Transportation Benefit District Board Port Townsend City Council acting as the Transportation Benefits District Board Special Session Meeting, August 1, 2023, 9:00 a.m. === TRANSCRIPT === This is Elis Rodriquez, City Clerk, and I'm calling to order the Special Session Transportation Benefit District Board. First thing on the agenda is to call to order, which I just did, and then roll call. Council Member Thomas? Here. Council Member Howard? Here. Council Member Rowe? Here. Council Member Faber? Here. favor? Yeah. Council member Mc hager is excused. Council member Palmer is absent. Council member Wenstrom is absent. We have a quorum of the Transpatient Benefit District Board. Next thing on the item or on the agenda is election of officers. Article one of council rules of procedures provides the process for electing officers at the first meeting of the Transportation Benefit District Board. The city clerk conducts the election for chair. Follow following the election of chair. The chair will then conduct the election for vice chair. The clerk will first call for nominations for the chair in each member of the Transportation Benefit District Board shall be permitted to nominate one person. The nomination shall not require a second A nominee who wishes to decline the nomination shall so state at this time, may I have nominations for chair? That's the question. Does it, does the nominee have to be present? We don't have city attorney here, it can't be hard to run the meeting if you're not present. Yeah, I'd suggest the preference would be there. President preference. But what if I know this person wants to do it? I mean I'd have to dig through the rules of procedure but my advice would be not to elect a chair that's not present but possibly if you want to elect a vice chair that could be something you'd consider if the chair is here so the vice chair can be acting in place of the chair at a future meeting. And if it's really something I think that we want to switch up there's obviously a way to do that at the next meeting so we can change roles. Nominate David Faber. Because I'm joining remotely and I may have to bounce around because of my very small child, I think it would probably be a bad idea for me to be chair right now. >> I got here just in time. >> You can decline if you want. >> We worked that out beforehand just to buy a little bit of time. Nicely done. >> Are there any other nominations? then we do a nominee for Vice Chair after. Yeah once we get a chair. Sure. Okay all in favor of chair the chair being council member Palmer. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right congratulations council member Palmer you are chair of the Transportation Benefit District Board. Next up is for the chair to conduct nominations for vice chair. Awesome. Do we have any nominations for vice chair? I mean I don't want to hog up the nomination thing but I would nominate Monica. We just decided, well we decided it was kind of verbalized that the person the vice chair maybe doesn't have to be present or we think that was just there just to clarify that. She's at her brother's funeral right now so. Right and And the idea is because she's on IND? That's my opinion. And Dizzy has said she would be interested. What does this body do after today? I can quickly answer that. So there's a couple different pathways. Today, I don't believe you can vote to be subsumed into the regular city council meeting structure. I think staff would recommend in the future that would be a good idea because it's easier to notice the public and to hold meetings at regular times. So there'd be another meeting and that would be possibly the extent of a separate board being the district board and then it would go back to how we run council meetings. So it'd be kind of a temporary assignment should you choose to subsume it inside of the city council. If not, it's an acting board that would have duties at least well for up to ten years until the TPD might be re-upped if that does go to the ballot and if it does pass. So, it could be a long assignment, it could be a short assignment. >> Okay, but someone has talked with Monica. >> Yeah. >> I'm comfortable with that. >> You should call on the vote then. >> All right, all those in favor of electing Monica McHager as the vice chair. >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. What's up first? >> Alyssa sent us the packet in email. >> Sorry, it was kind of a dirty trick dominating you, sorry. >> You know, as I was reading this last night, I thought that this might happen. kind of a dirty trick dominating you. Sorry. As I was reading this last night I thought that this might happen. I should have got here earlier. Alright. Pack it. Thank you. I appreciate that. >> All right. So now that we have elected officers, the next matter before us is resolution 23-001 providing for a ballot proposition to be submitted. And there is a staff presentation. So where does that go? >> Yeah. Chair Palmer, I think we will take this on. So obviously you know, but Steve King, public works director, Connie Anderson, and technology services director. And if she were not on a well-deserved vacation, Heidi Greenwood, our city attorney, would be here and shepherding us through the legal parameters. So the three of us are gonna deliver just a framing presentation that's less, it's about the first item, but it kind of bleeds into a few other things that are on the agenda. That's the only presentation we have by PowerPoint and we'll send it around after it. Spoiler alert, it's really just four slides, so there's not a lot of substance here that you haven't already ingested in a packet. So first slide, if we can go to that one. Well, congratulations, you've elected a chair, and I guess vice chair. So I just wanted to make sure everyone knew a number of things that this board needs to do should you choose to advance a revenue decision. And that includes looking at some of those options, which we'll do in a table format. And I could try to zoom in, and I could send it around right after that. I give this intro. There's internal local agreement with the city so that we can staff, essentially staff the district. There's project lists and need. You're very well aware that comprehensive streets program, the last three years of work that Steve and team have done, is really the backbone for this. And then a possible ballot resolution appointing pro and con committees should you decide to go that direction. and then something called the material change policy. So those are the things that we wanted to go through today, both with this presentation and verbally as part of the series of agenda items. The next slide really has, and I'm not sure how well you can dig into this, but we can go through it with you verbally. We wanted to be able to provide you a sense of what options you as a district have for revenue. Now that you are a transportation benefit district, you could exist without raising revenue, but the real purpose of the benefit district is to raise revenue to fund, explicitly fund streets. So there's a