[0:03] Good afternoon, everyone. I will now call to order the GetCarber City Council study session of Thursday, November 9, 2023, the time is 301 p.m. and I will call on our city clerk for a roll call.

[0:21] Mayor, Council member Barbara.

[0:23] Here.

[0:24] Council member Henderson.

[0:26] Here.

[0:27] Council member Leicons.

[0:29] Here.

[0:29] Council member Martin.

[0:31] Here.

[0:32] Council member Ronberg.

[0:33] Council Member Starset will be joining us later and Council Member Wolk.

[0:39] Here.

[0:41] Six of seven present.

[0:43] Okay yes and we will acknowledge Council Member Starset when he arrives.

[0:50] So our first discussion item is our introduction of our new Arts Commission appointee Barbara Blage.

[0:57] Hi Barbara, thanks for joining us this afternoon.

[1:00] Thank you, Mayor Berkeley. It's nice to be here.

[1:02] Yes, I wanted to first thank you so much for applying to be on the commission and just say if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and why you would like to serve on the arts commission.

[1:15] I've lived in Good Harbor for about 13 years now and I'm working artist and I've been here in Good Harbor but not had a chance to really immerse myself as much as I wanted to into the arts community.

[1:30] And so I'm originally from Chicago.

[1:34] I moved to Phoenix and with there many years and then came here.

[1:37] So I've been part of the art communities in both Chicago where I was born and raised and in Phoenix.

[1:44] So when I came to gig harbor, I fell in love with it.

[1:48] I have family here and we were able to move here.

[1:52] And so the time is right and I'm able to do more.

[1:56] and I'm really looking forward to being a part of the conversation for how arts is shaped

[2:02] in giga-cover. There's a lot of potential. We're a beautiful little town and I'm just

[2:08] real excited to be here. So thank you. Thank you so much. We're very excited to meet you and learn

[2:14] about you and appreciate you being here this afternoon. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

[2:21] All right, moving on to our second discussion item is our Logging Tax Grant Funding Recommendations, and this report will come to us from our city clerk, Josh Sticker.

[2:40] I looked up for my paper and I'm like, there's a, there's another missing person on the screen. So that's fine. No problem.

[2:48] Um, we're going to, we're still going to keep that I think the order of this. So, momentarily, I will find out where you would.

[2:59] It's, it's been about, it's like a tornado or a season around here, but like multiple ones popping up.

[3:06] You ever have one of those days? This is what this day has been like.

[3:10] So, I don't want to go into another direction and go to item 3 because Katrina has not

[3:17] long gone yet as well. So, if I could recess for two minutes so that I can figure out

[3:24] where what we need to do next, I would appreciate that. So, we will Tiffany, do you have the

[3:30] control of recording? Okay, so we will adjourn now at 305 and return at 307. Thank you for your

[3:39] standing council.

[3:43] We do technically need to wait, but it is three or seven. No, great. Thank you.

[3:46] Okay, I was like just about to go to the next minutes. Thank you Daniel for that for that. Okay,

[3:55] it is three or seven. Welcome back to the gay diversity council setting session of Thursday

[3:59] November 9th, 2023. And we are on our second item of discussion, which is the lodging tax grant

[4:06] funding recommendations, and this report will come to us from our city clerk, Josh Secker.

[4:11] All right. Thank you again, Mayor. Yeah. So this item before you is the recommendation for funding from

[4:19] lodging tax from the Logitech Advisory Commission. They met on September 28th. They reviewed 16

[4:25] applications for funding. They settled on 10 of them that they thought were able to be recommended for

[4:32] this year. The packet contains a spreadsheet which shows the amount for each application that the group

[4:40] recommended that we fund and has for council for your review comment and changes.

[4:48] Just really quick, council has the ability to elect to either fund or not fund any application

[4:54] that has been recommended. Council has the ability to fund any of these applications at a different

[5:00] amount. But what Council cannot do is they cannot fund an application that was not recommended

[5:06] for funding. So the six applications that were not recommended for funding by the group,

[5:11] Council does not have the option to decide to fund those. And it changes that Council wants

[5:17] to make, we need to go back to LTCH and just make them aware of the changes and get their

[5:21] comments. They have 45 days to review those and report back with any comments concerns they

[5:27] might have, and then at that point, Calso can take whatever action that chooses on those applications.

[5:35] The fiscal considerations for this coming into this 2024 year, which is what we're looking

[5:42] out for these applications. There was approximately a double checkment number as a mixture I've got

[5:47] correct here. Approximately 828,000 available to allocate. Earlier this year, Council awarded

[5:56] 500,000 of that to the Chamber for their tourism promotion efforts. So that left us with

[6:03] 328,000 available. These recommendations from the Commission total about 289,000. So that

[6:11] is pretty close to the amount that was the full amount that was available to allocate. Our finance

[6:17] director can weigh in, but that leaves us with an ending fun balance of about 40,000, which is

[6:25] kind of in the range you're comfortable for him or making sure we have operational funds in there

[6:30] throughout the year. We do have a little bit of wiggle room that we have, we've seen increased revenues

[6:38] in lodging tax this year, about what we expected, probably due to the tune of 10 or 20,000 so far.

[6:43] So that gives us a little more cushion to work with, but we're kind of still in the range of

[6:48] being comfortable with what's available to be allocated and what we've recommended here.

[6:53] So with that, the applications for each application was linked to the original lodging tax

[6:59] packet. So hopefully you got a chance to review those if you're interested in seeing what each group

[7:03] is applying for, but at this point, it's open for council's discussion and direction on how they would like to proceed with funding.

[7:12] Great. Thank you, Josh. Council member, Robert.

[7:16] Yes, one thing I just wanted to add was that new this year for the LTCH was we instituted a scoring guideline for the committee and what we did because this was relatively this was new for everyone,

[7:32] But the applications were reviewed by each member of LTAC based on that scoring, and that is what we use to help us to figure out what money went where.

[7:45] And so there was there was a consistent review process for each of these, which is something that if you remember from last year we discussed as being something important to add to the process.

[7:59] So we will probably be refining that this year, but I wasn't part last year, but it seems to go a lot more smoothly than what I understood happened in previous years.

[8:13] Great, thank you for explaining that. That's great.

[8:18] I don't see any hands raised from council. Do you have any comments or questions for Josh or, and I guess if not, then Josh, what direction are you seeking?

[8:29] from Council, just approval of what they see before them, and then this will come before them

[8:34] at the Monday Night Council meeting.

[8:37] Yes, so this will come back as a resolution for Council to officially authorize the mayor to enter

[8:43] into grant agreements for each of these, anticipated probably come back at the December 11 Council meeting.

[8:52] Because there's no changes we don't have a 45-day waiting period and we can just make those

[8:57] So if there are no other changes or requests from council, that's the direction we would go.

[9:04] Okay, council member, look.

[9:08] Thank you.

[9:09] I just want to say that listening to this meeting, it's not easy to come up with these amounts for these groups.

[9:17] I certainly appreciate the work that was done and the amounts that they came up with before the group.

[9:25] So I think it's a good thing.

[9:26] Thank you.

[9:27] Thank you. Council member Henderson?

[9:31] Hope you're muted.

[9:37] Okay.

[9:38] Add a question on the...

[9:41] All the folks are all the organizations that ended up in the Grey Zone.

[9:46] Did they not request anything this year?

[9:48] Like, for instance, the Korean festival.

[9:54] I see that they're in the Grey Zone, but they've been funded relatively well over the last couple years.

[10:00] did they not apply or because I see some zeros obviously for others. So maybe

[10:08] do we know what the gray meant? Yeah, the gray zone, those are applicants to apply

[10:14] in pastures, but did not apply this year. Okay. Yeah. So like the Korean

[10:19] that you said, festival, I believe they were funded last year, but not did not

[10:24] they didn't apply this year so they weren't considered. Okay, so they just didn't flat out

[10:28] apply. All right, good. Thank you. The white requested column in 2024 is all of the requested

[10:34] funding that was there.

[10:40] Okay. Well, you know, seeing no other hands, I will just ask Council

[10:46] to just raise your hand if you're good with what you see here and then we'll move that to a resolution.

[10:51] Okay, perfect. Great. Thank you so much.

[10:58] All right, moving on to our third discussion item,

[11:01] which is our levied lead lift direction, and this report will come to us from our finance

[11:06] director, Dave Rodenbach, and I think City Administrative Newsom will also be tag teaming on this one.

