City Council Workshops

0:00 >> Today is April, Monday, April 27, 2026. I'm Ann McEnerny-Ogle. We are starting our workshops. Our first workshop will be on the comprehensive plan update. So staff and Councillors, please remember to identify yourselves before speaking and make sure your microphones are on. Anything else, Sarah? We're good. Okay, Rebecca, you're on. Thank you. >> Great. Hi. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm Rebecca Kennedy, deputy director of the community development department for the city and part of the team that has been working for several years now to update our comprehensive plan and development code. Next slide, please.

0:55 And I'm joined by Mark Person, senior planner also in community development, and he'll be taking part of the conversations he's been leading the task, the code update task. So the agenda for tonight is to really do well, how we open every presentation on the comp plan, which is sort of the legal and policy framework and the key things we have to do as part of it. We'll go through the changes that have happened since the last draft you reviewed at your last workshop on April 13th, so essentially between the second draft of the plan and the third draft that was published on April 17th. We'll do that for both the plan and the code. We'll walk you through a few additional changes we think are going to happen between essentially now and the third draft and the final draft, review briefly the final environmental impact statement findings and remind folks what it is and remind all

1:55 of us that's what helps us meet our state environmental policy act obligations in terms of supporting the adoption of a comprehensive plan and then talk about final steps and have lots of time for your questions. So briefly, we do comprehensive planning under the legal framework of the growth management act that was established in Washington in 1990. It requires cities to plan and it has several goals associated with it in terms of protecting agricultural, rural, natural areas, forest and resource lands by focusing development into cities, preventing sprawl into those areas outside cities and outside urban growth areas. It requires us to project for growth in coordination with other jurisdictions in the county and Clark County itself and then demonstrate the ability to accommodate and

2:52 have capacity to meet that growth. And it requires several elements which you are all familiar with that where we need to address very specific items either from a policy standpoint or a regulatory standpoint or both and demonstrate compliance. We've reviewed those chapters in depth with all of you over the last several months but that includes our land use and development chapter, housing, economic opportunity, public facilities, transportation, parks and open space. We have an equity chapter, a climate chapter, a community experience chapter. So there's requirements associated with all the required chapters. And then just a reminder too we're not doing this in a vacuum. We as part of the growth management act all jurisdictions are required to look at their plans and their codes and their other implementing regulations

3:46 every ten years through what's called the periodic review process. This is when we update population projections and then the housing and jobs that come with that. You can do it more frequently. Vancouver is typically stuck to the every ten year or close to that. Other jurisdictions have done it more often including our colleagues at Clark County. And then just a reminder too that this isn't like this isn't lock us in stone. We look at our plan every year through the annual review process. We look at if there's plan, text or map changes that are needed. If there's zoning code, text or map changes that are needed. Comp plan changes have to happen once a year and have to be assessed together. Basically you have to look at impacts cumulatively. We can update the code any time under the growth management act. And then just want to note too that there's a full review and progress report due to the

4:42 state after five years from this periodic review update process. And that is a new requirement that the legislature added a couple years ago. So there's a more robust reporting and review process than there previously was half way through the periodic update time frame. Rebecca, before you go any further, Anne McEnerny-Ogle, you stated update the population projections. The county gave us that number that we for housing didn't they? Correct, yeah. So the county in the growth management act structure, counties are responsible for selecting population targets and then translating that into numbers of housing and jobs and then allocating those out to the city. We planned for a little more like I think a little more than a thousand

5:38 more units than the county allocated us and that's because we don't always agree with their model. And we did our own analysis to figure out what we would need to do to meet our housing goals in terms of meeting our existing deficit and meeting that future growth, but it's all within pretty close. But the original allocation, the large number of housing units, yes, came from the county and they allocated units to other cities and the urban growth areas as well. Thank you. There's many reasons to do a periodic update and a full update of our comprehensive plan and our code now, both from a regulatory standpoint as well as just what's happening in the community. We see quite a lot of changes, more people

6:32 moving here, has impacts on housing affordability, which has impacts on housing stability and houselessness. We see different economic trends emerging, certainly since COVID we see more work from home but we also see a hollowing out of sort of those middle wage family jobs, family wage jobs. We're all familiar with the growth and the growing diversity of the city. Our analyses show that it is pretty much undisputable that where you live determines your access to different opportunities and we want to strive and have aspirational goals to make it so it doesn't matter that everybody has access to opportunity regardless of whether zip code is in the city, health care, education, parks and recreation, fresh food, transportation, all of that, jobs. And then we have council policy direction to take robust climate action

7:30 and address the impacts of climate change. We also have state requirements to do that, including new legislation around conducting greenhouse gas inventories and demonstrating that your land use plans and transportation plans reduce the local sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Good entry into new state laws. As you are familiar, there are many new state laws relating to what cities and counties and others planning under the growth management act need to do to demonstrate compliance and particularly focused on housing. So we have to allow a minimum of four to six units on every residential lot and we have to importantly make sure that standards for middle housing are not more restrictive than what we impose on single family development, detached single family development. We have to make room again for this set number of housing units. But what's new in this cycle is that we also have

8:29 to demonstrate capacity for units by income band. And we have to also demonstrate that we allow permanently supportive housing everywhere we allow housing. We have to account for racially disparate impacts and we have to demonstrate and apply that lens to ensuring new policies don't have those and demonstrate that we're trying to essentially address or change past policies that have resulted in racially disparate impacts. We've got to allow two accessory dwelling units per residential lot. There are several rules around parking minimums. We have to align impact fees with the size of housing. As I mentioned our last workshop that's happening going to happen slightly after this because we've got to give some more time to coordinate with schools on it. And then again I mentioned the climate and greenhouse gas requirement analysis requirements. So these are lots of lots of stuff happened

9:28 over the last four years of working on this plan. A lot of detailed analysis engagement translating that into maps and different regulations and a new regulatory structure. But the five buckets or the five things that we have to do as part of this is we have to have a community partnership and engagement process in GMA growth management act language that's called public involvement plan. That's a big piece of this and we've done that engagement and partnership work throughout. We have to have a plan document that is informed by a bunch of different analyses and has a bunch of key components. I mentioned the the key required elements. We have to have a capital facilities plan which shows our our planned capital investments over six years and 20 years time periods. We have to have a bunch of analyses around

10:26 housing and jobs to support the things that build off that. The third kind of big bucket is the Title 20 or your land use code. It is required under the growth management act to implement your comp plan. So we went through a very long process of talking to you all and talking to the community about what a new land use code framework could be and that started in 2024 and we've been talking about those concepts out in the community and with you all since then. We have to demonstrate some key implementation steps. The big one is Title 20 but but we know that our aspirational goals and the things we're required to do can't be solved by just the land use code and so we have implementation steps at the end of each chapter so that's sort of the fourth bucket and then the final one is the environmental impact statement process and that's a requirement of the state environmental policy act. This is a non-project action which I'll kind of go into but it's there's no

11:25 specific development thing that's going to be built proposed. This is a policy and planning document that we that there's a process for analyzing under SEPA and then on the right hand side you can just see a sort of a high level summary of the process over the last four years. We spent a lot of time learning about the community, analyzing existing conditions. We developed land use alternatives in partnership with the community and others you all planning commission. We vetted those and we refined it into a preferred alternative. We analyzed those under the environmental impact statement process. We eventually again got to a preferred alternative. We have refined our policies and our code and now we're at the adoption phase. We showed this slide last time engagement treatment and outreach slide at the last workshop

12:21 two weeks ago so I'll just say there's been a really long and extensive engagement process. We've talked to 2,000 plus people directly, had many many different events with different groups, utilized the city council's board and commission process to get citizen appointees who are on those boards and commissions to weigh in in their areas of expertise. We've obviously presented to the council and planning commission a lot. You can see a lot of numbers, 270 visioning tags, 150 pins on our online map, over a thousand survey responses, 409 draft environmental impact statement comments so we've got a lot of feedback and then a lot of outreach was done through I guess what I'd call our traditional channels of e-newsletters, direct emails, news coverage. The city has a quarterly newsletter

13:19 that they hard copy newsletter they mail to every address in the city. We've used that to spread the word and then social media and we've even canvassed so quite a bit of engagement through the process. This slide covers our targets so our population allocation, the housing units we believe are required to meet our existing deficit and serve that growth as well as the jobs target. As I mentioned earlier comprehensive plans are a 20 year time horizon that you're planning for but you update them typically every 10 years. Our current plan was actually updated in 2011 because there was a delay in this cycle because of COVID. 2021 wasn't a great time to do engagement and then we have a vision statement on the

14:15 right of this slide that is the vision statement council endorsed for this whole process and what we were trying to achieve including that Vancouver is an equitable and prosperous community which ensures that all residents businesses and organizations benefit from the growth and advancement we make together. Vancouver will be recognized for our quality of life as evidenced by affordable housing and vibrant safe walkable neighborhoods, access to jobs and economic opportunity for all and leading edge efforts to address climate change. And I should say our population as of 2024 was 200,000 people. We're anticipating 81,000 people in more people moving living here by 2045 so that gets us to a 2045 target of 281,000. We currently have about 86,000 housing units. You add 38,000 new units to that you get 124,000 for this 2045 target and then jobs. We currently have about 100,000 in the city looking at

15:15 adding 43,200 to get that 143,100 target. Here are the plan elements. As noted in the slide that some of these are required under the growth management act and by the implementing RCW's revised code of Washington the community experience and equity inclusion chapters we have optionally included and the annexation chapter is not required by the state but it is required by our countywide planning policies that all the jurisdictions create together every periodic update cycle and given the size of our UGA it's urban growth area it's very important that we plan for annexation. So since the last draft so the second draft

16:09 you saw these are the changes that were made in the third draft which is part of your packet. So we've updated some terms in the glossary and made sure we're using them appropriately throughout more consistent throughout. We've added some like kind of explanatory footnotes to different sections different chapters. We have added some language to policies in the climate chapter particularly around invasive species and climate resilient sort of spaces versus like climate smart development so there's been some clarifications. In the transportation and mobility chapter we added level of service for highways and multimodal level of service

17:03 for transit coordinated with WSDOT and C-TRAN on that. We updated and really it was adding a couple bullets to the community feedback summaries and a few of the chapters just to make sure they were comprehensive. We've published appendix T which is our multimodal evaluation and active trip potential analysis really shows us really important for us in terms of implementation and tracking of okay we have these areas where we think there is active trip potential and we need to see what happens as we implement a new land use plan and new programmatic investments essentially to and capital investments. We added a closing page and then we did like a full accessibility review so this is now an accessible document and for anyone who's using a screen reader otherwise. And then we are anticipating a