number of ways you can do that. And the first column has various options that are legally allowed by the state of Washington. The second column has kind of a predicted or described revenue from each of those options. A few pros and cons, not the full meal deal, but certainly a few to consider. And then a recommendation on which revenue sources are, you know, probably most palatable given the pros and the cons. And just to skip to the chase, I mean, really that focuses in on the sales and use tax, which I know has been discussed by city council when you were discussing whether or not to form a TPD. So the first line in sales and use tax, every 1/10 of 1% would generate approximately $270,000 in revenue. And as you likely know, you have the authority to councilmanically levy one tenth of one percent. You also have the option to put it to the voters to the sum of point three, three tenths of a percent. So you could imagine that three tenths of a percent is roughly eight hundred thousand dollars of revenue per year for streets. Pros and cons. I guess the you know, it's kind of a rough pro because we have such a regressive tax system in our state. But it's less regressive, and there's a high degree of revenue compared to other mechanisms. I think the other pro is it really captures a high volume of visitors who come to Fort Townsend who would also be paying into sales tax and funding infrastructure. So again, cut to the chase. Staff would recommend that as the preferred revenue option. But of course, you have some choices here. The second line is a vehicle license fee, commonly known as car tabs. Ironically, that's one of the reasons why our local road system is in disarray is because of some changes at the state level there. The revenue estimation there is about $186,000 a year if you were to go with a $20 car tab fee. We can get into more detail but the kind of summary here is that there is incremental amounts of car tab that you can do I think with two year intervals. You can do a certain level and then two years later you can escalate that to a higher degree, but you start off with a base level that's quite a bit lower than the sales and use tax at one-tenth of one percent. One might argue it's more aggressive because it's the same fee for every owner of a vehicle, not based on the value of the vehicle, and there's less revenue. The third line is general obligation bonds. We haven't really determined the amount of revenue there because it's kind of across the map. One of the reasons why I think we put an end there to, you know, not recommended by staff is that it's issuing more debt. And you'd still need other revenue sources to repay that debt. The fourth line is impact fees on commercial industrial. I think the revenue potential there is relatively low. And I think the main con is it would add cost to new commercial enterprises. So staff does not recommend using that mechanism. The fifth line is vehicle tolls. Cost to implement that seems relatively high for a small community. I'm not aware of any small community that does tolling inside its jurisdiction. You think about New York City attempting to do that for the last decade or so. It's uncertain what the revenue would be because there's so many parameters there, but that is technically a revenue option open to you. The second to last one is excess property taxes. again really uncertain what the revenue is and would add to the local property tax burden which we would imagine would be less palatable than a sales and use tax. And then the final one listed is local improvement districts, kind of variable on where you'd implement those districts and it's really less of a system wide impact. You would have you know impacts in certain regions of the city but you know not across the entire network and it's not an option available for existing streets. So it really undercuts our ability to maintain what we already have. So like I said, I'll send that around to you, but I want to pause there and just summarize of those options, and there are technically a couple more. If you're a border town with Canada, you have another option available to you, but we are not, so we don't legally have that option. Of those options, the sales and use tax would be the staff recommendation based on level of aggressiveness, revenue, and kind of capturing the visitors who visit Port Townsend in the ability for us to pay into a street system with help from our visitors. So I -- >> Is there -- >> I think there's a few more -- there's just two more slides. I could pause there, though, just for any questions. Chair Palmer? >> Not that I think it matters, But I think we actually technically are a border town because we are a customs part of entry. But we don't share a road border. So maybe-- Yeah, that's a good point. We could look into that more. I don't think so. I'm just-- it was just like-- We could only tax the people who come via boat. Come by boat from Canada. That seems like a small thing. Yeah, when I was reading about that one, I think it was a road crossing border that was the only one that had-- Yeah, no, it makes total sense. It was just it was a momentary oddness. Yeah? You guys should all have that power of mind here. Thank you. Oh, good. Thanks. Because it's hard to read them up there. Yeah. My apologies. No, it's OK. Anything else before we move on? David, any questions? No questions. Thank you. All right, let's keep going. The next slide is really a set of options, A through G, that you have, there are probably more kind of permutations here, but what we wanted to do is give you a sense of if you were to go with sales and use tax as your preferred revenue option, whether you levy that councilmanically or put it to the voters, there's a variety of ways you can do that. So, everything from option A, which is no action, all the way through to some degree of councilmanic decision, meaning you as a board can decide up to one tenth of one percent without a public vote. It would be the quickest option to start receiving revenue. But there might be some degree of confusion there, particularly if you did also decide to put something up to the voters. You could just put up to a public vote one tenth, anything below three tenths of one percent up to the public. Kind of going through the options here. There's a timing, you could do one before the other, or you could put all three-tenths of 1% up to the public vote. So I won't unpack each of those options, I just wanted to make sure you and those watching knew that you do have options, and we've estimated the amount of revenue for each, provided some brief analysis. I'm gonna look to our staff team, make sure I didn't miss anything critical on this table. Any questions on this slide? No? Great. Let's keep marching. Okay. And then the last one is just really a recap from what we shared when you were determining whether or not to form a transportation benefit district. And kind of the timeline kind of blocked out that first meeting, which was the council meeting of deciding whether or not to form a TBD. Now that this is the