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| Devon Vose Rickabaugh Photo by Jerry Pickard |
Shoreline City Council Meeting Monday August 12, 2013
Brugger's Bog Maintenance Facility
The Shoreline City Council adopted an Ordinance authorizing the issuance of a $3,565,000 Limited Tax General Obligation Bond to provide permanent financing for the acquisition and improvements to the Brugger’s Bog Maintenance Facility.
This number includes an increase by $165,000 to cover closing costs on the bond issue, escrow fee and title insurance plus fencing and gateway improvements to make the facility more attractive to the neighborhood. An audience member questioned the increased cost without an open meeting. Councilmember Eggen said that the study leading up to the ordinance had been an open process. City Manager Underwood said before the city issues debt they need to make sure everything is covered so as a project’s projection unfolds the cost needs to be reevaluated. She stressed that immediate improvement to the site to make it functional as a maintenance facility costs $600,000. More work and planning needs to be done to make it a permanent facility.
Lynnwood Link Extension - Light Rail
Sound Transit has released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Lynnwood Link Extension. The DEIS identifies and evaluates the impacts of several different alignments for the project, including six possible options in King County.
The alignment through Shoreline is along the east side of I-5 and includes elevated and at-grade options. Potential station locations in Shoreline include NE 145th Street, NE 155th Street and NE 185th Street. The DEIS examines the impacts associated with several topics including transportation, land use, noise, visual and acquisitions. Review of the DEIS includes a 60 day public comment period that ends on September 23, 2013.
Kirk McKinley, Transportation Services Manager and Alicia McIntire, Senior Transportation Planner, told the Council that the Sound Transit Board will use the information developed in the DEIS, Council’s input, as well as feedback received from other jurisdictions and the public, to develop a Preferred Alternative that will be carried through the process. Staff is seeking direction from Council regarding development of DEIS comments and recommendations for the alignment, stations and mitigation.
Alignment concerns for the Council to consider are: an elevated alignment is more expensive than one constructed at-grade; the visual and noise impacts associated with an at-grade alignment are less than those associated with an elevated line; the property acquisition and residential displacement impacts are greater with an at-grade alignment as more property is needed than for an elevated alignment; all elevated sections of the alignment need to be designed in a manner that does not impede any future modifications to the interchanges at NE 145th Street, NE 175th Street and NE 205th Street.
Using previous Council direction (Scoping comments, Guiding Principles, Transportation Master Plan, Comprehensive Plan), staff offers the following conclusions:
- NE 145th Street station: The option that relocates the northbound on-ramp provides for a more compact station and parking structure layout, shortening walking distances for riders that park vehicles and in the garage. This also provides more flexibility in developing areas for bus service
- NE 185th Street station: An at-grade station with a parking structure on the west side of I-5 will minimize the visual and noise impacts. The required improvements to 5th Avenue NE that will accompany the parking structure development will include new sidewalks and bicycle lanes, per the City’s adopted plans for this street segment. Reconstruction of the bridge will present the greatest opportunity to improve facilities for all users – bicyclists, pedestrians, bus riders and drivers; because an at-grade alignment is less expensive and has fewer visual and noise impacts, the line should be at-grade as much as possible; the issues identified above for each station, the alignment and system-wide will need to be appropriately mitigated. Staff plans to return to Council with a more refined recommendation, including suggestions for mitigation, at the September 9 meeting.
Councilmember Roberts suggested working with the School District to utilize parking at the stadium on 185th for transit as well as stadium parking. Councilmember Eggen said he would rather see a multilevel parking garage to preserve open space. Also he said if 185th is reconstructed he doesn’t look forward to having “one of the four east west routes cut off for a year.”
Councilmembers Winstead, Eggen and Mayor McGlashan were concerned that bus routes to the transit stations be increased, coordinated between the city and Metro and that bus transferring take place on site.
McIntire assured Councilmember Eggen that all of the property owners have been notified if their property has a chance of partial or total acquisition to accommodate the light rail system.
Deputy Mayor Eggen was under the false impression the total "all in" cost for the Brugger's Bog project was the number he had seen in a recent briefing, the date of which he could not recall. When departing City Manager Julie Underwood informed him the cost had increased since his last briefing (again, no date was mentioned), the Deputy Mayor pulled the item from the Consent Calendar, though the Council and the staff were pretty much at a loss as to how to proceed. Staff was caught flat-footed with nothing to add to their staff report, and the Council made unimportant remarks, as if the only reason to pull the item from the Consent Calendar was to rebut this writer's public comment.
ReplyDeleteThe Administrative Services Director made light of the increase, noting it was less than 5% of the total. True enough, but no one seemed to catch that the initial site preparation had jumped a whopping 40 percent.
The former project manager was longer an employee with the City. They chose to outsource his replacement, and borrow that salary for 20 years at 3.47 percent, ostensibly for better project accounting.
There was no mention of the June 20 application document deadline for Local Option Capital Asset Lending (LOCAL) funding, which the City had hoped to meet, but failed to because the King County Council did not approve the sale until June 24.
The Consent Calendar is supposed to be used for items that are non-controversial, not as a means to keep an item "low profile." Brugger's Bog has been on the Consent Calendar 4 times. Low profile.
There is much more to the Brugger's Bog story: That King County Executive Dow Constantine attended an hour long early afternoon Special Meeting of the Shoreline City Council 3 years ago, where the City expressed its need for Brugger's Bog; this was 14 months before it was declared surplus by the County. The minutes are on the City's website, but are not easily found. They lie buried with the minutes of the regular Business Meeting which occurred later the same day.
That Shoreline Water District had expressed interest in purchasing Brugger's Bog back in 2005, and that following a very low initial offer from the City, the County opened it up for closed bids. That they Mayor was dismayed at this turn of events and complained to Mr. Constantine, expressing his concern over stalled negotiations and inclusion of open bids, and reminding the Executive the City of Shoreline is a large consumer of regional services, stating 32% (nearly $12M) of City's general fund goes toward contracts with County for police, district court, animal control, jails, public defense, traffic signals and roads maintenance. And that he was quickly reassured that the County would only negotiate with Shoreline.
Low Profile. All of it low profile. And there is more.
Open process? Baloney! The Open Public Meetings Act was enacted 40+ years ago as a REMEDY for the secrecy that was rampant at the time. The act says it is to be construed liberally, which means our governments shall err on the side of being too open.
It is time to reopen Shoreline.
Correction. The loan rate was 3.75 percent. Back in November, when this cycle kicked off, the City estimated loan rates of between 3.0 and 3.5.
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