City of Lake Forest Park: When it comes to other business, there's just AM zones we don't.
City of Lake Forest Park: Copper.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, good evening and welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us tonight for the City of Lake Forest Parks
City of Lake Forest Park: City Council Regular Meeting for Thursday, August 13th, and with that, we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance, and I will lead us in that.
City of Lake Forest Park: Stand, please.
City of Lake Forest Park: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States.
Matt Muilenburg: States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation.
Matt Muilenburg: Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
City of Lake Forest Park: Little echo there. Yeah, that's all good. Welcome, Councilmember Muenberg. Just for the record, Councilmember… Councilmember Muilenburg is, wheelchair Brown, so, thank you for attending, Matt. We appreciate that very much.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, with that, we're moving on to adoption of the agenda.
City of Lake Forest Park: So moved. Second.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any questions, comments, or concerns? With that, it's adopted by unanimous consent. Thank you, everybody. We're moving on to a proclamation thanking Jack Tonkin.
City of Lake Forest Park: Wow, okay, A comment first.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, I'm sorry, public comments. Apologies, I was moving forward with this.
City of Lake Forest Park: I already failed, sorry about that. No, no, you're good. I told them I was gonna get a little out of… out of order here.
City of Lake Forest Park: Before we start, just to let you know, the agenda item regarding the L90 culvert has been pulled from the agenda. So, it was pulled earlier today, or yesterday? Yeah, and there was an… if you have comments about L9…
City of Lake Forest Park: well, we have a whole bunch of them here. Apologies, folks. Happy to listen to them, it's just that there was some Scrivener's errors in the presentation, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: It's… it's such your pleasure. Happy to listen to you, if you'd like to make comment.
City of Lake Forest Park: What did you say?
City of Lake Forest Park: Scriveners. Scriveners. Scrivener's errors, you know what those mean?
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Phil Scott is… Yeah, Mr. Hill.
City of Lake Forest Park: Slightly more than Scribner's errors. The scope of work for the contract was not updated based on the last Council meeting to reflect the work that's going to be done as far as exploring several alternatives at that location, so until that contract is rewritten, it won't be back before Council.
City of Lake Forest Park: So it's been delayed indefinitely.
City of Lake Forest Park: Better for assessment, Mr. Hill.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you. If that helps with anybody, you're welcome to make public comment if you'd like to.
City of Lake Forest Park: The important point to recognize is that everybody wants to make sure that the street is safe, the culvert is environmentally safe, and we'll move forward from there. In consideration of those of you who've been here tonight, if you want to make comment, please.
City of Lake Forest Park: Mr. Nelson, would you like to comment, or would you like to answer?
City of Lake Forest Park: There's a way to raise this, right? There is, I think on your left. Nope, there's a switch on the dais. It's like a light switch.
City of Lake Forest Park: There you go
City of Lake Forest Park: Cool. Yeah, it doesn't drive, though. My comment was essentially the question of why it was eliminated from the agenda tonight.
City of Lake Forest Park: In July, we were told
City of Lake Forest Park: in August, this night, that would be the first touch. Sure. And then there would be another touch in September, and so I'm just wondering, is this thing going to be prolonged for a definite period of time, or why was this error not found sooner?
City of Lake Forest Park: Council, with your permission, can we suspend our rules and allow Administrator Hill to respond?
City of Lake Forest Park: I would say, as to the reason why it was not caught earlier, we've had some people in and out, and there was just, I think, crossing a pass between staff to make sure that the contract was
City of Lake Forest Park: crafted appropriately, and then as far as schedule, we will aim to bring it back on September 10th, but not until such time as we have the contract in the full form that is expected, and this was presented for what it would represent at that last Council meeting.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you very much. Appreciate your comments. Andy Olson.
City of Lake Forest Park: Please join us if you like.
City of Lake Forest Park: Make sure I can see everybody's names here.
City of Lake Forest Park: I may look familiar to some of you from last meeting, and I don't want to become the face of this project, but I also don't want this project to be forgotten for those of us that are greatly impacted by it. I also wonder… you talk about the change, and there was errors in the scope.
City of Lake Forest Park: But it seems like there's a scope, and then there's a contract, and there are things, but I haven't seen the analysis that led to the scope.
City of Lake Forest Park: and the project, so I'm wondering still if this is a solution looking for a problem. And you talked about safety and the culvert, but I haven't seen any indication that there are safety issues, which, in my understanding of traffic calming is that's what it's all about, is safety.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so… or that's one of the primary portions of it, is safety. So I'm just…
City of Lake Forest Park: It's very confusing. I don't understand the process that you all go through to get a project approved, and it just seems somewhat in reverse, and without enough analysis, at least, to convince me that it's needed or appropriate. So, thank you. Thank you for your comments, Andy.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I'll let everybody go through here, and then I'll make a final comment to the Council's consideration. Bonfini.
City of Lake Forest Park: Welcome, Gonda.
City of Lake Forest Park: Good evening. I've had a growing concern over the last couple years that evolves around the three-touch rule.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I understand that there may be some on the Council that have forgotten why we have a three-touch rule, or…
City of Lake Forest Park: We're totally unaware of it.
City of Lake Forest Park: The purpose of the three-touch rule was to allow for counsel
City of Lake Forest Park: To listen to public input on
City of Lake Forest Park: Legislation they were thinking of passing.
City of Lake Forest Park: And being able to, contemplate the response from citizens, or responses from,
City of Lake Forest Park: council members themselves, and take the time to be sure that you've figured out all the unintended consequences of the legislation you're about to pass. I also understand that you're looking at some new legislation.
City of Lake Forest Park: And that, will have a big impact on Lake Forest Park, and I encourage you to,
City of Lake Forest Park: Either pay attention to the three-touch rule, or…
City of Lake Forest Park: abandon it completely. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Feeney, appreciate your comments.
City of Lake Forest Park: Jeff and I think this is Ron… Rhonda?
City of Lake Forest Park: Okazaki? Apologies for…
City of Lake Forest Park: Welcome, Jeff. Sorry. Hi. I'm Jeff. Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna talk about the L90 as well, all right? Please. So, I'm just frustrated that this continues to be a topic.
City of Lake Forest Park: I would request that no studying, investing, proposing needs to happen.
City of Lake Forest Park: As what was brought up in last month's meeting, this is a proposed solution in search of a problem. There is no problem. I walk that street almost every day, and there's no problem on 35th and 185th and Ballinger. With the lights there, we can walk it safely.
City of Lake Forest Park: We've lived there for 30… 35 years.
City of Lake Forest Park: And we don't see any issues there.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, and my frustration really is around the budget. We continue to hear, that we have a budget problem.
City of Lake Forest Park: more costs than revenue to run our governments, and I believe LFP is not immune or exempt to this problem.
City of Lake Forest Park: So here's a situation where you should not spend any money
City of Lake Forest Park: on this, or invest in this project. Save some money.
City of Lake Forest Park: This neighborhood is a popular walking area. If you… if you live in that area, you know that people walk around there. I walk 185th to Ballinger almost every day during the week. Dog walks or volunteering.
City of Lake Forest Park: I don't remember a time that I felt unsafe walking LFP, except for maybe during the construction. So during the construction was going on, there might have been some times when things were a little bit dicey, but now that they're pretty much done, it's fine.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh.
City of Lake Forest Park: If this project does happen, you will see more traffic move to 30th Avenue NE and to 26th Avenue Northeast.
City of Lake Forest Park: If you notice, 30th Avenue Northeast is narrow and, poorly… a poorly visible street. We live on that street. There's cars there, and it's also a bus route.
City of Lake Forest Park: The one-lane, one-lane road. 26th Avenue kind of curves around, and it's kind of a blind corner, so it's also, a poor street. 185th is fine. And both of these streets are bus routes, so now you're going to move more traffic off of 185th to 30th and 26th.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, please don't waste your time, or our money.
City of Lake Forest Park: on any further action on this proposal. Thank you. Thank you very much, Commissioner.
City of Lake Forest Park: I just want to add on, it sounds like, from what Mr. Hill said, that, like, the contract proposal is already going through. I'm disappointed in the lack of community,
City of Lake Forest Park: knowledge. No one in our neighborhood knows this is happening. Nothing has gone out to our community, that 185th would become a one-way street. I can't think of another street in Lake Forest Park that's a one-way, that is a…
City of Lake Forest Park: all of the traffic's gonna be diverted to 30th and to 26th. There's no way you're cutting off a whole community from access to 104 by making that street a one-way, including the houses that live just, like.
City of Lake Forest Park: A few feet.
City of Lake Forest Park: they will have to go up and around and not have access to 104. I would invite you out for a site visit. I'm happy to drive around with you and show you what my route would look like, what other people's routes would look like if you make 185th the one way. So please just take it off the table.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you very much for your comment. Appreciate that. I just want to check with Melanie. You did not want to make a comment. Would you like to make a comment?
City of Lake Forest Park: Hi, as somebody who also lives directly on 185th, I actually live where she's talking about, when you come up to 30th, I would not be able to turn right to drive to my house that is 10 feet away.
City of Lake Forest Park: My family does not drive on Ballinger often. We use a lot of the back roads to access our house and help
City of Lake Forest Park: keep away from the traffic and keep the flow going the way that it does, but as Rhonda has said, and I think that many of you were here, talking about the property that's also on her street that they're considering turning into 5…
City of Lake Forest Park: houses or EDUs, whatever their plan is, already driving traffic on that road, creating a further problem by making 185th a one-way street. Again, I echo what has been said here tonight, is a…
City of Lake Forest Park: we're creating a problem that's not a problem with money that doesn't need to be spent on it. So, please consider taking that project off the table. Thank you, Melanie. Appreciate that.
City of Lake Forest Park: And…
City of Lake Forest Park: Council, if I… with your permission, may I respond? Thank you very much. Just a couple comments. I reached out to Jim Stetzer earlier today, who's been spearheading a lot of the conversations about that, culvert situation.
City of Lake Forest Park: One of the things to just recognize is that we are not going to be taking any action until we know what the flows are from the existing culvert, the new culvert, if you will. And if it's not necessary to do a full remediation of L90, we're not going to do it. The money's not going to be spent.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, having said that, my understanding, and I apologize, I was out with COVID at the last meeting, shaking too many hands, apparently, so I didn't get to hear all of your public comments, but the…
City of Lake Forest Park: The reality is that if we don't have to spend the money, we're not going to do it. And it is a very important intersection when it comes to pedestrian safety. Right now, in my opinion, I walk there every day. Thank you, Jeff, I appreciate your comment about that. I walk it every day, I run through there.
City of Lake Forest Park: there are some challenges, and if we can make pedestrian improvements extraneous of the culvert, let's make them happen. Let's make it safer. So, having said that, I want to make sure that everybody understands that this is not something that's going to be immediate, it's going to be a process going forward, and you have plenty of time to make comment. So,
City of Lake Forest Park: History hole.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, I'd just like to take the opportunity. The contract that is… would be considered by Council is to conduct a study on what improvements may be done. I know that at the last meeting, it was presented such that the one way going up 185th was a foregone conclusion, and I would say that the packet that was submitted to Council this week continues that, and I think that's where the confusion lies.
