Notes from Shoreline City Council meeting Oct 29

Shoreline City Hall
Photo by Steven H. Robinson

By Pam Cross

Mayor Will Hall called the meeting to order at 7:00pm.

The Mayor proclaimed November 15, 2018 as the 21st America Recycles Day with a presentation to Evergreen School.

Presentation of City Manager Debbie Tarry

• Indoor Playground Halloween Wednesday 10/31 from 9:30am to 12:00pm at Spartan Recreation Center for ages 1-5. $3/child.
• Arbor Day Event Saturday 11/03 at Darnell Park 10:00am to 2:00pm.Volunteers needed to assist removing invasive plants
• The Planning Commission will meet Thursday 11/01 at 7:00pm in Council Chamber to discuss the 2018 Development Code Amendments

There were no Council Reports. The Agenda and Consent Calendar were unanimously approved.
There were no Public Comments.

Action Items
8(a) Discussing the Proposed 2019-2020 Biennium Budget - Continued Department Presentations and Capital Improvement Program

Sara Lane, Administrative Services Director, did the introductions.

Tonight’s agenda continued the department presentations with reviews of the Public Works Department’s budget, the 2019-2024 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), the Surface Water Utility and Wastewater Utility budgets, and a brief discussion of budgets for other funds.

Based on feedback from Council at the last meeting, the slides were reworked to show annual or biennial figures instead of a combination of both.

Presented by Randy Witt, Public Works Director and Tricia Juhnke, Engineer

Public Works Department
10,829,442 proposed budget

This was a quick presentation of the Public Works budget including Surface Water and Wastewater Utilities and the Capital Improvement Plan, followed by the General Fund Transfers and Fund Balance and Debt Service Funds.

 
Operations and budget expenditures consist primarily of road surface maintenance, and right of way maintenance. They also spend considerable time on Wastewater maintenance and Surface Water maintenance, asset inventory, and management.

Engineering Services include review of Capital Projects, Wastewater reviews, and construction inspections.

Transportation Services include City transportation planning and concept development, as well as regional coordination of those efforts.

Contract services for landscape maintenance have been unsuccessful in the past years so the City is taking this service in house. This will result in an increase of $750,000 ongoing cost which is about $150,000 less than staying with contract services, due to the most recent “prevailing wage.” Taking these services in house should allow the City to enforce performance standards, offer flexibility in scheduling and meet quality standards by providing direct supervision of the crews. Also this additional staff would be available in case of emergency. Surface Water utility picks up some of this cost because there are surface water features in the landscaping. This changeover will develop incrementally throughout 2019 . Parks maintenance will continue to be done by contract for 2019 while Unified Landscape Maintenance Service gets up and running. By 2020 all landscape maintenance is planned to be in-house.

Another ongoing budget change comes from durable pavement markings. King County used to provide this service (for a fee), but this is one of the services the county is no longer offering. In response to a question from Council, the City is not bringing this in-house because we don’t have the equipment or trained workers. This is part-time work completed during favorable weather so it isn’t something we could contract for with a neighboring city. This is also one of the reasons the County no longer does it. The City has a current backlog of estimated $60,000 of markings not completed as the County stopped doing this (still pushing the County on this). The cost to bring this in-house will be explored at a later date. The long term goal is to have all ongoing work reviewed for possibly bringing in-house. Although the County no longer offers services for durable pavement markings or guardrails, they still do the important traffic signal maintenance and road striping.

In addition to the 60k mentioned above, other *one time expenditures include technical review of ST3 SR522/145th BRT project, parking inventory around light rail, damaged guardrails (County no longer provides this support), purchase of a backhoe, and cleaning of the 155th St bridge over Aurora. The City will need to hire a contractor for bridge cleaning.
(*one-time per biennium)

Council questions: can we also review some other areas for parking such as around the college, North City, other residential parking impacted by Light Rail? Or in SE Shoreline along 145th where Seattle residents are parking in Shoreline to avoid Seattle’s regulations - leaving Shoreline residents with no on-street parking. Yes once we identify the areas. The engineer does periodic surveys of parking on an informal schedule. We need to review where, the reason for concern and cost.

