And welcome to the Kent City Council meeting for January 15, 2019, if you could all rise for the flag salute.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.
One nation and the God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Kim, can you call the roll please?
Thank you, Madam Mayor. Mayor Ralph.
here. Council president boys.
Yeah. Council member Fincher.
Yeah. Council member Higgins.
Yeah. Council member Core.
Yeah. Council member Larmor.
Yeah. Council member Thomas.
Yeah. Council member Troutner.
Yeah. Thank you.
All right. Thank you.
Are there any changes to the agenda from Council or staff?
All right. Seeing none is there a motion to approve the agenda as written.
So move.
The motion to second all those in favor.
All right.
Opposed. Motion carries seven zero. All right. Welcome everyone to this meeting. There are a ton of you here. Really good to see.
It's been about a month since the council met so this is a pretty lengthy agenda. We are going to work our way through.
One item by one item and lots of good things to celebrate and lots of business to get done tonight.
Before we start on the formal agenda, I do want to recognize the passing of one of Kent's heroes.
Over the weekend, Colonel Joe Jackson passed away.
Some of you might be familiar with the bridge that is named after him that connects up the road that connects up to military.
Joe was a Medal of Honor recipient, Air Force Legend and a Veteran of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
He was a native of Georgia but he called Kent home.
He retired here and lived here for many years, so we're very sad at his passing.
There will be public services more information to come on that, but I just want to recognize the contributions that Colonel Joe Jackson made to our entire country and to our city as well.
So sad news.
Now we get to move on to some of the fun stuff.
So the first item on our agenda is the oath of office for Judge Michael Franz.
He is our newly appointed judge, started officially in that capacity at the beginning of January.
And, judge, friends, if you'd like to come up, we'll do this wearing in.
Okay. If you could raise your right hand, repeat after me. I do solemnly swear.
I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States.
That I will support the Constitution of the United States.
And the Constitution of the State of Washington.
And that I will faithfully discharge.
And that will faithfully discharge.
The duties of the Office of Judge, the duties of the Office of Judge, of the municipal court, of the city of Kent, of the municipal court, of the city of Kent, according to the best of my ability, according to the best of my ability.
All right, I think that makes it officially official.
All right.
So I probably should have done that background first, but as you may or may not know, our Judge Carly Jorgensen officially retired at the end of December, and Judge Franz is being appointed to fill that seat in our court.
So we are sad to see Judge Jorgensen go but very excited to see Judge Francis take over
in what our court has in store with him presiding.
Oh, and Judge Jorgensen's there in the back.
So thank you very much, Carly, for coming tonight.
And Judge Phillips as well.
Okay.
Next on our agenda is Employee of the Month.
Is Taylor here tonight?
Yes.
All right.
So, each month, our city employees come together and nominate a fellow employee for the honor of employee of the month.
Our employee of the month, January 2019, is Taylor Burns.
Taylor is our January employee of the month. He began working for the police department on April 3, 2017 as a probationary police recruit officer.
He works to protect life and property and force laws and ordinances and to rent and investigate crimes.
Congratulations very much Taylor.
Yeah, unless you want to say something.
Okay.
I wanted to introduce this whole family in the back there.
Do we have a family back there?
No, all those guys have blue.
Every single one of them, exactly.
I always give, I always give our employee the month the option.
sometimes they want to say something and sometimes they don't. So I never want to put
anyone on the spot.
Next on our agenda is a very important proclamation. It is a proclamation
for human trafficking month. I'm going to read the proclamation and then I'm going to assume
we've got some folks here from youth and family services to come up and accept.
Whereas human
trafficking is modern day slavery and involves the use of force, fraud and coercion to exploit
person for involuntary servitude, labor and commercial sex acts, and whereas trafficking victims
can be men or women, boys or girls, U.S. citizens are foreign nationals. And whereas
the average age, a girl enters into commercial trafficking trade is 12 to 14 years old and
boys 11 to 13. And whereas each year as many as 100 to 300,000 American children are at risk
of being trafficked in the United States, and whereas traffickers may target young victims
through social media websites, telephone chatlines, shopping malls, and after-school programs,
and whereas after drug dealing, human trafficking is tied with illegal arms industry
as the second largest criminal industry in the world and the fastest growing.
Whereas assisting victims of human trafficking requires a coordinated community response
among community group social services, schools, and law enforcement.
And now, therefore, I, Dana Ralph, mayor of the city of Kent, do here by proclaim January
23rd, 2019, as human trafficking awareness day in the city of Kent, and call upon
the people of the city to support the subservents by helping educate residents about human
trafficking in our city, as well as across America and around the world.
Wow, Mike's coming out by, would just like to celebrate the fact that it was constant.
They found that 13-year-old girl, are you going to say something?
Go ahead, Mike.
No, I'm so excited,
I'm a pastor.
Hey Jen.
Good evening, City of Kent.
My name is Kira Dobeck, and I work with Kent Youth and Family Services,
and I have the really wonderful pleasure of working also alongside
a campus department.
And I wanted to kind of share with you something wonderful that happened recently.
About nine months ago, I received a referral from Kent Police Department of Young Woman who was 14
at the time and had been a human trafficking victim for a couple of years that had been within
children's administrations care and on the run frequently for three, four months at a time and
then back in care for about a week at a time. Recently, we were able to reunite her with her biological
go father and she was able to go home out of state and had we not received the support
from Kent Police Department, as well as so much support from everyone here in the city
of Kent, Mayor Ralph, all of the members of the city council.
We wouldn't be able to continue this program and continue to have the opportunity to reunite
families together in such an impactful way and I have reports that she is now enrolled
school, she hasn't been in school for over three years now. So I just wanted to think
all of you, that's one of our most recent success stories that I would share with you. Also,
this will be talked about more, but get a T-shirt. Thank you Kent Rotary and Kent Police Department
and Lightning Strike Design for helping us put together this T-shirt to help spread more awareness.
So, thank you.
Now, my kind of shunny executive director,
can't even think of families.
So, I want to introduce Jane Presby,
the pastor, Kennedy's in church.
Here are blue arrows with Starbucks.
Both of our board.
Board members who supports work as well as cheap
the dollars back there with the blue spell somewhere.
I think there he is.
He's also on our board.
And the case, please department,
a particular, and Karina,
rather start fun developing person who puts
this stuff together.
But it's the, can't please department,
particularly took the stand to say,
we need to have a partnership
with an nonprofit community-based organization to start really attacking in a different kind of way a different scale
this scourge of human trafficking in our community and so we're fortunate enough to find a cure as you found us
and as we're close with the police department in partnership on rest of the young women being the women
but certainly young men too when they come to the attention to the police department and the story she told she didn't tell you
It was late Friday night, which actually had to find the young woman who had run again,
and her father was leaving the next morning after trying to be here to find her daughter,
his daughter, to get them reunited and back out of state. That's the other part of the story.
The T-shirts, if you want to model, turn around. She mentioned the T-shirts.
Part of our effort of course is to keep this program going and in recognition of human trafficking
on this month. We've developed these t-shirts with the support of the Candidate Rotary,
the Campus Department and ourselves and the Designers, etc. They're on sale
through our website at $20 a piece, or you can come across the street during
business hours and second-titles and walk in by one. It's
spread the word about end-demand because demand is what this issue is about.
It is the issue. It's end-demand. So thank you.
I just want to say the work that Kira is doing in this community is second to none, the
number of who are now survived people who are now survivors because of her continues
to grow every single day when she started. I think we talked in that first month and you
already had 14 and that's been two years ago, one and a half okay so just amazing work
that's being done and the partnership between her, can you think family services and
our police department is really making the difference in a lives of a lot of people.
So, it's a much bigger problem than I ever realized until I started doing talking to folks
and it's happening to our kids and to our neighbors, kids and people that we know.
And we need to stand together as a community.
So, thank you for the work that you're doing.
Thank you so much.
Okay, now I'm going to ask Tony Denotti to join us at the podium.
I'll look at there, he is right there.
All right, we are going to recognize our adopters street
and adopt a spot partners.
Again, another amazing community partnership
that we've got going on.
Tony's going to talk a little bit about it,
and then we get to recognize all of our wonderful volunteers.
Thank you so much.
Tonight we're here to honor some real hometown heroes
our adopt a street and our adopt a spot volunteers.
Many of whom are here tonight.
These dedicated folks consistently donate their time
energy to ensure our community is clean and looking good. And for that we cannot thank them enough.
These civic-minded individuals range from, well, range from individuals, couples, families,
churches, neighborhood groups, businesses, and organizations. Whoops. And they have all taken
ownership of their community to make a difference weekend and week out.
We started the Adopt Street program in 2012 and we currently have 24 active groups.
We started the Adopted Spot program in June this last year in 2018 and we already have
Eight Act of Groups.
At 19, so we're really growing. In 2018, the adopters combine to collect 458 bags of trash,
and they put in 745 volunteer hours.
So not only are these adopters reducing litter in
our community, but protecting our wildlife, our water quality, and being outstanding role models
to our children, family, and other community members, and how to take care to take pride
in where they live and where they work.
All these volunteers are true hometown heroes.
Amazingly not all the groups could make it here tonight, but we do have many that are here.
So when I call your name, could you please come up?
So we have Paul Hammaker of Alberto, Alberto Snats, and your groups can come up as well
if you like.
Mary Engelhart of LeBlanc Gardens,
Gary Stratton, or actually it's, let's see, Jane,
Jane Rothwell of LeBlanc, I'm sorry.
of catenighted Methodist Church, and Brienne Green of Girl Scouts Unit 020,
Willie Drinker of Twisted Riders Motorcycle Club,
Robert Indiana Craft of the Craft family,
Francesca Ambrotine, and John Young of Inger Saul Rand,
Vivian Bruns of the West Hill neighborhood group,
our pre-car of Seats of Washington, and this group is actually adopted two different areas.
Cherry Sare,
and his Mike Campbell here from Doxa, come on up if you are.
Jeff Snyder,
Jason and Gail Valley in,
Cynthia Boyd, you're here at Constation.
See here.
A Mickey of Kent, Teresa Hurn and Kenna Duckworth,
Edward Jones, Kevin Haslinger, and of Kent
Clean Streets, Tom and Tammy Berkley,
also Sean Bower and Michelle from Michelle
case post my family.
Everyone up here, okay. All right, thank you, God everyone. So also, also. Also,
taking who are also really great members of this group are many of our council members. So of the
Mayor Ralph, and Venture, and Less Thomas, all and anyone else who has before my tongue.
I need to go to the street, I feel like that's out now.
Tony, if you're going to get out of the street, okay?
Okay, we all please give these folks a round of applause for making a,
and of course I encourage
anyone interested in joining this elite group to please contact me via our website or
call me and together we can all clean Kent one bag at a time. Thank you so much.
Thank you
guys. Good job. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. It was a plastic bag. You haven't quite officially
John.
You got one.
I'm here.
Maybe I just bet you.
Thank you.
All right.
Yeah.
All right.
That's not an impressive group.
Look at all the people that care about keeping the city clean.
Thank you all so much.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
And like Tony said, that's not everybody that is out there working in our community.
So I encourage everyone, it's easy, super easy process, pick a street, you can sign up,
give Tony a call, you'll get a really fancy vest that looks amazing with anything, a couple
of litur picker things and some bags, and that's really all there is to it, and then you
get a sign on the street, you can free your club, your organization, your family, and it
I'll tell you it's a good family event.
My boys will attest to the fact that they've spent more
than their fair share of time out picking up trash.
The best part is now that they are getting to be adults
every time they see someone litter or they see litter
on the ground, they say something or do something.
So, huge benefit there.
Thank you, Tony, for all your work.
All right, we are moving on in the agenda
to a couple of appointments that we have.
So the first one is an appointment
and some reappointments to our lodging tax advisory committee.
This is the committee that oversees funding that comes in through hotel stays in the city of Kent.
It's a program that was set up through the county or the state.
I'm not totally sure that that lodging tax money comes in and we have a committee that determines how that money is spent.
If you follow the council meetings, maybe at our last meeting we talked about where some of that lodging tax funding goes.
Council President Boise chairs that committee and we were able to use it to sponsor things like the job fair that was that happened at show where the last week the
Aerospace job fair. We've got some great programs coming to the city. So it will be the recommendation to appoint Mohammed Abelrus to the committee and also re-appoint Andrew Hutchinson and Barb Smith
to that lodging text committee and that will be wrapped up in the consent calendar
So, hopefully the council will approve those appointments.
Next item on the agenda is another reappointment and that is the reappointment of Mel Roberts
to our Bicycle Advisory Board.
Mel has served on that committee for, I want to say about 18 years if memory serves me,
a wonderful gives lots of advice to us on great bicycle projects in the city of Kent.
I see you all sitting out there. Thank you, Mel, for your service, and it's my pleasure to
put you up for reappointment by the council at tonight's meeting.
All right, we are going to move on to our final public comment, and that is the Tork Lift
Turkey Challenge Awards.
Okay, so I want to join us and see, we've got the awards up here, and yes, hi, good evening.
How you doing? I want to just start off by thanking you guys, Mayor Ralph, and the council for your support again.
This is our eighth year for the Kent Turkey Challenge. How many here knows what that is?
Okay, for those of you that don't know what that is, the Kent Food Bank lost its funding
during the Great Recession, and they were unable to meet the needs of people, especially
around that time of year, and so we had the opportunity to kind of step up and help facilitate
So, diversity is a good thing, right?
Diversity is a good thing.
And what diversity gives us is a lot of different perspectives.
And those perspectives, when they come together, they give us clarity.
And when those perspectives come together, when that diversity comes together,
not only does it give us clarity, but then it gives us unity, right?
the unity of the community coming together.
And so when you have the community coming together,
and that's really what the Turkey challenges about.
What we're able to do is bring schools together,
different organizations, and different businesses together,
and contribute both donations and dollars
and food donations for folks to have hope.
And the love that they can share their family
for Thanksgiving.
And we feel like, in a small way, we're able to help do that and facilitate that, and it's a great honor that we have for that opportunity, so.