[11:13] Thank you, Mayor. I am going to go ahead and jump in first. I just want to thank Council for

[11:19] review of our mid-Bino budget review as well as the many questions that you have respectfully asked

[11:26] of us since the agenda for this meeting was posted. I know it's not the most popular

[11:30] topic to discuss, but it is one of high priorities for the council as it is one of your main

[11:36] roles within the city government structure to look at budgeting for the city. I want you to know

[11:43] Tracy, Dave and myself we take the city's finances very seriously and we every day strive to spend our precious tax dollars on items that are beneficial to all of our residents and further the council's bulls and objectives.

[12:01] You may know that in my first the first year and a half that I have been in this role we have really focused on wellness engagement and staff morale.

[12:11] Also, you know that we have been looking at our budget, both our current budget and long-term revenue streams as we seek to fund the city and have fiscal responsibility into our future.

[12:26] Just a little bit of a trip in the way back machine.

[12:30] If you remember in 2022 as we're prepping the budget,

[12:33] you may recall that staff we proposed a 5% reduction

[12:39] to the 2022 budget revenues in 2023.

[12:45] And we then for 2024 assumed a flat line from 23 into 2024.

[12:52] This was in, if you take go back to where we were in summer of 2022, that was prior to the unprecedented inflation that our country has seen over this amount of time, we were not.

[13:08] yet I don't believe hit the first interest rate increase. We still had a strong real estate market.

[13:14] We still had strong permitting revenues coming in. However, we did see the first little player of a

[13:24] a problem brewing in our in real estate and those transactions in general. And so we assumed a

[13:32] five percent reduction of those in 23 and assumed a flat line of 23 into 24.

[13:38] And day we'll get into this a little bit more in his presentation.

[13:44] I also want you to note here, and Council Member Henderson spends out to all council members

[13:51] after he attended a luncheon, the legislative luncheon with the Association of Washington

[13:56] Cities.

[13:57] And this is something also that the mayor and I learned at the A to B, C conference this

[14:00] there is that cities across our state are all in the situation that the city finds itself

[14:06] in now with general fund revenues drying up or not keeping up with expenditures.

[14:12] And so I just want to briefly share my screen from that the A to D C materials and note to

[14:23] Council that the Association of Washington City has noted that city's need funding in order to carry out our very vital functions with general fund revenue that is in particular criminal justice safety the police.

[14:39] It's also the court, it is also parks and street maintenance, and everybody within community development, so building fire, planning, boat enforcement.

[14:52] Dave will get a little bit more into this, but in the 90s, Washington City's were capped at 6%.

[15:00] Of for property tax growth. And then later in the 2000s under Tim I'm in those initiatives, we've

[15:08] were then limited to 1% each year. And Dave will show you those limited funds and what that has

[15:15] been for the city over the last couple of years. And what that means for us. But in this document,

[15:21] it talks about the city, you know, we need to have funding that is assured to the city in order for

[15:27] to maintain the functions that we've provided. They did a public opinion survey that was commissioned

[15:35] at the end of 2022 and 72% of those in the state of like the voters so that they would support

[15:43] a modification to state law to allow cities to go up to 3% of property tax,

[15:51] which, again, that would help the cities, especially those like ours that have grown so substantially.

[16:00] I want to get further down here, 82% of cities report the increased cost of city services are concerned in their community,

[16:07] and that they're essentially cutting costs and cutting programs from their cities because of lack of funding.

[16:14] And then here you can see and we already know this based on our budget that public safety

[16:19] are police very important part of our city staff take up quite a bit of our general fund budget.

[16:29] So I share this with council, you may be asking yourself is this something that the city has done.

[16:35] Have we been not utilizing our funds properly and I'm happy to answer that that is not the case that the city has been very.

[16:43] responsible with its funds, that we have added where we need to, and we have retracted as needed.

[16:52] Geek Harbor has been trending this way for quite some time.

[16:54] Geek Harbor has been trending this way for quite some time.

[16:55] Geek Harbor has been here for with with the city for quite some time.

[16:59] Geek has noted this for quite a while that this 1% arbitrary, or this 1% cap,

[17:05] would eventually catch up to the city of Geek Harbor just as it has,

[17:08] for many other, or most of our sister cities.

[17:13] For the city of Dick Harbor, we are having this hit us now

[17:16] at a different time than some cities

[17:18] because we have had such a strong economy

[17:22] with real estate and development.

[17:25] Our development revenues have been very high, as we note,

[17:30] and have been turning our general fund.

[17:33] As we know, we have a slower growth policy

[17:37] that we're going into that we're currently in as well as going into with the

[17:41] comp plan. And so noting that Dave and I with and Tracy Jeff Harrell we've

[17:48] looked at our budget and if we are slowing growth and having much less homes

[17:52] built we need to look at our budget and adjust accordingly. And that's part of why

[17:59] we're here today.

[18:03] Essentially the city needs just your additional funds in order to

[18:09] In order for us to continue to be able to respond to all of the calls for service, the calls that we get daily of this needs to be mode, this needs to be patched.

[18:20] We need to be able to staff those positions.

[18:24] Some other information that I just briefly want to point out and some of this may come as a shock to some of it did to me as well.

[18:32] The city of Descarber has not increased its lobby since 1980.

[18:40] 1980, we have not gone to the voters and asked for an increase of general taxes.

[18:47] Our proportion of the tax that were allowed to collect is a very small proportion compared to some of our other taxing districts in the community.

[18:57] I just want to say I am an old millennial so bear with me I tried to put together this visual

[19:03] I'll show you it is not the best. So but I think it will get the point across.

[19:10] And essentially

[19:11] what I've done here if you can see it is you can see there's a dollar behind here. This is the

[19:19] property tax distribution of $8 of taxes and where the money was in that dollar of taxes goes.

[19:26] So for every dollar that our residents pay, 29 cents of that goes to the State of Washington.

[19:35] 21.5 cents goes to Peninsula's full district, 23.5 cents goes to fire and EMS,

[19:43] which for those that may not know, I know all the council knows, but the fire district is not within the city.

[19:49] They are a separate entity and we are wonderful great partners with them, but that does not come to the city.

[19:54] Here's County receives $9.37 of that dollar.

[19:59] The city, we receive $8.9 of the dollar,

[20:03] and then the last three, the library court

[20:05] and flood insurance that goes to the county,

[20:08] those are the remainder.

[20:10] But I think there is a big misconception in the community

[20:13] that their taxes when they get that bill,

[20:16] that that money comes to the city.

[20:18] I'm sitting, why can't you fund your programs

[20:21] with this much money?

[20:22] And so to that, I think we have a little bit of duty to provide education,

[20:31] but also that it our taxes, it is quite a lot, especially for people that are on a fixed income.

[20:38] And so being able to describe to them where their taxes go and that yes, if you think all that comes to the city, then we would be, we would have a lot of money flushes put it that way.

[20:49] But unfortunately, as you can see here in the green of every dollar that is paid in property taxes, the city only receives 8.9 cents.

[21:02] The last thing that I would like to just say before I turn it over to date to get into a little bit of the specifics is that there are a number of things that we have already done.

[21:11] within this budget, so that if we are not in emergency in 2023 and we are not in emergency in 2024.

[21:22] We have 10 positions that we are currently holding that are frozen in various departments.

[21:29] The first thing that I did was an administrative decision in February when we had a trend of development permits not coming in.

[21:36] We did not hire an associate planner as building inspectors have left.

[21:41] We have not filled those, there's a community development assistant that is currently open.

[21:46] Those savings are shown in your mid-Bayonial budget review.

[21:49] So that's not an additional something that can be added to that.

[21:54] To that any fundons, we have already done that.

[21:57] Additionally, we're holding off on a senior accountant on a communication position for right now wherever that ends up becoming as well as an engineering project manager and an NPDS coordinator.

[22:15] Besides the police, the one position that we have had go forward is our Housing Health and Human Services Program Manager, and that position is over half funded by opening settlement dollars, and partially by utilities for the utility billing work that are each three is doing, so that position does not have a high reliance on general fund and has a high benefit to achieving the council's adopted strategic plan.

[22:43] Therefore, we went forward with that position, other than that, my directive to HR and the directors has been to go forward with hiring the police officers.

[22:56] As of Monday, we are now back to pre retirement levels, and we have been having a third day of oral boards for both entry level as well as lateral and exceptional candidates.

[23:10] So, it is, if I knock on wood, hopefully if possible, will be up to the full staffing levels in the P.D. soon.

[23:20] The last thing I wanted to mention besides the reduction in staff or the holding of positions that we are doing, of course, that needs to be balanced with the 50% of staff that say that they regularly have more work to do.

[23:34] Then they have time for and so in that name we will be coming to you at your next council meeting requesting that council prioritize capital projects.

[23:46] So that we can determine what is the highest priority of council and definitely work and put our energy toward achieving those and potentially move some of those well not potentially will request to move some projects to the 2526 budget.