18:02 few additional refinements for the draft that will be published with your materials on 5/5 and you'll review under consent on May 11th and that's adding our ADA transition plan is required to be a piece of this. It's a pretty high level analysis that's required as part of the comprehensive plan under the GMA and the Growth Management Act. Our team, our equity and access department will be back with a more I believe detailed version of that and to vet with you later this year but this is what's required for the comprehensive plan. HB 1491 which was the transit oriented development bill that passed a couple years ago, the Department of Commerce let us know that we had to include some analysis of that in our comp plan and so we have a memo, we've been meeting with them and it just needs to

18:58 be included and then we did some clarification, we're going to have to make some additional clarifications based on comments we got from Commerce, they're pretty minor like one of them was you have a lot of transportation policies that also help meet your climate goals, you should list those under your climate goals as well not just cross reference them. So stuff like that just that we're responding to. So that covers the plan. Now I'm going to turn it over to Mark Person who is going to talk about the zoning code. Thank you Rebecca. So these next few slides will go over the title 20 overhaul that we've been discussing for the past two plus years here. Every parcel in the city will have a new base district, a new zoning designation as a part of this process. Those base districts

19:56 will include a minimum density and a maximum height. Most of the other development standards that live in our current zoning code will move to building typologies. We'll also have allowed uses per base district, very similar to what we have now. The main difference will be that we are allowing obviously more types of housing everywhere in the city except for our industrial employment zones. And then we have a table on the right here showing some of the major differences between our existing code and the new code. Again, we'll allow more as Rebecca has mentioned in the past, nearly every zone will be a mixed use zone allowing small scale commercial in our low scale and medium scale neighborhoods.

20:51 As far as density, our current code has minimum and maximum densities. We're going to focus with the new code on minimum densities. Maximum will be controlled by height, setbacks and other site elements. Each base district will have a building, a maximum building height that will be very similar to our code today. Our parking as we stated in the past, right now our code has minimums. We're going to most uses having no minimum parking requirements relying on the use and the private sector that builds our city out for the most part to show us what they need. And we understand that parking makes projects more expensive and takes up real estate that could be used for housing. Our new code is really focused

21:46 a little more form based, meaning we're really looking at the relationship of those buildings to the street. We'll also have some overlay overlays as we do now. We're going to remove some of our overlays and add some overlays as well. Some of those overlays are the downtown has design guidelines. We have our noise overlay because of the downtown's relationship to Pearson PDX and the rail line. This slide is showing our proposed plan districts and plan designations across the top are our four comp plan designations. We'll have residential neighborhoods, urban mixed use neighborhoods, employment and industrial zones, and our two

22:40 green space which will include parks and natural areas. Our employment and industry designation will include institutional campus, industrial employment, and heavy industrial. And again, as we've said throughout this process, there's very little changes to our heavy industrial areas in either geography or use standards. We have worked with our industrial stakeholders to refine some of those standards, but for the most part, those are staying the same. Our urban mixed use zone includes our mixed use neighborhoods and our regional activity center. And then our residential neighborhood plan designation will include our mobile home, the park designations, those are going to be covering our 16 existing mobile home parks

23:33 to retain those for naturally occurring affordable housing. And then our two neighborhoods, the low scale neighborhood and the medium scale neighborhood. This is the preferred alternative that council endorsed in December. And on the left, we are showing some elements that went into this preferred alternative, as Rebecca mentioned, that's the draft environmental impact statement. Those comments are centers and corridors, strategy for where we want to focus growth, where schools are located, taking into account tree canopy, taking into account community assets such as parks and community centers and services, where our industrial employment lands are located, our existing service deserts, you know, council's

24:28 goal to reduce vehicular miles traveled and emissions, where public facilities and services are located, transportation and health and climate vulnerability. This slide is showing our draft code changes. On the left, we have draft code changes since draft three that was published on 417 that is part of council's packet. This includes a change to the exemption in the medium scale minimum density. We heard from folks in the community that if there is a natural disaster or an issue where there's a catastrophic event at the home, that it could take a while to work through that process with insurance companies. So we wanted to extend that time from the original one year time frame to three years plus the potential

25:28 for a one year extension if folks can demonstrate that they're working through that process to get that home rebuilt. I want to make it clear we have an exemption to ground floor active and ground floor ready requirements for emergency services. And we heard from folks that if you don't have a site with frontage, then why would we put up a big sign and we agree. This is I think mostly for the port where not all of the port's parcels are served by a public right of way. So placing that big sign for neighborhood notification doesn't make a lot of sense. And on the right we have our anticipated final refinements that we're still making that will be included in the 55 draft, May 5 draft. We're going to address some code section numbering issues and references. We'll add in some new review fees for some

26:25 of those middle housing and some of those other new code elements. We're going to add language to clarify that existing uses can continue and expand in the industrial holding overlay until it is lifted. We've refined heavy industrial uses to make some clarifications on those use classifications and what can be allowed there. There was some confusion from community members and stakeholders about landscape plans and planting plans. We've cleaned that up for readability. And then there's some clarification that we've had on landscape maintenance bonds and who would be responsible for those and the timing and we're working with those with our urban forester right now on some of those clarifications in the code. The 55 code will also have updated downtown design guidelines. As council may

27:21 recall, we took that through a process, it feels like a while ago now, 18 months ago or so probably. Those are adopted by reference, so our downtown area, those just got updated. I think our last ones were from 1997. Okay. Under the State Environmental Policy Act, a non-project action, again, so nothing being built, this is the policy and planning document, is required to be reviewed under SEPA. We have done it through the most extensive review process possible under SEPA, which is an environmental impact statement process. We've analyzed land use alternatives under this. You take questions and comments through a public comment period after you release the draft. And then the final draft includes the analysis updated for your preferred alternative and also responds to all the questions that

28:21 you received. So we've gone through this process. We've published a final environmental impact statement. As part of this, it essentially is covering the preferred alternative. As we talked about really extensively through the process, the alternatives, the no action Alt 1 and Alt 2 represented the range of what was possible. And the preferred alternative generally fell within that range, which was intentional. That's where we wanted to be so that we could demonstrate we were clearly analyzing impacts, making that information available to the community, and then responding to their comments. So this has been published, and the final environmental impact statement is quite long. It's a requirement under the State Environmental Policy Act. And it's not something that you adopt, but it's something

29:14 that is required for action to be legal at the state level. And then this is the last workshop, anticipated workshop, as part of the comprehensive plan. I know you were all very sad about that. We are, too. But this is the anticipated last workshop, and then we are scheduled to come back to you for review under the consent agenda and first reading of the final draft of the plan and code on May 11th and then scheduled for a public hearing on the final plan and code on June 1. I just want to reiterate that that is the process never ends. We refine and update our comprehensive plans annually. We change our codes all the time to respond to new conditions and changing circumstances or unintentional things that we're seeing, and we will continue to do that. I do want to just be clear, though, that our commitment to the development community, particularly

30:12 through this process, because we are overhauling the entire code, is that we will be coordinating with them. We will educate. We're going to help facilitate. We'll make sure staff are trained up on the new code and processes. And then as we find things that maybe are not fully aligned or don't work or not working as anticipated, we will be efficient and responsive to that. And so this certainly is not intended ever to imply we will not be changing things or that things are now set in stone, as is true of the world. It's also true of our planning documents and regulations. Things are always changing. And we'll be working with stakeholders and partners to ensure that we're working together to meet our goals. That's all we've got. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you very much.

31:07 Councillors, do you have questions? Councillor Foxx, go ahead. >> All right. I like how close we are getting to the finish line here, just to also share in that relief that you guys are taking a deep breath. Just a few, I guess, minor thoughts on the zoning code. I focus mostly on that review. Kind of looking at the building type section, so that's 20.420, the section starts with a nice table, a nice clean table like the way it looks, but which shows all of the building types and where they're allowed in the zones. And I'm wondering if it needs a footnote. And I say that because I don't want us to go back to tables with footnotes. But when you dive into each of those building

32:05 types, there are caveats there. There's, you know, other notes that say in particular going back to the manufactured housing zone where it mentions how that building type could be allowed there. And so if I'm looking at a summary chart at the beginning of that section and it tells me no, yes, no, yes, but doesn't mention that there could be a caveat to this or a condition, I think we should call that out. And then the other question I had is on our overlay zones. We are we planning to work on those at some point in the coming years or because it doesn't I don't recall us working on the overlay zones in this process. Why I say that is specifically to the historic overlay. The map being that I used to be on the Historic Preservation Commission, that

33:03 was a terrible map in the zoning code then. And it's the same. So we've updated our entire zoning code, but we still have this really terrible map graphic in the historic overlay zone, which then made me kind of look at our other overlay zoning maps for the other ones. And I'm just wondering if they should all be, you know, updated at least to look at the current color schemes and graphics. >> Yeah, we can look at it. The in overlays in particular, they what's in the code is meant to be both regulatory and illustrative because often you're, you know, covering a very big area. And then from an implementation point, you know, we create GIS databases and property lists, right, so that it's very clear to the implementers and people in the private development market who is impacted by those.

34:02 But we can take a look at them and try to make them look better. We are finalizing the we have to finalize the draft by Friday. So it also may be something we could come back to and improve as we go. But let us see what we can try to do by Friday. >> Yeah, I recognize when I mention the historic overlay district as well that there's been some changes, particularly at the academy. You know, it's not reflecting that there has been built development there. So this I do recognize this could be a bigger lift. Okay. Thank you. >> Rebecca, we removed transit overlay. And we removed hospital overlay. Correct. So Mark, what you were talking about the two overlays, downtown design. What was the other one? >> Mark Person, development review planner.

