Recording in progress.
Calling to order the city council, the Bainbridge
Island city council study session of Tuesday, April 21st, 2026. All seven council members are here
and the interim city attorney and assistance, sorry, the interim city manager and the assistant
city attorney. Clerk, would you please call the roll? Yes, thank you. Christine Brown, city clerk,
please state for the record if you're present after I call your name. Mayor Moriwaki. Present.
Deputy Mayor Hightopolis, present.
Council Member Matthews, present.
Council Member Fenroy Johnson, present.
Council Member Nelson, present.
Council Member Lant, present.
Council Member Snyder, present.
Thank you.
Could we have a motion to approve the agenda?
I move approval tonight's study session agenda is presented.
Second.
May I, staff would like to remove item D as our climate manager is sick today and can't present the climate action plan.
We'd like to defer that for one week if we may.
All right but I will offer my motion as amended. Seconded as amended. Great. All
right. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries
unanimously. All right. Any conflicts of interest to declare?
Seeing none we'll
move on to regular business. First item up is 3A received presentation of the
2023 greenhouse gas inventory report. Good evening Council. Ellen Troyer
interim city manager and I'll just say a few words to introduce this item. I am really disappointed
that our climate manager is not here today as she has done a lot of work to bring this to us
but we'll be receiving a presentation from the consultants from Cascadia who did this work for
us. Reducing the cities and the communities greenhouse gas emissions is a primary goal of
our climate action plan. We last completed an update and received a report in 2019 using
2018 data. So this report gives us a chance to update and see how we're doing. If you
have a plan, it's important to measure and check and that's what we're doing right now.
Our consultants are online and we'll be ready to present the findings and can take questions
at the end and also have a presentation to make. Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. Can everyone hear me okay?
Yes, we can. Thank you.
Okay.
Hi, good evening council members. Thank you for allowing me to present the results of the 2023 greenhouse gas emissions inventory.
I do have a presentation.
Let me see if I can share it.
We go.
Right.
Can everyone see that? Okay.
Yes, we can.
Perfect. Great.
So my name is Andrea Martin with Cascadia Consulting Group.
I led this effort, the greenhouse gas inventory update.
I also was involved in the city's last greenhouse gas inventory in 2014 and 2018.
So it was really great to be back and see how you all are doing in terms of making progress on emission reductions.
I wanted to introduce my colleague, Haley Weinberg, who is also involved in this effort
and will be helping to answer any nitty-gritty detailed questions you all might have about
this analysis.
All right.
So first, just provide an overview of the objectives of this study and the methodology.
So, as I mentioned, the objective was largely to provide an update of greenhouse gas emissions
for Bainbridge Island.
We conducted two different types of inventories, one that focused on Bainbridge Island's municipal
government operations-related greenhouse gas emissions, and then another that looked
at emissions from the broader Bainbridge Island community.
And this update was for calendar year 2023.
The reason why there's a little bit of a lag is because some of the key data sources that are needed are often on a time lag.
So that was the latest year that was available when we started this effort.
Another objective was to understand not just where you all are at now in terms of emissions but how emissions have been changing over time.
And so one way that we analyze that is through what's called a contribution analysis.
And that is a quantitative way to break down emission trends into different drivers.
So that was another component of this that I'll share with you today.
But overall, the goal here is really to just get a better understanding of emission sources,
how those emission sources are changing over time, and use that information to inform
climate action planning and implementation of the climate action plan.
So I mentioned that there are two types of inventories that are included here,
the community inventory that quantifies the missions that are generated within a
community's geographic boundaries from those community members, so it includes
residents on Bainbridge Island, businesses on Bainbridge Island, and and then
also missions that are coming directly from activities of those community
members. And then we also have a government operation inventory. This is
It's often a subset of the community inventory and often a pretty small subset that's really
just looking at city of Bainbridge Island government operations related emissions.
So those are generated from activities that are really under the local government sphere
of influence.
So those two inventories were the focus of this effort.
I also just want to acknowledge that there's another type of inventory that can be done
and called a consumption-based inventory
that's a bit more comprehensive
and attempts to look at both direct and indirect emissions
that are being generated by a community
regardless of location.
So that includes things like a life cycle
and upstream emissions associated with the goods
and services that are consumed by community members,
for example.
So that wasn't within the scope of what we did here.
we were looking at the community and government operations inventories that
are indicated with those orange arrows.
In terms of methodology, there are standard
protocols that are available for this type of work. They were used for the
previous inventories that were done in 2014 and 2018 as well. Those are the
US Community Protocol for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas
Emissions, the Global Protocol for Communities Fail Greenhouse Gas
inventories in the local government operations protocol. We use an inventory platform, again,
consistent with what was used for 2014 and 2018 called ClearPath, and that platform follows the
guidance of those protocols. So that was the overall approach and methodology. I'm going to go into
the specific emission sources that were included in this inventory at a moment,
But overall, just want to mention that our intent was to be as consistent as possible
with the previous inventories that were done, just to make sure we're having a good apples
to apples comparison of how emissions are changing over time.
There were a couple instances where we made updates to the methodology to improve accuracy.
One of those was around fuel oil and propane, and another was around solid waste.
So I just wanted to note we use the same approaches for previous years with a couple exceptions,
but where there were exceptions, we retroactively updated the past ones as well to make sure
you maintain that apples-to-apples comparison over time.
In terms of what emission sources are included, I wanted to include these two visuals that
show what emission sources are often included or can be included in these different inventories
and then how those are often referred to or organized.
Often we organize them into what are called scopes, one, two, and three.
And those are meant to represent how kind of directly those emissions are attributable
to an organization or a community.
So on the left-hand side, this graphic shows emissions sources in SCOPE 1, SCOPE 2, and
3 from government operations inventories that you can see.
SCOPE 1 includes emissions from agency-owned vehicles.
For example, fuel combustion like natural gas or propane or fuel oil from buildings.
Scope two includes purchase electricity for use within your government buildings.
And then scope three can include things like employee business travel, waste generation
and disposal from government facilities, employee commute travel, for example.
And then we have a similar graphic here for the community-wide inventory.
So this also has scope one, scope two, and scope three.
Some of the emission sources that can be included here in scope one are things like, again, stationary fuel consumption.
But this would be in like residential buildings, commercial buildings, for example, in boundary transportation.
So, passenger vehicles or freight vehicles that are traveling within the geographic boundary
of the island can include agriculture, forestry, and other land use from land within the island's
geographic boundary, industrial process and product use, and any inboundary waste
or wastewater that is produced and treated within that boundary.
Like the government operations, we also include grid supplied energy.
In this case, grid supplied electricity from Puget Sound Energy.
And then within scope three, we can include things like out of boundary waste and wastewater.
So if there's waste that's produced within the island that's then transported to a separate
location off island, you know, like a landfill, for example, it would account for emissions
from the waste that is being transferred to that landfill.
It also can include things like transmission and distribution.
So as energy is transmitted over electricity lines,
you get some losses along the way,
and that produces emissions, so it can count for that.
And then out of boundary transportation
is another example of what can be included.
I think the big one here is air travel, so as Baymard Island residents fly in and of SeaTac,
for example, it would account for emissions associated with that air travel.
So those graphics showed what can be included. This slide shows what we did include in these
inventories. Again, we intended to just be consistent with past inventories, so this
is consistent with those sources that were included in 2014 and 2018. So it includes
building energy, residential, commercial, industrial electricity, fuel oil, and propane.
We include emissions from on-road vehicles, so that includes passenger and freight vehicles
that are driving within the geographic boundary of the island. Any off-road equipment,
So boats, for example, but it also includes things like
lawn equipment or construction equipment,
public transit, ferries, and air travel, as I mentioned.
Within solid waste and wastewater treatment,
we included emissions associated with commercial composting
and landfilling of waste that's generated from residents
and businesses within the island.
land. We also code emissions from wastewater treatment and septic systems on the island.
We estimated emissions from the leakage of refrigerants from like vehicles and buildings
used for cooling. And then we also looked at agriculture emissions from enteric fermentation,
which is emissions directly coming from livestock and as well as management of manure on
agricultural lands. For the government operations inventory, we looked at buildings and facilities
owned and managed by the city of Bambridge Island. So that includes electricity, sources,
facilities, streetlights, traffic signals, propane use within those facilities. We looked
at fleet vehicles, off-road fleet equipment that's owned by the city, and then we also
look at employee commute. We also looked at solid waste and waste water that are generated
by city government activities and emissions associated with those as well as refrigerants
from buildings and fleet vehicles.
Okay, so that's all the methodology now to dive
into what we found. So starting with community-wide emissions, this pie chart shows a breakdown
of emission sources for the 2023 community-wide inventory.
So you can see here that the largest sources
are within residential electricity,
which made up about a third of emissions.
And then we have transportation sources,
including air travel, which is about 20%,
and armored vehicles, which are estimated around 14%.
In terms of how this has been changing over time
and compares to past years, this graph shows overall emissions with these stacked colored
bar charts, and each of the different colors represents the different sources, and then
these dots here show the per capita emissions trends.
So you can see quickly that since 2014, there has been an overall decrease in both
overall emissions and per capita.
There's a 14% decrease in overall emissions and a 21% decrease in per capita.
And the largest driver, and you can really see it visually here on the graph, is from
the electricity sector.
So that's the darker green and the lighter green here.
And the largest driver of that is just the transition to cleaner electricity sources
between those years.
So we'll dive a little bit more into that in a moment.
So diving more into each of these sectors in particular, this graph shows energy consumption
in the community over time by different sectors and fuel sources.
And then the dots here show how emissions have changed over time.
So you can see here that overall energy consumption is increasing, residential electricity consumption
increased 8%, non-residential electricity consumption increased about 1%, but overall
emissions are decreasing over time.
And so the reason for that is because the fuel mix from Puget Sound and Energy and
And the electricity that is being consumed by buildings in Maybridge Island is getting
cleaner.
So there are two pieces to that.
One is that they're just more renewable sources in PSC's fuel mix.
Another is that PSC has an option for community members to participate in a green power program
and you all have seen an uptick in participation in that program.
So that has also contributed to the overall decrease in emissions that you're seeing.
Diving into transportation, overall transportation emissions have increased over time.
There are a couple of drivers contributing to that.
VMT, so this graph is showing VMT.
That's annual vehicle miles traveled for passenger vehicles and trucks.
Overall VMT seems to be increasing over time.
So it's increased 6% since 2014, and that can be somewhat expected with population growth
as you have more people coming, you have more people who are going to be driving around.
But one thing to note is, despite that VMT increase, on-road emissions have decreased
over time.
They decreased by 6% since 2014.
So that is due to a transition to cleaner vehicles.
So, as the community purchases and drives more fuel-efficient vehicles, electric vehicles,
for example, those are going to drive down emissions.
Aviation is a key driver of overall increases in this sector.
So, they increased 49% since 2014.
This is due primarily to an increase in fuel consumption reported by CTAC.
we have a little methodology note here that these are estimated from those
fuel consumption trends at CTAC and county level passenger surveys. So just
want to note that these are this particular emission sector is pretty
highly estimated. We estimate to the county level and then downscale from
the county level to the city level. So you know there's not a survey that's
being done of every Babers Island community member
asking how much they flew that year and where they flew.
We're deriving that from these different sources.
So we're seeing overall increase in aviation emissions
kind of across this region,
kind of driven by these trends that we're seeing at CTAC.
So solid waste is relatively a smaller proportion
of overall emissions,
but it's still important to
to talk about and understand because local governments often have more direct control over
solid waste trends and it's an important emission source to be tracking. So we included it here.
Overall, you can see that we are seeing emissions increasing over time in this sector. There has been a notable increase in the
composted waste tonnage,
which is great because on a per ton basis compost produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions
than landfill waste. And we're seeing some decreases overall in landfill waste tonnage
as well in the single family sector, but we saw an increase in the multifamily and
commercial landfill waste tonnage. So there are, you know, kind of some different forces
happening here, but overall causing an overall emissions increase over time.
So I mentioned that we also did some analysis on what's driving these overall emission trends.
And we use a tool that can quantify various drivers of emission trends over time, including
consideration of things like weather.
So if it was a colder winter, for example, you're going to be more energy for heating
in your home.
It looks at changes in energy grid, population growth, per capita energy consumption, economic
changes in fuel switching and how much each of these are driving the trend
that you all see in your inventory over time. So this has got a waterfall chart
and it breaks down those different drivers and quantifies them. So you can
see the 2018 inventory on the left-hand side, the 2023 one on the right. So
overall you're seeing a decrease over time. The drivers of emission increases
are in the red and then drivers of decreases are in blue.
So there are some kind of more minor drivers here
like a colder winter that was in 2023
that was driving emissions upward.
There's been a growth in employment
but then you can see by and far the big driver here
has been that electricity and heating
fuels mix transition, driving that decrease over time.
So, in terms of takeaways, overall you are trending in the right direction.
Emissions are decreasing over time.
The majority of emissions are from that residential energy and transportation sectors.
So, you know, those are important sectors to be focusing on and thinking about your
climate action efforts.
The largest changes that we saw were in the electricity sectors, a downward shift
and then an air travel that was more of an upward shift.
And then as I noted before, just important to note
that some of these are estimated downscaled
based on county level and that we also use downscaled data
to estimate fuel oil and propane related emissions.
All right, so I'll quickly go through these
government operations emissions findings
buildings, and then we will wrap. So for the government operations submissions, you can
see it's a lot smaller proportionally to the whole community. 581 metric tons, about 0.3%
of community-wide emissions. But we still think this is important to quantify because they
are emissions that, you know, the city has more direct control over. So largest emission
sources here were on-road vehicles and off-road equipment in the purple, an employee commute
here too, and then also electricity use within buildings and facilities.
We're overall seeing a really large emission reduction trend here, a percent decrease in
emissions since 2014, and that has been driven largely by, again, that same transition
to cleaner electricity so that darker green here you see the electricity and then also a
reduction in fleet vehicle emissions from the city's owned vehicle fleet.
So this is looking at
buildings and facilities specifically so you can see energy use here has actually increased
over time but emissions have decreased again due to the cleaner electricity and the city actually
purchases green power for its facilities. So that has been the primary driver of this
really drastic decrease that you see.
And then within transportation we are seeing a
reduction in both fuel consumption and then associated emissions. So you can see fuel
consumption here in gallons and the purple bars and then the dots here show the emission
trends over time. And this isn't shown in this graph but we also saw a 36% decrease
and employee commuting emissions as well.
In solid waste and wastewater, we are seeing a decreasing trend there as well, notably
from landfill waste emissions associated with city activities, and then a slight uptake
in wastewater treatment-related emissions.
So overall takeaways here.
Fleet vehicles contribute to the majority of emissions, and that source is decreasing
over time.
Facility electricity emissions decreased very substantially due to that green power
purchase and employee commute emissions have also decreased likely due to
mo-shift and more telework options that being available since the last
inventory. And that's all I have.
Thank you very much. Council, any questions or
comments? Mayor Moriwaki. Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Hi-Tapas. And
your thanks for your and and Haley your work on this report. Just a
couple observations you noted that these cities really reduced and you know that
was part of partially I saw the big jump in or reduction in the commuters from
our city dropping and you explained that that's probably because of telecommuting
and and other things that they don't have to use their vehicles come in to
work.
Yeah so the employee commute piece that I just mentioned that was
specific to city employees, so City of Cambridge Island employee commuting.
The larger community telework transition would have been captured in the on-road transportation
sector.
Thank you very much for watching this video and I will see you in the next video.
And on your emissions trends, there's a huge drop from 2018 to now, and that's mostly because
of our green power credits. That's correct. Yeah, so for the city government, for the
buildings and facilities that are owned and managed by the city, the city purchases green
power to essentially negate the emissions associated with those buildings and facilities, which
is an option provided by Puget Sound Energy.
A couple questions from me.
On the community emissions chart, it was pretty amazing that air travel is the second highest
next to regular vehicle stuff.
And I'm glad you explained that you kind of did it from a table, but how do you
come to that estimate of our island's population's use of air travel?
Yeah, maybe Haley, do you wanna try and take that one?
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's a lot of downscaling, as Andrea mentioned,
but essentially we get some passenger survey data
from the airport itself,
and they also provide us with fuel consumption.
So we'll take the total fuel consumption
and we'll use those surveys to separate anybody
who's kind of on a layover,
so we're only looking at flights directly
into or out of CTAC,
and then we also look at where people are coming from,
they do surveys about who's kind of in the Puget Sound region, so we'll downscale down
to like King, Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish County. And then we downscale from the county level
to Bainbridge based on households and household income, assuming that households who maybe
make more have more ability to be flying more often. So it definitely is fairly downscaled,
but it is an estimate, so.
Yeah, it's a guesstimate though, right?
Yeah, and just one final point.
You mentioned that Puget Sound Energy,
yeah, Puget Sound Energy,
it's because they have a coal-fired plant
that creates a lot of pollution,
but the study, this is what I find interesting, is it?
Yeah, they do, but we as an island are really low,
and you mentioned a lot of electric vehicles,
so I wonder how, we use the electricity,
And so we're kind of punished because the utility is burning this fuel in Montana,
and that's where the pollution is actually taking place.
Yeah, so the electricity consumption within the community, the emissions associated with that electricity consumption
is determined by the energy, different energy sources that are used to create that electricity.
That's then, you know, kind of transmitted ultimately to the homes and businesses on the
island.
And so that's a standard approach that is taken for these types of inventories.
And it is based on information provided by the utility and reported to the state in terms
of their fuel mix.
So Puget Sound Energy has been transitioning to more renewable energy
sources and so that is reflected here in the decrease of emissions associated with each
kilowatt hour of electricity that is consumed within the island.
Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
Councillor Nelson.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
So first I just want to say thank you.
Excellent work on this. I found it really interesting.
I think it's quite
topical on the eve of Earth Day.
found it good.
So just a few questions. First,
am I reading it right then
that you included some scope
three emissions, but not all scope
three emissions?
Yes, that's
Right, so we included the scope three emissions
that we felt confident that we had data available for
and that are more typically included
in these types of inventories.
Okay, and then I think given sort of the,
I would say unwise largely repeal
of the Inflation Reduction Act at the federal level
and also sort of the trend in AI,
where you're just using a lot of energy
to cool data centers and what have you.
I mean, I think this is really impressive,
especially at the municipal level,
it's 71% decrease, and then county wide at 14,
but is there concern, I mean, you're in this industry,
is there concern about potentially backsliding on this?
Because a lot of this is driven by, you know,
electricity and heating fuels mix,
because I'm to understand there's now become increased demand for non-renewables
and maybe you can speak to that a little bit.
Yeah I mean there's no crystal ball
right but so hard to tell you know how exactly this will be changing over time
but I will say that there are some strong policies in Washington State that
are contributing to the behavior that we're seeing and the trends that we're
over time, so the Clean Energy Transformation Act or SATA is requiring electric utilities
to be carbon neutral by 2030. Haley can probably correct me here. Okay. So that is definitely
driving utilities to incorporate more renewables into their fuel mix. So there are some
strong even though, you know, there are different things happening at the federal level, there
are some policies at the state level that are helping to drive these trends.
That's helpful.
And then one more question.
So, what does it look like if you combine the two?
Because it's 14% down community-wide and then 71% down as far as the municipal level.
And then I think the sort of larger question in my mind is, is it enough?
And I mean that in a sense that we have a goal to reduce it, I think it's 90% by 2045, or is it 2044? 2045.
And then also kind of the question of are we doing our part.
I think what I've heard in general is that at this point it's very unlikely that we sort of globally reach that 1.5 degrees, you know, target from the Paris Agreement.
And so are we doing our part towards it, I guess is my point, or question?
I think that's a tough one to answer just by looking at the numbers.
I think, you know, you all have your climate action plan and are working toward the goals in that plan.
And that wasn't really in the scope of what we were doing to be kind of bringing that together.
But, you know, I will say that, like I mentioned, you're trending in the right direction, which
is good news.
I can say that, you know, we do a lot of these inventories, not everyone is in that same situation
of seeing trend in the right direction even.
So, and, yeah, I think your point is that perhaps a lot of reductions we're seeing
were maybe due to things outside of your control like the electricity mix.
So, you know, are you doing your part within the city?
Let's see, if I go back to... Maybe I'll share my screen again.
And I just want to interrupt to say we will have an opportunity to be hearing from our climate action
manager who is really the one who's going to be in a position to be able to give us a frank,
I think, evaluation of how we're doing and what we need to do differently.
I just want to point that out. We can't do that tonight because she's not feeling well,
but we'll have the opportunity.
Great.
Yeah, just quickly showing, because I didn't mention
all the pieces on here.
But we do have some indicators of households
and personal behavior and how that's changing over time
in the island.
And that seems to be generally trending
in a good direction and for some of these metrics here.
So, for example, decrease on remissions per mile, so as I mentioned, it looks like the
community is purchasing and using cleaner vehicles over time.
There's a decrease in commercial energy use per job, which seems a little abstract, but
that is the way to kind of provide an indicator of kind of in a normalized way how energy
use behavior is changing over time and that seems to be moving in a good
direction. The waste generation per person is decreasing over time. So you
know these are all indicators to me that that you're seeing some behavior
changes that are happening within the community between these two inventory
years and those are you know locally driven. So for what it's worth I will
Well, thanks for your work on this, I appreciate it.
Okay, Council Member Matthews.
Thanks, Deputy Mayor.
Thank you so much for your presentation.
I'll just won't ask a couple questions that I think after Deputy Mayor's comment that probably will save.
I won't steal any thunder for Laura.
