivors told us when we did that report um on what healing and Justice Means so here's some of the things that survivors told us when we interviewed them it's been interesting the amount of people who respond by being concerned about him and what would happen to his reputation it's interesting to have me share what happened that was hurtful to me and they focus on the hypothetical hurt that this other person might EXP experience I reported a suicidal attacks to the counselor she told me not to break up with him right away even though he assaulted me After experiencing child sexual abuse I did have a therapist at first who asked me what I was wearing when things happened and if I had given him the idea that it was okay healing would be being able to have therapy or support as long as you need it and not just as long as you can afford it and the judge granted me more time in the restraining order hearing because the lawyer and my son's dad were unprepared and that wasn't my fault and I want to read one I feel like that's the negative that we're really trying to overcome and improve

processes for survivors but there's someone who shared what it would look like for them to have healing and that's what we're going for as I want to end with what we're the aim is for is not just to have an absence of trauma but to have full healing healing looks like being believed and supported by my community being able to walk around town go to the store go to the park living without hypervigilance being able to wear my hair down again wearing clothing that makes me happy being able to experience Joy with my friends so that's what I think we're really all going for together is I think all of us would like to live life like that so some of the projects we're doing which kind of speaks to what systems change looks like we have been having a focus on missing and murder indigenous people we really started focusing on it last year we've been kind of learning in fits and fits and pieces for several years one of the things every time we have a native woman on the commission one of the things they ask us to do is to take on this topic um one of the biggest ways to impact domestic violence sexual assault in this County will be to focus on the ways that indigenous women and people are targeted and to improve that response that response would improve for everyone um in the past year we had several commission meetings where we were really just learning about what is the scope of the problem what's happening in wam County and where what's our role um to bring people together and we

had representative Deborah lanoff and ASA wasin who's the tribal leaon for the State Attorney General's office spent a couple of those meetings with us um and one of the things of course we learned is that the history is long basically since first Contact and though there's a lot to atone for our role really um kind of what we were left with is you can't change the past but we absolutely we are learning about this we know about this we have no excuse for not changing the future and so um they had said you know what would be really great is if wam County had like a summit where you brought together all the community leaders from throughout the county and we learned about it and we learned from different disciplines what are the actions that people can take to improve and so we are working on planning a summit on missing and murdered indigenous women and people um it'll be Wednesday November 20th we'll be sending out save the dates within a couple weeks we actually do have a location now it's going to be at peace health St luk Luke's education center you all will get an invitation and I strongly encourage you to come for the day one thing I notice we go to meetings and we say land acknowledgements and we really notice that whose land we're on and action that goes along with it can be things like showing up for this and seeing what can we be doing differently um to support families when someone goes missing and to help bring people home another projects we are working on or have

been working on is case reviews and this past year we looked at intimate partner fatalities um we brought together a multi-disciplinary team um and looked at three different intimate partner fatalities last year and um what we do is we I will kind of gather everything I can from public records put it into a summary doc which usually is like 15 to 20 Pages the multidisiplinary team spends about an hour ahead of the meeting reviewing that and then we'll come together for three or three and a half hours and really dive deeply into that case and from that try to learn from these individual cases what do people experience whe their family experience and where can we increase our supports for families and where can we um hold offenders accountable we really kind of set it up so we talk in a way that's respectful acknowledging um we always have people in the room who' have worked on those cases and know those people um we've had people in the room who've worked with those people or had those people in their school um we've had people who been the first responder so just trying to be really respectful of the way that it impacts all of us personally and our self-care and also the fact that these were our community members who some of whom were dead some were in prison there are kidss still in our communities um members so um we really try to ground that in learning the past looking forward being respectful of these human beings that um are part of our community and making change

moving forward so we'll spend this three to three and a half hours debriefing everything we learned what stood out to us what are the straints in our community responses what are the gaps in the recommendations um in may we met to look at across all three of the cases what are the themes and we'll be putting out a report probably in June a really brief kind of executive summary of our findings and recommendations um but some of the primary things we found that really St out to us was one the need to prepare natural resources so people are kids are in schools people go to the doctor people in faith communities people go to work and really needing to increase our support so that those agencies when people come forward or when they notice domestic violence that they can provide the support that they need and each one of those sectors does have a role um we also really knows how many kids are being affected we looked at cases where kids were killed where they witnessed a homicide where their dad's in prison um lots of violence being used as part of the violence so just thinking all these kids in our community and real prevention is going to look like how do we get support to those children while they're young before that flips because what we see of course is sometimes the generation continuing and becoming victims or offenders um and so some people actually left with some ideas of programs that we can do um to really connect more directly with schools to get support for those

kids um and then there's just a general lack of understanding still about domestic violence and who can be a victim or offender and what abuse is and so some of what we're going to be doing is working more closely with the media on how they um when something happens like how they frame it what's the information they provide what are the resources they provide how do they talk about the abuse versus um it's not like a conflict or dispute you know just a name as abuse so that people understand what's happening and then this fall the team is going to come together and look at sexual assault protection orders um we're going to look at every single one from 2023 since there were only like seven um and just look at the process what do the orders look like and try to come up with some ideas for how to start making that process more accessible and then um sever you heard me talking about this for a long time or this is like probably our longest project that I'm putting a lot of time into is our restorative justice pilot project um we started this in 20 we officially started working on this in 2019 and before that was just kind of some side conversations with Community Partners so in 2019 and 2020 we get LED year-long learning series U actually I'm going to back up for a moment just say one of the reasons we really got into this is there's two things about the way that we often approach domestic violence and sexual assault which is the legal system one is that especially in domestic

violence so much of what happens is not illegal emotional abuse is not illegal Financial abuse is not illegal controlling someone it's only a little bit illegal so there's lots of things that the criminal legal system cannot um address and the other thing is some people choose not to do that process it can be years um sometimes people care about the person that did it to them don't want them to go to jail there's all sorts of some people are students and they just want to be like address the problem and go back to you know move on with their lives so um we always hear we need more options for thinking about healing and safety and justice so we um have been working particularly Clos with the dispute resolution center on this one um we did a learning Series where for a year we brought together Community Partners to learn about restorative justice we kind of took a break during covid um came back in 2022 and started a planning work group so we now have a group of us that are like meeting and talking about this every month to really move it forward we got that Survivor feedback on Justice and healing we asked specifically about restorative justice uh we developed it's like a 12-page road map to developing our pilot program which we are kind of working through the steps currently we're studying this creative interventions toolkit it's a 600 page toolkit for Community accountability for gender-based violence um and some of the things that we can pull out of there are things like

how to do safety planning how to assess Readiness for a uh process how to think about who are the community members involved um to support victims and offenders and accountability you know what does a follow-up plan look like um and then we want to hold another gathering this fall for practitioners and interested stakeholders basically pulling together the people who did the learning series and are probably like wow we learned all the interesting stuff um and let them know what's happening next and there's always a little bit of the unknown with this projects I feel like we get to a thing where we're like oh we're almost ready and then something else will come up but one of the things that we are doing is just last week the Department of Justice released that grant that we've been waiting for for a long time um so along with DB SAS and dispute resolution center the makeshift art project and um Western Washington University we are going to be applying for that Grant which would fund us for five years to finish our planning phase and actually Implement processes for survivors which we're really um obviously excited to start providing so um hopefully we'll hear about that in September then kind finally our role some maybe I should have put this first is one of our primary roles is just to know about domestic violence and know how systems can respond um particularly in the last year I feel like a lot of workplaces and Faith communities have been reaching out for training and

wanting tools for how to provide support which are as I mentioned earlier places that really need to be prepared um we also often work with schools especially if an incident comes up sometimes people reach out and say like this is what we're doing but what else could we put in our communication or how should we about Survivor support um courts housing providers media and Healthcare Providers and actually this summer we're going to kick off some work around Healthcare Providers we have a professor at Western who um is looking to partner with the community agency to do research so she's going to help us develop more uh tools for healthcare providers which is very exciting for us and finally if you're not doing anything on Thursday um we are having our annual meeting I believe you all should have received an invitation and at this meeting um it's not at the Cy Auditorium it's the learning Commons at wam Community College so if you want to come check our website before you go to the wrong place but is at wam Community College we've had to change the place a little bit because people keep registering um so we're looking at how we can use Public Health to address sexual assault and domestic violence primarily this meeting uh Erica lottenbach is going to lead a large part of it talking about what is public health how does that interact with other community issues why is domestic violence really need that public health lens um and then what can we be doing in each of our agencies to

um really broaden some of the work we're doing so that will be this Thursday morning and I'm open to any questions or comments any questions for direct remarks CC M hman thank you Susan for the presentation um always look forward to this every year uh the I'm interested in learning about the grant for the restorative justice pilot project that's really exciting that there's a potential source of funding out there how much is it the grant for what will it fund uh you said it's over 5 years great question um it sounds lot of money because it's like a million dollars but it's for five years no it's like yeah I think it's a million dollars for five years so that goes really fast so primarily why I think the work that we're already doing it wouldn't fund but it would fund us to hire someone full-time to move that project forward it also we required to fund um an evaluation contact at our they're doing kind of a national evaluator we need to have an evaluation person here so Dr Christina burn who's on the commission has been in part of this project is going to do that um and then it would fund us to DB saas would be our Fiscal Agent so it covers their cost because when you take in a large Grant there's accounting cost and then it would fund more training one of the primary things they have you set aside money to um travel to trainings and bring trainers in so they would help guide us through implementation so I think it would really would take us from the work group we're doing now

into being able to after the first year you're supposed to be able to have a process offered to people with facilitators and case management and safety plans and everything which I know all's been a part of helping to move this forward and I know you know the need for this so yeah it's really exciting to start thinking about maybe having this and actually being able to make it happen yeah consc member lest yeah I want to continue Susan to ask about the restorative justice restorative justice takes different forms in different contexts and in some of those it has to do with um bringing perpetrator and victim together and it has to do with uh creating healing and a sense of responsibility in the perpetrator as well I don't know if that would be the right approach in this case so uh you said you were ask asking survivors what Justice and healing look like for them what does it look like CU it probably doesn't usually or often wouldn't include that sort of interaction yeah it depends and not I think one of the ways what I initially thought of restorative justice is there's like you'll have a circle and you have a facilitator and have the victim and some people and the offender some people and then you know kind of work through it and by the end the offender will be very sorry and won't do it again and the victim will feel better and that isn't always how it works there could be um lots of other formats including like the victim could have a proxy standing in for them um there

could be written communication between the two um actually one of the things that we heard a lot from the survivors we talked to was how many other people harmed them and a lot of times it was you you tell your friend or your family member your school counselor um and you didn't get the response you needed and that sometimes people wanted that conversation to happen who uh really want to support you moving forward I think there's a lot more motivation so um that is what it could look like we also did hear from people yeah there's kind of two groups there were people who were like no way um that person has hurt me for years if they find out how they hurt me they will do it more um and it will make them feel happy about ways that they can be effective and being abusive um but then there are other people and I would say um it's really that long-term domestic violence where I think most people are like no I want them you know as far gone as possible my rearview mirror um but some people do have kids in common so you have this long-term relationship and they could think of places where you could have conversation that would maybe help a lot like some people said I'd love to get a commitment that um we wouldn't communicate except via text um that we would exchange to certain places these are some things that happen in mediation as well but having more of a community around could maybe hold to some of that accountability and then I would say most common actually I think our grant

we're going to kind of say we're going to put it more of a focus on sexual assault you have to like say your percentages and so we're saying like I think like 80% of our Focus can be on sexual assault because at times you know a lot of times there's an acquaintance or a known person and those can be like more finite instances where having that conversation can lead to education empathy building for the offender and for the victim being able to say you might think you did nothing wrong but this is what happen like this is the impact on me this is how it has affected My Life um and that is really where we heard the people the most saying I would love to just tell him what he did to me I'd love to tell him how I live differently um I would love someone else to be there to back me up for it so I think that's really what it looked like but you know everything like what we're looking at is a Survivor driven driven process and actually the Department of Justice it's their office on violence against women so they have one of the reasons we're going for that funding is because they have a lot of Protections in place that these are supposed to be Survivor driven Survivor centered Survivor safety is number one um if someone doesn't want to do something you could take them through months of preparation if they're like actually know that's okay the months of preparation was support for their healing so um yeah that's a good question and actually I'll say I often used I think a lot of