Yeah, just like Jack said, it's a huge honor for us to be able to help facilitate it.
And, you know, we want to take that honor and share it with all the participants. This year we had 79, which was amazing.
And so we just wanted to honor them today, but to start off we just wanted to kind of share some stats from the previous Turkey challenges.
So far, over the past eight years, we have managed to collect $180,000 and over 55,000 pounds of food, which is huge in eight years.
So just I really appreciate everyone who participates and helps spread the word and helps make this such an amazing event.
So I would like to start off this year we did a really fun coloring contest with the schools and also the businesses.
So we had some really awesome prizes that we've never had before. We had electric scooters.
And so there was one electric scooter awarded to each school and then there was also one scooter for the businesses and organizations for all of those coloring pages.
And so we wanted to honor the coloring contest winners and we invited them today
So I'm hoping some of them are here, but some of them might not be, but if you guys could just come up if you're here
And then we'll just you know give you guys some applause and then you guys can go back to your seats
So to start off, we have probably from sunrise elementary
I'm not sure if there's a lot of people outside so
And then we also have Lily from Glass like elementary
All right,
Erica from Springbrook Elementary and I'm not sure if she's here, and then Max whose mom is from Kent CrossFit
So that was where we got his coloring page from so just thank you so much to Lee with really appreciate you sharing your coloring with us and it was really awesome
So thank you so much
All
right, so moving on to the top monetary or to the top donors
We also invited the top five of each for both monetary and for food donations, so
you know, we're hoping some of them are able to come.
If not, we will make sure to get their trophies to them as soon as you know the
challenge, as soon as the meeting is over.
But if you guys could come up, then we'll get hand you guys your trophies,
and then we'll just give them a round of applause too.
So
first one for top five monetary is Eberly Vivian.
Just
to see you. It's not strong. It is. Thank you so much.
All right, and then next up is Pegasus Northwest. Hopefully they're here.
No, okay.
Third is can't United Methodist Church.
No, okay.
Fourth is Shannon and Associates.
Anyone here?
And then fifth is Chatoa Valley Center,
both the residents and the employees participated.
No, okay, cool.
So moving on, all right.
So the top five food doughenators,
plemins, industries, anyone here?
No, okay.
Next is Sunrise.
I know they weren't able to come today.
So Seattle Tacoma, K-O-A, anyone here?
No?
Okay, fourth is grass-like elementary school,
and then fifth is the Seattle Lions Club.
Thank
you.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
I don't get that anymore.
Thanks.
All right, and then last but not least, we wanted to thank any time fitness in Kent Washington.
They were the ones that won our Facebook contest, so two of their trainers actually are getting a trip to Las Vegas for a weekend.
So they're very, very, very excited and that was, as a thank you for sharing their photos
of the donations on Facebook to kind of, you know, promote social recognition and, you know,
commentary and communication, everything about the challenge so. So, you know, just, we
wanted to say thank you to everyone so much for all of your participation. You know, it's really
your guys' efforts and help that really make this so successful.
I want to say thank you to Torcliffe. This is shows what that grassroots community effort can do every year. We see bigger numbers, more participation, more businesses and kids participating. Thank you Torcliffe so much for everything you do for our community.
Very, very grateful.
Okay. Moving on to the next item on our agenda and that's community events. Council President Boy, do you have some events to talk about?
Just a few to talk about here. I've got a lot of these going on at a Cecil show where I sent in here
They hit the ground running on January 3rd and 5th. We got check challenge
They kept downtown partnership and visit can't have thousands of elite high school rassler that
Came all around the country to came to compete. That was a real huge event for the city greater tenets
We also have on January 17 18 we got the commas stars
We got the M.A.K. Basketball Tournament on Martin Luther King Day on January 21st.
Lots of hockey, so please get a chance to go in and tune out from the birds.
And I think that's about it for the most part. A lot of hockey is going on.
They can definitely use our cheer to kind of keep them going.
So thank you, madam.
All right, thank you. Council number four.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
on January 21st from 6 to 8 p.m. Living well-kinned is organizing a night of healing
right here at Council Chambers in honor of MLK. So if you're able to join them on Monday
night, that would be great. It says on the on the flyer, the night of healing is a night
to come together and remember the lives lost due to gun violence and heal as a community.
And on January 26, our neighborhood program is organizing under our skin workshop, which should be a great workshop.
Learn about neighborhood program, but also come have a conversation about difficult topics like diversity or racism.
Just bring your experiences and we'll have table facilitators to talk about your personal experiences and have conversations.
It's supposed to be very, like it says, under our skin conversation.
So I hope you'll be able to join on January 26,
9 a.m. at Ken's Senior Activities Center.
Thank you.
Council member Troutner.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
The spotlight series continues in 2019.
And this Saturday, we have an evening with Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary.
So if you're lucky enough to have tickets,
it looks like that event is sold out,
but that is this Saturday.
January 19th and on February 2nd, the Seattle Rock Orchestra performs the Beatles number
ones.
So more events coming up and we'll bring those up at our next meeting.
Thank you.
Highly recommend that Seattle Rock Orchestra show they're pretty amazing.
Councilmember Fincher.
Okay.
All right.
Then we will move on to the next item on our agenda and that is the Public Safety Report
and joining us is Chief Raph Pidea.
Good evening.
We bring up the presentation here real quick.
Well, good evening.
Madam Mayor, Council, Kent Community.
My pleasure to bring you the report.
We've got an action-pat full agenda,
so I'm going to go through this pretty quick.
We're going to start with swearing in.
And as you know, we said to work last year
really hard to close the gap with the numbers
that we have of open positions.
And we are doing a great job at that.
And to that end, we hired 28 police officers last year.
So, and nine of them are getting sworn in tonight.
I don't think I've asked around.
I don't think we've ever had nine sworn in at a time.
So, we'll get to work right away on that.
I'd like to call down.
These are our entry level, sworn in.
So, new brand new officers never before police officers.
And once they line up, I'll run their names.
I think it looks like a sister chief
having got them squared up in the right order.
So looking at them from the audience perspective,
left to right we have Matthew Fisher, Jordan Axeson,
Joshua Arnett, and Andreas Rodriguez.
And I'll go through a quick, quick bio in each of those.
Officer Matthew Fisher, he was born and raised right here
in Kent, he is a former Kent Explorer, by the way.
Graduated from Kent Ridge High School,
later earned an associate's degree
from the American Military University.
Before he worked for Kent, he served in US Army for five years
with two tours overseas.
Why he chose Kent because he loved going up in the city
and would like to see others grow up in the community
that he keeps safe.
Something interesting about himself is that he is a twin brother
who I believe is also here in the audience.
That also went to Kent Rich High School,
Officer Matthew Fisher.
Next up there is Officer Jordan Axelson,
interesting story on Jordan.
He's kind of what I call legacy hire.
his dad is worked for us, and his dad's been with the Department of Lombard and I have.
So, got to be approaching 30 or close to 30.
His dad is a crime analyst for us, Kevin Axison.
He is from Covington, Washington.
His education includes graduating from Kent Lake,
attended Northwestern College in Iowa,
and he received his bachelor's in criminal justice and minored in political science.
Before Kent PD, he was a full-time college student and member of the football team there, and let's see
work for maintenance company in Seattle. He chose Kent because he is the strong connection to Kent as he grew up here
and went to Kent schools. Always wanted to work for the department that requires extreme amounts of hard work and that has a
culture that demands excellence. Something interesting about Jordan is his wife, Aubrey, and he just had
for his baby Jessica K. Axeson on January 6th.
His gentleman Jordan Axeson, officer of Jackson.
Next up, Joshua Annette, he is from Tacoma.
Later, moved to Pihuahua.
He's a graduate of Rogers High School.
He has a journey level, diesel mechanic working,
mostly on semi-tracks and heavy diesel engines.
Reason he chose Kent is he likes small town department.
He likes the mentality and the community involvement.
He likes the chance to stay proactive and have a lot of a valuable and valuable training.
Something interesting about himself, he's married to Brittany for over six years and has a daughter named Riley.
He's a loving, hurtly training for his private pilot's license that has over 20 hours of flight experience,
most camping, fishing, and scuba dance, diving.
I guess that's what we're dancing.
And last but definitely not least of our entry level is we have Andreas Rodriguez.
She grew up here in Kent as a Kent-Rage high school grad graduated from Central Washington with a Bachelor's of Arts in Law in Justice and a Second Bachelor of Arts in Sociology
And she chose what she do before Kent. She was a correctens officer, so she is one of our corrections officers to police officer
Transverse if you will and she chose Kent because nothing mentioned here because it's a wonderful place to work
And something interesting about herself is half her family is in Honduras.
She loves to travel, has been to Honduras, Mexico, Spain, and the Dominican Republic.
Ladies and gentlemen, Andreas Rodriguez.
Mayor, you do well.
It is my honor to get to swear you guys in tonight.
If you could raise your right hand and repeat after me, I state your name.
I do solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance.
to the United States of America, the State of Washington, and the City of Kent, that I will uphold the constitution and laws of the United States and the State of Washington, and the United States and the State of Washington, and that I will obey the rules and regulations of the Kent Police Department.
All right. Congratulations. Welcome,
and have you come over and find your certificate.
Got a pen here.
This is the final test.
I will get them signed. Thank you and welcome.
I want to do a photo.
Yeah,
wait. Yeah.
Yeah.
All right. Well, they're doing that. Let's have the next group come up.
And we'll have our lateral officers come on up.
I'd like to talk to you.
Thank you.
I'd like to talk to you.
All right.
Next up, we have our lateral officers.
And just for those that may not be aware,
lateral officers are the officers.
We hire away from other good departments.
It's because they're attracted here because what we can offer and they come with experience
and the biggest thing for us in addition to bringing outside experiences and perspective,
they get to work right away because they don't have to go to a full academy.
And the other part of it is, we did a cost analysis years ago and I'm going off the top of
my head here, but easily we save about $60,000 in training costs and lead time getting
a lot of officers on the street pro-office, so it's a big opportunity to take advantage
of it. And to that end, I'll go ahead and start introducing from the left to the right. We have
Jacob Mines, Jim Beamer, Patrick Baumann, William Fritch, and Oscar Rodriguez. And I'll
go through their bios. We're quick. Mr. Rodriguez has someone here for him. This one.
All right. We'll start with Jacob Mines. He is from Hurricane West Virginia. He is a bachelor's
In criminal justice, minor and business administration from Wheeling, Jesuit University.
Before Camp PD, he worked at the, I'm going to mess this up, they called County Police Department in the Atlanta Georgia for three years.
He chose camp because it's a fast-paced department with diversity and has a lot of opportunity for growth.
Something interesting about him is he did track and field in college.
He did the shot put, hammer throw, discus, and javillate.
These are gentlemen, Officer Jacob Mines.
Next up, we have Jim Bieber. He is from North Central Montana. He is a high school graduate
and before Camp PD worked at the Montana Sheriff's Department. Let's see here. He chose
camp because of professional atmosphere and knowledgeable co-workers. Something interesting
about himself is he is an Avid Hunter and Fisher, Lays and Jim and Officer Jim Bieber.
Next up, we have Patrick Baumann, who is from Fort Pierce, Florida.
He has a bachelor's degree from the University of South Florida.
Before Camp PD, he was the U.S. Army for five years and worked for three years at the
Seattle Police Department.
He is one of three officers that we were recently able to recruit from Seattle PD and that
is unprecedented.
It's we've never recruited from that great department, so we're very glad to have our
Seattle transplants, if you will.
He chose Kent, because he heard the campus department
supports their employees and wanted the work for the department,
the support of their officers.
He has only heard great things about the city of Kent.
Something interesting about him is he lived in Bosnia
and Germany for approximately one year with his dad
in 2003 while working for the UN.
Ladies and gentlemen, Officer Patrick Balm.
Next up, we have William Fritz.
He is from Wellington, New Zealand, grew up in Geneva, Illinois.
I always say Illinois, but Illinois is education is he graduated from Geneva High School
spent four years in the Marine Corps and attended the University of Iowa.
Before Kent PD worked also, this is another Seattle PD off lateral for three years.
He felt that Kent was a better fit for him and that's why he made the move.
And something interesting about him is that he is a triple citizen and has three passports,
ladies and gentlemen, Austria-William Fritz.
And next up, last but not least, we have Oscar Rodriguez.
He is born and raised in Santa Ana, California.
His education includes high school, general education requirements, Santiago, Canyon College,
and Orange County, California, and you transfer to the University of Texas in the Permian
Basin.
currently working on his bachelor's in political science in English.
Before Camp PD was a police officer in Odessa, Texas from 2014 to 2018,
and prior to law enforcement he worked the day program to help build useful life career
and education skills for individuals with developmental disabilities.
He chose Camp because it's a dynamic and diverse community that is rapidly growing.
The opportunity to work for the city during an exciting time at a police department that values training
and provides good standard of...
For my family, make Kent an easy choice to work. Something interesting about Oscar, as is married to
D.N., I'm guessing the one here with the camera in front. They have, it says for child, but I think
they meant for Charlie and an engine, two year old, and a board of college, a two year
board of college, for children, and a board of college. No. Okay, got it. That's only wrong. All right,
All right kids, and closing out, he says I am a lucid dreamer, and I'm able to control the
direction and outcome of my dreams every night.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Officer, I'm ready to go.
All right.
Once again, it is my honor to be able to swear you in this evening if you could raise your
right hands and repeat after me, I state your name, do solemnly swear that I will bear
true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, the state of Washington, and the
city of Kent, that I will uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States and the
state of Washington, and that I will obey the rules and regulations of the Kent Police
Department.
Okay. Again, it's official and congratulations. Welcome.
Same test.
Train spots with you in the evening.
We are very excited to welcome all of our new officers this evening and I am with the chief.
I don't know that we've ever had nine in one night.
So speaks volumes to the work that our hiring officers are doing
and the quality of the police department that we have.
So congratulations, Chief.
All right.
Next up, I'd like to call up Officer Taylor Burns
for a life-saving award.
Many of you may recognize Officer Burns,
he attends these council meetings regularly, I say.