first official meeting of the transportation benefit district, you're discussing funding approaches, councilmanic and voter options. And should you put something to a vote, there's a timeline there about getting to the November election and then having it come in effect with revenue. Quarter to next year, if you decide councilmanically that revenue comes in a slight bit earlier. They could be parallel tracks or they could be one or the other. So that's the basics of where to from here. And I think with that, that's all the slides we have. >> All right. Are there any clarifying questions before we take public comment? Okay. Then is there any public comment on this issue, the ballot proposition? Or I guess the presentation is kind of on everything. Yeah, it is. I think maybe the first item was the ballot proposition, so I think it's fair to do that. Maybe I'll just also add that in the packet, they're written by Steve, really. There's an agenda bill that outlines kind of the question you're considering right now, or the decision you're considering right now for the ballot proposition. So-- [INAUDIBLE] yeah maybe a brief summary of that would be helpful and then we can go to discussion yeah Thank you. Steve King, Public Works Director. I think probably the best place to start is a three year process of developing a comprehensive streets program which you've heard before but I'll restate it is really a program to implement plan policies that have already been identified, values, so to speak, important challenges, comprehensive plan, functional plans, and the takeaways from going through a three-year process of looking at comprehensive streets is we have found places to make efficiency improvements and change our operating procedures to dedicate more resources to pavement repair. we have actually implemented a number of those. So part of, I think, the value of comprehensive streets was taking action, including purchasing equipment, changing the coming product volume and vegetation control practices, getting the streetlight grant to change our streetlighting costs and operations. Those are just a few of the highlights. Talked a lot about development of streets in the development review and world and the challenges with our pre-platted city. We have talked also in financial sustainability about very dispersed nature of our city with lots of road miles per capita relative to other communities, placing a much higher burden on our residents compared to, comparatively to other cities. And the public feedback has helped us shape the priorities. And what we've outlined is the majority of the funding here that would be raised through transportation benefit district if approved by this board and/or the voters to pay them any options, would go into payment repair, restoration, and preservation. Balancing that out is, the goal is to preserve the streets that are not failed first, because once they go the way of Lawrence Street, they're extremely, extremely expensive to fix. So preserve those streets like F Street, portions of San Juan, 19th and Kerney that are shared in that are still in okay shape, and then claw our way back through a slow process of dealing with the streets that completely fail. By demonstration, we are working on bank capacity projects, so council dedicated bank capacity funding to streets. Our transportation benefit district will allow us to continue that work on an annualized basis in a programmatic way in which we become more efficient, more effective in our systems for repairing and preserving the streets. This is important because that practice that used to be done by the city effectively stopped it. At the time, the initiatives in the early 2000s, late '90s, inched all the state funding to the city, and the street operations became a mowing operation, a sweeping operation, snow plowing, and I'll just call, for lack of better words, a cold-mix pothole patching operation, and we can see the results very easily in the polka-dotted pattern of our streets that are falling and crumbling apart, coming apart. So a very unsustainable result of that change in funding landscape. And so this gets us back into a more of a proactive pavement preservation repair. And I'll mention that that's not only important for vehicle traffic, but it's important for walking and bicycling traffic because the pavement condition becomes treacherous and so many of our streets, that's where people walk as well. The other element of the streets program that we kind of unraveled or figured out is over the last at least 10 years, maybe more, the grant match for-- we bring a lot of grant dollars into town. The staff has been successful in bringing a lot of grant money into town. But we still have on average about a one to three leverage ratio, meaning we need about $1 for every $3 a grant. And so that has been funded through debt in large part. And we're now paying the price for that because we spend considerably-- every year we make debt service statements that Connie is well aware of. Really hard to keep-- or actually like pull apart where all that debt went. There was Howard Street, there was Jefferson Street. There's all kinds of various, we've refinanced that debt so many times that it actually picks it apart, it's challenging. But the long, the short story is, is that debt service now takes away from our ability to work on streets. And so this program, if passed, would allow us to use real-time dollars instead of debt to leverage grant resources. Grant resources are important because, like Discovery Road, not only is it addressing sidewalks and bicycles, but it's also fixing a pavement problem for that 2/3 of a mile section of Discovery Road. So if you look down the street on Discovery a little bit, you see it go in the way of Lawrence. And these things, when you look at this every day, and go, oh, every day is like, we're losing it. So I'm excited about the possibility of this program. And we think that the public feedback is-- this reflects the public feedback in a prioritization of paper preservation repair, not increasing debt. And then some of the funds going to the other big request that we get is ADA improvements and traffic calling. So just a very small amount goes to that. And then the goal is to basically work around the city to keep the streets safe and calm. That's 90% of the Conference of Streets program. We do have a rolled up version of it now online. It is a living document. you will edit it and make clarifications because it's a compilation of presentations and presentations are often in bullet format so we try to add some clarifying text to that but it is now posted online and in the public. Anybody that wants to learn more about our streets can have a look at it. Happy to take questions. Could I also just add, sorry, the other piece of that agenda bill is also some of the ballot language based on maybe do you want to unpack that a little bit or just give a quick summary of how we um it's a it's a recommendation based on discussion that we heard during the council meeting about some preferences so obviously that could be changed based on the options you have but we are putting forward a you know recommended action to put to the voters three-tenths of one percent of sales and use tax and that's what that ballot language and the recommended action mean. >> If we are not going to be using the PowerPoint, if we could take it off the screen, it actually makes it so David can see us. That is a thing we just have to remember to do. >> Thank you. And we can see David. >> I am less interested in seeing David than I am in David being able to see us. Yeah, that's the question about the the traffic column in the ADA both of which I'm very much in favor of especially the traffic calming versus enforcement you know I get that thing but I'm curious if you had a rough percentage you said to be a small percentage would go to that and I'm what the reason I'm asking is because I'm wondering if people if the public is thinking that's what they're would be paying for or not or how much I think they'd want to know that six 6% 6. 