But so I was really interested in your comments on manure and greenhouse gas emissions through agricultural, through farming and agriculture.
And then also, I had a question about the employee commute.
It might be you or our interim city manager.
When we talk about employee commute,
were those city-owned vehicles,
or are those just an employee's car
going to and from work or to home?
I wondered that.
And then I was curious if any other employees
besides our police, who I support,
taking their cars home, take their vehicles home,
just out of curiosity.
So the city manager, you can probably answer that one.
Sure, I can just jump in there.
No, we don't have, we have only very limited take home vehicles for people other than our
police officers.
And then I think the commute is very different than it used to be.
We didn't used to have telecommuting on a regular basis for most employees and certainly
not before COVID.
So the 2018 numbers wouldn't show very much telecommuting whereas now you are seeing
the reduced number of people taking their personal vehicles to come to City Hall.
Got it. Okay, that's a good one. And then just for my colleagues, I ride horses and spend
a lot of time on a farm. And we have probably a building size composter. So if anyone is
ever interested in coming to take a look at what that looks like and what it entails,
the offer stands. It's pretty cool. And then so the last is at our last Puget Sound
regional council meeting, we received a presentation from the Teardown Region's Comprehensive Climate
Action Plan to guide regional climate action.
And so we learned what was in the plan, how it was developed, and how strategies and actions
can reduce greenhouse emissions.
And at the end of it, they asked us a question that I was going to get you to do my homework
for me.
And so we were asked, in addition to funding, what would be most useful to our jurisdiction
to make progress on emissions reductions.
What would you say?
I might punt that and say that Laura would be
a great person to answer that question.
Thank you so much.
Because I see these numbers, but there's so much more,
you know, to what's happening in the community
beyond the numbers, and I know that she's more dialed
into that.
Yeah, I won't, wait for Laura.
Thank you.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Yes, and I suspect most of my questions will be
punted to Laura too, because they are all kind of outside of the information you
presented. I was very interested in these details you provided, and all they do
is beg more questions, right? More. And so as far as just to piggyback on
Council Member Matthews questions about manure and composted waste, perhaps I'm lumping those two together,
but there was a 61% increase and that's also kind of a good thing if it's going to a good place.
Do you happen to know where all of that waste is going, the composted waste?
I'm not sure if that was in the scope of your work at all.
This is just a, you can punt that one.
We should know, the question is, am I able to answer it right now, or have to get back
to you.
Haley, do you know that offhand?
I don't know the name of the landfill off the top of my head, unfortunately.
No worries, and it's a landfill, so it's not a place that actually takes it in.
You can put that.
That's a lot.
I'm pretty sure last thing, our waste that goes through, maybe just goes to North
kits up for composting, but we can get an answer on it.
If you don't compost your waste through reemerge disposal, I mean that might be, I would love
clarification on that, but all my other questions, I'll just jump over to that one because we
can jump back into that, but all my other questions have to do with the regionality
of the information you provided.
You've been doing this for other municipalities and communities, and if you could tie this
information into what you're seeing around us, how best can we work together to not be
in a silo with this to work towards a trend that works for all of us regionally?
Do you have thoughts on that?
But
yeah, there are definitely a lot of efforts happening regionally and, you know, you mentioned
under, one of you, I can't remember, sorry.
Sorry, there was a mention of the Comprehensive Climate Action Plan that is being done regionally.
And those climate action plans that are funded by the EPA were intentionally regional in nature,
and that is because the EPA acknowledged that regional action, coordinated action, is often
and more impactful than working kind of in individual silos
in terms of jurisdiction.
So that is generally, I think, the direction
that many communities are heading is just
acknowledging that regional is better
and how can we work together for these kinds of efforts.
There are some great models actually
regionally in the Puget Sound for that kind
of collaboration. King County has the K-4C, which is a collaboration between the county
and a good number of the cities within the county where they have shared climate commitments
and they also have shared programming and even actually a shared inventory effort and
we support that inventory effort too. And then the east side cities Bellevue and
and Rush Island and Redmond and others also have a coalition and they've been able to
work with PSE and other partners to create shared regional programs for things like heat
pump retrofits and I think that has been really powerful because as we all know like contractors
For example, they're not just saying a wondrous restriction.
They're moving around.
So having programs that are applicable across multiple
registrations that are consistent across jurisdictions,
you're just seeing a lot more opportunity for success
when you have those introduced regionally, power
in numbers and consistency across jurisdictions
and all those other benefits that you get.
So, hopefully that answers your question, to some extent.
It does, but my big takeaway was consistent, which I like.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Council Motion.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
Thank you both.
This is very exciting.
It's really gratifying to see a decrease,
even if maybe we can't take credit for an awful lot of it.
It's certainly better than going the other direction,
right?
So I had a, sort of to that goal, net metering and solar, the impact that our islands uptake
on doing rooftop solar, is there a way to sort of deduct that or is it automatically deducted
from the energy use that you're reporting on?
I mean, if you understand a question, go for it.
Yeah, Haley, do you have anything you want to add to that in terms of the electricity
consumption data and how solar might be taken into account?
I don't think I necessarily have anything to add.
I'm not sure that Puget Sound Energy splits that out for our main bridge data, but
I can check really quick.
Yeah, we get the electricity consumption data from Puget Sound Energy, and yeah, so
any consumption that they are aware of, at least they provide to us with that number.
And then I mentioned that you have the Green Power Program participation, which PSE accounts
for separately and so we're able to deduct you know that the emissions
associated with that so it's truly the zero emission green power so I guess
that's what we can offer in terms of how how about this would be accounted for
okay because that would be one way right of sort of seeing how the community is
is impacting this in a more general way
if we're able to deduct that
or maybe it's already deducted
and that's part of how the energy use is going down.
Similarly, so also with the Puget Sound Regional Council
as part of the Transportation Policy Board,
we got also a download on the climate action plan.
And if I'm not mistaken,
I did not go back to verify my notes
But I have it scribbled somewhere that the vehicle miles traveled overall in the four counties went up 20%
But the per person
Vehicle miles traveled went down 12%
so
That's a lot of going down right even though
Overall, it's still going up because the area has more people
So what I saw or thought think I saw is that
Vehicle miles increased here on Bainbridge
6%, and then the on-road emissions decreased 6%.
So, you know, it sounds like that's a 12% decrease, maybe on a per mile, am I interpreting
that correctly?
And I'm just kind of wondering, you know, how we can go about looking at this, analyzing
it after the fact to see how we're doing.
VMT increased 6% and I can't remember what the population growth is. You can kind of
probably do the math. We don't have a per capita VMT change here noted, but you know we can
probably deduce that fairly quickly. I would say on a per capita basis I would say that
that VMT has stayed steady if not declined, consistent with what you have noted.
And then when you also factor in the fact that vehicles are getting more efficient, you know,
those are both contributing to, you know, kind of a decreasing force in emissions.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah, I think so. So kind of what I hear is that we can't really deduce from this data
vehicle miles traveled per person.
We can. We can. We just don't have the stats in front of us.
Gotcha. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. But I was just thinking, I was trying to think about, okay, what's the
percent of population growth and how is that compared to this percent?
Right, right.
To do some math on the fly here.
But I think a 6% increase in VMT is fairly modest, I would say,
like between those two years.
And if I remember right, that percentage is kind of,
it's fairly consistent with the population growth
that we saw between those years as well.
So that would indicate to me that per capita VMT, yeah,
is remaining fairly consistent,
if not decreasing over time.
And I see Haley unmuted.
so I might be able to provide more than my mental mass numbers in front of me actually.
Per capita, BMC has declined by about 3 percent since 2014, and population has increased by
9 percent.
Thank you.
And so that's vehicle miles traveled.
That's not efficiency and greenhouse gas.
Correct.
That's just miles traveled per person.
Awesome.
Okay.
And then the last one you're probably going to punt but can our advisory committee, the climate change advisory committee with the help of our climate change staff person, can we pull out what has been impacted by our own efforts, right?
So a lot of this has been impacted by state efforts and COVID.
So do you think that we have the ability to pull out from this data what our efforts have resulted in?
That's a great question. I think the simple answer is no, unfortunately.
Typically, that's more of a ground up analysis where you look at program metrics, for example,
how many homes installed heat pumps, and then what's the energy reduction from that.
It's really hard at the level of this analysis to be able to make that determination.
Okay, all right, but maybe we could still do it for the municipal emissions, right, just
from the government emissions.
It seems like we might be able to drill down on that.
Anyway, thank you very, very much.
This is very exciting.
Okay.
I think we have a couple more comments.
I think I'll make the only comment that I was going to make other than, let's remember
that we'll have Laura and who knows if she was watching and she might be saying,
Gosh, I wish I was there and I have a feeling that our guests might wish she was here too
to support them.
I just wanted to add that on the topic of how much are we paying for gaining whatever reduction
and reliance on coal and we want to remember the equity issue of the impacts on people
in Montana of coal strip, the severe health impacts of coal burning.
And so that's something that we're also getting that's not measured here in our
reduction. So I just wanted to add that. But I believe the next was Councillor
Matthews and one more from Council Member Nelson. Okay, I'll be really quick
because this is quick. So I just wanted to speak a little bit to
collaboration and give a plug for what Laura is doing, Laura Reiser, if she's
listening. So Bainbridge Island participates in an inter-county climate
partnership and thanks to Mike Cox and the audience as well. And among
It's Bainbridge Island, Baffle, Edmonds, Kenmore,
Lake Forest Park, Shoreline, King, Kitsap,
and Snohomish County.
So we are working towards some of those collaboration goals.
And then I did send this presentation to council today.
But basically the Puget Sound Regents Climate Action Plan
Agency is proposing a program for ongoing regional
collaboration on climate action.
And the objective is to achieve greenhouse gas
reductions and coordination across four counties
that maximize scale and leverage resources
as well also supporting individualized needs, so if any of you have any other ideas or want
to further comment, you can comment on the email and keep it moving that way.
So thank you so much for your presentation.
Councilmember Nelson.
Yeah, just one other question, which is the last time we did this, did we also look
at consumption-based inventories?
We I think did a high level look at it.
there's a tool that was available out of UC Berkeley that uses some demographic
data to try and estimate what consumption might be. So yeah we there was a
high-level estimate but it wasn't scaled up to the entire community level it
was more looking at you know kind of an average household. Okay thank you.
Great
Thank you very much to both for the excellent presentation and bearing with us through our questions and comments. Hope you have a good evening
Thank you so much
Next up is item 3b discussed framework of an interlocal agreement with kids
Kids of public utilities or I want to say KBD kids of public utility district related to water system coordination on Bainbridge Island
Thank you, Council. Our next item is an introductory discussion to set the stage for a potential
interlocal agreement between the city and our partners, Kitsap Public Utility District,
describing a long-term approach to providing water services on Bain Ridge Island. We recognize
that our organizations need to work together on this project. And tonight we'll talk
about both a near-term desire on the south end and a longer-term project potentially
on the north part of the island. I'll turn it over now to our Public Works Director,
Chris Werzbicki, who will provide a couple more framework comments and then also welcome our
colleagues from Kitsap Public Utility District who are here.
Good evening Council. Chris Werzbicki,
Public Works Director. Good to see you this evening. I'm not going to turn most of my
time over to Kitsap Public Utility District to talk a little bit about some of the challenges
and issues they're facing with the South Bambridge water system because I know we're
all interested in what's happening there. But also I just wanted to give you a brief
introduction of the framework for this interlocal agreement that we have set up for your review.
Basically it just establishes the intentions of the agencies to work together on a number
of kind of short-term and long-term potential issues.
One of which is working together on the south bainbridge and intertide between those
two systems, the city central system and the south bainbridge system owned by KPUD
as well as potential inter ties or interconnections
and additional coordination between systems
in the central and northern parts of the island,
which as we've discussed in the past,
is kind of one of the long-term goals
of our groundwater management plan.
In addition, working together on conservation comprehensive
and kind of consistent water conservation messages
for all of our public water customers on the island.
And so we did not put a lot of the details
into this agreement it really it's intended to kind of lay out some
parameters and then once the details of these particular issues become known
then we would go back and amend this agreement for specific for moving
forward on specific terms. I know it's a kind of a lot to digest in a single
discussion this evening so our recommended motion for you this evening is
to potentially consider moving this to the utility advisory committee for
additional review and some recommendations for your future consideration. So with
that. I'll turn it over to my colleagues at KPD, Angela Venick. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Ellen. Appreciate all the work that we have done together.
And how do I advance right here? Never mind. All right. So here to talk about regional water
on Bainbridge Island. I'm going to go through some slides pretty quickly, just a little bit
about who we are and then get into the meat of what we're talking about here today.
So Kitsap, PUD, we are 85 years old.
We are a public utility district really created for electricity.
It didn't happen.
And then about 50 years ago, we started providing water.
And so we've been providing water throughout Kitsap County for over 50 years.
and serve now about 46,000 customers
and have also added in this time,
in 2015 we added sewer,
and then in 2003 actually we added telecommunications.
So we do all three utilities right now.
We do water telecommunications and sewer services.
We currently have about 1,000 miles of fiber
throughout the county
and own over 51 water systems.
Angela, could you get a little closer to the mic for especially for the benefit
probably of people at home? Thank you. How's that? That's great. Better? Okay. So I
can't read that and this at the same time so I apologize for that. I'll look
down. Kitsap County we are a special purpose district with the whole
of the county as our boundary and so because of that and because of our
experience with water services doing this for so long we in the 90s worked
with the county when changes were made requiring counties to provide water
services as a provider of last resort the county didn't have those
expertise, but kids at PUD did. So they leaned on us not only for our operational but also
for our technical expertise. And in 1994, we entered into a memo of understanding where
we took on those obligations to provide water services to entities, whether it's individuals
or groups that no longer had water or there was a problem with their water system
and no one else was willing to step in the PUD will step in. In that also the
county did designate us as a water the water resource manager and really looking
at how we would be the technical lead agency to look at water throughout the
county as a regional resource and that's how we've been chartered and
And that's really since the 90s have looked at that and focused on building regional infrastructure
similar to what climate regional engagement we're looking at regional as well.
As with this also, this is when we began doing all of our stream and rain monitoring.
And so we capture all that data and we have a great collection of data for the county
as a whole to really look at what we're dealing with, the climate change, how it's affecting
us, what the different, you know, the five-year cycles we see, things like that.
Okay, but the really meat of what we're here, Bainbridge Island, we have two really large
systems on the island here.
We've got the North Bainbridge system and then we have the South Bainbridge system
and the South Bainbridge is really what's driving us here.
South Bainbridge began with the island utility system and South Bainbridge, those were consolidated
together. Bill Point is on this map, so I did leave it as separate, but it has been
recently consolidated into South Bainbridge as well. And then we are working with Department
of Health on consolidating Harbour Crests and Rose Avenue at this time. And really
the goal there from the Department of Health side of things is really reducing the number
of small systems that are out there and having larger entities to deal with so they don't
have as many different points to measure.
We also have an intertie with the city of Bambridge Island to serve Rockway Beach and
And that is in case of an emergency, we're able to provide water to that area should
the city need it.
And there was some times with the Taylor Well where there was rehabbing and we were able
to use that to provide services.
We currently serve about 3,500 meters total on the island, which is 3,280 residents
or 5,8 inch meters.
meters. And five hs meters really comes into important, that number comes into play because
that is considered with our calculations with Department of Health, one equivalent residential
unit or one ERU. So when we look at ERUs, we have to calculate and we're determined
and how many people we can serve or how many ERUs
we can serve on a system based on a series of metrics.
And those include the rights, the water rights we have,
so how much water we can pump on any given day
or over the course of a year total.
Those are the rights from Department of Ecology,
the source, what the well can actually pump.
So, that source, so the amount we're actually pumping out of each well, the storage, the
reservoirs and such, and then also the average peak usage of a ERU or of our 5.8-inch meter.
So, we discovered just recently last year that our mirrors that were measuring the
amount we were pumping out of the wells were reading incorrectly.
And so they were telling us we were pumping more than we actually were.
And so what that means is we actually have less source than we thought and were using
in our calculations.
At the same time, we're seeing an increase in peak, average peak usage.
And that's during the summer, the really hot times of the year.
And that's kind of the worst case scenario that Department of Health
requires you to use when determining how many equivalent residential units you can serve.
So we have this double whammy of the increase in peak consumption and the decrease in source.
and this we redid our our plan for this in 21 water system plan in 21 so these
are done every 10 years and this completely changed what we thought we
had in 21.
This information was brought to the board in January we
We continued to evaluate the numbers to ensure everything was correct, seeing what we did
and seeing the reduction in equivalent residential units that were allowed.
Our Board of Commissioners did pass a resolution to limit sales of new connections.
And so really put a pause on what we're doing right now until we're able to look at additional
source or if we can reduce the peak consumption. I do want to point out there
were a couple of exemptions on this and that is if there is a home that has
water right now that's not on our system and for some reason the quantity or
quality of water does not meet their needs for average daily use we will be
able to step in for that. So that would be an exception to this. Also an ADU,
because we're seeing our peak usage be really associated with landscaping and
those types of things, by adding an ADU you're not adding any extra property so
as long as you weren't adding another connection for that ADU, we're allowing
you to upsize the meter for that. Those are the two exceptions we're
looking at right now. In the resolution we do state that we will revisit the sale of
binding water letters and so that's the addition of new connections in Q1 of
2027.
So what do we do? All right the first step is conservation. Let's see what
we can do to bring down that peak load. If we're able to do that, that really
changes the equations and really increases the number of equivalent residential units
we can serve.
So if for those of you who live in our South Bainbridge system, which I know a couple of
you do, we have sent a bunch of communication out, or at least a couple of communications.
And these really talk about what happened, what we're seeing and the difference, and
and how the peak usage is affected.
We do see a peak usage here that's extremely higher than any of our other systems within
the county.
And so we are requesting, really or desiring, to bring down the peak usage from 618 gallons
per minute to 500 gallons per minute.
That is gallons per day.
Thank you, gallons per day.
that's even details yeah gallons for a day thank you and so with that it would
still be higher than any of our other systems throughout the county but that
19% reduction in usage would affect us quite a bit so we've asked and are
We're instituting a water only on every other day.
This is something we've done in the past.
When we did it in the past, it was because we had an emergency that drew down the storage
that we had, and so we had this week, and the community really came together for that.
We're hoping to see that same response here.
If your house number is odd, you water on an odd day.
If your house number is even, you want her on an even day with everybody taking a break
on the 31st.
So it's all fair across the board.
We really do think that this will work well.
We're working closely with City of Maybridge Island staff to make sure any communication
we're sending out, you're aware of.
Also looking at the island as a whole because we do have additional, or we do have high
consumption in North Bainbridge as well, that we would like to bring down with our water
use efficiency goals, just not the near term challenges we're seeing on South Bainbridge
right now.
Okay, so this takes us to the ILA that Chris was talking about.
We have a near term need.
And that near term need is a inner tie between kids at PUD System and the City
of Bambridge Island system at Northeast Eagle Harbor.
This is something we've been talking about doing.
This is something that we have thought is good for both systems for resiliency and
being close together, looking at when you're able to rest different systems operationally,
when you're looking at climate change, all of our water comes from rainfall.
all, when you're doing all these things, it's good to have that regional infrastructure.
So we are always talking about this.
And a couple of things have happened that have allowed us to expedite, being able to
build the infrastructure that would reach City of Ambridge, and then also being able
to work with the City of Ambridge on excess source that you may have on your system
at this time.
So, right now, we have two grants with Department of Health.
And what those are doing, they're replacing the infrastructure and consolidating Harbor
Crest and Rose Avenue, as I mentioned earlier.
Those two systems have emerging contaminants of manganese.
And so what we'll do is we'll be removing, putting treatment plants in for those, removing
the manganese, combining those with the self-membraged system.
That gets us a majority of the way, as you can see from the map, it gets us a majority
of the way to where the city of Maybridge infrastructure already is.
And so we are doing these two projects in 2026.
So they're underway right now.
Next year we put in our capital plan to build the rest of the way to the city of
Maybridge.
So that would be a 2027 connection to the to the city. So really that's what
we're asking of the city in this ILA is to really expedite that connection with
us that intertie in the ILA that would allow that to happen as well as
provide source for us for this near-term challenge that we have.
I will
We'll say there are also other sources in South Cambridge that we are looking at.
Those just take longer.
Term. So those take the application for water rights, drilling wells, if a well already exists,
which there are some, being able to just acquire that and then apply for water rights for that.
Those all take a minimum of five years. And so to meet the growth projections that the
city has put out there for Linwood Center and other of those areas that we serve.
We want to make sure that we can continue selling water, binding water letters.
Long term.
That's next.
Here we go.
Long term is really the bigger plan that we've been talking about and you may have
seen this before.
I know that Chris has spoken with the UAC about this and that is really connecting the
North Bainbridge system to the city and then also connecting it to the South Bainbridge.
And working together on regional resources that will support having different sources
for both the city as well as kids at PUD.
Okay, I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about reclaimed water because that's
another source that we can look at.
With the acquisition of sewer district seven, we are investigating that use.
So right now the effluent does go out into an outfall to the Puget Town right now.
And what we can look at doing is adding tertiary treatment and then you would end
end up with class A drinking water.
And then what we could do is either use that to reduce these peak usage because you could
use it for irrigation and landscape purposes, or we can also take this and place it in
a drain field to recharge the aquifer.
And that's what we're doing in Port Gamble right now.
Contact information.
So I'm Angela.
This is Dave Everson, he's the assistant general manager.
He's also been greatly involved with Chris on this.
Bernie Kenworthy, she is our engineering manager.