people in our movement say domestic vience sexual assault should not be topics for restorative justice but um I remember when I was actually talking when we first started the learning series Shasta Kano Martin who works at the lumy cedar project um she works at lumy child welfare but also with the lumy cedar project leading peacemaking circles one of the things she said was her experience with restorative justice is sometimes the deeper the harm is the more invested people are and if it's something like um like if someone tags your fence you might want to tell them about the time it took you to like your fans you know but it's like that deep personal harm isn't there and so having someone really like if it's really personal people actually tend to be really invested um and so that's been her experience yeah C more Stone then Anderson um thank you for the the report and great appreciation for you the work that that the commission's been doing for for a long time and grateful just wanting one comment and then a question um but to highlight just personally seeing the importance with the focus on right missing and murdered indigenous women and children and people in general um and just knowing that through my work as an immigration attorney right in other countries sorry that's okay where someone can disappear right from the community um and how sort of unimaginable that is but knowing that it happens here at home um feeling just great responsibility to address that issue and

knowing that um some of those most right impacted by that also are most vulnerable in our community and maybe you know least likely to um to speak up or to have access to those Avenues of um of support and so yeah providing the time and space to you know to dedicate that work um is really important so thank you for taking that on and having noticed as well that what I've seen um working with the community has been an increase just anecdotally in instances of domestic domestic violence um and sexual assault even coming out of the pandemic and whether there's any correlation or not I don't know but so when you mentioned that there are reduced right numbers in those reports to law enforcement that that those numbers have decreased I'm just wondering within our community are there other have we created other spaces and other avenues for people to you know make those reports and so maybe that's where we see the decline or I understand there are great obstacles and barriers to why people may not feel comfortable reporting but you have any um I mean I like to think well again not everyone wants to use the legal system so I do like to think we're doing better at Preparing People to get the other supports they need um I definitely think things like it will be interesting to see the 2023 data as well because 2022 we were still a little bit doing all the virtual coming back from covid stuff um yes I I do think there's also we went through that same time where um you know there's been

kind of a spotlight on law enforcement and so I don't think that makes people wary and so one of the things um and I know Chief merch is on the commission she comes regularly and is very involved is just really and actually yeah some of our other staff as well is just making that connection to the community where people feel comfortable that that's a place to go I think is really important um I also do think people if they come for advocacy they're often asking what's going to happen and people um you often learn that it's not going to be like SVU like law it's they're they're not going to have like four detectives on your case until they solve you know and so as people start learning this is what it's going to look like this is the process it could be years if any you know then some people really just sit down and think about what are they committed to and so I think um and there's nothing I think that's actually a good thing for people to have a little reality testing and decide what they want instead of walking in and saying I didn't you know I thought I was going to make a report and it would be done in four months you know um but yeah I do think some of that is just the relationship building of helping people feel like when they come forward they'll get the support that they need Merson thank you um I've been excited about this project through since hearing it through SAS but one of the questions I had is capacity so with this grant funding um do you think it's you're

going to have the capacity for people who are currently going through um the process of reporting and then services and healing or will there be capacity for people who who have been kind of stuck in the process of healing and could maybe benefit plugging into this but maybe they don't have a current support system or case that's going yeah good question um so some of the limits on the grant is I mean because there are some safety assessments you have to do about the offender and so some things are like I mean if they have an open case so all cases kind of have to be closed um because you can't promise uh that none of those things that they would I mean you want them to able to come in and fully accept responsibility and that could end up in court um they also can't have a felony charge against them I think it's like three Mis so there's a number of kind of things in place that would make it so people with current issues would not um be a part of that and those are mainly related to safety and but other than that I think yeah one of our things would be to help prepare DB SAS advocates for talking with their clients about like this is one of the other options this how I can support you through it um and yeah I will say capacity is our biggest I actually was the least um wanting to apply for this grant because I was like but after five years what are we going to do and uh mo water this few resolution center helped me just decide like we should just go for it I mean what if we

don't get it so we don't know unless we go for it but also 5 years is enough time for us to learn a lot and think about how to do things but I do worry about capacity all of our agencies are over taxed already and that doesn't mean that this isn't needed and so I think that's just something like everything else we have to figure out as we go along is how do we offer this really important service to people who need it in the community and also yeah dbas doesn't have enough staff or enough funding as it is so yeah committee cons question um Susan I wanted to ask you said only onethird of protection orders are granted those are mostly DV protection orders and it sounds like you haven't really done a dive into why that happens but is your impression that the that are those being denied by the commissioner at the end of the process or is the is the uh petitioner kind of like dropping out of the process due to the difficulty of the process itself yes to both um and actually we did do a deep dive um I think it was it was right when I started so I think it was in 2011 that we finished up an audit um of the SE of the domestic vience protection order office the Civil domestic viance protection order process um and that audit is still a really valuable guide because we have not made a whole lot of process on implementing changes but actually that's one of the things this grant would allow and um one thing that has changed we have um there's kind of a new bench in Superior and district

courp and so people have different experiences and so we there's a lot of support to starting to implement some of those audit recommendations um and the funding will help do that so hopefully it would help um some of the training there also new protection guidelines on coercive control can be a part of a civil protection order so provide some of that training and then also provide more advocacy one of the things it would do is fund a dvas Advocate to be housed at the courthouse to be like right on site because it seems close the courthouse and DV SAS but if you're like you know on your lunch break or dragging a couple kids around or you took the bus downtown and it's raining those blocks can be or you're you know disabled and need to drive like that can really be a barrier so hopefully one of the things it'll do is reduce a lot of those barriers get people connected right away with an advocate um and so if they get a temporary order and they want that final order then they'll have the support to do that also final order is only a year so I think some people when you get that in a year if you have the same problem you have to go back through that whole process again so um that is a state issue but more support available and one of the things that Grant would do provide um attorneys for people if they the offender has an attorney then the petitioner we could fund attorneys for the petitioner as well which is another barrier Stone yeah just to follow up on Council liist

question because that was one of the other things that I highlighted was less than a third right being granted a final order um and you mentioned that most of those were prosay right and is that simply because there right there aren't enough that's yeah and that's everywhere I mean most people can't afford an attorney um it is meant to be a prosay process that does not mean that we actually when we did our audit someone who was um she was actually the court administrator at Belling Municipal Court was on our audit team and she went in to request you know kind of hypothetical protection came away was like I don't know what to do you know and so like even in our system it's complicated so yeah having an advocate I feel like is key have I mean actually had someone just last week who works you know in an agency our community say I have to go to District like how do I get there and where do I park just some of those Basics are really confusing even if you're really comfortable moving about these systems so advocacy part is huge and then having attorneys for people especially in family law um you know you're making agreements about long-term Arrangements about your children and then in those civil protection orders to have advocacy so thing we see that right repeated in lots of different systems when yeah it's a civil matter and there's not representation sort of guaranteed so similar with the tenants rights right when you're having people trying to navigate those systems so and

the grant does have an access uh a focus on language access which is definitely um obviously think about our immigrant population sedu to all sorts of people who speak languages other than English so yeah committee further questions I'll take a go um just wondering uh direct marks if you could just touch on DV offender treatment services available in the community and what what's available and what's needed Bally yeah oh my gosh yeah I mean that is an ongoing need um okay so we do currently have so Lumi through lumy Behavioral Health has two providers and they serve people through lumy tribal court then there's another provider called Phoenix counseling and they operate out of I believe it's yaka County but they also have an office here um and then there's one other provider it's the clarity Mental Health they do one group of domestic violence treatment um it is not enough it remains people pay for it and so that is a problem if you're an Indigent offender I know the city and the county give funding to District Court probation and they contract with Phoenix counseling so um they can pay some of those costs which is really important and getting people there um I think paying for things is a part of accountability and also if you're also supposed to pay your child support and your court you know like it helps the parent more if you're just paying your child support than um the offender treatment and yeah there is not enough there's none that's provided directly in another

language um so to a group with a translator is complicated um I think some is via Zoom but there's none outside of uh Bellingham right now in wam County I think the quality is improving and the state level oversight has definitely gotten really strong um one of our actually local providers now pre prior local providers works there and provides some of that oversight as well as another person but yes it is a need and I think it's hard to get funding and money for because one we're not funding victim services or prevention enough um and then also it's hard to argue for services for offenders sometimes people don't always want to see that need um it definitely it can reduce harm and I think that's really important thank you I just wanted to make maybe just kind of go on record here saying that this is one of the big gaps in our community um and it um affects people of color and people who um may have lower incomes more than than other um so yeah I think that that might be worth an Ask of our state legislature to perhaps take a look at this for funding purposes but then it comes down to Workforce who will be the provider in the community and that's been a perennial issue um for years um but thanks for addressing that actually add one so one yeah the money doesn't we yeah a lot of providers don't want to do it because it doesn't really pay their time you can't build Insurance the other actually one of the things in the case reviews too that we really sure there's no surprise that

it's tied up deep like we need that kind of wraparound with substance abuse treatment housing support mental health treatment um especially with like fat andol and math it can really actually impact long-term you know their way their brain functions and increase abuse in ways that other drugs can't so it's like that whole but I feel like perpet treatment often gets left out of that conversation and we just want to do the mental health the housing and the substance abuse but we haven't addressed the control so yeah I'm really glad to hear you say that and I'd love to be provide any information you need if you do that at the state level thanks appreciate it thank you any further questions all right thanks thank you for the presentation thank you so much I appreciate your interest and engagement yeah thank you okay we'll move on to our next agenda item and this is financial management guidelines um so uh strong upto-date financial policies are critical to maintaining the financial health of the city these policies ensure fiscal prudence and guide decision-making and policy prioritization they also set parameters for many Financial procedures including budgeting monitoring issuing debt and investing the financial management guidelines and Associated policies were last updated in 2010 this new version updates for brevity and Clarity throughout makes significant changes to the budget policy to reflect a return to a one-year budget and revises fund Reserve targets and here to take

us through as Finance director Andy ason yes thank you Council um we've been talking about the financial management guidelines for some time we're happy to finally bring them forward to you for official uh review and approval um the financial management guidelines as as stated in the uh opening statement were last uh approved in 2010 uh there's solid guidelines even from 2010 so we continue to follow them today but they did need a a bit of an updating throughout and so um what we look to with financial management guidelines is we look to some of the best practices out there from s the state excuse me the state RS office has paired with uh the mrsc to come up with some Financial toolkits there's a lot of examples on on updated Financial policies out there also looking to government Finance Officers Association and and other um sources so we can have the best practices out there um really the written guidelines um help local government officials and staff approach all Financial issues uh these are essential to the financial health of the city can help officials management and staff make the right decision not only now but into the future so they're really looking into the long range uh the policies are also looked at by outside agencies when eval evaluating the financial management and health and stability of a city and so these were looked at recently when we uh had a bond rating agency review by S&P for our upcoming Bond and they reaffirmed our doua plus uh rating so uh

