Notes from Shoreline Council meeting June 17, 2019

Shoreline City Hall
Photo by Steven H. Robinson

Shoreline City Council Regular Meeting 

June 17, 2019
Notes by Pam Cross

Mayor Hall called the meeting to order at 7:00pm
All Councilmembers were present

Report of the City Manager, Debbie Tarry

About 50 people attended the June 15th World Dance Party that was co-sponsored by JHP Cultural Legacy and Shoreline Community College.

June 21st - Orca Celebration and Whale Trail Dedication from 1:00 to 3:00pm at Richmond Beach Saltwater Park. Activities for the whole family.

Public Reminder: The Planning Commission meeting originally scheduled for June 20th has been cancelled.

There were no Council Reports

Public Comment

Ginny Scantlebury spoke about the housing and addiction crises.

The Agenda and the Consent Calendar were approved unanimously.

Action Item 8(a) Adoption of Ordinance No. 856 – Amending the Shoreline Master Program Pursuant to the Periodic Review Required by the Shoreline Management Act

Staff report by Miranda Redinger, Senior Planner

The City’s current Shoreline Master Program (SMP) became effective on September 2, 2013. The Shoreline Management Act requires cities to regularly update their SMPs. Shoreline is required to update its SMP on or before June 30, 2019.

This was last discussed in detail on May 6th. Since that meeting there are two additional proposed revisions: reformat SMC 20.230.020A to conform to standard practice and incorporate additional recommendations from Ecology to improve clarity for SMC 20.220.130 (Expiration of Permits).

If Council adopts the ordinance tonight, it still requires State approval before it becomes effective. That can take up to 60 days.

There was no discussion.

There was a motion to adopt Ordinance 856, amended to include the above two revisions, and to incorporate edits proposed by the Washington State Dept. of Ecology through the Initial Determination of Consistency.

This Action Item was adopted by unanimous consent. 

Study Item 9(a) Discussion of the King County Homelessness System Redesign

King County and the City of Seattle are actively working to implement a number of recent recommendations related to improving the regional response to homelessness. This agenda item is intended to provide the Council with an overview of that process and an opportunity to ask questions of the consultants and county staff working most directly on this initiative.

Colleen Kelly, Community Services Manager, introduced the members of the panel

• Kira Zylstra, Acting Director of All Home,
• Kelly Rider, Government Relations Specialist for the King County Department of Community and Human Services,
• Ann Oliva with the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH)
• Marshall Buxton with National Innovation Service (NIS).

The current homelessness system is greatly fragmented between cities and different organizations. To take a unified approach, they plan to present an inter-local agreement in August to create an entirely new entity to govern this new system. Their goal to present this is September 2019, and they expect councils will be looking at this throughout the fall months.

As a way to align broader funding than just cities, they are also working on a regional action plan with corporations and philanthropists.

Key challenges from fragmentation are funding difficulties, many organizations looking for a way to address this growing problem, and no shared theory of change. There’s no single place to contact for information you need. So they are working towards a coordinated approach using a central authority for the region that will be data driven, equity centered, with a community wide commitment to implement a systemwide theory of change to achieve a common goal. This central authority must have the flexibility to work with differences between regions.

Discussion

Councilmember Chang: 

• What do you mean by equity in this context. You don’t expect everyone to need the same thing. 

Answer: for example, Native Americans and Alaskan Natives are not being adequately served.

• What is a regional action plan (RAP) in this process? 

It provides a means to identify goals and strategies to develop a plan to address homelessness. It will rely on metrics and set measurable milestones, determine whether a sequence of, or parallel actions need to be taken because everything is interconnected.

And it must be a “living” document: as data comes in, as things work or don’t, we will need to continue to make changes to the document. We are at the front edge of this work. We have identified what we want to do, viewed available data and are now starting community engagement. What goals does the community want to achieve regarding homelessness? What priorities are most important for the community and who should drive the plan? At this point, no decisions have been made.

Councilmember Chang sees the need for a single entity but has concerns about community tailoring. 

• How would signing on to this inter-local agreement work when, for example, Seattle is all in favor of something but Shoreline is not? How would this be resolved?

We don’t know at this time. This is a broad roadmap. If the plan says we need a certain number of beds, they may reach out and ask what you think your community can do. And then see how that works within our regional plan.