Tom Colby was going to be online.
He's our licensed high-level geologist.
And last but not least, we have Commissioner Deborah Lesser,
who serves this community on our board of commissioners.
All right, open for any questions?
Great. Thank you so much. I'm not sure it was first, Mayor.
And I may pull on these guys, too.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor, and thank you so much, Angela, and good to see you, Debbie.
And I've got a couple questions. One thing you said that got me kind of confused.
You said your meters or whatever they were were pumping out more, but then showing...
And then you had a sort of, it would seem that if you're pumping out more, it would look
like you're using more at that time rather than, my logic says it would be that you're
pumping out, it shows you're pumping out less, but there's more volume coming out.
Yeah.
So, yeah, so we have your source over here, and it's saying, let's say 100.
And then we have your residents over here who are using 50.
And in between, we had thought there was leaks, and we had been investigating everything
to find these leaks.
We had replaced residential meters, which is where they mostly are.
So we had replaced those.
We had looked at other lines.
We could not find the leaks.
We went to the source meters.
It was the source meters.
So it wasn't actually pumping more.
It was just telling us it was.
So what we thought was being pumped, there wasn't.
Now, when we pump those wells, we monitor what's called the drawdown and make sure we're
pumping at a level that's sustainable.
And so as we're doing that, that's kind of our maximum of what we can pump long-term.
And so if we thought that was 100 and now it's actually only 50, that's where you
saw a great reduction in our source.
So you discovered that.
You have no idea how long that's been going on?
Is this is something that just recently happened or is it something that is I don't know that we know yeah
Go ahead Dave. You want to come up in
15 and those source meters had not been replaced
Well, we have 10
Sources on the South Bay Ridge the new South Bay Ridge water system that comprises the old three systems
We're talking about just a couple of the meters that had an issue, but they were the two largest producing
Wells and so when we took it over and we you know did all of the homework prior to that acquisition
and we talked to the owner and stuff like that.
Everything made sense, the specific capacity
and everything made sense.
So this was obviously something that had been going on
before us, this is something that we were not aware of
and this is obviously something
that we should have checked sooner.
So we did have, so those two sources
that had a reduction account for about,
they were lost about 20% in each,
so not real water, just on paper, right?
But that accounts for about 10% loss on paper across the entire system, which is significant.
A few more questions.
You said, I think you said that this water district consumes more water than your other districts.
And you said irrigation was one reason.
What are the other reasons that's happening here and can you explain that?
It's pretty much summer usage.
So average across all of our systems is about 189 gallons per day.
So that's what we consider our regular usage.
Your showers, your cleaning, things like that.
In the summer when we get up over 600 in South Baymurch,
we know that's on these peak hot days.
So assuming it's landscaping, it could be slip and slides.
beds, sprinklers, things like that, but yeah, it's mostly outdoor use.
Well, I think the even odd day strategy is something that a lot of places use, especially
where they're drought-driven, you know, because they have a sudden drop.
Yeah.
Is there an encouragement also to point out that all of this summertime usage is also
adding to the excessive use of the water compared to other districts?
Yes. It, yeah, I mean it is adding to excessive use, yeah.
Then I just had one other point. You said that, you know, you were created by the county, the county about 76 years ago, and these were created and you're under the, you were created under county authority, is that correct?
We were actually created under initiative one which allowed communities to create the
PUD so it wasn't the county that created us but the community that created the PUD.
It really was driven out of Grange districts and I know it was all about the rural electrification
and so the granges drove this and had initiative one passed through the state
legislature and not allowed communities to create PUDs. So we existed but we
really weren't doing providing any services until the 70s. So what did you
mean when you said that the county created or authorized you? The county
entered into a memo understanding with kids at PUD to act as their water resource manager
and operator.
All right, so the initiative, but then the county asked you to do this.
County asked us to do it, and we said yes.
I'm just going to confuse because we're providing a city service and been a city for 26 years
and it seems that the county's no longer a part of us.
Those parts are not rural anymore and so I want to make sure the residents of
of our island have adequate water, that's not a question.
I'm looking at more as a logical utility perspective
as a municipality of why this is a typical service
and that there's this one that's been around
pre-incorporation.
And so I've always been confused by
when I see the kids at PED, water pollution
and stuff like that, we have a water system.
So this is the question I really like to,
not for the center tie thing,
but something I think we have to discuss
as a city and as a utility as well. So thank you for your time.
Absolutely. Okay, who was next?
Council Member Matthews. Sorry.
That's okay. Thank you, Stephanie, Mayor. Thank you all for being here.
First, I just want to thank you for your ongoing partnership.
You've been pretty much doing the Canary in the coal mine for a really long time,
as long as I've been around about this issue.
So thanks for being proactive when you noticed what was going on.
I think as long as maybe it was the water festival several years ago
You said that Bainbridge Island is the most in your network and it seems that we still have that distinction or award which is unfortunate
Which is yeah, not good. So I
Was one and also I want to thank you for clarifying on ad use because I know that was of concerns
And I actually had a constituent have that concern and you directly called them back, which is wild
So thank you for that
So my question is I was just thinking about the
the alternate side watering and the card,
because I live on the south end,
so I've gotten the card and the letter,
and I was wondering if there might be a way
to do one side of the card in Spanish,
because many of the folks who are doing that work
are, speak Spanish, and so I think
that would be really helpful.
Absolutely, I will, yeah, yeah.
And then in thinking also about the alternate sides,
many of the way that they get of the water or the homes get watered on the
south end is a crew comes and does one group at a time it might not be on
alternate sides because of their day that they come so I wonder if there could
be some so we alternate sides if you're you know not in an HOA but HOA's
maybe have some I don't know how to think about it but there it's a
little because I know thinking about where I live we're even an odd on one
side but it's all one day and it's all on one irrigation system. So we are we
are providing guidance to do every other day how that looks and how you're
able to do that. We've had a lot of people call and question especially if
their irrigation system is set up for every other versus odd even can that
and so we're really asking that you do the best you can
to just use every other day.
Okay, yes.
And then also thinking about it,
a lot of the folks who are watering are not even there.
They might be not living there for the summer
or it's another home or they're in a compound
and it's one home, but the others,
they're not in it as much.
I don't know the answer to this.
It's one of the most frustrating things
because it's not a money issue.
You could bill till the cows come home.
You know what I mean?
It's not going to change anything.
So it's like then what?
And that's where we find ourselves.
And we are, we're looking at what we can do.
We have a handful of really super users.
And so how do we support them in being able
to take care of this resource as well?
That really is a community resource.
So how do we support them in that?
And so we're looking at different ways to approach those individuals on a one-on-one
basis to make sure they understand that this is what's happening. Thank you so
much.
How about we go down the line? Okay, Council Member Nelson.
Okay, well
thank you for being here. So a few questions. The first one, when you guys
came to the Utilities Advisory Committee had a really great discussion there. And I wonder
if you could speak a little bit about the three well fields down there. I know you had
mentioned one of them having seawater intrusion, another one or two of them having PFAS, maybe
you could kind of, you know, kind of level set for us on that one.
I'm going to hand that over to Dave.
Yeah.
No.
All right, yeah. And let me know if you want anything specific, but you're very
Very right. The systems came with well fields. So three systems, three well fields. Starting
in the west, I guess, at the South Bainbridge system, which would have in Linwood Center
is where the well field resides. Just a little bit of history in addition to that.
So there were two wells that were being used. There was many old wells that had been retired
or decommissioned, but there was two wells that were being used when we took over
ownership of the system. We had since drilled three wells, wells 9, 10, and 11, also known
as Deer Path Well that you're probably aware of. And so 9 and 10 were successful, 10 by
far the most successful, but in the Deer Path Well 11 was not successful. So in addition
to that, though, did some water quality concerns. The well field came with an iron
and meganese removal system from the previous owner, and it is working as designed. Still
today. We've made some improvements but I was working as assigned. But we have had both
non-regulatory PFOS hits in that well field and we've had rising chloride and conductivity
levels. Now they're very low. They're not to the point where you would actually call
it sea water or salt water intrusion at this point. But that is something that we watch.
We actually for the last 20 or so years have been monitoring chloride and conductivity
connectivity around the county so this is something that we do anyway because
we're essentially an island county so we're very familiar with that but that
is something that we're watching it's not something that always trends
linearly it can be exponential and it's in its growth so definitely
watching that closely as we move to the east we have the island utility
wells three wells there as well that that system came to us with a large
watch
Right? And wells that had previously, at one point in time, been very productive. They're
the deepest wells that the district owns, and they have lost a significant amount of specific
capacity, which is gallons that you're able to pump to the surface per foot of drawdown.
So we have done rehabilitations on those. As a matter of fact, we recently completed
a rehabilitation that was, we actually went in multiple times and we threw the latest
technology at it, and we did improve capacity, but not to what we had hoped, all right.
Other than, I'm trying to remember if we have anything in there, those wells don't deal
as much with water quality issues, but if we move to Bill Point, Bill Point is a much
smaller well field, again, through another three wells, they're shallower wells.
When we first got involved with them, they did see some rising, they were seeing some
rising nitrate levels. And so the plan in consolidating the Bill Point system was to
rest that well field and to use other source to then see what could happen after we monitor
these sources for a while and see if we can improve upon that situation and learn a little
bit about that. Since that time we have detected PFOS in that well field. So that's something
and we do believe that that nitrate and PFOS likely go hand in hand and are probably
from drain fields, being that they're shallow wells within that community.
So that is kind of the summary of kind of what we're looking at in the south end.
No, no, that's helpful.
Thank you.
And I will tell you, I am on south Bainbridge water, and my water usage is very low.
Excellent.
We're not going to call anyone out, don't worry.
No, but I think so, as far as the, I'm kind of thinking also, what's the timing
So, kind of your section one is sort of the short term, the inner tie to deal with South
Bainbridge water.
What's the timing as far as your sort of section two, larger coordination between the city
and KPUD?
So section one, looking at next year and being able to start that process, if depending
Depending on how much water the city has available to provide us, 90 gallons per minute gets us
through the next five years with the growth projections and the comprehensive plan as
well as serving everyone now and the people who have bought connections that are connected.
good.
For the longer term, we're actually going to start working on some of that right
now. And so looking at well fields, things along those natures, because those take so
much time to get water rights for them, we will hopefully work with the city, continue
to work with the city to do sharing of infrastructure on that side of things and
and then also looking at how to connect for the North Bambridge system there by Madison.
And then as far as the sort of section 2, I just want to confirm that's going to go both
ways, right?
Okay, that's not just a, okay.
Yeah, it's a wheeling, it's kind of a wheeling agreement, so, you know, when the city is
looking at resting your wells or has some kind of operational capacity, whether it's
taking down a reservoir to clean it.
Those types of things were able to do those things
and then transfer the water both ways.
There are details associated with that
that we're going to have to work through,
but that is the purpose of that wheeling agreement.
Okay, and then, and this might be more of a question
for public works, but are we targeting new wells
at this point to sort of handle this?
Do we have the capacity I think the one by Eagle Harbor that's pulling from is it glacial Marine aquifer
Do we you know?
Have you looked at it from a capacity standpoint from the city?
We believe we have the capacity to provide the service the one variable that we are
going to do a little bit of
Evaluating and piloting of this summer is whether the infrastructure how much the infrastructure can really provide
The head of the bay well that is nearest to this inner tie has some of the older equipment
in the system.
We have a capital improvement plan that we are about to engage where we are going to be
replacing a number of pieces of critical equipment as well as doing a rehabilitation
of at least one of the wells on that site over the course of the next 18 months.
So I have no doubt in the long term that that site will be able to provide the water.
We're just trying to determine in the short term, you know, is the infrastructure suitable
for delivering what's needed.
this 90 gallons permitted is the five-year kind of maximum.
In this initial year, I highly doubt
it will be anywhere close to 90 per minute.
So the short answer is yes, and in the longer term,
we are continuing to evaluate the situation.
OK, and then I think I just have a couple more things.
Let's see.
So somebody emailed me a question
where they were wondering what the ownership of the piping
between South Bainbridge and KPUD North Bainbridge
wells three, seven, and nine.
Who owns the infrastructure? Is it KPUD or is it the city?
In North Bainbridge 3, 7 and 9?
Yeah, and then the piping between South Bainbridge and North Bainbridge.
Yeah, those are all things that would be determined as a part of this agreement.
We would probably look to the coordinated water system plan and where our water system boundaries are.
I know there's some desire of the city and PUD to kind of look at those boundaries
as you're looking at what systems may need your support to be able to reach them.
And that's something we're looking at too and very aware of.
We've had those conversations.
You know, we can look to figure out what makes the most sense there.
On the south end, we're pretty tight there.
We've got a pretty good boundary established.
You all already have infrastructure to the boundary and we're almost there.
In the north area, we do have boundaries that are tight,
but our infrastructure is farther apart.
So the exact location of those interties
in the payment agreements or the cost sharing agreements on those would be something that
we would have to negotiate. I mean, each zonally, in addition to piping, you would have, you
know, pressure regulating systems in place at each intertie or transfer stations, if you
will.
Okay.
And I only have one other question which is, I think, obviously, for us, we are mostly
concerned with the citizens of Cambridge Island having, you know, quantity and quality
of water. And obviously you look at this as a regional resource. Would you guys be open
to putting in a provision of the contract that essentially says that any water that came
from the city could only be used to service residents on this, you know, on the island?
I think so because we actually couldn't serve anyone off the island. There is no
infrastructure off the island. Any infrastructure, to be honest, that would be brought from maybe
Sir Quamish to the island would be to provide water to the island if it's needed. There's
not a need outside, but yes, absolutely.
Okay. I think that would sort of allay some concerns from some citizens.
Absolutely.
Thank you. Okay, I appreciate your time. I have a...
Thank you.
Councilor Lantham.
Thank you.
This is a really interesting topic and I know it's like, you know, salt and bread and it's
close to all of us.
Right?
So I have a couple questions that are about the south end and a couple more on a broader
scale.
Okay.
So regarding ADUs, what is the conversation like with Kisep Public Health District?
Because I was under the impression that you needed a dedicated hookup for ADUs unless it was inside your existing structure.
So is that something changed on that?
That is not the case as we understand it based on the requirements.
We are able to provide an increased connection, so an increased meter size.
Now, if that were, so there are some regulations that allow you to divide your
lots and condominiumize ADUs at that point, they would have to have their own
connection. And so we do have that in our ADU policy. As long as it's the same
lot, we're able to do that, but as soon as you condominiumize your, we have to
have the separate connections. Very good. Interim City Manager, I would love to
to have some clarification from our planning department
regarding this because I think a lot of the direction
that's given to folks who wanna construct ADUs
is based on a two-bedroom septic
and a one-dedicated hookup.
Unless you have a cottage, unless you have a guest house,
unless you have something that is not described
specifically in our code as an ADU.
And our code is different from other county regulations.
So I would love to have some specificity on that.
Are there any legal bumpers to tell people they can't use water above a certain limit?
I mean, not just ask them, but require them to stop.
Can you turn it off?
We can.
I mean, there are things you can do.
We don't want to go there.
We don't want to get there.
You're sure?
We don't want to go there?
We really don't want to go there.
Not yet.
I didn't want to check.
Let's just say our staff was like, are we going to have to police this?
Am I driving around to make sure even an odd and it's like we're not policing it, but we are monitoring it and we will be
Educating yes, they sell the south end of the island did great last time we asked for this
And so we expect the same. All right. Thank you. Yes. I just wanted to put that out. I know I know where we've discussed it and
And we hope not to hit that point because there is,
I think that's the other thing is like,
this is on paper, as Dave said earlier.
This is a calculation on paper.
There isn't enough water to serve the community.
It's that when we use that peak usage,
that's when we see that calculations say
you can't sell anymore.
more.
This means that we're looking at a problem in the future, right? It's not that it's not
a problem. It's just that today, operationally, we're fine. It's a matter of bringing that
usage down so that we are able to continue into the future.
Thank you on that. And I also understand that leakage is kind of a normal thing
with systems. I mean, there's whole communities, especially in California, based on leakage.
I mean, successful communities based on nothing but leakage.
So where are water use efficiencies? Guidelines require us to be below 10%.
Okay. Very good. Okay, so here's my kind of a bigger ended question about the North
south intertie.
So we have K-PUD, we have Kobe, we have Bill Point, we have
Hidden Heights, we have Walden Water System. All those little systems aren't
mentioned in these interties. How will either class Bs or small single family
the wells be affected by an intertized situation?
Yeah, and I don't,
I think the question is like drawing more water
out of those wells,
how that will affect surrounding wells.
So Dave can correct me on this,
but we do tests and we look at drawdowns
and we look at the usage
and and how you're affecting different things but most smaller systems are in
the higher aquifer levels and we tend to go in the different into different
aquifer zones and so that helps but we do monitor it and we do what we can to
make sure we're not affecting additional so I don't know if you'd
add anything yeah yeah well I was just gonna say that you know what are the
goals of this regionalization would be the ability to diversify your source
locations geographically to be able to mitigate any of those potential issues
that could have arised without the ability to pump different wells at
different times for different needs. So this is something that you know can be
a coordinate. This is something that Chris and I have talked about you know
and if you have all your eggs in one basket, which I think the city has
that in some case and the PUD has that in some case, so this would allow
us to mitigate those things from happening. I'm trying to think if
there's anything else I want to say on that.
Yeah, but did that answer your question?
Or I mean, I think, I wasn't sure if you were going there
or like I said, we do have the ability to,
when we look at where we're putting this infrastructure
to look at where, if there are needs of systems
and see if there's maybe something that we can't
get some infrastructure closer
to those communities as well.
And I absolutely appreciate that.
I guess I'm thinking more about the small landowner
that maybe has a one or two person, two party well and they're talking to the
health district, they're talking to DOE, they're not necessarily talking to you and
they can't necessarily point a finger at you or Kobe or anybody else for a
reason that maybe there's a drawdown and they're well and so if there is an
instance like that how might they and again you yeah the assumption is this
you would be the culprit which is an assumption right there's a lot of other
things at play but it's a question mark for folks right? Exactly and I think one
of the biggest changes that we're seeing here all of our water comes from
rainfall and we're seeing a change in how much rain we're seeing on the island
we're even now we're like at about 80% of normal and continue to monitor it
just seems like the rain shadow is shifted a little bit we don't know if
that'll maintain, but as that continues on, that will affect.
And I think, you know, what Dave was saying is we're there,
but we don't want to cause any damage as well.
And so,
I think that's part of being the steward of the resource and making sure we're working with
others as well. In many cases, we end up helping homeowners who do have more shallow wells because
those are the ones being affected by these climate changes first.
And one thing about
looking regionally. The whole south end of the island is bedrock. There is no aquifers
in the south end of the island. So once you get past Lynnwood Center, it's just bedrock.
So anyone down in that area, we have to be moving it from an area north of that. And
so right now that's within the South Bay Bridge system, but it is coming from further
north, down to south.
Thank you.
Okay, here's my very last question, and this is probably a question.
And this is about water rights and whether COBE has already acquired land, looking forward
to new wells.
Have we, are there things that we're doing right now to anticipate as we talk about
these interties and supporting the south end especially?
do we have new proposals in mind for new properties and new drill? I'll stop talking,
you know what I'm saying.
Jordan answers no. We've known that this situation related to coordinating with these
larger water systems has been something that we want to work towards for a little while
now a couple of years so we've kind of paused on our individual efforts to look
at additional supply although we have funds in the baked into the utility
rates and into the capital improvement plan for additional supplies in the
future so that like the financial resources are there but the actual
technical planning work really hasn't been done because we've been kind of
waiting for this moment to figure out what is the best way to coordinate on
these kind of shared resources. So say that we work closely with parks.
parks and have inner easements, things like that with parks and some of the areas that
they've acquired recently towards the middle of the island would be where we consider a
good source.
And so being able to have that engagement already helps a lot.
Is that what you were going to say?
No.
I was going to say that.
I just wanted to share that the district does have actually currently two hydro geologists
on staff.
I know you all consult for those things and so we do have one retirement coming so we
would be losing our senior water resource manager who's been doing this a long time
in Kitsap County but we have for the last year or so as we've been having these conversations
obviously talked about whether it be where infrastructure could go or where source could
be located.
Looking at all, because we have the ability to look at all the sources on the island and look at those well logs and kind of look at different things.
Mitigation is a big topic right now with ecology and how much of that water would you, that you pump, we have to put back on the ground to mitigate stream flows.
And so we have been having those conversations. We have not shared any of those conversations. We thought it felt like that was a little premature.
But do know that those conversations have been happening at Kitsapudy.
Thank you so much. That was very helpful. Thank you.
So first of all, I just want to say that I'm very much in favor of working together and
having these interties and knowing that the support is going to go both ways and all that.
I'm also really happy to hear about the beneficial reuse possibilities in the future.
What I wanted to get back to is maybe some of the equity issues of water use.
And so, I mean, just as a clarification, if Bainbridge had the same peak water usage
as your other customers off island, would we be having a problem?
No.
So it's safe to say that off island water users, and they're in the same climate
climate more or less than we are,
so they're gonna have a lot of irrigation issues
the same as we do.
Is it, it's like more than, we're more than twice.
Is that true?
You were under 500 anywhere else in the county,
but I will say it's, climate is actually very different
even within the county.
So right now, while Bainbridge is at 80% rainfall,
Seabuck is over 100% of normal rainfall.
Hansville is right at AD as well, right?
So we're seeing things kind of change over time.
Seabuck is always where we get the most water right now.
It's also where it snows most
and usually we have issues with school buses
and it shuts everyone down.