City of Lake Forest Park: What is before Council is consider, are they going to put the money forward to study alternatives and
City of Lake Forest Park: whether one-way is part of that alternative package or not that's presented to Council.
City of Lake Forest Park: is yet to be determined. If it was, Council then makes the decision what, if anything, moves forward. So, we're very early, and that process, I think, Director Heaton at the last meeting mentioned that there will be a whole public process to that exploration.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, thank you, Administrator Hill. So, with that, we…
City of Lake Forest Park: don't get into a back and forth here in public comment, but I think it's important for people to understand that, there's been some disconnects because people have been out. I've been out, I apologize for that. Director Heaton has been out as well, and there was a real miscommunication at the last meeting, so I apologize personally to you all for that.
City of Lake Forest Park: Moving on, is there anybody else that would like to make public comment tonight?
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, thank you, everybody. We're going to close public comment. Not even gonna use the gavel.
City of Lake Forest Park: With that, we're moving on to a proclamation.
City of Lake Forest Park: Take a bit of a deep breath here, for a moment, and, I do wanna,
City of Lake Forest Park: It's always difficult to, I'll just dive right in.
City of Lake Forest Park: Tonight, we honor our friend Jack Tonkin, business owner, city council member, and community activist, father, and mentor.
City of Lake Forest Park: He has lived in this community for more than 60 years, and volunteered his time and expertise to make our city a better place to live.
City of Lake Forest Park: He has come up with many ways to improve Lake Forest Park, from his bungalows of Lake Forest Park.
City of Lake Forest Park: With Mr. Feeney here?
City of Lake Forest Park: To, recently a community shuttle that he partnered with, Chris Clayson on bus service. And who can forget 2011's goat days?
City of Lake Forest Park: That's a collector's item, people. And…
City of Lake Forest Park: Jack has come up with creative, fun, and innovative solutions to issues we all face, as a small town.
City of Lake Forest Park: I've always found him to be witty, Civil, thoughtful.
City of Lake Forest Park: During our many, many conversations, that we've had over… over two decades.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Tracy.
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, Jack and I have not always just… always agreed on some topics.
City of Lake Forest Park: We've enjoyed many respectful debates and backs and force.
City of Lake Forest Park: I've always found to be…
City of Lake Forest Park: Sorry, missed my… my step there. He's been a consummate host for many of our discussions, providing coffee and pastries more often than not, and lunch.
City of Lake Forest Park: Difficult problems sometimes require difficult conversations, and Jack has a knack for navigating the stresses of those conversations.
City of Lake Forest Park: With grit, with wit, and grit too.
City of Lake Forest Park: Grace and consideration.
City of Lake Forest Park: I am proud to count Jack Tonkin as my friend, and I remain grateful for the knowledge, effort, and support he has shared with the city, and he personally.
City of Lake Forest Park: Our hearts and thoughts and prayers go out to Jack and his daughter, Dana.
City of Lake Forest Park: And her family as he navigates this difficult time on his life's journey.
City of Lake Forest Park: With that, I'm going to read the proclamation.
City of Lake Forest Park: We're at… and by the way, this is not all-encompassing.
City of Lake Forest Park: There's many more things that he's done.
City of Lake Forest Park: Whereas Jack Tonkin has called Lake Forest Park home for nearly 6 decades, demonstrating an enduring commitment to the community and its future. And whereas Jack has generously served the people of Lake Forest Park as a member of the City Council and Planning Commission, contributing his time
City of Lake Forest Park: Experience and thoughtful… thoughtful perspective to local government.
City of Lake Forest Park: Whereas Jack has played an important role in identifying the location of the current Lake Forest Park City Hall.
City of Lake Forest Park: Leaving a lasting mark on the community. And whereas Jack has supported the stewardship of Lake Forest Park natural environment.
City of Lake Forest Park: By helping organize volunteer work in local parks, including Lion Creek Waterfront Park.
City of Lake Forest Park: Waterford… Waterford… Waterfront Preserve, excuse me.
City of Lake Forest Park: Blue Heron Park, Animal Lake Coast Park, Rising Free Park, and, whereas, throughout as many years of civic involvement.
City of Lake Forest Park: Jack has remained a dedicated advocate for responsible government, public participation, environmental stewardship, and Lake Forest Park's distinctive character, and whereas Jack's willingness to ask difficult questions, offer ideas, participate in public discussions, and encourage
City of Lake Forest Park: others to get involved exemplifies the important role residents play in shaping their community, and whereas
City of Lake Forest Park: Jack Tonkin's decades of service and civic engagement have meaningfully contributed to the history, identity, and quality of life on Lake Forest Park, and have earned the community's gratitude and respect. Now, therefore, the Mayor and the City Council of the City of Lake Forest Park do recognize and thank Jack Tonkin.
City of Lake Forest Park: And encourage all residents to join us in honoring him for his dedicated service to the City of Lake Forest Park, and extend our heartful appreciation for the lasting contributions he has made to the community he has called home for nearly 6 decades. Signed this 13th day of August 2026.
City of Lake Forest Park: I'd like to… everybody to give a round of applause for Jeff.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I will say that, as I said in my comments earlier, Jack and I have disagreed on many issues.
City of Lake Forest Park: But the conversations have always been civil, and I will, any day.
City of Lake Forest Park: Sit down with anybody that has the same gumption, and the same tenacity, and the same passion.
City of Lake Forest Park: for preserving this community that he does. And we wish him the very best, I really do. And…
City of Lake Forest Park: I hope that, jack?
City of Lake Forest Park: I know, Jeff, you're filming this. Smooth sailing, my friend. All the best.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: We'll move on to them.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, final confirmation. We get to get to the fun part, too. This is always fun when we get to
City of Lake Forest Park: Con… confirm our friends to,
City of Lake Forest Park: Commission or Task Force, Jean Reed, and this is appointing Jean Reed to the Lake Forest Park Planning Commission, Position 5, a partial term. Gene, would you like to come up and join us? Just give us a little brief overview of your thoughts and feelings, and Council can ask you a couple questions?
City of Lake Forest Park: I'm always so shy about my thoughts and feelings, you know?
City of Lake Forest Park: I wrote something down in case you guys made me nervous.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, I stumbled into Lake Forest Park in 1993, and moved here shortly after. I've lived lots of different places, but Lake Forest Park is just so special, and it is my home, and I love it.
City of Lake Forest Park: When I very first lived here, I would go to my deck and think, man, why are there so many cool birds around here? And I realized after a while that our house was perched right above two big wetlands, headwaters for Brookside and Hillside Creek.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so, I learned about wetlands, and what they do, and how they create that cold, clear, flowing water Ole Hansen so eloquently described.
City of Lake Forest Park: And their role that they play in keeping that water cold and clear. And then, I learned about the miracle of salmon, which we grow up as kids knowing about a little bit, didn't get it.
City of Lake Forest Park: And the notion that these little creatures will brave the deep ocean for 3 years, just to come home and deposit all that nitrogen they gathered up, which enriches our soil and
City of Lake Forest Park: That nitrogen is what allows us to have our beloved cedars and dug firs. For, as I learned, our geology simply doesn't support that.
City of Lake Forest Park: Without all that delivered fish fertilizer, we wouldn't have our trees. And in turn, the trees grow tall and provide stability and the shade that keeps the water cool that allows the salmon to live.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then I learned how precious places like Lake Forest Park truly are.
City of Lake Forest Park: Where the hydrology and the cool temperatures, flowing water year-round, nice cool temperatures, in our two stream systems, remains intact, which is almost impossible to recreate. Not impossible, but it's really hard. And…
City of Lake Forest Park: In our city, in living memory, our streams were thick with salmon.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, as I learned from Doug Hennik, the fate of the survival of our salmon rests squarely on the shoulders of our urban streams.
City of Lake Forest Park: If we do not protect them, we will lose our trees.
City of Lake Forest Park: When I learned about the World Wide Web, some of you may remember this, I was so excited, I came and made a 3-minute citizen comment, just to make sure you all knew about it, too. But who knew all those trees, all underground, are talking and communicating and sending warnings and have a whole… a whole, like, flea market down there, commodities and messengers and…
City of Lake Forest Park: I realized that If we didn't protect them, we would lose them.
City of Lake Forest Park: And they need each other.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, I've been coming to council meetings for, 30 years now, complaining about trees and land use issues and things I see as deficiencies in the code, and so it occurred to me
City of Lake Forest Park: that maybe, at this point in my life, it's time to step up and do some of the hard work to try and improve our codes to the best we can, though I reserve the right to come as a private citizen and complain once in a while. So…
City of Lake Forest Park: I thank the Mayor for nominating me, I ask for the Council's support, and I would say that, this supports me in my aspiration for one of the favorite things I've learned up to Layla. The aspiration is, may we be the elders that our grandchildren are thankful for.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you. Are you gonna grill me now? There's questions for Dr. Reid.
City of Lake Forest Park: Around the dais here. Definitely refer to Tony.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, thank you, Dr. Reid, for stepping up, and we really do appreciate volunteers with your expertise and life experience. And I just had a question, was basically, are there any particular topics you want to work on as a Planning Commissioner?
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, the fact that Critical Areas is under review right now is distinctly a draw.
City of Lake Forest Park: For sure.
City of Lake Forest Park: But the middle housing, that's on the table right now is also really interesting. I mean, we're a pretty homogenous city, and I don't think that's…
City of Lake Forest Park: philosophical, it's economic. How are we going to fix that?
City of Lake Forest Park: Is there a way we can at least start the process?
City of Lake Forest Park: Colleagues, other questions? Dr. Reid, yes? Councilmember Good?
City of Lake Forest Park: Dr. Ray.
City of Lake Forest Park: That sounds so formal. I know it is. Okay, Jean, how are you doing? Councilmember Good? Yes. I think that you're an excellent choice for this position. With all of your background and knowledge and all of your advocacy for all of these subjects, I think that you're ideal.
City of Lake Forest Park: So thank you for… Stepping up.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Newark. Colleagues, anyone else? Questions for… Gene. We can be informal.
City of Lake Forest Park: Josh. I'll say Gene also. And yeah, I'll echo everyone. It's just… it's… we're so lucky as a city to have amazing volunteers, and you've done a lot of amazing volunteering for the city already, but to step into these sorts of roles and help guide the real important decisions that we make, and as you're talking about trees.
City of Lake Forest Park: one of the things that I always… when I'm thinking about urban design and urban growth, there is a sort of successional process to cities, and I wonder, when you were talking a little bit about middle housing a minute ago, if you want to… do you have…
City of Lake Forest Park: Not that… not that you get to decide on your own, or any of us do, but do you have a vision of, sort of, where… where… how that succession might play out for the city?
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, we are blessed with larger lots, but most of the ones that are left are pretty compromised, as far as critical areas. But wouldn't it be nice to have some kind of…
City of Lake Forest Park: cluster housing, or something that would afford a place in Lake Forest Park for our elders to stay. It's been a big problem the whole time I've lived here. You know, could there be some really innovative…
City of Lake Forest Park: I know we've talked about this for 30 years, but a redo at Town Center that could be acceptable, fit with the neighborhood, be kind of innovative, give us a safe place during wildfires for air quality with state-of-the-art stuff, and have some residential over the retail or something.