34:59 Mayor, yeah, those were just two I recalled. We have ground floor ready, right? That was where we're anticipating allowing residential but building to a little bit higher standard. And we had extensive conversations with the stakeholders on what that ground, you know, ceiling to floor should be. We'll also have, if council recalls, the ground floor activation, right? So we're really shrinking where we're requiring mixed use. So allowing mixed use everywhere. But only requiring a mix of uses in those few strategic locations. And then, you know, the ones that we're retaining are the noise, noise overlay, airport overlay, design guideline downtown area. >> Downtown overlay, basically. Yep. There's

35:56 some others. We have it here. Yep. >> The CBC, the Columbia Business Center, that will be, you know, zone regional activity center but continue to operate as heavy industrial until a time when the city and that property owner make a plan for a master plan. So those are the ones that are new. And then we've retained several of the existing ones. Yeah. I will say you did receive a comment in some of the written comments about the requirements for it. It was, I think, a week or so ago. But for the requirements about that active use requirement, and I will say that in that comment, someone mentioned recently passed state legislation, and we are well within compliance with that because we've reduced

36:52 it so much to remove as many barriers to housing as we can. We are well in compliance with the new state requirements. >> Thank you. Yes, Councilor Stover. >> Thank you, Mayor. And a happy, sad moment here. So technical question. So I was going through the title 20 code today. And some places links I felt like some places I could click on a number and it would take me to a section, and then other places it was not. You're going to clean all that up, I'm guessing? Great. Then, Rebecca, we started to have a conversation but haven't finished it, but I think it's by the way, Ty Stover, City Council member, I think it's good to flush this out. So I received feedback this week about density

37:51 near parks. And I know that in our kind of guiding principles was this idea of density near parks. And this person was struggling with the practicalities of that, so you have a neighborhood park that's maybe not far from a transit line but definitely not a transit line that is frequent. And probably is not going to be frequent for a very long time. But in that medium density, the building height is allowed up to 75 feet. And so their concern

38:42 was a 75 foot building around a park but nowhere near transit really aligning with what we're wanting to see. And so I wanted to just kind of get your feedback on that. Yeah. Thank you. So when we worked on getting to a preferred alternative, so we had a range of options that we analyzed, and we worked with council to develop a framework for getting to a preferred alternative. So how would we combine and refine the options right into a preferred map. And one of the core principles of that framework that we heard over and over and over again from people is that parks and schools are essential places for people. They

39:34 are essential things people need to be able to access on a daily basis to thrive, basically. And so as we went through that process, the direction from this council was to apply the medium scale neighborhood around all parks and schools, regardless of transit access, to give people that access. So anyway, that's what shows up in the map. So it's not just one park. It's every park. And it's every school. And in recognition that in some cases, and particularly if there isn't good transit, allowing people to live close by those things that are essential to them thriving is really something that we heard very strongly from the community and that this council supported as part of your framework and ultimately endorsed your resolution as part of the final map. I will also say that, you know, the 75 feet

40:34 in the medium scale or whether it's next to a park or not is something we've got a lot of feedback on. And it really is I think some of you have been like to National League of Cities and, you know, have brought back even to me information on how do we make how do we get more housing built. And one of the biggest things is to allow by right development that's flexible. And so our standards are intended to be that. So it's kind of two part answer. One is really about what the community said about access and that these are putting more access and then also getting out of the way of housing and allowing by right development in the places where people say they meet it need it most. Okay. And so the and I'm I don't want to argue with it, but I think it is important that we're we're continuing to have this conversation

41:32 because it is can be a big one for people to get wrap their hands around. I would also say, though, in the ill is just ill ill to strip photos. I didn't say that word right. That is definitely not what's reflected in the code. What's reflected in the code is more three four story, which feels very different than a probably 75 feet is probably more like a six story. And so, oh, you know, want to make sure that we're being sure. Transparent. Yeah, that process. Thank you. Yes. And I will say we did update a lot of the photos

42:27 in our materials. We're anticipating 75 feeds accommodating five stories. I'm not saying it couldn't accommodate more, but between the energy code and the desire that we're hearing from the development community for taller ceilings for greater light and livability. That's essentially what we we've planned for again with that flexibility. So we will look at the code precedent images as well, though, and make sure those align with what we've shown in other materials, which really we thought we're trying to be very thoughtful about making sure we are intellectually honest, transparent about what's possible. Thank you. Other comments? Counselor Perez. Okay. Rebecca, I have, um, several questions. One first.

43:23 My name is Diana Perez, uh, Vancouver city council member, uh, manufactured homes. And in the document I read that, uh, the manufactured home zone allows redevelopment if ongoing use as a manufactured home park is demonstrated to be unfeasible. So my question is who makes that determination and is there a standard of proof? And is there a community notification or appeal process before that threshold is triggered? And I don't know if you want to answer that question. Yeah, I can. Um, I think we know that, um, uh, we, we're gonna, well, there is some code language around like how you would demonstrate it. Essentially you have to provide, um, a market study that, that basically says that, you know, shows that like continuing to provide infrastructure services, water, sewer power, whatever that

44:22 is, um, is, and, and, you know, maintain the property and pay your property taxes and stuff is infeasible. Um, it'd be a, um, I'll have to follow up with planning commission or planning official determination. I can look that up. We'll look it up. Um, but there is a, yeah, it does outline a process. Um, and again, yeah, there are, it's important to remember that, uh, at the state level, there are a lot of protections for manufactured home parks. Um, and so yes, there are appeal periods, notification periods. There are periods of time where, um, the manufactured home park residents have the opportunity, uh, it's not cultural first right of refusal, but to, to, to also purchase the property. So there are state level requirements beyond our code as well. And would it, would the document tier to those? I mean it'll specifically tier within the document to those state codes. Um, we

45:20 do not like to do that cause state codes change. Okay. Um, but we, but we, these are, these are, I mean, I would say knowledge about state level protections for manufactured home parks is pretty broad if you know about them. Okay. And to your point of state codes can change. Um, so in the situation where a mobile, a manufactured home zone parcel, um, sells, does that zoning stick and are there, and can we identify those mechanisms like right of first refusal, tenant purchase programs to back up and need anti-displacement intent of the zone? Well, that is so, so basically the, that, the situation you described where someone, so the zoning goes with the property, it's not the owner. So it essentially putting

46:14 the zoning on it is like our best local tool to preserve it. So anti-displacement. It will, the zone sticks sticks. That's my point. It's correct. Okay. Thank you. And then second is the timing with this, with this entire process. And I shared with you some feedback that I received. Um, can you just go ahead and summarize the, the extent to which when we started communicating with public, but most importantly how to better involve our neighborhood association so they're not feeling like they're catching up or this is going really fast or especially as you tie into this post adoption final steps discussion so that, um, we get our neighborhood associations feeling like they're, they're on task and they're involved and up to speed. Yeah. Um, and apologies. I did send you a response to

47:11 that. I just saw that and I would love for you to share that for those who are watching. So yeah, I think we've, we started engagement on this in early February, 2023 and we've been at many community events and we've, um, you know, even before we were like organizing our own events for the comp plan, we were out in the community talking to people all the time. We were communicating with neighborhoods in the best ways we know how, which is by directly emailing their chair, their association leadership and using the office of neighborhoods newsletter. I don't know how many times we were in the office of neighborhoods newsletter. I think like most of them, um, during the, the comp plan update or at least during those periods where we were really actively seeking feedback and doing engagement. Uh, we've also, you know, presented at the Vancouver neighborhood Alliance, which is a separate but kind of

48:06 umbrella organization several times. Um, I think we've, we've, like I said, we've been, you know, put information in the direct mailer that goes to everybody's house. Um, uh, as part of the city newsletter, I, I, but I, but you know, we can't reach everyone and I just want to acknowledge that, right? Like it's, it's really hard, um, to get people, um, involved and particularly hard to get them involved while, you know, earlier in the process. Um, but we have been out presenting on, you know, I think one of the comments was, well, the, the, the, these standards, the code and the, um, were, were just made available on February, you know, the February 19th. And that was when we first published the full drafts of all that. But we have been socializing this and talking to you all and many, many other people about, um, you know, the, the proposed new zoning districts and

49:05 the development standards, no parking minimums, the heights, um, the, you know, how we got to the map, um, for years. Um, and I, I totally understand that it is a lot to, for folks to digest and if you're just coming into the process, it can feel, you know, overwhelming, but we really have done quite a bit of engagement. And I just also want to just reiterate, it, this, we, we will keep adjusting things based on new information. Um, and what we hear, I think, you know, the EIS public comment period was last July, between July and September, we got 409 comments, right? Like written comments on that. So people, the information has been out there. Yeah. Um, but, but I mean, there's a lot going on in the world. Well, maybe we could follow up with this particular neighborhood association to ensure that. I've been communicating with that specific individual and that neighborhood association directly for quite some time. I've been to their neighborhood in the last month and,

50:04 but I will keep doing so. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah. And, uh, lastly is the anticipation of a next update, a next iteration. And I'm glad to hear that this isn't final. We're always going to be modifying and updating, and I'm thinking about data centers and how that's just moving forward. And, you know, we don't specifically mention data centers and the EIS, but in the industrial zoning, uh, does it or what are we in a position to be able to, uh, catch up or be smart when that comes to us? And so our, our code does not allow data centers anywhere in the city. Okay. So that wasn't clear in the document. And so if it's not mentioned, I will just assume that it's not allowed. Correct? Well,

50:55 the EIS is not going to analyze every potential use. Right. Um, but, but, um, but the code is where we address every specific use and data centers are prohibited. Um, everywhere in the city, we've consulted extensively with our economic development folks. These are not, these use a lot of energy and don't employ a lot of people. It wasn't mentioned in the final EIS. Yes. Yeah. No, every use won't be measured. Okay. Well, it's not what it's intended to do because that's the hot topic and coming forward. And then we need to wrap it up. We have two other counselors that need to comment. And, um, thank you. I messaged you with some other questions so we could follow up on that later. Councilor Hanson, go ahead. Thank you, mayor. Council member Bart Hanson. Um, Mark, you mentioned, uh, what was it? Landscape bonds. Now wouldn't the performance bond cover that? I don't believe

51:55 we have a Mark person development review. We don't have performance bonds. We're we'll have this vegetative maintenance bond, uh, for any plantings onsite. Okay. And this would be for any development or developments with the city. It would be a private development thousand if it's a thousand, I think the threshold is $1,000 or more in plantings and labor. So you would require a landscaping bond, but you don't have like a performance bond requirement or a bid bond requirement or any of the other bond requirements? Not that I'm aware of counselor. So the intent here is what we're seeing with this. It's, and this is really about, it's a maintenance, a landscaping maintenance bond is that, um, plantings not surviving. Um, because we require you to put in the tree say, but, um, we, we have to have a way to kind of make you water it. Um, and so the intent here is to, um, have that in place.