Surface Water Utility
10,086,020 proposed budget that includes capital expenditures plus operations

The revenue comes from the Surface Water Masterplan and Fee Schedule adopted last year.
The fees in 2019 will show a 15% increase and then 10% in 2020. In 2019 the average rate for a homeowner will be 246.55/yr ( which represents a 15% increase over 2018).)

The 2018 Surface Water Master Plan identified several new capital projects as necessary to deliver the Proactive Management Strategy (The proactive management strategy includes implementing 25 high-priority projects and 24 new/enhanced programs that address high priority long-term needs, as well as anticipated new regulatory requirements.). These projects have been programmed in the 2019-2024 Proposed Capital Improvement Plan. There are 13 repair and maintenance projects.

Wastewater Utility
Budget 4,924,892

We are under contract to Ronald Sewer District (RSD) for maintenance of operations in the field and in the office. We took over these operations in late 2017 so the increase to this biennium from the last reflects this. Staffing changes mostly involved moving staff and reallocating the costs between the City and RSD operations.

In response to Council: Rather than purchase a backhoe and pick up truck for the Surface Water Utility, can we share these with RSD? No, RSD contracts out digging operations so there is no equipment to share. Additionally, RSD wants their equipment used only for wastewater work. It’s possible that sometime later we may be able to re-work this.

Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) 2019-2024
2019-2024 Budget 187,817,724
We are budgeting for the biennium, even though it is a 6 year CIP.

The proposed CIP consists of the General Capital Fund, City Facilities-Major Maintenance Fund and the Roads Capital Fund. The Surface Water Fund was already covered so it’s not included here.

The General Capital Fund represents projects for both parks and facilities. Playground replacement and the Community / Aquatics Center are added for parks this year. As for facilities, now that the police station is complete, what’s left is the city maintenance facility. There is nothing specific for this year. 

City Facilities-Major Maintenance Funds. No change in budget, it just depends on what maintenance we are doing to which facility.

Roads Capital Fund includes Repair and Replacement Projects and Capacity Construction Projects.

Repair and Replacement Projects: Sidewalk Rehabilitation Program is added. This is where we will use the money from the increased VLF for repair and replacement of existing sidewalks. It has been renamed for a fresh start new program that will replace what we’ve currently been doing under the Curb Ramp, Gutter and Sidewalk Maintenance program.This is in addition to the Road Surface Maintenance and the Traffic Signal Rehabilitation programs. Capacity Construction Projects: included new project that will add some school zone flashers from a grant from the Washington Traffic Safety Committee

General Funds transfers and balance summary, and debt service was provided in several charts.

8(b) Discussing Ordinance No 845 - 2018 Comprehensive Plan Annual Docket Amendments to the Shoreline Comprehensive Plan
Presented by Steve Szafran, Senior Planner

This presentation detailed various administrative type corrections to zoning, figures and duplicated information, where later changes made the existing document inaccurate. Maps were updated with similar changes in property lines or zoning. For example, a zoning change made during the year needed to be updated so users could depend on the accuracy of the Plan. Some amendments clarified ambiguities.


The meeting was adjourned to be followed by a 30 minute Executive Session.


The schedule for the remaining Budget and CIP Review follows.

• November 5, 2018:
• Public hearing and discussing the Proposed Budget and CIP
• Discussing of final 2018 Budget Amendment
• Public hearing and discussing the 2019-2020 property tax and revenue sources
• November 19, 2018:
• Public hearing and discussing the Proposed Budget and CIP
• Adopting the 2019-Property Tax Levy,
• Adopting the 2019-2020 Biennium Budget and the 2019-2024 CIP

The Biennium Budget is available on line at the City website. Budget Books are also available for review at both libraries (Shoreline Library and Richmond Beach Library) as well as at City Hall. Budget books are available on CD for purchase at City Hall.