CITY OF
SHORELINE CITY COUNCIL
PRESENT: Mayor Jepsen, Councilmembers Chang,
Gustafson, Hansen, and Ransom
ABSENT: Deputy Mayor Grossman and Councilmember Montgomery
1.
CALL TO ORDER
The
meeting was called to order at
2. FLAG SALUTE/ROLL CALL
Mayor
Jepsen led the flag salute. Upon roll
call by the City Clerk, all Councilmembers were present
with the exceptions of Deputy Mayor Grossman and Councilmember Montgomery.
Upon motion by Councilmember
Hansen, seconded by Councilmember Chang and unanimously carried, Deputy Mayor
Grossman and Councilmember Montgomery were excused.
(a) King
County Councilmember Carolyn
King
County Councilmember Edmonds provided an overview of the proposed
Councilmember
Edmonds said the most controversial part of the proposal to balance the budget
is to charge the Solid Waste Utility rent for the Cedar Hills Landfill. Councilmember Hansen noted that he opposes
this idea.
Councilmember
Edmonds concluded by describing the human services funding for Shoreline and
the capital projects scheduled for the Shoreline area, including the 1st
NE transfer station upgrade, the Aurora Transit Corridor improvements, and the
Hidden Lake Pump Station.
Responding
to Councilmember Chang, Councilmember Edmonds said the regional parks levy was
passed specifically to fund regional parks, so Shoreline residents’
contributions cannot be earmarked for Shoreline parks.
Councilmember
Gustafson raised the issue of the Brightwater
project’s impacts to Shoreline.
Councilmember Edmonds responded that the money in the current budget for
Brightwater is for design. Since Shoreline will be the permitting
authority for the outfall, it should be able to negotiate mitigation of negative
impacts. She concluded by soliciting the
opinions of Councilmembers and residents prior to
budget adoption by the County Council.
Mayor
Jepsen thanked Councilmember Edmonds for the update and also for donating a
passenger van to the City.
3. CITY MANAGER’S REPORT
Steve
Burkett, City Manager, asked the Council to delete Item 10(a) from the agenda,
since the Interurban Trail bid opening has been delayed and will be on next
week’s agenda. He also noted that the
City’s
Mayor
Jepsen thanked staff for its support of
4. REPORTS OF BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS: none
5. PUBLIC COMMENT
(a) LaNita Wacker, Shoreline,
commented on the disappearance of campaign signs and told a story of a very
dignified campaign that occurred when Judge Wacker
was running for Shoreline District Court.
(b) Janet
Way, Shoreline, felt the public process for the updates to the Comprehensive
Plan is not being conducted in a way that facilitates citizen involvement. She objected to the fact that citizens are
not allowed to speak at the meetings of the Planning Commission work groups. She suggested that citizen advisory
committees be formed as occurred when the first Comprehensive Plan was
developed. She also reiterated an
earlier suggestion to create an Environmental Quality Commission similar to
(c) Stan
Terry, Shoreline, supported the suggestion of an Environmental Quality Commission. He also commented on the Aurora Corridor
Project, noting it was a plan developed by all segments of the community and
supported by them.
(d) Cindy
Ryu, Shoreline, spoke about the
(e) Gretchen
Atkinson, Shoreline, commented on the appropriateness of naming the
(f) Fred
Clingan, Shoreline, objected to Executive Sims’
proposal to charge the solid waste utility annual rent of $7 million for the
Cedar Hills Landfill. He felt that this
was never intended to be an income generator for the general fund. If the County can find any savings, they
should go directly to the utility or to the ratepayers. He said the rental proposal will set a bad
precedent when the Harbor Island Landfill comes on line.
(g) Brian
Doennebrink, Shoreline, also commented on the Aurora
Corridor project. He recalled the
County’s initial offer in 1995 to add a new northbound lane and the Council
decision to look at the entire corridor.
He also noted that much of the money for the project is grant funding that
cannot be allocated in any other way. He
concluded with several comments regarding sidewalk widths and the median.
Mayor
Jepsen responded to the other public comments.
6. APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA
Councilmember Hansen moved
approval of the agenda, deleting item 10(a) as requested by the City
Manager. Councilmember Gustafson
seconded the motion, which carried unanimously, and the agenda was approved as amended.