52:50 Now we did get a comment back from, um, a company that does a lot of, a lot of subdivisions where they, um, plant and title the, the, but they don't actually build it. And so their question was, well, where, how would that work? And we clarified and will clarify that essentially, you know, if, if, if you're doing it as part of your, your, um, entitlement process, it's on you as that land developer. If you're doing, you know, if you're required to do the plantings as part of construction of a house, um, then it's on them. And so we did talk to that individual and I think we've landed in a good place. So it would be on the owner because they're the people who have to like water it. And I see the intent. The intent is very, yeah, I think it's intended to be a way to try to help get that investment to a point where it's going to survive. Um, and, and so it's,

53:45 we don't have performance bonds are really performance criteria in our code because it's at the land, right at the permit phase where we have the enforcement mechanism between the owner and the developer wouldn't necessarily be between the city as far as maintaining that. Is it with the city? Yes. What's the city on the builder, the builder, probably the counselor, not the owner, individual owner. So, well, see that, that kind of puts me in a little if, cause if you build it and then you're done and you move on and you're not required to be the person that water it every day, why wouldn't you put it on the owner? You'd be putting that, you'd be planning it and put in that on the builder, I believe, but we can follow up with our forester and get back with you on that. Thank you. Counselor list. Did you have any comments? All right. Thank you very much. I'll send you my comments and get my questions answered at another time. We're running a little late. Thank you so

54:41 very much. Let's move on to the budget, please. Counselors, we have two more workshops. Let's make sure our comments are short and sweet. All right, Lisa, thank you so very much for joining us. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And mayor, while the slide shows no loading, I'll just note that a city manager pluck on is online and he'll be participating in this presentation as well. He'll lead us off. Great. Thank you so much. And we have with us Lisa Brandel and Jeff, are you on

55:40 this also? Yes. Jeff Towery, deputy city manager. Great. Two deputy city managers and a city manager. Lisa, let's go ahead and get started. I'll read just that up. There it is. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. All right. Go ahead. Let's jump into that next slide, Sara. There we go. Okay. Good afternoon, mayor, council and community. Lisa Brandel, deputy city manager and interim CFO. We are starting our budget, our biennial budget presentation and budget framework and we're going to start our presentation here with city manager Lon Pluckon who is online and Jeff Towery, deputy city manager, will take over and then I will talk for a

56:35 few slides and then Lon will close the presentation. So I'll turn it over to Lon. I see him online. Thank you, Lisa. Sara, I'm hoping that you'll be queued up to advance the slides when we're ready to go. The purpose of today's workshop is to really talk with the council about the environment that we are developing the next iteration of our biennial budget in and that starts really with our budget framework. So the budget framework is really the overarching environment that we're going to be working in and it springs from the universal policy themes that the city council has set for us. And just for that quick reminder, that is community safety, equity and inclusion and climate action. Now, those get filtered down and expressed in the organization. Next slide, please, Sara. Through the city's strategic plan because those three areas, those three focus areas are very, very broad and much

57:34 like the conflict presentation that you just heard about are really things that can take decades or even generations to be able to effectively implement. So the way that we break that down into the bite-sized chunks that are actually actionable and that we can show the council and the community progress are by using a six-year strategic plan. So the strategic plan takes those three universal policy themes and breaks them down into our core values and focus areas, which for us focus around livability, equity and inclusion, sustainability and resilience and trust in relationships. And these are the pieces that every single thing that we bring to the council should filter in underneath one of these and think of them in terms of columns to support those overarching universal policy themes. Next slide, please, Sara. To actually then take those and construct the budget, we start off with the item in the top left on the graphic, which is our revenue and expenditure forecast,

58:33 and then setting the budget policy direction. So that's the area where the council really first gets involved, works with me, and then I direct the staff to implement the policy direction that you set for us for the outcomes that you want to achieve during the next budget. There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes with the staff side to actually create the draft budget that comes back to the council. And then we bring that back to you for review, final adjustments, and then move on into the statutory adoption process. Next slide, please, Sara. So just as a reminder, we are in the second year of our current biannual budget. The '25 to '26 budget was just about $2.3 billion, $1.63 billion of it in the operating side of the budget and $667 million going towards capital. Next slide, please.

59:30 And why that's important is because the end of that biannual budget determines where we're sitting with the cash reserves that we have, both for making sure that we have enough money for working capital to meet our day-to-day operating expenses, but also money that we've been setting aside for future capital projects. We have a fairly extensive set of financial policies that the city has to work within, and we require ourselves to establish reserves in a bunch of different categories. And this one really shows you what is available to the city in these different categories. I will call out one with the emergency reserve because the council is going to be adopting some policy changes with that one here shortly that really are related to making sure that the State Auditor's Office is happy with us. But all of these total together come up to just a little bit over $114 million. Next slide, please, Sarah.

1:00:26 So one of the other tools that Vancouver has available is to be able to issue debt for eligible projects. Vancouver, with the size of our community, has a pretty significant debt capacity. We have a piece that is non-voted, meaning that that would be for projects at the council's discretion. It's about $578 million. That can be supplemented by voted capacity with approval from the public for another 1%, another $401 million. Right now, our debt load is extremely low with an outstanding GO debt of about $23 million. The next piece on this that we have planned already, as council may remember, is that of the three pieces that will be supporting the Operations Center project, part of that is expected to be general fund debt, supported by general fund revenues, along with revenue debt from Public Works. And here I'm going to go ahead and turn the presentation over to Jeff Towery, Deputy City

1:01:24 Manager, and that will be followed up by Lisa Brandl, the other Deputy City Manager, when we get to the expenditure portion. Thank you, Mayor, Members of Council, Jeff Towery, Deputy City Manager. Next slide, Sarah. So this is a reminder. We have loaded the primary operating funds together for the purposes of this proposal -- this presentation. It includes the general fund, the street fund, and the fire fund. So they are all wrapped together. We have three major sources of revenue, property taxes, sales taxes, and utility taxes. You'll see on the pie chart that they are by far the three largest. It's roughly 73% of our total revenue. We also include other revenues like leases, transfers, grants, fees, utility tax on privately owned or other publicly provided utilities. Next slide.

1:02:24 The major assumptions this year are related to what we see as our current trends. The sales tax has slowed. We're a little under the forecast for the current biennium. We are projecting the implementation of a public safety sales tax in January 2027, which will come to you as a companion item to this budget. There was a lot of conversation about that up to and past the implementation of Prop 5. Our property tax revenue is projected to increase by about 1% a year plus new construction. We've worked with the County Treasurer and Assessor's Office to refine those numbers. And this does include our Proposition 2 bank capacity in 2027, which in part will allow us to be on track with our planned capital improvements to our fire stations. Next slide. Again, showing our major assumptions with respect to property taxes, the increases in assessed value do not impact revenues except for new construction. New construction was

1:03:23 reduced to about 1% from the 1.53 due to the slowing in development. You'll see the historic growth in new construction and the decline that we've seen over the last few years. We're projecting to be fairly stable in the latter years, but you can see the decline that's based on our current planned development. Next slide. These are our major assumptions on utility taxes. This aggregates the utility taxes on city owned, which are the sewer, water, storm water and solid waste utilities. We're anticipating at this point in the process an average of 5.5%, which assumes no changes in the taxes. You'll see that that does translate to some growth. You'll see a flat number from 25 to 26, which is related to our 26 budget. We'll be refining some of these along with our other

1:04:22 revenue numbers as we move through the process. Next slide. And then our major assumptions on other revenues are that business license and business license surcharges will include some programmed increases. We'll see some increase in fires, existing occupancy fees, recreation center revenues continue to grow but are a little bit below projections. Other revenues are anticipated to follow our historical trends. Thanks, Sarah. Next. And at this point, I'll turn it back over to deputy city manager to finish up the presentation. >> Thanks, Jeff. Lisa Brandl, deputy city manager. We're going to go on to the expense side of the city budget. Next slide, Sarah.

1:05:11 So this pie chart illustrates the categories of the types of expenses for 2526, 655 million. You can see it broken out. The largest portion being salaries and benefits. Inner fund denotes the expenses of internal service charges, typically HR, IT, those kinds of departments that charge out to other departments that serve for infrastructure services and capital, debt and supplies and services. Next slide, Sarah. And here we have a new type of pie chart. And this denotes the type of the expenses by department. And so we wanted to show how the city's budget is broken out by department.

1:06:06 You will see the biggest parts of the pie chart are for fire and police. Between the two departments it's about 54.3% of the entire city budget. And then we have the other categories broken out in the different slices. Next slide. For personnel cost increases, the recent police skill contract that was approved was a 15.5% increase. The total increase over the life of the contract equals $12.2 million. We have broken it out by year, $3 million in 2026, $3.9 million in 2027 and $5.2 million in 2028. Of note is the citywide overtime amount that we are projecting in 2027 and 2028 of $34.6

1:07:05 million of which between the majority is about 97% broken out between fire and police. You can see the majority of the overtime is between the two departments. The remaining amount of $1.1 million is spread out among the rest of the departments. Public works being I think the largest part of it. And then other departments. We still have bargaining remaining for other labor groups this fall. And so we do have some projections built in but we don't have that firmly locked in so that is subject to change. Next slide, Sarah. Thank you. So we have other assumptions built into our projections. Our health insurance in general in line with the national economy continue to rise upward. We are going to experience

1:08:02 a bit of a lower cost because for a large part of our health care costs excluding some labor groups we moved over to AWC. We are expecting a bit of a lower cost in 2027 but after that we are expecting upward trend just because of the nature of health care costs in general. And we are assuming that we will have some debt service to support the Op Center campus for the public works department. And we do believe there is minimal capacity for covering new or unavoidable issues at this point. Next slide, Sarah. And with that I'm going to turn it back over to City Manager Lomplakan. Thank you, Lisa. Go ahead and go to the next slide please, Sarah. So I guess before I dive

1:08:58 into this slide a little bit just to set some of that overarching context for the City Council. What you are seeing now tonight is assumed around a status quo budget where we are basically considering carrying forward our current level of services, the current programs along with some of the things that already have prior approval. So for example, with the public having approved Proposition 5 we are projecting hiring the new police officers that would come from that. Many of those prior commitments we have already heard us talk several times about the operations center would be included but beyond that it really is a status quo budget for all the initial projections. And you can see on this slide where that leads us is in 2027 we are projecting that we would have a $9 million structural deficit and in the second year that would grow to $20.8 million. And while it seems sometimes like a little bit of a tough pill to swallow, I do take some comfort in knowing that this is much

1:09:56 smaller than it was the last time we went through this exercise with the Council. And I think part of that is attributed to the fact that the budget cuts that we made for the 25 to 26 biennium, we really did try to focus on ones that have long-term impacts on the future budgets all the way exceeding 25, 26 into future biennia and we are seeing some of the benefits of some of those tough decisions that we had to make during the last budget cycle. I think every time we have shown the City Council this chart since I have been with the city, it has always shown that gap. The structural deficit just sits out there and until there is a change to the way that city finances are structured, we will have to continue to be creative and go through these exercises with every budget biennium to make sure that we achieve a balanced budget. So next slide, please, Sarah. So how do we address that structural deficit? We have done it for quite a while through a combination