But yeah, it is very different
even across our small county.
So I will say there is aspects of lack of rain that affect that as well.
Right. So we need to be careful then comparing apples to apples.
A little bit.
If we're going to do that comparison.
I will say that it is higher.
It's higher.
So, towards that, then, it sounds like you started to work towards education, and does
that mean reaching out to individual super users?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so, those super users know how they compare to, let's say, the neighborhood average
or even off-island average.
We have not done that yet, but that is our plan.
Yeah, so they don't know today that, I mean, I think, I think, Deputy Mayor, maybe you
were saying it or, or Councilman or Matthews, you were, it's, we have a lot of people who
maybe don't even live here.
And so even though we've provided that information, even though there are bills during the summer
become quite large, we have some users who are over a thousand, a thousand gallons
per minute and your average is 618. So, you know, you have these users who aren't encouraged
to change habits by, and, you know, conservation measures, you increase tiers, right? I mean,
make it more expensive and that's usually the way that you're able to decrease usage
in these cases.
But that might not be...
In these cases it's not happening.
Yeah.
So, the issue I want to bring up is kind of about communication.
So people, I'm in the central area, so I don't get KPUD communications and whatnot, but people
have heard about this.
It's a big deal.
Absolutely.
And so, you know, people are sort of looking at the situation.
They're calling it the water system that is running out of water and residents are
are being put on water restrictions.
You can see how there's a tiny, tiny bit of truth to that,
but that's really not the truth.
That's over.
And so what I want to ask about is
how can this be presented to the community for what it is
and say that, look, the South End has a big problem
to solve in terms of lowering its fair usage.
Yeah.
I think that is something that we struggled with, with the letter that we sent out as
well, making sure that we understood there is a concern, right?
It's not a problem today as far as being able to provide services to the users right
now.
There's not a problem today.
there's a problem with being able to sell binding water letters and believe
me we've had plenty of people in our well calling me and in our boardroom
saying hey I was about ready to build right this I've done all these things and
now I can't get my permit and so obviously it really hurts those
individuals directly but as far as a whole we had to communicate that yes
there's a concern yes there will be a problem and we can't sell these and we
need to do these things for the future. Right okay so I mean also just letting
some of these super users know that they are basically standing in the way of
other people building you know their own units on land that they already own and
we're playing on it for years. There's there's a couple things we're
working on there that we haven't fully committed to as far as looking at different
size meters, doing some other things as well to support the general residential
population and treating those super users a little differently. Maybe just a very
tiny suggestion would be in addition to some inner ties of the water systems
maybe there could be some inner ties to the communication so that you know
our whole island. Absolutely. You know, maybe through the city manager's report or something
like that, we could learn about what some of these challenges are. That would be that would
be great. And I know our communications manager is working with your communications person
to make sure we're looking at this island wide way. So to be able to do a consistent
message because we do still have conservation desires in North
Bay Bridge based on usage. Being able to have that message
consistently across the island is something that we're working
on right now. Now, now having it be in the in the city
administrators newsletter, I think it's brilliant. I'll take
brilliant. Thank you.
Okay, Councilor Fanatry Johnson, then
and I'm gonna take a turn and we need to watch our time.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
Thank you, guys, for coming out
and giving us this information.
I guess I was wondering about the super user.
Yeah.
Are these individuals or are these businesses
or are what are these?
So these are all based on five-eight inch meters
And I think that's important because I think that was some confusion that people had to like hey
The pool is causing this problem. It's like no these are five eighths inch meters
So it is residents who are who are using an extreme amount and
I'm assuming you have like some historical data to tell you how long this has been happening. Yes
How long has it been?
I I've only been GM for four years
So I'm going to say that beyond me, but it's been happening for some time Dave might have better of that
So I would say that in general the usage was there
15 you know, or I guess it's
11 years ago when we took over ownership of the water systems
I would say that the characteristics. It's interesting because you put three water systems together, which does provide
resiliency. I would say there are areas within two of the water systems that
that really make up the bulk of what you've all labeled as super users and
and like General Manager said these are these meters were purchased as
residential connections from the previous owner in most cases or owners in
in most cases and some of them serve very large
waterfront homes with a lot of irrigatable outside space.
Some of them serve adjacent lots.
Some people own more than one lot
and maybe have landscaped the entire lot.
And when we say lot in a city,
we don't typically think of lots
that are maybe as big as an acre,
but that is what we have in the south end of the island.
And so you can imagine if you purchase $300,000
with the plants you need to protect your investment.
We have people, I could go on and on with examples
of people that I've personally talked to over the years.
As you can imagine, when they came
on to PUD rates originally,
they experienced those tiered rates.
But like we talked about earlier,
a majority of them that don't live there
have other people doing their work for them.
They also, in some cases, and a lot of the cases
have somebody else paying their bills for them.
So they're completely disconnected and so that does make it hard for us to communicate with them.
I know that I have had the chance over the years to communicate with some of them
and they believe that they're doing their absolute best to use water wisely.
They're buying the most expensive irrigation controller that adjusts to where the sun is
in direction of the earth and the evapotranspiration and all that.
But maybe one thing they didn't realize is that on that peak day, when all those things
are at play, it actually has their system watering more, which is a negative for our water system.
So there is some education opportunities with people, but it is hard to be able to get
in touch with them because they are fairly disconnected, able to have a great life,
obviously.
I guess I just want to piggyback on that a little bit.
But there's a problem that we see in IT, shadow IT, and, you know, people have servers and
stuff under their desk, and we don't know who's using AI, and we turn it all off.
And then we find them, you know, we get their attention.
If we're trying to mitigate this, if we're trying to make sure that every person on this
Island has a right to water.
I would think that if this has been happening for a long time, I think some drastic action
is needed. I like what you guys are doing, but I think we have to try to go above that
to get these people's attention. And I don't know if just, you know, sending a letter out
to all of us will work. I mean, it's, you know, I'm just saying, I think that we have
to get a little bit more creative in trying to get these people's attention to let them
know that, no, our water isn't, we're not at the stage where it's critical, but another
15 years.
Yeah.
It will be.
Yeah.
You know.
I will say that the other residents on the system have benefited from these super
users in rates being lower, right, because those have been able to offset that.
And when there wasn't this issue, it didn't, there wasn't a communication to reduce.
And so now that we're stepping into it, it changes what we need to do and how we need
to work with these individuals.
And so I think there is lots of opportunity for us to look at creative ways.
turning people's water off probably is not one of them necessarily or at least
not the top the first thing but definitely in telecom I know that works
really well and you do get people calling right away so yeah thank you okay so
I'm I'm taking the last shot here and I know we're way over so I'm going to try
to be quick but it also is a very important issue to me and I am a
Real quick, I guess I wanted to say I'm kind of thinking there's two tracks here.
I want to make a point about that one goes in the direction of what Councilmember Fanatroy
Johnson said, which is that absolutely with a super user problem, I'm imagining that
Council would support you in whatever, and obviously this is your choice ultimately,
but in doing, taking whatever drastic measures are necessary, and I know I've read before
in California, some jurisdictions taking some pretty severe, maybe I don't quite
understand how they do it, but you probably do, where they bring it down to just
some little flow.
I don't know how you regulate that, that provides enough for essentials, right?
For people who don't, for whom pocketbook impact doesn't matter.
So even some famous people.
So there's that, and I'm fully supportive of that.
And I'm supportive of the fact that if what that means, I'm not just saying that
ultimately shifts a little more cost to us, smaller users,
because that will help us, if we do fill that pinch, behave better ourselves, right?
Yeah, I also want to be a little defensive of the south end because I feel like we've got these superviewsers
And I want them as far as you know
I'm sure we all need to clamp down a bit
But I've been thinking before you mentioned about the regional differences and for example the difference between north and south
Bainbridge in soils sun exposure
Dryness etc. Yeah, you can't compare it. It's mostly forested up north and I think I also just want to put that
I just want to just just be a little defensive of some people who not everybody in the south end is is watering the lush
landscape as opposed to also growing food and so forth. So putting that little defensive
thing out there. A couple little... Appreciate that, yes. Yeah, because it's not all, it's
not all elite. Some of it's actually getting your hands dirty. You can tell I actually
like to grow things too. But a couple specific questions I think policy-wise. So intertie-wise,
when we have an intertie and this may differ whether it's the south or the eventual
north. Is this something that stays open and is constantly flowing, or is this something
that is activated, seasonally activated in crisis or which?
In this case, it would be activated as needed. It really, it's a matter of putting it on
paper that this is available to us. Okay, great. Another question is, I hope
I'm hearing, and I just wanted to directly ask, when we're talking about being able
to access different sources, presumed at different times
by more organizations, a larger, the whole jurisdiction
pretty much at that point.
Are we talking very specifically about looking at things
like trying to shelter the water in the Fletcher Bay aquifer
more than some, I think North Bainbridge draws from it,
City draws heavily, and saying, how do we maximize
our shallower aquifers to draw less of the,
less rechargeable?
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think one of the things Dave said earlier,
that ties into mitigation.
deeper you go, the more mitigation you have. And so at this point, going into that deep
aquifer doesn't financially make sense when you start looking at it. It may in the future,
but right now, we're definitely looking at other options.
Okay, great. Just real quick, I want to see if I had a couple other questions.
No,
I think just one, I want to just say, I'm happy to hear, I heard the word stream
flow at least once. I mean, at least knowing that that's on your radar because of DOE, I
think that probably makes us all happy to know that, yes, we all care first about making
sure we have potable water. But last question, it's a question or maybe just an idea, but
are you exploring any incentivizing of drip systems or does that not help? Because that's
something I know I've got the pieces of that I'm eventually going to put in myself
and doesn't that help quite a bit?
I we have not gone into any kind of supplemental like green barrels things
like that or or anything of that nature at this time really looking at if we
could do this every other day how does it work and then taking those next steps
okay yeah I meant long-term I know that wouldn't overnight help but yeah
yeah well I don't have any more questions one more follow-up question
from Councilmember Land I do actually I've got a question and I'd like to
actually make a motion.
I would like to just clarify with the city,
interim city manager, if the planning department is making
any accommodations for folks who have permits,
mid-flow, so to speak, and cannot complete their proposed
buildings because they don't have the water that they
need for our permit requirements.
Is there something already happening in that?
I think we're going to take those on a case-by-case basis,
but you do need a water availability hookup
to get a building permit.
OK.
So the folks that are halfway through this process,
we will be lenient with them if at all possible.
We'll certainly want to be in communication with everybody.
But again, if you don't have a water hookup,
it's you can't build a house.
Right.
But there's a, when you apply for a permit, there's a timeline and sometimes that expires
before you get all your parts in.
So I just want to make sure that we're being cognizant of timelines associated with permit
applications as well.
Certainly, I would encourage people to come talk to us.
Wonderful.
Okay.
Thank you.
Well, if I might make a motion that we send this over to this discussion for a potential
interlocal agreement to be forwarded to the Utility Advisory Committee for their
review and recommendation.
I can second. Okay. Discussion?
Oh sorry council member Nelson. I want to move to amend the
motion to add at the end with a recommendation from the City Council for an added provision
providing that any water provided by the City of Bambridge to KPUD may only be used to
service customers on Bambridge Island.
I'm not sure if that's necessary given
in the nature of an interlocal agreement, but.
I understand that that's where the water would go.
It doesn't go on filing,
but it just puts the next formation point on the point,
I guess.
Okay.
All right.
Any issue, I guess I'd SSC manager, no problem with that.
I'm going to the, you may see,
might have already been going there.
No, that's just fine.
Council Member Schneider.
I guess I disagree.
I think that that sends an interesting
and possibly wrong message
that there is a possibility for it going off-island and so I think I would vote
against you know putting that out there as a presumed possibility. Do we want to
vote on the motion as amended? Just for clarification the Councilor Nelson did
not get a second. Oh you did? All right. Well what are your thoughts?
I'm willing
to speak to that. I kind of feel the same way honestly but I mean I was
this kind of where I was going. If we could move water on and off the island to the jurisdictions
and maybe you mean other water systems? If we're talking about other jurisdictions, I
don't think we're worried that water is going to be going off the island.
No, when I asked KPUD about it, they specifically said that that's not contemplated in the
short term, but it could be a possibility in the long term and that it sounded like
they were completely fine with such a provision.
Okay, why don't we see clarification? I thought that was about between local
water systems not clarification is that in a long term it would only be to move
water on to the island there's no there's no water that would be moved off
island for the peninsula there's just not a need so I don't see any reason why
not to include it that's what I'm saying okay vote for the motion as
As amended, all those in favor?
Point of order.
We want to vote for the amendment of the motion.
Oh, thank you.
Okay.
That's right.
Sorry.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Aye.
Okay.
So we're back to the original motion, which is to move this to the UAC for their input.
For the discussion.
Okay.
I'd just like to say that I think the UAC will bring back some recommendations.
And if you want to add that exclamation point then, we can talk about it one more
time, but I think they'll do their thing and bring something forward to us that will be
approvable.
Okay, all those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Nay.
Okay, motion carries six to one.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, and I do want to take this opportunity, or we want to take this opportunity to
just thank Chris Forsbecky for all the work and all the engagement he has had with
kids have PUD over the years. And state that we will miss him. Thank you, Chris.
All right. The next item is 3C received 2025 report and 2026 work plan for the Climate
Change Advisory Committee. Thank you, Council. And thank you to three members of the Climate
Change Advisory Committee who are here, including one of our longest serving Climate
Change Advisory Committee members. I believe he has been on the Climate Change Advisory
Committee since its inception, so thanks, Mike, for coming today, and thank you to the
Vice Chair, Sanjay Bhatt, who will be speaking about the activities in the last year and
introducing the work plan for the coming year.
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is Sanjay Bhatt.
I'm the current Vice Chair of your Climate Change Advisory Committee.
I'll be delivering our report tonight as our Chair, Kevin Thomas, is out of town.
I just want to acknowledge, as you already acknowledged, Committee veteran Mike Cox,
My colleagues, Steve Richard.
We're a group of residents who meet once a month,
along with our council liaisons,
councilmember Hytopoulos and Schneider.
Thank you.
And I'm still learning a lot,
so I'm going to touch on a few highlights
from the report that you have.
One of them is the Kicking Gas Heat Pump Pilot Program.
The CCAC originally helped design this pilot,
and once it was completed,
We reviewed the findings with climate manager Laura Reiser and recommended next steps.
In short, the pilot was a huge success.
It met its target for the number of installations.
And just as important, 90% of installations served the city's priority demographic.
Households at or below 80% of area median income.
The CCAC has recommended that the city sustain this program by leveraging partnerships and financing for this program,
program, which could include collaborating with regional organizations, grant makers,
and equity focused financing entities.
Moreover the city should explore more incentives covering additional electrification needs
such as induction cooking and heat pump water heaters and potential incentives for
renters and small businesses.
Finally the city should use hybrid models that combine virtual information sessions
with in-person events.
Another program that we wanted to highlight was the electric vehicle charging code for
multifamily buildings.
Two years ago, as you know, following a request from council liaisons and city staff, your
advisory committee reviewed the city's EV charging code for multifamily buildings.
The key idea is that these buildings are designed to be around for 75-plus years,
and it's far more cost-effective to design the charging infrastructure up front than
and trying to retrofit, plus raising the required number
of EV charging spaces and multifamily buildings
supports the Climate Action Plan's goal
of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
from motorized transportation.
It also supports equity by making it feasible
for those who live in multifamily buildings
to enjoy the same access to EVs
as residents of single-family homes.
Last year, the city engaged an intern,
Maury Harbick, to conduct further research
and consult with the CCAC. Two of our members joined Maury to table at the farmer's market
to gather feedback on potential options. And late last year, Maury presented his recommendations
to the CCAC. And our committee liked his proposal of raising the required percentage
of EV-ready and EV-capable spaces in a stair-step fashion with an opportunity for the council
to weigh input before each increase goes into effect.
We also suggest the city use some objective milestones such as increases in new EV registrations
on Bainbridge to guide the pace of these increases.
But in order to make this work, the CCAC also discussed developer's need for permitting
readiness and greater predictability from Puget Sound Energy into the utilities
these process.
This is a memo that the CCAC coauthored with the REAC or the Race Equity Advisory Committee
on recommendations regarding the draft zero emissions landscaping ordinance.
The memo proposed an alternative to the draft ordinance recommending a more targeted and
phased approach.
One of the things that the memo recommended was that the council consider banning the
use of all gas powered leaf blowers on the island in the near term, set an overall goal
for how many landscaping tools are used on the island that should be non-gas powered
by 2030 and supporting the community and businesses in their efforts to transition away from gas-powered
tools.
Now looking ahead to this year, the committee plans to work with the climate manager to update
and revise the CAP or the Climate Action Plan by conducting analysis on the current
document and participating in community outreach activities.
Along with that, we want to support Laura as she pilots climate-informed decision-making
using the Climate Lens Tool and the development of a public-facing dashboard tracking the
city's progress toward the CAP goals.
Another initiative this year is the Solarized Bain Bridge.
More than 150 households applied for this program for a free solar assessment on their
home to see if they could cost-effectively generate their own electricity by installing
solar panels on their home's roof.
The committee would like to support and extend the work of the climate manager and
of Olympia Community Solar and collaborate with the newly formed Bainbridge Solar Collective.
This is a program with great potential to help the island reduce greenhouse gas emissions
and become just a bit more energy resilient.
As you heard earlier this evening from the consultants, residential electricity usage
accounted for about a third of community-wide emissions.
Finally, just to come back also for this year to the EV charging code after all
the work that's been done, the committee would like to work with city staff to advance updates
to the city's charging code, EV charging code that broadens access to level two charging
in new multi-family buildings. We're certainly seeing renewed interest in EVs now as gas
prices hit record highs and prices for used EVs are actually at parity with prices
for used cars with gas engines. Thanks for your time and we're happy to answer any
questions and I'm going to ask Mike and Steve also to come up if they feel so
so compelled if you all have questions that I can't answer.
Thank you.
Council Member Nelson.
Yeah, I just want to say thank you to you very much support
and appreciate the work of this committee.
And I think, in particular, I really
like number six on the work plan given the sort of,
I mean, again, I mentioned the repeal of the Inflation
Reduction Act and kind of the hostility
of the Trump administration towards climate mitigation.
and then the increased demand from AI and everything like that and sort of non-renewables
demand for those coming back on. You're just seeing more and more folks think about, you
know, you know, kind of like resilience and adaptation, I guess is what I'm getting at.
And so given that we are on an island, I definitely appreciate sort of addressing
the idea of rising sea level. So thank you for that. I think the only real question
that I have is I don't know anything about this climate lens tool so I'm
curious if this has been done can I get a copy has this been looked at and
approved by council yeah I'm gonna defer to Mike he's got more background on
that topic than I do my understanding right now we worked on a climate lens
when for a number of years that didn't quite work out so the city is
currently working on the lens but personally to me that's a foundation of
how we make sure we have a resilient adaptation in our permitting and
everything else. There's a checklist. Here's what you need to consider when we
meaning the city is trying to decide whether somebody should get a permit
and secondly people coming in becomes very clear what the city is expecting so
I'm hoping we make some improvements and advancements as you that's the
And once it's done will you bring it to council for our review? Oh, yeah, I mean, I'm not speaking for the city
So I don't speak for the city. I try not to but I would hope so. Okay. Very good
Well, thank you very much for your work on this and just appreciate it
Councilor Schneider
Thank You deputy mayor
so I I
Guess I was very excited to go through the greenhouse gas emissions report and I'm sure that you'll all be
chomping at the bit to get into it a little bit more and take credit where credit do, right?
So I'm really looking forward to that.
One thing that's new now that maybe hasn't been considered in the work plan is that there's
a mobility advisory committee coming on board somewhat soon.
And I know that there was a time when we looked at maybe having a mobility subcommittee
of the CCAC.
And so my only suggestion right now is that, you know, find ways to collaborate.
And so maybe in the greenhouse gas report or, you know, in your next goals forward or whatever,
maybe collaborate on vehicle miles traveled reductions in that and so forth, you know,
with that new group.
So, and I'm really happy to be back serving as a liaison.
Thank you.
Do we have a motion?
I'll take it.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
I move to forward the 2026 work plan for the Climate Change
Advisory Committee to a future business meeting
for consideration of approval.
Second.
Any discussion?
All right.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Thank you all for all your hard work. Thank you very much thank you. It looks like let's see we had we struck item 3d and we are on 3e discuss and provide direction to the Planning Commission to base on request from the April 9th and April 16th 2020.
my six Blaine Commission meetings.
Okay, thank you Council. This last item is really time
for your discussion and if desired, motions to provide direction to the Planning Commission.
I do want to note that while it's customary at study sessions that the Council not pass
motions, today it is certainly possible for you to do so and I note that you did
indicate in your packet that you might be making motions tonight so it would
not be unexpected. And indeed, I think that was part of the point of the meeting. At Council
Member Request, there is a significant amount of material in the packet. I hope this helps
support your discussion. I also will note that we did get some motions which were passed
out for your reference today. Final note, we did receive a reply from the Department
of Commerce related to the Housing Accountability Act yesterday. That information was sent
to the Council and also posted to the city's website for interested members of the public
on the Housing Accountability Act page. Our reply to the letter that we received yesterday
is due in the middle of August. We'll be working on that and we'll also post that information
to the website when it's sent and be happy to discuss that with Council before that
time. Thank you.
Thank you.