25 Yeah, thank you Follow-up clarifying question that two to three hundred a grant match that's for grants for street projects, correct? Okay, I just wanted I understood that but I wanted to clarify that so it's not like oh We're gonna do this so that we can do other things. This is specifically trying to go for grant money for street And that's fine, the city can still do that on good real estate sales years or high volume real estate years. But right now, isn't the debt service close to 500,000? So that's not a reliable source of funds because of the debt service. - I would like to add a point of clarification, if I might. So even in the revenue options, we listed debt as revenue. That is not really revenue. That is not the way that you need to get capital projects done. That is really a future life. So one of the biggest benefits to finding additional revenue sources dedicated to streets is it actually opens up opportunities for larger grants. So grants always have a specific amount of match that's required by the jurisdiction. So if it requires 25% grant match, you need a bigger pool of dollars to be able to draw that match from. As Steve has mentioned, historically we've used debt to pay for that, and then debt of course has interest on top of all of that and becomes that future liability. So creating a revenue source to draw from, that doesn't require the debt match. And as Steve also mentioned, real estate excise tax, we do continue to receive real estate excise tax, but it is a dedicated source towards past debt. So that, anyway, just wanted to add that clarification, knowing that there's a dedicated stream that provides This is kind of a mechanical question. If this went to the voters and was approved, would we collect for 2024 and spend in 2025 or how does that piece work? Yeah, effectively the timing would, you would start seeing revenue in April of 2024. And what we're, our sequencing of timing is we'll always be one year behind the revenue. So as we're doing bank capacity, half of it this year, half of it next year, then we would follow in in 2025 budgeting with that revenue for the next project, next series of projects. And one additional point of clarification. It goes into effect if voted in November and passes. implements on April one, businesses start to collect that money in April. It's then turned into a state into the state, and then 30 days later, the Transportation Benefit District receives their first receipt. So we here would not actually see those first receipts until the end of May. And that first year would be less than future years because it's for less of the year. Yes. That is only three quarters. Yes. And realistically, the expenditure of funds isn't perfectly level because what you do, what we would do is we would lump like chip seal projects and paving projects. So one year will be a bigger expenditure year. So you do want to build a little reserve. So you can oscillate, you'd be more efficient with your project delivery. Thank you. That's helpful. Yeah, Libby. This is sort of follow on to that in terms of timing if we were One assuming that this pat goes to the belt and passes in November and we start to see revenue coming in in May We could conceivably Late in the year if there was some project like for instance We had a late in the year grant that we needed match or we had some small project We could spend some of those funds. It just wouldn't obviously be in the 2024 budget, which we're going to be adopting >> That's why they invented supplemental. >> But it's like you could do a supplemental in August because you anticipated we have a special project or something. >> So this is just a question. Should we, all of these individual votes have public comment option. So should I still take it one by one? >> I would advise that. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> Great. Okay. Then I'd like to give an opportunity to receive public comment on Resolution 23-001, the ballot proposition item. Do we have anyone on? - No one with their hands raised. - Okay. Is anyone in the room would like to give public comment? - Yeah. - Approach the podium, state your name and where you live for the record. - Yeah, my name is Steven Schumacher. I'm really glad that the council is addressing these essential road repairs and making that such a high priority. And I super appreciate the thinking behind, you know, staff, all of it. So that's all good. I understand that the problem originally arose with the changes 20 years ago or whatever. But in other ways, we've had 20 -- we've almost had a 20-year bender of not having the actual real road repairs that should have been paid for by the base taxes and instead you know we've shipped tenements from Canada and we've we've paid consultants a lot for big projects and all sorts of things so you could say that you know maybe those are good ideas but the road should have been fixed first so you could say that you know where I appreciate that we're now waking up and actually addressing this thing that should have been done back then the real question for me is with this tax thing be would this be part of an overall austerity perspective or would it be enabling the problems that kind of got us into this in the first place you know because we're talking about well anyway not enough said about that I also wonder specifically about the the usage of the funds you know because like looking at the at the proposal it's you know road Road repair, pavement repair, gravel repair, all that stuff. Essentials. Then we have stuff like ADA and upgrades and traffic coming. And to me those all feel kind of like discretionary. You know, those are things that might be good ideas, but traffic coming in particular is a pet peeve of mine because you might have neighborhoods where you want to have some traffic coming and that's one thing. And then you have arterials in which traffic calming is just basically a crypto way to you know reduce the speed limit without reducing the speed limit. So I'm not even sure it's a good idea. So again I wonder whether you know the whole TBD thing I'm unclear I mean I really appreciate that only 50,000 out of 800,000 at this point looks to be used for these purposes. But you know could this be shifted the year after the year after? I mean, there's, you know, what if one wanted to start doing public, you know, what's it called? Mass transit. I ran out of time. Okay. Just as a parting shot, I heard tell that it would cost 750,000 just to keep things going as it is and, you know, maybe 1. 