1:10:55 of making sure that we are very disciplined about how we make our spending investments. The Council has also allowed for new revenues in the past. The pickings have gotten successively more slim as far as revenue options that are available for the city. We also then are continuing to grapple with inflation, particularly in the construction side of the equation. While we have seen some downward pressure in some projects, specifically I think streets and some of those types of infrastructure projects, it does not seem to have caught up with things like building construction and building investments. So while this process really is intended to set out what the framework looks like in the environment for the budget, when we bring back the balanced budget for the City Council, we will exercise all of those options and include future policy direction from the Council on how we actually achieve that. Next slide,

1:11:51 please, Sarah. You can go ahead and advance from that one. Go back one, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. So as far as the budget, the next step for us is to really confirm those Council policies. We do have a public survey plan where we will do some work to see what the public would like to see the City prioritize our investments around. We have added in more touches with the City Council for the budget this time around and anticipate coming back to you on July 13th for our first budget workshop to review the current status of the draft budget. We even have some time held later on in July to be able to come back to you again, depending on how that conversation goes, all leading up towards the October 1 deadline for us to have the recommended budget published. Next slide, please, Sarah. From that point, once the budget is published,

1:12:50 we have workshops on the presented draft budget scheduled for October 12th and 26th, and then the final two steps would be the hearing and adoption process, culminating in having the budget adopted in the middle of November. And so with that, we can open it up for questions. Thank you very much. Questions? City Councilor Kim Harless. Hi. Kim Harless, City Council, Councilmember. I had a question, a comment, one, just a – this seems like a values-based direction for the budget, so I'm really excited about that. That's something I've been wanting to see. Also gratitude for having these conversations way earlier than last go around. I know that was feedback we had, so I really love the direction we're going. I had a question just about, you know, we're

1:13:44 looking at that $9 million deficit in 2027 and the $20 million forecast for 2028, you know, but we have that $21.5 million overtime in fire and that $12 million overtime in police, and I was just wondering how changes in policies, also just for, like, you know, worker safety, you know, not having folks overextended is always really good, about how changes in policies for overtime might be helpful to that deficit, or I know buckets don't always change and exchange so easily in that way, but I thought it was a question worth asking. Yeah, thank you, Councilor, and I should say that, you know, it's important for me to note that I'm not necessarily – that I'm not picking on police and fire with the budget presentation for today. I don't want them to feel like that, but I think I wanted to do two things with that. One was to be able to show the Council the real costs of some

1:14:43 of the decisions that we make in terms of actual dollars spent rather than keeping it generic and talking about percentages and percentages over time, but I also know that whenever you have a challenging budget situation, the Council is going to hear from the public that there's an expectation that they really want you to be – to prioritize public safety, prioritize public safety. We've seen that exemplified in a couple of public votes between Proposition 2 supporting fire and now Proposition 5 supporting law enforcement, but I also want to be able to arm you with information that shows that the city has been prioritizing public safety in the two traditional uniformed public safety departments. Now, the slide that shows that collectively the two of them are 53 percent of the budget is one way that we do that, and you can see that we've been supporting them by providing additional dollars for overtime. Now, that being said, that is something that I think both chiefs have recognized

1:15:40 that we need to be aggressive in how we are working on that overtime equation. I don't necessarily want to put words in chief Price's mouth, but I believe that we fully expect that the first seven or so officers, maybe even a few more that are hired under Proposition 5, will be doing work that is already being done that we are paying overtime for, so that that would be a conversion from overtime to straight time. And I think it's important for us to really take a look at our staffing models and, to your point, Councilor Harless, make sure that we don't have expectations that people are putting in an incredible number of hours in order to cover the work that is there. We're going into this with the mindset that particularly for those two agencies, my feeling is that we have been imbalanced on the expectations about the number of personnel that we have versus the number of hours that they're being required to work and the tasks that they're being asked to take on, and we

1:16:35 may be in better shape to actually staff up, and even though we have more personnel, that could be more than counterbalanced with the reduction in overtime hours. So we're doing some detailed analysis on that. Thank you. Councilor Perez. This is Diana Perez, Vancouver City Council member. A couple of questions. It just seems like this deficit from '09 to '20 is not a temporary gap. It seems like a built-in imbalance. And so I would really like for us to think about what strategies, specific strategies, we're going to look at to close that gap, and how that is baked into the community participatory budget process. So you mentioned maybe there's a community budget workshop where they're

1:17:29 also part of this assessment of strategies that we look at. And so I just wanted to share those comments that I'm a little worried about this big gap and how we're going to close it and would like for us to dive deeper into those specific strategies. Councilor Hanson, any comments? Councilor Paulson? Councilor Stover? Thank you, mayor. Councilor Stover. So I appreciate that we're having this workshop now. I still don't -- historically, I still don't know that it's that early in the process from when I first was on council. But two years ago, we ended up with surprises that came along late in the process. And there are going to be surprises. But I just really strongly ask

1:18:28 that we get those surprises earlier rather than later so that we can have conversations during the course of development of the budget and we're not waiting until after October 1 before we're able to have some of these tough decisions that we can make. Thank you. Councilor Fox? All right. Lisa, thank you so very much. That concludes this portion. We'll see you on July 13th to have some further discussions. And I think we're good. All right. Thank you, Jeff. Lon, it's good to see you. Thank you so very much.

1:19:14 Counselors, let's go ahead and move into the IBR update. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Kathryn Kelly, policy and programs manager with the city. We are waiting for IBR staff to arrive. Carly Francis, who is the program administrator, is on her way. So I apologize. She is not yet here. And she will do the bulk of the

1:20:10 discussion. So I don't know if we want to take a break. But I have pinged her office. Kathryn, are there some pieces of this that you want to take on? I could potentially do some opening slides. So, yes, I can do my best here. So the interstate bridge replacement program has hit a key milestone in that a final supplemental environmental impact statement, or FSEIS, has been published and is currently out for public review. And you will hear that from Administrator Francis. And that is kind of the key step before hitting what's called a record of decision, which is the federal government, federal agency partners' prompt to go ahead and use federal funding to begin

1:21:02 construction of the program. Next slide. Okay. Thank you. So this slide is a reminder. This is what has been studied through the IBR program over several years. This is the five-mile corridor that the program has conveyed they are committed to delivering over time. Just a real quick reminder of the elements of that program. It is a replacement bridge across the Columbia River. It includes interchange enhancements on both the Oregon and Washington sides of the river. It includes a new multiuse path on the east side of the bridge and connecting to both sides of communities on the river. And then in addition, it includes a guideway for light rail to extend from the yellow line

1:21:59 in Oregon to Vancouver. And then additionally, it includes -- excuse me -- mainline highway enhancements past Fourth Plain and up to SR 500 on the Washington side. Excuse me. So each -- so this is the general program that has been studied. And -- excuse me again -- in 2021, a modified locally preferred alternative was approved through program partners for this five-mile enhancement. And program partners, once again, include from both sides of the river, both departments of transportation, both transit agencies, so C-TRAN and TriMet. It includes the cities of Vancouver and Portland, the two ports, Vancouver and Portland, and

1:22:56 the two metropolitan planning organizations, so Regional Transportation Council on the Washington side and Metro on the Oregon side. Next slide, please. And this is really where I can talk at a very high level, but I would prefer to wait for Administrator Johnson to get here. But what I can do -- >> Not Johnson. >> Oh, I'm sorry, Francis. Previous administrator. Thank you, Mayor, was Greg Johnson, Carly Francis. But the program did deliver an updated cost estimate for the full five-mile program on March 17th, so fairly recently. And as you can see, there is an updated range for the full five-mile corridor, which goes from

1:23:46 13.5 to 15.2 billion, with a likely cost of 14.4 billion. And this is at a 70th percentile probability, and what that means is there's a 70% chance that that 14.4 billion is the cost. That is based on analysis that includes a lot of risk and escalation based on current market and projected market at time of expenditure for the program, and it does take that base cost estimate of 7.8 and inflates it by those two factors, the risk and the escalation. >> Catherine, could you explain what that 4.2 billion in risk is? What is risk? >> Yes, thank you, Mayor. And again, this is probably where I will not do as much justice

1:24:40 as Carly Francis will do, but it does include the cost of materials escalating. It includes the cost of labor escalating over time. And then there was a delay in getting the publication of the final environmental impact statement, which delayed the full program. And any time you have delay, you're going to have those cost increases. So in essence, I believe those are the three critical pieces that are in that risk category. >> Okay, thank you. >> Next slide. All right. So this slide is showing just the cost increase of construction over time based on the program's analysis, and this does come from Federal Highway Association

1:25:35 construction index. And I believe what this is showing that where you see that yellowish triangle in 2022, there was a cost estimate. And the inflation that has happened since that time with the new estimate, this does represent that cost increase to construction. >> So for those individuals that can't read those tiny little size 5 font in white, could you go ahead and describe those numbers for us? >> Sure. So the 2022, the acronym is NHCCI, which is the National Highway Construction Cost Index, was set at 2.04. And the updated version of that is 3.21. >> Okay. >> All right. >> Thank you.

1:26:30 >> Next slide. Okay. So this does get at some of the questions you were starting to dig into and why there is an estimated cost from the 2022 estimate. First of all, there is the escalation impacts. Construction costs have increased dramatically over the past few years. And that does include, as I mentioned, materials, labor and equipment. It also the program used a different type of forecasting, as I understand it. There is an inflation index that was used in the 2022 estimate that was more of a, I believe, state wash dot standard. And hello. I am doing the best to represent --

1:27:24 >> I am so sorry. I had walked over to the office. I had understood 515. And so my apologies for being late. >> My apologies. >> That's okay. Katherine, keep going. >> Okay. I actually, at this point, I'm going to turn it over to the administrator. >> Happy to. My apologies, again. Carly Francis, the interim program administrator for Interstate Bridge Replacement Program. So thank you, Katherine, for covering some basics. We do have cost estimate increases, both associated with escalation, as Katherine was mentioning, but also associated with some schedule extension impacts. So the original anticipated schedule for construction that was built into the 2022 estimate was assuming that all work across the five miles would happen in ten years. We have looked at both the constructability of that, the viability of disrupting people's lives in that way, had rich conversations

1:28:19 with industry about how you would package and deliver that body of work. There is a substantial sort of schedule increase that we have anticipated based out of those conversations. We now have a roughly 20-year delivery horizon for the whole program. The other aspect of schedule adjustments that are baked into this estimate that we have now is an additional two -- is a two-year delay that's already accommodated in the estimate. So when we completed the 2022 estimate, we had anticipated we would have the final supplemental impact statement and the record of decision two years ago. And so that has been actual realized schedule delay, and there are costs built in associated with that. Beyond those items, there is the scope and quantity updates estimate, so we have more