[24:01] As we have a lower amount of staff now, we're needing to adjust our priorities and we definitely want to make sure that we are

[24:10] effectuating all of the projects that are important to council as the policy makers and so we look forward to that discussion.

[24:18] With that, there's only one capital project that is relying on general fund money and that has not been the case in any other budget that I can think of.

[24:30] The only project that is relying on capital funds is the HFAC system for the Civic Center.

[24:37] And as we know that is estimated at $2.2 million and we have provided council some options of how we could pay for that differently so that it would give us some

[24:50] at just some leeway, a one year leeway on some of those funds, and we'll have you to talk about that

[24:59] later time. The important thing to remember there is that that is a one time expenditure that isn't a

[25:05] $2.2 million that will be coming in every year that we can utilize, right? It's

[25:11] but it would allow us kind of some a pressure relief valve if you will, if we're able to pay that off

[25:16] over 20 years versus spending $2.2 million in 2024.

[25:21] But other than that, none of our capital projects

[25:24] right now are assigned general fund dollars.

[25:28] They are assigned HVZ, REIT, Park Impact,

[25:31] these transportation impact, these transportation benefit,

[25:35] district or based on GFC charges, utility charges.

[25:41] For some of them that are, for utility purposes,

[25:44] But I know I've heard throughout the community, well, don't do X project and fund your police. Unfortunately, we're not in that position. Those funds cannot be used for staff.

[25:58] So we have done everything that we can administratively to solve this, which is why we're coming to you the policymakers to begin this discussion and request that we lift our levy.

[26:12] I know that there's going to be a lot of questions about this, that this is a process.

[26:17] Again, it has not been done since 1980,

[26:22] and they've traced to you the entire executive team.

[26:25] We are committed to providing you all the information that you need.

[26:30] We are requesting February ballot date, which I know will be an item up for discussion.

[26:38] But essentially we need to go out and have this past sometime in 2024 in order to be able to budget appropriately for 25 26 because the budget will look much different if we have this versus if we do not.

[26:59] if we're not able to rely on this is what I should say.

[27:03] Council member Henderson?

[27:05] Thanks.

[27:07] Thank you.

[27:08] Keeping at it like a 30,000 foot level, you know,

[27:13] we're today's discussions about the levy lift, property tax levy lift.

[27:19] What other income streams to the city could we have looked at since,

[27:26] for instance, the sales tax increase or instituting a BNO tax, you know, maybe it may be a

[27:35] sliding scale, it could be, you know, exempting some of the small businesses, something like

[27:40] that, I mean, it sounds like we're putting all our eggs into one levy lift property tax,

[27:46] levy lift, maybe you can explain whether these other revenue sources could be increased or

[27:54] would than money not help us at all. I certainly fully understand that we've got accounts

[28:00] that we can't get into and transfer money as what we did when I worked for the federal government.

[28:05] You got certain accounts and you can't touch them, whether they're flush for the money and you're

[28:08] broken the other. Sorry, I think we're in the same slot. So these are the two revenue sources,

[28:15] the B&O tax and sales tax increase. Can you mention maybe why those might not be looked at

[28:23] why we weren't looking at them? Great question. Dave I don't want to steal his thunder too much,

[28:30] so he'll he'll go into it further. But essentially the big buckets that we're looking at for

[28:35] general fund revenue or the BNO stocks, sales tax and property tax. And for good harbor we do not

[28:41] have a BNO tax. Our sales tax is one of the lowest around we know. But Dave park we have

[28:48] But we are at the maximum that we can go unless it's for a specific purpose.

[28:53] That's correct.

[28:56] And then property taxes, again, we have not had those increased since 1980 and we are

[29:01] statutory.

[29:03] We can go to 160 if allowed by the voters.

[29:06] Dollar 60 per thousand.

[29:08] And we're at what 72 cents state.

[29:11] About 70 is more projecting for next year.

[29:13] 70 per thousand.

[29:15] So we're less than half of what the statutory allowance is for property tax.

[29:23] We have been talking internally.

[29:25] We do believe that a levy-led lift reset to a number,

[29:30] whether we want to talk with council about what that is.

[29:33] There are several options for sales tax that we could consider

[29:38] and we may need to look at a number of alternatives

[29:41] So that, you know, it's especially if the council believes that one $1.30 is to high.

[29:48] Perhaps we could look at, and we'll get into this a little bit later, but perhaps we look at 110 and go after a sales tax increase for the public safety sales tax that we can do.

[29:59] Eight of these

[30:00] In the legislative session, in January, is going to be requesting that they allow a .2 sales tax for public safety, councilmanically, so that would be an option that would get net us what 2 million roughly do.

[30:16] two point two to two point four, yes. And so if the AWC is successful, then that would be a larger component of solving our problem. So we can utilize that on our police and essentially utilize any of those additional funds elsewhere within the organization, but definitely we believe even with that 2 million for the police in order to sustain operations without reduction in service.

[30:45] we would need some sort of wood lift.

[30:48] You've been quiet on the B&O tax.

[30:51] Is that enough revenue or it could that not be used for general fun?

[30:55] If it can't be used for general fun stuff, then that's fine.

[30:58] I get it.

[30:59] It's very unpopular.

[31:01] I would say.

[31:02] I think any tax increases not popular right now.

[31:06] Right.

[31:07] So they, I don't know if you want to mention talk about B&O.

[31:10] person. I don't know a whole lot about B&O, but I do know there's last I looked

[31:15] there's like 40-ish cities in the state that have B&O,

[31:21] and all my time here

[31:23] anytime you even peep the word B&O tax out of your lips. Everybody jerks to

[31:30] attention and doesn't like it. And the the past concept here at the city is

[31:36] And if we impose a VNO tax, the business will leave and just go out into the unincorporated.

[31:44] Times change, I don't know if I don't know if now is right or not to do a VNO.

[31:49] And certainly you can do various VNOs.

[31:52] You could do a VNO just on retailing or you could add in services.

[31:57] So your attorneys, your doctors and all that kind of deal.

[32:01] And what you're going to hear is how unpopular VNO is because it's on gross receipts.

[32:05] as opposed to profits.

[32:09] Okay, and other than that, I don't know a lot about it.

[32:13] I have no idea how much money it would bring into the city.

[32:17] And so kind of marching forward based on pardon?

[32:20] That's something that we can look into and provide that information to Council.

[32:24] Certainly, we can dig that out somehow.

[32:29] But it's been hugely unpopular.

[32:30] I would almost suggest maybe a survey as far as if we were looking to go down that way

[32:37] because it's very controversial, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't consider it and maybe

[32:41] maybe do it.

[32:43] Thank you. That would be useful. I mean, I think we need to look at all revenue streams and some we can dismiss.

[32:50] So, may not be popular, but again, I don't know if any levy or tax increase is going to be popular.

[32:56] even a sales tax increase. People are going to say, gee, it hurt me. I can guarantee you that

[33:02] a levy lift is going to be very unpopular, because people are saying, I just can't afford it.

[33:06] And then we, you know, one other thing we have to kind of think about is that's going to get passed

[33:11] on to the ranchers. And that's going to make things even less affordable and gig Harbor. We're already

[33:16] on affordable as it is to pass on that. It's going to be rough. So I thank you for looking at it.

[33:27] I think at a time when we're trying to revitalize downtown, we're trying to attract businesses,

[33:36] it's not so much businesses we will lose, which we will.

[33:40] But I think no B&O tax goes a long way in attracting businesses, and that's what we've said in our initiatives that we want to do.

[33:50] So, I'm adamantly against a B&O tax of any amount.

[33:56] Thank you.

[33:57] Mayor, we can, we'll definitely pull the B&O tax just so that Council would have what that,

[34:03] what that estimate would be.

[34:05] Yeah.

[34:06] And we can also pull after this, which we began to do, but there was another urgent matter

[34:12] that took us off of that looking at what a dollar 30 would be over time,

[34:17] I know we have but we can look at that with point one public safety sales tax as well so that we can maybe hone down better on if we can make a property tax lower and then offset that with sales.

[34:29] So we'll make sure that we get that data.

[34:32] to you all.

[34:34] Mary, if I'd there may be one more thing that I'd like to address,

[34:37] come to remember Henderson's question.

[34:39] I have met with each division within the city about this budget

[34:43] and about kind of what we're going to be talking with council about.

[34:46] We know that once things come to you, they become public

[34:49] and you know, we wanted to make sure that people knew that we're not looking at

[34:54] a layoffs furloughs in 23 or 24

[34:57] and we're looking at these resolutions.

[34:59] in those meetings, our staff have provided some other potential revenue options.

[35:05] They aren't the babies that would be necessarily a something we could guarantee,

[35:10] but we're looking forward to bringing some of those to you. For instance, planning and

[35:14] development fees, they have not been, they've been raised one time over the last 15 years of 3%.