City of Lake Forest Park: I don't know how… I don't know exactly what that means, but…
City of Lake Forest Park: I don't know, I think we can think creatively.
City of Lake Forest Park: All right, thank you, Councilmember Rosenel? Yes, Vice Chair Goldman. Yeah, so, Councilmembers Ferritani and Rosenel stole my question on middle housing, so instead I'll just thank you for, volunteering to serve, to lend your time and expertise to the Planning Commission. Thanks, Larry. Councilmember Goldman?
City of Lake Forest Park: Councillor Riddle, sorry, I was going to say summer, but then I went back to formalities here. Dr. Riddle, excuse me. Not yet, absolutely. Thank you for stepping up. I don't really have a question, I just want to acknowledge that it's…
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, it is extra work, and that you're ready to come to the table with ideas and a vision and…
City of Lake Forest Park: collaborate. I really appreciate you stepping up, and look forward to hearing your perspective on the Planning Commission as things move forward. Thank you. And I will try to channel Jack in being
City of Lake Forest Park: Entitled to my opinions, and also gracious in conversation.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Councilmember. Colleagues, any other questions? Hearing none, I entertain a motion for confirmation.
City of Lake Forest Park: Deputy Mayor Ferton. Thank you, and with great pleasure, I would like to move, to appoint Jean Reed to the Lake Forest Park Planning Commission Position 5 Partial Term. Second. I moved and seconded to appoint Jean Reed for Planning Commission for the partial term.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any questions, comments, or considerations? I apologize, Councilmember Muilenburg, did you have any comments that she wanted to share?
Matt Muilenburg: I couldn't be more thrilled that Jean Reid is applying to be on our Planning Commission. Thank you, Jean.
City of Lake Forest Park: I apologize, Councilmember. Yeah, thank you. And when Jean said she was interested, I… I… I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled. And,
City of Lake Forest Park: So, with that, all those in favor of confirmation of Dr. Jean Reid.
City of Lake Forest Park: to, appointment to the Planning Commission for a partial term, please say aye. Aye.
Matt Muilenburg: Aye.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any nays?
City of Lake Forest Park: Eyes have it, it passes unanimously. Thank you, Jean, so much for your volunteering. Really appreciate your efforts, and all you do beyond that. So, thank you so much, yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, we're into, presentations. Goodness. Administrator Hill.
City of Lake Forest Park: We're talking about revenue and fisc… excuse me, expenditure fiscal year-end projections for 2025, 2026, and I'm sorry, folks, this is where the fund ends.
City of Lake Forest Park: I say it out loud, my filter's not working tonight, I apologize.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's why we need a finance director to take those… Yeah, so, just for the record, Administrator Hill is…
City of Lake Forest Park: Wearing a whole lot of hats today, including Finance Director. So, thank you, Phil. Thank you, Mayor, Council. We'll go ahead and get started, Matt. Oh, never mind. Forgot, I have a remote.
City of Lake Forest Park: So this slide, I think it's readable for most of the audience. It's also in the packet, and it's available online. This should look somewhat familiar to you. This is from June of this year. This is the,
City of Lake Forest Park: the slide that Director Vaughn presented to you back then, just showing you that what this did was take 2025 expenditures, and then what was budgeted to be expended through the end of 2026,
City of Lake Forest Park: into account. And so, you're gonna see some big jumps in numbers, some things kind of shift around between this slide and the next slide.
City of Lake Forest Park: In general fund, traffic safety, transportation capital, you know, we have the roundabout project going on,
City of Lake Forest Park: But obviously, we're just now starting construction, so what was programmed for some of these capital projects won't obviously be spent out in 2026. So you'll see some jumps. Same with the Sewer Capital Fund, as we're just now
City of Lake Forest Park: Moving on to 30% to 100% design, that contract's gonna be brought to the Council over the next few months, and so construction won't start until 27, 28.
City of Lake Forest Park: timeline, so you'll see those differences, and I'll try and explain those to you as we move through. There will be a lot more discussion as we go through the budget, so that you don't have to try and remember all this tonight.
City of Lake Forest Park: But I would say, you know, for the big items, take… keep an eye on general fund, traffic safety, street fund.
City of Lake Forest Park: transportation capital and sewer are the big ones, and your, obviously, your strategic opportunity fund, as you remember, Council, moved $1.6 million out of the general fund, set that aside in the,
City of Lake Forest Park: Strategic Opportunity Fund that was done during the June, budget amendment is now that we've projected through the end of the year, that's moved into expenditures, so you'll see those dollars moving.
City of Lake Forest Park: Sorry, I was gonna move my screen, and that won't do you any good.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, when we jump to the next slide, this is working with all of the department directors, is looking forward at where they think their spends will be through the end of the year, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: Looking at projects, looking at professional services, obviously, salaries. They're gonna fluctuate a little bit if we have people, you know, resign their positions. We had the finance director resign.
City of Lake Forest Park: But we also had a payout on that. We… hopefully, in the next couple months, we'll have a new finance director. So those are kind of small fluctuations that you don't really get represented here. But if we start…
City of Lake Forest Park: at this slide, you'll remember that the general fund revenues to expenditures was about 2 point… almost $2.8 million. Now you see it at $3.8 and a half.
City of Lake Forest Park: That represents several things going on there, and that… one of those is the $1.6 million moving out into the Strategic Opportunity Fund.
City of Lake Forest Park: Those are positions that aren't filled in the police department, in the courts, those all have effects on the general fund.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then we also have some revenues that have come in higher than were anticipated, and some grants that have come in, and we'll hit those in the last slide in more detail. So that's where you get that difference. If you look at your ending fund balance between the two.
City of Lake Forest Park: There will be about $500,000 left at the end of this biennium, more than was anticipated when we started that.
City of Lake Forest Park: And that's a factor of many things, like I said. Those grants, offsetting costs.
City of Lake Forest Park: Vacancies and, for example, our sales tax has come in higher than we anticipated, so that wash at the end of the year is about $500,000.
City of Lake Forest Park: Traffic safety. If you remember back, you know, we projected going into this traffic safety fund, not having any idea how those cameras would perform on 178th as a 24-7 operation. We've seen, people
City of Lake Forest Park: Coming more and more into compliance, so the revenue is steadily decreasing as we've moved through the last couple of years. And so, instead of anticipating that we'd have,
City of Lake Forest Park: I'm sorry. The projected revenue to expenditures would be on the plus side about $4 million, we'll be on the plus side about $1.5 million. And that's just a matter of, we had no… no history there to know how those revenues would come in. But the benefit is there, you look at the ending fund balance, and revenues are exceeding expenditures. Council's been very diligent in not
City of Lake Forest Park: Getting too far ahead of ourselves until we knew what the trends looked like on allocating those dollars.
City of Lake Forest Park: You'll remember some of those dollars have been allocated towards, like, supporting the roundabout Project, supporting the traffic officers, support officers, and additional court staff that we needed for those cameras.
City of Lake Forest Park: Let me see, where do we go next? How about Strategic Opportunity Fund? That just shows the $1.6 million flowing into that, and so that is set aside. Those dollars are not
City of Lake Forest Park: allocated. Those will be held in that account until, at some point in the future, Council or the administration brings forward an idea of something.
City of Lake Forest Park: strategic opportunity that those could be put towards, but while they'd be shown as revenue in your 27-28 budget, they will not be shown as an expenditure until there is a project that Council deems is appropriate for those dollars.
City of Lake Forest Park: Transportation capital, just, you'll see the swing there from a negative, you know.
City of Lake Forest Park: spending $1.6 more million more than revenue. Now, that's a capital project. You have to remember, there's not a…
City of Lake Forest Park: Always a lot of income coming into that. We bank that capacity, and then we do large projects like the roundabout, so we have a lot of grant money, some loan money in there. And so because the construction's not happening this year, you'll see that we have a positive $2.1 million.
City of Lake Forest Park: At the end of the biennium.
City of Lake Forest Park: Just some things that you'll see, some negatives, capital facilities maintenance, you know, we had a lot of issues here in City Hall that had to be remediated.
City of Lake Forest Park: cleaned up, we had a mold problem, we've had HVAC problems, we have a generator problem, we had some leaky pipes, so a lot… it's an aging building, it's over 20 years old, and so some of those things are coming to…
City of Lake Forest Park: Coming home to roost. Sewer capital.
City of Lake Forest Park: You'll see that, sorry, I lost my place.
City of Lake Forest Park: 402. Yep, no, I got it. Sorry. The ending fund balance would be about $4.3 million. Obviously, that project is still in design.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so those dollars won't get start… start getting spent until we get into the construction phase of that, where we aren't even thinking, 30 to 100% design will begin before about December or January. So, that may be a late 27 project, or early 2028 project.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then the rest are just, just fluctuations up and down. Vehicle replacement fund is now positive, just as we… closer to the end of the year, we've paid less for vehicles and the upfitting of, say, the police vehicles than we anticipated. Information technology, we've had a lot of computer issues, especially in PD, and
City of Lake Forest Park: just bringing things up to standard as far as security, so there's a little bit of overspend there.
City of Lake Forest Park: So we'll step into this last slide, and this kind of highlights what I've been talking about.
City of Lake Forest Park: Under the revenue side, sales tax is trending higher. Investment interest, you remember we do that laddering system with municipal bonds. We are receiving more interest than was anticipated when those were set up. Just the investments have stayed good as we've rolled those every six months. Councilmember Riddle has asked for
City of Lake Forest Park: A little bit more detail on that, so I'm thinking we can bring that probably to the budget and finance meeting next month, maybe a little sooner, if it's available.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then additional grants have been awarded. So, that's kudos to several departments going out and getting dollars for things that we now don't have to pay for out of the general fund.
City of Lake Forest Park: On the expenditure side, interpreter requests have been higher. Public defense cases, you remember the contract that we ended into was a one-year contract with our public defender, based on the unknowns of this new world we're in with the state Supreme Court and the number of cases they can handle.
City of Lake Forest Park: And there was a scaler in there that once he hit so many cases, and it was a per-case basis, well, we're doing a lot more public defense than we've done in the past. I think that's a sign of the economy.
City of Lake Forest Park: And that's where we are, so it's costing us more than I anticipated. We have very high legal costs related to the SEPA appeal, the lakefront park.
City of Lake Forest Park: Fuel prices, I think we all know, you know, except for some of us who have electric cars, we know that, fuel-efficient cars are a benefit, especially today's dollars, but if you…
City of Lake Forest Park: Think about it with our public works trucks. Those are big, big trucks, diesels.
City of Lake Forest Park: more expensive than anything, and then our PD runs 24-7. So, gas prices have gone up, City Hall repairs and maintenance I talked about, the, $1.6 million to the Strategic Opportunity Fund, and then Project Timelines just sees you shifting those out. So…
City of Lake Forest Park: It's a lot, it's still quite high level.
City of Lake Forest Park: Just to give you an idea of where we're gonna end up.
City of Lake Forest Park: But, you know, the benefit is
City of Lake Forest Park: And people would look at the early SM…
City of Lake Forest Park: Projected ending fund balance for general fund, and go, you know, good job, you saved a lot of money.