Financial uh policies are are are looked at in our um are important to have uh what we have in our financial management guidelines the overarching financial guidelines uh this just covers those basic uh premises of the the guidelines of the priorities and how we address uh revenues and expenditures uh not a big significant change to that from the 2010 policies but um we did uh streamline the wording of of the financial guidelines also in here are uh Reserve targets which uh Forest will take us more in depth on the res Reserve targets some bigger changes on those uh debt policy uh not much of a change the biggest change was that our 2010 policy had a requirement where our debt coverage would be at least two times the annual Debt Service so our Revenue would have to be two times we've reduced that to 1.7 we've also talked to our financial advisers on on how that's viewed and it they say it's not going to make a big change it's actually recommended to bring it down a little bit to that 1.7 is more common uh for that debt coverage ratio so that's the only big change in the or small change in the debt policy budget policy is um a bit much more significant change moving from a two-year budget to a one-year budget so we are looking to bring forward an ordinance that will repeal the two-year budget um requirement we're going to repeal that ordinance and that'll take us back to a oneye we're looking to bring that to council very soon um we also have the investment policy which there

are some uh larger changes which are also in the slide deck where Forest will take you through some of those differences in what is available to be invested in uh per RCW um thank you uh so our financial management priorities uh the city will allocate its resources consistent with the following uh service priorities so this has not changed significantly from the 2010 so Priority One is ensure Public Safety and meet all legal and mandated obligations priority two is provide General City governance maintain the existing infrastructure of the city operate city-owned and operated amenities and programs uh then down to Priority three is replace existing city-owned assets and equipment and then priority four is invest in new assets amenities and or programs to advance policy goals uh so that is pretty in line with the previous ones what we've done is um separate out priority 3 and priority four uh 2010 guidelines only had priority three and had both those bottom ones together we've just added that fourth priority to evaluate the hierarchy of of funding these are also very useful at this time as we're going into a future budgeting uh period so um what we'd like to do is bring forward the financial guidelines and fin Financial priorities um annually at least every two years we we'll reaffirm these guidelines so we're not going to wait 14 years again to bring these back forward to council uh this is a helpful graph as we're evaluating revenue and and what the city will uh do in these

different um Revenue cases so on the right side is increasing revenues and on the left side is decreasing um revenues so on the upper right is when the city is experiencing steeply Rising revenues uh the expectation is what we' look to do is meet long-term unfunded commitments uh and also increased service levels um when we're experiencing uh rising steeply Rising revenues when we have slightly Rising revenues that's when we're just looking to maintain Services we don't want to uh extend our uh extend what we're doing too much we want to make sure that we can meet all of our expenses um slightly declining revenues is uh lower service levels and reduce capital investment and then on the bottom left is deeply declining revenues uh that's when you have lower service levels narrow programming reduce capital investment so at the moment we feel like we are uh kind of in between uh we we've kind of flattened out so we're not we're not really in experiencing much growth the first three months of the year we saw uh that we were under our budget projections for sales tax and then uh in April we finally saw that we had jumped above it slightly so we're uh either in the slightly declining or slightly Rising but we've definitely flattened out where um expenses are um expected to slightly grow faster than our our Revenue Source at the time but this is where we look to our financial policies and we're going to our budget uh time frame as to what we're going to look to do or or how we can

make sure that we can ensure the Financial Health now and into the future of the city now pass it over to Forest that'll get more into the reserve uh targets and the investment policy um when you say April is slightly above is that for the four months or just the projection of April has gone up a little bit just April so April yeah the sales tax that came in at the end of April was slightly above budgeted expectations thank you I'm going to I'm going to discuss our our reserves and how we're changing our general fund reserves uh specifically we changed all of our reserves uh to simplify our reserve requirements and and just streamline it but didn't have a I don't think most of those have a dramatic change on on what has to be held aside but we do want to go through our general fund reserve and so we wanted to talk a little bit about the government Finance Officers Association best practices for reserves so as we go down this um the first one is to maintain no less than two months of general fund expenditures the city uh our current policy of 15% is close to that um but it is 15% is a little less than uh than 2 months it's certainly not more than so we we wanted to take a look at that uh they talk about the adequacy of the reserve should be based on the risks unique to the municipality we didn't feel like that discussion had been had so we wanted to talk about that um they said we should Define appropriate uses we didn't feel like the current policy really talked about what

that Reserve was for and I'm going to talk more about that it our current policy and the and the new policy definitely Define the rep replenishment timeline um it defines how to use fund reserves in excess of those uh restricted reserves which is to limit them to one-time uses it says you should assess your Capital renewal and replacement needs we do that to some degree um we're working on a more robust assessment of all of our Capital needs that may impact um non-infrastructure needs our facilities things like that and that you should comp consider the impact on our bond rating and with a doublea plus Bond rating we feel like we're in pretty good shape in that regard so going back to that question of defining appropriate uses and and what are reserves for um our traditional definition has just sort of been it's a savings account for a rainy day or you know it's the emergency Reserve but there's never been uh a lot of clarity in what exactly that means so as we were uh we went I went to a conference and and talked about this a little bit and we did some research and it's really uh came around to this better definition of thinking about it in in tears so the primary the first thing is this catastrophic insurance so that's that um that Reserve That Base reserve is for significant disasters when revenues or expenses may be uh significantly upended for some period of time and then the second purpose is for economic risk mitigation to soft or soften the economic IC downturns and

then the final tier is as a savings account so that's to save up and pay for uh large one-time expenses and so the new uh policy includes language that that defines these three tiers more explicitly uh getting into thinking about what our risks are for that first tier uh what do we need to ensure against well the city's the main risk uh that we see uh the big risk is that geog geological risk R the Earth Lake the tsunami there's some elevated climate risk uh increased Wildfire flooding exposure we also have risks about liability and property damage liability claims property damage those we mitigate internally with our self Insurance um and our uh claims and litigation funds and our outside insurance policies but then also the general fund is a back stop for other other fund losses and then looking at that second tier the economic mitigation and we wanted to think about that a little bit more um the pie chart is just showing that we have a very even distribution of revenues from our sales tax and that does or for in our general fund we have five major Revenue sources that are all fairly balanced so that does mitigate the risk to some degree some are more economically impacted than others but in 2008 we did see our G General friend revenues decline by 8% and it took four years to recover so that kind of use that as a guideline for the recommendations for Reserves bringing that together what we're recommending and what the policy includes is um is is is taking on that tiered

approach um and and being a little more willing to have a higher Reserve level when we talk to other well-managed uh cities you know having a higher amount of reserves you know in the last few years there's been a little bit of a narrative that the city's holding on to too much money that we have too much money in reserve and when we talked to those other well-managed cities they had reserves uh similar to what we had and we weren't really an outlier in that regard um so looking at this we have uh our our tiers here were recommending up for the Emergency reserve a 15% floor and an 18% Target and an economic reserve on top of that with a 5% floor and a 10% Target with a cumulative then the floor would be 20% with a 28% uh total Target Reserve balance mons and if you look on the right here this shows uh where we are in regards to our our general fund Reserves at the beginning of this year and how they would be stacked so the policy clarifies that we we'd have that emergency Reserve filled first then we' do the the base for the economic reserve and then we'd add the 3% to get to 18% for the Emergency Reserve then add on the economic reserve and actually right now we have this arpa Reserve but this red line that represents what the minimum Reserve level would be uh with this policy with our current level of reserves and then up here is this is where we were with our Reserve balance at the beginning of 2024 and then any excess reserves would act as a savings account for these

capital projects um the 18% we got to by saying you know the the the risks that the city face are are difficult to quantify they're low probability they're high impact there's going to be Federal engagement with something like that but so we decided to sort of default to the the best practices on that we wanted to get it up above that two two month that gfoa recommends with a little bit of cushion on top of that being no less than two month is being the target so that's how we got to that number and then the economic Reserve was based on on what we saw in 2008 and what could happen and having that economic Reserve will allow us to to get through any recessionary period without having to make drastic Chang es uh to our service delivery hopefully uh that's the intent so I guess before I dive into in the investment policy changes um if there's any comments or questions on that name marquist uh thank you so uh Forest you said the old way of describing Reserve was a rainy day fund I'm going to use that outdated metaphor anyway um when do we know it's raining when do we know it's time to say begin looking at the economic Reserve portion we had uh inflation Spike at 8 9% couple years ago which led to a delayed hit to the city finances because wages had to keep Pace with inflation was that a rainy day when when do we consider drawing it down not below its minimum but at least above below its Target yeah and we did put a definition so he said that this Reserve may be accessed when

revenues or shorter projections or when revenues are projected to fall um as determined by the city council but I think the the key is as determined by the city council so you know if we are putting together a budget or we are mid um Mid budget and our projections are starting to suggest that we would come to council and have a discussion about that if it was appropriate to get into that Reserve we sort of been talking about damp weather recently I'm sorry to say that again haven't we sort of been talking about damp weather recently didn't you just indicate that some of our our Revenue projections were falling low and hasn't been clear in the budget discussions that we do have a revenue problem is it raining yet well it you know it's it's hard to say what the forecast is saying exactly right now and it it may be uh rain may be in the forecast so we'll that'll be part of the conversation going forward um you know we'll have to assess where we are with these reserves also for the beginning of next budget cycle and it'll be part of a conversation with the Council of of where we want to dip into where we're at and and where we want to go you I will say you know we we call these the financial management guide guidelines because to some extent there are guidelines right and and the council sets these guidelines sets this policy and as Andy said we want to bring them back more often so this is what we're recommending at this time and we'll continue to assess and make sure that these

guidelines are working for the city and and meeting the council's goals as we go forward I think the peculiarity of psychological in that if times are looking a little bit difficult economically if expenses seem to be going up or revenues are are lagging um it seems like there's a a a reaction to want to be a little bit conservative and play it safe oddly enough dipping into the reserves the thing you're may be supposed to do seems like a risky thing and you've just put yourself into a very conservative mind frame so oddly enough the moment when we might dip into reserves is when it feels like it's the least prudent thing to do well I think I I agree with you I think that that notion of the reserves is a is a psychological barrier but the the idea between create behind creating this economic Reserve is that so we have something that we can dip into no matter what um and hopefully remove that psychological barrier because when it's just a rainy day fund we never know how hard is it raining when we can dip into this right do we is it a drizzle is it a thunderstor storm but with that economic Reserve it's you know it can be a little more clear and hopefully that acts acts more as a buffer uh for our our real that critical Reserve Mar Anderson thank you um I I really do like how this is presented um I I like the categories the understanding between the emergency and the economic reserve for me is pretty clear um based on like right now what is our Reserve level and the difference

between where we are and where we would like to be you know excluding arpa how long do you think it would take for us to get there until we have the funds in order to meet these uh these tiers yeah good question so you can see this line at the top this is where we are at the beginning of 2024 so it it is currently fully funded now we are budgeted to dip into our reserves not the restricted reserves but just our our our cash on hand during this budget cycle so as we're evaluating the budget process um you know we'll be coming back to you with a better idea of where we're expecting to end this year where we think we'll be and then if we are not at our Reserve targets you know how we intend to get there thank you any further questions c m Stone um thank you yeah the Graphics helpful and the detail in the um that addendum a was helpful in outlining it as well I guess and thinking about council member liist question um I mean I'm looking at this as though we still right when we're preparing the budget and passing the budget you're doing so separate from the reserves I mean ideally you're not you're not factoring the reserves into the budget itself but then the way I look at it is through the course of then a budget cycle something that was not predicted right happens that then forces us to make a decision that okay to keep the lights on we're going to have to dip into our reserves and those being the economic reserves but the emergency Reserve being again something that you're not

sort of trying to determine are we in the middle of a crisis or not like it's a you know a major disaster where clearly right we're then in sort of a state you know a true state of emergency um and so I just want to be clear on that economic Reserve piece that when we're looking at because something you just said made me think so if we are looking at our budget now and um accommodating for I guess dipping into those economic reserves as part of our budget right to stay to keep the lights on is that what we're doing and then at what point then are we need to have harder conversations about okay clearly that's not sustainable so we need to take a deeper look at the budget to Make Some Cuts to avoid going into those reserves right I mean I feel like it's I'm hoping it's not quite as as nuanced that bring more deliberate in I I mean I think we'll be I don't think we can say we cons we don't consider reserves when we are budgeting it's definitely a part of the consideration you know we we are looking at this budget cycle with the the notion that we need to close you know we have a $4 million operating deficit in our general fund we need to close that Gap because it's not sustainable so we're certainly looking to budget in a way that that that takes care of that and is responsible for creating Financial stability in the future and so this will be a guideline to going into that and You Know It ultimately is sort of the council's decision if if the economic Reserve should be uh

accessed and so part of our budget process will be evaluating that and then coming to council and talking to council about where we are and why we've proposed what we've proposed and if we were proposing to dip into that or not if we think that the grounds are there to do so does that make is that helpful I would yeah to add to that i' would even say that we have budgeted into our economic Reserve in the current bayum and so that is uh the service levels that were requested that were wanted um that were approved that that was dipping into our economic Reserve in this bium and that's that $4 million deficit as well that would need to be corrected um we would we would say that the 15% is that hard floor but that economic Reserve gives us flexibility when we're looking for revenues to adjust expenditures to adjust um and hopefully going to the one-year budget also gives us that shorter term perspective and a better better ability to forecast uh that near term rather than really looking out to that second year of that bium um and not knowing because that's where we are now when we're trying to evaluate what those revenues will be and then What expenses we can offset or what revenues will offset those future expenditures and now we're seeing those revenues are not coming in at what we had budgeted because it's such a long forecast do you have a followup well just really I guess the thought was the difference between then shortterm and long-term right forecasting which I don't envy