So on November 7th of last year, Officer Taylor burns along with other Kent officers responded
to assist King County to investigate or help with a shooting that they had just south of
our city.
When Officer Burns got there, he was responded to help a particular deputy that was treating
and providing lifesaving efforts to one of the people shot.
Taylor has some depth from his military background in training in life-saving techniques and got
to work right away, taking care of some serious wounds, some definitely fatal wounds if
not treated too right away, and his expertise basically saved that person's life that day.
When above and beyond, and so for that, we are recognizing him with the life-saving award
and metal.
Um, to say thank you.
By the way, the second.
Yeah.
And the third.
Oh, where are you?
Just kind of into the lower side of the right side of the right
side of the right side.
You don't want to say anything.
Maybe next time.
No.
And next.
This is a job, by the pressure driven.
Next I'd like to call up Officer of Test of Melville.
This has also received in a life-saving medal.
On November 9th of that last year,
she was dispatched to a report of a stabbing
at one of her local apartments downtown.
She found a victim on the corner of 240th and 30th
and had life-threatening injuries from being stabbed, obviously.
test. We do a lot of combat first aid training, but she also has exceptional background
from her prior military experience as it was a medic in the military. So far and above
what we provide, she already brought that with us. So we hired some outstanding people without
standing skills. She quickly went to work. These were also very severe life threat in the injuries.
Um, and without hesitation was able to place a chest seal over a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
what they call a, a sucking chest wound and stop bleeding from other injuries.
And basically kept this person alive until, um,
um, men can arrive and get this person safely, the hard review where they survive.
So, another outstanding effort to save a life and we just want to award her and also say thank you.
Okay, it's always kind of nice to do the life-saving metal thing because it makes me feel
like we're keeping up with the firefighters on saving lives and stuff.
So switching gears just a little bit, I want to do quickly go through some 2018 statistics.
These are preliminary, some numbers may still be coming in, but a snapshot comparison to where
we ended up with some crime categories for the year.
The first one up there are our vehicle problem numbers.
It's no mystery.
We have higher than we'd like vehicle crime in the city and we're working on it.
And this is a little bit of success over the last two years.
You see there is a three-year trend downwards.
And we are 13% down from last year.
So moving into the right direction.
There's some crime per capita rate.
Same numbers, just a different way looking at them.
are vehicle thefts. We're also down in 2018 and I know it's here. Down 13.4% continuing along with the
three-year trend. If you're wondering what the difference between a vehicle proud of vehicle theft is,
a vehicle prouds when they break into your car for whatever reason, but don't necessarily,
necessarily still it. A theft is obviously to take the whole thing.
This is a very serious crime as you can imagine, but we have, and we have a little work to do in this category.
Unfortunately, it was up 0.9 percent.
So, working on that, we're seeing a lot of what we call, we used to call Iraqis, but they're changing,
where it's just kind of happenstance people getting contacted on the street and being still robbed of your personal effects.
We're working on that.
We're doing a good news from that residential burglaries, which has really been down almost since 2012.
Significant drop in those from last year were down 8.1%.
From last year and 61% down from 2012.
So things continue to trend in the right direction of that.
You know, we work that problem really hard, but I also think some of the reasons behind
is the advanced of technology, a lot of wireless cameras, Wi-Fi cameras, and not, so it's
helping.
Commercial burglies, another area where we have some work to do, we've seen a steady trend
now for the last five years, and we are up 4.6% with commercial burglies.
So this is, like I said, something we're working on,
homicides, good news here, but still
way too many, we were down 45% in homicide from 2017 with a six coming in last year.
And so that's the trend in the right direction, obviously, we'd like to see none of those.
Case reports, we are also down a little bit in our case report, surprisingly, this was
surprising to me, down 3.9%, but then I realized that at the first part of the year,
we really put an emphasis on online reporting, we changed some of our service delivery
model, so some of the trends there are kind of a specific perspective.
There's our online reporting numbers which are up.
We took an additional 630 case reports via people filing online, so that's a 20% increase.
Pat incidents, cats are the incidents that are tracked through our 911 center, either
a dispatch calls that come in, or officers conducting business on their own like traffic
stops, or field contacts.
So those are up a little bit there, 1.9% over last year.
And here's the part that was really good for me to see.
We are down 13.9% in our shootings.
These are verified shootings throughout the city.
So that's a big trend.
Still way too high.
We had 105 verified shootings in the city last year.
And verified shooting just means we were able to prove
in some fashion through evidence or someone being hit
that there was actually a shooting, it just wasn't, you know, people celebrating a Seahawks victory
on Sunday, which unfortunately happens by, so,
and that would complete my report. Any questions?
Any questions for the Chief?
All right, thank you very much, Chief.
Lot going on in the city, a lot of good things.
Very grateful for the work that our Police Department is doing every single day.
All right, moving on in our agenda.
Next item is the Economic and Community Development Report.
and joining us is Bill Ellis.
Good evening, council.
Good evening.
Please call up the council.
So good evening.
I'm here to give the updates since for the quarter.
So Happy New Year, if that's still applicable.
I wanted to talk first off about the drive-in
that opened last month.
We had some pretty stellar lines at the Dix Drive-in.
And what we're hoping this will do now
is generate more interest in the remainder
of the shopping center and on some of the other parcels
to fill in.
I wanted to start with that because I also
wanted to cover.
Another property, a closure in town, and the Kmart Properties, you might have noticed, has gone dark since October.
We're in constant communication with the property ownership and the representatives.
There is still a lease on the property, and as the Kmart Sears Corporation is entered into bankruptcy,
we're just sort of tracking the machinations of the hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert to his effort to restore stores all across the country.
So, there's some elements of this that are beyond our local control, and of course in the meantime what we are doing is forwarding a lot of the interests from national retailers and from developers who are interested in talking to the properties ownership about the site and about the location and will be close communication with them as the situation matures and may enter a point where we can actually talk about redevelopment scenarios.
In the interim, a lot of the property owners and business owners, West of Washington, on
Meekers Street, have come together collectively to improve the area and to work together.
Not quite a business district, but they're discussing what they can do together.
So there are good things happening, West of Washington, along the Meekers Street corridor.
And the came our property, I want to pause it as an opportunity, although there's fittingly
fog around this photo today, as we were watching, even late this afternoon, headlines come
across business news wires about what's the latest from Eddie Lampert and his long running
saga with the Sears Team Work Corporation.
Another positive news, second and maker, you might know this location from its proximity
this tax lot to a town square plaza, and of course the tenant maggies in our downtown, has
new owner. And that owner is restoring the building facing on the right there, a town square
plaza. It's actually two structures on the one parcel. In the 1980 structure seems in much better
condition than the 1909 structure that is facing towards the lots with the penguins sculptures
to orient you at second and maker. So the second and maker building that is 1909 structure
is still undergoing some conceptual planning with the new owner of the building with his
architects and engineering teams.
Whereas we are already bringing forward tenants and ideas for the town square, Plaza
Facing Structure.
So stay tuned there, that's a good story I think for downtown.
Having this long vacant structure in between Kent Station and the rest of the historic downtown.
Another corner of interest in the historic downtown is the moral bank building. Kent downtown
partnership has been a champion of fundraising and investigating some of the underlying
conditions of this non-profit owned building by multi-service center. You can see from this
image that the way it looks today is not the way it always looked. And they want to go towards a
original look, removing some of the stucco and restoring the double-high windows that face
Harrison and on first avenue of this grant for you.
The city is a facilitator and convener is working with Kent Downtown Partnership, Green River
College Small Business Advisor, Kevin Grossman, and the tenant project feast in identifying
the impediments and solutions for a restoration of this building and trying to put it on
path towards a credible business plan that might attract additional funding help.
Looking at the building interior on the right, you can see it's a bit of a rabbit worn
of unleasable, difficult spaces that have built up by creation over the years on the first
floor of the commercial space.
The second floor is affordable housing service delivery by multi-service center, but the first
floor is kind of, it's not clear if it's been an asset or a liability to that entity.
The photograph on the top left is what the historic structure looked like on the corner first Avenue, which is our most intact
street in historic downtown
double-high ceilings
been filled in now as you can see in the image of the right with a false drop of ceilings, and
Addict for storage for the Alleluia Catholic store on the corner there. So this is a really opportunity
I see for the city to work in concert with partners and champions to look at another corner that doesn't have a private investor and
think about how do we tackle the capital meeting's backlog for this building and make
them more usable first floor on a key corner across from a wild week.
We did this thanks to the via architecture who was introduced to us from Project Feast.
They offered their services pro bono to measure the entire building and run a day-long
half-day-long Sharet with community stakeholders and start to come together on a vision
and for the program on the first floor.
multi-service center executive director Robin Quirk participated this really helped many understand
the potential of the building and start to have a coalition or a coalesce rather around ideas
for the first floor of vision statement for inclusive entrepreneurship and maybe some small meeting
event hall state steps. Next steps include working with Green River's business advisor to look
at the financial statements from multi-service center on the building, try to assess the backlog of
capital improvements and maintenance, and help to define future funding gaps and deal points.
Cities also reached out to way-find and other nonprofit legal groups to help work on the legal
work that is necessary to unlock some of the value of the first floor, given the complicated
control of the multi-service center to continue to deliver their services on the second floor.
Another quick update for you on Need and Avenue, where I've briefed this council in the past
about our interest to receive in the private marketplace
for hotel in this other portion.
As of January 8th, we have an agreement letter
for describing the terms of a deal
with PewDiePie, from a purchase and sale agreement
of the last little parcel that you can see there
that would enable a structure of a road right in right out
from the state highway, which is really necessary
to go back into the marketplace.
Once this PSA, sorry, the PSA purchase and sale agreement
and is reviewed by an internal stakeholder team of Puget Sound Energy.
We can then, and they sign off on it and bring it back, I can come back to committee
into full council for approval of the terms of that deal.
And that would then trigger us to go back to the marketplace and talk to all the hotel
interests that was there and is there still and maybe some that have drifted and may
want to come back knowing that this is in place and really put together an internal review
some committee to review proposals from the marketplace once we've fully controlled that.
Another update for you, late last year, we commissioned a study with the Community Attributes
Economic Group.
Those already working with the State Center for Excellence in Global Trade and Supply Chain Management.
Community Attributes is helping us define the broader Ken Valley area, and that's the map
on your left.
This is a map of communities and industrial areas that CBRE, which is the world's largest
a commercial real estate brokerage house, maps and tracks from a private marketplace standpoint
when they track vacancy rates in an area of similar pricing.
We verify this map with them and now we're continuing to investigate wholesalers, trucking,
e-commerce, distribution, those types of industries that comprise the state-wide significant
industry and start to pull together some of the statistics of what this area contributes
needs to the state economy and to our local economy.
Other uses for this effort, as we expect this report to be finished last week of January
first week of February, is that we can take statistics from this and plug it into our marketing
efforts, create better intelligence for our workforce to do an interview with leading employers
in the sector to talk about career pathway mapping to state policymakers who might be interested
to know that $164 million a year come out of this industry from this geography.
We're still ascertaining how much truck traffic from the ports, both Decoma and Seattle
and the airport flow through the infrastructure on Kent Valley roads.
So I think this will have some meaningful results that we can talk about in committee and
in the future as that report wraps up.
Another update for you, Kent Valley Marketing, Logitech's Advisory Committee has awarded some funding to economic development to do some promotion and business recruitment type of marketing efforts.
Now that we have that funding secured from Logitech's, we have an application going to the port of Seattle later this month that would round out our budget with the city owned funds to look at public relations and marketing firms that can start to leverage large stories that will be coming out of the Kent Industrial Valley.
over the next year and to national and even international media outlets that help get the
Kent story line out there.
We will also be looking to create a third-party website to put economic development messages
forward and have a landing place for people who are reading about Kent perhaps from the
first time to learn more about business locations, demographics of the area, what's available
in terms of property.
The image to, but you know about, is greater Seattle partners there, have hired a new CEO
back in August.
They're still in start-up mode, they're still working on their strategy for their marketing
for welcoming investment into the area.
We've talked with their staff and they have a promise that any marketing effort that we do
as a Kent, or actually even with our neighboring jurisdictions in the Kent Valley area, would
be considered as foundational to their later bringing it on board their own marketing
help for their greater Seattle region.
Lastly, may have mentioned this earlier.
We put on a job fair at the Accessal Show or Center on January 7th with some partners.
At this job fair, we had more than 1200 registered job seekers who were greeted by 1338 potential employers.
The employer feedback we've received so far was strong.
Most of them wanted to do it again, and all rated eights are above on a scale of 1 to 10 as to their opinion of the event.
No employer scored less than a 7.
It's hard to know exactly how many were hired at this point because a lot of interactions were
sort of for the first time and may be dependent upon later interviewing, but for working
the floor and talking with everyone, we know of at least one local company that hired eight
people before noon, so I'd love to extrapolate that out, but I won't do that.
I would imagine that hundreds were hired, and I do like the quotes from the Kent Reporter
that I read earlier this week, one person to quote from the Kent reporter.
I came from California looking for works at one engineer who has to remain anonymous.
There's a lot of energy here, it's very promising here. I've already had an interview.
Blue Origin was there at the event, their recruiter, again quoting the Kent reporter,
said that she had scant time to sit down and even eat lunch, given the city stream of inquisitors.
So I think the feedback I was most interested in for this event was what the employers had to
day, and what the employers had to say is we wanted to do it again.
So I thought that was a strong statement as a cultural location for this.
We put this on with the aerospace futures alliance, who has merged with the Washington State
Space Coalition.
This event, I had me to also thank Michelle Willmont in my office who worked a lot with
the organizing committee and helping to stage it and making things the trains run on
time.
And I really hope that this events will start to help substantiate the claim of Kent resident and corporate
historian for the Boeing, Michael and Barty, that Kent is the center of gravity for aerospace and
huge its sound. And I think having events like this with thousands of people seeking jobs,
employers throughout the region coming to downtown Kent, helps tell that story very well.