[35:21] And we have one of the lowest if not the lowest business license fee of $40 flat.

[35:29] So that's $40 if you're renting a haircut or a chair at a hairplace or if you're the hospital.

[35:36] And so we, as a city, utilize those funds to pay the fire district who conducts our fire inspections.

[35:45] So the staff asks, is it fair that the hairdresser of one chair is paying the same amount for this as the hospital when it takes five days to inspect the hospital and it takes five minutes to inspect my chair at the hair salon?

[35:59] So I will say that our staff have been very thought into this and are looking at those fees and we're looking to put a task force of staff together to provide a recommendation to council.

[36:10] Yes, thank you. I'm very grateful that they're doing that.

[36:13] Councilmember Leckens.

[36:16] Yes, thank you.

[36:18] Just a quick comment on the B&O tax.

[36:21] I don't know if it's possible just when you're gathering the data.

[36:26] I believe I'm trying to remember I had a consulting business.

[36:31] There are some cities that have a B&O tax,

[36:34] but it only applies if your growth process exceed a certain amount.

[36:40] So, that places like costum, for example, not to call out costum, but some of the big box stores.

[36:50] You know, to have a small B&O tax on some of those bigger stores, but only make it for stores that have large profits.

[36:58] So that our smaller downtown businesses are smaller community businesses, maybe aren't taxed.

[37:04] and is that in legal options, and maybe what that might look like because they're making a lot of money

[37:14] I assume the big box stores, it seems like they have a lot of traffic, you know, a lot of

[37:21] is there a way or can we treat them differently? That would be interesting to see.

[37:25] Great, we'll get that information back to you. Great, thank you.

[37:29] Sorry Dave, if you're stealing your thunder.

[37:33] Council Member Barber.

[37:35] I agree with both what Council Member Rodenberg and what Council Member

[37:39] Lichens just said about the B&O tax.

[37:42] And I was also going to ask and I think this is where Katrina was going to.

[37:46] We let Dave give his presentation and then we go back and do more comments.

[37:51] I think that's a great idea.

[37:52] Although I won't call on Council Member Rodenberg because he just got his hand up at the last second.

[37:58] I like the idea, if it works out to be a site increase in the sales tax, if we could do that,

[38:06] that gets people from outside of Geek Harbor to helping us pay for the items that they utilize

[38:13] in Geek Harbor.

[38:14] Our roads, our streets, all that kind of thing are police, so it's kind of spreading the responsibility

[38:21] to people.

[38:23] So that's something for all of us to keep in mind when we get to that discussion.

[38:29] Great. Thank you for that.

[38:32] Okay, Dave. Take it away.

[38:34] Well, thank you. You're not going to let me get off Scott free, huh?

[38:36] No.

[38:37] I'm just sitting here to turn off the screen and eat.

[38:40] Part of my presentation has been taken already.

[38:44] We pretty much, I wanted to discuss the concept of funds available and not available.

[38:48] And for the most part, the only revenue is Katrina's already touched on this, the only revenue is available for us for general purposes, and when we talk general fund, we're talking general fund, general government, general fund and street operating.

[39:02] So remember, this is our whole street program, except for capital, you know, this construction of streets.

[39:08] So, you know, so this is general funded, everything the general fund does, public safety, community

[39:13] development, administration and the various functions we have, and that's what we're talking

[39:19] about is the livelihood of those functions that we're doing.

[39:23] And the capital monies, I mean, we have a ton of money and re-impact fees HPZ and six months

[39:29] into this budget, three months into this budget, Jeff went and reallocated and we pulled

[39:34] almost every impact off of the general fund.

[39:36] And so the general fund is laid bare.

[39:41] And one thing Katrina tacitly avoided saying was,

[39:45] the most part, if we have to go into a reduction,

[39:49] cutting costs in 25, it's going to hit the police department severely.

[39:54] There's no way around that.

[39:56] And it's not the throw stones or anything in any one function or anything,

[40:01] but the way we charge the general fund,

[40:05] court, community development, and above the safety are 100% charged to general fund.

[40:12] The other functions are allocated out, like I believe I'm 40, maybe 60% including

[40:19] streets, impact to the general fund, and we try to do it transactually by expenditures on

[40:26] like how much water impacts the city, we allocate to water that much overhead.

[40:31] So, this is a huge, huge issue that we're talking about.

[40:38] And Mike was said, oh, this was also said, and I'll give some more details on this, available revenue sources, property text.

[40:44] Property text has grown. We did a little exercise and revenue is 101 back in 2015.

[40:52] And back then, property taxes were 18% of the general fund revenues.

[40:56] Now, they're 20% of this current biennial budget through 24.

[41:01] sales taxes were 44% back then now they're 51% and I think this is anecdotally I haven't

[41:11] analyzed the details of the sales tax receipts but we're tracking to about a $700,000

[41:18] decline in sales tax I think that 700 is the huge chunk of it is just development okay and so that's

[41:27] impact of development flowing through the sales taxes. And development has always been

[41:32] 15 to 23% as I recall of total sales tax. And so certainly it's not 20 because 20% of our

[41:42] 18 million would be 3.6 and we're not looking at that kind of a loss. We're not tracking there.

[41:47] And so the big change that I see in the pie chart that I did permits and charges, permits and charges

[41:53] back in 2015-2016, we're 13% of budget, and we're talking about the revenue budget.

[42:01] This year for this biennium, and this is with the adjusted numbers that we're tracking to lower,

[42:07] permits are 5% of the revenues.

[42:12] And so what's happened over all these years with the sales

[42:15] taxes is growth has been masking the impact to us, and we've been able to skirt past that

[42:22] And not deal with it and it's kind of something I've seen dealing with all my peers over the last 20 years at other cities

[42:29] They've had all these problems and I would kind of sit in the corner towering keep my mouth shut because we never had those problems

[42:36] And we were looking at double digit growth in sales taxes and development fees were covering all of development and the activities we were doing there and everything was going great

[42:47] So, what I pulled together, I'll share my screen here, let's see, oops, did that too soon.

[42:56] Let's see.

[42:58] And then what do I want to pull up?

[42:59] Well, you're pulling those up.

[43:00] If I may, and I see councilmember like this has our hand up.

[43:03] May I just reach?

[43:08] Go ahead.

[43:09] Okay.

[43:10] When Dave says the impacts are going to be to the police, what they've means by that is we've already

[43:16] community development is already down six positions. They are at the barebones level where right now

[43:23] where if they were to reduce further we would have significant level of service reductions

[43:28] and we would need to look at what I hesitate to say what but they are reduced significantly right now.

[43:39] So what Dave means is our court, you know we have four three and a half positions down there

[43:47] The largest portion of the pie, the general fun pie, is the police, and so if we were to have to reduce, it would be very difficult not to have a reduction there.

[43:59] And tells them they're like, and should we take, Mary, can we take her question first?

[44:03] It's a really quick question.

[44:05] Yeah, as long as it's related to this.

[44:06] Oh yeah, it's a super quick question.

[44:08] So when you talk about development, you used to be of the 20% of the failed text.

[44:14] Are you talking about the tax when, for example, a home was bought or a property was sold?

[44:21] Is that the sales tax you're talking about?

[44:23] I'm just trying to understand development sales tax, what that means.

[44:28] What a, when a builder orders the lumber package to, to build the home or whatever,

[44:33] that is taxed and sales taxed and, and so it's what goes into the home or the project.

[44:40] So it's what goes in that's purchased by the builder that's gone down.

[44:48] So here's the screen I'm going to share and this we're going to talk property tax now. Can can you all see this?

[44:56] Okay, so when we talk property taxes we're always going to be confused.

[45:00] We're never going to totally understand them, and I've been doing it 26 years and I have to rethink it every year. But we have two things we're talking about with property taxes. First is the levy amount. The levy amount is what you're going to see Monday night. We're going to ask for 3.4 something million dollars. That's the city's levy. That's the amount we're talking about that's hurting us. We can only raise that 1% per year. 1% of what we're allowed to raise, 1% of the highest levy since 85,

[45:29] is about $35,000, $35,000, and you saw in the memo what a police officer costs. If we

[45:38] wanted to add one position, that covers what 0.54 of a police officer, just this year. And so,

[45:47] we're looking at a total $83,000 increase, so why the difference? Well, we get to throw in new

[45:53] construction, and new construction makes out the rest of that difference. So it's about 36,000 and

[46:00] and then for new construction,

[46:02] and then we have a little bit of levee for refunds.

[46:05] The levee rate is the mechanism used to distribute

[46:10] the property tax liability to the property.