the position that you all are in right to have to to try and make those those predictions but again it's the idea of is this sort of a a I guess in in response to what council M Anderson was saying right the time that it's going to take us to rebound then from that and rebuild those reserves versus if it's more long-term trajectory that's looking downward we're not likely going to be rebounding anytime soon and so then you know You' proceed with more caution but yeah that makes sense yeah the the guidelines also establish a time frame as to when we need to replenish those reserves so we look to make a plan to replenish those within the next 3 years to try to bring us back to stable further questions before we trans transition into investment policy changes okay I don't see me so we can go ahead yeah um the investment policy itself there's not a lot of meaningful changes in the narrative but this table wanted to bring to your attention how we're changing what the city is allowed to invest in so left-and column is just the types of Investments the middle column is what the the current policy allows and at what percentages of our overall um portfolio and then what we're proposing with this new 2024 policy so as you can see uh most things aren't changing what we are changing is we are allowing uh supranationals which are um International Development agency bonds typically uh that are backed by the United States government so are fairly safe are very safe um and and we have I will

also add that as we've built this policy we're modeled it on the um on the best practices with the gfoa and the Washington uh State treasurers Association um and then we've also uh add allow G changed to allow of corporate notes which is a little a little bit longer term um corporate debt was not allowed before uh we we found that during uh the really low interest rate times uh we would have been able to eek out a little more yield with those and we think that there is value there and then we've taken off um repurchase agreements and bankers acceptance uh not necessarily because we feel like there's a lot of risk there but we just don't buy those um typically and so we just didn't feel like they needed to be allowed in our policy we wanted it to reflect what our actual investment uh practices were um it also UPS our uh our Municipal Bond uh limit up to a combined uh 25% between in the state and out of the state and um T municipal bonds are typically very very very safe and again when rates were really low having the ability to go a little over that 10 we were constantly at that 10% limit trying to eek out a little bit more yield so we wanted to to up that a little bit uh as opportunities arise so mquest have a few questions and probably a difference of opinion um first of all I I appreciate upping the municipal Bond percentage I'd be comfortable with it going even higher than that um as you say there it's a very safe form of investment um but I'm also and also if we don't use

repurchase agreements and bankers acceptance yeah let's just scrub them um but I'm also not looking just at Financial Risk I'm looking at what I might call geop political risk um for example the supernationals how do I know that the uh Asian development bank is an investing in lithium mines in Indonesia which are leading to enormous environmental Destruction for example how do I know that this is an occasion when we're happen to be uh you know investing through some other world Bank say in um I don't know uh surveillance and AI technology in Israel which would now provoke a great deal of problem say if we were another investing body so I've been happy to be able to say when various geopolitical threats come up don't worry we're not invested in equities we're not invested in commercial venors we don't have Wall Street exposure and I mean geopolitical exposure not Financial exposure um do we really need another fraction of a percentage Point more in yield that we're willing to take on that geopolitical risk that is a political question I don't think that our Finance people should be asking or answering that question but I'm asking that question I I I don't I don't see a particular reason to move into commercial paper the supernationals is probably less of a risk but I don't know because I haven't looked into it I'm not sure uh whether the world bank has the kind of exposure that I'm concerned with for example so those are those are my thoughts and I don't know if anybody else

uh would like to explore that question further can I just on the supernational piece um obviously the this is all council's decision and I totally agree with who you're coming from specifically on the corporate notes if that's something that Council doesn't want to have to um worry about that political exposure that totally makes sense I would say just with the supernationals it's it's similar to treasuries in a lot of regards I mean the federal government uh probably does a lot of things that some people's politics may not agree with um so I would I would say that it's closer to that than commercial paper but I just throw that out there M Anderson that was my my same question and same concern is I don't know enough about the supernationals to know whether or not I mean we have community members who are protesting to um make sure entities are not vesting their City funds um that would benefit and right now I'm able to say no because we're municipal ons and such I don't know enough about the supern national to give the green light because I would like to know more about where their Investments are in the sense of the more political concerns and environmental concerns um because the example of the lithium mines or and other areas where children labor is utilized those are things that I don't want our city funds to go to and if I can't say with 100% assurity that that's not happening with our funds I wouldn't be comfortable approving that particular type so I guess maybe a

better example of what in cupus and where that that money chain or money line would go for that type of funding would be useful well I would just uh a good example is the World Bank um and so that's making to other governments and it's being backed by our government and other um governments so I will say we don't feel super strongly about including any of these I mean some of these we need to be included but but in terms of the supernationals and the and the corporate uh Investments if it's council's wish to exclude those it's we don't feel strongly we're we're just trying to create more options that felt safe and were Within the the framework of what we are allowed to invest in that would allow us to get more yield in times when yield is hard to get by come by follow up Anderson yeah follow up um so if we say no is there another you know for that 25% that would have similar yield and security that we could then change um these percentages and and not necessarily hurt us financially yeah no I mean what you see here is is basically everything that's legally allowed for us to invest in and whether or not we're going to allow ourselves to and it's I will say right now we're ex exclusively even though commercial paper was allowed before we're exclusively invested in US treasuries local investment pool and us us agency's bonds so that's what we invest in all I mean all the time uh and this is just providing options for the future and that would be a 25% limit of the entire

portfolio and we're not invested in it now you know it I don't think it makes a huge difference we're talking about potentially a few pieces of yield uh uh you know a few basis points in the future one more followup then I'll go to cust Williams it's not a followup I'd like to um make a motion that we remove uh Supra Nationals from our investment policy changes uh with the caveat that in the future it could be reintroduced if we could have some level of assurity um where the financial um where the funds would go to ensure that they align with our priorities as a city second and a question motion been made by council member Anderson second by council member liquis go ahead council member and then I need to go to Williams So speaking to the motion I at this point my my impulse is to strike supernational supranationals and Commercial paper notes um the way that I be feel comfortable including them is if uh our finance Staff feel that they could I don't know in a certain sense you know dig into what the corporate note is and have it pass some test but that sounds like a lot of work yeah I think that I think that it is um and it's also um subjective so what you might uh how we draw that line would be challenging I think uh for example one thing that comes across my desk in terms of corporate notes often is that Brokers are trying to sell me is like apple because it's a AAA rated it's very stable it has lots of cash um which makes it palatable to governments um but again you talk

about lithium lithium mining or how apples building its phones in China or or any number of things that could trip up one person and not the next or someone may feel strongly about and I think it's cleaner probably if if we have concerns about it that we could just excise these things um those are um and uh we could make the these edits easily this afternoon and you could still pass the resolution for the policy this evening Council M Williams I need to call a question time well actually um council member lillquist uh question was the one I was going to ask in part but um back in 2010 why was it not allowed do you have a record of why that ration what I don't I mean none of us were here so that's what I thought perhaps Council liquis has an idea but uh I suspect it was a similar concern and and so the followup to to council member List's question I was going to ask is how would you evaluate those investment opportunities if they came up and what I heard you say was it's a subjective process um there aren't any guidelines and I hope it wouldn't be you'd have to come to us to get that sorted out because that would be more subjective and and we're typically making these transactions trying to do them quickly and stuff so that's easier for us just to have a clear line for sure okay go ahead council member um yeah I guess my question was council member list whether was that an amendment to the original motion to then include commercial paper and corporate notes or either we could

make it as Amendment or I could just do it as as a second motion afterwards you're either way works equally so I didn't want to I didn't want to complicate the discussion just yet the council member um has agreed to the amendment so the the motion will be to eliminate supern super National is not the easiest word to say and then commercial paper from this um policy portfolio corporate notes corporate notes those go together the CP and the CN okay Miss Gat did you get that Mo that motion okay any questions on that motion okay seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed extensions recusals motion carries 70 okay anything else go ahead um it didn't seem like the right time to ask at the beginning when we were talking about the priorities 1 2 3 4 would you mind putting that slide back up so um from reading what follows that it's clear that these really are in order one is higher than two is higher than three is higher than four and I had the same problem in 2010 because priority four sounds like the wants and others are the needs and priority four is the things we'll get to if we have Financial room um that's really where most of our work lies if we don't adequately address priority four items and the City of Bellingham is failing our community it's not an answering the wishes or requests the community have of us we're not stepping up to housing affordability we're not stepping up to climate change we're not adding bicycle and pedestrian Master plans inside

priority four is a lot of the work we do to improve the quality of life for Bellingham it's a lot of our work is in priority for you can make a stretch for of these things that stepping up to say downtown safety uh means we can also step up to mental health and drug addiction or to child welfare for example there's a lot of things we do that you kind of have to stretch to squeeze them into basic legal obligations or basic demands so I just simply have a problem with priority for being so low in the hierarchy I'd rather reframe this that our entire one of our highest goals should be to manage our assets and our revenues and our expenditures to ensure that we can also fund priority for our goal should not be to sacrifice for when we need to and roll it back in when we want our goal should be always to be able to make it all the way into it Priority for and deeply so so I think there's a there's something wrong about the way this is formulated that I think could be fixed with different language which indicates that priority 4 is sort of the goal right that we could have bread and water and a vitamin pill and live but we're here actually to set a full table for our community so we also want the other food items on our on our table so I would want to actually rewrite that to indicate what I'm saying that priority four isn't Last priority four is in a sense our goal let's take care of the needs and then let's do the other things that were asked to do so I would I would actually

rewrite that very important part at the beginning of the financial guidelines and I'm wondering if there's any support for that idea CC M are you making a motion or making a speech he's asking yeah let's just see the tenor first uh Council M Williams and Huffman I guess that my question is when you formulated that with those counc member Williams can you turn on your microphone please thank you my question is when you formulate that was your intent to say Priority One is more is more than four yes they are a hierarchy of order to ensure uh the longevity and future of the city's Financial Health okay may go ahead and I'll just add I appreciate what council member lilyquist said about setting a full table for the community but if we go look at uh the city Charter the description especially on the administrative executive side it essentially is only Priority One and Two those are the priorities of the executive branch reflected there so in terms of a hierarchy and in the Practical realities of our budget constraints that is my obligation is to ensure the public safety and the infrastructure of the city so CM Williams you have a followup okay uh C hman then Anderson and then I've got to move us forward here we're certain to fall behind and we have the world's longest slide deck up in about you win the prize go ahead hman thank you um I think and maybe this gets a little bit at what council member list is talking about but priority number one of uring Public Safety I think that

the term Public Safety can be defined so many different ways and the general public might look at that phrase and think something a little different than we sitting up here might um think I guess in terms of financial management priorities what what is the definition of Public Safety that we're considering here when we consider our priorities response to from staff well I would just you know one of the things we talked about in this whole thing is uh the value of being more specific on things and defining things um but these are our financial guidelines and I alluded to this a little bit more and I would say that to some degree ensuring Public Safety is what council defines uring Public Safety to be and and we didn't want to Define any of these things in the in the in the policy explicitly because these things can change over time and what is included in that today may be different than what's included to that tomorrow and certainly what was considered to be included in that 10 or 15 years ago so I would say we left that a little broad on purpose some of these things Anderson I was just going to say I'm okay with the four priorities um as listed and I understand what council member liquis is getting at but I'm also very um linear in the sense that we have to take care of you know our first thing is Public Safety whether you define that police and fire or roads or housing or Health Services it's just what the public expects of us is a you know that their basic care is being

taken care of and for me we have to maintain what we have in order to not lose value and to invest in new assets is after we've taken care of our house and our bills and our maintenance and the family that we've created which is our employees in community then we can go forward um and create new with our investments um so basically I wouldn't support changing this um I kind of like the way it's written because I think um there's a lot of strong values in there um especially um provide General City governments in maintaining the existing infrastructure of the city that we've already invested we need to maintain it and then with that we can hope create new with what funding is available and we have special initiatives to create those things so it's not as though there's not a slice of the pie that goes to number four we have very dedicated funds specifically for it already Okay council member Stone has convinced me to sorry I'll try and be very succinct but just um to respond to council liist as well I appreciate these outlining these priorities the way you have and I do see them in you know um in order and I think it's important because yes Council and the community gets very excited about priority four and then overlooks priorities 1 two and three which are the things that we have to provide for first um and really have to be addressed so I think it's important in our budget priorities to be outlining those so that they do receive the attention that that's needed okay any