And I think as we continue to do events like this throughout the calendar year, it will start to,
the actions will start to be do this talking for us. We're also going to be looking at a marketing
firm to do some of that talking as well. So we're hoping to rinse leather repeat on this
event and future and that this will grow a reputation as a place where hiring happens and that
the hiring happens and can't. Good message I think for companies. Thank you. All right, any questions
for Bill? I'll just make a comment. Bill, I'll just say thank you to you and your team. I think
This is just a prime example of how our economic and community development, the part of me is just going out of being creative and finding ways to have been as come to kit and running a business.
So to the team, excellent job and keep up the good work.
Thank you.
I should be remiss also if I didn't think a high-line school district can't school district and rent in school district who also participate with workshops to give a resume interview skill based training at the event itself.
So thank you Bill, one thing that he failed to mention that job fair was the morning after
our most epic windstorm that we had over that weekend.
And so when I got there in the morning, I thought, you know, if there's going to be a ton of people
who didn't have their alarm clock or didn't have their showers.
And I will tell you, the room was packed by 9 o'clock in the morning.
So definitely a successful event.
And I want to thank our economic development staff, all the work that they put in with AFA to make sure that that was a quality event.
All right, we are going to move on to the next item in our agenda and it's a presentation on how electricity came to Kent.
And I see the Greater Historical Society president Tim Clark and joining him is Gabrielle Johnson correct.
That's correct.
You want to just want to say a special thanks to Councillor President Boyce and the City Council
and yourself for the support of the Greater County Historical Society.
It has made a tremendous difference in our ability to keep history alive and I see later
on the agenda you'll be looking at holding on to the devourant barn, which of course was
one of our members Sharon Massos had worked so hard to basically hold on to that piece of
industry. I'm very pleased to introduce Ella Johnson. She represents, I think, a good pattern
for young people who need to consider the value of volunteering because that is how Ella
came into the kit museum. And then we went through a staff shortfall and had to go through
a hiring process and it was already quite evident that Ella had already mastered a number
of the process in terms of entering collections and taking care of materials and and working
on things. Ella is a junior at Kent Meridian High School.
No, no, I mean advanced education IB program and I asked her to work on this presentation
to keep local history from our students here in the community and live before us.
Hi, so I'm here today to talk to you about how electricity came to Kent.
I'm going to talk about three sections of Kent history before electricity in 1890 when electricity was first turned on to the city and then after electricity and how life changed.
So before electricity was in Kent, all housework had to be done by hand. This meant that a lot of families had house staff to help them with daily tasks.
In addition to this, care scene lamps and candles were provided all the lighting for homes and businesses.
This was expensive and somewhat unsafe.
And so this meant that at night time the business section of the city would be very dark.
And it became dangerous to be out at night.
And businesses would close earlier, especially in these winter months when we could start out at four, which caught into their revenue.
At this time, Kent was famous for producing hops, which would go into beer production.
But unfortunately, before the turn of the century, there was a hops infestation.
And this killed the whole hops crop.
And so, around this time, we see this area of looking for new products to sell out of the Kent Valley.
And two of these big products were lettuce and dairy.
In 1875, it would take you two to three days to go to and from Seattle.
So going outside of the Kent Valley, it was really a big deal and the roads were notoriously
terrible.
So rivers became the highway transportation system.
Steam engines would run between different landings on the green, white, and black rivers.
One of these landings was Albert's Landing, which you can see a photo of here, and these
steam engines were really common.
The biggest one was the Lily, which was run by Captain JJ Crow, and that picture on
the right is a model of the Lily.
Around this same time in 1889, the Kent Recorder, which would later become the Kent News
Journal, publishes for the first time.
This is a picture of their offices on opening day.
And this newspaper really helped establish information,
transportation, and rent.
Rather than just word of mouth and gossip,
it became a written down and recorded system
of sharing information throughout the valley.
So, on a national level, Alexander Graham Bell had filed his patent for the telephone in 1876, and that's almost 30 years before Kent would get its first telephone.
It took quite a long time for telephones to reach the west coast, whereas electricity, we were pretty much on the same page.
Electricity became common in homes across the country in the 1890s. In Washington, DC, DC had a 24-line switchboard in 1878,
And this was, again, almost 30 years before Kent would have been one telephone.
The number one line on that switchboard went to the White House, which received its power in 1891.
So, really close to the time that Kent was getting power.
The first distributors of power in Kent was the Kent Water and Light Company,
which was started by the Giverson Brothers, William Jason, and Captain JJ Crow.
They signed a 25 year agreement with the city in 1891 to provide the water and light for the growing city.
At the time, they signed this agreement.
The company was valued for $3,000, which would today be $8,300 and some change.
They built this powerhouse, which was located around 6th and Nicar.
And it was on where the future inter-urban train would come through.
So you can see in this photo, where the power station sits on the train yard for the inter-urban.
The inter-urban was a train between Seattle and Tacoma that the middle point of which was kept.
And this was really important because it meant that trains were staying in Kent overnight.
And then when they needed repairs, they would come to the Kent Depot,
which is this building right here behind the power station.
So, because power was in Kent, it really helped the inter-urban to establish roots here and to grow.
These photos also show the power station, boxed and red, and you can see in the background the train depot.
And you can see on the ground there, all of the train lines for the inter-urban.
Unfortunately, Kent water and light could not keep up with the demand of the growing city of Kent.
So, 12 years after they signed their contract in 1902,
Kent handed change providers, and they switched to the Inter Irving Railroad Company,
which was the company that built the Inter Irving train,
and would later become immediate sound energy, which is what we still use today in Kent.
These pictures are of receipts from immediate sound energy to the city of Kent in 1907.
So, the first telephone came to Kent in 1902.
Again, almost three years after it was first established.
Gasey Rogers was the young woman who ran the telephone lines in Kent.
The first telephone line, and she would continue to run the telephone lines
for the next 55 years until her death in 1957.
Here you can see a photo of a younger Gasey Rogers,
along with a photo of her standing in front of her switchboard
in the Kent Telephone Office.
So after electricity, we get a lot more electrical products
to help with health work, and they began to replace hired staff.
Only very wealthy families would keep staff in their homes.
And around this time, we also get our first hospital in Kent.
And this hospital had electricity.
It was 20 beds, and it was built in 1900 by Dr. Taylor.
The most famous thing that happened in this hospital was in 1903.
The first successful, the Serian operation, west of the Mississippi, happened in that hospital with the use of electricity.
So you can see there is a photo of a 1910 ice box above a photo of Dr. Taylor, and then next to him is a photo of his hospital.
The first car is also coming to Kent around this time, removing away from steamboats on rivers and towards automobiles.
It was a one cylinder brush and it was owned by Jim Finley.
There were many other cars coming to Kent in this time.
One of which was owned by Dr. Taylor, who I mentioned earlier.
His car was a Mitchell and he crashed into the Sue's Creek River
a few years after buying it.
It was fished out of the river and put up in a storefront
as an advertisement showing the SS Mitchell
after it had been sunk by the Sue's Creek River.
Like I mentioned earlier, the inter-urban railroad also came through Kent, and this was a really,
really big deal. As the middle point, we had a lot of people, products, and ideas coming
through our city, and it really helped the city grow, and it really helped the farmers in the area,
who no longer had to put their crops on barges and float them down the river, which is a slow process,
and they would also sometimes lose crops. Instead, they could just load them on trains, which would
them to Seattle or Tacoma.
The first radio opens in Seattle around this time and the spread
of radio would begin around this time with small radios throughout the area. This radio station
was KDR which still exists in Seattle under a different name. We also have the odd fellow's
lodge opening on West Meeker in 1907 and this was a social gathering place for the people of Kent
where they could come and let loose as much as they did, yeah.
So in 1899, a really big company comes
starts in Kent, and it's Carnation Milk.
In this period of experimentation, we moved to Dary a lot.
And they opened their first factory in 1899,
and that top photo is of opening day.
And then after they got electricity to their buildings,
in 1901, they got their first electric quilt candy machine,
which helped their business expand, and slowly the business would expand until it could
the Kent Valley could no longer support the amount of dairy needed for the company.
And it would move north to a small town which would be renamed to Carnation, Washington.
The bottom photo there is around 1915 and it's the front of the same building in the first photo.
But now you can see all the telephone lines in the area that are going to inform the building and helping provide electricity for this factory.
So next, we're going to look at three photos of Kent over a 20-year span.
This first photo is from 1910 years after power was turned on to the city, but not before
power became common in homes, so you don't see a lot of telephone lines really any.
In this photo, the houses are on big lots, pretty separated, and you don't see, they're mostly
residential, there's not a lot of industrialized buildings.
7 years later this is Kent and you can see now telephone lines and poles in the front of
this photo and you notice the houses are starting to move a little closer together and
there are more buildings that aren't residential and then finally 13 years after that in
1920 this is what Kent look like and now you can see many telephone lines and poles throughout
the city. The city has become much more condensed with everything in a downtown core and most
The buildings have signs of industrialization on them showing how the city moved from a very
agricultural-based society to an industrial-based society.
I want to leave you with the favorite photo I came across in my research.
This is a photo of 1930 of contented cows in Kent listening to the radio.
It was taken by P.J. Sant Energy as a promotional postcard to show how electricity can improve
your life.
in the lives of your cows.
Thank you for having me today, and I want to give a special thanks to the White River Historical Society for the use of some photographs.
Right.
That was fabulous.
I learned all kinds of things that I didn't know.
Thank you so much for taking the time to put that presentation together and come into Council tonight.
I think probably everyone gets to walk away with a new fact, right?
And some fabulous pictures.
Okay, we are going to move on to item number five in our agenda, which is report from standing committees, council and staff.
All of your council members are out in the community and the region on a regular basis, making sure that Kent's voice is being heard at all those regional conversations that are occurring, so that resources and things that we need and our opinions are being taken into consideration when decisions are made.
So, you will hear from tonight, I believe, all of our council members, looking at council member
Larmor, because she's going to have a report this evening.
I will start very, very quickly, and then we'll turn it over to our CAO.
I've been attending a lot of transportation meetings the last couple of weeks, the biggest topic
on every single agenda is Viadume, the closure of the Viaduct.
So, talking about that three week period when we know that the Viaduct is closed and the
tax that it will have all the way down to Kent.
We're seeing traffic backups just as we're predicted.
And I'm going to continue to encourage everyone,
if you have to go into Seattle public transportation,
it appears to be the way to go.
So spend a lot of time talking about that.
The two things I want to, or I guess the one thing
that I really want to talk about tonight,
over the last two days, I have made trips to Olympia
to testify in front of the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate to Ways and Means Committee,
lobbying for the continuation of streamlined sales tax.
If something that you hear us talk about a lot, the way that sales tax is sourced, it used
to come to Kent if things left are warehouses in our valley and now it's going to wherever
the product is being delivered.
So we stand to lose about $4.5 million a year in mitigation and you have my commitment to
if I have to drive to Olympia every day during this session, I will keep going and letting them know
how important it is that money continues to come to Kent to support the warehousing and the
jobs that we have going on in the Kent Valley. So yesterday I testified alongside the mayor
of Sumner and the mayor of Tekwila and today it was the mayor of Sumner and the mayor of Auburn.
So we are working collectively to make sure that the resources that our city needs to support
that economic engine continue to come in our direction. So with that, I'm going to turn it over
to Derek Nathison.
All right. Thank you, Madam Mayor. As I reported last time, we're gearing up for our 2019
City Council Strategic Planning Retreat, which will be on February 1st and 2nd. So Friday
afternoon, all day Saturday. Our facilitator is now finished interviewing the mayor and all
Council members. The good news is a lot of topics came up in those interviews. The bad news is
we have to fit them into an agenda. So we should be able to issue a draft final agenda by the end of
the week and you'll see it features the topics that most Council members wanted to talk about.
But we've also reserved a session toward the end called other issues on the horizon where that's
opportunity for any council member to bring up any issue on their mind and for the council to give
direction on next steps there. Also I want to mention we've closed out 2018 and a fun fact,
the City Clerk's office process 3,400 public records requests. Some of those are simple,
some of them are complicated, most of them require some kind of review. And so that's
quite a body of work and want to thank the City Clerk's Office as well as the department record
coordinators who work on that day and end day out. My written report is in your packet. We do have
an executive session this evening. The topics are litigation and property negotiations expected
time is 25 minutes and there will be no action when we reconvene an open session. Thank you. Thank you,
Before I get started, I just wanted to say that the mayor mentioned about all those working on different committees and trying to represent the city of Kent.
I don't think there's going to be a bigger advocacy for Kent than I may have.
You see our orange truck, brownie, can't say, don't mess with Kent. That's the mayor truck.
And she mean that. So big advocate, I want to thank you for all of you who was making sure that you know, up in Olympia and then being an advocate for us.
really linked a lot, so I want to just say thank you. For myself, I sit on the
Salon City Association Pick Committee. We had a meeting last week, very short.
I mean, the only thing that was on the agenda item that we probably
did talk about at some time is around the keen county parts,
Levy, I didn't speak to our parts director, Julie, how are we going to perceive it
at my only issue with that is that we're not getting enough money, right? What is this
So Julie is going to be looking at us and give us some insight on how we move forward to that.
So I look forward to that.
For workshop today, we had two agenda item on our workshop today.
One was around the drainage sustainability, timelaport team.
For now, I'm going to job.
This is a lot of stuff that going on in the city can't that is behind.
Seeing that we don't always think about, but I did a good job on talking about,
The Green River, Levy, was one of the neat talk about, which many, many years ago, I think it's all one of the pictures.
It was flooded. Can't use a flood a lot, right? So, we are coming a long ways, and over the years, we still have ways to go.
And also, I mean, can't is an economic driver for the state of Washington, which is one-eight of the Washington GDP.
So we play a major role in that. So when we talk about
2019 drainage sustainability, right? It's all about protecting our trail, our water, our parts, levees
We talk about the drainage to basin to ditch shoulders, stolen pipes
You know we have people sometimes just dump the garbage and and stuff in our ditches and so on and his team
Go out and make sure that stuff is clean to prevent flooding so on and we even got beavers in cat, right?
go down and chop down the trees and also cause problems. So his team is doing a phenomenal
job and we really appreciate the presentation and focus on the 2019 drainage sustainability.