So Council, this is our discussion. We won't be having any staff presentation. Hopefully
We were anticipating providing some sort of response
to Planning Commission's request for feedback
on the position that they've described themselves in
and possibly the council will entertain
some additional motions to address next steps
and helping us wrap this up
as far as compliance with 1220
and where we go from here now
and particularly in light of the letter
that we've received.
So let's, as everyone knows, I have five motions
but I will be waiting for the first motions from you all.
Councilmember Matthews, you were first.
Thanks, Deputy Mayor.
I was wondering how you want it,
because I know we all have motions,
so I'm just trying to think logistically how we...
Yeah, let's talk about that.
One thing we could do is we could just go around
and each person had a chance to make a motion.
I mean, I think that's what we probably need to do.
My motions kind of are a series that build on each other,
but that's the way it is.
But why don't we start with that and just go from there?
Before we do that, I have a process question.
This is Seguin and Dovetailing with what the city manager sent.
And I really encourage people to look at this letter.
It's quite lengthy.
But it's essentially a report card from Commerce.
And they went through 17 different points of,
are we meeting points or are we not?
And the good news is we met seven out of the 17.
And I'm just going to highlight the ones they said.
And some of these recommendations
recommendations. And by the way, they say what we need to do. So we have to answer everything
that they said that we're short of. And some of them are kind of simple, like adding a chart
or something like that. But on the ones that they said we already met, on 2A we met the
housing element requirements inventory and analysis for housing needs. We said on 2B
we met the goals and policies for housing development preservation. We also on 2C we
We met the sufficient capacity of land for housing on 2F.
We met the policies to address racially disparate impacts.
Point of order.
I don't think this is a process issue.
Yes, it is.
Because I'm going to mention, if I may, I want to point out, I'm going to mention that
I believe that all the motions should apply to the ones that they say we are out not
in compliance with, because those are the only ones that really have to answer.
On the ones that we are in compliance with, I believe we don't fit those.
I think we have a couple problems.
One is we as a council actually can decide as a body what we want to move forward, however
it relates to that letter.
Furthermore, I'm not actually hearing what I read in the letter, and I think at this
point we need to have a scheduled conversation to be advised by the city attorney and planning
staff as to what the findings were.
So, you know, I think certainly as we go around and we give our feedback about what we think is important today, we make motions, we have discussion.
I think obviously the Mayor is welcome to let us know what he sees the letter saying and how he thinks there's bearing.
I guess I'm a little concerned process-wise that Council Member Matthews was actually next.
But if she's it's up to her if she's okay getting a little more floor time to the mayor to share this
But I think that we're not hemmed in by this
Mayor all right
I'm just trying to share information to the community who don't want to read the whole darn letter because it's quite lengthy
They said the state said we met the establishes anti displacement policies to H number three
they said we met the relevant new rules adopted by the department and on
10C, they said we met the accessory dwelling unit
reservation regulations and so these other ones
are really the ones that, as I read this,
they say that these are the ones that have the changes
that are needed within our draft that we must address.
And so it was 2G identifies areas at risk of displacement.
Four, CEPA requirements, five, internal consistencies.
6, emergency and supportive housing regulations.
7, co-living housing regulations.
8, oh, 8 density bonus for federal housing regulations,
affordable housing regulations.
9, residential parking requirements.
10, implementing regulations.
And those are the ones that, on this letter,
said that we fall short on getting done.
And they're simply saying, and then people will read them,
you'll read the changes needed,
and they say, spell out specifically,
what are the things that we have to answer to?
And so I'm going to just say, and I would suggest,
at least my filter is gonna be,
if you're proposed, that's why I wanted,
sorry to interrupt you, Councilor Matthews,
but before a person proposes a motion,
My filter is, does it really fit one of the things that are required for us to meet?
If it doesn't, then I think we're not really applying our time appropriately to make sure that we meet the state law, as sent by the Department of Commerce.
So thank you.
Thanks, Mayor.
So good thing, all three motions of mine deals exactly with the letter that we got.
The first motion, I'll just make it quick, just so we can get through tonight.
So Planning Commission gave us three options in their motion to us a few weeks ago and I would like to propose we respond to them and choose one of the options.
I know at this point most of you have watched the Planning Commission meeting and saw the votes tended to go three to three.
A couple were a little different.
And if you listen to the meeting, there was a motion that proposed to recommend the motion that I'm about to make to us.
and it was a three to three.
The motion that I'm about to make
was also what's already been turned into commerce
and so it's what this report is based on.
So it doesn't seem to me controversial or wild
that we stick with what we already turned in.
I know there's some, you know,
I wish that we could go back in time
and that it had been presented differently,
presented to either the steering committee
or to Planning Commission, but at this time the horse is out of the barn, and I think that
it's, so I'll make the motion, just put it out there.
I move to proceed with one point, one point.
2.0, adjustment to the existing base FAR floor area ratio from March 2nd with the addition of a cap on maximum square footage based on number of bedrooms on all dwelling units in the ferry and high school road zones.
This is just from their notes and from their motion. They said note this has the potential to lower AMI on a development that happens naturally.
And yes, I can speak more to it after.
a second could you repeat the motion was this one of the motions you sent out I'm
sorry yes yeah and I just took it from planning commissions agenda I moved to
proceed with 1-0 adjustment to the existing base FAR from 3-2 with the
addition of cap on maximum square footage based on number of bedrooms so
we're thinking about families so if you know not saying a family of three
needs to be in 700 square feet as opposed so that was the reason for that
And that came from the Planning Commission's meeting.
Discussion?
Council Member Nelson?
Yeah, I want to speak strongly against this course of action.
The Planning Commission never recommended
any increase in base floor area ratio.
And if you listen to the discussions
at the steering committee, Commissioner Peter Schwab
had a really good explanation for this, which
is that they decided to go the voluntary inclusionaries
zoning route, not the mandatory inclusionary zoning route.
And the reason they didn't want to go the mandatory inclusionary
zoning route is because it would require an increase
in base floor area ratio.
And they felt that the community did not
want to see an increase in base floor area ratio.
And so they have been working for more than a year
under this idea, this idea that they've really
built much of a consensus around
that they didn't want to create extra capacity unless it was dealing with the affordable housing
issue, unless it was tied to some affordable housing requirement.
And then from a process standpoint, when the land capacity analysis was done, staff
included this 1.0 FAR in the ferry zone and the high school road zone, doubling it
fairy more than tripling it in High School Road as far as density.
And we only noticed this on the steering committee because I knew the math didn't add up, so
I asked about it.
And then staff said that they did this, and multiple planning commissioners were outraged
by this.
Multiple city council members were outraged by this.
And then even when this issue has been brought to the planning commission, as Council
member Matthews notes, they did not recommend this course of action. Their motion to recommend
this course of action failed. The Planning Commission has done an incredible job over
the last 15 months, sorry. And they have crafted a full recommendation. And I do not
think at this time it is appropriate for us to go this course of action. And I strongly
only think that we should stick with the base floor area ratio that they recommended.
And I'll leave it at that.
And I'm going to speak to this.
This goes to the heart of all the motions I brought forward, which are that we're pivoting
from a moment, as we've discussed previously, where the Planning Commission was at a point
where they had made their own recommendations that they did not include any increase to
base FAR, as said.
This was added, this concept of a 1-0 FAR in these two districts was added by
staff in an attempt to massage what they had by motion with their own addition to probably
try to get across the finish line on 1220, not directed by council, not directed by the
Planning Commission.
And so when this came back before Planning Commission, they were told that they had
the option of one of these two, they could either look at the base FAR that they had
And then they were told that there was a deficit and when they asked, can we do anything other
than this?
Is there staff capacity to do something else other than these binary outcomes, one of which
had nothing to do with anything that they'd recommended?
They were told no.
That is why we are having this conversation today, largely.
It's kind of expanded that why we're having this now.
But one of the reasons for the conversation is they said they then struggled.
They couldn't come to the multiple motions that couldn't come to a majority as they
struggled with this binary choice with no ability to be creative and find other ways to
solve the affordability. And so they came to us and they said, because they said, well,
we're stuck with this, it's this, this, or maybe we could at least throw something on
the increase to base FAR that would potentially create more affordable units if we come in
the unit size. That does not mean that the Planning Commission wanted that outcome,
that any of them wanted that outcome. They had asked to do something else, could
Should we do something else?
So we are here today to ask, among other things, what's the response to that question?
And my response to that question is, playing commission, you stick with what you did.
You don't increase base FAR for the reasons that you said you don't want to increase
base FAR.
And then let us provide some guidance in how to keep going along the path that you've
taken with some of your recent changes, including the addition of the language that
I'd like to discuss, a bonus program, and add more bonus programs, et cetera,
and do a better analysis, another better capacity analysis
that's gonna show affordability and in the capacity.
So for those reasons, yeah, I'm actually
would be making a motion to the antithesis of this
and would not support the motion.
Any other discussion?
Okay, all those in favor of the motion say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Nay.
Okay, so the motion fails I think four to three.
Do we have another motion?
I move to direct the interim city manager
in the planning commission not to include
in the preferred alternative,
any increase in base floor area ratio
consistent with the planning commission's recommendations.
Could you repeat it for me, please?
Yes.
I move to direct the interim city manager
in the planning commission not to include
in the preferred alternative any increase
in base floor area ratio consistent
with the planning commission's recommendations.
Any discussion?
I'm not sure who this is first.
I get to speak to it.
And I just, I'm saying it this way
because this is consistent with what the planning commission
has recommended to date.
And so my motion is saying,
let's stick with what the planning commission
actually recommended.
Okay,
who was next?
You go ahead.
Because I wasn't looking this direction.
Council Member Schneider.
So I think I'm going to abstain on this.
It feels a little too hard-edged like there might be another way for something to come through.
So at this point I just don't feel like I need to support it.
I did sort of support the reverse in your favor the last time around.
So,
yeah, I'll just abstain.
Councilor Vendor, do you think the mayor will be next?
Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
We're trying to find the Commerce's letter, but this motion would not meet some quick
things here, co-living housing regulations.
It would take away flexibility for us to allow that and for density bonus for affordable
housing regulations.
This is a religious organization, pardon me.
I just think I would agree with my colleague,
Council Member Scheider, that I think we should allow
the planning commission to have the flexibility they need,
not direct them to limit their options.
Council Member Fancier-Johnson.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I don't want to pigeonhole it and just, yeah,
I agree with that.
Okay, Council Member Matthews.
So I just want to, so we keep referring
to what the planning commission said and so they, I think it's pretty clear we had the two,
the dichotomy, the false, maybe the false, but it was a dichotomy of the one, three,
two and four, six and the one that their plan had was unfortunately 420 units in the deficit.
So what we're trying to do is close that gap somehow just so the public is aware.
And so I don't believe that turning in that same homework again or turning that in instead
of the other analysis is going to get us very far.
So I guess I'll take an opportunity.
And so yes, the whole point of the other motions is
to actually close that gap with affordability.
None of those units are affordable units.
None of them close the gap.
We could make a 2.0 base FAR and we would not close the gap
because they're not affordable.
So these are separate issues.
That's one thing.
It's a different approach that we're going to take.
We're going to need to talk about funding
and we're going to need to talk about the fact
that who's going to build it isn't going to be private development, and base FIR is
about private development. Base FIR is about telling somebody right now you own that parcel
and you get to have twice as many units with absolutely no requirement to do anything
other than market rate. So there's that. The second thing is we need a different approach
and obviously we are certainly not going to go back to commerce and just go with
the same approach and give them fewer numbers. That's going even oddly in a
weird direction and again I don't I am not going to I do not believe that we
heard from the planning commission that this is what they want they actually
when they were doing their deliberations over the last 15 months and they talked
about these issues they weighed these issues and their recommendation their
actual motions were no increase in base at the off at they are for very
reasonable logical reasons and to be put in front of them a staff created
alternative that was never authorized that most of us are very disturbed by and say your
choices are your original recommendation or this. And by the way, we're telling you that
you're going to not hit your mark with this. That's not to me, I don't believe that's
what the planning commission's asking us to do. I believe they're asking us to give
them guidance in this moment. And so if we abstain, if we give them just nothing,
we can't agree on anything, then we're giving them nothing. So I guess worst case
scenario, I guess we move past this and hopefully we can give them some other direction, but
I think we owe it to them to let them know that we endorse the work that they actually
did before staff corrected it, or sorry, amended it.
Council Member Schneider.
So I think that I have a motion, but I don't want my motion considered until after
we've gone through some of these other motions.
I feel like those, these other motions will lay some foundation for mine.
So likewise, I'm changing my mind. I'm going to vote against the current motion.
Councillor Nelson.
I really think that from a process standpoint, we really need to stand against what's happened here.
Because it was not appropriate for staff to do this.
And when one of my colleagues says that reverting back will cause us to be deficient in other ways,
I mean, my only retort to that is, well, we don't know because no one did a land capacity
analysis based on the actual recommendation, which is a little bit insane.
And the Chair of the Planning Commission has just emailed me and said that she's also
learned that staff adjusted lot coverage for the capacity analysis and didn't.
And that was not a part of the Planning Commission's recommendation.
So even if we change to keeping 1.0 FAR, it doesn't necessarily solve the problem.
And then on top of it, when they went through the development regulations, if you watched
the last Planning Commission meeting, HDDP was changed, even though that was not a part
of the recommendation.
And I really think that we need to rein in this idea that these unilateral changes
can just be made.
They can be in the land capacity analysis.
They can be turned in as our official product to the Department of Commerce receiving
back an official letter about whether we're compliant or not when it does not
reflect the recommendation of either the City Council or the Planning
Commission. And I just don't think that this is the way that this body or this
government should operate. And I will leave it at that. And if you vote down my
motion, you vote down my motion. But you know, there's a right or wrong way
of doing things, and this is the wrong way of doing it.
Council member Matthews and then Fandrie Johnson.
Thanks Deputy Mayor.
So I just want to ask us as just we're working together
if we can stop shouting at each other
and just talk to each other and talk to the public.
Okay, so I think that we are talking about humans here
and I get that there was a process issue
but to me it's really sad to say
that we're not going to deal with the human issue that we should because we're trying to
make a stand against a bad process. And so it just seems like it's time for us to get
this done. Not August, not tomorrow, not in the future. We are in a housing crisis now.
And I'm willing to amend my motion that I made before with the 1.0 and adjust that
down but I think we really need to give planning direction planning commissioned some direction they
had mentioned point eight or point nine if that would change any council members opinions but I think
that we have to make a choice and the time is now to make that choice it's not time for punishing
staff for any sort of indiscretion that we think was made that's not the issue right now
Unfortunately.
Councilmember Franchiway-Johnson and then Lance.
Yeah, basically I was just going to say the same thing.
You know, we are a body and that's the problem that we have is perception that we can't all get along.
We have to...
Take, you know, the bull by the horns here and do what needs to be done because, you know,
our constituents require it. We can't kick this down the road. That's how our council
get into trouble by the previous council kicking something down the road. We have to deal
with it. And if it, you know, today is not the day to deal with what happened. Today
is the day to deal with what we're going to do right now about affordable housing and close
in the gap that we see. We have to do something about that.
House Member Lant.
Well, I think if we don't have process, what do we have? Opinions.
And all of us can be right at once.
let's face it we can all be right at once but we have a process in place and we
have some requirements that we're being asked to do we've sorry we're being
required mandated to do we have our own self-imposed timelines and I think that
it was very clear that the Planning Commission said the information that they
were given to review, did not satisfy the work they hoped to achieve to give us the
product for us to recommend or to make motions on to approve that comp plan.
So I am very comfortable taking what I believe is the Planning Commission's desire and
that is for direction from us to tonight.
I don't believe we're kicking anything down the road.
I think we're actually taking the bull by the horns tonight.
We have a series of deficits that we already know from commerce as of yesterday.
We have a series of different motions that several of us on this platform have put forward.
I think there are wonderful options in front of us, and all of them are recommendations
for the Planning Commission to consider.
We're not making the decisions on the dais tonight.
We are putting these forward to the Planning Commission, right?
So, I'm very comfortable moving forward with action that is more towards, more in line
of what the Planning Commission's original request was.
Thank you.
If I can speak, I do want to actually address something that could help Councilman Schneider
come along.
We'll see because it is so important we have direction.
I want to point out that, again, the people we're talking about in this particular
motion are not our affordable targets these are market rate housing okay so let's be clear it's
not fair for the community think that we are turning down the people who we most need to house
right now okay secondly um and I absolutely agree with council member fan try johnson we absolutely
we do take the wool by the horns we are the policy makers we've given a lot of latitude to a lot
in a lot of places trying to get as much help from others as we can and at some point and when
the 11th hour is here, we have to act.
Again, any form of cycling on this issue of base FAR,
with no affordability attached to that up zone,
does nothing to get us one single affordable unit.
So this is why I was going to say,
well, I would prefer to have a clean start
and give the planning commission back their motions
that they originally made that were not thrust upon them.
This is not about punishing staff.
It's about acknowledging that it's not acceptable
and actually defending the original work product
of the Planning Commission and saying they are not held
to something that staff did.
And the original work that they did,
they discussed base FAR,
they would never have increased base FAR
without an mandatory inclusionary zoning
or some other clear requirement affordability.
So this is not my preference.
I'd rather have us deal with,
which I think is what Council Member Schneider would
like to do is talk about some mandatory inclusionary zoning
that would affect base FAR.
To me, that's an add-on because that's gonna get us
affordability that's not part of our ADIN below.
We could amend this motion to say
that we're directing planning commission,
I think they'll like that.
Do not increase base FAR unless you include
a mandatory inclusionary component.
It's not gonna touch our ADIN below issues,
which we still need to deal with.
it could give us some middle housing
and it at least requires something in return.
So I'm curious to know from Councilmember Schneider
whether softening it from no base up zoning,
if that's where she might be going,
but leaving the capacity for some type
of mandatory inclusionary zoning would be helpful.
Thank you.
So first of all, if we as a body vote against this,
we're not voting to up zone, right?
I mean this is just to say that we're not holding we're not laying down the law
about there being no 1.0. So I guess I do kind of want to talk about my
motion because as the deputy mayor knows it's not quite a mandatory program
but it does deal with providing double the density,
which might not be 1.0, right?
It might be 0.6 or something like that.
So anyway, I think just because of the sort of the
hard-lined version of this, I'm gonna vote against it.
That doesn't mean that I don't think there should be
something attached to up zones.
Okay, yeah, I guess there's nothing we can do
to get direction then to the planning commission,
unfortunately on the 1-0.
So yeah, that's fine.
It's fine.
We'll keep going.
Let's go.
One more quick comment, and then we'll take a vote.
No, I just want to make sure everyone knows,
because you're saying this is about the human aspect.
That's the point here, is that this increasing
the base FAR to 1 is entirely market rate.
It's not affordable housing.
It creates zero units of affordable housing, and the Planning Commission's whole goal was
only to do it if it had some affordable housing component attached to it.
And I could support bonus increases or, right, if there's actually affordability attached
to it.
But the issue I'm having here is this is just straight market rate upzoning.
and as the chair of the planning commission pointed out,
it's just taking from sewer capacity
and potentially water capacity
without getting us the benefit to the community
that the planning commission was trying to get.
So I don't appreciate the implication
that this is somehow anti-human to say we don't want.
Okay.
We're gonna call the question.
So all those in favor of the motion say aye.
Aye.
Nay.
Motion fails of four to three.
So anyone have a motion?
Because I do have some motions.
Okay, so I only have one motion.
You'll be done with me after this.
So as I put in my email late this afternoon,
maybe you didn't see it, and that's quite a right.
What I'm going to say is I want to say it,
and then I want to give a little explanation
and then I'll make the formal motion,
is that this is at its base, a middle housing
because there is some affordability attached to it,
but it's a much higher level of affordability.
And that being said, it does give more base density.
Well, I guess it's bonus density.
And then my goal is that our programs, financial and otherwise, our other partners can come
in and lower or increase the subsidy and then lower the AMI that this comes to.
So I'll read it.
I moved to include in the comprehensive plan a middle housing bonus density incentive
program that allows us to double the base density when at least 50% of the additional
units created are restricted as affordable to households earning 110% of area median
income or below.
Second.
Okay.
Discussion?
Councillor Mathews?
I mean, that's, we all talk about that middle housing gap and wanting to fill that
gap.
We had talked about it as future work, but if we can fit it in now, I think really
would be welcome and I think that's a I support your motion. So I'll make a
comment. I'm a little disappointed just because I know that council motion I had
talked a bit about some approaches that this and like I said at that time I
was open to the idea of us going against what we've said we were going
to do which was put the middle housing later because I know there's so much
desire to do it that maybe if we could open this part up and have it
looked at between now and our adoption by more than us
because we're not the planning commission
and we're not staff and we're not experts
that if it didn't have, if we weren't trying right now
to figure out what the right percentage of affordability
and the right density is that I could support it.
So I guess what I want the complicated way of saying,
I can't support the motion.
I have pivoted from wanting to hold us
to what we've said we're gonna do
and what I believe our resolution said
and what the planning commissioners did,
which is what middle housing will come next after this urgent moment. So I might be open
to something that was that was gave space for Planning Commission and staff to do some
work between now and the adoption, but wouldn't be able to vote for it now. Any other discussion?
Council Member Schneider. I would be happy to amend my motion to allow Planning Commission
to consider it. My goal in putting it out this way is because it's a fairly
mild, easily, maybe acceptable one and this would not create more work for the
Planning Commission. But if we think the Planning Commission would like to
chew on this and come up with some alternatives, I can modify my motion.
second the amendment and I really appreciate that because for one thing
the motion that I want to make next that would love them to rustle with
affordability and that's based on something they've already done on where
they find the way to distinguish between these incentives so I like that
and I'm going to support the motion so what is the motion I'm sorry it's
true what is the motion because I was all set to support yeah could you try
So, I'm just changing the direction. I moved to direct the interim city manager to direct
the planning commission to discuss a middle housing bonus density incentive program that
allows up to double the base density when at least 50% of the additional units created
are restricted as affordable housing to households earning 110% of area median income or below.