other questions comments pursuant to this C lqu go ahead G to give it a try um people say school districts should just do Reading Writing and arithmetic but that's a sucky School District where's the Athletics where's The Debate Club where's the music where's the drama I don't think that's a good school district I don't think it's a good city if we do one two three and maybe get around to four I hereby move that we amend the financial policies to include directly after priority 4 the statement that furthermore the city's Financial goal the the city's Financial goal shall be to manage its Financial conditions such that all four priorities may be addressed may be what may be addressed our goal is to manage it so we can do all four I'm not erasing the hierarchy I'm just saying our goal should be to address all four there a second can I clarify is that in the opening statement where it says the city of Bellingham will allocate it's resources is that where you've added it or is it a line underneath a line after priority four in the in the text so above the bold face City management guideline I'm adding it as a followon statement to clarify 1 2 34 which occur in hierarchical order and it says furthermore the city's Financial goal shall be to or the goal the the city the goal of the city shall be to manages Financial conditions such that all four priorities may be addressed here a second and motion had a courtesy I'll second I'm sorry second okay motions been made by council member

lillquist seconded by council member Anderson further discussion on this one counc member Williams I have a question sure council member lillquist it it it it it sounds to me that by adding that sentence down at the bottom it gives all four equal weight is that what you're seeking no I'm I'm not trying to overturn the hierarchy I'm just trying to say that our goal should be go which able to go all the way through the hierarchy and make sure we reach the bottom as well that should be our goal that's not saying it has to happen but it's saying it should be our goal so my so my followup is does that opening sentence at the top speak to that because it does to me I don't I think it it lacks a Clarity that I need personally and the clarity that I hope to have had in 2010 um I I really do think that the majority of our work is in priority four and we need to take care of priorities 1 two and three yes but we ought to get to priority for items and that ought to be our financial goal is to manage our our fiscal house such so we can also do priority 4 if we're not also trying to manage our finances so we can get to Priority four then we're sort of in a sense not saying that priority 4 is a priority at all so let's make sure priority 4 is enough of a priority that we will manage our finances to make sure we can do that as well uh further questions to the motion uh council member Stone you look confused so I'm I'm struggling with this not in in in some respects I I mean I appreciate

what you're saying but clearly that's the work that we've been doing for a very long time and I believe everyone's committed to continuing to do as Council mom Williams said that you know opening statement and it being listed as one those are our priorities that's what we're working towards and so some of my hesitation is that in going to that degree to articulate and with great specificity to state that what I'm struggling with is does that feed into what maybe distrust in the community right do we have to spell out everything about our intentions I mean I feel like clearly that's our intention and what what we are are doing and so to me I'm just struggling with is that Shining Light on something to me it makes me question like well were we not doing this like why is it needed to specify it was left out in 2010 and that was so since 2010 we haven't been addressing priority 4 no that that's the case this is the time for the city council to put things inexplicit black and right white this is this is when we go all the further distance and make sure everything is clear so that in 10 years time and all the years in between then everyone knows exactly what we intended this is the time for Extraordinary Clarity C Willian I'm G to call a question go ahead I'm having a hard time understanding the need because just like council member Stone has said since I've been on this Council we've been doing all four and I don't I don't foresee this city excluding three and4 unless there's some

natural disaster or crisis of some kind where we need to focus on something else but I see us doing just what you're asking the sentence to say and I don't think it needs to change because we're already doing it the first sentence says that it doesn't say the following Services Services prior priorities in this order it just says we will allocate the resources consistent with but it doesn't and I imagine there's going to be a time when number four comes about but it won't be at the expense of number one or some pieces of number one may come about but may not be be at the expense of number four we do run a balance program I think with this so all right I'm calling a question we are we're way over time here this is what group word smithing looks like when you go in to build a horse and comes out looking like a camel that's kind of where we're at right now so all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed no no did you get the count on that can I get a roll call on this one roll call please all right Hannah Stone No Holly Huffman no skip Williams no Lisa Anderson yes Michael list yes Jay cotton yes Dan Hamill no the motion fails okay motion fails all right anything else pursuant to this agenda Bill item seeing none let's move on to the next one may I get a formal motion approving the resolution as amended we amended the mo the the document but we haven't didn't we get that we didn't get that one okay let's go ahead and I'm seeking a motion to approve the resolution as

amended and the amendments are is it am I getting this right to remove The Supernaturals to remove commercial paper and to remove corporate notes can I get a motion for that please so move second motion's been made by council member Williams second by counc member cotton any further discussion to that uh motion for the resolution seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed abstentions recusals motion carries 70 thank you Miss Gat appreciate that now for the shortest summary statement in the world um the mayor um will share her proposed 2025 budget priorities with the city council mayor L it's all your good afternoon Council I will try and uh keep this brief and make up some time here uh but essentially I've issued a memorandum with some of the initial budget priorities for the 2025 budget and as always we're seeking to maintain our city services take care of our city-owned assets and remain on strong financial fitting and the 2025 budget as highlighted in the previous presentation will also we'll be seeking to address add the $4 million general fund operating deficit and so um as we Endeavor to do that work identified four initial budget priorities for our department head and City leadership team to keep in mind and those include Public Safety and a focus on the Justice project implementation plan expanding investments in housing across the entire Continuum of need in the city supporting the internal Services System sys and the people that allow the city to

effectively and efficiently deliver services to the public and climate action and work to mitigate the impacts of climate change moving forward and I just shared in the um in the memo to all of you that of course a budget at its core is a policy um it's a policy document but it reflects our values as a community and how the city spends its money is a representation of our priorities we've had a chance to spend time with each of you in small group meetings understanding what your budget priorities are I hope you see a reflection of what you indicated in those meetings in these four priorities and I look forward to working collaboratively with you and in our future 101s to make sure that um as we go through the budget process that your priorities are reflected in that work so I welcome your feedback and input thank you mayor committee feedback comments questions everyone got really quiet all of a sudden yeah go ahead Council M Williams uh this seems to line up with the previous discussion we were having so I I totally accept your um priorities Stone um thank you Maryland I'm yes supportive of the priorities as as outlined I just wanted to confirm so on page 341 which was actually part of the prior presentation it has budget development and sort of an outline of budget development number one the finance department develop bace budgets and initial review forecast and two the mayor with input from Council provides broad guidance to staff for development of the P um preliminary

budget so I'm assuming we're here right and you're providing that um and obviously we won't see see a you know final or a budget proposal coming to us before October 1st um but obviously asking for feedback now is there a time frame for if Council had I don't know requests or things to share um if there's a timeline that you're looking at I think upfront and early so now is a great time but I think in our future one-on On's you know my time with each of you individually in the coming months as well I think there's lots of opportunity to to share feedback and give input as we go and I'll be updating you on staff's work as we go through this process during during those meetings further questions comments for the mayor uh I'll chime in real quick um I think the the number one bullet point on Public Safety including the focus on the Justice implementation and plan reflects um one of the larger Capital expenditures that we're going to be seeing over the course of our lifetimes here and we have a really great opportunity to uh make investments in prevention things that cause people to land in the criminal justice system so fully supportive of having conversations uh as we move on to to help work to implement that for the questions for the mayor questions comments okay thanks mayor thank you all right let's move on to the next item this is uh parking reforms uh consideration of eliminating off- street parking requirements the city council has requested the opportunity to discuss

parking reform and evaluate the implications of eliminating off street parking requirements City staff will present the background policy framework industry standards and frame the discussion with multip multiple alternatives for consideration here to take us through is our planning and Community Development director Blake lion good afternoon uh while we're bringing up the presentation I don't see it in while we're waiting on that the presentation to be made available I wanted to um first of all thank you for the opportunity I will do my part to try to move through this Rel relatively quickly the the um staff report in and of itself and the white paper associated with it are things that I'm sure you've had the opportunity to look through and it's not something that I intend to uh reiterate or go through all the details of that in this presentation really what I would like to try to do is set the stage a little bit for those that may be watching uh the community conversation and starting that effort with the goal as we get to the different alternatives to have the council provide us some additional Direction and move through that and hopefully narrow that source of um consideration down a little bit in addition to my being uh here with you this afternoon we also have Iris not uh who is the author of the white paper and Eric Johnson our director of Public Works all right well we're doing that I wanted to um give you an idea of why it's important I think that we're discussing

the um parking reform piece of this and in in part you'll see in your packets uh the reference to kind of the big four rationale so we have a need in the commitment uh throughout this community to address climate change we have a need for uh some additional considerations with regard to our housing costs and affordability safer streets and additional placemaking and you know there are opportunities and we've seen examples across this country where we've done this incorrectly where we've we've let parking uh forms Drive some of the narrative in our conversation and um what you may recall is that in the presentation itself there's a there's a graphic that references um on Slide Five uh and on the left side of that image there's a um picture from 1978 Houston and I bring that up to your attention in particular because that begins to set the conversation thank you Jackie um yeah so on the left of this image you see 1978 Houston and I only bring this up to your attention because yes we as a country did build a place like this uh and this is certainly not something that we want to see repeated in fact we uh would would argue and and uh look for something a little bit more like the image on the right and so one of the things as we begin to align we heard in our previous discussion kind of the uh ability to align our values and when we talk about that you know we're trying to provide housing for people we're trying to provide environmental stewardship and parking and cars do neither

of those two things and so the idea of reducing that and encouraging uh a more livable walkable place is important we see an example of like this in in uh New Zealand where they say you know kind of an homage to to yet another tree being lost for the benefit of a parking space and so again trying to establish those policy guidelines and drive a little bit we start to see some of the national conversation and different uh professors like Donald shup or authors that are coming out and calling to question some of the parking reform that we've seen in this country uh or some of the parking policy we've seen in this country over decades we start to see different groups like uh strong towns and the parking reform Network and and um sideline Institute that are beginning to look at this question and call to this question really and in that upper right hand graphic you'll see the number of communities and local governments that are really starting to engage in this conversation and try to drive this a little bit further we do have an abundance of over Supply in this country in fact some of the recent uh data that's out there says we have as many as uh six or seven parking spaces per vehicle across this country and we we see repeated efforts um where we have inhospitable uh intersections and it's not done at the human scale and so we see a lot of these reform efforts trying to address these various different issues and yet there are now new governments and other areas that are trying

to look at U Better places and doing that placemaking and narrowing down travel lanes and reducing parking requirements and we look at areas where we try to deal with uh and hold on to existing lovable places that can accommodate both housing and green infrastructure and bike lanes and parking anding addressing that we see even more recent examples uh Portland on the left in this graphic uh Seattle on the right where when when eliminating some of those on-site parking requirements we see the ability for the housing units to really respond to that market condition and drive up those additional units that you're starting to see and so we we see that relationship ship between elimination of parking and the generation of those additional numbers there's examples like this in the City of Kent Washington where they did an analysis of a community and they said okay 85% of that Community is not able to build an Adu even though they have the space they are not able to do it because of the parking restrictions and so talking about the opportunity to open up that yield really gives us the ability to do that and look at that on a much much broader basis I won't go through the details of this but this is just a simple example to show you if you take the example on the left where it's a fourplex so for a four unit and if you have no parking spaces required on that you can build 54 units to the acre and given the size of that lot that's about 13 units on that particular if you add a one

parking space that number drops down to 41 units breaker or roughly about 10 units and if you require um front access for that to come off off of the street as opposed to off of an alley it drops it down even further to about 25 units the acre or about six units so you can start to see how the parking implications drives the availability of those unit Productions down on a per site basis we also see examples like this where if you have a a 20 foot wide driveway that can mean the difference between getting a a fourth unit or not and so we call to question the need for these various different policies and how we're addressing ing some of these policies in order to open up some of the supply when we look at Bellingham we look at specifically okay where are we existing we see whether whether you're talking about owner occupied or renter occupied kind of the number of vehicles uh per household if you will that also plays out in this and this information is also available in the white paper so I won't I won't belabor uh the conversation this afternoon to talk about these but we are starting to see some of that those numbers play out now we also did a preliminary assessment of what our street conditions look like and I'm going to go through a series of in relatively quick succession here some of the existing scenarios that we have but this is a Citywide map you'll see in the dark blue it shows where parking is available on both sides of the street in the light blue where it's

available on one side of the street orange that's not available and then we have a couple other uh perimeters but just to give you a local flavor of that so here's an example of where it's available on both sides of the street but maybe a little less formal there's not a curb uh there there there's concerns about potentially hanging over the sidewalk but this these examples exist where uh it can be a little bit more random some people Park in a parallel configuration some people Park in a angled configuration here's an example where it might be a little more formal where you do have a rolled curb section or some areas in some communities where again one side of the street we allow parking uh the other would not we have some streets that are arterials and that don't provide any uh allowance for parking on site um and I'm going to get in here so on the map you also see the pink areas this is identifies some of the areas where we have metered parking and the green which is where we have a couple of our um permitted residential zones so Railroad Avenue is a good example of you know metered parking spaces this is our parking residential zones this one happens to be sea home neighborhood uh we have other conflicting pieces that come into play where where we might allow for on street parking but we've allowed things like rais planter beds to to occur so that's going to be competing for some of that finite space uh so you see different examples of that we've got roadside ditches uh