We also had another presentation from K-P-K.
We'll see, share a little bit of interest, which is a keen kind of city climate collaboration.
And we have a target on what they want to do for Israeli growth management. So, large-term plan around a climate.
They want to have 80% below the 27 emission by 2015, and they have some targets along the way.
So by 2020, they want to do so by a 25% and then by 2030,
want to reduce it by 50%, I think we all agree that, you know,
climate control is important and we all played a role in that.
So we had a good presentation tonight, and I'm sure some
goes on to be hearing a lot more about it.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to my council member.
I'm very, very excited here.
Council member, warmer presentation here because she built
Council for four years and she's been begging to be on the committee for four years.
Well, for months, I think like four years, okay. I was thinking for months. So I will start
with Council Member Lama and it will just come down and you guys can talk about your committees.
Thank you. Thank you, Council President. Yes, I now serve on the King County Advisory Council
for Aging and Disability Services. We kicked off the year with the strategy and legislative retreat
on January 11th. It was an all-day working session where we spent the time discussing what
our legislative priorities and opportunities were for the year. There was five main legislative
priorities. I won't go into all of them, but just on a high level, we're seeking support for
long-term care trust act. Some new technologies to help those heart of hearing, staffing support
for those that are working and providing support for developmentally disabled adults.
There's a staffing crisis going on in that sector.
We're also looking to increase the annual income threshold for the senior
and veterans property tax exemption program and to overall increase the supply
of affordable housing units for seniors veterans and disabled adults.
Information on all these priorities can be found at agingkingcounty.gov.
And we also want to encourage residents to call the Washington State Legislative hotline at 1-800-5626000, which is a direct line where you can talk to a representative who will pass on your message to the legislators and we ask residents to consider calling and asking for support for aging and disability services.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council President.
I serve on Peugeot Sun Cleanier Advisory Council and our meeting was on January 9th.
We talked about, again, had a presentation from the staff on greenhouse gas emission reductions,
We had update on well, basically looking at comparing how California and Oregon are doing and
what we can do in Washington.
And we also had update on our legislative session that just started.
So the Pugest Sound Clean Air Agency will be working in the, of course, on bills,
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, possibility of a transportation package,
and updating, working, supporting the states updated, would heat emissions standards,
as well as increased funding for wood stove replacement.
And on February 7, I was also appointed to domestic violence regional task force and we will be meeting on February 7.
Thank you.
Council President Boise, I serve on the regional transit committee which has not yet met this year.
We'll meet tomorrow for the first time in downtown Seattle and I will be at that meeting.
As far as our city public works committee meeting goes we did meet last Monday and one thing
I'd like to point out I'll leave you to read the minutes for most of it but we did pass
a residential parking or we did recommend to the full council of residential parking zone
for the Mill Creek neighborhood so it's going to be coming soon as I don't think it's on
today. Becoming at our next meeting. Thanks.
Thank you, Council President. I chair public safety and I only have one thing to add from
the report chief, Padilla Gave. We had a presentation by Stacey Judd who is our Kent
Police Community Education Coordinator. She brought two of our youth board members to talk
about the game of life conference that was held December 10th and 11th here in Kent. And it
brings together leaders from Kent, middle schools, and high schools, and there's a great
video that's out. They're working on the video for this conference, but there's a video
out from last year's conference. And you can find that online. It's on the Kent website under
Kent Police. It's a great video that talks about the game of life. And if you want more information
on joining the Kent Police Youth Board, we are always looking for members and our new member
meeting will be in February. So if you're interested, please check that out. And I
also sit on the regional LA Safety and Justice Committee, and we meet next month. Thank you.
I chair the Parks and Human Services Committee. Oh, you know what? I skipped my
illustrious council member here. You go for me. I jump first. Thank you. So with Parks and
Human Services, on the Human Services side, great news is that grantees are being
notified the ones who have applied for human service grant that was available so they are
being notified now and the good thing is that that's a two-year grant so they'll get
that dollar round over the two years and there will be a list of those available. Riverbind
restaurant will pending approval by this body will hopefully have a restaurant tour soon so
that's going to be good. For the Arts Commission, the RAP artists, the traffic signal boxes,
the traffic controller boxes, the ones you've seen with the RAPs, there's will be more
of those RAPs appearing this year and things are coming along well with those Artists
submissions getting their final submissions in. And as far as the Arts Commission
cut spotlight series, here at about Peter Yaro, which is already sold out, the Seattle
Rock Orchestra on Saturday the 19th.
Our rather, I'm sorry, February 2nd.
But on February 15th, when that sounds like a lot of fun
to me, is the letters read aloud.
Love me or leave me.
There's a wide variety of people you have slash of,
Mark Twain, you have Virginia Wolf.
Just a wide variety of people who have their real letters
read by actors.
So that's going to be fun.
They're going to be dramatic reading.
Some will be funny.
The subtitle there is left me or leave me.
So I am looking forward to that.
Even George Carlin has letters in there.
And the mid committee, the mental illness and drug advisory,
council wisely has canceled their meeting for this month,
due to the traffic issue in Seattle.
Since we meet in Seattle,
can conservation district we met last Saturday and what it was was a meeting with a number
of the SCA sound cities, sound cities, association cities where it was a touch point so
that KCD could actually hear directly from the cities, what is of interest with them.
All of you guys are invited. The next session will be February 9th. So that's another Saturday.
it goes all day till about three o'clock and they are taking city input to make sure that
cities are able to voice what is most important to them, whether your city has drainage
problems, whether your city has food deserts and you're trying to find out ways to enhance
your farmer's markets, get more food and get more farmland, whether it's your urban tree
that you have issues there, don't know what your tree can't be actually in consists of.
So, lots of good information exchanged and that is all for today.
Thank you, Councillor President.
I'd share Operation's committee and those that report is in the minutes.
I also serve on the regional, Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority along with
Tony Troutner and our Council President Bill Boyce, and that meeting will be actually tomorrow at three o'clock, a very special time at station 78 out of Kobe did and that concludes my report your honor.
Madam Edittons, our reports.
She can see your council is busy at work for you every single day.
All right, we will move on in the agenda to item number six public hearing. Good news is we don't have one.
The next item on the agenda is public comment so this is the opportunity the public has to come up and address the council with issues concerns
Things that they're that we're that are going well and things you'd like to see address in the community please note that we've got a three minute time limit for speakers
And if when you are called up you can state your name and city of residents for the record that would be wonderful.
Kim can you give us the names of our speakers please.
I have two people signed up to speak. Tim Brown is going to speak on bags, and then I think I have a number of representatives from living well, Kent, youth policy council that are going to speak on the night of healing.
All right. Mr. Brown.
I'm Tim Brown. I live here in the city of Kent. I recently heard, well, first I wanted to
just thank the mayor for going to the state and representing others the city and speaking
with the other two gentlemen there bringing the message to the city to the state about the
problem of the tax mitigation and how we have the foundation and provide services and such to make
the economy go but not the tax baits to port the services.
The issue I came here tonight to talk about is the proposed plastic bag ban that someone
to bring.
I really think that the city council has better things to do with its time than to be worrying
about banning plastic bags and imposing a 10 percent charge for paper bags.
I really would like to see Council if they want to do this, take it to the vote of the people,
but the people decide if they want to ban plastic bags and pay a fee for paper bags or what
they want to do.
You'll get greater support if the people support it than if you shove it on them.
You need the people's support on that idea, you need businesses ideas and I think a plastic bag
And it's going to have a negative impact on our businesses.
Some people aren't going to want to go down to a business here.
And then suddenly we told, oh, I got to pay an extra 10 cents
for a bag, because I didn't bring one with me.
I really want the council to work another thing
than pushing a ban on plastic bags.
We need to say for schools, we need to say for streets,
through reducing easy access to guns,
more than worrying about plastic bags.
I thank you all for my time here.
Thank you.
Okay.
Living well, Kent Youth Policy Council.
Thank you.
I'm on my way.
Thank you.
All right.
Good evening.
City of Kent.
My name is Raham Haishi.
I'm with Limwell Kent.
I want to first thank the mayor and city council members for providing us with
and also the opportunity to be here to present to you an event that we're holding that
we're calling Night of Healing. This is to honor Dr. King in his legacy. We were going to
hold this event on MLK Day 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. here at City Council City Chambers. What we want
to do is basically we want to invite the community to come together to Hill and talk about
gun violence and to also raise awareness. With that said, I would like to introduce our City
council members and for them to elaborate on this event further and to invite all of you.
Hi, so my name is Deb and we are all a part of the Youth Policy Council of Living
Wilkent and we are specifically this during committee within the Youth Policy Council that is
responsible for planning the night of the council.
I like to introduce myself, my name is Karim.
I'm the youth leader for Living Will Kent, and I would like to invite every single person in this room to our annual night of healing.
That's happening in January 21st, Monday on MLK Day 6-8pm. It's going to be a great event. We have a lot of great people coming to this event.
Um, we have first, uh, the mayor, um, uh, Dana Ralph coming. Also, we have, uh, state representative, uh,
Tina Orwell. Also, um, we have, um, KSD supervisor, um, Dr., uh, uh, Dr. Watts coming. Also,
we have, um, the chief police, uh, Rafael Padilla, uh, it's a hard name to say. But, um, he's also
going to be there. First I'd like to talk about our mission for this whole event. Our mission
for this nice to bring awareness to gun violence around the city of Camp and also to hold
an event on where the community can be.
Going around nationwide and in camp. As a young youth of camp, we fill those our obligation to hold an event for the city of camp, because on a day-to-day basis, we deal with this problem, living in low, low income communities, we wanted to work towards healing the community and work towards a solution even if it's a small step.
And I'd like to thank everyone, I thank you guys, thank the Council members, thank the mayor for letting us speak and help change our community for the better and help young youth have a voice. Thank you very much.
Good job.
Thank you.
Well, I also have flyers, so if you guys want one.
Corrie?
Yeah.
Corrie, may I have my name's Corrie.
May I ask the question Mr. President?
Okay.
Where do you go to school?
I just graduated from Kentwood High School.
Kentwood High School.
Oh, a culture. Okay. Thank you.
Thank
you. Yes.
Thank you. I can tell you, they've been working hard on this event.
Excited to see it happen. I got to have a visit with them in my office.
I don't know what's it been guys about a week ago and learned all about what they've got planned
and excited to see how this turns out. So thank you for your work for our community.
All right. Kim, do we have any other speakers?
I have no more to yield signed up to speak.
All right.
With that, we will move on to the consent calendar.
So the consent calendar is a collection of items that the Council has been working on at committee for the last several weeks, meaning that these issues were presented and voted on at the committee level, one of our five council committees, and they came out unanimously or without controversies.
So the vote tonight is to affirm the work that was done at that committee level.
Council President, is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I like to make a motion to approve item A through S. Second.
All those in favor?
The post.
Motion carries seven zero.
Good work.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next we are on to item number nine other business.
our first presentation will be from our Park St. Dr. Julie Parris Kindola on some good news about
the golf course.
Great, thank you. Thank you, Mayor Council members. For those who don't know me in the audience,
I'm Julie Parris Kindola, the Director of Parks and Recreation for the City. Super excited
to be here today. I can't even have a little ran up if I could. I am the main presenter
tonight, but I did want to take a quick minute to introduce who is here in the audience today.
From Half-Line Brewing Company, we have the three owners. So if you guys just want to stand
up and wave there in the back. We've got Jason Ellison, David Westby, and Adam Sheay, and then
they've got their family members as well here. Also in attendance, just in case any questions,
we've got Pete Peterson, who you know, who is the golf complex manager. So first, you know,
for the listening viewing audience, I guess what I really just want to say first is just a
very sincere thank you and appreciation. It's been a journey to get where we are right now in
and it really, they've shown a lot of incredible patients and support.
We're presenting to the City Council and February, late February, about the golf course and
how we did in 2018. Happy to say we exceeded business plan goals and round goals and this year
we're rolling into our 30th year in a nursery so we've got the new logo look. Lots of exciting things
happening there and it's all because we started thinking back and took that step to think
through long-term strategic planning and that really gave us a chance to really study
what does this course need?
What do we need is a financial point for the restaurant?
And so I just really think allowing us to step back
and look at that is giving us the right partner
that we need out with the golf course.
So the new lease at Half-Line,
it's a little bit of a different approach
than we've had in prior years.
And I want to take us back
because I need you all to understand the journey
of why we're changing it up a little bit.
And so I've got a summary slide here
which probably is the first time several council members
have seen and it summarizes the history of the restaurant at River Bend. So you'll see in
the last 18 years we've had three prime restaurants out there, many changed in ownership
or assignment of of fleeces or sublaces. One of the challenges I think that you can look at is
whether it's the term or the the option either way every restaurant has ended up defaulting
in breach and owing the city at least revenue as we're moving forward.
When you're looking at that collective, you know, loss to the city,
you're at $175,000 after that time frame and that doesn't even include finance charges,
legal fees. And think of this too, every time we transition a restaurant,
we have to go in there in facilities and internal services and kind of clean that up and get that
for tenants. So this is an issue and one of the things we did is really stuck it took a step back and
said, what are we doing here? How are they not successful? What can we do? Because if we continue to do
this model, we will get what we've always got. And that is an effective and the way that we're managing
now. And so we had to do something a little different to figure out, how do we get long-term
sustainability? Is Kenton the golf course about high profit for the short-term or solid sustainable
experience and quality revenue for the long term. And so after having some good dialogue with the mayor,
we switched some things up. And so I just wanted to give you that demonstration. This is why
we have to learn from our past mistakes as we're moving forward. There's a couple of themes.
Every one of these restaurants has a story and there's many different reasons why or why not they
might have been successful. But a couple of themes of why things are different now. The first one is we
We have a really clear understanding of our financial strength and what we need out of this particular model or a segment of our business in order to maintain in the business plan.
We're going to highlight that for you a little bit later in the presentation.