And I think, yeah, I think I can support that because it's one of the things that we're going to have to talk about eventually. Let's talk about it now.
The planning commission talk about it. Yes. All right. Any for the discussion.
just a question is this is this for the planning commission to consider now or
post comp plan adoption now okay okay yeah I guess the only comment I'd have
on that is in resolution 2025 18 we said we wouldn't really put more on the
planning commission but you know I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna vote against the
motion but I appreciate one last comment is I feel like in recent
and conversations with people.
I feel that, and I think this could apply
in watching the planning commission,
that not giving some sort of a valve for this work now
is impacting people's ability to be comfortable
with other things that they can and should do
for 80% and below.
And I'm hopeful, and I fully understand what I'm almost,
I know I'm gonna be a yes though
because I'm hoping this will create
some more capacity in people's minds.
So, all those in favor?
motion passes six to one. I'd like to make a motion as we're doing this. So I'm going to make a motion that I've passed out to everyone I sent to you earlier and it relates to a chart which is on page, it relates to a section of the pending recommendations from the Planning
Commission, which is the fourth page of the handout, and that is it relates to 18-12-030-C3.
And I sure hope I'm getting the citation correct.
It's development projects providing 100% low-income affordable housing.
I'm just setting up the motion real quick, so I want to tie it to that.
So I moved to direct the city manager to direct city staff to work with the Planning
Commission to expand the provisions of draft section 1812030C3 proposed by the Planning
Commission and providing maximum bonus density for 100% affordable projects in the Winslow
Town Center to create an affordable housing overlay district that includes all of the
Winslow Service Center area, sorry Winslow Sewer Service Area with a comparable bonus
density in the residential zones.
Okay, so I'm going to speak to it first if that's okay with you guys real quick.
And that would just be that this does provide, I want to point out that this was drafted
in response directly to their request.
They have looked at it.
They are moving this forward, this part that we're looking at.
It applies in the Mixed Use Town Center, and the idea would be take that idea,
which lots of us have talked about different versions of, expand it out into the residential
zones and let the Planning Commission, it gives them some space there to determine
on what a comparable level of density increase would be.
But basically it's so trying to work
with what they've already done.
To accomplish some of the things we've been talking about. I think the last thing I just
wanted to say, just one second I just wanted to see what notes I, yeah,
and I guess what
I wanted to say, I want to key this back to my original points were about getting rid
of the focus on this, on the base density, is that the point is the base density just
increasing, if you increase base density a thousand percent, I guess maybe at some
point there'd be some odd outcome that a couple units would want it to be affordable,
but generally, they will never be affordable.
So going in this direction and playing
with what the Planning Commission's got already going there,
we're taking a different approach to demonstrating
that we can create affordable units below 80%
because we and other organizations like us
are the only ones who will build it.
Developers will not build it.
So what we need to show is a lot of land capacity
and the funding and how it's gonna happen.
So this is a bonus program that creates capacity in the entire sewer service area.
Okay, that's my pitch.
Council Member Matthews.
Thanks Deputy Mayor.
So I'm trying to remember all the different planning commission discussions because this
was a really, this was a year basically.
At some point I did hear an intentional moratorium and things like that.
So, I just also want to keep in mind, I think HRB wrote us today with some comments, and
I said, I think they said, we strongly encourage any tiered bonus program to also include incentives
which we are all for, but that requiring 100% affordable projects isn't, or, we don't
really lost it.
Oh, bonus programs that are limited exclusively to 100% affordable developments remove potential
partners that may be interested in mixed income.
Developments are some other creative partnerships.
So I don't want to limit us at all.
But I'm willing to, you know, I just, it seems to me,
if those are the folks who are doing the building,
even though you say these are going to have to be city-owned
projects or city projects, that if they're saying this
doesn't work, that we should look a little more at it.
before I go down, I just want to point out that they're...
Oh, sorry, sorry, no.
And then also I keep thinking about this market rate,
bad word, and I work under Harbor Square,
which is a development across from the ferry.
And it's market rate, but what it is,
is I call it a senior community.
It's seniors who might have had a large home
on the North End or in the middle of the island,
and lost a spouse, moved downtown
and now live an affordable, walkable life.
And so I think we really need to be thinking
about like the Lion King, the circle of life,
of that folks that
I think housing capacity
and market and diversity of housing add to affordability.
So just putting that out there too.
I just want to, because I've made help,
address the point about bonus programs. This doesn't eliminate HDDP for one thing,
which is a 50% affordable program, which HRB has taken advantage of. And so this is
just another program and it's newly created and it's part of it, the first
part of it, mixed use town center, Winslow Town Center, came from the Planning Commission.
So it's just a new 100% affordable program. Council Member Nelson.
And it's also on top of the 25% Voluntary Inclusionary Zoning Program that the Planning
Commission is recommending.
And it's also on top of the Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning Program that they're creating for
large lots that's going to require 5% affordable, 80% AMI and below, and 10% middle housing,
80% or workforce housing, 80% to 120.
20. So this is on top of all other programs and there are a lot of programs that take advantage
so I don't think this forecloses options for sort of more creative partnerships or mixed
income developments. I obviously this is a proposal that you and I had talked about
that's very similar, very similar and I am supportive. I would just, I wonder almost
is a friendly amendment if it could be direction directly to the Planning Commission because
I am a little bit concerned that it doesn't specify the maximum bonus density. It's not
specific and so I'm now worried about staff coming back with something that's not what's
intended here.
You mind if I speak to that?
Well.
His question?
What's the point about the lack of bonus density?
I thought you'd just wait for him to get done.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I think you're talking about the R-Zone because the Wenzeltown Center is already in what we're working with here,
which is maximum bonus density.
Right.
If this is the whole sewer area, so what is the maximum in the R-Zone?
for that right so you would like to set a cap on the portion for our zone I would
either like to set a cap or I would like this to be direction directly to the
Planning Commission and have them make the decision because what I don't like
here is direct the city manager to direct city staff to work with the
Planning Commission I'm just a little bit leery about yeah yeah I had a
couple other things but I don't think that's necessary I think the
the motion makers cramped a very solid motion and that again is directive rather than I just I don't think it's I don't think it
Accomplish as much
I'm just trying to
Deputy Mayor you're we haven't talked about the second or the last part of your motion
What how would you define or what would you think would be the comparable bonus density and residential zones if this should move forward?
Well, I mean we have the example of
HGDP is two and a half times underlying zoning
So that's, I mean, they've got things that they can look at to have worked.
I just wanted to give them the flexibility to determine what the incentive level should be that, you know, would, yeah, you know.
Thank you for answering that.
I'd like to continue my, I'm just clarification.
I'm curious about counter Matthew's comments because I want to just not to be affordable projects,
but I think the council member is speaking to trying to meet the needs of other groups
that aren't necessarily that.
We have a lot of people who are property rich and income poor because of they lived in their
facility for so long and now they have a $20,000 property tax they can't keep up.
And so I think that should also be considered even though income wise in their retirement
they might not fit, they might fit in the 100% range.
But they're still in the need of leaving a little waterfront home or whatever it might be, but they still want to live on the island.
And I think we don't talk about them enough.
So I just want to thank you for bringing it up. It's a very important and positive thought.
I think it's Council Member Schneider.
Then you, then Council Member Schneider.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
So, the way I'm strongly in support of this, the way I look at it is that it's like a blanket
that says, if you're going to do 100% affordable housing, we are going to get rid of the barriers.
So it doesn't affect if you're going to do something else, okay fine, it doesn't apply.
right? So the only thing I have a question about is, and maybe this is
provided in the table, but the maximum bonus density, what is that maximum bonus
density? And I think you address this later on. I have a motion on that. You do
have, yeah, that's what I thought. So anyway, that's a detail to be decided,
but yes, I'm very in favor of removing barriers when it's a 100%
and affordable project.
And I don't think it gets in the way of any other suggestions.
And to clarify in case that's not clear for the public
or anyone on the dais, the point is at the moment
there is in our code a current maximum bonus density,
there are recommended changes,
and then there's a potential for making a different change
that's different than the recommended changes.
So if this past and my motion
on density bonus maximum changed or didn't pass,
it would just be informed by whatever
the ultimate decisions are.
This would never direct that.
Council Member, I actually think it's Matthews and then Nelson.
Thanks, Deputy Mayor.
So just to clarify, if I support this,
this does not limit development of things that are not 100% affordable, right?
It's an option for 100% affordable projects.
So could it stay a harbor square built or a walk or a bliss?
Right. This wouldn't have anything to do with them. They wouldn't be this, right?
Well, to get the bonus, but to get that.
No, they couldn't get that, right? Because the point is this is the bonus density coming
because the project being proposed is 100% affordable.
This is not about making sure we have the right size and affordability for people
who are 100% aware. This is 100% aimed at solving for the 80% and below problem
we're dealing with that we cannot zone into. So we could all agree on this and then have
wildly different feelings about should we do market up zoning just to make more capacity
and we can talk at that point about that. Not going to, this doesn't stop that. It's
a different policy question. This is aimed at what, you know, the 1-0 was aimlessly
aimed at that wasn't doing anything. This is aimed at showing the state when combined
with funding, right, a funding plan which we have to do and we know that we have that we're going to
get these units and we can count them in a tiered report.
That's why I'm proposing it anyway.
So, how's we're going to listen to that?
Yeah, yeah, just, it's all the units, all the residential units are affordable. That's what we're talking about.
And I, I mean, I'm going to support it. I wish that there, I would love to see a little bit more
around what it means in the residential zones and and and I think that the last
planning commission meeting they did have a little bit of discussion on that
because it's sort of like should it be two and a half times because yeah if
it's a if it's your sort of a R2 or R3 you know you kind of get to kind of
R8 but but you know if you're at R12 and it's two and a half times
and suddenly you're getting up to like R30, right?
And that was I think what one of the commissioners mentioned
and so maybe it should be something like two and a half
times but up to R8 or something.
So, but I think the point you're making is that
you're leaving it to the Planning Commission
to decide on that.
Okay, well I'm gonna support this.
And yeah, I think it's another tool
to get commerce to sign off on a plan.
Are we ready to take the question?
Call the question?
motion. Okay. All those in favor of the motion? Aye. Opposed? Are we unanimous?
Are you voting?
You can vote no. Okay, begrudging unanimity. Thank you. That's really cool. So I have another
motion after this, but of course I also want to, I'm trying to kind of, we're sharing.
So, who, does someone else have a motion?
I have a motion.
I move to request the, and then I have a Robert's Rules question,
because is it possible to revisit a motion and change it
from my earlier motion?
Mayor.
The maker of the motion or the person who seconded the motion,
actually people on the prevailing side could revisit.
Okay.
Okay, okay, so I will do that at the end
But I will just keep moving forward just to keep us moving
I moved to request the interim city manager direct our city attorney and staff to work with commerce on providing an official decision on
Whether or not being for dialing can be subject to the builders remedy sanction given our designation as a critical area and sole source aquifer
designation
Could you read that a little slower and again let us know what authority we're appealing to and what yeah
and
And then I'll give it the why I moved to request the interim city manager direct
Our city attorney and staff to work with commerce on providing an official
Why could be anywhere official?
Determination on whether or not Bainbridge Island can be subject to the builders remedy section given our designation as a critical area and sole source aquifer
Discussion I
think it's sensible builders remedy. So the builders remedy was one of the sanctions when we
the Housing Accountability Act gave that
as one of the consequences of this funding
in the Builders Remedy, and the Builders Remedy
is sort of like a proposed development.
There are things you can't really say no in a way, right?
But if that's a consequence
that we are not affected by, it would be good to know.
I just wanna know what our consequences are
because we've turned in what they've already said
as a non-compliant plan just from the letter yesterday,
and some of, I see it staying that way.
So just wanted to, just wanted to know.
Let's move on to Nelson.
It's kind of a question which is,
and this has kind of been on my list anyway,
which is why aren't we just asking for legal advice
from our city attorney on this?
You know, as sort of an alternative pathway
because, I mean, I agree, I agree that,
This is a real issue to address because I had flagged its RCW 3678 835 11A3, it exempts parcels
that are in critical areas or in critical area buffers. And it's very similar language
to the language that exempts us from the 280U's per law. Yeah, exactly. So I just wonder
I'm not sure if why not just ask the city attorney for advice, but I'll leave that.
Councilor Lant.
Oh, sorry.
No, Councilor Lant was next.
Yeah, that's right.
Councilor Lant.
Yes.
All right.
I think that's a great motion, a great request, certainly.
And I'm in support of that.
I'm really in support of the answer, however we get there.
And I just wanted to point out, too, there was something in the commerce letter that kind of rang my bell a little bit.
it, and that was the, again, the fact that this jurisdiction will remain out of compliance
until it amends its housing element and or housing development regulations to be consistent
with the requirements in the RCW and commerce issues a decision of compliance.
So I'm also very curious about the things that we fear most, not just the Builders
all the grants that we're worried about, all the future financial applications we're hoping
to submit. Just a point that I think we talked about this one time before, and I think the
answer was once we turned the council approved plan in, we were done, but that is not the
case as I read it.
Commerce has to come back and say we are in compliance, so it's
It's not an automatic point.
So this is just a point to follow up on council members
Ashley request, Matthew's request for confirmation
of these things.
Mayor Morawaki.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
So that is a good question.
Is it our submission of a plan?
We met it and we're trying to get that
and they say you did submit a plan
or is it that I'm kind of addressing to informally
to our assistant city attorney, that we have to have it approved.
I thought it was, we just submit our, because we read a deadline to submit a plan and then
it's going to be considered.
We just haven't submitted a plan yet.
So Mayor, there's a couple of things that are being interplayed here.
So under the Housing Accountability Act, it says you need to submit your plan and
And then the commerce then comes up with a compliance determination.
That determination was just simply to say the city submitted a plan, the commerce says
it's non-compliance, the city disagrees, the city has a remedy to that, and that remedy
is to appeal to the growth management hearing board.
You can also submit a plan, you can also have it be declared compliant by commerce,
and somebody still challenge your plan to the growth management hearing board, and
disagree with both the city and the commerce and say it's non-compliant. In
both of those situations you are still facing the same set of issues at least
when it comes to the grant money. Just pushing out for a moment here the buyer's
remedy because I know to be respectful to the count to councilmember
Matthews a current motion but that's in the larger picture that is kind of
the pieces that are going. So your work here to submit the plan yes once
Once that's submitted, all these other pieces might happen, but it only gets triggered if
once we get compliance either, you know, sign, excuse me, commerce is a determination on
compliance, but also whether it is commerce or a third party or even the city in challenging
a decision by commerce, then decides to put an appeal to the growth management hearing
board.
Those are a lot of what ifs. That's a lot of rice.
Dice rolling. God, I'm hungry. Anyway.
So on the grant that is before us, what is the stipulation? What does it say? We have
have to have a plan submitted. We have to have a plan approved. What are the qualifications
of that grant, especially on the stormwater recharge project of a manzanita?
I think the answer to that is we don't know yet. The original guidance that we got from
commerce was before the Housing Accountability Act was passed and before we were selected
for that so we are still on the staff side working very hard towards the June 30th deadline
and assuming that we're going to get there. If we don't then we'll cross that bridge and
ask the questions.
Thank you. Thank you. I forgot where it was on this.
Okay. Train of thought has just
left and all the cars are empty.
I have a recommendation. Let's focus on the motion on the floor by Council Member
Matthews, let's then talk about asking for a report back to us from the city manager
with the advice of a city attorney with regards to the interplay with these different, basically
ways the scenario could play out with these competing deadlines and process issues to
also include the recent feedback from commerce.
So we have some dynamic pieces that could help us understand better our deadlines for
each part.
So why don't we park that, which is a different issue than the issue that Council Member Matthews is asking, which is
I think Council Member Matthews wants to kind of go to the horse's mouth and ask, hey, we're just asking you outright.
Is there an exception for us given our status?
So that's the motion on the table.
And we've been discussing it.
I'm going to go add a quick item of discussion, which is that my quick piece of discussion is that I will support it.
I I don't know that it's the be-all end-all question because there's things we might have done to
Litigate this or but I've always I've always assumed this was actually had needed a little bit needed new legislation for us
It'll be interesting to get the answer
I'm not sure we're gonna be able to tell the community
Dispositively this is the definitive answer that we might have gotten somewhere else, but I certainly support asking
councilmember Schneider
Council Member Matthews, you said you were going to speak to it as sort of the why.
And I guess just to state my concern, do we want an answer or do we just want to go for
success here, Lailo?
Because you know, so what I'm hoping you'll tell us is how, what difference would it
make to us going forward, right?
I mean I would want to know but I do want to know if we're thinking that we have
time to do certain things or we can maybe send in a non-compliant plan as the
planning commission's current iteration if they if you know if it goes as is
is not compliant. So it was less, I think, 420 units, even if through tonight's motions
we make up, say, gosh, a new capacity, not like half of that, cut it in half. It's still
non-compliant. And we turned in what went into commerce was the one FAR. That was still
not compliant. So I just am just wondering, as we keep going down the road, just want
to know, you know, what's my punishment? How much more room do I have? You know, maybe
there's the teenager in me. Like, where's the line? But I think it would be a good thing
for them to have to say either yay or nay and give us that, because I think we are,
you know, just acknowledge that would be really helpful for our community. I think, and
I think the community wants to know.
Councilor Land. I still agree I would like to know too and as much as I'd like to lay
low, BCAT could be broadcasting to commerce as we speak, so the jig is up. So they're
all listening anyway. But I do think that we've got motions coming that are going to
address the doubts that the motions we've heard so far are leaving out. It's purposeful.
I think that it's a waterfall of motions that will get us to some compliance recommendations
for planning commissions.
So I do support your motion, absolutely.
Can we call the question?
Bob, so thank you for reminding me.
And your motion is very sensible because you're simply asking, here's what we're
proposing.
You're asking our legal counsel who is supposed to represent us and how we're doing this to to the letter of law that
Getting them
Get a report card first from
Commerce that directly is what you're asking for and I think that's really sensible call
the question all those in favor
Hi, I posed. Okay passes unanimously
Where are we you in the U.N. motion go ahead
So I'm going to make a motion about subsidies, very specifically, the Planning Commission
has talked about this a lot and they haven't really gotten to this piece, but on top of
the voluntary inclusionary zoning, mandatory inclusionary zoning, there was going to be
a whole part about subsidies and funding and they actually had this excellent presentation
that was put together by Chris Garcia and one of their subcommittees that had a whole
suite of funding options. And I think, Chair Blossom, did she e-mail
that to us? Yeah, very good, very good. So that's what this is about, and this specifically
speaks to one of the deficiencies noted by the Department of Commerce. It was primarily
that we didn't have a chart showing the allocation by income level and that we
didn't have a discussion of funding sources and gaps in local funding so
that's what this goes to to the mayor's point. So I moved to direct the interim
city manager to include in the preferred alternative a discussion of
subsidies which shall include each of the following elements the total number
of housing units that require subsidies to be constructed the total cost of
subsidizing the number of housing units that require subsidies a
discussion of which available funding tools the city of Bambridge Island is
currently using, the gaps in local funding needed to achieve the city's housing allocation
targets and a discussion of which local tools can be implemented to help close the funding
gaps.
Second
discussion.
Council Member Schneider, I think.
Oh, no, sorry.
I mean, Council Member, you're the maker of the motion.
I'm sorry.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I just spoke to it.
But all of these are the number of units required to be subsidized as mentioned in
in the House, in Commerce's letter,
as is a discussion of the funding tools,
a discussion of funding tools to help close the funding gaps
and a discussion of need for gaps in local funding.
So all of this is really speaking to specifically
what the Department of Commerce is asking we include.
And so I think that this would create
a very good discussion and as far as the funding tools
we can draw from what the Planning Commission
already provided to us.
And so I don't think that this would be a huge lift to do.
Council Member Schneider and then Lant.
This is great.
I feel like we've been kind of asking for this for a long time.
It's absolutely what I think commerce is expecting us to provide to say show your work, you know.
So I support it.
Council Member Lant.
Yeah, support it too.
And they said actually verbatim show your work.
And this is absolutely this is it.
But my only question mark is whether staff, the Planning Commission, can create something
and then give it back to us before the resolution that has been self-imposed by the 2025 Council,
and that might be for further discussion.
But whether we can get this all done by that time is a question mark for me, but
I absolutely support this motion.
Mayor Moriwaki and then Council Member Matthews.
Thank you to every Mayor.
and read comments that's the multiple specific subject topics which are fine
but do we have the intellectual and and capability to study all these things and
find all the possible funding sources I'm just curious if we're able to do that
and I'm looking ahead to council I mean deputy mayor's motion for which is
very similar I think we need to have all this stuff I just want to make
sure that we're not giving kind of a impossible homework assignment to stay in
that theme. That can be done comprehensively enough to meet our needs.
That's the only concern I have.
Thanks Deputy Mayor. So yeah, this is something Planning Commission's been
talking about all year and it was I think Commissioner Blossom sent us this
either yesterday or today and they had the subcommittee that did extensive
work on this. I too don't, I mean staff in 10 days is minus another realistically. I don't see all
of the things there on that list getting done but what I do see as being possible is them
literally using the subcommittees presentation and data that they already did. I don't know if
we need to recreate the wheel, we just need to tie it into, so I think there's a way to
mesh the work somehow. So maybe staff could work with the current, with the
PowerPoint that Commissioner Blossom presented and the work the subcommittee
did. Okay, Councilmember Fenner Johnson. Well look, I think that you know the
Planning Commission is they're talented and we already have this
information.