[46:15] You know, so you take the, it's a bunch of math,

[46:18] but you take the levee of 3.4,

[46:20] you divide it by the total assessed valuation

[46:22] for the city and you come up with a dollar amount

[46:25] per thousand dollars of assessed valuation

[46:27] to city property.

[46:29] The chart you see here, what I did was I took since 1912, since 2020, I took the change in property tax from year to year, and I compared that to the change in public safety expenditures year to year.

[46:50] And so the blue line is the annual property tax increase and the orange line is just the police department.

[47:00] That's the annual increase year to year of police department expenditures.

[47:06] And that's just one thing.

[47:07] I wanted to try to keep it simple to illustrate a point on how the city is falling behind.

[47:12] this is how we, you know, so for 20 years, this has been happening,

[47:16] cost are going up revenues for property tax can go up 1%

[47:21] cost are going up 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, you know, whatever percent much higher.

[47:26] And so we're sliding down. And I believe the property tax rate in 2013 was about

[47:32] a buck 40 before that it was down below a dollar.

[47:36] And it went up a little bit and what causes the property tax rate to go up is

[47:40] and property values go down.

[47:43] Okay, so we had the Great Recession in 2008,

[47:47] and we went down for several years,

[47:49] and so the rate goes up.

[47:52] And so you might say we're a victim of our own success here,

[47:56] because we have an environment where property values are increasing,

[48:01] and with the property values increasing, the rate is going down.

[48:06] Yet the needs are going up,

[48:08] And this is compounding year after year after year.

[48:11] And so what you're going to see when you look in the packet in the general fund six year forecast,

[48:23] that's what this is illustrating. This is illustrating how the city's ongoing revenues are not keeping up

[48:29] with the increases and expenditures. And so without doing an LTGO for the HVAC,

[48:38] In 2024, we're probably okay.

[48:40] We're a little bit higher than we budgeted for ending fun balance.

[48:43] It's a little bit lower than we would like.

[48:46] You know, we probably would like to be at 2.5 million in a perfect world.

[48:51] But we're coming in at less than 2.1 to me and 50, maybe.

[48:56] But we could live with that.

[48:57] The problem is, then when you get to 25, we're almost a million dollars negative.

[49:05] And then if you go to 26, which would be the end of that, by an year, more 5.6 million negative.

[49:13] And so it's a trend that we, you just can't buck it.

[49:18] And so one reason to go to the property tax is, we're given those three mechanisms to raise money.

[49:25] Sales tax, being no tax, property tax.

[49:29] And we're given a dollar 60 property tax rate as the legal maximum.

[49:34] And we're levying 70 cents,

[49:39] okay, so we've, we, we've slid and there's a lot of capacity there and property taxes are probably for the city the most stable source of funding that we could have because the property values do not fluctuate as readily as the sales taxes can go down in a recession and they when they do go down, they don't go down that much.

[50:05] But for full disclosure, the problem I see with property taxes, by the way, is when you get into a recession,

[50:13] the city's 3.4 million that we levy still goes up by 1%, and gets divided out amongst the property,

[50:21] and the rate goes up, and then the homeowners paying more in the recession.

[50:26] I mean, that's just one of the way they work, and it just is what it is.

[50:32] Dave, I'm so very, very, very quickly.

[50:35] There's one thing I was remiss in saying in my opening remarks that I think is really important here.

[50:40] Dave's talking about the historical significance of this and how, you know, growth, et cetera.

[50:47] It's really important, a very key component to this.

[50:51] As we talked about growth, our population has doubled since 2006.

[50:56] We were, you know, 6,500 ish, then we're at 13,200 people in 2020 free.

[51:06] Our staff, we are relatively the same amount of staff that we were.

[51:13] I believe maybe 10 additional staff members.

[51:18] And so when we look at, when we look at all of the growth, all the parts that we've purchased,

[51:25] developed the pipelines that we've created, the sidewalks that we've created, the roads that we've created,

[51:33] looking at the sports complex phase 1B that's coming on board, right? The art. Our community

[51:40] has grown, the community need has grown. I'm sure you've heard it because we hear it all the time.

[51:46] You need to maintain your infrastructure and, by the way, pursue criminals, which we're trying.

[51:51] and that's a whole, another story. But those are really the two biggest things here, that we here

[51:59] complaints, that complaints up. So we've doubled our population and our staff has barely increased

[52:04] since that doubling of population. The other thing is, and I'm waiting for current figures from

[52:10] the future sound regional council, but our daytime population rises to over 20,000 people.

[52:16] So I know I've said this in a council meeting before, but when we sleep for about 13,000 during the

[52:21] We've fluctuated between 20,000 to 25,000, but with all the workers that come in, all the people that come into

[52:27] utilize our hospitals, our hospital and medical facilities, shop at Costco, et cetera, from keeping

[52:33] insolent, getting our uninterpreted, to keep our report orchard from our tensile video, where we are that hub.

[52:39] And that is important to look at when we're talking about our police department, which sets us apart from some other cities.

[52:46] people may say 21 commission officers, wow, that's really high for 13,000 people.

[52:52] Well, that's why when chief UC gave us the prime statistics,

[52:56] he puts us at the date on the night time population because they're very different.

[53:01] And so we have to staff accordingly for the amount of people that are here during the day.

[53:07] Thanks Dave, just wanted to jump in with that.

[53:09] Well, good timing. I just had one more thing I want to talk about. And what I wanted to portray to you on the same page where you have the forecast, it's just a little snapshot, certainly not of all the needs, the ongoing maintenance needs, but I would kind of wanted to keep it as clear and simple and the simple thing is I guess public safety and street maintenance. In my mind, we haven't done street maintenance program in many years here, and annual requirement years ago was 2.3 million.

[53:38] And then starting in 24 to do the program Jeff's recommending, it's 2.5 million a year.

[53:47] And then the four officers grew the department to where it needs to be, and then potentially police lieutenant if we want to go accreditation.

[53:58] And because I was trying to come up with a number, what are we looking at? What does city need? We have to put a need before we actually ask for more money.

[54:05] We just can't have money thrown at us and it comes up to almost three and a half million for twenty-five

[54:10] And to get our arms around that our levy our assessed valuation on average over the last

[54:16] I think 20 years has gone up about 10% a year on average and so I estimated the assessed

[54:23] Valuation for 25 and we come up with that 65 cents

[54:27] Proform a number that it looks like would hit us to about three and a half million more dollars and that's what they would go for

[54:34] Certainly if we did like a public safety levy, the 0.1 percent would get us about 1.2 million.

[54:42] We would just take it off of that number on the need.

[54:45] You know, for this property tax thing, we have 3 million 492.

[54:48] Just subtract out 1.2 for sales tax public safety enhancement.

[54:57] And if AWS is successful and they get a 0.2, we could certainly do a 2.4.

[55:02] and then that way drops the needs for the property text.

[55:06] And that's pretty much all I, I didn't want to delay for this, but if you have anything else

[55:10] there are any questions I'm happy to try to answer.

[55:14] So, Dave, thank you so much for any see-compulsed hands.

[55:17] Again, this is a lot of information, and as Dave said he's been doing this for a long time,

[55:23] and we trust and value him, but if you have, there's no stupid questions in this.

[55:29] we really desire to provide you all the information that you need in making your decision.

[55:35] I will also note that Jeff Langham, he's on here today, he and Jeff Olson have been working

[55:41] to put together a workbook of all of the new streets sidewalks, bike lanes, parks, park buildings,

[55:47] restrooms that have all been constructed since the early 2000s so that we can show to you soon

[55:55] what that is and why we need the current maintenance staff that we have and Jeff I just want to give mayor if that's okay just if Jeff wanted to say a few words on that prior questions.

[56:12] We are summarizing a lot of this data.

[56:15] We've summarized it last in 2017.

[56:19] Right now, we're looking at staffing FTEs.

[56:24] The 2006 was 20 and 2023.

[56:28] And I'm talking about operations on the operations division staff.

[56:31] 2009, 2006 was 20 FTEs, 2023 was just under 30 FTEs. So it increased by about 50% more.

[56:44] It's the data that we're trying to finalize that says how much, how many more facilities we are maintaining.

[56:51] It's Katrina said, population, that's more than 50% increase.

[56:58] So, fortunately, right there, you know that we're behind.

[57:01] But we do have a lot more facilities that we need to be maintaining.

[57:07] And so we're going to be able to provide you with that information, hopefully so.

[57:13] Thank you, Jeff.

[57:15] Council number look.

[57:18] Thank you.

[57:18] Thank you for this good presentation.

[57:21] I have two questions right now.

[57:23] What about the timing for the AWC public safety and how would that work with us having to go to the public in February?

[57:33] It's a great question and it's one that at least two of your fellow council members have asked me today already, so you're a good company.