and Swale storm water SES that impact some of that we've got some neighborhoods that have come out and expressely said no we don't want uh anything formal we don't want sidewalks we don't want formal parking we're willing to do that others that have you know manicured into those spaces across the city we've got some areas that are topographically challenged that you know you start to make it challenging to park on one side of the street or another some neighborhoods that have you know alleys uh so this image on the left this is the same exact neighborhood the image on the left is the uh front side if you will the street and the the back portion is the the improved alley there and you've got some that have travel alleys uh in different neighborhoods so again trying to give you an idea and to let's say that we've thought through some of this we wanted to make sure you were aware of that in some of our commercial context we've kind of done away with some of the parking and tried to improve some opportunity for Commerce in that whether that's the street Aries or or other things we have districtwide approaches and I say all of this to say that in any of these circumstances really where the value is is in how we manage those basis not the number not coming out with a regulatory stance and saying You must have this amount of minimum it really comes down to our approach on on how we manage those different resources we've got shared parking opportunities uh the image on the left is

the um proposed board Mill project the one on the right is a different project that I worked on in a previous life um but all of this is to say okay we've got an overabundance in terms of Supply locally I mentioned nationally there's about six to seven parking spaces per Car locally we have somewhere around the five uh mark this is a an image of bellisfair Mall and now somebody could be critical of this picture and say okay well we're really looking at this very static photo of one one point in time okay so let's take that argument so here's Sunset Square Mall in 2004 and I'll highlight for you just really quickly the idea if you look kind of at the the left side of the screen and the right side of the screen there's an abundance of of of unused parking okay same thing in 2008 okay but no there's a downturn in economy okay so we're bouncing back in 2011 but still pretty vacant 2013 still pretty vacant 2016 again so you can go through over a decade worth of photographs and looking at some of the stuff and saying we're over we have an over Supply or an overabundance of vacant parking spaces why does that become important because when you start talking about the cost of construction and we start looking at some of this stuff and you look at the national averages and we're talking about about 20,000 21,000 per space for a surface lot when you get into structured parking those numbers can go up substantially when you look at the local cost of that and you look at this particular

image okay in that picture there's 11 parking spaces that's $220,000 worth of surface parking if you start going into structured Park parking that gets closer to 350 to 500,000 if you go below ground structure now you're talking about $660,000 to build parking and that's not even just the maintenance and operation of it it's just the construction of it so you look at how much value we have tied up in some of these underutilized spaces let's look at downtown for example not talking about street parking but just structure just surface parking lots and other things like that we have over 18% of our downtown tied up in surface Lots so it's financially unproductive it's all of these other things that come into play that tie up in an asset that's not really generating anything uh of value to us and to the community all right now that's the technical side I want to take a minute and shift a little bit more about the the human behavior side because we're all in this together but I will tell you human behavior is an interesting dynamic because there's a number of different places is myself included where we have detached single car garages or maybe a twocc car garage and the majority of people in those conversations are not utilizing their garages for parking purposes whether that's a workshop whether that's a home office whether that's storage uh you know I'm guilty of it too but we have this need where we're not even using the assets that we have available to us and so what happens

in those situations is people often park in driveways or they Park out on the street and then you get this kind of Behavioral uh you know we're creatures of habit and we say okay I park in that space right in front of my house and if somebody else starts to come into that space now all of a sudden we get a little bit Territorial and it can be it can be a little bit more challenging in that respects right and so how many times have you been maybe cruising for a parking space whether that's on the street or maybe in a in a overflow lot and you say to yourself oh if that person had only moved up or if they had only parked little less at an angle I could totally fit in there you know and so again it comes down to more of a management type structure and we get scenarios and this is little tongue and cheek I know but uh you know we're not we're not seeing this kind of scenario but it it feels like that to some people that we get into this scenario where we just get into I mean they make TV shows after this stuff right Parking Wars and all that kind stuff so we're we're trying to say it's more appropriate to manage how we use that public Supply rather than than doing that it's important to know kind of where we approach this from a from a preference standpoint and there's studies around this people you know the Holy Grail of parking if you will is I want it free I want it available when I need it I want it right in front of where my final destination is and I need it for as long as

POS as long as I want it to be available and yet none of those four exist in totality and so people then start to look at what those orders of preference are and we say okay well on Street's preferred and then if I can't get it on street I'll go into a surface parking lot and if I can't find that then I'll go into an above ground and then below ground structures become the kind of fourth order of priority so you can manage some of that expectation through different and this is where Donald shup comes in and a lot of his efforts where you start to manage that uh pricing models and we've seen some of that uh throughout this city and throughout different areas when we start talking about the policy approaches that are laid out in your staff report there's five that that we put up for you um and when you think about it kind of on the bookends on one side of the spectrum is eliminating parkings uh Citywide the other side of the spectrum is keeping things status quo um in between those things you have an opportunity to look at okay if you're not comfortable going Citywide with that effort then you can begin to identify ways to look at along uh existing Transit lines so our go lines or around our Urban Villages and the image that you see up here on the right the blue area is a quarter mile from the existing Transit lines the orange area is a half mile from those Transit lines uh and again most of those Urban Villages that we have currently are served by those transits so it's a way

to pull back on some of that you could also look at ways to address this by land use and by separating and say okay if housing is one of our primary goals then we eliminate it for all residential areas but you can keep it for commercial in my opinion that doesn't get at the over Supply that we talked about in some of those commercial areas um so as a staff recommendation and trying to see where we want to go and again we put this forward to you for some direction and consideration is if we're going to bring a couple options back through the process and analyze them and bring the type 6 process to Bear we're really recommending the two that are up there on the top of the list in green for for future consideration any one of those five options will have um consistent requirements for Ada spaces electrical vehicle charging bike parking requirements so these would not change uh with respect to that access management if you're not familiar with that term it's how you get to that parking space and the one brief example I'll use for this is that if we have for example a formal curb along a street that parking space out there is a public resource if I take away that on street parking space to allow for a curb cut to serve as a driveway now you've privatize that public amenity so where it become access management becomes important is things like prioritizing the use of alleys if there's an alley available that's where the order of preference would go to providing access to that if you

are going to provide parking on that particular site I'm also going to make a plea for form and why form becomes important when you're talking about parking we see examples and I I'll back up for a second this slide is in here to say that when parking is allowed and available on a property then the Ada spaces come into consistency with that requirement and we do it that way when we talk about electric vehicle charging there are ways to think about and policy implications where we need to make sure picture in the right is the more structured and formal charging stations the one on the the two on the left there are ways that we are thinking about and wanting to make sure we're not increasing trip hazards and things like that if people are extending uh charging cables across the street so we need to make sure we can address those kind of issues when we start talking about form and this gets back to um council member lilus we talked previously about things like dingbats which is a term uh a different architectural form in the 60s and 70s Texas Nance is another one yes this is an example of San Francisco and where they didn't have parking forms and a lot of these things and you can see how much of these front yards got turned over to parking so there is not a parking minimum requirement in m in fact many of these have either one car or two car garages but most people have paved over their entire front yards and I would venture to say this is not what we're after this is not this

is not the standard so be form becomes important to think about those kinds of things even when you have better architecture it can still feel very dominated by those front yard uh environments this is the definition of dingbat where it's a tuck under piece of parking and again that round level Human Experience um becomes dictated by parking and that's not really what what we as a community are after and what we want there are ways to do that uh different multif family examples where you can deemphasize parking and you can have a real Street presence it doesn't have to be at the larger scale it can be at the smaller scale the middle housing type forms where you can have a bit more of a curb appeal and less dominated by by the parking itself we want to get away from kind of faceless nameless places that get dominated by these kind of garages as the way you announce it and look to get into examples like we have right here in Bellingham uh over um Queen and Texas area in the Roosevelt neighborhood where there's a lot more porches and and deemphasizing the the parking when it is provided and you begin to create examples like this where you get away from the upper left and you gravitate more towards the right when you can deemphasize some of those those requirements we can find out different ways as we get into the middle housing discussion to to do that in our in our form but again to not make mandate it to not require it gives us the ability to get that housing production where

we want it to be um and provide some of these opportunities to to do these various different things if you've got a concern about the form itself there's also the piece that we can talk a little bit about parking management and there are different technologies that we can start to look at there's a variety of different smartphone apps where it helps you find spaces and again we can get into those different pieces as necessary and kind of as the last thought in this I wanted to remind you not only are we doing this as the city of Bellingham but we're looking to others around this country others potentially internationally uh you all have invested in several of Staff members going over to Copenhagen Denmark on two different occasions to study some of the work that's done and that's a great example that I bring up because they've had a 50-year investment of moving away from from parking cars and prioriti in bike and pedestrian and their climate is their their Topography is different than us but they're actually at a higher parallel than we are so their climate is not too different uh from ours and you see examples like this where they you know where they get some urbanity you have bike parking and metered parking and you get Street trees that pull into that and you get different parking approaches or you get these things they call parking houses where um they're provided per block and not within individual ual projects or where they're integrated into on street parking

opportunities so uh we have different examples we can look to the other places in the country and other places in the world uh for those best management practices and so we really would like to hear your thoughts on the matter if you have any ideas on which kind of policy Direction you would like us to pursue um I'll leave it at that but I'm going to back up to the slide that has essentially the five different options I encourage enourage your questions and we can talk a little bit more in depth and again I'm here Eric Iris are here we also have uh Chris Cook is in the audience as well that can support some of those efforts so I'll stop there and try to keep us back on time that was remarkably concise thank you com list then hutman this is an exciting conversation um thank you very much uh Blake for staying in a conceptual level which is why I'd like to stay uh myself I want to begin by saying that I really appreciate the fact that ADA parking bike parking EV charging parking that those requirements we need to find a way to continue those not not throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak um I agree retaining form requirements and guidelines that's really important how you do things matters a lot I also agree the status quo is failing us or often fails us it doesn't always fail us but it often does fail us um I also want to thank uh Miss not for for the excellent white paper appreciated your writing yay um and in there you had one map and I went to the parking reform

website and because that just showed one of the filters right and you could click through and see the other filters and one of the things I saw is that um you know well over a thousand cities have done some level of parking reform but most of them have done it by District or Transit oriented or for part of the city some have expanded it um and that's really I'm what I'm interested in exploring so eliminating parking Citywide maybe we'll get there maybe I'll get there conceptually but I think it's it's pretty clear that there are opportunities um to look at certain areas those could be the urban Villages they could also be the uh uh Transit corridors it might be a few other areas that geographically seem ripe for it like the old town area where it seem to make sense I would love to see how much of our city uh seems like it's more in need and reier for these reforms um and in particular I would like to add a second discussion that probably helps us to evaluate any of those other U options which is if we're looking at housing affordability is one of the main benefits I want us to talk about ways of actually tying affordability to the reforms if we give flexibility and benefit and take away requirements can we ask for a return and rather than just simply hope for a return so I would like to talk about explicit ways of getting affordability and that may not be necessary or feasible in all places but where is it maybe more necessary and where is it maybe more feasible so explicit

ways of of tying affordability to eliminations or reductions in uh parking and then also I want like I said I want to look at what what large areas are there better opportunities or is it more feasible and start there any staff response to that don't have to okay CC member hin then Williams okay thank you um and thanks for the presentation and and all the information here it's it's this is really great work that's been put together uh to break all of this detail and there's a lot of it um so we're asking to uh maybe focus our interests and um council member lqu might be interested in the transit oriented development option looking further into that I'm interested in looking further into uh eliminating parking minimum Citywide luckily we can bring them both back um and I had one one specific question um maybe this is getting a little bit more into details than than we want to get right now but um you might be able to touch on it or bring bring back for further discussion later but um in the cons list of the the Citywide minimums um and thank you for the pros and cons of each that's really helpful but uh elimination of Citywide would make it more difficult to anticipate where development is likely to occur and therefore make it more difficult to plan for the ne necessary infrastructure understandable um the cities that have implemented Citywide uh removal of minimum requirements how have they comp compensated for that um or what do we know what they have seen in terms of that