And I think if we, you know, they're asking us to give them direction, and this is it. It's
like this is what we need. This is what commerce is asking for. So let's get this part done.
So I'm looking at this in relation to my motion, my fourth motion, and trying to figure out for
sure that I'm 100% comfortable with it and that it covers everything I wanted it to.
One question is, I mean, I was struck by the word subsidy because although I'm just trying
to think about whether every single way we fund will be a subsidy, not sure if a subsidy
is what I would call direct build, I had said, you know, preliminary framework for the delivery
of income qualified for housing.
So that's one question, and I mean, we've got a motion on the table so we should work
with it.
What was your date for bringing this back to us?
Was it coming back to us?
That's another issue. It was important to me. Sorry. Yeah. Council make the motion. No, no. I don't have a date
This is just to be included in the in the comprehensive plan update. It's directly
responsive to
To commerce's letter
And in fact your question about the the word subsidies the commerce letter
Specifically says subsidies it says jurisdiction should identify the number of housing units that require subsidies to be constructed in the
gaps in local funding needed to achieve
these affordable housing needs,
information on which local funding tools
or incentives are being used,
and which local tools can be implemented
to help close the funding gap.
No, I understand.
I'm trying to be sure we're being as expansive as possible
and not closing off anything by subsidies.
So the things that to me that,
I can't help it since I wrote the other motion, right?
I mean, I want this to come back to us
because we're the policy makers
and we're gonna have to go yay
or it can't go in anywhere, right?
It needs to come back to us in time for this to go into the next land capacity analysis.
So can we massage just a little bit to make sure some of these things happen?
Is there anything that you want to add to it?
Because I'm in faith, I'm trying to make this expansive to include everything that might
be needed.
Is it inappropriate for me to read my alternative motion as just discussion?
I'm going to read my motion just to be clear what's different because I also include
a reference to the city attorney, which I think is important.
So my motion was I moved to direct the city manager to direct the city staff. This is not a motion. This is a comment
To direct the city manager direct city staff to develop with the guidance of the city attorney because this is compliance a
preliminary framework for the delivery of income qualified affordable housing that includes a combination of partnerships fee and loop programs direct investment from
The city including contributions of public land new and existing revenue sources and all their potential mechanisms and
Return to the city council with a plan for adoption no later than May
understanding that the date would need to be discussed, but process-wise we need to endorse
something like this, I believe, and I get guidance from someone else, I think it won't
to pass muster with, and it won't be that we all understand, we're talking about tons
of millions of dollars of gap, so it's not going to be that we found it all, it's
going to be with the most credible attempt possible to where we will be pulling in
it's the thing we can. Mayor. Thank you Deputy Mayor. That's what I was trying to get to.
I looked I liked your motion at least for one thing. It's it's a little flowing
better plus I think it's actually a little more comprehensive and it captures
everything that I believe Councilmember Nelson was seeking just the
language is a little different and has more flexibility than being so
the specific so yeah and so thank you just in lieu of us and I know you have you
know private ownership and stuff but I the problem I had with that the first
motion was all the specificity that said you must address these individual
things I wasn't quite sure if you didn't check those off that would they
failed on their job so I think this is a little broader it probably captures
There's most, if not all, the things that you're asking.
I just think that when it was spelled out directly,
it is an action that has to be fulfilled.
I just hope you understand that.
And can I just add that jogs more,
what's why is it itching at me?
I think that's why I wanted to mention the city attorney,
and I would like to keep it really broad,
like a framework, is that this is in flux.
I mean, I don't know if there's any active decisions
being made right now by the gross management
hearing board or what, but we know Mercer Island's
still working on I think their city council is actually has just received
these kind of things and they're working it through so it's in motion and
having legal counsel also trying to figure out what would this look like
what's going to pass muster and and I appreciate very much that Council
member Nelson he's been repeating some of this excellent language for a while
about things like the gaps in local funding etc. I think these are some
really great keywords but the whole point is at the end of the day we're
going to want the best legal guidance we can get up to date on what are those key words
that they're going to want? What is it that's going to tell them the difference between,
eh, and oh yeah, they're really serious or whatever it's going to take? So that's
kind of how I'm feeling.
I think my concern with your formulation is it doesn't include things like gaps in
local funding, which is sort of those key words and something that the Department
of Commerce called out. And same with subsidies, it doesn't use this word subsidy. So
So my language is specifically taken from Commerce's letter, but I also think would it help if
we included the city attorney in it, and if we softened it to maybe say should instead
of shall?
I think if you can simply say that, I think we're both saying we want the city attorney
and the help of Commerce to tell us what should go in there, and what you're saying
is you're thinking it's this, right?
And so it could be, it could say that it might include
or it will include, but that's fine.
But as long as it opens it up to allow the best advice
and we're not dictating what it does,
we know, I think everybody here knows what we want.
What we want is we want the funding piece
to go in our housing plan that is going to give us
credibility of delivering this housing.
Okay so I move to amend my motion to to read I move to direct the interim city
manager to work with the city attorney to include in the preferred
alternative a discussion of subsidies which may include each of the following
elements a total cost of housing units that require subsidies to be
constructed the total cost of subsidizing the number of housing
units that require subsidies a discussion of which available funding
tools the city of Bayon Rouge Island is currently using, the gaps in local funding needed to achieve
the city's housing allocation targets, and a discussion of which local tools can be implemented
to help close the funding gaps.
Do we have a second? I seconded it the first time. I'm happy
to second it, but I really want to comment. Okay, Council Member Schneider. I don't see
that there's a conflict between the two. I would like to pass both of them. And I don't
think, you know, if there's some sort of a clash between both of them at some point
in the future, we hash it out. So yeah, we want legal support. I mean, I just, I'm willing
to be locked in a room with pizza to hammer this thing out. That's my threat to staff
and the planning commission or whatever, you know, like, we could do this. And maybe
we do it in steering committee. We get a head start on it or something that's
happening on Monday but I mean this is just I think a lot of it is just format
like how do you set up the page so that you're filling in the blanks so that
you're meeting commerce's requirements and so I'm happy with it now I'm happy
with it the way it was I'm happy with supporting deputy mayor's one
I'm following and I don't think there's a big conflict there.
Could we, could we seek advice from,
or input from the city manager and the city attorney?
I think passing the two would be weird for the record.
And so could we, if we pass the one on the table,
is there enough, does that,
I don't wanna assume any of this context ever
for the record, the record's that.
So is that, does that say what you think,
I guess city attorney, we're trying to say about
if you're off working or when you're colleagues
with staff and trying to produce something, you know what we're trying to do.
Yes.
Let's just take the motion on the table.
On the floor, you mean?
On the floor.
Yeah.
And just a friendly amendment.
And just so the one part that is, I don't think you had this in yours.
And I think it's going to be intuitive as this is how the city manager would work.
but the deputy mayor's motion says a direct the city manager to direct city
staff and you can have that gap out I'm just we would assume she's working city
staff but I would you want to be specific I'm certainly fine with that
friendly amendment thank you could you add a return date or something to
return it to us I don't want this floating out there I'm gonna break in
and say I think that's very important okay okay so okay how about I
I withdraw my motion and restate it, no?
Oh, whatever you want.
Because then there's several things.
Okay, so I move to direct the interim city manager
to direct staff working with the city attorney
to include in the preferred alternative
a discussion of subsidies which shall be returned
to the city council no later than May 12th
and which shall include,
or which should include each of the following elements,
the total number of housing units that require subsidies to be constructed,
a total cost of subsidizing the number of housing units that require subsidies,
a discussion of which available funding tools the City of Bainbridge Island is
currently using, the gaps in local funding needed to achieve the City's
housing allocation targets, and a discussion of which local tools can be
implemented to help close the funding gaps.
No date. I did. I said May 12th.
Thank you.
It was so much, I'm sorry.
Great seconded.
Any more discussion?
Okay, all those in favor?
I opposed.
Motion carries unanimously.
Great job, everybody.
I have one more motion.
Did you have another motion?
Oh, it's my turn actually, isn't it?
I'm sorry.
Okay, so, oh no, I actually have two more.
One's short, and I hope that people
already have a feeling about this or not.
I've gotta go up to back the top.
And that was motion three,
which was to reduce the proposed increase
of maximum bonus FAR in the Winslow Town Center.
So I moved to reduce the proposed increases
in maximum bonus FAR in the Winslow Town Center to 2.5 FAR.
Second.
I'm going to just make my brief comments in favor of that.
So if you look at that chart, that would be referring
to the last chart that I provided.
You can see what the current maximus is bonus FAR, right?
It is available if you do certain things.
We can create other programs and they can say we can reference bonus FAR max.
You can see what the current is and the recommended.
The current draft has upped and this is not Planning Commission's recommendation.
I'm quite sure.
I'm not going to get that right.
So the bottom line is the increased recommendation.
God, I should know that because I feel like I know that's the case.
But 3.0 FAR in the central core overlay, let's see, sorry.
We've got up to 3.0 and 4.0 FAR.
And we've been talking about this because obviously that's
a very large increase in FAR, the original proposed changes.
I think that's the issue, just one second.
These are increases, so we shouldn't work this late.
Nobody should make decisions right now.
The increases that were, oh, I'm sorry, this is what I'm trying to say, if we went to 2.5
FAR, why am I proposing 2.5 FAR as our maximum bonus in these areas, if we went to 2.5 FAR
that is already an increase over these original underlying densities we have here, maximum
densities of 200 to 400 percent is what I'm trying to say.
We know that 2.5 FAR is sufficient to build, for example, we have a living example
of it. 625 fits on that site to maximum build in 2.5far. So first of all going all the way to 4.0
and 3.0 in this pass of the of the of the of our planning it feels too soon too fast one we know 2.5
far can build 625 and similar projects across the city and I think what I what I particularly
I really wanted to point out was that gosh,
I'm brain dead.
I think I'm going to leave it at that and see.
Wait, is there additional, is there additional conversation?
Because I'm going to try to remember what I was going to say.
Yeah, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I'm looking at a table and I'm not in favor of that.
I think it should be as many carrots and as possible
attractions that could be for developers, especially for property
owned by religious organizations. I think the 3.0 and the 4.0 are really attractive because
these developers are really going to have to put in and find ways to make these structures
affordable for the people who may be living there. So I think that there's no guarantee
it's going to get that high, but if they can find a way to get the affordability and meet
all of our current codes that are in compliance with the other things that we have in our
municipal code then it is the real grail for them if you can get there so I
think it I think we need all possible options that can be attractive to
potential partners and developers to build the affordable housing on the
styling we need. Councillor Matthews. Thanks Deputy Mayor. Yeah I agree with the
Mayor. I think all the carrots are a good idea. I do and this came from
Planning Commission and I do remember all of their
Thank you very much for your time.
We have a discussion around this, and this, they had very specific reasons why it was for,
and so out of one side of our mouth we're like, we have to listen to what planning commission
says to with the 3-2 versus the 4-6, and that of the other side, like, well, let's change
what they said here. I know we're the policy makers, but we have to, for sake of argument
that was made this evening, then let's follow our own argument. So let's, I don't support
this.
I can remember what I was going to say, but go ahead, Council Member Schneider.
Thank you.
I do support it.
I think that I'm really grateful that we have a living example of what it could look like.
And I think, you know, if the Planning Commission has a scenario by which they would need three
or four then you know we can always change our minds but I think that what we
I'm in favor of having a bit more of an incremental process I'm not process an
incremental stepping stone towards where how fast the island changes and what
not and I think it'll give the community a sense of confidence that
that we're not going too far too fast.
So I think it's enough for us to get done
what we need to get done and it's not too much
and I'm willing to change my mind on down the road
if I hear a good excuse.
Thank you.
Well, thanks.
Well, thank you for bearing with my blather a moment ago.
I'm truly fried, so I'm sorry about that.
No, the reason I was struggling with the recommendations
for the Planning Commission is that
as this came through Planning Commission
with these very large FARs,
I mean, for our community this was huge, right?
And just for the public's understanding, what 3.0
floor ratio means is that the mass you're working with
is three stories high, lot line to lot line.
Doesn't mean you can build lot line to lot line,
but I'm gonna say something about that.
Or 4.0 is four stories, lot line to lot line of mass.
So these are very large for us because once you put in,
if you, depending on the height you allow
and you've got setbacks, these can get tall
or they can be fat or whatever.
The planning commission, as it was making these,
It was playing with these, and it was not unanimous, but yes, they did ultimately decide
they wanted to do that.
They talked a lot about the fact that 3.0 and 4.0 would be hemmed in by, it would be
controlled by other development standards, height and setbacks and so forth.
And these are really important to us because we need permeability of structures, we need
step back structures to make them visually, you know, not overwhelming, et cetera.
So first of all, even if what happened since with regards to lock coverage had
not happened.
And I was always intending when this came to us, I don't know if I'd get any traction,
but yes, even though these are the recommendation of the Planning Commission, we are the policy
makers.
And I don't think I've said that we're here to endorse everything the Planning Commission
does.
I would like to work as much as possible with their work, but we make the decisions
ultimately.
And I believe 2.5 has been demonstrated to us as an adequate next step.
And again, that is 200 to 400 percent increased density over the current.
And so what's happened since that has further eroded my trust as to what this would look
like, which is very important, because the Planning Commission themselves were saying,
staff was saying there was an understanding, what we're not saying, you'd have, say, 100%
lock coverage and 3.0 or 4.0 FAR, because that would literally be these massive structures
with no setbacks or anything.
And in fact, staff did put into the preferred alternative that was submitted to Commerce
100% lock coverage. I believe it was, and please don't quote me, but it was at least
in Ferry, the Ferry District. And that greatly undermines my feeling that we can have faith
that we can't say 3.0 FAR, we get that in the door and we'll have these and then we're
just angling to get as much lock coverage and height as possible because then we've
already opened the door halfway to structures that nobody in this community. I don't care
or how much, I mean, okay, you never see nobody.
Many more people who strongly support affordable housing
would be shocked by and not feel
that at least not now in this planning cycle
this community's ready for.
I don't know what we're gonna look like
or what our water sources are gonna be.
In the next planning cycle,
maybe we'll be ready for 4.0 FAR.
Those are my reasons and I'm really sorry,
like I said for losing track of that
and I know means meant to undermine
the recommendation of my planning commission.
I do want to be able to do the things that we're set out to do, and if this does, that's
fine.
But it also will give the community a sense that we're not trying to grow as fast as
We've been accused of you know, we're we're not we don't need to jump to this level at this time
So I will support it
Remember comes women elson. Yeah, I agree with the council member fontra Johnson and and Schneider. I of course would
Love to see lower F. A. R. But I I welcome
Lowering it from where where three or four which I think is quite high. So I'm supportive. Thank you
ma'am or walkie
Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I did not watch the meeting, but my presumption is that they
were using this as a caretn tool that might be up to that level. And like I said at the
other meeting, just because you plan something doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be
there. But what our problem here is that we're trying to demonstrate to the state
that we're trying to find ways and use every tool possible to try to create as
much affordable housing as we can. And perhaps this can do that, and we can demonstrate
that they can. Doesn't certainly mean it does. And so I'm going to follow the lead, but I
do believe that the more care that you have, and it could be appealing to someone, if someone
really comes forward and meets, again, all of the requirements that we require through
the code, then it could be tiny units. They could be a bunch of studios. I'm not, I
don't know how it's going to work. But I just want to know what the Planning Commission
views were, I wasn't there. So I want to hear what their arguments were, pro and con.
Council Member Matthews? Yeah, so I think I'm trying to remember the conversation, but I feel like it was around safe,
around high school and safe way. If I'm trying, if I'm remembering correctly,
Commissioner Dynas bringing up that. So, but I can appreciate the fast for community and slow.
that resonates slow, we're walk slow walking it,
it's late, I can't talk anymore.
I can appreciate that and I can also appreciate
that we are trying to achieve affordable housing
for our community.
But I think 2.5, I think I sent this to council,
Charlie Winslow sent back when we were discussing
that last week. The 2.5 was adequate for the current needs. So I will hostage support.
And I didn't want to bring him up because I want to throw the poor guy under the bus for just
making a comment to us. But yes, thank you. That was also my mind.
Council Member Lant. I was hoping we were going to call the question real quick. But
I just wanted to also just input that I do believe this discussion really did revolve
all around what other levers did they have to pull at the Planning Commission.
And they were looking at a marriage of levers plus this.
So having one without the other is a wild rogue monster.
And I would think that while we're doing our homework for commerce, we just need to
do our homework.
We don't need to give away the, you know, until we do this again in a couple more
years.
but I would rather slow walk it forward and do just what we have to do if we're
not having the levers attached to the FAR so okay
so we're going to call the
question all those in favor I opposed motion carries unanimously you have
another motion I have another motion okay let's find it okay and just I'm
I'm thinking about Council Member Lance's last comment.
The comprehensive plan update process
is starting again for the one we are.
So we are just getting ours in and the,
yeah, exactly, so there's that.
Okay, this is directly from the letter
that we got yesterday and let me try to find,
so I'll give the motion and then I'll find out.
So my motion is I move to request the race equity advisory committee convene a subcommittee to work with city staff and the city's equity officer to identify local policies or regulations which may contribute to racially disparate disparate impacts displacement or exclusion in housing per commerce guidance.
The city should complete an evaluation of existing comprehensive plan policies and goals and examine whether previous policies contribute to RDI exclusion or displacement contribute to harmful narratives or biases about marginalized communities.
And then to document completion of this document the city must document how it reviewed its policies and regulations of
racially disparate impacts displacement and exclusion in the housing element and its findings
Commerce recommends the city include the policy review in an appendix
Evaluate policy chapter 3 evaluate policies and guidance to address racially disparate impacts disparate impacts for detailed guidance on completing a
policy evaluation. The city may choose to use an evaluation matrix like the one included
as an example in that chapter. This was just something in the letter that we had not done
that we had to do that. I feel like we have a committee who could help with that. We keep
talking about Sammamish and as part of the growth management policy board, I got to
review Sammamish's comp plan and one of the things that stood out their plan highlights
was plan includes the city's first economic development element and detailed historical
and data overview of racially disparate and disparate impacts is that a motion
oh the motion was the beginning part okay okay the motion was really out really
short I'm sorry the motion I moved to request the race equity advisory
committee convene a subcommittee to work with city staff and the city's
equity officer to identify local policies or regulations
which may contribute to racially disparate impacts, RDI,
displacement, or exclusion in housing.
Per commerce guidance, the city should complete
an evaluation of existing comprehensive plan policies
and goals and examine whether previous policies
contribute to RDI exclusion or displacement
or contribute to harmful narratives or biases
about marginalized communities.
Okay, second, and that's a lot there.
you may want to just as a friendly amendment or at least a discussion to make a
brief or move that we follow through with the recommendations from the the State
Department of Commerce that recommends how we address the issues of DEI etc.
and just use that you know and there's a language or whatever it is paid you
know to pay two point or whatever you can cite the 10A or wherever the
finding is or it's usually called a finding or changes needed you know you
might just that'd be just my friendly deal because it's quite long yeah okay
something like that line I'm
trying to assist the motion discussion yeah I'm
okay with the motion the way it is it's long we'll figure it out I don't know I
just I think we could move on and and somebody seconded it the second time
I agree with the mayor I think it could be streamlined and I'm a little bit
worried about the timing of it of getting a subcommittee why not just ask
for a recommendation from the committee itself but you know in sort of the
spirit of it I understand. So on those lines I mean that's actually so my
biggest concern like if we have is making sure the motion allows the
or whoever needs to, it could be the equity officer,
somebody needs to be able to say,
okay, this is so much time we have,
and this is how we're gonna do it.
And for one thing, she's probably,
this may be sort of the sort of thing
that she's particularly skilled at doing,
and so helping walk through.
So if she thinks it's a full committee thing,
if she thinks it's a subcommittee,
are we worried about that at all?
Just about timing to make sure we get the product done.
Is there, do you, I don't know if anyone thinks.
It doesn't need to be a, I'm not picky,
just something with our race equity advisory committee
getting to address question 2E in the letter we got yesterday.
So maybe if we're just providing additional verbal guidance,
feedback for the city manager that we're understanding
that the equity officer herself may like,
figure that, you know, talk to planning,
figure out whatever, if it looks a little bit different,
like it was in the subcommittee,
we want React involved and we want to get this done.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor. So, just as simple, you know, I'd send it to the
Vice-Secretary of the Committee and our equity officer and address the issues that were stated
in the letter from the Department of Commerce on page whatever.
2E, section 2E.
Page 10.
Does that work for the motion-maker?
So, we're mending it to that?
Sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
Someone second?
Second.
Okay. Are we ready? All those in favor?