[57:41] We expect we would know if the legislature, if they're feeling this or this about both the 3%

[57:53] modification to the cap as well as the public safety by the end of January, definitely by the first few weeks of February.

[58:03] So we would definitely know by the end of February if they passed or not.

[58:09] And so that is a consideration here as Council is considering our request and the timing for such request.

[58:17] But we would be going out to the for a vote in February, right?

[58:21] Well, that's that's what the current request is.

[58:24] The AWS information that was provided to us provides an additional piece of information that may have Council considering a different time.

[58:32] We don't. Okay. And my second question has to do with it has to go for Jeff. If he's still here. Oh, good director, Langham. Let's talk chip and seal.

[58:45] And how how much do we need to do and how far behind are we on that. And those are my questions. Thank you.

[58:53] You're trying to just general payment maintenance or. Yeah, chips. Okay. So,

[58:58] Payment.

[59:01] They're not the same.

[59:03] No.

[59:04] They're related, but they're not the same.

[59:08] Yeah.

[59:09] Ideally, we would like to be able to keep, we feel we're keeping up with payment maintenance.

[59:15] If we're able to spend a budget allocate of about two and a half million dollars a year, that number keeps increasing because we have many more as we saw in the last go around.

[59:27] Every time we do major pavement maintenance project, we have to also upgrade the crosswalks

[59:35] and the adjacent concrete ramps associated with the roadways. So that has significantly increased

[59:41] our costs. So we hope that we can then, I think, Dave mentioned where we're talking about

[59:48] two and a half million dollars a year to keep up with our pavement maintenance program.

[59:55] and chip and sealed, do we need to do that now?

[1:00:00] Chipsials are an alternative to complete roadway, serve resurfacing. The chipset that you're talking about, it's been a success in some areas of town, our preferences to do real asphalt. It has a much longer life. It's much less disruptive. It's much more preferred by the users, including the bicyclists. They do not like chipset.

[1:00:30] But we can and it is an option if we get into a dire need we will then look to counsel to support some chip ceiling as part of our payment maintenance program.

[1:00:44] Okay, but we're really looking at the maintenance not so much chip seal we're going for a higher quality.

[1:00:50] Right. I mean we consider chip seal as one of our tools in the toolbox for payment maintenance. It's just not the preferred method.

[1:00:58] Great, thank you.

[1:01:00] And the council member would to follow up to what you and Jeopardy's discussing.

[1:01:03] That's part of the Public Works prioritization of projects that we want to do with council.

[1:01:08] Noting that hospital benefit districts own money and be utilized for pavement maintenance for streets in our proposed state in the city.

[1:01:17] So as we're looking at our street program, we're not able to secure general funds money by either in a sales tax increase or property tax.

[1:01:27] then we may need to look at strictly utilizing HPC money for pavement maintenance.

[1:01:33] Thank you.

[1:01:36] Thank you.

[1:01:37] Councillor Leckens.

[1:01:39] Yes.

[1:01:40] Thank you.

[1:01:42] I just wondered if we could have a five minute break before we continue with questions.

[1:01:46] That's absolutely.

[1:01:47] That's great.

[1:01:49] Thank you.

[1:01:49] We will reconvene at 410.

[1:01:53] And

[1:01:57] welcome back to the Good Cover City Council study session of Thursday, November 9, 2023.

[1:02:03] We have returned from break. The time is 410 p.m.

[1:02:07] And we will go right into Council questions on our third agenda item, which is our

[1:02:13] Loving with Lift Discussion. So Council member, Henderson, you are next.

[1:02:18] Thank you, Mayor.

[1:02:21] It's kind of a question for Dave and then for Jeff too.

[1:02:25] The LTGO bond you were thinking of going out to,

[1:02:28] that was specifically to help fund the HVAC system for the city center, right?

[1:02:36] Okay, so my question is,

[1:02:39] there's a lot of money out there for clean buildings

[1:02:42] and upgrades, grants and whatnot.

[1:02:45] Are we actively pursuing what we can or

[1:02:47] is it not pencil out well because we're a rich city

[1:02:50] and they're only giving it because I'm seeing all sorts

[1:02:53] of stuff from department of commerce coming out

[1:02:57] and then those, that's just the state level,

[1:02:59] what about the feds and the part of the inflation

[1:03:02] reduction act, seems like there's a lot of money out there

[1:03:06] and I'm assuming that we're going for it,

[1:03:07] but I hope that we are that would certainly ease

[1:03:10] that $2.2 million a lot.

[1:03:13] Oh, yes, I'll jump it on that one.

[1:03:16] We are looking at options.

[1:03:18] We are also working with our contractor,

[1:03:23] we've got a Miller telecut options.

[1:03:24] They haven't anticipated they'll be some limited amount

[1:03:29] of rebates or grants available.

[1:03:33] But there is a lot that we have going for us

[1:03:37] that other communities do not.

[1:03:39] And even with the EV charging stations

[1:03:41] been working with Chloe for quite a bit now on EV charging stations, we were just not competitive

[1:03:47] community. I mean, we don't have the need in many ways. We don't have the statistics,

[1:03:56] social dynamics that have us being competitive.

[1:04:01] And so we can't rely on that. We just can't

[1:04:05] one of them. Within our legislative aspect, we are requesting a 2.2 million dollar grant for

[1:04:12] to be a grant. For requesting a 2.2 million dollars from this legislative

[1:04:18] session from the state carbon tax. And the mayor has met with our senator and representatives

[1:04:25] and obviously can't predict anything but it looks good for now. So if that's the case,

[1:04:32] we would not request the LTGO bond so that we don't have to have that going when we don't need it.

[1:04:40] And so for right now, there's no action required.

[1:04:46] Yes. Thank you. Kelts member Martin.

[1:04:50] Thank you. Thank you. Trina and Dave. Thanks for the information. Really appreciate it and Dave.

[1:04:55] Putting up with my emails and questions. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to all of us.

[1:05:00] So as I listen to timing, both with the legislature and I listen to the needs that we have here,

[1:05:08] and then I reflect back on prior conversations about potentially and we're not talking about this

[1:05:12] now, I know about utility rates, et cetera, and the need or the desire of the council

[1:05:19] seemed like was to say, how do we impact those with financially the least amount possible,

[1:05:27] especially those who are on fixed incomes, et cetera, and so now I think about

[1:05:32] the property tax rates and what happens to those living in apartments that may be

[1:05:38] can't afford much more than they're paying now. So what would that do? What would it do to those

[1:05:43] that are living in mobile home parks, et cetera? And so what's the formula, if you will,

[1:05:51] that we as a city potentially could look at and use to spread what we need out to the most amount

[1:06:00] of people. So what I'm getting to is a little bit about Roger what you were saying. I don't know

[1:06:06] about the B&O tax and I think maybe that's something we look at but as I think about the sales tax

[1:06:11] rate and what we can do right now specifically for law enforcement and public safety and then we

[1:06:19] have the legislature coming in to session here come January, potentially expanding that.

[1:06:25] And I look at the property tax rate then and is there a way that should we as a city

[1:06:33] wait on the timing of when we would go out if it's not a detriment to the city.

[1:06:41] So February or April having that debate of what's the right time, knowing that there could

[1:06:47] some changes to the legislation and also giving us time to do the math and saying as Dave said,

[1:06:53] we don't want to ask for more than we need and I really appreciate that and we want to show

[1:06:58] our community that we're using the funds that we're requesting of them four said purposes.

[1:07:05] That's always the difficult thing when you look at getting funds for general funds. Certainly

[1:07:09] our city is much much smaller than the state but it's kind of like it goes into a black hole and

[1:07:14] don't know what they have here doing with it, right? And so we really like to know if we're

[1:07:18] spending another dollar, gosh darn it, city, what are you doing with that? So, as we're having

[1:07:24] these conversations, I hope that we can be mindful of that, especially given the fact that a

[1:07:30] Monday's agenda is the first reading of a vivid, vivid, vivid lift. Triple L, I think I'm going to

[1:07:44] the conversations about here today and I'm not going to be on the council but I'm certainly

[1:07:51] going to be a taxpayer person looking at what's being done out there but I think how do we

[1:07:56] how can we be more equitable perhaps as a right word about the needs that we have for the city

[1:08:03] and I really like the council member Rodenberg as well as I think council member Barbara we're talking

[1:08:08] about the fact that we have so many people coming in and we have this tax rate how do we have

[1:08:13] those additional 10,000 or so people coming in help us with that because they are using our resources in our infrastructure, etc.

[1:08:21] And how do we get them to pay for it, especially when we have a really low sales tax. Thank you.

[1:08:26] Thank you.

[1:08:27] Can you continue to address that?

