Shoreline City Manager update 7-6-2015

City Manager Update 7/6/15

From Debbie Tarry, Shoreline City Manager

Council Meetings – Still on Council Break!, but coming soon ……

July 13

·         Dinner Meeting (5:45 p.m.): Joint Council and Park/Tree Board meeting.

·         Business Meeting

o   Motion Authorizing the City Manager to Enter into an Interlocal Agreement with King County for Electronic Fingerprint Capture Equipment: Through King County property tax levy funds, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) Program provides electronic fingerprint stations and handheld remote fingerprint devices to police agencies in the county. This equipment is the means by which fingerprints are transmitted into AFIS, resulting in potential identification of an individual. AFIS matches fingerprints against existing records and “latent” prints collected at crime scenes. The King County Sheriff’s Office is establishing an interlocal agreement (ILA) with each interested agency. The ILA addresses use and maintenance of this fingerprint equipment and, if executed, the City’s Police Department would implement the ‘Mobile ID Policy’ detailed in the ILA.

o   Authorizing the City Manager to Terminate the Existing Botanic Garden Service Agreement and Execute a New Service Agreement between the Kruckeberg Garden Foundation and the City of Shoreline: A Service Agreement was adopted by the City Council on November 26, 2007, that created a partnership between the City and the Kruckeberg Botanic Garden Foundation (KBGF) to achieve the goal of preserving Kruckeberg Botanic Garden . The Agreement includes provisions for maintenance, preservation, and enhancement of the plant collection, and ensures the Garden remains an environmental and educational resource for citizens of all ages. The term of the existing agreement is 30 years, expiring in 2037. The relationship between the City and Foundation warrants periodic review to ensure it meets the changing needs of the Foundation and the City. The Foundation and City staff entered into an extensive review of the existing Agreement in late-2014 into early-2015. That review resulted in a new Service Agreement proposal that most accurately reflects current needs of the Foundation and requirements of the City. The existing agreement will have to be terminated before the proposed agreement is executed.

o   Authorization for Real Estate Acquisition, Molver and Ohora Property: The City was approached by the owners of properties abutting the east edge of the City-owned 22,000sf property ("Gunderson Property") between N 198th and 199th Streets on Aurora Ave N. The property owners, Molver and Ohora, offered to sell the City a combined property measuring 50’ x 200’, or 10,000sf. Council met in Executive Session in October 2014, to discuss the acquisition. Appraisals established the value of the Molver property as $310,000 and the Ohora property as $60,000; the property owners are offering the properties for $225,000 and $37,500 respectively, meaning if purchased, the City would be paying 73% of the current appraised value. The Molver/Ohora property would be used for Aurora corridor construction staging and related uses along with the Gunderson Property.

o   Continued Discussion of Aurora Square Community Renewal Area Final Environmental Impact Statement - Planned Action Ordinance No. 705 and Sign Code Amendment Ordinance No. 712: Council will continue its discussion from June 8, 2015, of the Planning Commission’s recommendation in support of a Preferred Alternative for the Final EIS (FEIS), approval of the proposed Planned Action Ordinance No. 705, and changes to the City’s sign code in Aurora Square through proposed Ordinance No. 712.

o   Discussion of Traffic Impact Fee Modifications, Ordinances No. 716 – 720: This will be a discussion of a variety of items associated with the City’s Traffic Impact Fee Program to include:

§  Ordinance No. 716: Building Vacancy: The City’s current ordinance provides for certain impact fee payment triggers when there is a change of use and/or a building remains vacant for more than 12 months. Based on further evaluation we believe that this time frame may be too short and the City Attorney is recommending a change.

§  Ordinance No. 717 – Small Business Payment Deferral Option: It would provide that a building permit applicant may defer payment of up to fifty (50) percent of the impact fees until twenty-four (24) months from the date of final building inspection.  For the purpose of this deferral program a “small business” is a for-profit commercial enterprise occupying a total gross floor area of 2,000 square feet or less.

§  Ordinance No. 718 – Residential Payment Deferral: With the adoption of Engrossed Senate Bill (ESB) 5923 in April 2015, the Legislature amended Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 82.02.050 so as to mandate that cities collecting impact fees adopt and maintain a deferral program for the collection of impact fees for single-family detached and attached residential construction. This has to be in effect by September 2016.

§  Ordinance No. 719 – Community Service Agency Exemption: The Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 82.02.060(2) permits the City to exempt development activities with broad public purposes from impact fees so long as the impact fees for such development activity is paid for from public funds other than impact fee accounts.

§  Ordinance No. 720 – Land Use Code for Assisted Living Facilities: The City’s current Transportation Impact Fee rate table does not include a land use category that closely matches with Assisted Living Facilities, and this ordinance would amend this.

Agenda Planner Highlights

·         July 20 Business Meeting

o   Special Start Time for Groundbreaking @ 6:45 p.m.

Veteran’s Recognition Plaza Groundbreaking: We'll do a short ground breaking ceremony with picture ops for Council and members of the Veteran’s Association.

o   Added an Executive Session – Litigation.