So I know that I need $X dollar to break even.
I need this much more that's going to give me some indirect benefit.
Prior to this we didn't know we budgeted two years and another two years and another two years.
We're looking at a six-year window and beyond that this new plan is in direct alignment with.
So we have that knowledge now. We didn't have that in the past.
The other thing too is looking at just the history on the restaurant side for those who are in the business.
There's a very small net profit margin.
You know, and that's a challenge.
And when Kent was taking a percent of gross profits and more to a B&O, they're taking gross.
They're not taking the net.
It was proving to be too much for the restaurants to be able to handle even with the proven clientele in an automatic clientele there.
What we've chosen to do also is rethink a little bit about how are we looking at it.
This is a tenant landlord relationship. It's a for-profit.
But they're also a collaborative partner and we need to see them as that.
We're partnering on events, we're discounting, we're working on a logo where, you know,
so there's a lot of other things that just a standalone business, you know, on whatever street has a change on.
So it's changing that philosophy as well,
is how do we see a partner ever have been?
Because both of our successes are linked
to the course of success as well.
So what we did here is we removed the growth profit.
And that's probably the most significant change.
As we were taking 5%, 10%, 8% of growth profit,
and top of that.
What we've done now is got rid of that.
And we're just doing a sit, flat, monthly fee.
Similar to a mortgage or just a regular apartment rental
right on the CPI. That's probably the biggest change that you'll see. This does break even for us.
Offsets my facility fees, it offsets any, you know, charges with utilities and so on.
The other fundamental flaw I think in the past, you recall when we went out for Scotch and Vine,
we hired the big restaurant consultant, you know, a person that did the huge study and they went everywhere
and they did all this stuff. Now, once did they ask the golfer what they wanted?
major flaw. We went ahead and did that in our strategic business plan as you know when we presented
so you'll see there obviously food and beverage is extremely important to the experience of golf.
66% said they just want a bar and grill. They don't need fancy fine dining, China plates out there.
They just want burgers and fries and some drinks to have a conversation about their golf game.
We swayed a little bit when we went to a different model out there. We're trying to do and this is
1950 golfers gave us this really clear opinion. The other thing that's exciting that we had
to think differently this time is we have the golf customer, but we also have Maker. Maker
has some really exciting stuff coming. It's going to be a whole different corridor here in the
coming years bringing in a lot of millennial generation, a lot of different activities, so we had to
kind of look at a restaurant coming in that can serve both and I believe we found that they've got
this niche. We'll talk about in a few minutes. The other thing I just wanted to remind
the council on is that we have as part of the business plan reduced the square footage
of the restaurant space, so it is not the same size. As it was in the past, we have expanded
on the pro shop to bring more pro shop merchandise sales and that was the business plan strategy.
And you'll hear more about that in February. So this is just a smaller footprint.
So we began the search in April 2018 and went out for formal RFP to see who was interested
out there in the community. We did, as you know, had some of the interested hackers burn grill
out at Madrona Lynx and spent four months negotiating, got all the way down to the final
wire at no fault of the cities. They pulled out personal and family reasons. So that was a
devastating for us. We love to Kelly family. They're very high up in promoting the game of golf
and, well, of course, always be welcome at River Bend. But that didn't work out. It was too late
at that point because that was after, you know, right when summer ends, so that was a devastating
loss for us like, oh, so what it did is to give us the opportunity to reach back out to
people that were interested, the timing might not have been right, so we started working with
the few and then eventually after discussions of what people's visions were, staff is now
recommending to the council tonight that we move forward with awarding at the least two half
growing company who will be creating a new subsidiary. So the new name out there now will be the
half-line public house at River Bend. So a little bit about half-line, you know, had to check
old Jason asked if he should bring like beer samples, which of course it's, you know, late now,
you might have been good, I was like, no, but is anybody here familiar with half-line? Oh great,
good. So they're out fairly new out in some nerve. I have just like flown the second they started.
And they have their full tap room and some nurse and will remain open and so that business
will be going.
This is an expansion of their brand and they're kind of branching into now the public house
side of the house.
Just want to clarify it is a full service bar so there will be alcohol and everything else
there but they will also be serving their craft grooves and their beer there as well.
I think it's kind of hard to see but their tap room has a really authentic rustic Pacific
Northwest field, they're going to bring that same style to Riverbend, which is exciting.
Lots of experience with food and events in catering.
There, beer now, can be found on tap from Tuckwillet to Olympia in 200 locations.
They're obviously in the Sumner Auburn area.
I know them well.
They are very involved in the community that they serve in the surrounding area of R.E. raised
cumulative up to 250,000 for their, you know, different events and fundraisers, so they've
that really strong brand very excited about it and where they're moving forward.
So to bring it into the least world of the nitty bit gritty restaurant name half-lane
public house, security deposit of course is 5,000 that's standard, least term is a 25-year
term we're looking for the long term on this one. The first term is 10 years and then three options
to extend for five. We do have a redevelopment clause in there that was a challenge. That's
expectation from the mayor, we had to have it in there, but we're asking for a long-term partner,
but then saying, hey, we might want to switch out the way that we work through that with half
line, is that we will look at if we choose to do that for whatever reason, do a depreciated buy out
of their original capital investment when they're coming in there. So it can offset some of that if we do that,
obviously that's not on the plan, but it's there. Based annual fee like I mentioned, it's around $3,000 per
month 36,000 per year, it does have a 3% CPI growth factor. Looking at the timing and some
of the capital improvement, we're going to do a lot of window replacement, etc. We did go for
a 3 month rent event. The other thing that's important in our stand is in talking with
the mayor and with F-line, a lot of opportunity on Meeker. And when Meeker is successful and
have line is successful, that's a time to re-evaluate and then we all should share in some
of that success.
So at the time of the option for renew, we'll be looking at the market and what is the
going rates for some of that stuff and begin working.
We may jump their annual lease higher than 3% but we will not go higher than 6% we won't
go higher than 10% so on.
Utilities.
Utilities right now, they're responsible for paying 45% of actual and that's just based
on historic trend out there.
We do have obviously two years of no utility consumption, so we know what's not there, and then we're going to be tracking this year, and then we'll be adjusting that formally of what that real formal percentage.
Capital investment right now initially we're still working through final design, probably around 100,000.
I think if you've seen their tap house, they're just going to keep moving with that as they're moving forward and continue to evolve.
All taxes, least sold insurance, etc. is on the tenant.
So, here, kind of linking back to business plan and alignment with vision.
2018, as I mentioned, we kind of exceeded business plan goals.
We did not have a restaurant.
We absorbed that lease fee into regular operations.
We'll talk about that February.
2019 lease is going to be pro-rated towards the end of the year.
We already have a plan to offset that loss in the business plan.
So, when you look at that solid green line is what the business plan shows.
If you have took out the business plan, you would see that's what we expect to receive.
We're just a little bit higher than that.
What this doesn't show is indirect benefit.
etc. That's all stuff that's not just directly linked to revenue. So this just shows you were in 100% alignment with business plan.
So next steps, depending approval tonight, we've got to finalize any kind of least detail final stuff for the mayor and half-line to sign. Hopefully we'll lock that down in a couple weeks.
We've got to finalize our renovation, get through that remodel, we think that'll take about
three to four months, hoping for a tentative soft opening and may get our feet wet over
there, and then grand opening and June, again, that's dependent on construction and liquor
cannabis board right now.
They say they're running 90 days on permits, we'll see, so they have to get through that.
And then, as I mentioned, it's our Riverbends 30th year anniversary.
We have a new restaurant coming in, so a lot of hype to marketing.
We're going to really do a lot of joint promotion.
and they'll be putting out press releases.
They bring a huge draw for them as well.
One of the things in the business plan
is to really focus on the millennial targets.
Obviously, having half-line in there
is a direct length for that.
We were laughing in the back that the presentation
about bringing hops back to Kent, of where it was.
I mean, that's a great link.
So we need to think of that one, which is great.
So other than that, we're super excited.
I'm excited, we're jazzed, they're fun.
Alex made a comment.
He's super excited, so we've been working on that.
So I'm here, Peter, have plans here.
If anybody has any questions?
OK.
Any questions for Julie?
Councilmember Higgins.
Thank you, Your Honor.
Thanks, Julie, for the presentation.
I think I don't really have a question so much as a comment.
I've less than I have been here the longest at this point, and I remember after Scotch and
left at some presentation I made the remark, you know, three times I think it must be us and I'm really pleased to see that
by that I meant that we had three different restaurants fail in that space and so we must be doing something wrong
and so Mayor I want to thank you and Julie for rethinking how you're going to run that lease and I'm really excited
been to your brewery and excited to have you there.
So Councilmember Higgins, that exact quote that you said has been running through my head all the way through this process.
So I think you were spot on and I feel like we have accomplished that in the changes that we've made to make sure that we're setting all of us up for success.
So, to the gentleman from Half-Lion, I do know that there are some of those original
Kent hops still growing down here in the valley, so if you're interested, we can certainly
make sure you get some of them.
There you go.
Okay.
Any other questions before we call for a motion?
All right.
Seeing none, Council Member Fincher.
Madam Mariah moved to authorize the mayor to sign all documents necessary to enter into a
agreement with Half-Lion Brewing Company LLC doing businesses Half-Lion public house for
the restaurant at River Bend Golf Complex, subject to final terms and conditions
acceptable to the parks director and the city attorney.
Second, all right. There's a motion there. Second, any discussion? All right, hearing none,
all those in favor? Hi. Hi. If you don't mind, can we get a photo up there?
Let's make an official motion carries 7-0, all right.
Good job, guys.
Welcome.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for hanging in there with us tonight for this meeting.
Thank you.
Welcome, boarder.
I can't.
Welcome, boarder.
Thank you.
It is.
Yeah.
It's good.
I wasn't sure.
Five o'clock.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
We are moving on in the agenda.
The next item we have is the Kent Town Homes Resown Ordnance.
And with this, special process that we will be working through here.
And I'm going to turn that over to our city attorney, Pat Fitzpatrick.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
It's been a long time since we've had a quasi-judicial hearing before the council.
So we have to go over some ground rules that apply to this kind of process.
So before you as a agenda item 9B, where a new or asked to consider the reason of the Kent
presentation by staff and open record hearing regarding this reason occurred before the
sitting hearing examiner on December 5, 2018. People owning property within 300 feet of
the subject property were notified of the hearing and no person appeared to oppose the
reason of this property. Staff recommended approval and on December 18, 2018 the hearing
examiner recommended the reason be approved. The property subject to this reason is located
at 2, 3, 9, 0, 108th Avenue South East and Kent and there's a map of the parcel in your
agenda packet at page 4, 6, D7. Because this is an issue of changing the zoning on a specific
parcel, this is a quasi-digital matter. So typically as a city council, you sit in a legislative
capacity and you make policy decisions for the city. But in a quasi-digital matter, you're
changing your hat and you're acting like a panel of judges
to determine the rights of a specific property owner.
So because of this, the appearance of fairness
doctrine applies to your actions.
And that doctrine is set forth in the state code.
And it is established to ensure that you, the decision maker,
is impartial, and you are free from outside influences
on these matters.
So in order to ensure this, I have to ask you a number
questions, and if you have an affirmative answer to any of them, just please let me know,
and then I have a question for the audience as well. So I'm going to go through those questions,
and if you have an answer in the positive, let me know that. So the first and there's six of them,
I'm sorry, there's so many. So the first one is, does any member of the Council have knowledge
of having conducted business with the proponents of this reason and the proponents are John Graves'
Okay, hearing none, moving to question two, does any member of the Council have either a
pecuniary or non-pecuniary interest in the outcome of this proceeding?
I may, who is the owner of that property?
The owner is John Graves' architects.
Oh, John Graves' architect, no, I'm going to be the owner of the property is Dana Beckley.
Okay, I'm sorry, John Graves is the person who is proposing the reason.
Okay. We're still safe. All right. Okay. Number three. Does any member of the council know whether or not his or her employer has a financial interest in this matter has an interest in the outcome of this proceedings?
All right. Number four, does any member of the council live or own property within 300 feet of the property, which is the subject of this proceeding?
Okay. Other than what was established in the record, the records contained within the council
packet that you have, does any member of the council have any special knowledge of the substance
or merits of this proceeding which might cause a council member to pre-judge the outcome that
you're going to have to decide tonight? All right. And the last question, does any member of
the council believe that he or she cannot consider this matter fairly and impartially? All right.
So we pass that test.
So I have one more question for the audience, and this is just to ensure that there's no member
of the audience that we have any objection to this, because of one of you sitting before
here.
Is there any member of the audience who, because of the appearance of fairness, doctor, and
which is to disqualify any member of the council from the hearing in this matter?
And if so, please state your name and the reason that you believe the member should be disqualified.
And nobody in the audience has spoken.
So, just to be clear, the record in this matter has been established that you are qualified
to consider this quasi-judicial matter.
Staff member, Jake Arnam, senior planner with ECV will make the presentation.
This is a hearing that has already occurred, so you're being asked to approve the reason
based on the record that's in the council packet tonight.
So, there's people testified at the hearing, there was evidence presented and that information
is contained within the packet and Jay's here to give you a presentation of what happened
or what occurred at that hearing and you're being asked to approve what the accounts
or what the hearing is them and recommended and there's an emotion in your packet to do so
at page 462 and that's all I have, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you.
Ready for the presentation? Okay. Thank you, Patrick. Good evening, council members and the mayor.
Many of you have met me, but for those of you who have not, I'm Jason Garnham, a planner and
ECD.
I primarily work in development plan, review, and permitting for private development projects
and Kent.
So don't necessarily see me here very often.
As Patrick stated, this is a request to reason a vacant one acre property located on
On 108th Avenue, southeast, just northwest of its intersection with southeast 2040th Street.
The applicant requests to reason on the property from CC Community Commercial Zoning to
MRT-16, multifamily residential townhouse zoning.
The CC zoning permits a wide variety of retail and service business type land uses, but
prohibits residential development entirely,
whereas the MRT-16 zoning allows
development of townhouses only and up to density of 16 units per acre.