1:29:12 engineering detail. And that both just drives clarity, but it also has increased the spaces where we have just better understanding of the work and so there are additional quantities, additional costs to doing the work, so that's built into the estimate. There are the risk impacts that we have identified and talked about. And then also this increase in probability costs, so the 2022 estimate was using a 60% probability, that's a 60% likelihood it will be at or below this figure, and that was the $6 billion figure. I'm used to seeing the slides and then getting to this point. And at this point, that's a standard WSDOT plan two figure, so that's what we were using at that time. We are using this information associated with key deliverables to the federal government. Their plan two figure is a 70% probability,

1:30:08 so that is a 70% chance that the -- or likelihood that the cost will come in at that number or below it. So that's been a change in the estimates from the place in which they're not exactly apples to apples. Next slide. Associated also with the cost estimate update, we do also update the schedule of the program. So the variables that you're building in are how many widgets do you need, how many people you do you need, how would that work occur, but also over what time scale. So this does reflect that adjustment in timing, so the -- one, we do have the final supplemental environmental impact statement that was published last month, so -- sorry, earlier this month, so very exciting. We are expecting a record of decision out of the NEPA process, so that is your approval to advance to construction. We're expecting that in quarter two of this

1:31:07 year. And then the next two items here are speaking about advancing the program to delivery. We are working to put a request for qualifications out on the street in quarter two of this year. That is the beginning of a conversation to seek a progressive design-build contractor to do work with. And then also issuing the request for proposals in quarter four of this year. That would allow us to identify a contractor that we would be doing the work with in 2027 so we could have those rich conversations with folks who know this kind of work, who know how to deliver it. And then leading to start of construction in 2028, we look for that to be concurrent roughly with the start of tolling over the river. Specifically, that is the style of the FHWA sort of style of tolling. There's a couple different programs

1:32:03 you can be approved through. And the program that we are falling under is one where you like to see that those revenues start to flow as you have key construction underway. We are still targeting and this cost estimate considers still targeting the capital investment grant, full funding grant agreement. So that's targeted for 2030. Newbridge open to traffic is a six to seven year time horizon once construction starts. It's a range because we really need the conversation with the contractor to actually settle that schedule and set it. And then this also anticipates light rail transit service pending additional funding beginning in 2036. The overall schedule anticipates if we had funds at the available time frame that the schedule identified, we would have the program complete the five miles in 2045. Next slide.

1:33:03 So the other piece that's important to note is what we are doing right now. So we've mentioned a couple of these items that are quarter two of this year. Really critical is our work with the federal government. So we are working on that record of decision, working to update the metropolitan and state transportation improvement programs that is critical to demonstrating fiscal constraint, which is an essential input to getting our record of decision from the federal government. We are also working to demonstrate that fiscal constraint through an initial finance plan that needs to be submitted. That is where some of the cost estimate information is folded into and our representation of the program at this time comes into play, which is what we are talking about. That does feed a process where we are looking to amend our agreements with the federal government to obligate funds for both the bridge investment program and also the mega grant program. So those are anticipated to occur before the

1:34:00 end of this federal fiscal year with respect to the bridge investment program grant. There is over $500 million that would go away if we are unable to execute by that time. So we are looking to maintain over half a billion dollars of funding by executing a schedule that gets us to those grant obligation agreements by the end of September. As I already mentioned, we are working to advance procurement, which is also noted on this slide. Next slide. So as we got to the point of having this cost estimate update for the program, the $14.4 billion is big, bigger than what we had before, and serves to raise the question about how do you advance the program forward. So internal to the team, we looked at identifying a core set of projects. Specifically, that is identified as the bridge itself replacing it, getting

1:34:54 that bridge connected to I-5 as well as to Hayden Island and into the SR-14 interchange, extending light rail to the waterfront station in Vancouver, and removing the existing bridges. We do need to build the bridge right so that we can build the rest of the program. The program is always needed to start at the river, build out from there. The other piece that is really critical is in working with the federal government and achieving their approval to advance to construction, they need to see a project that can be constructed and used. So they will term that as independent utility, but we have to demonstrate that we have something that people can use and doesn't get, investments that don't get, that aren't able to be used once we're done with those funds. So that's really critical. And advancing the program within the available funds was a key message from the governor's offices as we released that information. So we very much were looking to use the available funds to begin the program

1:35:53 and also deliver that independent utility. Next slide. So the line items that I mentioned on the last slide are depicted here visually. So on March 17th, when we released information on our cost estimate, this is the core set of projects. So this does demonstrate, one, replacement of the bridges over the river, that connection into Hayden Island and I-5, the connection into SR-14 and I-5 in Vancouver. Notably the medium gray on here are improvements that are identified within the program but not part of this first funded activity or first seeking to be funded activity. You will note that in the SR-14 interchange there are local interchange connections that are not included there, so the connections onto local city streets. The removal of the existing bridges is here in Maroon. The other thing I would note about the replacement bridges

1:36:50 is that one will have space for light rail over the river. It also will have a connected bicycle and pedestrian facility, so that will be connected and integrated into the systems on both sides. In yellow or orange, depending on how you see it, is the body of work that's needed to advance and extend light rail from the Expo Station in Portland across to Vancouver. So what you need there is you need to grade separate at Marine Drive so that you don't have light rail and trucks crossing at an intersection. You need to build a bridge over the North Portland Harbor. You need to extend the guideway and extend the transit across Hayden Island. There is a station on Hayden Island. Then it connects into the bridge and on the Washington side you need to connect it to the bridge and then extend and complete

1:37:47 the station at Waterfront to make that connection. Inside of this is also pre-completion tolling as a component and yes, that other piece is there. The other thing, so then I would note just that the cost for this is that we had estimated on March 17th with $7.65 billion, which is beyond the funds that the program has right now. We are working to update that cost because I'm going to tell you a little bit about some refinements we've made since the March 17th date. We don't have a new figure for this at this time. Next slide. So in looking at how do we match up the funds that we have, we also had this as a set of information that came out on March 17th, which was looking just specifically at replacing the bridge across the river and making those connections at SR 14, I 5 and Hayden Island, also including pre-completion tolling. So it's at the March 17th date. This was estimated

1:38:45 to cost $5.9 billion, also a little bit more than the funds that we had at the time. And so we also took out messaging at this time recognizing that we were looking at some possible cost efficiencies and also looking to continue to explore tolling as whether or not there were additional funds that could accrue to the program through tolling. Next slide. The updates since mid-March, we've been continuing to refine that first set of projects. So one, the federal government was very clear that we needed to include and reserve funds in this first step for the bridge demolition. So we had to build those costs in. Additionally, we've looked at consolidating the contracts. So consolidating the bridge, the approaches and the interchange connections into one progressive design-build contract. So that has been validated

1:39:39 and we've done, we've reanalyzed risk associated with that merging of those contracts. So there's been cost and risk reduction associated with that. There is reduced oversight requirements. There's also efficiencies of scale with the toll gantry siting, and so that's allowed for some cost reductions. So all of that and then analyzing what risk could actually be retired because of the lack of that interface led to cost reductions. The other piece that's here as a variable is increased expectation out of projected toll revenue to accrue to the program. So there has been a completed toll funding analysis and so that figure has gone up. Those rates analyzed are part of the conversation that's happened with the Transportation Commission. So they've talked about four different rates and the rate that informs this increased toll revenue is one of those four rates. So still in the dialogue

1:40:36 with the public about the analysis that was conducted. Next slide. So those updates on the cost side, we have, as you'll see here, added in the removal of the bridges. It's the same content in black here of the replacement and the connections in on both sides of the river, the inclusion of pre-completion tolling. The anticipated cost for this is $5.68 billion, so it is a reduction from the $5.9 billion, but we did also add in that bridge removal. And then if we can go to the next slide. So just to put it also in writing here, so this includes the Columbia River Bridge, those connections to I-5, Hayden Island, and SR-14. It does include transit design to be able to continue the process with CIG to advance that orange that you saw earlier. It includes

1:41:32 tolling infrastructure and also the bridge removal activity. This body of work is what is being coordinated with both metropolitan planning organizations and the states in doing updates to the state and metropolitan transportation improvement plans. And also just to note that the bridge removal is out far enough that it's outside of those horizons for those planning periods for the transportation improvement programs. They typically cover three or four years, so it's outside of that time. So those costs won't show up in the line items because they're on the out years for when the STIP and TIP plan for. The other thing to note is that those improvements will allow for folks to drive on the bridge, access it. There is the independent utility built into this that allows for future compatibility towards delivering the rest of the program and also satisfying the federal expectations and requirements now to have a project that

1:42:29 you can build and people can use. Next slide. So speaking to, so 5.68, when we walked into the March 17th time frame, we had 5.45 on the table for funds, so we've seen that adjust. Running over here, we do have the, we continue to have the federal funds through the MEGA and BIP programs, so that's 600 million and 1.5 billion. We have a billion from each state. There's some previous state funding and then the projected toll funding amount, this used to be 1.25 billion and through that toll analysis conducted by both states, we've been able to increase that to 1.5 billion. Beyond that, so that's what we were looking to, so that brings us to 5.69, that is above and maths with the 5.68, so that brings us into that congruity that we need to communicate to the federal government so they can see how the, you know, the funds match the costs.