City of Lake Forest Park: We also did it without the people that we need in positions, and so we've got…
City of Lake Forest Park: you'll see a lot of that offset with overtime, honestly, especially in the PD. We've got detectives working the weekends to cover for patrol officers who aren't available, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: It's not all.
City of Lake Forest Park: all roses there. So, while we have savings more than we anticipated, it's because we haven't been able to do the work we should be doing.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I'll take any questions. Thank you, Administrator Hill, and I put a finer point on the PD comment. I know that Chief Sinella is doing everything he can to keep things working.
City of Lake Forest Park: And every… every shift staffed, but we are… we are leaner than we've been for a very, very long time, and we're down a number of officers, so the cost savings,
City of Lake Forest Park: are at the expense of the, you know, the, the life… lifestyles of our… of our, employees, and that's not okay. We need to make sure we step up and make that happen. Colleagues, questions I give…
City of Lake Forest Park: a budgetary riddle the first shot at it. Thank you. I guess what would be… another metric that would be nice is the anticipated salaries, actual salaries, so that we have a sense of, you know.
City of Lake Forest Park: where we're at with those, and how much work we're doing that we haven't had bodies for, so we're… we're leaning on our existing staff. I… I never want to overwork staff, right? Because we don't want them to leave, they've got the institutional knowledge, we just… but something that can kind of daylight maybe that… that as we get
City of Lake Forest Park: into the next budget cycle a little further. Yeah, I think that's something definitely that we will look at. Our HR director is doing salary surveys right now, looking at cost of living. We'll take a look at, you know, where we've been spending a lot more on overtime. I think it'll be reflected in the overtime budgets as we get towards the end of the year.
City of Lake Forest Park: And as soon as I get a finance director who can run that type of analysis, we will get it to you. Yeah, I think that's helpful for us as a council to understand what staff is going through, since we're not here, you know, on a day-to-day basis. They're going through a lot.
City of Lake Forest Park: You can imagine. For Tony, what's do one question, please? All right, and thanks for the update, Administrator Hill. My question's about,
City of Lake Forest Park: the expenditures, all of those were pretty much anticipated, except… can you speak more about the SEPA appeal costs?
City of Lake Forest Park: Is that about the Lakefront Park? It is.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so that project has been appealed on a few different levels. That takes attorney time, that takes staff time, that takes consultant time to prepare for the hearing examiner, and so there have been extraordinary costs there that were unanticipated, and so…
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, you can't budget for something like that. You always budget a little bit extra in your legal services, just for those unknowns, but that one has been extraordinary in cost. It exceeded the costs… exceeded what we had budgeted? Oh, certainly, yes.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, weird.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, one comment and then a question. So the comment is, even if things are somewhat less dire by about half a million dollars, I do want to point out that we are still hemorrhaging money from the general fund year after year. So I do want to point out that the structural deficit is still there.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then my question for you, when the expenditures are less than what we originally budgeted for, it would be helpful to know if that is a true savings, because we were able to do a project for cheaper.
City of Lake Forest Park: Or if it's sort of a false savings because, oh, this project has been delayed into 2027, which makes it another biennium.
City of Lake Forest Park: I would say, for the most part, is because they've been delayed. It's rare in this economy that a budget… that a project comes in under budget. It's going to be at or above budget, so any of these that you're looking at on, you know, the roundabout, the park.
City of Lake Forest Park: culvert projects, what… whatever it is, the sewer lift station, not a culvert project, we aren't there yet, but sewer lift station, those are all just delayed. We anticipated those beginning construction in this biennium, but they just… due to turnover, due to just,
City of Lake Forest Park: the amount of work that it takes to design those projects and the consultant time, they're just not ready yet. So, yeah, it's pretty much just pushing it till the next biennium on those large projects. Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Good?
City of Lake Forest Park: lean forward here, please. I need a bell or something. Yeah, please. In reference to the SEPA,
City of Lake Forest Park: I know that people have asked about the SEPA, like, what does it really encompass, and I understand what it might be for, but I… possibly our residents don't know 100% of what it's for, and if…
City of Lake Forest Park: if it's not successful, what's the plan B? And I'm not expecting a complete answer right now, but I'm just bringing forth that there's people asking about it, and there doesn't seem to be any talk about it, so can we have some talk about it, I guess?
City of Lake Forest Park: I think there will be an update in the future from the staff. If you remember, everything was remanded back to the city staff. They were working on a proposal to take back to the hearing examiner. They haven't completed that yet. They're working with Attorney Pratt on getting that back before the hearing examiner, but there certainly will be more information to come on what
City of Lake Forest Park: the city is proposing in response to that… that appeal and those questions that rose during that time.
City of Lake Forest Park: And Plan B.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Councilmember Good. Excellent question. I want to reach out to our friends online. Councilmember Saunders and Councilmember Muilenburg, any questions for Administrator Hill on these
City of Lake Forest Park: Updates on the, projected revenues and expenditures.
City of Lake Forest Park: No real surprises here, other than, costs keep increasing.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay. Going once, going twice, going.
Ellyn Saunders: Good.
City of Lake Forest Park: Funny.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, so I have just sort of a… sort of almost irrelevant follow-up, but did the… did we take delivery on the motorcycle?
City of Lake Forest Park: Yesterday. We did, nice, yeah. The police motorcycle is here, it has to be outfitted.
City of Lake Forest Park: Chief Zonella could, like I said, I used to call him Interim Chief Zonella, can still address that, but there's a lot of training that the officer is going to have to go through, so you're not going to see it on the road anytime soon, but it is here. Okay.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thanks.
City of Lake Forest Park: Calling to other questions.
City of Lake Forest Park: Vice Chair Golden. Yeah, I have a question about the, 002 Traffic Safety Fund. So, you had mentioned that, so the revenues are roughly $3 million less than what was originally expected.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I'm curious, do you have a sense for to what extent that is because people are driving safer, which means it's a policy success?
City of Lake Forest Park: Versus more technical challenges, either operating the cameras, the court system, you know, is it…
City of Lake Forest Park: That we should have been able to collect the revenue, but we were not able to.
City of Lake Forest Park: I would say, for the most part, is people are doing better. We have had some technical challenges, you know, the administrative office of the courts just…
City of Lake Forest Park: changed their software at the county level. Maybe it's not administrative office. I think it is. State level. State level. We had to change our software. There have been some serious hiccups.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so there has been some revenue lost, but…
City of Lake Forest Park: counter to that, we will be, negotiating that the fees that we would normally pay are offset an equivalent amount, so it would be a break-even for the city. We've had this in the past, where the cameras have had issues, and we've just been credited what we would have paid, because the work's not really being done on the back end by the,
City of Lake Forest Park: the provider, and so we will have those… we just haven't gotten to the point now where we can gather all that data and see what that number is, and have those discussions with our provider. So, that will occur. So, at the end of the day.
City of Lake Forest Park: Dollar-wise will be where we should be, but the problem is, people are out there speeding through these zones, running red lights.
City of Lake Forest Park: And not getting, you know, The tickets that they should be, you know, to…
City of Lake Forest Park: the stick, so to speak. So, we're… we are very close to getting that back online and running.
City of Lake Forest Park: If I could get on my policy soapbox for one moment, in a good way. I think we, council members, we had all said that this primary focus was not revenue for the cameras, it was making the streets safer for everybody. So if that means a leaner 002 fund.
City of Lake Forest Park: that is great, because it means that the road, like 178th, is a safer road for people to get around. Right, absolutely.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Vicer Goldman. You're… you've been definitely drinking the Kool-Aid, because I've… we've talked about this for years. If it's zero, it means we're doing our jobs, and people are being safe, so it's good. It's unfortunate there are some hiccups. We'll get there. Combination of factors in that regard, and again, I'm giving a little…
City of Lake Forest Park: taking a little license here, because Mr. Phil… Mr.
City of Lake Forest Park: Hill is on the spot because he's not finance director, but the traffic camera safety revenue, there's been some challenges because of issues with technical details on our vendor side, and also with the Association of Washington Courts, which
City of Lake Forest Park: As you remember, two years ago, we had a major hiccup with them. So, it is what it is, not pointing fingers in anybody's direction, but again, we want to make sure people are safe, and
City of Lake Forest Park: Finer point on this, Mr. Hill, could you talk about restrictive funds? Restricted funds? I would be happy to, because I was thinking about that earlier. And just specifically to address the L90 question that came up earlier of, you know, if you're hemorrhaging dollars.
City of Lake Forest Park: why would you spend money on this capital project? So that… those dollars that would be spent on that project cannot support
City of Lake Forest Park: the general fund. They are restricted funds by state law, they come out of a myriad of different pots of money, but they… they aren't general fund dollars, so they come out of transportation benefit districts, so,
City of Lake Forest Park: your car tabs that you pay, help pay for that. We get… we have a lot of grants from the state to pay for that project.
City of Lake Forest Park: In fact, I think the majority of that project is grant-funded at this point in time, and so even if we stepped away from a project like that, we could not then turn and spend the dollars to help pay for the exorbitant increases in police safety costs.
City of Lake Forest Park: Or just, you know.
City of Lake Forest Park: the costs of running a city, or to pay for legal fees on… on something else. And so…
City of Lake Forest Park: It runs into the same with the 002 Fund, as we talk about that. These new traffic cameras that we've installed are…
City of Lake Forest Park: highly regulated by the state. They can only be used for traffic safety and multimodal safety, so we can spend it, you know, put money towards a roundabout. We could do bike and pedestrian.
City of Lake Forest Park: improvements, crosswalks, you know, chicanes, speed tables, things like that. Things that improve the environment for all users of the roads and sidewalks, etc. And so, when you start talking about capital projects, those, for the majority, are not paid for by general fund.
City of Lake Forest Park: An example would be the purchase of the Lakefront Park.
City of Lake Forest Park: Of the $5 million that we paid for that, the city put in $500,000, and that actually came out of a restricted fund for purchasing parks. It did not come out of the general fund. So, they're very much separated to, for good reason. I mean…
City of Lake Forest Park: Dollars should be paying for what, you know, the userts are putting in for.
City of Lake Forest Park: Utilities, as far as your sewer capital, your surface water.
City of Lake Forest Park: what you pay there stays there and goes into, you know, the sewer lift station on Beach Drive, for example.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Administrator Hill. I think it's really important, and again, for everybody's edification, since we don't have a finance director. Restricted funds are restricted funds, and it's a very, very complex system of
City of Lake Forest Park: nested kinds of, funds that… surface water can only be used for certain things. Environmental fees can only be used for certain kinds of things. Park funds that we receive from the county can only be used for parks. We… capital can only be used for certain things. General fund…
City of Lake Forest Park: We have very, very limited places we can receive funds from that, and when it comes to savings.
City of Lake Forest Park: It's… there's certain kinds of fool's errands, if you will, when it comes to culverts or… or some of these other projects, because we're receiving the vast majority of the funds from outside of the city.
City of Lake Forest Park: And they're restricted, so I just want to make sure that… and if anybody has any questions about that, I… as much as we can answer, happy to help with that, because it is very, very, incredibly difficult. I… I don't,
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, I understand completely that the community has really serious questions about it. It's easy to say it's general fund revenues versus, you know, other things.