specific issue I'll address it in the following way I think um and I I can't I don't want to say this unequivocally across the board but I'll couch it in this in the framework of the housing demand the need for that additional available supply for housing outpaces the concerns that might exist with the infrastructure planning need and so the part that I didn't uh that we didn't put in the staff report is any weighted averages on those pieces and so we know and this is the value of eliminating a Citywide is the ability to to open up as many places as possible knowing that not every place is going to be able to accomplish that but to provide those additional housing supplies across the board we know that there are jurisdictions our self included that will have to be strategic about how and where we Implement those different resources and sidewalks uh you know other components there um but we've talked to like for example in Spokane where they've just said that that hasn't been an issue for them or we've looked at different jurisdictions and I don't want to uh steal the mic entirely from my colleagues here so I'll let them respond as well steal away Blake but I I I so the well would not put too much weight into the number of pros and cons in each of those car there just a list of things that out there but the pro might be more significant than a con in those particular situations so in this first elimination of parking Citywide has a con there I would not put that on equal

waiting on to the pro side of it so while there may be challenges in providing some of the street infrastructure that would best meet the need for a change in the minimum parking requirements that's not to say that the the need would be in inadequate today and so the this the skipping over is to say okay well rather than having this logical and theoretical progression we start in one sense and we grow consistently steadily block by block by block from the inside of the outside you may get an Adu developing on the outside where something may not be where we would like to see it or consistent with the core but that doesn't mean it's not 100% it's not it's not adequate to meet the need at that point in time so I wouldn't wait one of those character to the other I do want to come back to one thing and the reason that those two items are in green on there is I think that that is is our recommendation that those are the two things that we would recommend the council refer back to staff to further develop through the type 6 process necessary to come back to council with a recommendation and so that would go through a public process get further vetting of those of these ideas and Concepts would go through the Planning Commission would come back with a recommendation for Council to deliberate so we don't need to make a decision today as to one or the other what we're recommending is that you consider all of the options that are here in the information and and would recommend that you

ask staff to develop those two options through a type 6 process which has multiple public hearings presentation to the Planning Commission and coming back to council with a with a recommended action at that point in time Williams then Anderson when when this uh topic first came up and we were looking at doing the research and I was talking with Iris and most of our conversations focused on number one and number two and what my concern conc ER was at the time was I wanted to see how many other cities did number one just okay we're going to eliminate everything but I also wanted to see by doing that were there any bumps in the road that they had to deal with and uh there were some I believe you found which were well we're eliminating everything but now we have to maybe go back and modify that a little while then they eliminated everything again and it proved to be successful um I would basically support looking at number one and number two from from a point of view of how do we get there how do we get there um I I always say that's where the rubber meets the road it's not the what it's how and um if we can get there by just doing number one and then dealing with the bumps in the road but understanding that number two we also have a partner in the transit authority that has to do their work to make sure that there's service to all these places so um I would hope that all of that would be in the process Eric just outlined for us to bring back okay council member Anderson then

cotton thank you um and thank you for bringing this information forward in the presentation um and very concise for such a large slide deck so thanks um I'm more interested in number two um would consider number one in the sense incrementally um the the reason why I'm more interested in the transit oriented development in urban V Villages is much to my like not wanting to open up the ug is because I want to eliminate sprawl that is single family homes on the outskirts that don't necessarily have the services like really good Transportation um amenities that people can walk to and my concern is that if we go Citywide um it's going to take some time to catch up um and resources for WTA to have really good um infrastructure and transportation for the outskirts of the city um I really am invested in the Urban Village concept because I want to grow up tall um so things are compact um and services are close by because environmentally is the best footprint um and economically I think it's also um more viable I love what's happening on samish way um with all the housing I kind of would like to see some of the buildings go even taller um be some good competition but the the interest even up to the half mile of the um like a lot of the main lines I would be open to that because if we're truly about getting rid of parking and the aspect of saving money but also trying to encourage people to use alternative trans Transportation um my concern opening Citywide um no parking is that there

may be the unintended consequences of development happening out outside versus the incentive of building up the urban Villages so that we could meet I think is a um a very good goal but also much like uh council member Lil Quist had mentioned I have been for several years been asking and wanting inclusionary zoning to come forward because the idea was the lovers to be able to um partner where we give something and we get something and as much as we need housing what we really need is affordable housing and I kind of feel like we're not going to get it unless we um can give something where a developer can have more units um by something like reduced parking and they can make more but maybe not quite as much on several units so when we're looking at how many parking spaces and how much money that costs if we're looking at a large complex if they're going to be able to net an extra 30 or 40 units um why is it because everything's going to be market rate and so when we think of affordability 5 years from now a new housing complex that's not going to be affordable for a lot of individuals who are Workforce or below that so we need to have some levers so I would like to look at um if we do go Citywide especially in areas that are outside of some of those fast Urban Transit that we look at it as an incentive in order to gain additional affordable housing um and then that way maybe developers will look more towards the central core and urban villages um in order to um reduce their

parking and maximize their their profit margin um I also one of the things that I asked for long ago before you was design standards and I think that speaks a bit to the form that you're talking about because we don't want the ding bats we don't want the snout houses um there are really good design standards when it comes to how parking and driveways and curb Cuts or not having them um but a lot of that we're talking about Green fill and we don't have a lot of opportunity for green fill unless we get into those Urban um the outer urban areas so um I'm not too sure what you can do on form um but if that could be implemented um into a shorter version of design standards for this parking uh reduction that would be great and then lastly um more information on the management tools um other than the the you know app based joining off of you know your Apple system to see what parking is there because that may not be here and when it comes to looking at things on a private sector um those companies come and go so how are we going to deal with the management of our parking especially if we have a a pretty strong reduction in areas that are going to have a lot of housing um last example off of samish way and I forget the little Street there's a new housing and it's behind a Chevron and a um a Subway there's a little tiny Street and they Park on both sides and I don't believe we could get a fir truck through there if there was an emergency so really having to seriously look at how our

streets when these large housing comes in especially when they have a reduced parking um I think we're going to have to set some design standards on that and limit parking on one side or the other as policy on short spur rows and I don't think we have that trigger for some of those developments so um some of that coded in would be very important so we don't have the issue and then we have to fix it when something happens Dr Johnson just want to make a comment on that I appreciate I think you think you meant to say this but we're not talking about eliminating or reducing available parking inventory in the city uh so to be to clarify for you know outside of this conversation that what we're talking about here is the elimination of a code requirement that requires you to add more parking at the time of development we're not talking about removing or deleting getting R of spaces what this would allow for is allow developers to choose how much parking they would be choose to install on site so there's a my clarification there the the term parking reform and parking minimums can sometimes go together but this is not about deleting or eliminating parking this is about providing developers the choice to provide the parking that they feel that their customer base for their particular product may be appropriate uh Blake used the pictures up the Sunset Mall uh I I don't know whether that met the minimum requirements most likely uh Mall developers build as much parking as they possibly

can so that you can see the front door from any space in the parking lot and they design it for that day after Thanksgiving so that you can find a place to park on the one to the highest retail space of the day and part of this conversation in parking re is to not design our cities for that Peak period when it's most convenient and most available for us on that one day where we have to go to the Mariners game or to the mall after Thanksgiving but in our neighborhoods a a a homeowner or a developer a builder could choose to still provide for the on Space Spa number of spaces but what we're talking about is eliminating the city's arbitrary requirement and I say arbitrary intentionally because much of those codes that are in the United States are based on standards set by The Institute of of Transport Transportation Engineers which are bogus they are not based in any sort of an actual reality and that's that's inflammatory language but that's my profession and and there's really no basis for those numbers they there's not a there's not a rational number but yet in United States we have based those numbers on what other cities have done and that has resulted in the Houston model or parking lots that are larger than we needed so just want to reframe that a little bit we're not talking about eliminating parking or preventing parking from be built from being built we're talking about removing the code requirements the established parking minimums also reference to the trips to

Copenhagen that a couple of folks have gone to Copenhagen has taken it one step further in there's 70 years of of Transportation policy focused on uh you know people walking and biking and on on on buses they've taken it one step further in that core of Copenhagen established parking maximums and Blake mentions in the staff memo as an option to that eliminating parking minimums of creating parking maximums not talking about creating parking maximums which so say within a defined geographical barrier no more than x number of spaces will be built in total so they take it one step further beyond that and they do that to to to to solve the Dilemma of the chicken and egg theory for Transit Demand right so if you if you say you cannot park more than x number of cars here then that obligates users to have to walk and develop at a whole different set of develop we're not talking about that here either the the options that would be considered for these two two two ideas here for part reforming our codes related to parking requirements that time of development would be do we remove and to what extent do we remove the requirement to provide minimum number of parking spaces per types of development throughout the city and so A variation on these themes might be to look at consider do we remove it across the board for all types of development or only certain types of development and I think that's be worth exploring as we go into that system overall and then the other question I think a

couple folks asked about parking management that's a whole Suite of activities and that could be charging for parking that could be time limited parking that could be parking enforcement that could be parking availability there's a whole Suite when we talk about parking management and that brings into all of those things that we manage when it comes to parking so just a slight slight Twist on the theme there not just to that that we're not talking eliminating parking we're talking about limiting parking development codes more cotton then Stone then list then Huffman thank you again for this great presentation and for the memo and for the white paper excellent white paper um this is is really exciting for our city because up on the dasas we talk a lot about lwh hanging fruit I mean this is really truly lwh hanging fruit and you know to look at this graph right about the amount of new housing in Buffalo and in Seattle that was created through this reform alone I mean we're in the face of a housing crisis and we have a huge next step and I I think um Iris not in your in your white paper you put it very well at the end I almost want to read the sentence the question is whether um parking reform solves the affordable housing crisis the answer is no if the question is can eliminating parking mins be part of the solution because it removes a barrier then the answer is yes and uh I'm excited for us to take this step um I wanted to follow up maybe just briefly on um the previous

conversation about development patterns to the city and um right and to your to Point director um Johnson the developers Builders are still going to create as much parking as they choose to right and I think um eliminating you know Citywide would yeah allow for that gentle infill that those adus that we we have a huge barrier um right now and we're definitely going to see more parking get built in King Mountain than in I don't know where I live on the edge of downtown in the lettered streets and so I guess my question is um uh can we expect kind of rational decisions to be made about how much parking to build based on current you know consumer demands and what different demographics and geographies kind of require I absolutely believe we can uh we're seeing kind of the early throws of that in Oldtown right now where we seeing our first development application that has come in um understanding that that's not a typical across the board scenario because it does have proximity to Transit it does have uh a little bit more of a commitment to ownership and they own multiple blocks so there are some variables that go into that but what we are seeing in that Dynamic is the opportunity for the developer to come in and say okay if we looked at that example where it's an L uh configuration in the lot um you can roughly fit about 30 spaces at ground level given the six-story height limit if we had stayed with the parking requirements that were in place prior to the council's action of

eliminating them within that you probably more than likely would have seen three stories of structured parking with three stories of residential above that which would yield probably in the order of about 50 units for a project of that scale and size given where we've gone and eliminating those parking the developer has said okay there's still a need for some parking this is what drives the market we still have a need to address some of those things both from a retail component to support what's being proposed and to some degree for some of the units but then they're allowed to look at what what they can provide and what it does is it removes that that limitation so now they're able to provide five stories of residential and so we're seeing on the order of almost double the amount of units available to that now the point was made earlier that those May be market rate units but there's also depending on the size of those and what the need is whether they're Studio units one-bedroom units and trying to meet the market where it is and so it's a about driving that and about allowing the um developers that know their industry that want a return on their investment to be able to do their market analysis and look at those specific things and not have that be dictated by Arcane local public policy I mean I'll take a minute to say you know we developed our codes and I have this a little bit in the staff report but we developed our parking regulations our first code was in in 1947 our

zoning code was 15 pages long you know we had three parking requirements for the entire city at that time wasn't until the 50s and even into the 60s where we've changed that code and we we jumped in up to having 34 different land uses that each require a different parking and I encourage you if you haven't already go try to read that it's really difficult to kind of at common language understand how many you have to have and it gets to the point where it's really complicated it's almost a barrier it's not an incentive to to be able to develop and so I think by taking a step back from that and rethinking how we approach these and trying to do that with the people and the objectives in mind then we can kind of create the future we want and not have it dictated by some kind of past policy practice and to add to that just a little bit if I might so the the rationality and parking and that's almost a challenge to say in the same sentence but the the the there is some rationality that comes to uh uh market rate housing right because why would somebody develop market rate housing they want to return on their investment and so at some point there's a conversation with a banker or an investor they're going to make sure that their product is sellable and if they can't sell the product because there's a lack of parking they will not finance that project so so there to degree that you that we trust where we can uh the market effects in supporting the types of development that will occur