5 million a year to really turn things around. And this is only raising 800,000. So I'm just sort of wondering exactly to what extent this is going to be enough to turn things around. Anyway, thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else like to give public comment? Sure. This is great and I appreciate actually all the aspects of it. Just from my own perspective, I think while traffic calming is a very small percentage of the total, the purpose of traffic calming is to slow people down so that they are going to speed limit not to limit people below the speed limit and the only death we've had in town on a bicyclist occurred on a road where people routinely exceed the posted speed limit and traffic coming on that road would be most welcomed so I'm all for this and I hope that voters agree with us all. Anybody venture to raise a hand online? No one with their hands raised online. Alright. So then let's come back to discussion and deliberation specifically to the ballot proposition. Any opening thoughts? Yeah, David? I just wanted to reply a little bit to the first public speaker. One is what we're doing right now is putting something on a ballot and allowing the public to decide whether or not this is their priority. So this is not the city just deciding between different priorities. At the moment, this is asking the public to weigh in and say whether or not they want to levy a tax on themselves to pay for road maintenance, repair and some upgrades as well. As to the comments, I think the second speaker So very well to what traffic calming is and why it's important. It saves lives and decreases the risk of injury. And for ADA, the idea that that's an optional bonus or something is, I think, actually offensive. You know, for years we designed streets and sidewalks without consideration for disabled people. And now we're trying to rectify that public policy failure. So I think it's essential that be included component in what we're doing here. And as to whether or not this is going to be part of a austerity mindset, uh, or that, that we, you know, this is brought about by, by the city deciding to, uh, to, to do things differently than pave our pay for, uh, road repairs. you know, sure, there have been steps that the city has taken historically that each of us on Council wishes we hadn't, including myself, including some of the decisions we made, such as the Cherry Street building. But that's in the past. We have basically, through the Financial Sustainability Task Force and our budgeting process for years, ended up, I think we have a budget that's pretty lean overall. There really just isn't resources to pay for road repair and maintenance. The City has a bunch of different priorities as well, things that we have to do as a City. So suggesting that there is at all money to be moved from elsewhere to pay for roads repair and maintenance is just out completely out of step with reality. Thanks, David. Yeah, I'd like to actually take up the public comment that came in an email from George Randles and his suggestion given that the addition to sales taxes, the less regressive the option but it's still regressive. If there is any mechanism to have that sales tax automatically sunset if the state allows for an actual progressive option I I doubt there is any real mechanism for that but I did just want to note that the sales tax that we might be proposing to put before the voters does have a 10-year time limit it would have to be renewed after 10 years so yeah so it's Sunsets it it's it does sunset it doesn't have a trigger of you know if there are other changes in the state tax structure but we can hope that there may be changes in the next 10 years. - We can also actively advocate. - We can also actively advocate. - Yeah, Ben. - But I take Mr. Randall's point, or maybe I'm assuming what his point might be, is that the creep of like, whoa, we got this tax, we'll hang on to it, oh, and add that one too, because oh, this is a better one. - Yeah. - But let's not get rid of that one. I do think that would be a little bit of a baby switch for people if it came to that later. So I do think there's value in that. I don't know how to write that in there, though. This is somewhere between discussion and clarifying question. My understanding is the way this is-- what we're proposing to put on the ballot would be that this is going to sunset and have to go back to a vote of the people in 10 years. So I think addressing your concern, like, oh, well, then we would add this tax. And then suppose the state, I don't know, passed an income tax or something, or some dedicated form of street funding to replace what was lost 20 something years ago. At the very worst, the voters could say, yeah, now we're paying this statewide transportation, whatever, I mean, this is hypothetical, obviously, but the worst case I can come up with is that in 10 years, it would fail because there was an additional funding source and the best case might be, oh, there's a better system And so I guess I'm not-- tenure seems like a reasonable time horizon. We'll have a fairly good sense of whether this is working well or not, whether it needs to be tweaked. And I really want to applaud staff for bringing this concept forward, because I think, as Mr. Schumacher said, we have been kicking-- we, the council, I mean, I wasn't on council. But this has been kicked down-- the can has been kicked down the road for a long time. And I think initially, out of very good intentions, that of course the state will figure out how to replace that municipal funding, and then that just didn't happen. And of course, one of the problems with maintenance is that it always seems cheap to defer maintenance. Like, I really can't afford to put a new roof on the house this year, and the roof's not leaking, so let's wait. Well, then you wait, and all of a sudden, the understory is all rotten. And that's really what's happened with our streets, is that we've waited too long, and that we're having to now do rebalancing. And Steve is nodding, and I'm thinking about the Lawrence Street roller coaster. So yes, $800,000 isn't going to be enough to totally turn the ship around. But I would say that having some course correction is a good bit better than having no course correction. I just want to reiterate what I said the last time we talked about this topic is I do think that I guess austerity I'd rather not word it that way but I think it's kind of what's going on here that for the rest of the budget as much as we can from the rest of the budget to hopefully match this or something like that is very