·         July 27 Dinner Meeting: Start time will be 5:15 p.m. as we are doing a tour of City capital projects.

Sound Transit 3 Funding Request

Shoreline Community College and SeaShore sent letters to the Sound Transit Board asking that high-capacity transit service on SR523 and SR522 corridors be added to the Priority project List for the ST3 plan.

Farmer’s Market – Week 2

The market went great! Sales were $22,000 (just a little dip from $25,000 on opening day). Attendance was lower, but it seems that the people who came were there to buy. A couple of vendors sold out again and the biggest farmer broke their record for our market with $2,600 in sales.

SR523/145^th Corridor Study

Below is a summary of the 145^th Multimodal Corridor Study Citizen Advisory Task Force (CATF) Mtg. 5 which was held on Wednesday, July 1.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss and review the four study concepts (three concepts and no action) that are moving forward for further evaluation. The meeting was with CATF group members, City staff (Nytasha Sowers, Kurt Seemann and Catherine Lander) and the City’s consultant, John McKenzie from CH2M. During the meeting they looked at the corridor in three separate pieces and discussed the design elements (both the roadway and non-motorized section) for each piece:

·         3^rd to Greenwood

·         Greenwood to Aurora

·         Aurora to SR522

The next step will be to evaluate these various study concepts against the overall project goals.

May 2015 Revenue Report

A few highlights include:

·         Staff worked with the Department of Revenue to correct the miscoding of some tax returns. The amount report for the month of March is approximately $113,000 higher than that shown in the report due to the aggregate amount of the correction for the period of November 2014 through February 2015 being received with the March distribution. Sales tax receipts from December 2014 through March 2015 activity are higher than the budget projection by 6.3% and the year-ago level by 5.2%.

·         This month’s edition also includes a discussion of the gambling revenue received through May and gambling trends for the first quarter’s activity.

·         For REET, there have been more transactions that occurred in the first five months of 2015 as compared to the same period in 2014. REET collections through May are ahead of the budget projection (+38.4%), the revised projection (+22.6%), and the year-ago level (+43.1%). It is interesting to note that transaction values are also higher even though there have been only twelve transactions greater than $1.0 million in 2015, as compared to ten in the same period of 2014. One of these transactions was the commercial property that will be the future home of Potala Apartments.

·         Permit revenue through May 2015 is 10.6% above the projection, but 15.2% below the year-ago level. The number of permits issued in 2015 is 7.7% lower than the year-ago level, but the number of building permits issued and plan checks has increased by 4.5%. Local development activity in 2015, in terms of the number of building permits pulled for new construction and remodels in 2015, is lower than the year-ago level. The valuation is also lower. A substantial portion of the difference is related to the timing of the large projects that occurred in March and April 2014.

Camp Shoreline

During our first week of day camps we had 185 day campers (kids) at Spartan Recreation Center, with an additional 34 kids on the wait list, and 104 day campers at Highland Terrace, with an additional 10 kids on the wait list.

Park Board Public Hearing – Fee Cost Recovery Framework

On June 25 the Park Board held a public hearing on their recommended fee cost recovery framework. One resident came to testify and she was supportive. The Park Board endorsed the framework, which will come to the City Council as part of the 2016 Budget process.

This and That

·         We approved a neighborhood mini-grant for the Summerset Arts Festival at Ronald Bog. The grant is for $3,885.

·         Nytasha Sowers, Transportation Services Manager, has been appointed to an alternate position on the PSRC Regional Project Evaluation Committee. Kirk McKinley has served for many years on this committee and pleased that Nytasha was able to get on as an alternate.

·         The King County Housing Authority issued a news release regarding the high marks they received from HUD on the physical condition of its public housing portfolio. Overall they received a score of 97.5 out of 100. Shoreline facilities received the following scores:

o   Ballinger Homes/Pepper Tree, 136 units, Score: 94

o   Briarwood/Lake House, 140 units, Score: 90

o   Northridge II, 140 units, Score: 97

o   Paramount House, 70 units, Score: 98

·         Last week we discovered that the City’s outside storage cage in the City Hall garage was broken into sometime between Thursday, June 25 and Tuesday, June 30. A generator, 3 pumps, blower and an air compressor were stolen. We have filed a report with the police.

·         On June 19 we issued a Request for Qualifications for design and construction management services for the North Maintenance Facility. Those proposals are due by July 23. We anticipate coming back to Council for award of contract in late August/early September.

·         The 2016 Assessment rate for the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is increasing by 10-cents per capita, for a total rate of 81 cents per capita. This is the second part of a two-year planned increase that started in 2015. 2016 assessment is $41,936.

·         The Kruckeberg Botanic Garden has received a $49,000 grant to finish Phase II of their demonstration garden. Also they have two fundraising events coming up:

o   Summer Picnic in the Garden, July 18, 1-5 p.m. at Kruckeberg

o   Garden Party at the Edmonds Yacht Club, September 30, dinner and auction.