[1:08:29] Thank you.

[1:08:30] Yes.

[1:08:31] I just want to clarify that what is on the Council's agenda for Monday is not the lid list discussion.

[1:08:37] It's allowing our 1% increase for 23.

[1:08:42] We do currently have the resolution for the levied lift schedule on the 28th.

[1:08:49] I believe it's the council meeting.

[1:08:51] 27.

[1:08:52] So it's to go forward with a normal one percent that we would be typically coming forward with.

[1:08:57] Yes.

[1:08:57] Thank you for that clarification.

[1:08:59] I'm interested in the concept of February to April.

[1:09:05] I think from staff you'd be curious what other council members think on timing.

[1:09:10] noting what information you have now versus what information you would need and then based

[1:09:15] on any feedback that you've had from your constituents, you know, are there other council members

[1:09:20] that would like to consider April? That's, I guess, a question for the group today.

[1:09:27] Yes, thank you. Councilmember Rudenberg?

[1:09:31] Yes, that couple things.

[1:09:32] I know that we're always from approving this but I think it's so important that the public is educated and knows what they will be losing if it doesn't pass.

[1:09:50] You know, we're not trying to make things better.

[1:09:54] We're trying to maintain status quo.

[1:09:58] And that's an excellent level of service.

[1:10:01] And that's what people on Geek Harbor are expecting.

[1:10:04] I think Dave, in my mind, just a little bit,

[1:10:10] when he says, we need it to enhance the police department.

[1:10:14] In a lot of people's minds when they hear that,

[1:10:17] It sounds like they're putting fancy hubcaps on the cop cars.

[1:10:21] It's really to get the police department and our public safety to the level that it needs

[1:10:28] to be, not beyond what it needs, and our department does so well with that.

[1:10:36] So I think all council people, this just this meeting alone is going to cause a lot of discussion

[1:10:43] within the community and I think if Council people agree with me, we have to be careful

[1:10:51] about what we say and that it's only to maintain the level of service that people expect

[1:10:58] now and we will lose that level of service if we don't get it.

[1:11:06] So I'm disappointed that the survey didn't cover that.

[1:11:11] I don't know much about how they put the survey together, but I think the results would have been different.

[1:11:17] So that's just my comments.

[1:11:20] Council Member Ronanburg, your point is very well taken and you are absolutely correct.

[1:11:24] We are trying to maintain our current level of service with one exception and we noted

[1:11:29] it in their administration, we do believe that we need administrative lieutenant within the

[1:11:35] police department to split out operations from administration from the lieutenant position.

[1:11:41] So we would be looking for one additional position, other on top of what is currently

[1:11:46] budget it but the people that do the accreditation they say that's necessary they say that

[1:11:54] necessary to maintain your accreditation so yeah and and the benefits of that down the road

[1:12:00] is certainly going to be worthwhile. Yes your your point is well taken though this the it's a

[1:12:08] really good way of saying it actually we're trying to maintain our current levels of service with this. Thank you

[1:12:15] for that council member, Barbara?

[1:12:19] Yes, thank you.

[1:12:22] Just following up on what Lisa said about the timing

[1:12:25] and the messaging, it's obvious that we need

[1:12:30] to increase revenue.

[1:12:31] I think that we have you Katrina and Dave and Jeff,

[1:12:36] we've stated that case really well,

[1:12:39] but what concerns me most is the timing

[1:12:43] is actually the timing of going up for the vote because we've stated it to ourselves, but we haven't

[1:12:51] made the case to the public, and we have to figure out how we're going to make that case.

[1:12:57] Before we do that, we have to decide how much is property tax. If there's going to be being

[1:13:02] out, if there's going to be sales tax and make sure that that is all put together with a bow,

[1:13:07] really when we go to the public, because they're going to be so many questions, and I feel

[1:13:16] like, and other things like this that I've done in my past life, we have one opportunity.

[1:13:22] We can go back a second time, but when you go back a second time, you're going, hey, we want

[1:13:27] to ask you again. Same question. Could you answer it differently? You know, I think it makes

[1:13:32] To me it makes the most sense to look at what would happen if we waited till April because it

[1:13:39] would give us so much more time to put the case together. I'm really concerned about staff

[1:13:45] workloads as we approach the holidays. And I'm also concerned about going out for a

[1:13:51] lovely lid lift and having the discussion about a lid lift when people have just gotten their

[1:13:57] that card bills from the holidays, and they're going, I have to say money, I don't have

[1:14:03] any money.

[1:14:04] I'm just really worried about the timing, so while we have a fabulous case, I just

[1:14:12] like to know if you guys really think that we can and have to do it in February, or could

[1:14:19] we wait till April, and what the implications of doing that are.

[1:14:27] Thank you. Councilmember Likens.

[1:14:32] Yes, thank you. I believe that maybe waiting until April might be wise, just for all the reasons that has been stated.

[1:14:43] Kind of looking at the opportunities of the tax, what's going to happen with the legislation.

[1:14:48] I think the point to explaining what would happen if we don't have be fun and kind of fooling.

[1:15:00] Like was said, explaining what could happen to our level of service. I think is really important as well. One thing just information only I wanted to share with people is I went on the Pierce County side, the assessor treasurer site last night and they have the property tax exemption for those who are disabled or low income.

[1:15:26] And they just announced the maximum household income limit will increase considerably to

[1:15:33] $64,000.

[1:15:34] You're based on 2023 income, and those with making under 55 or 46,000 are going to see even greater

[1:15:43] property tax reduction.

[1:15:45] So that the Pierce County program for those that could be struggling, I think that's

[1:15:49] also an important piece that they could get property tax exemptions.

[1:15:54] And I loved how we did the property tax exemption working with the county at City Hall last year.

[1:16:02] And I think that we should consider continuing that program and helping people out,

[1:16:09] because I think in talking about all these taxing and talking about affordable housing and all the other aspects.

[1:16:15] Just informationally, it looked like the program's getting its family quite a bit.

[1:16:20] So thanks.

[1:16:21] That is really great news. I had heard that that might happen, but I hadn't heard that it was going to be official, so that's fantastic.

[1:16:29] Councilmember Henderson.

[1:16:32] Thank you. A couple of questions. Katrina, can you send us that wonderful $1 graphic? That was probably the best I've ever seen.

[1:16:40] A lot of good information there that we can pass on to other people when they say, hey, where's all my money going? I think that's useful.

[1:16:47] Well, secondly, we're talking about timing and council member Barbara was saying, Mary,

[1:16:56] Barbara was saying, we have to do we have enough time to get the message out and should

[1:17:01] we wait longer.

[1:17:03] My question maybe today is, and you don't need an answer right now, because I think you're

[1:17:07] going to have to mull it over a bit, is how much time do we have that we can really wait?

[1:17:14] If a ship is taken on water and you wait to turn the bill to pump so and you might not catch up.

[1:17:19] So if we got plenty of time that's great then maybe we can use the extra time to get a good message out there,

[1:17:25] because I think we have to do our homework to make sure that everybody understands why we need this.

[1:17:32] And also for to look at, you know, for us to look at all the revenue streams, including the BNO tax and sales tax and property,

[1:17:38] levy lift tax. I just looked real quickly. There's 49 cities in the state of Washington that have

[1:17:45] BNO taxes and there are various categories at various rates. So I think that's something that we

[1:17:51] should really look at, including services, you know. So it's not an uncommon thing. And we worry about

[1:17:59] businesses leaving, I remember since got a BNO rate and Tacoma's got a BNO rate and a big business

[1:18:05] isn't going to pick up just to, you know, just to save a 0.1% BNO rate. So I think it's something

[1:18:12] that we should look at. It's just one of the tools and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work

[1:18:16] and if it can get us something. I'd like to see this whole thing spread over as many income sources

[1:18:22] as we can to mitigate the impacts on the citizens here. We're all going to pay something more

[1:18:29] with that's true, but let's just try to not dump it all on one thing. Never good to put all

[1:18:35] and one basket. Thank you. Thank you.

[1:18:38] One of the primary reasons that we suggested February was none of our partners are going out in February.

[1:18:48] But also, and Jeff will attest to this in days, probably they start their budget preparations

[1:18:55] around February March for the next biennium, because we have to have our budget to council in August

[1:19:01] for you to look at for 25, 26. So August would definitely be too late. April, I would

[1:19:10] need to defer to Dave and see if it passed in April, if that would be enough time for us

[1:19:16] to adjust, but essentially one of our requirements is that the mayor has to provide council

[1:19:22] a balance budget by, I believe, it's August sometime. And so we need to know if we're going to

[1:19:30] these revenues as we're prepping in the budget for you for 25, 26. That's kind of the book and

[1:19:37] that we were considering. Okay, Carlos fine. I think we can

[1:19:44] shoot for April. I don't think we lose too much waiting two months and I think it's probably

[1:19:47] prudent because we've brought up some new ideas here and some new ways to look at it

[1:19:52] and it'll give us more to consider and time to get our ducks and roll if you will.