much in my interest I know that it's a lot of numbers to crunch and they don't seem to add up but it does seem like just just just doing this alone would not be enough to satisfy us so I don't know how else we can I know we talked about trying to commit something but it's hard to commit a certain number but that's I'm still have an interest in that one thing that I would applaud Council over the last three years by making some of these proactive moves in this direction purchasing equipment helping our crews actually transition the way they do business from my last experience when a When a TBD was formed it took three to five years to ramp up and actually get the pavement on the ground. So we're in a mode now where we'll be able to, as I mentioned earlier, be able to 2020 end of 24 beginning 25 we'll be putting money on the ground. So I think the public, if they approve this would see the immediate results and that was Because of your budgeting to actually get us equipment, to put bank capacity so we can, our crews are learning how to do this. Nobody left on the crew from 20 years ago. They're learning how to do street maintenance and they're excited about it and they're doing a great job. And we'll make some mistakes along the way, but we're already seeing successes. And I think this is, I guess to your point is there's momentum. >> Do you know off the top of your head how much we've spent total towards essentially the street repair including the equipment purchases in 2023? >> I can give you a round number off the top of my head just kind of doing some quick math. Since we're probably probably close to $500,000 with the bank capacity funds that we've spent this year on the drainage improvements and certainly we'll be pushing well over that by the end of the year when we get some pavement on the ground. And we've about 300, maybe closer to 400 is the equipment that we purchased and that was ARPA funding. A lot of that so that was again, a choice to use this COVID mitigation money to reinvest in our systems and our staff and our equipment. So that that's part of the momentum that that it's going to make this a lot easier for staff to get the work on the ground. Yeah, it would be piling on to that that five hundred thousand dollars plus on equipment and stuff doesn't also include the dollar value of that we've redirected staff time that rather than spending a huge chunk of our staff time doing lawn mowing and believe me I've heard a lot of yelling about the lawn. Oh, you're not mowing the lawn. We're using that to on street repair and I'm seeing the results of that already. So there's a cost there too. Or there's a spend there I guess is a better way to, that we're choosing to prioritize staff time being spent on street repair rather than spent on lawn mowing. Opportunity cost for mowing was really high. >> So on the proposition does anyone. Is there anything in the language. That people noted. A desire to change before making. - No, I like the language. I was gonna just say a couple other things, but. - Oh, sorry about that. Yeah, you can say something else. - Oh, I just, in response to Council Member Thomas' comments, I mean, we cannot, as we discussed last Monday, we cannot bind future councils. There's no commitment to doing anything in the future beyond what funds are specifically directed, certain specific buckets. This pot of money is going to be dedicated to these specific purposes listed in the ballot measure and we wouldn't be able to change what those funds are spent on. General funds are spent at the discretion of the council as a whole. We can just we can decide where those funds are spent and to I mean are you for austerity or you know committing certain dollars in the future to certain specific goals or projects. I think it's a dangerous selling the future short. We don't know what the future priorities of the community are going to be. If the community come demanding certain things, I don't know about you, but I don't want to necessarily just say we're going to ignore them. So I think it's important to note that while this Council as a whole each all seven of us and the staff have evidenced an intent to do exactly as you're stating we've all been pushing for for repairing our roads and this this very vote that we're putting on the ballot here is clear evidence of that along with what we've dedicated our bank revenue bank capacity revenues to you know what the future holds is an open question. I hate the idea of constraining future action based on future need. We don't know what those needs are going to be. So even if we could dedicate and guarantee that we're going to continue putting all the bank capacity funds towards road repair and maintenance, I would be an adamant no on that. Thanks, David. Okay, now can we refocus on the ballot measure itself? Yeah, is there anything? >> I'm fine with the language. >> Okay. >> And the language has presumably already been vetted by legal and everything. >> And as previously signaled, I am strongly in favor of the full 3% going to the voters. >> Yeah, going to the voters. I would agree with that too, that I think that that is the clearest, cleanest, most effective. And most transparent. Yeah, absolutely. It's like this is what the plan is. Yeah, yeah, Amy. So I would then move to approve resolution 23-001, providing for a ballot proposition to be submitted to the qualified electors of the district on November 7th, 2023, to authorize a sales and use tax to be imposed within the boundaries of the district upon all taxable retail sales in the amount of three tenths of one percent for the purpose of financing all or a portion of the cost associated with transportation improvements in the district identified herein for a period of ten ten years. I'll second. All right we have a motion and a second all those in favor any opposed any abstentions all right motion carries thank you make one is it okay if if the voters reject this I don't think we should necessarily interpret that to mean they don't care about the streets and I just think that there's also a timing factor here and a lot of other things we have on the table and I think there's a bit of a trust issue gap and I just concerned that we're gonna interpret this collectively as a oh well they don't care about the streets that much and I don't think that'll be the case hopefully passes you know and everybody feels sees the need and the trust in us to do this to spend money wisely and do it all but it may not be about the interest in the streets. Yeah but it needs to be. It needs to be about the interest in the streets. That's what we need to talk about. We do sure but I'm just saying. Fundamentally. We do a lot of scolding of the public and I really I really resent that on behalf of the public. I keep hearing it. Who? I resent that implication. I'm not understanding that that statement scolding of the public I just get the tone a lot that we that we call I understand collectively I'm not gonna point anybody in particular but generally there's a scolding nature from city government to the public