there there is an element that an investor or a bank will say are you meeting either the city's requirements and if you're not meeting the city's requirements then we're not going to finance that or are you producing a product that you can sell or lease or whatever out there and if the product you're trying to sell is not marketable IE there's not adequate parking or access to Transit then they're not likely to finance and fund those projects so there's an ele within the market itself to to to assure that there's some rationality in how these things are approached um so that that removing the parking minimum the Arcane requirements those things that are based on uh standards set years and years ago does not mean that a developer would not provide for adequate parking for their particular use that may not be consistent with the neighbor might think uh but that is not that's a different question follow Mr yeah thank you you and um I think especially in the context of our extremely low vacancy rates in in our city I'm looking for a new until right now and uh there are 10 people at every showing and it's gone within 20 minutes right and so um I think because this is so the Citywide approach is so easy to administer it seems pretty clear from the research that there is not um a rational basis to our existing regulations and it's not producing good outcomes um maybe just to frame the conversation a bit more I I'd like to move that option one eliminating the minimums Citywide um be

an option that uh staff continue to develop second made by council member cotton second by council member Huffman further discussion to the motion Council sorry director Johnson go ahead we would recommend that you proposed that at least two options be developed through that type 6 process if you recommend moving only one there's no need to have a type six process to go back to council with recommendation of the two options so recommend you forward at least two council member Williams have a follow I'd like to amend the motion to add uh number two second okay can I ask a clarifying question go ahead yeah um C can you clarify from that for me again so if we we only select one we would not have to go through a type six process which is pretty lengthy if I'm right is that correct are City attorney just stepped out for just a minute but typically when we when we uh bring things through the type six process is to consider the options related to those uh and that we we not presuppose the decision after because regardless of what the council does we have to go through the types six process if you've already made the decision then there's no point in having a public process so so by going through it and I this is my terms this not how I want reflect that but but but by presenting two options then we have something to compare against and have a chance for the public process and the public input to be thoroughly vetted and vetted through the Planning Commission coming back to council

with a recommendation good so I'm wondering if folks would be uh willing to select the two two separate motions um because I know which one I want and I want that on the record and so um if uh if people feel strongly that we want to amend that motion um I I can live with that but um if it's same function to vote on the two options separately I'd prefer that we we'll vote on the amendment first and then we'll vote on the the main motion is there discussion related to this yeah I was just going to say I think since there was an amendment in a second then it goes forward and if it passes it passes if not then you can separate it out from there okay further discussion to the amendment or the motion council member liist the motion is to pursue Bill points one and two as if there's only two ideas in there the second bullet point I think probably has a bunch of sub options and possibilities in there so what would come forward wouldn't just be this or that it might be this or flavors of that is am I understanding that correctly and that's part of what we would address through the type six process with the Planning Commission is wrestling with those nuances and the and the differenes ultimately to get to a Planning Commission recommendation in front of this body for you to decide upon C randerson go ahead thank you um one of the reasons I well I'd like to be able to have both uh looked at in the type 6 process but a big part of that is the public input giving our public the

opportunity to go through a full process and have them weigh in um and I think good ideas could come from that and if we only pursue one and in many ways we're eliminating that public process and letting our Community come forward and help guide where their interests and ideas are um so I just I feel very strongly about allowing or giving our um Community an opportunity to weigh in fully through that type 6 process I think that's very Democratic especially when we're making a change at this level across the City MO you have you have a followup to that yeah I just see your City attorney is back in the room so um I just wanted wanted to uh to ask a clarifying question about um what triggers the type 6 process and if we were for instance select one today just one option does that still go to the type six um I I've I've heard a couple different versions of what what might be the case so is that a clear question well I I didn't hear some of the discussion I had to use the restroom but uh type six is uh process with which is going to the Planning Commission with a public hearing and then coming to city council and having a public hearing with city council is required per our code uh whenever you're making a change to development regulations so this would be a change in the development regulations and I think what staff is trying to do is you've got this broad spectrum of at least five options you could probably come up with more than five but staff is seeking some direction to sort

of narrow it a little bit before going through that type six process um if you just picked you could pick one one just one item one option to take through the type 6 process the problem with that is that it sort of seems like you're make you've already made your decision before you've gone through that public process and that public process is is our our effort to meet the GMA requirements of having having the public weigh in did I did that answer your question it did okay okay we have Amendment Amendment and and a motion I have at least three council members in the queue and it is now 3:30 so we have we are up against time and I'd like to remind Council that we have 35 minutes of executive session coming up it's so it's a little bit longer than than normal so I'd like to move us along here if your question is not your remain to the to the motion or the amendment I'm asking you to um maybe table it we can talk about it later this discussion is far from being over if we go through a type six process which I think we might or even if we don't we still have um we have a lot of conversations to to have so anything further to the amendment or the motion okay um Miss get do you have the am Amendment yeah the first amend uh first motion uh was to recommend staff investigate elimination of parking minimum City wide um and then the amendment was I believe made by council member Williams and seconded by Lil Quist to amend the previous motion to include the transit oriented development

in urban Villages okay is everyone clear on the amendment and the motion okay go ahead Mr L I just want to know the problem is there's other things like my mention of housing affordability that's not mentioned in here in the motion is that still included there there other things that are that could be part of a full type 6 process I hope we're not just limiting it to these and only these as literally spoken but there will be a and there's other issues I'd like to talk about that's all absolutely um and I and I and I think you made that clear to to staff and that that that'll be included within that discussion so with no further um questions all those in favor of the amendment signify by saying I I opposed no no abstentions recusals motion carries 52 and now we'll now we'll go to the um the actual motion and I want to be clear to you that I also support the elimination of uh parking minimum Citywide but I do believe in the public process um as was brought up here uh today and that um the input needs to to be there so I I will be supporting um going through a type type six process council member Huffman thanks uh i i e with that I I also am I'm feeling pretty strongly about the option to remove parking minimum Citywide but um also think that this is this is a pretty controversial subject parking always is um and I think not only having the input from the public but also the opportunity to educate the public as many opportunities as possible to educate the public about um some

of these pretty complicated factors that are going into this decision is really important um which is why I I support the amendment um as well as we'll be supporting the motion okay and so to be clear the the first motion was the was number one item up there is that correct or number one only correct okay all right so any questions further on that uh on that motion okay I don't go ahead the motion's been amendment has has been am amended but don't we need to don't we need to speak to the primary motion still we're we're in the primary motion now that's what I'm saying as amended right okay so we we still need to vote on it yes we vot on it yes okay so all right it's a little confusing this is what sausage making looks like okay so the the amended motion will be the first two items up on the screen correct okay okay um all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed extensions recusals motion carries 70 Mr list um I'm going to not talk about some things but I do want to talk about a few things um one is you said you called the the current parking minimums bogus I get that um I'm just one ing if there is another possibility we're leaving off the table this is an all or none proposal eliminate or not eliminate here entirely or not what about the idea of radically reducing or reforming or simplifying our parking requirements make them really minimal as opposed to somehow optimal are are there ways we could eliminate them in some places and reduce them in other places as you say

people will still build parking if they want to they can um but they maybe our minimums really should be minimal in areas where we think some protection is still required some minimum is still called for I don't want us to eliminate that as a possibility that there might be some reasons for some places to still have a minimum minimum and then I also we never really discussed parking maximums which dozens of jurisdictions have enacted and I didn't understand their value and I would like that to be part of a future education of me or or part of the type 6 process um when do you use them and why they work or do they do anything good Mar Stone um so I originally was going to speak before the motion but the motions have happened um but still wanting I guess to address some confusion I guess about the discussion about a type six process and whether it feels like we've already made the decision or not because um I mean I think the type six process is there to right to have that robust engagement but if we're clear about what we're considering and then receive that feedback I feel like it's more um robust than it may be otherwise so if provided a an array of options right to me sometimes that um I don't know can muddy the waters to some degree and looking at these options to me transit oriented development and urban villages to me that's a no-brainer I mean that's clearly asers was saying those are the areas where we want right to see increased development and for me this all comes

back to the fact that parking is not free um whether it's in front of your house on the public right away you know or um in a parking lot specifically and so the ability to unbundle right that parking from housing and ultimately to prioritize people and housing um over parking understanding that this is not going as far as right other parking reforms that we may consider further down the road but at this point you know some concerns have been addressed about development and the uncertainty about when and where that might happen and um obviously permits come forward and develop moves forward and it's an opportunity then to collaborate with WTA and others right to meet those needs to me this is about setting when you're talking about the past right 2010 we make decisions and then we're back talking about this to me this these are some of the decisions about laying the ground work for what we want to look like right our community to look like and what we want to prioritize um and forcing in some ways that that change to be creative and to look at things you know in in new ways and so I think the direction you know today it was asking for providing Direction so just wanting to share that yeah I'm in strong support of looking at eliminating it um Citywide okay any other comments or questions C member huon um one question that I I'm hoping that the staff might be able to bring back to us some information on as we're talking about these two options um some of the concern it sounds

like is that that if we allow um parking minimums to be eliminated parking minimum requirements to be eliminated outside of specific areas that we might end up with um developments that we look back on and say that was that was a horrible idea um you know why did we allow that development to happen in that area it doesn't make sense um or it was such there was there was a huge negative impact to the the surrounding neighborhood or or whatnot um and anecdotally we've heard we've read that uh a lot of the decisions about parking in a new development are made based on the market what what the people who are living there would require if somebody's living on the outskirts of town they're probably going to need a car more than somebody living in the middle of downtown so if you're looking at an apartment it doesn't come with a parking space space on the outskirts of town probably going to choose something else more desirable so you can park your car there anecdotally I'm interested to know if there is any anything beyond anecdotal evidence um in that area if other cities are can provide us data on where developments um have decided to reduce their parking versus um the developments that decided to meet the former parking requirements and potentially more um you know is there I guess is there any data that supports how that how those decisions were made um in in cities that removed parking Citywide parking requirements Citywide okay and last question this is sort of under old and

new um I'm thinking of a possible research project for MN our policy analyst and this has to go with what is a value of parking Donald shup is very much convinced that we undercharge for parking the marker R for Mark for chart parking ought to be way higher than our meted rate and we know this for a fact we also know that parking lots are really good money makers just asked Joe Diamond who's made a fortune off of charging for parking the question is what is the cost of paid parking in cities and what drives it because I think part of what we're doing here by stepping back from managing parking is we're going to be changing the supply potential supply of parking and one way to know whether or not parking is under supplied is to figure out how profitable it is to charge people for parking so I would like some information on what paid parking costs in various cities and then I want to understand that because that's the only indication we have in a sense of whether or not parking becomes a pay-to-play game okay any objection from councel to have our policy analysts U maybe dive into that a little bit go ahead uh counil Anderson I would also like to make sure clarified not just parking lot like you know Joe Diamond but also in rental units that are charging for parking how much are those for places that have eliminated um parking minimums um how much are they charging on top of their rent for the spot certainly look at it um in a more analytical standpoint but just from an

anecdotal and conversations that I've had with local developers on average the park work is about 10 to 15% of the construction cost for that particular project but because of an amenity it can drive up the asking price for that unit to 20% or above so it's a again it's one of those things if we are trying to take some of that uh cost of that unit down by unbundling it and doing other things you can you could potentially take that off the table and also on on the Donald Chups model which is uh the city Bellingham has been using that model the last 15 years in terms of our on street parking management Donald shups does not necessarily app that that the he espouses charging the right price and that price might be 0 but his point is that there's no such thing as free parking and that in that somebody is paying whether that's an outright cost or an indirect cost or a lost opportunity cost so so this conversation should not be um assume that this will result in US putting parking meters in neighborhoods but not to not want to get to that point but we want to make sure that the right price is charged and born by the right individual benefiting from that uh and that's what shs as espousing is charging the right price and that parking is not for free thank you um any other items for this agenda Bill item okay see now we'll move on to old and new business any items for old and new no okay I don't see any so um it is now 3:41 we have 35 minutes of um executive session our first item is

litigation CD Bellingham versus Fang this is with um attorney good approximately 20 minutes second item is potential litigation with herb approximately 15 minutes I'll be back to adjourn or put more time on the clock at 10 20 30 like quarter after quarter after four okay [Music]