City of Lake Forest Park: General fund is general fund, and these other things, culverts, parks, capital facilities, surface water, all those different things. O2, for example, as we discussed, traffic safety is very difficult to reconcile that those have to be
City of Lake Forest Park: Never in the twain shall they meet, quoting whoever I'm quoting here, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: Colleagues, other questions for Administrator Hill, and I want to get him off the…
City of Lake Forest Park: Spot here, if you don't have anything else.
City of Lake Forest Park: check in with our friends online. Mr. Muilenburg or, Councilmember Saunders?
City of Lake Forest Park: All good?
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Next steps, our goal is to present the Mayor's proposed 27-28 budget to you on September 10th. So the work session at 6 o'clock would be the CIP presentation by Director Heaton, and then we would roll into the 7 o'clock meeting to present,
City of Lake Forest Park: the document to you. So fingers crossed that we get a lot done in the next few weeks.
City of Lake Forest Park: I will give props to, Director Vaughn. She is still helping from… from outside the city. She's getting us through some of the little questions that we have. She has been available, so that has been beneficial, and we have questions. But just a shout out to,
City of Lake Forest Park: Trish, our accounting supervisor, and Shannon.
City of Lake Forest Park: Myself, we're doing what we can in a situation where we're without a finance director at a terrible time to be without a finance director. So, I'm glad we're… where we are, I'm glad we started early, and I think we're on track, so stay tuned.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Administrator Hill, really appreciate it, and…
City of Lake Forest Park: Tipping my hat to the staff, they're wearing a lot of hats, pun intended, right now.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, thank you. Moving on to… Let's see, where are we?
City of Lake Forest Park: 8B? 7B. 7B.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, yes, Washington Collaborative Elective Leaders, that is yours, Deathie, for Tani. Thank you very much for that.
City of Lake Forest Park: This is the RTS I get to, report out, so if I can have the presentation on screen… yeah, there we go. So the abbreviation WASELI, is basically a… first, I wanted to thank,
City of Lake Forest Park: not just the council, but also the staff in the city for sending me to this institute. It's an amazing process, it's an amazing experience, and I wanted to kind of convey, basically, what the experience was like.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, how do I advance?
City of Lake Forest Park: There we go, okay. So, the Wasalli stands for the Washington Collaborative Elected Leaders Institute. It's, as you'll see, it's basically sponsored by the Association of Washington Cities, which is a sort of municipal group.
City of Lake Forest Park: Plus, basically, the, Evans School of Government at the University of Washington, the Ruckelhaus Center there. Plus, basically, a couple of other, sponsors that I'll list.
City of Lake Forest Park: The point is, though, that basically this is a multi-day, spread out over a couple of months, and the reason I want to convey this to everyone is one of the priorities that I think I heard the most when I was talking to residents at Lake Forest Park is, do we work with other cities on any projects?
City of Lake Forest Park: And they will really express the desire that we do, that we reach out beyond our borders to find out what other cities are doing.
City of Lake Forest Park: And for my fellow council members and mayor, this is an amazing ability to basically work with colleagues from other cities, as well as your own city, on projects that you don't normally have a whole lot of time, even in a subcommittee meeting to work on. So, I really do recommend the experience for all of you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Alright, so in any case, I was fortunate enough to be on a team with Councilmembers Ted Weinberg from Mercer Island, he's the guy kind of in the back at my table there, Councilmember Laura Mork of Shoreline, who's got her back to us in the photo, and then over to my right.
City of Lake Forest Park: is basically, Councilmember Sun Buford from, Newcastle.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so, what do we all have in common? It's interesting, because there are 27 council members there. Many of them were from their own city, so there were 3 from a given city.
City of Lake Forest Park: Tukwila, for instance, sent three folks who were thinking about how do we communicate the city's issues to our constituents in a timely and thoughtful manner, and I thought that was a great question to work on. So we all had to have some kind of project, and so you might wonder why we have these four folks together.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, first off, the mission of the training is for elected municipal leaders to address issues of community concern in collaboration with the community and other elected leaders. And I think both parts, the community and the other elected leaders, are a super important thing, because it basically sets kind of the tone of
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, what are the concerns out there?
City of Lake Forest Park: with the people who basically can make the decisions to make… to address some of those concerns. And so the folks pictured here are the people who run the Institute.
City of Lake Forest Park: Julia Carboni's on the left there. She's the, she's a professor at the Washington State University in government.
City of Lake Forest Park: The fellow in the middle is A.K. Sterling, who's the program manager for Waselli, and then on the right is Becky Corelli, or Corielle, sorry, who's the, who's the, the director, the dean, actually, at the, Evans School of Government.
City of Lake Forest Park: And the reason why her name is highlighted is because she's also a Lake Forest Park resident, because we're like that, right? We really are civically engaged.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, the point is the, this institute was sponsored by not only AWC, but also by the Ruckelhaus Center at the University of Washington, and I really am thankful for them basically working together. This is the third cohort I was in, so they've done it a couple of times before, and every time they've refined the training, so it's more relevant to what we need to do.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oops.
City of Lake Forest Park: There we go. So, the team that was put together, the four from the three… four suburban cities.
City of Lake Forest Park: We all were… we all know each other through other different regional committees and things.
City of Lake Forest Park: But when we sat down to kind of think about what we could do at Wasselli, we were saying, what are our mutual concerns? And we narrowed it down to two, but we were talking about things like municipal finance, you know, the 1% levy, levy that Councilmanic was really limiting all of us. We also talked about how sewage rates
City of Lake Forest Park: were basically ruinous for some of the cities, but we decided that those two were much too large to work with, just with our small group, so we settled on transportation. First, the electric vehicle charging question, which is, how do we site them? Where do we get the funds to build them? How do we build out our infrastructure?
City of Lake Forest Park: The last mile problem, similar idea, getting residents from their homes to a place of public transit. And so the questions are common to all four of our cities, because we all have some kind of public transit coming in, though not everywhere. There are definitely transportation deserts in our city.
City of Lake Forest Park: Many of our residents are very interested in using EVs, and
City of Lake Forest Park: Problem is, basically, there's really not a lot of places to charge up unless you're willing to invest in your own… in one in your own home. But what if you live in an apartment, or something like that? That becomes a real question. So, that was our problem that we were thinking about.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I'll show you how this institute helped us frame it in a different way. So the purpose, as you see in the taped-up sheets that are on the board there, it's really to create this network of elected leaders who are concerned about civic health and polarization.
City of Lake Forest Park: to learn and implement collaborative leadership principles, strategies, and tools to tackle real-world challenges in cities and towns. Now, the two bullet points that I have are definitely real-world challenges.
City of Lake Forest Park: And…
City of Lake Forest Park: what the Institute was very good at was pointing out that, yes, yes, we have this certain degree of political instability and polarization in the U.S, but the problems that face cities aren't necessarily going to be falling on a left-right, red-blue kind of spectrum. They are really common to all the cities, no matter where you live, and the way that you should be thinking about this is.
City of Lake Forest Park: Let's engage people with education, let's engage our constituents with education, get some great ideas by crowdsourcing to the community.
City of Lake Forest Park: bring them back, see what can work with the fiscal restraints that the elected leaders know about, and then try to implement these solutions. And I think that's basically a much healthier way of looking at a lot of these kind of problems that face the cities. Because as we discovered, amongst, you know, the Institute had 27 council members that I mentioned all over the state of Washington.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so, you know.
City of Lake Forest Park: made friends with people from, for instance, Starbuck, which is a tiny town in eastern Washington, Toccoa, Spokane Valley. And, you know, the fact is that their political climate is significantly different than what it is in Lake Forest Park, but the problems are basically the same. So we had a lot of common language between us, which was kind of fun to see.
City of Lake Forest Park: So…
City of Lake Forest Park: Through the three days that… one day that we met in Spokane at the AWC conference in June, a Zoom call that we had in early July, and the three days that I just spent a couple of weeks ago at the University of Washington.
City of Lake Forest Park: We basically honed and, you know, our approach to how we're gonna talk about these transportation problems in our four cities.
City of Lake Forest Park: We're gonna develop a set of steps that lead progress to resident mobility. For instance, some of you know that in Shoreline, they're thinking about putting mobility hubs in, which are not just basically where the light rail stops are, but they would also have, for instance, Lime bike and scooter stations, they would also have EV chargers, also have Lyft and Uber stops.
City of Lake Forest Park: And the idea is that it's kind of a way to get people from that light rail station to their homes.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so the question is, is that a scalable thing for other cities? That's something that we're going to explore.
City of Lake Forest Park: And one of the things that's important to realize is that it's not necessarily going to lead to legislation. In fact, this one may lead to some ordinances that we talk about here, but it's more likely to lead to… we're going to lobby our state legislatures and our county legislators to basically think about policy in this way. Maybe you can fund a program that helps… makes the infrastructure for EVs more…
City of Lake Forest Park: sound into the different cities. After all, we have a lot of power outages, we have a lot of places which are just hard to wire up, including City Hall, and I'd like to basically be able to see if we can find some common ground with what the county's goals are, as well as the state's.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, the point is that we'll be still, even though the training's over.
City of Lake Forest Park: We're still going to be meeting on a monthly basis, about the problem, as well as with our Wasalli leaders, and then we're going to report our outcomes at the next, Association of Washington Cities meeting in June of next year in Tacoma.
City of Lake Forest Park: So I'm really looking forward to working with these folks over the years, and of course, you'll be seeing all the progress I'll make, because I'll make periodic updates on the dais here.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so as I mentioned, you know, one of the other benefits of this was to meet these other council members from… and mayors from other parts of the state, and realize that we all have a lot of
City of Lake Forest Park: amazing, you know, commonalities. Like, for instance, sewers, roads, and solid waste. Very common to all of us, and we all have the same problems. We, you know, all the rates for doing all of those things are going up. How are we gonna pay for it? I'm, you know, won't mention the city, but some cities are still worrying about having a city hall and a police station.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, in many ways, I felt blessed to be here, because we've got some of our basic infrastructure in place.
City of Lake Forest Park: And the question is basically, how can we build on it and make it a better place for everyone? So that's really the purpose of this, and I feel rejuvenated, energized, willing to tackle a lot of these problems. I recommend this to all my fellows up here on the dais, and basically, please, basically, and those of you in the community, ask me about the experience.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you. Wonderful. If I… before questions, Councilmember Saunders, I know you have to go. Thank you for being with us. Appreciate your time.
City of Lake Forest Park: If you have any questions for Councilmember Fertani, please… Feel free.
City of Lake Forest Park: Nope, okay. Sorry, folks, and I just want to make sure, because she said she has work obligations. So, sounds like a wonderful program. Colleagues, questions for Jeffrey or for Tani?
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, I'd love to be there next year. My goodness, if I had the time, I will make it. Goodness, sounds like a lot of fun. I do encourage you, yes. Thank you for, collaborating. One last thing.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, we all had a workbook, of course, because there's a workbook for these sorts of things, and any of you, including members of the public, if you're interested in taking a look at it, I'm going to leave it with our, our, city clerk, and it'll be available as a resource for everyone.
City of Lake Forest Park: Wonderful. Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: bipartisan, or… agnostic,
City of Lake Forest Park: participation in creative solutions is really important, Deputy Mayor. Thank you so much for doing that. It sounds like a great opportunity.