I just I get a lot of feedback on that and I see it myself sometimes you necessarily I'm going to refocus. I have to leave at 10 45. But thanks Ben for your comments. So let's move on to resolution to three dash 002. This is regarding the interlocal agreement with the city of court Townsend, is there anything additional from staff on this just very simple TVD doesn't have staff so this just authorizes us to work on behalf of the DVD. Are there any questions about this from the Council? Is there any public comment on this resolution? - Yeah, I'm ready. - Sure. - Steven Schumacher. So, this resolution seems to be part and parcel of the previous resolution, and I guess I'd just like to comment that my understanding is this would be raising $800,000, but the city has already been, the city has done stuff for roads in the past. City gets grants, city gets other things. So I would assume that it's $800,000 plus that would hopefully be able to make some real substantive improvements. I feel like this discretionary aspect that I'm referring to, I sort of feel like there are these crying needs for patchwork, not patchwork, we've done patchwork, there's been crying needs to do substantial road repairs. And those, in theory, should have been part of the stuff that was done by just regular taxes over the years. And they weren't because there wasn't enough money or other priorities were chosen. And so I feel like that is the thing which is the almost like emergent and essential thing that needs to be done. Then you have other projects like road coming that may be good ideas but to some extent are optional and I apologize for mentioning ADA, you're right, that's not optional. But when you do a project like the Howard Street thing, they're often very expensive and they've got you know they just they just have a big package of things and they're they're good but they're not necessarily essential and so i'm concerned that the discretion that is part of this for the transportation board where the board can decide you know today road repair is important but five years from now something else is more important i mean i feel like if five years from now people decide that road something else is more important that should come out of out of some other funding you know out of the you know out of a grant out of something else whereas here we're basically talking about a point three percent tax increase in order to deal with a crying unmet need and so you know I wish to some extent that it could have been tied to just that and the other stuff could be continued to be done outside of it on a more discretionary basis but I understand what you're saying and and anyway thanks a lot for hearing is there anyone online no one online with their hands raised is there any response to public comment I have one response to mr. Schumacher's comment um I think one of the things to understand about funding street funding and why things fell apart so badly is that more or less simultaneously as part of a series of statewide ballot state funding for municipal street repair went away with the car taps, but at the same time, city governments also got restricted to a 1% annual cap of re-ing. And if you're running inflation, right now we're running about 5%, and you have a 1% raise every year. The question doesn't become what new projects can we do? It's like what do we cut this year? And over a 20 year period, that's a 20% short fall, percent shortfall, 27 percent shortfall, et cetera. So you're getting farther and farther and farther behind. And the net result of that is having to use debt just to do grant match to meet those basic needs. So this is an attempt to kind of rebalance that and I get, Oh, it would be great if we could actually have a tax base that met our basic requirement needs. But the reality is that the tax base doesn't literally meet some of the needs for state mandated things that we have to do. And so street funding keeps coming on to the, oh, we wanna do this, but this has to be on the back burner. And over a 20 year period, that gap between that 1%, if inflation's running three, four, 5%, you're just gonna keep getting farther and farther and farther behind. So that's the answer to that question. - We're supposed to be talking about the interlocal agreements. - Correct. - I'd like to refocus us on that. Thank you for your comments. I appreciate you walking back to 88 comment So can let's let's stay there. Yeah, is there anything else related to the interlocal agreement? Nope Anybody like to make a motion? I Would move to approve resolution 23 - 0 0 - authorizing the board chair to execute an interlocal agreement with the city of Port Townsend Second that we have a motion a second all those in favor Aye, aye any opposed any abstentions great. Thank you All right, our next one is resolution two three dash zero zero three adopting a material change policy Anything from staff here? No, it does kind of get at some of the issues that have been brought up. So basically material change means that if the TBD decided to do something completely different, we'd have to go through public hearing process, make sure the public is engaged in that change in direction. So that's what this policy addresses. And that was done intentionally by the state legislature so that you could put before the voters a tax or the council could choose a revenue option and have some sort of assurance that things would not get switched up without public process. >> Okay. >> Thanks, Steve. That's helpful. >> Yeah, Amy? >> And this is a required policy. >> Yes. >> Correct. Thank you. Very important distinction. >> Clarifying question, but I think I know the answer to it, is basically this is a required policy because a TBD is not a municipality. A municipality would already be required to hold public hearings. So this is basically trying to make this subject to similar level of rules for public transparency. Is that accurate? I believe that's part of it and and just knowing that it's it it's another tax. It's a yeah. Okay. Thank you. This is the anti bait and switch policy. Right. Right. Good. David, do you have anything on this? Nope. Thank you. All right. Anybody? Public comment. Oh, public comment. Right. Is there any public comment on the material change policy? Okay, thank you Thank you, all right Yes, I will move to approve resolution 23 - 003 adopting immaterial change policy Thank you, all right, we have a motion in a second all those in favor Thank you any opposed Any abstentions motion carries? alright appointment of a pro and con committees April and a con committee so so as part of a part of any ballot measure we have the opportunity to appoint a program and column committee so we did have three folks step forward for a pro committee Becky Kimball, Scott Walker, and Rick Yonke. And so they will be developing a statement for-- I think that's due August 8th. It's the 8th, yeah. The 8th. And then we were unable to find anybody that wanted to lead a con committee. So at this point, the auditor has that option to assign a con committee. This is not