1:43:28 Beyond that is the continued activity for the program to advance the full five miles, so continuing the process to secure and work towards the capital investment grant program, billion dollars that we are in the pipeline for, and then there are additional funds out in the future, both through Connecting Washington, Reconnecting Communities pilot program, so those are things that are not associated with funded phase or that core set right now, but we know are out there as discussion points in the future. Next slide. Next steps for light rail is, first and foremost, building the replacement bridge such that it has the space to accommodate light rail as it comes along. Without that, there's no way to bring it across the river. Continuing to pursue that billion dollars in capital investment grant program funding, targeting that full funding grant agreement, that is the final agreement with the federal government that you have the funds to, you

1:44:25 have that allocation of funds and the funds can start to flow from the federal government to the program for constructing transit, and then anticipating about a six-year horizon to bring that transit across and bring it up to operating capacity. Next slide. So I know everyone is interested in how do we get to Evergreen, and we want to get to Evergreen too. The selection of Waterfront is tied to other costs that are necessary for, per the design that we have right now, for getting further than Waterfront, so there's some very real kind of challenges beyond that. So the current costs in funding availability really limited what options that we had. We were trying to figure out how to get the bridge across the river started and underway. The long-term vision is still to complete to Evergreen, and the interest is in working with the partners to figure out how to both complete that and

1:45:23 also complete the rest of the five-mile program. So I know that there's vested interest in getting to Evergreen. We want to work with folks on that and finding a way to animate construction now with the funds that we have, because the cheapest bridge that you can build is the bridge you start building today. We needed to find a way to sort of start this program and get it underway. It's been far too long. So I know the timeline has changed for delivery, but the commitment to getting the full five miles done has not changed from the states. Next slide. We will continue, and this is a dialogue with partners as well as internally, to look for cost-saving opportunities, you know, design refinements, value engineering, risk management, pursuing what other federal grants may be out there, and also talking with the states about other, you know, maybe cost savings or funding and financing opportunities. So we're looking at under every cushion to try to figure out how to find pathways for

1:46:22 this forward, and there's a long horizon over which to do that, but the states are committed to doing that work. Next slide. So I think we've mentioned most of these before, but really critical, as I mentioned, you know, getting to September is so important for us, and keeping on time with the record of decision is essential to that. Getting our financial plan in and validated by the federal government is essential for that, and then getting these grant agreements reviewed and executed between the parties, all essential to retaining the half a billion dollars, the over half a billion dollars that would otherwise elapse by the end of September. The other piece then is really animating construction, as we've talked about, so issuing those procurement documents, and also working inside the office to understand what does it mean to transition this program that has been heavily in the planning and environmental phase into one that is ready to administer construction of, you know, frankly

1:47:21 the largest construction program that either state has really ever seen in the transportation space. So, you know, excited to do that work, but it definitely means transitions within the team to make sure we have the right folks on board and the right expertise in house. Next slide. So specific to that, I think I mentioned briefly, progressive design build is the method that we'll be using to deliver the program. If this is not familiar to you, it is this sort of merging with a design builder early, so you have conversations in the development between where we are now with design to finalizing design. So instead of just issuing, you know, at a lower level of plans for design build, you issue it out, you ask people to give you proposals, they price all the risk that they see between where you're at in design and finalizing it. And you don't have a dialogue around that. In progressive design build,

1:48:18 you get them on board, you have a rich dialogue as you are working to finalize that design. That does provide opportunities for risk management, for, you know, possible betterments that are maybe no different cost because they have just a better way to do this or see things differently. Because frankly, some of our, you know, our analysis for this is our best understanding from the DOTs about how to do this work. And folks who have heavy marine capacity and other of this construction ability, their capacity and their knowledge of their workforce is really material to this conversation. So there is that opportunity for innovation. We're also hoping that it will reduce, you know, change orders and claims both through risk sharing and also just through that rich dialogue where there's just better understanding when you start the work. So that's really what we're focused on is trying to figure out how to, you know, get the bridge under construction and make the program real to everybody when it's been in the planning stages for so long. Next slide. Great. I think that

1:49:14 was it. We're up for questions. Thanks for starting. Sorry. >> Yes, Mayor Pro Tem Sarah Fox. >> Yes, thank you. You already anticipated that we probably will have a lot more conversation on the evergreen terminus. And for me, I think the piece that I'm struggling with is that if the work for on this light rail starts at a park and ride in Oregon, I don't understand why it wouldn't end at a park and ride in Washington. So I'm having I'm wondering if this project team has one recognized that should be the goal on both sides of the river. And secondly, if there's cost reductions, we don't we're not asking for that it to stop at the edge of the river. We're asking for

1:50:12 it to go to evergreen. So I would hope that the short term goal would be to first construct the evergreen stop and then long term we could go back and construct the waterfront stop. And so that's where I'm trying to understand why that wouldn't have been a consideration for cost cutting. >> So I think one, the team was working within the conversation that we'd had to date with design with partners. And so looking for a lot of changes to that dialogue before talking with partners about where we were going or maybe changes we might be considering felt like it would be early and inappropriate to do as we were bringing out costs. So the costs are based on the dialogue over several years. One of those things is that there was interest in transit running adjacent to the highway. To make that work in the space past waterfront, there is highway investment that's needed as well to make that work and to be able to build the light rail into that space. And

1:51:08 so it's not simply a costs for transit. It's also a cost for highway consideration. So I think that's what's sort of important to recognize is to go beyond that space. You have to extend the highway improvements there. And so there would be additional costs there to incur. And, frankly, there was just not enough funds to go beyond that and sort of retain as much money as we could for light rail to bring it across and sort of reserve as much of that capacity. So what you have in what we're talking about is a connection into I-5 that's maybe around Sixth Street, around that sort of zone, as opposed to going further than that. That's an approximation. But you have walls that end there. To actually adjust the highway, you need to build a wall on the east side. You need to shift things over. You need to build a wall on the west side, which is actually the support for the light rail bridge that would be over active traffic once it's constructed. And also then

1:52:07 building in all of the pavement underneath that and putting some posts back in. So it's simply, it's not just a light rail specific set of costs. It is a composite. And based on the funds that we had, there's not enough money to do it, I think is the very basic answer, unfortunately. I don't want to sound argumentative, but it probably will come across that way. But I'm hearing, again, on the south side, just out of fairness, they're building a bridge for that first section of the light rail to make its connection to get onto the new bridge. And again, when we're talking about the infrastructure we have here in Vancouver, and not to have that same level of infrastructure being built for these transit connections feels like we're not getting treated equally in this construction of this project. It feels

1:53:04 as if you're giving the future 10 years from now city council members a big bill to build some type of infrastructure to connect all of those maybe potential future commuters to get them onto that light rail because we don't have space down there to put it or intention. We have other intentions for that waterfront space. And so I feel like they're handing us some impossibly large bill that we're going to have to pay for. And that's what I'm concerned about. Sure. And I think what's also important is there's a rich dialogue that needs to happen with C-TRAN, with the city about what does it mean to sort of make that work and also to explore whether or not there are other options sort of in the future that make something different more possible. But there are these financial constraints right now that especially in documenting the initial finance plan with the federal government that we really need to action now. And so that is the sort of basis of talking with the feds right now on

1:54:00 how to move forward. I guess the other challenge is there's no way to get the light rail and building the light rail. There's a gap overall in the funding for that. So we're not building the bridge over the North Portland Harbor until we have the funds for that either. And the only way to connect to light rail in Oregon is really to meet at an expo where it is. So there is a there's a gap in that investment that's been made in Oregon where they chose to stop it at expo which was probably I would say very fairly and I mean like no doubt was about getting a bridge over the North Portland Harbor. Bridges are expensive. And so they chose to stop their investment there and then the reality is of connecting into the 68 or more miles that they have of light rail in Oregon really requires getting it onto Hayden Island first before getting it connected to the bridge. So it's it's not parody as you're pointing out like it doesn't look like the same investment on both sides. It is about

1:54:59 trying to get light rail into Vancouver and making sure that we're making that connection between the states. And I would say also to the point of park and rides I think we've heard pretty clearly at least from the mayor if not from all folks that there's not a lot of interest in park and rides and so exploring what are the opportunities to have that the extension pencil from a FTA funding standpoint and also to make it function with folks that that's a again it's a rich dialogues we know there's going to be a connection to the purple line once it's built from C Tran and other things but there's a lot of dialogue to have about how that's going to function and fit within the city so we that's ahead of us it's not behind us yet. Mayor Stover. Thank you mayor. Thank you administrator Francis for being here today. So help me understand

1:55:57 help me understand this 14 how 14 comes into play because what I'm hearing you say is that 14 it almost sounds like you're saying 14 will end with a choice a binary choice either you've got to go I 5 north you've got to go I 5 south because you said there's no at this point money to connect to downtown so you're asking specifically about the SR 14 I 5 connections and what's there and what's not there. Correct. Yes. So there will be what what people in the transportation industry would say a system to system interchange so highway to highway interchange so that will be constructed so from SR 14 you could head north on I 5 you could head south on I 5 from I 5 you could get to SR 14 but again the C Street what we

1:56:53 know right now is a C Street 6th Street ramps those or Washington where it gets on those would not be constructed in the first body of work and so those folks who are wanting to get locally in and out of that area and downtown would probably route up to the mill plane interchange. Okay. Sorry to interrupt maybe we could flip back to that slide might be if it's helpful. Does this work? Yeah. Okay. So yeah. So yeah this is where you'll see medium gray it's a little I mean it's not it's not particularly large to see so apologize but you'll see the sort of lines there that swoop from the bridge down that's the I 5 to or that's a connection from the bridge to I 5 and then you'll see on the lower

1:57:49 half you'll see those sort of arcing lines that are in black from SR 14 to north 5 there's one from north 5 to SR 14 and then also the connections to southbound are built in there so those are the connections that are there other things would need to come along in a future activity. Okay. But they'll some somehow they'll be accommodated that future build will be accommodated I mean so I'm I am concerned about this quote unquote future build you know CRC we saw the bridge influence area get pulled back so there is a visual design

1:58:49 on the on the cover of the final supplemental environmental impact statement that shows a pedestrian pathway for instance that looks like it would be a great water slide but doesn't look necessarily as appealing for actually getting on and off the bridge and it definitely is a photo that doesn't show a future where that goes to goes to library square goes to the fort goes someplace that isn't a twisty turny thingy and so again and at the same

1:59:43 time we see where there are freeway on off ramps on I-5 in downtown Portland for a future highway that never was built that are just left orphaned and so there is that concern that it's all great to say yay we're going to do this someday and then end up with stubs or is there even a stub? So I don't I can't speak to the engineering specifically enough and I know what you're talking about in Portland to the places where sort of starts to veer off and then there's just a truncated so I can't speak specifically in the SR-14 interchange about what that would look like or whether or not it would be more of just a merge into something that's there and so it would be a little more seamless and not look like a

2:00:36 stub in the interim. So I would have to go ask about that to sort of verify it is the intention is that we would be able to come back and build those things certainly construction is always disruptive so it would be a disruptive activity to do it but you know getting those things back and completed over time is the intention of is the intention of the states the intention of the program this is the other reason though why it's going to be valuable to have conversations with our partners about construction funding and sequencing and how you know if there are based on where we're at right now whether or not there may be different priorities that folks want to say I care less about this item I care more about this item is there a way to do something different first versus what you'd anticipated. There are dependencies in the construction and what we would need to do for bringing forward this design my discussion briefly about getting to evergreen there are dependencies between highway investments

2:01:34 there and light rail investments there there are other places where those dependencies exist but we're certainly open to the conversation with our partner agencies about whether or not there are different priorities or folks want to discuss something that you know maybe adjusts from this plan. Is there so I want to really focus in on the bike pad at this point so we're still loop de loop is what we're hearing what I'm hearing is we're going to or I'm seeing. Yeah so I would note that like there's been one I think the corkscrew right that had originally because you're pretty high in the air had been the default assumption for getting down to getting down to grade and I know folks have been asking for whether or not you could make the path adjacent to light rail or run up to evergreen or other