City of Lake Forest Park: Moving on,
City of Lake Forest Park: Can't believe we're at the consent calendar. A motion… I'd entertain a motion for adoption.
City of Lake Forest Park: So moved. Second.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any questions, concerns, ruminations?
City of Lake Forest Park: poems?
City of Lake Forest Park: Hearing none, all those in favor of adoption of the consent calendar, please say aye. Aye.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any nays? The ayes have it. Thank you very much, everybody. We're moving on to new business. Resolution… read this… 262093 Resolution… and Resolution 26…
City of Lake Forest Park: 2094, authorizing the mayor to sign a professional services agreement with Facet Northwest Incorporated for on-call arborist support services and arborist services to support the Sound Transit Bus
City of Lake Forest Park: Transit ST3 permit review.
City of Lake Forest Park: first presentation. Wait for it, Mark, that was… I'm gonna take a deep breath to finish that. Thank you, Mayor and Director Hoffman. Mark Hoffman, Community Development Director. This is a follow-up from prior adopted resolutions for service contracts, professional services.
City of Lake Forest Park: And in two formats. So you have one agenda bill, two resolutions. Each resolution has a different contract, even though they look very similar.
City of Lake Forest Park: The reason for that is they have different purposes. One is general arborist support. The other one is specific to arborist support for Sound Transit's
City of Lake Forest Park: bus rapid transit, project, which has come in.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, the, scope of work, attachment for each contract and the rate sheets are the same.
City of Lake Forest Park: But the purposes are shown in the title, and they will be used in two different ways. We don't know how yet. They're both task order-oriented, as needed, fully reimbursable from the project applicant.
City of Lake Forest Park: And we are not asking to weigh three readings tonight. This is just introduction. Is the project in? Is the work important? Yes. We have one main application that came in
City of Lake Forest Park: Month and a half ago, it was incomplete. That was the right-of-way corridor permit, not necessarily applicable to trees.
City of Lake Forest Park: And last Friday, I believe, a series of other applications came in. Tuesday, some critical area permits came in. We have 28 days to dig those out and see what they are. We anticipate a series of other applications to come in.
City of Lake Forest Park: Involving trees. So at this point, we don't have a task order to do this work.
City of Lake Forest Park: Will we have a need? Yes.
City of Lake Forest Park: And given that the…
City of Lake Forest Park: second meeting of the Council in August has been canceled, we're fine with coming back in September. We'll know a little bit more about trees. We started our first site visit
City of Lake Forest Park: Tuesday, to look at a group of trees, and so we're, I know that in a previous meeting, two things. In a previous meeting, I pledged to go look at every tree.
City of Lake Forest Park: I know I can't do that alone. Christy Bishop is a highly qualified urban forest planner that we have on staff. She will be the primary. It was asked… the second issue was when all of those service contracts came before you the last time.
City of Lake Forest Park: I believe it was Councilmember Riddle asked a question about arborist-specific services.
City of Lake Forest Park: Since then, I've reviewed… the word arborist does appear in the other contracts, but what doesn't appear is local knowledge and experience on implementing codes in this community.
City of Lake Forest Park: Drew Epping is now with FACET. She used to be the urban forest planner here. I've worked with her in Bainbridge Island. This contract is designed to work with her. She is the project manager, and so that's the purpose. We would really enjoy having this resource for a variety of reasons for what's coming. It's not urgent, but we ask for you to,
City of Lake Forest Park: allow the mayor to sign them. Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Director Hoffman.
City of Lake Forest Park: Appreciate that. Buttons… Belt and suspenders, as it were, Mark, right? Colleagues, questions for Director Hoffman? Again, this is Second Touch, we'll be coming back.
City of Lake Forest Park: Councilor Riddle. Thank you. And this may be slightly off-topic, but,
City of Lake Forest Park: Have we considered including in, any of these contracts,
City of Lake Forest Park: To have the arborist, like, reviewing the trees for being able to be used and repurposed for art or other purposes, to be able to identify trees that would be, candidates for that.
City of Lake Forest Park: Do you understand what I'm kind of suggesting? I'm not sure I do. I heard the word art, and I know that we have not discussed that in any way. There's been some thoughts that some large trees are coming down. Can we repurpose their trunks for other things? We, you know… We'd be glad to entertain that. Yeah, I don't know that we would own those or have the final say in any of that.
City of Lake Forest Park: But, that, there's nothing wrong with doing that and interjecting that into the process. I know that a lot of times, large woody debris
City of Lake Forest Park: which is very large scale, is used elsewhere, and is very valuable for salmon habitat and so forth. My hope is that we do not remove any trees of that size.
City of Lake Forest Park: So the marketability or the reuse of a tree that's coming down is, questionable.
City of Lake Forest Park: But we'd be happy to entertain that any time that it came up. Now, some will be owned by private property owners, some will be in the right-of-ways, they'll be the responsibility of Sound Transit, but we will be there at every moment.
City of Lake Forest Park: I think knowing which ones we may want to request
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, further conversation, whether it's with Sound Transfer or a private property owner, would be useful, in… It would. …respecting those trees. In two ways. One, because as I go to every tree, I'd like to know which ones they are. Administrator Hill.
City of Lake Forest Park: To this point, we have reached out to Sound Transit to ask them if they have a procedure for trees to be donated as… for art, especially the cedars. I know a lot of
City of Lake Forest Park: go down…
City of Lake Forest Park: South Lake Union and, you know, carve yourself a boat. But, Sound Transit is looking into it. If they have a standard operating procedure and how they would go about it. It's not something that sounds like has been asked of them before, or at least not the current staff they have today. They've had a lot of turnover, so they may have something tucked away. But we just…
City of Lake Forest Park: Found out yesterday they're gonna look into it, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: Maybe that was this morning. Thank you, Administrator Hill. Excellent question, Councilmember Riddle, and I think it…
City of Lake Forest Park: Probably the reason why they haven't encountered that is because…
City of Lake Forest Park: we're Lake Forest Park, and other places are not. I'll just say that. Councilmember Rosen. I will say on that, at some point, they said that their arborists were evaluating some trees also for possibilities for that, so we…
City of Lake Forest Park: they may have ideas of that. I was gonna ask, for this contract, you're talking about you and staff doing some of these visits, is the contract…
City of Lake Forest Park: other of those visits, or how… what's the division of labor that you're envisioning? Well, it's task order oriented, so it's support for what we need. It does not delegate the recommendation or decision or, you know, the work done by city staff.
City of Lake Forest Park: the basic legwork, but as needed. And so I don't know that one person can field every email, every phone call, every site visit, be in every backyard.
City of Lake Forest Park: be able to respond to inquiries, know which trees… the corridor is very wide, as defined by code, so I know it's at least that work.
City of Lake Forest Park: It could extend to analysis of arborist reports, and I know that there are… is some SEPA documents that need to be reviewed, so it's essentially fair game for anything technical trees, including field work.
City of Lake Forest Park: But it doesn't rise to superseding what a staff member would do. Certainly not what a department head would do, issuing a permit.
City of Lake Forest Park: Councilmember. Colleagues, other questions for Director Hoffman?
City of Lake Forest Park: Councilmember Muilenburg, between bites, would you like a… Sorry, I'm hungry, Matt.
Matt Muilenburg: Very excited for our commitment to touch every tree, and thank you, Mark, for reiterating that commitment tonight and moving this forward with us.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, colleagues, thank you. Thank you very much, Director Hoffman. Really appreciate your efforts there. And the good news is.
City of Lake Forest Park: to everybody who's at, you know, watching this, or will watch this, as I said, belt and suspenders. We're going to make sure that what staff doesn't have the time to do, we're…
City of Lake Forest Park: paying… they're going to pay for us to… Sound Transit's going to pay for us to take care of the contract, so it's important, but it does involve a lot of staff time to… to herd cats, so to speak. I mean, that is very important.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, moving along, wow. Council discussion, we got nothing. Councilmember Reports, goodness, at 8.20?
City of Lake Forest Park: It's not possible.
City of Lake Forest Park: Be brief.
City of Lake Forest Park: All right, at the risk of being brief then, alright. So, thanks, Linda. I just wanted to mention that at the Planning Commission meeting, which I happened to be at last night, there were some very thoughtful comments from members of our community regarding reasonable use exceptions and critical areas, and I thought, you know, those of you who are interested in the topic, please review the video of that.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Vicer Goldman? Yes, the, Tree Board met last week. Their big topic is they're moving forward with a tree giveaway. It's styled in the same way that Shoreline does their annual giveaways, and, Bellevue as well.
City of Lake Forest Park: The plan to kind of dip our toes into it would be to get maybe, I think, roughly 30 to 50 trees of assorted species. I think they were looking at maybe 3 or 4 species.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then just open it up to any resident, basically anyone who lives or works in the city, who wants to get a free tree.
City of Lake Forest Park: While also providing some general guidance, you know, advice on, you know, how to help keep the tree alive while it acclimates to a new place.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Councilmember. Excellent.
City of Lake Forest Park: Colleagues, other council member reports?
City of Lake Forest Park: I can add more on the Planning Commission meeting, which was started off with a bang, as Deputy Mayor Fertani said. It was,
City of Lake Forest Park: a lot of public comment about reasonable use exemptions and critical areas ordinances, and how all that plays out, and I think it was a good opportunity to air out
City of Lake Forest Park: Concerns that people have and experiences.
City of Lake Forest Park: Which will inform how all of that code gets redrafted, and it's always great to see LFP residents show up with… having done the research, they had looked at all the neighboring cities' codes, and knew… knew what they wanted to borrow for ours, and were being very thoughtful about it, and staff…
City of Lake Forest Park: Explain, sort of, where all that's gonna go forward, and how that'll all play out, and, why…
City of Lake Forest Park: Why those were not in our code already, and how they're gonna get in there.
City of Lake Forest Park: So that was… that was great, and they…
City of Lake Forest Park: Have been working through the existing zoning, thinking… looking for,
City of Lake Forest Park: road bumps or obstacles to doing the middle housing work that we've all been excited to see move forward. So they had a good discussion of
City of Lake Forest Park: How… how they're gonna keep proceeding and… and looking for those opportunities,
City of Lake Forest Park: and are looking to have some local developers come in at a future meeting and share some of the experiences from the developer's end of what sorts of road bumps they've been hitting as they've tried to roll out those sorts of projects also. So it was,
City of Lake Forest Park: a good, and at times, I guess you could say heated discussion of some of those issues. There are strong feelings all around, and so it's all… it's a good opportunity for it to come out, and…
City of Lake Forest Park: Hash it all through.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Councilmember.
City of Lake Forest Park: Colleagues, any other Councilmember reports?
City of Lake Forest Park: What's… Well, let's start with some fun stuff. I'm all about visual aids, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: So, like, somebody on TV. This was my week last week.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, nice. So… Such a thankful to Representative Jayapal to, giving us this giant check,
City of Lake Forest Park: we try to cash it, but Chase wouldn't take it. Yeah, because it's on full, but we'll get there. Yeah, many thanks. I mean, my goodness, a big thanks to Jeff…
City of Lake Forest Park: Jay Johnson, and his team,
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, bring the crew together to help with lobbying towards this project, and it is, again.