As you may see, if you're looking at the site plan that is on the site
and map that's on page 467 of your packet,
You can see that this property does not have access to or visibility from the commercial portion of southeast 240th Street and as evidenced by its long vacant status.
The argument is that it's not a viable, the property is not viable for commercial uses.
So, the applicant property owner intend to develop the site with 14 townhouse units.
They did submit a multi-family design review application with related plans about a year ago.
You can find the renderings and site plans for that development starting on page 498 in
your packet if you would like to have a look at what sort of development they're interested
in doing.
The site and surrounding area, particularly to the south, has a comprehensive plan land use
designation of MU mixed use, and MRT 16 zoning is consistent with that comprehensive plan
land use designation per the land use portion of the comprehensive plan.
Further, the proposed development is also consistent with the vision for mixed use areas
in having vibrant urban centers with a mix of housing types and that support the nearby commercial
establishments.
So for those reasons and as detailed in the hearing examiners, findings and conclusion and
recommendation and in the staff report that I wrote, both of which are in your packet, both
city staff and hearing examiner reviewed this proposal for compliance with the five criteria
of Kent City Code for approval of a rezone and the hearing examiner provided a recommendation
approval after an open record hearing as described by Mr. Fish Patrick.
That's that's it for my presentation
so I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay any questions? I do your own hands. Remember Thomas? Patrick I want to make sure that I'm doing this right because I may have to
that the end of verse is 108V, is that three-thin three-hundred feet,
use the pose?
Do you see where I'm at here?
The Fox property.
That's correct.
The Fox property.
All the way in to, all the way at the end of the dead end,
probably closer to about 244.
Third.
Well, access is all the 108.
It is, but where that starts, I think it's,
Yeah, I would think that that's further than 300 feet,
but I also would question whether you have any ownership
interest or a pecuniary interest in that property.
Well, I've been kind of working with him a little bit
in contact with the city and doing things.
So if it's okay, I'd just assume to be accused by his self.
If you feel the need to be accused yourself,
then by all means you've got to be better.
Okay, that's fine.
Does I don't want to jeopardize this?
So, thank you.
Any other questions?
All right.
At this point.
We call for the motion,
or there. Okay. Do we have a motion? Council President Boyz.
Yes, madam, let me get back here for a little bit of y'all, I don't know what's there.
Come on.
I know.
Uh, excuse me.
On his number.
Kim, please.
Ordnance number 4303.
4303.
Thank you.
Madam, I'd like to make a motion to set the findings,
conclusion and recommendation of the hearing exam of the Kent Town House
Reson application and adopt ordinance number 4303.
three approved a kit town homes. Reson application from C.C.
Community Commissioner to MRT-6T,
multi-family residential townhouse.
Okay, have a motion.
The second is there any discussion?
All right. Seeing none, all those in favor?
Aye. Opposed?
Motion carries 6-0 with Council member Thomas for accusing himself.
Thank you, Governor.
All right.
Thank you.
Okay.
The next item on the agenda is also something a little bit out of the ordinary for the
Council, so I will turn this over to our city attorney as well for an explanation
of process.
Thank you very much.
So this will be much quicker.
So we have an ordinance before you to establish a process for franchise applications.
Assistant City Attorney Christina Schuck will explain that the FCC rules that she's been
talking about for some time now with regards to small cells, went into effect yesterday actually.
We had hoped for a stay of the FCC rulings because of court action, but that did not occur.
So as a result, we are in dire need of putting together our processes for an ordinance
for processing the franchises.
So we have before you an ordinance and because of the timing of this issue, the ordinance
is presented to you as an emergency ordinance, which if past will become effective immediately
usually ordinances are effective either 30 days or sometimes five days from the data
passage. This ordinance if past would become effective immediately. However, and this is
the key, in order to become effective immediately, the motion to adopt the ordinance must
be approved by a majority plus one of the full council or five members of the council. So I
just want to let you know the emergency nature of the ordinance and the need for five
of affirmative votes on this matter to become effective immediately.
Thank you.
All right, ready for the presentation.
The evening, Christine, I should like assistant city attorney.
So tonight I wanted to give you just a brief overview
of this draft order, or this proposed order
and as which is called franchise applications
for the use of right of way.
And I wanted to break it down really briefly
into the what, why, how, who and why.
So first, what, this is a new chapter
within within Title VI, which is the public works chapter, what it does is set forth a specific
franchise application process. It has application requirements and the time and review of such
applications. Why, as Pat mentioned, overall, overall we're here because it's a good idea to have a
franchise application process. Most cities have something similar to what's before you, but specifically
We're here and under, I'm constrained,
because of the new FCC order and what small cells are
in the small cell deployment that's coming to the city.
So we're here to standardize the process.
We're really here to standardize that process,
so we can comply with the new deadlines in the FCC order.
And that's the most impactful thing of the FCC order
is that we have to process applications for small cells
within a really tight timeframe.
And that is 60 days or co-locations.
For example, installing small cells on PSU utility poles or city infrastructure,
and 90 days for new poles.
So that's a quick turnaround for getting a franchise authorization
to use the right of way and individual permits.
So how we're going to do it?
This ordinance sets forth application contents.
We'll have an actual application on the to fill out.
So this is timeframes we can start counting, start the clock, also let's us do a complete
in this review.
So if we're missing information, we can stop the clock and request the information, information
we're requesting is designed to help us ensure, you know, our design standards are met,
safety standards are met, and also that we're streamlining the process.
So, who this applies to utility and service providers?
Definitely tailored towards telecommunications, even fiber buildouts and small cells, but it also would include other utilities.
It does not include cable, and it would not include water and sewer districts.
Like the franchises we've just adopted with like high line and midway sewer.
Those would not be covered under this application process.
process. And when, as Pat said, if adopted, it would go into effect immediately.
So,
okay. Any questions?
All right. Seeing none, then emotion would be an order.
I don't need to have a one. Sorry.
You got a question? Nope. I was going to do an instant. Go ahead.
I would come. I need an ordinance number. Four, three, zero, four.
Shouldn't this come on operations?
I think that seems reasonable.
You're on her.
I would move to adopt orders number 4304, creating a new chapter 6.15 of the Kent City Code,
to establish franchise application requirements for the use of city right of way declaring
an emergency and providing for an immediate effective date for the ordinance.
Second.
Yeah, there's a motion a second, any discussion?
Seeing none.
All those in favor?
Hi.
I.
Post, motion carry 7-0.
So we have the supermajority that we need.
Thank you.
OK, moving on to the last item under other business.
It is transit operation and maintenance facilities
interim zoning ordinance.
We'll once again turn it over to our City Attorney Pat Fitzpatrick.
Thank you.
I promise this is the last special process
that we're going to deal with tonight.
This one's a little more complicated than the last one.
So, Haley Bond's deal, the city's long range planning managers is going to present the background for the transit operations and maintenance facilities in terms of zoning ordinance.
This is an interim ordinance that provides for a temporary zoning code change to the midway sub-area.
The effect of the ordinance is to prohibit transit operations and maintenance facilities in the north midway sub-area, which is the MTC and MCR districts, and specifically allows them in the south midway sub-area, the CM2 district.
We're presenting this order ordinance to you in accordance with RCW's 35A 63.220 and 3670A
390. And this is an interim ordinance that may be effective or remain effective for
up to six months unless it is renewed or repealed by the council. And because it is an interim
ordinance, a public hearing must be held within 60 days of adoption of the interim ordinance. So as a result,
The ordinance provides that a public hearing will occur on February 5th at the council meeting
on that date and moreover the ordinance direct staff to prepare a permanent zoning ordinance
for transit operations and maintenance facilities for your consideration.
Once again, though, similar to the last ordinance because of the detrimental impacts
to the area that could be caused by siding in operations and maintenance facility in the
emergency exists and it's imperative that the ordinance become effective immediately upon adoption.
And once again, in order to become effective immediately at least five members of the council have to approve the ordinance.
So this again, it was much like the moratorium that was passed a number of years ago on a couple of issues that we dealt with from a land use planning perspective.
but this is just an interim ordinance,
requires to have to create a permanent ordinance
for your consideration, and it's presented
as an emergency ordinance.
Thank you.
It's good evening, Council Mayor.
I'm here before you as Pat described
to bring forward an interim zoning ordinance.
So first I'm gonna set the context
and then kind of walk you through
what we have in front of us.
So on the screen is the midway sub area
just to remind you of where we kind of considered
to be midway, of course, this is I-5.
We're looking west of I-5 for the most part,
between 99 and I-5 in Kent's West Hill area.
So knowing that light rail was coming,
the city invested significant time and resources
in a robust visioning process that you all
have probably heard me describe many times
our midway severity of plan.
We were really trying to welcome light rail plan for its success
and provide a framework for future decision-making
because knowing light rail is coming
is just the very first step
and there's lots of decisions we made after that.
So the next few slides as I'm just going to describe
a few things in the midways of area plan
and just shows in photos actually from that plan
so you have an idea of what we were envisioning.
So obviously community engagement guided that vision
significantly and I think to some extent
the region kind of records the approach and bought into it.
By that I mean that between various agencies,
this midways of area plan has laid the framework
for a lot of the decisions made as part of the station area
planning, and then also we got some press local transit blogs and things, you know, really
recognize the work that was done as part of this plan.
So the overall plan goal in the midways very plan is to create a dense pedestrian-friendly
sustainable community that provides jobs, housing services, and public open space around
nodes of high capacity mass transit while maintaining auto-oriented uses between the transit
oriented nodes.
I'm going to come back to that, but essentially, it envisions a well-designed built environment
including pedestrian-friendly streetscape,
small-time little connections, and a variety of housing types
and jobs that support transit use.
And that's, of course, based on best practices
about how you plan for mass transit coming to your city.
So this framework guided the zoning changes
that we've passed at the same time,
that's made ways to vary a plan.
Where we established new zones for the pedestrian-oriented
kind of urban development that takes full advantage
of the high capacity transit and brings a host of benefits
to the area. So the midways of area plan identified a distinction between the midway areas that
are north of what we call approximately south to 45th Street, which there's not a 245th
there, but that's kind of what it's aligned with. And to the south of that. So in the pink area,
the text that's too small to read from here describes the transit-oriented community as, you know,
being a high-intensity transit supportive mixed-use area with a residential focus in a strong
pedestrian orientation with no single use, big box, industrial, or auto-dependent uses.
To the south in that orange area, that's considered highway commercial corridor, and
that includes a wider range of community, city-wide, or regional commercial, and light industrial
uses that are primarily vehicle-dependent.
I think that this is a really realistic plan.
We were not anticipating that the entire West Hill north of south is going to become completely
skyscrapers.
You know, we recognize there's an existing auto oriented character and then it was a very
plan really reflected that.
So that distinction, just to view it from another angle, this is if you're looking south,
I-5 on the left and 99 on the right there, you can see kind of as the guideway will be coming
and pulling back behind the lows.
That 240 fifth is shown with this yellow line.
So that's kind of the distinction between the area mostly in the foreground here is what we consider to be the
We're hoping to see dense compact development and behind where the midway landfill starts,
that's where we understand that it's a different context there.
So with that in mind, of course, we made zoning changes.
Reflecting that intent.
So the new zones that we proposed at the time that the midway severe plan is adopted,
include the MTC-1 and 2 zones, those are in the red here, and the MCR zone.
And those stand for midway transit community, 1 and 2,
and midway commercial residential.
So the purpose of all three of those zones
if pulling up slightly, they have slight distinctions,
but essentially they all say
that they serve the purpose of providing a location
for dense and varied retail office
and residential and pedestrian orientation.
Now of course, we could not contemplate
every eventuality that would come to pass.
And so at the time, we didn't add a lot of new use categories
when we made this zoning change.
We took a look at the existing use categories and said, you know, whether or not they belonged in these new zones.
And, um, one category that, you know, makes a lot of sense in, um, in sort of hindsight that we,
we said, were permitted in all these were transit facilities, right?
Because this is the whole point is for attracting transit here.
Um, we were, of course, picturing light rail stations, and light rail stations, you know, have a couple different primary characteristics, they serve passengers.
They also attract activity, they catalyze dense development.
They tend to be in the sort of five to seven acre range.
If you discount land that might be surplus after construction.
For instance, the Kent Demoing station is just under six acres.
I think a little under six acres and the Star Lake station as they're currently designed as about seven acres.
So that's kind of what we're envisioning.
We've learned that sound transit is considering the midway area for a very different kind of transit facility.
It's called an operations and maintenance facility and this is a quick Googler from the Seattle operations and maintenance facility and this one is about 21 acres, but the one that they are looking in Kent for is actually about 30.
So for those of you for whom this reference might be relevant, that's apparently according to the internet over 22 and a half foot ball fields.
So it's quite a large, quite a large dimension to contemplate.
So, not quite what we were picturing in terms of scale
when you think about a transit station.
So these things operate in the middle of the night
because that's when vehicles are available
for maintenance, cleaning, you know, repair.
That kind of thing. They don't really attract pedestrians. They're not great for pedestrian interest or activity. They do bring some jobs. They bring about 300 jobs, which over 30 acres is maybe could be considered a low intensity job use.
And so if we actually look at our use tables, we might not say that their closest in use to, in terms of functionality, to a transition. They might be a bit closer to something like outdoor storage of trucks.
Have you equipment contractor yards and you can kind of see this is a lot of outdoor train tracks and that kind of thing so
based on that kind of
Characteristic where would we allow
Outdoor storage of trucks and every equipment you might imagine we were planning on allowing that kind of thing in our MTC 1 and 2 and MCR zones, right?
Because we were trying to attract those more pedestrian oriented uses, so
We do allow outdoor trucks though in CM2
So that's just to the south, it's commercial manufacturing too.
It's slightly different color there, but that's again, that's sort of more vehicle-oriented
zone.
And the purpose of that zone is to combine some characteristics of both retail with small-scale,
light industrial, heavy commercial, wholesale, advanced manufacturing.
Very different words than the words that describe those more transit-oriented zones.