2:02:30 things along the highway there are significant right of way constraints where that is extremely prohibited I know that in the design conversation that we were having with folks from England who have rich design experience they had some unique ideas that looked at whether or not you could get that pathway under and integrate it into the light rail station in some fashion so that there'd be some access to elevators or other things I would say there's open space for sort of considering whether or not there are other opportunities right now the assumption is the corkscrew and we're also early in design and so I think it's that space of whether or not there may be a some way to make it a little bit different I know it's been a dialogue that's been of interest with folks I can't make any solid guarantees right now about what that's going to look like but I recognize that they're you know just swooping down in a continual circle or swooping up in a continual circle is not something that

2:03:24 is very pleasant for the user and yes exclamation point yeah on the other end so the bridge impact area is smaller than what it was for the CRC and largely because Oregon did the southern end they widened victory to to victory to wherever it is Marine Drive to three lanes but in that process they did not improve the bike facilities through Delta Park is that at all part of this so I guess one I would note that the victory project sort of predated a lot of this and so the bridge influencer I think is largely actually the same as CRC

2:04:19 because that was otherwise scheduled work there are I'm not as familiar with them but I know there are some adjustments to how those connections get made there's a assumption about a local access bridge and then some of the small medium grade that you see on the map there's actually some of those things that are bike ped type access tools versus not notably I would say you don't see any medium gray through Delta Park so that's and I've ridden my bicycle through Delta Park on the roads that are there so I'm familiar with that area so I think there are some ways in which trying to make it integrate better into the network that's there are within the current assumed design for the program but and I actually I do know if it's on the bridge the local bridge between Hayden Island and Portland kind of presume yeah so I'm sorry that I can't answer that one for you live

2:05:16 today but there are other connection improvements that are built in with bike ped for this facility recognizing that especially at marine drive and across Hayden Island it's confusing for folks so for me that's the biggest thing is is I feel bike ped is still getting under are getting less attention than it should be in this whole process thank you thank you councilor Paulson thank you mayor city council member Eric Paulson program administer Francis I appreciate you being here this afternoon I want to start by thanking you and the what I can only imagine are large numbers of people who are working tirelessly on a pretty tight deadline to allocate the money that we have available before we lose it yeah and I think

2:06:14 that's a point that you haven't heard yet but you need to hear which is that we are committed to building the bridge that can be built with the funds that we have before we lose the funds and I appreciate that in order to do that there are a lot of trade-offs that take place and so I just wanted to start by saying thank you you know this phrase the bridge that or the facility that people will use I think has a lot of room for subjective interpretation I think you just heard a colleague of mine talk about one set of individuals and what they view as a minimum viable project and I agree with a lot of the sentiment that was just conveyed when I'm thinking about the decision-making processes that you're going through right now the biggest concern that I have and the biggest the biggest thing

2:07:09 I want to stress to you and your team to consider is like please don't make short-sighted decisions that sacrifice long-term opportunities because we are replacing bridges that are collectively 100 plus years old and 70 plus years old and we're not going to have another opportunity to replace this facility probably over a similar time frame and the needs of our community changed greatly over that hundred year and 70 year time frame and they will change greatly over the next 70 to 100 years as well and so when we talk about things like having to build the bridge we can with the funds we have available and we talked about the possibility for stubs or stopping where we don't want to finish but we don't have the money to finish you know making sure that whatever that resulting design is leaves open the maximum future flexibility

2:08:04 possible so that we're not committing to a course of action and then it's more expensive in the future to have to do the thing that we wanted to do or maybe our thinking has changed through the progressive design build process and maybe there's an alternative routing for for example light rail that's less expensive easier to build doesn't have the same highway considerations that you mentioned earlier and we have but we haven't done something to get to a waterfront that precludes us from doing that next thing that could be possibly better than what we have in mind now similar with a bike ped facilities right having the ability to have access to the waterfront while suboptimal might be a compromise you make in the short term but with a long-term vision towards eventually being able to in a cost-effective way connect to library square because the vast majority of users of that kind of a facility are going to come from places north of evergreen and it's a little bit absurd to go down a

2:09:00 hill to go up 95 feet to get onto a facility when you can seamlessly roll onto it and go up much more you know manageable grade from evergreen and so those are the kinds of things that we are hearing from our community that we would ask you to incorporate into your design now and your decision making now so that we're not making decisions in order to save money that we can't recover from in the future or that are cost prohibitive in the future to fix and then I think those are my my comments but I'd appreciate if you have any initial comments or responses to the thoughts that I've conveyed thank you I think mostly it's just incumbent as I think we've had a lot of conversations with our partners about design and had some you know rough but not very tied to location sense of costs and we're

2:09:55 at that moment where that is shifting clearly and importantly and so I think as you know we think about those choices looking forward I think it's also important to really recognize what are those financial trade-offs with those questions so sort of alignment to bike pedal alignment to library square and sort of again there could be similar cost prohibitive factors there associated that we're talking about also with light rail if you're over or alongside the highway so that's just sort of a reality space there or how do you do that differently certainly open questions and I think we're open to the dialogue and trying to both one maintain the fact that we have a pathway forward we have something this is a you know compliance we are compliant with NEPA and building something as independent utility and it was in was within the NEPA document that we've analyzed so far and really maintaining the ability to use

2:10:50 all the funds the federal government has allocated I certainly think that paying attention to precluding future opportunity is really critical and requires an ongoing rich dialogue with our partners and so I know we want to have that we want to also place that in context of where we're at with our dialogue with the federal partners and others so that we're managing risks along the way but appreciate the sentiments. Councillor Hanson. Thank you mayor Bart Hanson administrator Francis thank you for being here you know the transit construction phase going through 2030 to 2036 what about the meantime? Right so one you have the you're talking about a construction period right? Well yeah construction period what can we do to enhance a high capacity transit going across the bridge in the process?

2:11:48 So I think what is built into the plan on the highway side is making sure there are shoulders so that bus on shoulder can run so right now that runs up to the bridge but does not extend across and so making sure that that space is there that would be usable by both the express buses that are choosing to use I-5 as well as local buses that are on I-5 to get across so that's the I would say the primary highway aligned mode and capacity that's built into the plan I don't know if I'm missing anything Catherine but that feels like the primary so I think that that's built in and I know that the I think the bus on shoulder project here in Southwest Washington has been incredibly valuable and allows the buses to queue jump or you know if you're at 35 miles an hour or below on the main road they can get out of that and keep moving and keep on with those reliable transit times which is so critical to maintaining ridership so I know we've seen really good benefits

2:12:48 both here and then along the SR 14 corridor that's having the bus on shoulder out there as well so that's the primary transit item that would be built into this certainly that doesn't come along until you have both bridges built over the river the construction assumed construction phasing here is that you build the the southbound bridge first so you're building as far west as you as your your furthest west point you are transitioning all lanes northbound and southbound on to that southbound bridge it's going to be wide enough to carry traffic that is going to be in that more constrained footprint that we see right now so not a big shoulders three through lanes in either direction so it's going to be compressed will be kind of similar different but similar operating than what you see on the bridges right now once we're able to transition traffic onto the northbound bridge as it is built and connected then you have the shoulders that are available and then that that sort of improved bus condition

2:13:45 can be there as traffic is flowing alongside it Councillor Perez just want to read Diana Perez city council thank you so much for being here and appreciate the overview that you've provided I want to reiterate the points that my colleagues up here have brought up especially the long-term view and not letting just the dollar amount dictate what you can and won't do but really thinking about the impacts and the benefits to not just the pedestrians but the bicyclists from both sides of the river and do agree that we do need to at least see if we could stretch that dollar to ensure the the ped bike up to evergreen at least and I'm curious about the the impacts by stopping there at the waterfront versus the impacts going to evergreen and I understand the association

2:14:44 and the dependency with highway 14 and and all that but I don't have a very clear picture of that trade-off when it comes to the impacts to businesses homeowners separate from just the infrastructure that's in place but more from the community impact by making that decision you made a point about making the program real and how that can translate to real jobs here at the local level and in our contracts and and not just going with the lowest bid but really looking at having some type of process that we're ensuring that our contracts are providing those local jobs and local businesses and where there's a history of non-compliance where we have apprenticeships and really diving deep where all that aligns with our values

2:15:37 here at the city so I'm looking forward to to working with you on that as we move forward yeah thank you yeah thank you counselor harness similarly yeah in agreement with my colleagues here about wanting to prioritize library square as much as possible I mean I would be interested in any sort of alternative transportation going to library square versus waterfront at all so as was mentioned you know there's bike and ped there's transit there's light rail let's explore what it would take for any alternative transportation to library square versus waterfront at all because as was mentioned by council member Paul oh sorry did I say Kim parlous a council member sorry about that that was mentioned earlier by council member Paulson is about that use and you know when the use is mentioned used by whom because

2:16:32 it's not going to be Vancouver folks as was explained you know most people live north of or would be accessing north of evergreen and folks aren't going to travel downtown just to go back up again it's going to be mostly people coming to Vancouver from Portland that would be using that and so it seems unfair to Vancouver residents that are in a desperate need and frankly a lot of folks are very passionate about being able to access and go across the river using other modes of transportation so how can we make that possible sooner than later for our Vancouver folks it's hard to have conversations without numbers has been which has been you know I think a huge aspect of this project in general so it makes things really difficult but I think just an assurance of you know what those numbers actually look like I think would be great to be able to see to better visualize those trade-offs that

2:17:29 we're all talking about because right now it's I know it's hypothetical and I know it's hard to put numbers too but it seems like you and other folks have at least a general idea of the cost differences and so it'd be great to maybe have a little more information about that thanks happy to continue the conversation I would note at least on this slide that we have up this 7.65 again we're looking to have this updated in the you know in the next I don't have a specific time frame but definitely in the next couple months to have that updated so we have a clearer sense of what is that Delta between getting between just the bridge itself and the bridge removal and then adding operable light rail so at least that sort of sense of that initial additional funds that are not yet allocated to the program so that becomes clear and also continuing the dialogue with our agency partners including you folks on what are the additional costs to get to evergreen what does that mean and

2:18:24 whether or not there are other options that are of interest to explore over time and McInerney Ogle mayor for the city of Vancouver interim IBR program administrator Francis that's right big title Carly thank you over 20 plus years working on this project we do appreciate everything we also look forward to having that discussion about the various options that we can work with your engineers so that perhaps it's not paralleling the i-5 freeway what other options are available we do know your deadlines with September we look forward to having the conversations about design options and funding options and we'll continue moving forward with that Catherine thank you for stepping in and filling in that little bit of gap right there we are done

2:19:19 with the IBR program update for right now we'll be going into executive session pending in or a potential litigation RCW 42.30.1101 triple I from 6 to 630 and then we'll be back here at 6.30 for our regular council meeting thank you

2:20:05 you