City of Lake Forest Park: this community continues to excel in bringing in other outside money to make sure this community has what they need, and public resources that are important for social well-being and the good of everybody. So, huge thanks to Camilla and her team, and
City of Lake Forest Park: My goodness, it was so fun to see the other folks that receive funding as well. They were…
City of Lake Forest Park: really amazing,
City of Lake Forest Park: list of funders of people that were funded, and including a project that's really important, which is the preservation of the
City of Lake Forest Park: strangely enough, the refrigeration system at the University of Washington for all the ice cores. It's about climate, folks, and this is something, as you know, the federal government has pulled funding for
City of Lake Forest Park: other… in other places, but, our… our wonderful representative brought money back to the University of Washington to help with preserving those ice cores at the University of Washington, and some other things.
City of Lake Forest Park: I mean, there's a whole litany of things. Look at the list, it's online, but huge thanks to Representative Jayapal for helping us out, because it is…
City of Lake Forest Park: We can't do it by ourselves.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I wanna… this is a legacy of Deputy Mayor Lori Bodey. Sure. The fact that basically she made the connections in Washington, was talking to the representative, as well as our Senators, several years ago. You bet. This is the fruition for that.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, and, and many thanks to our federal senators for bringing this forward. It was… it was a really fun event, and, never… I've never been to the Port of Seattle, building before. It's beautiful.
City of Lake Forest Park: If you're… if you're ever there, don't walk in the fountain, because a couple people walked in the fountain. It's easy to do, it's like a river right down the middle of the building, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: I did not.
City of Lake Forest Park: I, if I did, I was gonna wear my boots, but it was, it was a great, really great event, and…
City of Lake Forest Park: Huge thanks to… Jake and the team for helping us get this across the line.
City of Lake Forest Park: A couple positive things really quickly,
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, let's go to the positive things at the end.
City of Lake Forest Park: really positive things.
City of Lake Forest Park: Roundabout is going really well. Things are, we've seen a lot of increased traffic on 145th, so people are getting the message that they don't want to come down, down Ballinger Way when there's construction going on. The culvert project is wrapping up, from WSDOT. We are working
City of Lake Forest Park: With them to try to get, accountability about the
City of Lake Forest Park: sad degradation of the roadway even more because of their project, and I hope we'll get a result there.
City of Lake Forest Park: And a couple other things, quickly. Lots of deer out there, be very careful. And, you know me, I love my animals.
City of Lake Forest Park: There has been multiple sightings and photos of the Northwest Mink.
City of Lake Forest Park: In Lake Forest Park.
City of Lake Forest Park: Everybody thought he was extinct here.
City of Lake Forest Park: But as my daughter and I saw it, we couldn't get a photo, but one of our friends did a couple days later. So, there is definitively Northwest Mink, it's been verified by Fish and Wildlife.
City of Lake Forest Park: They're back, and they're, they were native to this area, and they were hunted to almost extinction here, so it's pretty extraordinary. They are… they look like a giant ferret, and they're brown, and…
City of Lake Forest Park: yeah, I was like, is that a ferret? And my daughter said, no, it's not a ferret, and then…
City of Lake Forest Park: A few days later, I got a photo from somebody of one. So, just, heads up, if you see them, get a picture, it's pretty cool. That's a testament to all the environmental work that you all are doing, and we're all doing, to try to protect the environment, as I…
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, beating the drums for environmental activism. When I was a kid, there were no eagles, there were no osprey, there were no beavers, there were no… hardly any salmon, and they're all back in… in… in numbers and…
City of Lake Forest Park: let's keep it up, folks. This is… this is why we're a Lake Forest Park. It's really important.
City of Lake Forest Park: With that, Administrator Hill, anything you want to… oh, I did have one more thing. PD, by the way, thank you, Chief Zanella. Contrast between our department report, number of calls, and I'm not going to call out any other community, but if you have a chance, take a look at
City of Lake Forest Park: Our department calls for service over a month, and other cities.
City of Lake Forest Park: locally, Way to go, Chief and team.
City of Lake Forest Park: Huge.
City of Lake Forest Park: difference and delta between our department and other departments. So, again, I'm not going to disparage our neighbors, but it's a big difference, and… and that's why we…
City of Lake Forest Park: We love our PD. So, with that, Administrator Hill, what do you got on your… any thoughts?
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, with that, we're moving on to… Executive Session, I believe.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, joy.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, wait.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes.
City of Lake Forest Park: Hang on, hang on. Yep, we're moving on to an Executive Session Qualifications of an Applicant for Public Employment, RCW 4230110, Parens 1, Parens G, and potential litigation pursuant to RCW 4230.110.
City of Lake Forest Park: Friends 1, Friends I. We will be coming back to the council chambers.
City of Lake Forest Park: For a decision. Mr. Mayor? Yes. Before we go into Executive Session, was there any other Council business? Well, we think we'll stick it at the end of other business.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so after the… Other, other business. Okay, thanks for the heads up.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, we're gonna be going out for 20 minutes, we will… if…
City of Lake Forest Park: Are we staying here, Administrator Hill?
City of Lake Forest Park: There will be an announcement and decision
City of Lake Forest Park: after we come back. Thank you so much for… For joining us.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, we are adjourning the regular meeting and moving into Executive Session.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, good evening, welcome back, everybody, to the City of Lake Forest Park City Council Regular Meeting for, Thursday… what date? August 13th. Thank you very much. We're out of executive session, and we're moving into conversation with City Administrator Hill.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, and for those of you here for the last meeting, you're gonna hear me say this again, but we have guests, so we should, and we have people online. As you know, the mayor has extended an offer of employment to Diego Zanella for the position of Chief of Police.
City of Lake Forest Park: For the city, so the mayor is seeking confirmation of the appointment pursuant to Section 216020 of the Lake Forest Park Municipal Code, and authority to enter into that employment agreement. Just a little bit of background, we did do this as an internal search. Both commanders applied for the position. We had interview panels of myself and the mayor, and then we had two other panels that consisted of
City of Lake Forest Park: of Council Members, Human Resources.
City of Lake Forest Park: The Police Guild, Lake Forest Park Civil Service Commission, and the Redmond Police Chief.
City of Lake Forest Park: Before you tonight in your packet is the proposed contract. Commander Zanella has reviewed that and is… finds it acceptable, as does the administration. Some of the key terms are listed in the agenda cover. I won't go through it. The base compensation for that is pulled straight out of the budget for this year.
City of Lake Forest Park: As I said earlier in the night, we're going through salary,
City of Lake Forest Park: survey right now, so any adjustments in the upcoming budgets would be proposed to Council during the time, but this is the compensation that was put into, the budget for 2026, as I have…
City of Lake Forest Park: put in here, thanks to Senate Bill 5974, which went into effect on May 20… 1st, 2026.
City of Lake Forest Park: Commander Zanella has to go through a full background investigation before we can officially make him the Chief of Police. And so, what is before you tonight is a resolution, and I think Deputy Mayor will cover the specifics of that, but to,
City of Lake Forest Park: confirm Diego Zonella as the Chief of police, and…
City of Lake Forest Park: authorize the mayor to enter into that employment agreement subject to the full background investigation and submittal of the eligibility requirement verification form to the… I'll read it out loud… the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any questions for me? Colleagues, questions for Administrator Hill?
City of Lake Forest Park: Hearing none, Mayor Fertani, would you like to move forward with this? I'd be honored to. I'd like to move Resolution 262095, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Lake Forest Park, Washington, authorizing the Mayor to sign an employment agreement with Diego Zanella for the Chief of Police position.
City of Lake Forest Park: I want to point out that basically this is an amended version that was in the packet, so those of you following along at home.
City of Lake Forest Park: As mentioned by the City Administrator, we had to amend it for State Bill, or SB 5974.
City of Lake Forest Park: Do I hear a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Any questions, comments, concerns?
City of Lake Forest Park: I have one question.
City of Lake Forest Park: Aren't you gonna bring him up here and grill him a little bit? Oh, you know what? Actually… Speech, speech. Right, we're not gonna let him get off easy, are we? Diego, welcome! Thank you for having me. Of course, I'm honored and very happy to be here, and thank you for confirming me. And I know I have to go through the background.
City of Lake Forest Park: investigation, my personal life is pretty boring. I go out with my wife and my dog for long…
City of Lake Forest Park: walks, and actually, my dog will say that I'm the best dad that she can have, so I will not have any problems with my background investigation. Anyway, I'm very happy to be here. I will be basically trying to do exactly what the previous chief… we were on the same page for many, many years. We had the same leadership style. We think about our community first, and that's what really matters to me.
City of Lake Forest Park: ethics, number one for me. Professionally, number two, and of course, I want to be committed to the city where I work. And I did that for the last seven years, and it would be nothing new for me to be 110% to this community. So, thank you again for having me and confirming.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Diego, very much. Colleagues, and I will just say, the city, members of this community have
City of Lake Forest Park: made their comments very clear, and fully supported Diego's nomination for this position. I have the highest confidence in his abilities. He exemplifies
City of Lake Forest Park: community policing, the kids love him, the staff loves him, he's got mad skills in a lot of areas, and I'm just looking forward to the time that we can
City of Lake Forest Park: build up the department so that he has more time to do the things he's really, really good at. So, we are very lucky to have him.
City of Lake Forest Park: With that, if you have any questions, otherwise we'll move on to the vote.
City of Lake Forest Park: comments, may we? Please, comments, please. I was lucky to be in the interview panel and had an opportunity to talk to you and hear your answers, and I just want to say that I really appreciate your
City of Lake Forest Park: willingness to continue in the positive direction that our department has been going, but I'm also very excited to see what new ideas that you will be bringing when you have an opportunity to do so. So thank you so much for stepping up and putting your name in the hat. I really appreciate you, being willing to take on this new role. Thank you so much.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, echoing Councilmember Riddle, the word community has been said several times in the last few minutes, and I really appreciate that. I think that's something that helps our department stand out, is that we are very community-centered as a police department.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so I'm really glad that you'll be continuing that.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Councilman. Deputy Mayor Ferritani, and then Councilmember Rosamond.
City of Lake Forest Park: And thank you. I want to echo my colleagues' comments about your willingness to work with us, and, you know, all the service that you've already given the city. I think the most telling comment was I was talking to a friend of mine earlier today.
City of Lake Forest Park: And, he's a recent immigrant, and he basically said… I won't name the city he lives in, but he said, you know, oh, it's terrible, I was robbed, and, you know, the police didn't come, you know, it's better in my home country. And I said, so you don't live in Lake Forest Park? And he was stunned to realize that there are cities in the Puget Sound area that still have police respond very quickly.
City of Lake Forest Park: to basically things like robberies and burglaries and such. So, thank you very much for setting the tone for the department. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for a resident. Oh, I…
City of Lake Forest Park: people have said a lot of the things that I would want to say. I certainly also had the chance to be on one of the interview panels and really appreciated
City of Lake Forest Park: your community orientation, also the focus on mentorship and bringing up a department that really embraces those values, and I think we even saw that
City of Lake Forest Park: Looking at the two commanders as they came in to speak about their experiences.