I have one last motion which pulls together some of these other motions. We'll see okay, so I'll just state it and hopefully get the right
I moved it to direct the city manager to direct the planning department staff to add the following to a new capacity analysis to be submitted to commerce
And a form that includes a table identifying housing capacity each income level. That's their
guidance. The increased capacity available, number one, the increased capacity available
from a category of bonus parcels, similar to that category used by the city of Sammamish
to include all buildable public publicly owned parcels and those owned by religious
organizations. Two, the increased capacity available from the affordable housing overlay
described in the previous motion that did pass and all other affordable housing
bonuses in the existing BIMC and currently proposed by motion of the
Planning Commission and a funding gap analysis and plan for addressing that
gap which was what was addressed in that previous motion. So the only new
thing here, I gotta wait for a second. Okay, so the only new thing here
really is the bonus parcels which I'd like to address because the table
identifying the housing capacity each income level is something we always
should have done and now we're being told exactly we should do and hopefully
people are okay that we're saying take that work we just talked about doing and
throw that into the capacity analysis for commerce because they all inform it
but here is a description from Sammamish of what that what I'm talking about
and this has been talked about again we got to keep giving credit where it's
do with the planning commission. It's been talked about the planning commission. Should
we be looking at, we know we're looking at hopefully some city land. How much of our
city land are we asking to be looked at? How much other public land that isn't actually
our jurisdiction? Sammamish did do that and their plan passed. And also religious properties,
which we, of course, created an ordinance for. And so in Sammamish's housing strategy
in their adopted and approved plan, they had three major strategies, and one of those three
major strategies was this inclusion of bonus parcels, and they were able to come up with
a nice sizeable amount of capacity there. That's the background. Their definition of
bonus parcels is, well, this is what they said about bonus parcels. This strategy leverages
substantial amounts of public and religious land that primarily exists in low-density
residential zones across the city. Density bonuses will be provided in exchange for
the construction of extremely low and low-income housing on vacant or underutilized lots owned
by the city, King County, Sammamish Plateau Water or religious institutions. In many circumstances,
surplus land can be used for affordable housing while retaining existing structures. That's
how they did it. It's something that we all are hoping is going to happen. The school
district has been talking about it and that's my motion.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor. That was the next question. Because we do have other public entities,
the school district, fire district, library district. They can also off on this. And I
appreciate, and this is, has this been approved and it's been in sync with commerce? Okay.
Good. Because I like the Latin line that says primarily exists in low density residential
central zones. That's where we get the trap. That's where we can't, you know, people say,
that's going to happen. But if we have this kind of tool that gives a public owned property
and religious organizations that happen to be in a residential zone area, but now we
have opportunity for more affordable housing, I think it's a great idea.
Council Member Nelson and then Land.
I think just, I'm very supportive of this, and it overlaps with mine that just asked
for revised capacity analysis, but it's so much more in depth and really, I think the
point is it gets in the capacity analysis, the publicly owned parcels, in addition
to, you know, the sort of up zoning for projects that are 100% affordable, which
I think was really not in the land capacity analysis, which is why it showed a deficit,
right?
What I'm wondering is, would you be willing to strike number three, because I feel that
that was addressed in a previous motion, and I'm not quite sure, maybe you can explain
with the funding gap analysis and plan for addressing the gap.
How does that, what's the interplay with that in a land capacity analysis?
I'm trying to understand that.
Because our land capacity analysis, oh, I'm sorry.
Because what we know is that somehow, this is going to be, you know, on all of our
pay grades, but when we're directing this land capacity analysis to be done, it's
going to be a more complex one than we've had done previously. It's one of the
things that was great about having this simple up zone, just up zone. I mean,
it's like, now we, I'm assuming, we're talking about a deeper level and a more
complex process of figuring out what the uptake is going to be, right? So we
We create a bonus prop, we create this capacity out there in Winslow.
We say these are the bonus, you know, these are the, this is, we're moving, we're moving
barriers by allowing more of FAR and by allowing more height, we've got a bunch of things
going on the, in the comp plan.
And now we've got to be able to say that because 80% and below, this is the crux
of everything, will only be built by public and nonprofit funds coming, you know,
together or separately. It's integral to the capacity analysis. It must be. And I'm happy
to be told otherwise. Someone come back and tell me. But this is the point, is we need
to be, for someone to be able to come up with an algorithm or whatever, a formula that
says when you've got this kind of thing and this, you're going to have to have credible
funding. So to me, they're all necessary. So all the things we worked on today
and all the stuff the planning commission's been doing and everything comes together in
a different and fuller capacity analysis that addresses these things we've talked about
and frankly things that the planning commission before we talked tonight to keep giving them
credit would have wanted in the capacity analysis.
And I that's very helpful. Can I say one other thing which is just is it possible
to have it say a funding gap analysis and a plan for attempting to address that gap
because I think the way it's written, it's saying we're going to address that gap and
I don't think that we can.
And I got that pretty much, I believe, from guidance from Mercer Island or something that
is supposed to address the gap, which is really weird and I'm not sure how that's all going
to work out.
But I think it would just be saying the gap in local funding.
It's addressing.
I guess the point is addressing, I guess another way to put it, is addressing the
gap can be that we are going to be taking these steps to explore X and Y or to try
So for example, if we say we're going to try to pass a bond or we don't know we're going to be able to do it anyway
We're going to seek it. So I think it's accurate. We can't make it happen
We cannot like any other jurisdiction. We cannot come up with 90 million dollars
We're going to do the best we can. Yeah, that's my that's my point
But that's very helpful and I'm supportive on that basis. Thank you
Okay
I just want to know if some of this language came from the letter are we
addressing anything in the letter from commerce with this you know that I wrote
this none of this is the part that's specifically from the letter actually the
top is in a form that includes a table addressing the housing capacity each
level but good point I'm glad you mentioned that because to me we could
have a friendly amendment that said what I think is just a given which is a
direction for everything else that we've been directed to do we want to do so
we've hit on a couple individual things but of course whatever we've been told
you need to go do this and this if we're being told we're gonna do it we're
gonna go do it so I guess I assume that that's or maybe it's a separate motion
or maybe it's just simply obvious guidance if I may I think it's a
a separate motion, you know, just just to for to councilmember
Fentall Johnson's point and that was something I started out the whole
meeting, make sure all of these address something that we're supposed to address
and it falls under analysis one GMA housing planning goal and it says changes
needed to fully address the housing goal of RCW, etc etc and quote plan for
and accommodate for housing affordable on economic segments on quote we have
determined at the city of Bainbridge Island we need to complete the
actions noted in sections 2D and blah blah and this helps meet that. It's another
tool to help meet those goals. I also think we still should have an overarching
motion that captures everything that we're supposed to be doing. Councilor
Landt? And mine was just going to be a quick observation that the land that
we're talking about is everywhere just like earlier today when K-PUD was
talking about their conversations with Park District.
Was anybody here just a little surprised
that there was possibly a partnership happening
outside of us in that with our utilities?
So this housing can happen anywhere
and we should make sure that all of our motions
or the planning commission's recommendations
reflect everywhere, whenever possible.
And I actually wanna identify that this,
that just only now reading this through
and talking about it I realize there's a gap in here that might need to get
addressed and that is we do have we do have city land out in the you know
open space residential what a recall in the outside Winslow area and we don't
have any meaning public lands and we don't have any special ordinances for
that and that's something that we might maybe we need some feedback from
planning commission on so our religious properties ordinance will apply where
they are so just think about that whether it's now whether we need to do it
now in this update because we're not gonna because it would help us get just
across the finish line or it's something that we ultimately need to do we
write I mean so anyway I'm not adding that here now but I'm just pointing it
Now, are we ready to call the question?
Okay, all those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion passes unanimously.
Great, now did we wanna talk at all
about the Council Member,
of Andrew Johnson's request?
Oh, did you want to make the motion?
I was writing a motion to do it.
Oh, okay, go ahead.
So, I moved to direct the Interim City Manager
to work with the Planning Commission and City staff
to include in the preferred alternative
of changes to address the deficiencies noted
by the Department of Commerce
in its letter dated April 20th, 2026.
Second.
Okay, any discussion?
And I just want to be clear,
because I think for the public's sake,
I feel a little confused,
I have to say by some of the quotes
from the letter earlier tonight,
that we're quite out of compliance.
I just think we need to say that,
otherwise we don't think we would have been doing
all this, so I don't know
whether we should quote from any of it,
like however we have found the city's housing element
does not plan for and accommodate housing affordable
to all economic segments of the population
because it does not clearly demonstrate
how the city's identified such capacity.
And it talks about, you know,
like commerce has found the city's housing element
includes no mention of sufficient capacity
for housing needs at all income levels.
So anyway, I just, my point is,
it feels odd that we're, are we, are we not?
We did not get good news from commerce.
It's my point.
Okay, I just want to be clear
because we didn't really get into that.
That is why this is really important.
So thank you.
Any for the discussion?
Councilor Matz?
No.
Oh no, okay.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
Great.
Basically promising we're gonna try to do
the best of our homework is what we're gonna do.
Okay, so yeah.
I wonder if I can just summarize a little bit
and maybe reflect back what I heard.
There were a number of motions
pass today, some of which we got in advance and I think the city clerk and I will work
carefully to go through those. Many of these represent a significant amount of staff work
and some of them include due dates which I need to reflect on and develop a strategy
to achieve. We may need to obtain outside consultant help to achieve some of these
and it may not be possible to report back fully on some of these by May 12th.
Also, we talked a little bit or I heard you mention including some of these in the preferred alternative.
The Planning Commission is actively considering their preferred alternative right now
and so we won't be able to provide significant staff work to them before Thursday,
for example, with a packet that's already been published.
So I appreciate the conversation.
I think we discussed a lot of topics today, but staff will need a little bit of time to reflect back to you
what we're able to do and
Excuse me and in what timing so that you can have that that information for your discussions going forward. Could could I
I'm gonna attempt to speak on what I would hope we think and let's just see
My thought would be I think I think we only use one date and again
I think we can receive feedback on that date if that's just not viable
but yet we can still comply.
And so I would think across the board,
we're looking, I think that our direction is
we need to move as fast as we need to move
as we are able to move to key in to the process
we're required to adapt to all parts,
including the timing of and the noticing, et cetera,
of public hearings and commerce and growth management.
I believe, I would like to say,
say, we are understanding there will be additional costs, there will be trade-offs, and we want
to take those on, and we need your guidance in helping us step back if we have to, but
only as much as we have to.
That sound right?
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
And I think I don't yet know what kind of additional costs I would be looking at, right?
And when we would need to issue an RFP, for example, or when it will be something
that we can do with existing consulting resources.
So we will of course work to comply with the Commerce Letter for the Housing Accountability Act.
We just got it yesterday, so we too are still figuring out exactly what it means and how we're going to comply with that.
And in defense of the Council and the Planning Commission, and no offence meant at all to the City Manager,
a lot of the direction that came back in that letter was what we've known for 15 years.
Council is just asking for anything more than we have to do. What order are we in?
I think it was Councilor Nelson, then Councilmember Matthews, then Councilmember Land.
I'm just going to offer a comment which is that I do think we have to move on. I was
We, as a body, should talk about whether the June 30th deadline makes sense.
Moving forward, and I had requested something on this, because the letter says the jurisdiction
will remain out of compliance until it amends its housing element and or development regulations
to be consistent with the requirements of the statute and commerce issues a decision
of compliance.
So even if we stick to June 30th and we get it done by June 30th, we're no longer
in a world where it's assumed compliant.
We're now in a world where it is not compliant until commerce says it is compliant.
So we're not going to, the June 30th deadline to get the, to get the grants, that's gone,
is my point.
And at this point, it's August 18th is the deadline when commerce wants us, I'm just
going to put that out there.
Let's raise issues now, knowing that we won't probably have all the information
we need and we're basically providing additional guidance to the administration that what
what we need to talk about ASAP.
Council Member Matthews.
So my last thing is just wanting to give Planning Commission
some direction for Thursday.
We're still on that same thing.
So I was going to amend my motion a little bit
or change my motion, change it
to proceed with their three,
now I lost it, with Planning Commission's,
Okay, there's this 4-6.
I moved to proceed with the 4-6 Planning Commissions 4-6 chart, hold on,
4-6 chart with Planning
Commissions, sorry, my brain, with the analysis turned in, which was not turned in, reflecting
planning commission's 4-6 analysis that showed the negative 4-20 deficit of 420 units to allow
planning commission to work from that and suggest ways to make up that deficit. So to make it
shorter to go back to planning commission, say use your 4-6 chart and try to come up
with 420 units or maybe just not even give them a number because of the other.
I second that.
Can I talk to it?
So it sounds like to me what you're saying is that okay, the information that was
turned in wasn't the planning commission's information that they wanted to be turned
in. So allow them to go back to that information and use that information going forward. I
support that.
And the concern is, but you've, but the councilor Matthews has added and they need
to add 4 and 20 units.
We didn't take that off.
Oh.
Yeah, I took it off. I just said.
No.
I said no, like I said 4 and then I said no.
Okay.
Whatever they if you're saying they can go back to there. I'm trying to remember if it's four six
They're original as opposed to the one by staff
Then I'm happy to support that if we're moving because I don't think they can find the four hundred twenty. It's that way. So yeah
Councilor Nelson so is so is this essentially the motion I have made where it goes back to the point five
No, it's different from what you said, because that was what I had said was to not have an
increase.
That was to go back to what planning commission had originally recommended, which was the four
six column base FAR in Ferry at point five, high school FAR at point three, right?
I'm saying go back to that and use that as where they are starting, they are working from
and I'm not saying get 420, but get us to a compliant, get us to something we can turn
in from there.
Well, and that was the intent of my original motion too, was just to go back to what Planning
Commission had done and then go from there.
I think we're saying the same thing.
I think we're just saying it differently. Okay. Well, I'm supportive then. Yeah, I'm supportive
Any further discussion?
Council Member, Council Member Vandere does what you still, did you still want it your own? Okay, Council Member Schneider?
I
Don't know what this solves. I do kind of get it that out of all the things we've done tonight
It's maybe not clear guidance for what Planning Commission can work on and they have a published agenda of whatever whatever
So I'll support whatever. I just want to say that I don't clearly get it.
They're looking for an answer. So they've had this question posed to us now for three or four weeks.
Just give us an answer of which one.
I know. And I guess, I mean, I heard all that. I kind of understand all that.
I just don't know whether is that the highest and best use for planning commission time.
And it's a couple days from now, so I'm going to support what you shared.
The mayor?
Yeah.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
I just look at this as giving this as a baseline document and work from it and along with all
the other stuff that we suggested to him just to make it official that way.
I think it's that really simple.
I'm going to vote for it because I do want them to go back to their original.
I just the extra language it sounds like I don't understand the guidance to them
So I hope it doesn't make them think they have to do anything other than
What they're already doing which is all the work they're doing is to try to get the units and that's all what we've done tonight
We're all trying to get the units. So if that's what that means absolutely
Okay, okay all those in favor
I
Did want to point out to the city manager of the motions pass tonight and forgive me if there's any more that I'm missing
But the two motions that need to get married up to need to be given to the playing Commission in order for this to all work
Even if it's too late to go in the packet
That would be that well
it's actually three now because it's this direction when they meet they're gonna
want to know the direction that was just passed and then we have said that we
are asking them to expand 18-12-03-0 that that motion to expand their their
hundred percent density bonus and we are asking to reduce the bonus FA we're
just basically directing that the bonus FAR in the Winslow Town Center is the
maximum most bonuses 2.5 those two motions need to get to married up
with what's happening at Planning Commission to become part of what's set for public hearing.
So those are timely.
Other things are work that needs to be done to figure out the funding.
We cannot rush it.
We know we cannot even begin to start those really before Thursday.
We know that.
Does that make sense?
It does make sense.
I'm trying to figure out how we would communicate that.
How to get it all done in the next, you know, 24 hours.
Well, I would say this is what we created that communications option.
So this isn't I mean this is they can work on the language, but anyway the point is it's like our communications
I think I'm going to communication to them that this is what came up our meeting and
Then they can work with it, but I understand staff will want to prepare some probably. Yeah, um, but it's we're stuck
Yeah, thank you. I think well we'll do what we can to get this to them in the most expedited manner. Thank you
Okay, okay
All right.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Mayor Moorlach.
Just hopefully to wrap up, we realized this was a huge lift.
We were all surprised to get an email on Monday saying,
hey, check this out.
So I mean, I'm sure we all spent a lot of hours.
And I want to thank all my colleagues.
Clearly, you all read it.
And you took care and looked at it
and realized this is what the roadmap is to follow the law.
And so I think we tried our best to get there.
And I know that it is an impossible thing and I want to be respectful to the Planning Commission
because this is going to be a brand new thing that we've thrown out, but we're just talking
about advisory committees.
This is what we do.
We can send things down and ask them to address it.
And that's exactly what we're doing right now.
So I hope they don't hate us.
But I appreciate, and it goes, and I hope I can speak for all of the folks up here in
this day, is that Intercity Manager and everybody and planning staff and the rest, we realize
the lift we're asking you to do.
And I think we can add that if there are resources that you need, you know, however,
I believe we'll, whatever, well, almost a blank check, but whatever you need to get
that done and it gets us to our goal. I think that's, I believe we all would support that.
So thank you.
I was just going to ask that we consider releasing our city attorney if he has a ferry to catch
if we're going to go on any further with committee reports. Just a thought if he wants to go.
Before I go I just want to make sure there isn't actually any lingering questions or
concerns or any other items that the council which is direct art to our office that
we can assist in this large lift.
I think we're about to move to committee reports, which would be the perfect signal for you if I'm correct. Are we moving to committee reports?
Yes, okay. Thank you everyone. Thank you
Okay, council member land right and I just wanted to say just reiterate one more time that maybe we can take a tiny little breath planning commission maybe because
Pardon me back to the letter we received yesterday they state we have 120 days to respond and so that is well past our
self-imposed June timeline. So just to reiterate that we have a little bit more
time not that we should use it to you know like a like a term paper last
minute but we have a little bit more time. That's all.
Councilmember Schneider
are we doing committee reports? I think so. So I want to I want to share some
good news maybe it's old news now but on Friday I went to the Peninsula
regional transportation planning organization, PRTPO meeting. It was also a retreat, so it
was a really long meeting in SQIM. And I learned that the raise grant that provided 16 million
dollars for the Fort County region and multiple tribes and all that, we had had this horrible
Trump administration saying that you have to do A, B, and C
in order to get it.
And there was no way we were going to do A, B, or C.
They lifted those dependencies.
And so we are back to having $16 million for the corridor
and, I think, $1.7 for Bainbridge Island.
And we're going to be moving forward with design
on the Sound 2 Olympics Trail.
So woo-hoo.
And then in the PSRC Transportation Policy Board,
there was also a big milestone there.
We voted to forward the regional transportation plan
as a recommendation to the executive board.
The executive board is planning to forward it
again to the general meeting
and it will hopefully be adopted on May 28th
at the general meeting, which we are all invited to.
And I'm going to leave it at that.
Okay.
Do you guys just want to come down the road?
Is this okay?
Council Member Lant.
Yep.
I'll be quick too.
I was at that same meeting with Council Member Schneider,
and it was very interesting, very informative,
cooperative, intergovernmental, coordinated transportation
planning between four counties.
And Washed Out was there and it was great to see some human faces of Washed Out for a change,
like just regular people talking about stuff.
That was terrific.
And then on Saturday, there was the 23rd Legislative District Town Hall right here
with Senator Hansen and Representative Simmons and Nance.
And it was very well attended.
Council Member Matthews and I moderated lots of great questions, including what our city
can expect with the new sales and use tax exemptions that are being put in place in
this upcoming budget cycle with the state.
So that's it.
Councillor Nielsen.
Just real quick, we had a wonderful southward meeting last Saturday.
Very much enjoyed that.
Great conversation.
Actually very good community feedback on that one is what I would say.
that people really enjoyed it.
I think my only critique is we should have just made it longer,
right, because people had so many questions
and it felt like sometimes we were having to cut people off.
I know that's, but the only other thing I have
is I, you know, this Friday I'm gonna be calling bingo
at the senior center again.
I do it every Friday of the month, that's it.
Okay, Council Member Matthews, Deputy Mayor,
I gotta get to bingo.
I thought, actually I bet my parents go.
I gotta ask them.
So I just wanted to reiterate comments on the ward meetings, our ward meeting, the south
ward meeting was I thought really well attended, lots of great questions, lots of great engagement
and really got some feedback from folks that I didn't think you'd get positive feedback
from of just how appreciative they were of just being heard and even if things might
have gotten, you know, plucky at times it was just great to have that venue.
So I think that's really good to council member Nelson.
We have our coffees the first Saturday of the month at the marketplace at 11.30 to 1. So keep the conversation going. We want to hear from you. So it was great. And then also had the Saturday here with councilmember Lantt and the legislators. And it was a lot of the same people came from the south ward to here. So they did double duty, but always great to see everyone. And thanks for hanging in there with us.
Thank you so much to this city manager for being at all those word meetings.
I mean, like me and I didn't go to one of them.
I went to two.
She had to go to three.
And her, it was really appreciate that.
And then as a parting remark next to it, council member,
I mean, so there can be less.
I just want to say, I really appreciate tonight's meeting.
I'm so impressed with us that we accomplished all of these unanimous motions.
So I just want to say thank you.
that. Okay, Mayor. And the ward meeting, Councilmember, I mean Councilmember
Scheiderer, Central Ward meeting, and he was at large, we met in this chamber. And
at that meeting, a man from St. Barnabas Episcopal Church came up to me and
said that they have a project at their building called from the Department
of Commerce Clean Energy Community Grants Program and funding from the
Washington Climate Connect and it's basically covering their entire roof
for solar panels. And so he invited me to come to the ribbon cutting on May 30th to go and
say a few words. And I asked if I can invite my colleagues to come. And so you will begin
an invitation soon. I'd love to have you see you there. And I would suspect, Councilmember
Nelson, that you do the bingo because sometimes you don't need a mic so they can hear you.
I'm sure they do, and I gotta do that, I love bingo, so I'll be seeing you sometime.
Alright, I think we are adjourned.