Mayor Hall: 

• Seattle and King Co will be the initial signers and other cities will follow?

They don’t know. Currently they are still asking questions and seeing what interest is from other entities.

Councilmember Roberts: 

• He understands the fragmented system isn’t working, but we don’t even know what this entity will do. We don’t know its specific purpose. We’ve had months of conversations but still don’t know. How can this be done by September?

The approach they are taking is to make the box smaller. They started with the big picture, and are now cutting back to what it will ultimately be. So, what does Shoreline want?

Councilmember McGlashan asked about the workshops and community outreach. 

• Were they talking to only the homeless?

In their search to find out what is going on with the services, they talked to the homeless and advocacy groups. Parallel groups asked staff at various agencies and elected officials.

• Can you briefly explain what CSH and NIS are?

CSH is a national non-profit that works to integrate supportive housing into state and national policy by consulting, providing technical assistance and lending for supportive housing (a bank).

NIS is a consultant group that partners with cities throughout the country.

• Do we really need another regional - actually countywide authority? Councilmember McGlashan worked for several years on the 10 year plan to end homelessness. It fell apart - turned into a small group that was going to report to a bigger group. That’s now All Home, right? So why again?

Rather than tweak the structures that we have, we are making a more foundational shift this time to ensure the right level of authority to carry out the system. Or maybe the whole system needs to be redone.

Councilmember Scully: Because we wanted to know what more Shoreline could do, we had a staff of four working on this and it took them a year. This was partly due to the lack of a system to access the information. 

He appreciates that everyone is being asked what they want. Maybe it will work like the ARCH program (ARCH stands for A Regional Coalition for Housing which is a program to increase the supply of housing for low and moderate-income households/ pac). We could have the option to pay into it or we can supply components. 

If we can do a piece of it, and the other cities do a piece, and that way a local police officer who finds a person sleeping in a park, knows who to call. But it has to be voluntary. The local jurisdiction needs to control what will be put in their neighborhoods.

Councilmember Robertson: at a high level, she is supportive. 

• But who would this new entity be accountable to?

That hasn’t been figured out. We don’t know about the board, the size of it, who will be on it and what their authority will be. How will this affect the nonprofits? One nonprofit might have different contracts with multiple entities. This will allow them have a single contract and one point of contact.

• Right now it looks like a plan to make another plan etc. Look forward to seeing how this takes shape.

Deputy Mayor McConnell talked about trying to rent housing when you need to pay first and last month’s rent plus a damage deposit. You can’t even get in the door. If you go hiking, for example, and you get cold and can’t get warm, and can’t take care of your basic sanitation needs, you can feel your dignity slipping away. Being without a house is so quickly dehumanizing.

Mayor Hall stated that our economic development strategies have increased the cost of housing by attracting highly paid individuals to this area who then drive up the cost of rents. He believes this should be part of a public conversation.

He talked about some of the things Shoreline has done: create housing with wrap around services at 192nd, provide human services funding for people who need maybe just a month or two of rent or a utility paid, a methadone clinic and affordable housing mandates. But one catastrophic event can result in homelessness. And there are addiction issues and behavioral illnesses.

Councilmember Roberts: 

• Will this new countywide system prevent Shoreline from giving directly to Hopelink or others?

Councilmember Chang: Shoreline requires community tailoring of services provided. We help with supportive housing and we’re pairing with King County for a community court. But Council also hears a lot from people worrying about their quality of life. They don’t want broken down RVs parked in the street, or people camping in local parks.

Study Item 9(b) Discussing Ordinance No. 863: Minor Amendments to the Aurora Square Community Renewal Area Planned Action Ordinance Planning and Community Development 

The Planning Commission recommends approval of Ordinance No. 863 which corrects a transcription error in Ordinance No. 705 the Planned Action for the Aurora Square Community Renewal Area (CRA).The City recently determined that trip generation numbers were incorrectly reported in the Environmental Impact Statement.

Rachael Markle, Planning and Community Development Director

The correct numbers have been added by addendum. They had no effect on the analysis. She responded to Councilmember Chang’s question by saying the math behind the scenes was correct, but for some reason the tables were wrong.

Ordinance brought back for consent calendar.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:32pm.