City of Lake Forest Park: there is a mindset here that is really valuable, and that we appreciate, and appreciate the leadership that it takes to build that spirit. And I wondered to ask a question. Sure. In the last week, we… the long-anticipated arrival of… not desired, but anticipated, of ice in Lake Forest Park, and I wonder if you wanted to say anything about the department experience
City of Lake Forest Park: as that unfolded, since I know it's been a topic of discussion here. Yeah, I don't have any problems in answering that question, because we responded like we should respond, so when our community members, you know, call the police because they think there is a suspicious activity and they don't know exactly what it is.
City of Lake Forest Park: And possibly, you know, federal agents doing their job, or maybe not doing their job.
City of Lake Forest Park: Our job is to respond quickly, follow the rules. We have policies that we are following, and so that's how we responded, and that's the reason why I stopped the…
City of Lake Forest Park: agent, and talked to them, and checked on the warrant, and did everything properly, and actually ended up well, because we received a lot of positive feedback from the community, because community members were like, oh, you guys were there in a few minutes, the chief immediately talked to the guy who was in charge of the operation, and, you know, just like, yes, that's how we're supposed to talk
City of Lake Forest Park: respond. If other cities don't do that, well, we are Lake Forest Park. We respond in a different way, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, I think the, the King County Sheriff was speaking with the Shoreline City Council, and sort of said, yeah, the ice can show up, and they'll tell us to pound rocks, and that's where… I feel like… I feel like it went a little bit differently here, which I… Yes, yes, it went different, yes, for sure. Yeah, and indeed, we do appreciate that. Thank you. Everything went exactly the way it should,
City of Lake Forest Park: Civil, respectful.
City of Lake Forest Park: But also, making sure that everybody was safe, which is absolutely the most important thing. Yep. So, let's move on with… I'm sorry, no, Councilmember Good, you have it absolutely answered.
City of Lake Forest Park: No, I think, that all of the police work in Lake Forest Park with you and, Chief Hardin previously, and… and…
City of Lake Forest Park: Commander Ross.
City of Lake Forest Park: have been a real example of what you want a police department to be, and I wish that other police departments could take a lesson.
City of Lake Forest Park: Especially some of the ones that are bordering our city that have lots of problems. So, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I will say, just quickly, on a very positive note, giving the department huge props, when
City of Lake Forest Park: Commander Adams and I were at one of the National Night Out events, very close to another city.
City of Lake Forest Park: One of the neighbors there said she had a visitor from this other city.
City of Lake Forest Park: And that joined her on her porch very late at night. And the visitors said, oh my goodness, there goes Lake Forest Park Police, something must be going on. It was 2 o'clock in the morning, she's a night owl, she's… I think she's a tech… tech person, she spends a lot of time working on things.
City of Lake Forest Park: And she… she said, no, that's what they always do.
City of Lake Forest Park: What a wonderful thing that is. Good confirmation. Testament to the department. You bet. Let's move on with this, folks. All those in favor of confirmation, or of passage of adoption of Resolution 262095, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Lake Forest Park, Washington, authorizing the Mayor to sign an employment agreement with Diego Zanella for the Chief of Police position. Please signify by saying aye.
Matt Muilenburg: Bye.
City of Lake Forest Park: Many days. Nice half it, it passes, you know, congratulations.
City of Lake Forest Park: Excellent.
City of Lake Forest Park: Hey, let's… let's get a… we gotta get a picture, Chief. I mean, there's nobody in here… well… Come on, Council.
City of Lake Forest Park: I think we're going down for this. Okay. Well, when you do this.
City of Lake Forest Park: Funny years. Yeah, yeah, something about funny years. Come on.
City of Lake Forest Park: Awesome. Congratulations. Thank you so much. All right, everybody.
City of Lake Forest Park: Check it.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, let's see… One more item. Legal services, folks. Item B. So, we are at,
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, there is a 15B, authorizing the mayor… authorize the mayor to sign an agreement letter with Arete? Arete? Arete? Aret. Aret. Law Group, request to waive three-touch rules for action. It's your pleasure, Council.
City of Lake Forest Park: Go through the process, and I'm doing.
City of Lake Forest Park: I will go ahead and move that we waive the three-touch rule and sign the engagement letter with Aret Law Group, regarding the
City of Lake Forest Park: Should I say what the project is, or just engagement letter? Just engagement letter. Engagement letter, yeah. Is that good?
City of Lake Forest Park: Any questions, comments on waiving the three-touch rule?
City of Lake Forest Park: All those in favor? So, the reason for this, there is the potential for litigation, and so advice of our current… of the city attorney is for us to bring in this outside attorney to assist with that, and so there is some time sensitivity.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Vice Chair Goldman, appreciate both.
City of Lake Forest Park: as much clarity as we can give publicly. Any other questions or comments? All those in favor of waiving the three-touch rule and item B under 15, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any nays? Ayes have it.
City of Lake Forest Park: I'll go ahead and move that we authorize the mayor to sign the engagement letter with a Rhett Lager.
City of Lake Forest Park: Second. Moving the second to authorize the mayor to sign the engagement letter with the Rett Law Group, with the three-touch rule waived, and, with our… the administration's commitment to make sure that you are informed… informed early and often of all expenses.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any questions or comments? Similar comment. Again, this is our… this is the advice of our city attorney, is to hire this, Kevin Rosenfield over at Arrett, who has more experience in this particular field, and so the city will be getting the best possible legal advice.
City of Lake Forest Park: Of course, not to disparage our current superiority, since this was her referral for this very specialized matter.
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, Larry, honestly, after 9 o'clock, sometimes we throw disparagement rules out the window. Sorry, Kim, but, you know, it's… No, all good. Any other questions or comments, everybody? All those in favor of authorizing the mayor to sign the engagement with the Ratt Law Group, please say aye. Aye.
Matt Muilenburg: Bye.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any nays.
City of Lake Forest Park: Guys have it. Thank you, Council. And with that… One, one… Yes. Other, to ask about.
City of Lake Forest Park: There are 3 initiatives on the ballot in November.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I wonder if there is interest in taking up a resolution
City of Lake Forest Park: endorsing, in my mind, against the three of them. Two of them related to, to,
City of Lake Forest Park: Trans women in sports and schools, and one relating to the millionaire's tax.
City of Lake Forest Park: And whether we wanna… Either have one…
City of Lake Forest Park: resolution regarding that, or two, or three, or how we wanted to do that, if at all, if there's any interest. It'd have to be three separate ones. Would it be? Yeah, it'd have to be.
City of Lake Forest Park: colleagues in interest in… in a discussion about that. We can certainly bring it back to…
City of Lake Forest Park: Committee of the Whole, plenty of time. Let's do that. Let's do that, let's do that, yeah. So, Committee of the Whole… Be interested in continuing the conversation in a cow. Yes, sir. Certainly September. Certainly the outcomes that, those decisions that the ballot will make will impact residents of our city, so it's fair to engage. You bet. Yeah, just a temperature check on it. Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Rosenau.
City of Lake Forest Park: So… Can I do that.
City of Lake Forest Park: one set of parameters on what the schedule will be as to if it will come at all. Yeah, we'll be very… Yeah, there's gonna have to be guardrails, folks. Yeah, thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, a bit of scheduling. So, our August cow, which would have been August 24th, has been canceled for August recess.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so, in terms of timing, that means it would be the September cow, which I believe is the 25th.
City of Lake Forest Park: 1st? I think that's correct. And so, you know, discussion on the 20… September 21st, I assume it's going to be too soon for it to be at the 24th council meeting, since there needs to be a public… I don't know if it's officially a public hearing, but there needs to be a public comment process where people… the public can weigh in, pro or con.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so it's looking like it would be the first October meeting for the actual… if the council took a vote to support or oppose those ballot measures. So, does that timing work, you know, considering the November election?
City of Lake Forest Park: Before the ballots go out, so I guess it's fine, but…
City of Lake Forest Park: I'm watching Kim very closely here, because I don't want to get outside of the guardrails.
City of Lake Forest Park: There's… there's certainly a…
City of Lake Forest Park: I mean, there's a process in state statute that allows you to consider ballot measures and decide whether or not Council will take a position, and it involves inviting people pro and con to the meeting, and I think
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, council leadership can help lead that on whether or not you want this for…
City of Lake Forest Park: any ballot measures that are going to be on the… on the ballot. But there… you can't have discussion, pro and con, before that evening.
City of Lake Forest Park: You would just be deciding, are we going to do this? Are we going to have public testimony about this and invite people to come and talk to us? Yeah, so… so in that case, do we need to wait for a cow, or…
City of Lake Forest Park: could we just schedule something at an earlier count? I… well, I think that part of the caution here, Josh, is that we've got to be very careful that even in the cow, you can't talk for or against it. Well, that's what I mean, like, is the cow superfluous in that event?
City of Lake Forest Park: do we just… should we… should it just simply… The only decision is whether it goes on the agenda or not. Yeah, yeah, so… Your council rules
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, have rules about how things get on the… I'd leave it… I'd leave it to Council leadership, and we'll… we'll go forward from there, and be very cognizant of the OPMA, please, please, everybody.
City of Lake Forest Park: I mean, we want to be very, very careful.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, is that…
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes, yeah, okay, yeah, I agree, sure. We won't be back together for another month, I wanted to be sure we… Making sure I… so, next steps forward, it sounds like we don't need to have this on the September 21st cow.
City of Lake Forest Park: But Deputy Mayor Ferritani and I and Budget Chair Riddle will discuss this, and then we will decide whether we want, you know, each of these on the agenda. And then at that meeting, when there's pro and con comment from the public.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's when individual council members can weigh in on whether they you know.
City of Lake Forest Park: Would want to support or oppose, or neither.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, I think let's not get our… let's not get our head of ourselves, let's…
City of Lake Forest Park: You two need to have this conversation, council leadership, and then…
City of Lake Forest Park: We'll… we'll go from there. Let's be very cautious here, because this is ballot measures. So, yeah, I'm just a little concerned that if we have three as the executive, or the council leadership, and a council member, we have a quorum, so that's a problem. I would back away to maybe one or two of council leadership.
City of Lake Forest Park: making that decision going forward, yeah. We gotta be really careful, folks. With amending what I just said, would a better… since Councilmember Rosenault's the one who brought it up, should we kind of have, essentially, an executive subcommittee of Councilmember Rosenault, Deputy Mayor Fertani, myself, to decide if it's on the agenda?
City of Lake Forest Park: No, I'm sorry, I'm going to be really blunt, but we've got to be… subcommittees are dangerous folks when it comes to OPMA, because we already had it…
City of Lake Forest Park: questions, so let's not… let's… let's not do that right now. Move it through our standard…
City of Lake Forest Park: Let's do the procedure, let's table this procedure. Process of determining what's on… Yeah, let's table it. Yeah. On agenda. I feel like I've stated what I… what I would…
City of Lake Forest Park: what I'm thinking would… might happen, and I'm happy with…
City of Lake Forest Park: whatever process you all set up, that's fine. Take it from there, okay. Appreciate it. And is there anything we need to… would we need to do to draft anything in anticipation of a meeting, or can that wait
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes. Let's let it go. That's fine. Thanks, Josh. I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else?
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, thank you. I think we're adjourned. Great meeting, everybody. Appreciate your time.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thanks, Brianna.