So, while characteristics of either truck storage or operations and maintenance facilities,
don't necessarily, you know, they're not necessarily the most favorable for some of our
plans.
That doesn't mean that they don't belong anywhere.
We think that, you know, they do belong in cities, but they need to be very carefully
cited.
So we have a zone, CM2, that is very appropriate for these facilities, and it's obviously
it's also appropriate for connecting to a light rail that aligns with I-5.
So what the ordinance before you tonight defines transit facilities to be what we were all
texturing transit facilities meant, which were light rail stations could also be a significant
transit station, like a bus, depot, that kind of thing.
But it talks about operations and maintenance facilities and defines those as being something
great different.
And it zones those to be permitted in that CM2 district and not permitted in other zones.
So finally, I think it's safe to say that operations and maintenance facilities were pretty
contemplated at the time of the Mid-Waste of Area Plan, and so when we think about the goals
and there's many quotes throughout the plan that I've spared you this evening, but this is just one
of a safe urban place where buildings hugged the edge of generous sidewalks, and it's aesthetically pleasing sights and smells and sounds.
I don't think that anyone was picturing an operations and maintenance facility, and it would be very difficult to say that that would fit in with that environment.
So, to protect our MCR and MTC zones, to ensure that an OMF can be a benefit to our community,
which I truly believe it can be, to set the stage for a win-win project that meets the goals
of both agencies, and to meet this shared vision that our community so bought into.
This ordinance before tonight invites some transit to work with us to site a facility in our CM2 zone.
So, with that, I'd be happy to take any questions.
Council Member Thomas.
Thank you, Your Honor.
Would you go back to one of the earlier slides showing the south picture of a
lows?
I think it does.
So if I'm looking at that lows, the large building of the center,
where is Dix?
Right here.
Right down there.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Other questions?
Council Member Higgins.
Well, I'm not sure a question,
And so much first off, thank you Madam Mayor.
Thank you, Haley, for the presentation and I appreciate the administration for bringing
this forward and I'm very much in favor of it.
Less than I were here when we passed the midway sub-area plan.
I don't think Dana, you were-
I was on land planning.
Or landing planning at the time.
I can tell you what I was thinking at the time, which very much corresponds with your
description, Saley, that in that area within the walkshed of the light rail station itself,
that someday, and I remember sending Gloria, the lead planner, what was her last name?
Gloria, gold, Western.
I remember sending her an email saying, someday, when I'm 80 years old, Gloria, I want
to meet you up there next to the light rail station, and we'll have a cup of coffee and
walk around and enjoy what we just did in this area plan for midway.
The whole area is prime for high density, mixed use, development, including residential.
It's certainly not what we had in mind to put some big 30-acre train yard and it's
inconceivable that a public agency or the region would even conceive of doing such a thing
in a city like ours. And so I am so glad that we're taking this option. There are so many
better alternatives for a rail maintenance yard than in the middle of an area that the community
has a dream of re envisioning. So I would strongly urge your support of this.
Thank you. Any other questions? All right. With that, I would call for a motion.
Or just number 4305?
Is that okay? Go easy, D.C.
Thank you. I moved to adopt ordinance number 4305.
I'm bending title 15 of the Kent City Code to establish interim zoning for transit operations
maintenance facilities in the midway sub-area, setting a date for a public hearing, declaring
an emergency and providing for an immediate effective date for the ordinance.
Okay, have a motion.
The second.
Is there any discussion?
Hearing none.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries 7-0.
Thank you.
I would like to give some additional background in, and it likes an addition to Hayley's
So as you've heard, we were brought into this conversation back in November by sound transit after a significant amount of work was done on their part looking for locations.
There have been several sites identified in Kent, one being this property that is the home of Lowe's, the only hardware and home improvement store in that area.
And the brand new, just opened on December 12th to extract and along with other businesses.
The other site is the Midway Landfill that was the region's garbage dump for many, many years.
Has been capped and treated and measured and monitored and all of those things that would be required for construction to be done on such a property.
It's owned by Seattle Public Utilities.
It is a large piece of vacant property in our community that is begging for a use.
We have what I deem and I believe the action from this committee or from this council shows
a really, really bad choice and what we believe to be a really good choice for this operations
and maintenance facility.
Can't is not saying we don't want this in our backyard, that is not at all.
what we are saying is we've got a place that it's not appropriate because of the planning
that's been done for many, many years as Council Member Higgins talked about because
of the fact that we have viable, healthy, important businesses to the community and that
location were the first dicks driving in the South County.
And as you saw in our Chief Economic Development Officers report today, the lines are still
out in the street.
they're not able to utilize their entire parking lot
because the lines go out so far.
I have asked repeatedly that sound transit take
the lows and dicks site,
the one that the zoning was just made the change on,
off of the list of potential locations for their EIS process.
Sound transit put it on the list,
my ask is that they can take it off the list.
We have a viable alternative.
So, I am committing to this council, to the community, to do everything in my power to make sure that this site gets taken off the list.
The problem is, as if it makes it into this process, we're talking about two years that those property owners will, we held in limbo.
That redevelopment, new development, and their existing businesses will be in question as it works through the process.
That's not acceptable to this community.
We deserve better. We will demand better. Very, very willing to work with sound transit
on figuring out how we make the landfill site a win-win. It would be a fantastic use of that property.
So we will continue to have conversations with sound transit on this site.
There's a group of us going down to tour the operation and maintenance facility at 2am on Thursday morning.
So we are committed to making this process work, want to see it happen to am, right?
So you can meet us at my car at 1115.
This isn't us saying, no, this is us saying that they're just as a place for this facility.
So we will definitely keep you posted, have the support of the City Manager and
Des Moines, the mayor of Fejwai, Council Member Pete Vongrike, Bairbauer,
has sent a letter supporting our position and we will do everything we can to make sure
protect the land and the development that was envisioned by this council and this community many years ago.
So. Thank you.
All right. Councilmember Fincher. I wanted to thank you for leading this
for leading this effort to have that moved. They could move next door to literally next door.
Share a property of where they want to build now. I take this as a slight decant. They wouldn't do
in Bellevue and they didn't do that in Seattle.
So again, right next door.
Good point.
Thank you.
Okay.
We are going to move on to Bids.
We have three tonight.
The first one is the Lake Meridian Park Bathhouse Repair Project Bid, joining us once again as
our Park Director, Julie Paris-Condola.
Thank you, Mayor Council.
So as many of you know, last year we renovated the Lake Meridian Bathhouse and finally real
for the public for use on June 15th, and then two weeks later, unfortunately was damaged by
arson fire, not only the restrooms, but extended into the lifeguard office and storage area,
so obviously very critical to operations at the park in providing programs. On a side note, I
did just double-check with Chief Bedea. On the arson side, they did a rest of the event,
nine on a separate, couldn't directly find a link, so we still at this point don't know
how that happened. So that's just a side note for you. So immediately following the fire of what
we had we began working with the city's insurance carrier on what our path forward is on that.
We did contract with Miller Hayashi who was the original architect on the original to try and
speed that along since they had most of that going on. Very little changing from the original of
what we rebuilt, what we're doing, but we did do a few things. We're all the same interior fixtures
are similar to what was installed prior to the fire, building, plumbing and electrical
we replaced.
Largest change is going to be on the roof.
It's the overall same design, but it's going to be updated to meet current building code
and be insulated.
This is going to raise that roof height up a little bit about a foot, as well as adding two
skylights and a breezeway to add for more light and surveillance in that area.
I don't know if you've been out there.
We did obtain final approval from the insurance carrier to move forward forward forward
bidding and went through a public bidding process that did occur with bids opening on December
27th. We received three responsive bids. Engineers estimate was 550,000 are low bid by
eight to be builders with 610,311. 60,000 higher. We've looked at it at this point. It's a direct,
we believe a direct result of the competitive bid market right now. And that's, so we feel confident
moving forward. The insurance provider has approved that and what we're doing. So with the award of
tonight. The project has a little over a four month construction window, so we're really hoping
fingers crossed. We will be open by mid-June. Hopefully, and we'll be maintaining it out there.
Just a reminder, you know, the original renovation that we did first in June was an RCO funded grant
project. So we still have commitments to fill on that side of the house. We did get an extension
from our CO, that's through all the way of December 2019, so just to close the loop on that.
We do have an insurance expense, the deductible, if you will, and that's not really that,
a hundred thousand dollars, and then the insurance carrier covers the rest of the expense from
there as we move forward. So I'm happy to answer any questions from there.
All right, seeing none. Council member Fincher, did I motion? Yes, Madam Mayor. I moved to award the
We're reading in Park Bath House Repair Project to A to B Builders LLC and they mount
of $677,942 and 10 cents, including Washington State sales tax, and authorized the mayor
to sign on necessary documents, subject to final terms, and conditions acceptable to the city
attorney and parks director.
Have a motion.
A second.
Is there any discussion?
All right.
Seeing none.
All those in favor?
Hi.
Opposed?
Motion carries 70.
Thank you, Julie.
Just a quick note on that.
As we talked about this was an arson that occurred last year, I have to be at a conference
in Eastern Washington and got the news.
I do want to commend our parks department for jumping in, saving the day we had splash
coming up immediately after that.
And we brought in some alternative restroom facilities, figured out the work for the lifeguards, still were able to staff the lake for the summer.
It will be wonderful to be able to celebrate this one more time and have a permanent facility there.
The sea, the renovation.
It happened.
It happened that quickly, but thank you to all of the parks department for pulling together and making sure that our residents had as little impact as possible through this.
Thank you.
All right, the next bid we have is the Kent Valley Signal System Upgrade bid joining us is our public workstractor Tim Laport.
Thank you Mayor and Council members.
Very pleased to bring this to you in the effort of moving traffic along.
This project has been conceived some time ago by actually a Kelly Peterson and his staff.
And we're very pleased to move this forward, the next, let me get this thing going here.
The Kent Valley Signal System upgrade follows two or three phases that we've already completed.
The staff were able to get a $780,000,000 grant from the State DOT or through the State DOT.
That grant was received some months back putting the package together.
I was completed in December.
We did receive five beds.
The low-vitter was North East Electric out of Stonewich County.
We go a lot of work for the DOT, so we're very pleased to recommend a warning to them.
This also includes new fiber, which is shown in the red on this slide, includes new traffic
cabinets, and we will be installing new controllers at 20 intersections.
Again, the flashing yellow arrows that we are installing at the north end require essentially
a new brain to be able to add that function to it.
So this would complete the work that was envisioned a number of years ago to add flashing
yellow arrows for the signal system and the valley.
There's more work to do on the west till and the east till of course, but we are very
pleased to do this and do recommend awarding this work to them.
So with that, I'm here to take any questions.
I would like to make one slight correction in the motion.
One of the skrivener's error, the motion should read
northeast electric, as opposed to northeast
electrical.
The low biter, again, is northeast electric LLC.
Without I'm ready to take any questions, or I can go on to the next presentation.
Clear plug.
would you we can have to do the second presentation to both motions are there any questions
on this item. Council member Higgins. I just wanted to point out I don't know if you
mentioned but we did receive a grant that covers almost all of the cost of this. Yes
Kelly and his staff receive that grant about a number of months back. Yeah, it covers 780
2000 of it. Congratulations. We like those. We like those. All right. Okay, I'll move on to the next
presentation. Very different. It's regarding the
DeVort barne. We had quite a bit of history earlier today.
This barne is actually built around 1930. And it is located.
Here's another shot actually looking essentially north,
north west at the bottom right. But the existing barn is located
just a little bit north of the nursery that we have at the
Green of Natural Resources area. If you look at the photo on the
Unfortunately, the, unfortunately, the, you know, get this thing work, it's kind of darkening
or thing.
I'll just forget that.
At any rate, the levy will be going right through the location where the barn is currently
and so the barn would need to be moved.
At the time, when a city acquired this property, we did not realize it's historic significance.
We have work with members of the Historic Society and they're very pleased that we're able
to find a location or relocate it.
In addition to that, we're going to be using it
for barn purposes.
It's going to be part of the nursery area,
and so it's kind of like a match made, whatever.
I'm going to look at that.
At any rate, Jennifer is excited to have it
as part of the nursery facility.
It will also be in a protected location.
It'll be behind the lobby, recall that the lobby
on the front side of the barn is unstable,
which is why we have to set the lobby back to begin with.
So with that, we did solicit a number
beds. We received a couple of them and we do recommend ordering to the low beds. I can
please represent any questions on the barn. Tim Clark mentioned today that it was this effort
was spearheaded by a couple of our Kent residents that are very involved at the Historical Society
Sharon Brassos and Nancy.
Absolutely.
So, Nancy Simpson.
Thank you.
It's been a long night.
Thank you for the help there.
So, very, they were both very passionate about saving this piece of our history.
So, I feel like this is a good, a good win on all fronts.
Seeing no questions, is there a motion for, let's start with the, the first item?
Yes, Madam Mayor, I would move to award the Kent Valley Signal System Upgrade Project to
North East Electric LLC in the amount of $820,869 in authorized the Mayor to sign all necessary
documents, subject to final terms and conditions acceptable to the City Attorney and Public
Works Director.
Have a motion.
Second.
Any discussion?
Seeing none.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries 7-0.
All right.
Moving on to the barn.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I would move to award the Historic Divorac Barn Relocation Project to Nickel Brothers in the
amount of $159,494.50 and authorize the mayor to sign all necessary documents, subject
to final terms and conditions acceptable to the City Attorney and Public Works Director.
Second.
The motion.
The second.
Any discussion?
Seeing none.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries.
Seven.
Zero.
All right.
With that, we are at item number 11, which is executive session.
We have several items to discuss, falling into the categories of current or potential
litigation and property negotiations.
Executive session is expected to last 20, 25 minutes.
There will be no action after executive session.
And so with that, if we could get Council Chambers emptied out and we'll have Council going
to Executive Session, thank you.
Welcome back.
The Council has just finished Executive Session.
There is no action following that session this evening.
So with that, after a very long meeting, it is now 10.30, this meeting is adjourned.
Have a good evening.