uncommon. According to the auditor, this is not uncommon. >> So that's where we're at. Yes? >> Clarifying question. Do committee members have to reside within the district? >> Good question. >> That's probably a question for Heidi. >> I don't know that. >> The auditor will presumably know the-- >> It would be my guess, but I don't know for sure. >> Okay. That's a good question. >> I think the auditor's office can probably know the answer to that. >> I do know the three members on the-- Yeah, yeah, and I'm just wondering if that factored into the the con Candidates that you might might have approached Yeah, but if if we hear some you know after after this gets out into the world and people Say, oh, I'm not really against that. Should we direct them to the auditors? to to volunteer to be on the con. I don't know how the timeline would work. Yeah, we could do that by the 7th, which I think is the deadline. And then there is the whole process of preparing through the county the ballots. So there's a rebuttal that comes a few, like the next week. And I think that's pretty locked down in terms of timing. But certainly, if we hear of anybody with interest, we could forward their information to the auditor. So what would happen if someone stepped up between now the eighth probably seven actually yeah I think we would because the materials are due today we'd say that the materials and then we could verbally or by email transmit to the auditor a suggestion to help them find the comm committee which becomes their responsibility if we don't find it okay so after today it would it it's the it's the auditor all the times the auditor just after today. All right let's take are there any other clarifying questions for staff? Nope all right public comment on this appointment of a pro and con committee? Hi everybody Deborah Peterson part Townsend I'd like to point out that that these committees are official committees whose job is to make a statement for the voters pamphlet. But that is not the same thing as a ballot measure committee that registers with the public disclosure commission. It can be completely different. It is up to volunteers to set that up. Just wanted to clarify that. Thanks. >> Thank you. It is really helpful. Thank you. >> Is anybody online? >> No one online with their hands raised. All right further discussion and deliberation. Ben? I'm happy to move to appoint Rebecca Kimball, Scott Walker, Rick Yonke as the for committee and default to the county auditor's choice for a con committee. I'll second. All right we have a move for second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any post? Any abstentions? All right, motion carries. And now we set a meeting date and time. And we look to the staff and say, what are we doing? You know, the next meeting would be the assumption of the duties. John, do you have any thought? I don't know if you talked with Heidi about it. - Yeah, I mean, I guess it's yet to be determined whether there, I don't believe there's really a need to meet between now and November. In fact, it might be problematic because as I think I've indicated to you, as the district and as council members, if this does go to the ballot, there's a high degree of restriction. Maybe it's a good time to point out, particularly on staff, you know, there's a PDC requirement that you don't use city facilities for election campaigns. So any of my time that's not just informational and pointing people to the page of information, same with staff, is against the law. And so you as an individual, and even as a council member, can speak in favor of this, but you cannot do so on behalf of the city, on behalf of the council. And I think just having a meeting to check in is just, you know, there wouldn't be a purpose between now and when the voters decide yes or no. Once that happens, I would say, you know, late in this year or even into the first quarter of next year when the revenue if it does pass comes in we'd want to have a conversation particularly about the mechanics of assuming the powers of the TBD into the council I would say that would be you know that that's November December or possibly January February conversation that'd be my recommendation I could also check with Heidi if there are other you know details that I'm unaware of but I think we can schedule that meeting we could also reschedule it if we have an urgent need in between now and then just clarify it so understand so no lobbying from us to the public on this vote because it would indicate that we're representing counsel on this you can say it without not necessarily Heidi sent some very clear guidelines about what we can and can't yeah there's I've sent a memo that just helps to clarify I think the upshot is you can actually from what I understand from reading the PDC rules myself as a member of council or the TBD lobby and advocate but not on behalf of the full council or on behalf of the city council wants you to do this versus Amy wants you to do this there's the comment from our PDC expert and David has his hand raised so yeah actually there isn't any further public comment so I apologize if would you be willing to send us an email? That's not what is part of this agenda item it's just about setting a meeting. Okay thank you. David yeah? Yeah I was just gonna suggest pretty much exactly what John suggested but then we also we could set the next TBD Transportation Benefit District board meeting as a special meeting maybe at the tail end of the council meeting in November, December, January, something like that. And so if we wanted to actually peg it to something, we could say the second business meeting in November, and that allows it to be pushed if that's too busy. I recommend doing it before instead of after because of being able to set a time definitive. if it's the first half hour of that meeting because you have to be able to notice the time. Oh, I see what you're saying. People can't know that they're coming for that. I see what you're saying. That makes good sense. Yeah, that makes good sense. Yeah, I like the idea of setting it for after the ballot measure and then, because that's when we would know if we need to do something. It doesn't look like, we don't need to vote on that, do we? Whatever that date is. Yeah, I mean, I would make sure just maybe by motion just so it's crystal clear for the public that I mean, maybe just converting what mayor favor. It's our district board member favors said about the second meeting of November. That might just be helpful. That would be November 20th would be the second business meeting. That works for me. So that's right before Thanksgiving. Yeah, so I can move to set the next meeting of the Transportation Benefit District for Monday November 20th at 6 p. m. All right we have a motion. Great, Ben has seconded. All right all those in favor of setting the next meeting for 6 p. m. on the second business meeting of November? Aye. Aye. Thank you. Are you opposed? Any abstentions? Wonderful. We've set a meeting. And with that, we adjourn on November 15th. Did I just give you a gavel?