[1:19:58] Yeah, great. Thank you for that, Dave. Um, my apologies. I did not recognize council

[1:20:04] resource set. He arrived at 357. Welcome council member. Um, sorry about that. Thank you.

[1:20:11] Appreciate it. Just listen in. Thank you. Right now. I'm trying to like add questions, but I

[1:20:16] don't want to make anything be repeated. Did we really one question that we already covered

[1:20:21] health act or. Yes, we've definitely done that one. We did. Okay. I'll check in with somebody later. Then. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Council number. Look. Yes. Thank you. I'm supportive of April. And as I look at the.

[1:20:38] from Flash vote, and what I see in the individual comments that were made, I think there

[1:20:44] are about 16 individual responses that said police, been the money on police, been the money

[1:20:50] on police, and there were about 19 individual responses that wanted to see what the city had done

[1:20:58] to reign in some of our projects, and hopefully as we prioritize things, and we let that know,

[1:21:05] and we let our community know what we've done. Maybe we let them know that we didn't hire those folks

[1:21:10] and we've saved the money that way. So I'd like to see April and I'd also the

[1:21:17] more education we can do is really good. I'm very supportive of that dollar bill. I think you did a

[1:21:22] great job Katrina. And so yeah and to just get as much out there as what the city has

[1:21:29] listening to our community and what we've done to to reduce costs and maybe restructure

[1:21:34] and I'm probably going to try some of our projects. I think it's really important for our community. Thank you.

[1:21:41] Thank you very much. So I do have four of you that have said that you would like to wait until Martin or until April is possible.

[1:21:50] And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I wrote down Council Member Martin, Barbara Leicons and look have all been supportive.

[1:21:58] Katherine Henderson, Rudenberg, great.

[1:22:01] Councillor Sourset, I know your camera's not on the side.

[1:22:04] Okay, perfect.

[1:22:05] So that's all of you supportive of waiting.

[1:22:09] And I really appreciate that you brought this up, the timing,

[1:22:13] because I haven't thought through all of that.

[1:22:18] And once I went to Katrina and I were kind of like, you know,

[1:22:22] chatting a little bit about this just the whole thing,

[1:22:26] That just had an inner mind that it was even a possibility to wait, but it was feeling a little rushed to me and I'm glad that you're supportive and I'm glad that you brought this up because this makes me feel a lot better too.

[1:22:41] and in terms of learning about all the other revenue streams that we could possibly pull from,

[1:22:47] like Calesmer and Henderson mentioned, it just kind of mitigates spread it out a little bit.

[1:22:52] So it's not just hitting one particular area really hard.

[1:22:56] So looking forward to hearing more from Dave and Katrina's and Jeff, as we kind of figure out

[1:23:02] those different streams. And then certainly I am always in favor of the most possible notice

[1:23:08] to our residents, especially when it's something so big.

[1:23:12] So really appreciate your support on this council.

[1:23:15] Council member, Barbara.

[1:23:17] Yeah, I would just like to follow on to what you're saying, mayor.

[1:23:21] I'd like to see from probably from Katrina and Dave,

[1:23:26] a schedule for when we'll have discussion

[1:23:29] about this at future council meetings.

[1:23:32] Because what I heard from people today

[1:23:34] were different things that we're asking you guys to look at

[1:23:37] and come back to us with options.

[1:23:42] And my expectation anyway is that we won't now,

[1:23:45] here, nothing until February.

[1:23:47] I'm sure that that's not true anyway,

[1:23:48] but I'd kind of like to see a flow chart

[1:23:51] of how this is going to come back to us

[1:23:52] and when we would be able to do something

[1:23:55] and also when our hard stop dates are for April.

[1:24:01] Yeah, sure.

[1:24:02] We will definitely talk about

[1:24:03] we have the schedule of practice for February.

[1:24:06] So, we'll take today and move that. I do want to share counsel and this is the highest

[1:24:16] organizational priority at this point. It needs a number of objectives that you accept for

[1:24:22] a thumb and strategic plan and we can't do any of those if we don't have the staff there to

[1:24:27] do them. That is just the fact. There is not a higher organizational priority than providing

[1:24:34] information to counsel on this so that we can work together on making some happen.

[1:24:41] Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. Staff is working really hard on this. I can assure you,

[1:24:47] they are spending a lot of hours making sure that this is the most information we can provide to you

[1:24:54] so that you can make the best decision on what to do for our residents. So really appreciate

[1:25:00] Dave's work on this Katrina's work, Jeff's work and everyone else that's contributing to getting this going.

[1:25:08] I'm very proud of our staff. They have, they do a lot with a little bit of time.

[1:25:14] I mean, I hope that makes sense. They have limited time limited hours they're working and they do so much within those hours to make the most of their time.

[1:25:24] And I see that over and over again with our staff and I'm very proud of them for that.

[1:25:28] So, Councilmember Martin,

[1:25:33] thank you.

[1:25:34] Yeah, I just wanted to stress that I do agree

[1:25:37] that we need to do something from a revenue standpoint

[1:25:39] and hopefully staff will hear that this council wants

[1:25:43] to do something, but we want to do it in the best way possible,

[1:25:47] having it be as equitable as possible,

[1:25:49] and that we take this various seriously

[1:25:51] and we want to make sure that we give this staff

[1:25:54] and we give our residents and community

[1:25:56] and that information to make a good decision

[1:25:59] that when we go to the polls, we're going to get a strong yes on this. So it's fully supported

[1:26:05] and I certainly want staff to know that. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay, so it seems to me

[1:26:14] we have direction from unanimous direction from council. Is there anything else you need Dave or

[1:26:20] Katrina from Council at this point for on this topic, or I need guys. Good to go.

[1:26:28] I thought we were going to talk with Council and give them their homework for next week.

[1:26:39] Yes, coming to you on an email inbox soon, just a heads up. As part of the

[1:26:49] We're going to do some prioritization of projects and a capital projects.

[1:26:55] We're going to be focusing, starting to focus on streets and parks project and unbudget to items.

[1:27:01] So I'm going to be sending out an email to you.

[1:27:04] Mo has been helping me put together this matrix that you're going to see.

[1:27:08] It's going to have three different matrices and then some instructions and an email about how to fill this out.

[1:27:15] Why we're doing it and then how to send it back.

[1:27:17] So I hope to get that email out tonight.

[1:27:22] Great, thank you.

[1:27:23] And to ask if I can operate a really meeting,

[1:27:25] we appreciate Council filling those out,

[1:27:27] sending those to Jeff as early instructions

[1:27:29] and also not talking about them

[1:27:31] in the meantime with each other.

[1:27:34] Are we gonna get graded?

[1:27:37] You'll find out on the 16th.

[1:27:39] No, I'm gonna get graded on the timeline.

[1:27:41] I think that.

[1:27:42] Yeah.

[1:27:43] Now, the ideas to have them set back to Mo.

[1:27:47] by the 15th so that we can collectively put these together and then come back to you on the 16th

[1:27:53] with data and see what the end result was. We're going to do it collectively. We're not doing it

[1:27:57] individually. So it will be sent to us individually. Yes, thank you Katrina for that reminder.

[1:28:03] But we're going to be putting the data together as a whole group.

[1:28:11] Well that'd be done such a way

[1:28:13] that we'll show what our priorities are, but we'll have the opportunity to say why.

[1:28:18] Well, you can't, yes, we were going to show, though, just one result as a full city council not as individual city council's priorities.

[1:28:32] I think the why is important because it may influence other council members to recess theirs or other people's priorities.

[1:28:44] I guess I don't fully understand if this is, we're going to kick off the boxes and that's going to be it.

[1:28:53] I think we should know if this is okay.

[1:28:56] This is something to, so each of you will be comparing projects to each other and Jesse Miller explained it all, but

[1:29:04] We'll illuminate what you feel is the highest priority to lowest.

[1:29:09] We will compile all the results and then we'll go through with Council and you'll have an opportunity to talk about them.

[1:29:14] Great. Thank you.

[1:29:16] Good.

[1:29:18] Good.

[1:29:28] Thank you so much.

[1:29:29] This was really productive and we look forward to bringing more information forward soon.

[1:29:34] So, uh, with that, I would entertain a motion to adjourn at this dark hour of 438s.

[1:29:41] I'm moving with you, adjourn. I second it.

[1:29:44] Please adjourn. Thanks everyone. Have a good night.

[1:29:48] Thank you, good night.

City Council Study Session

Transcript