7. CONSENT CALENDAR
Councilmember Ransom moved approval of
the consent calendar. Councilmember
Gustafson seconded the motion, which carried 5-0, and the following items were
approved:
Minutes of
Workshop Meeting of
Minutes of Dinner
Meeting of
Minutes of Regular
Meeting of
Approval of expenses
and payroll as of October 17,
2003 in the amount of
$679,280.17
Motion
to adopt the City of
2009
Strategic Plan
Motion
to approve a $5,000 mini-grant to the
holiday tree and street banner project an
Rotary
Pocket Park project
8. ACTION ITEMS:
PUBLIC HEARINGS
(a) Public
hearing to consider citizens comments on the proposed 2004 budget
Debbie Tarry, Finance
Director, provided an overview of the proposed 2004 budget, noting that it is
balanced and totals $58.3 million. She
said it reflects conservative revenue projections and shows reduced expenditures
in the areas of health insurance benefits, jail costs and janitorial
services. There is an increase in
right-of-way maintenance services. She
reviewed a variety of financial information, including revenue sources, 2001
taxes per capita, sales tax comparisons, distribution of property taxes,
expenditures by category, personnel costs [three new positions but with no
budget impacts, a 1.2 percent market adjustment to salaries, and health care
costs], and a comparison of staffing levels among various comparable
cities. She noted that Shoreline has
only 2.6 staff per 1,000 residents.
Mayor Jepsen opened
the public hearing.
(a) Mark
Deutsch, Shoreline, commended the Council for its conservative financial
planning but objected to the City Hall Project at this time.
(b) Jeff
Lewis, Shoreline supported an allocation for a “Show Mobile” to be purchased by
the Shoreline/Lake Forest Park Arts Council, the
(c) Cindy Ryu, Shoreline, commented that the amended 2003 budget
increased by $6.7 million from the adopted budget. She also pointed out an inaccuracy in the
budget figure in the Strategic Plan. She
concluded the funds should be spent to make Shoreline “a safe place to live.”
(d) Janet
Way, Shoreline, concurred with Mr. Deutsch that the City should wait for a
Upon motion by Councilmember Hansen, seconded by
Councilmember Gustafson and unanimously carried, the public hearing was closed.
Councilmember Hansen
commented that moving forward with the City Hall Project will be a financial
decision that involves comparing buying and building to renting facilities over
time. Councilmember Gustafson concurred.
Responding to Ms. Ryu, Ms. Tarry explained that the 2003 budget was amended
twice, once to reappropriate funds allocated but not
spent in 2002 and the other time to move one-time savings from the 2002 budget
to the Capital Improvement Plan budget for the City Hall Project.
Mayor Jepsen
asked staff to try to calculate the impacts of the
Mr. Burkett commented that,
unlike
Ms. Tarry explained the
process of review of the departmental budgets and how the performance measures
associated with each budget will be tracked and used. She then reviewed the City Council budget,
which has a 12.03% increase because all Councilmembers
will be eligible for health insurance in 2004.
Councilmember Ransom said he
did not care where it appeared in the budget, but he felt the discussion should
occur about potential funding for sister city activities. He noted that
Mayor Jepsen
felt that if there is a sister city allocation, it should be a match to money
raised independently by the Sister Cities Association.
Councilmember Hansen
commented that no expenses for the recent trip to Boryeong
were charged to the City and the Sister Cities Association did raise some money
for gifts.
Turning to the City Manager
budget, Ms. Tarry said there has been a decrease of 1.9% because of reduced
professional services and the shifting of $13,000 to the City Attorney’s budget
to help fund an administrative assistant in that office.
Ms. Tarry explained that the
City Clerk’s budget has increased by an extremely small percentage. Mayor Jepsen asked
why license revenues are projected to be less in 2004, to which Sharon Mattioli, City Clerk, responded that early in 2004 a
proposal will come forward to eliminate some of the specialty licenses.
With regard to the
Communications and Intergovernmental Relations budget, Ms. Tarry said there is an overall decrease and a shift of $15,000from the
temporary help item to support hiring a part-time administrative
assistant.
Councilmember Gustafson asked
about the use of the mini-grants and said he would like to discuss this
allocation.
Joyce Nichols, Communications
and Intergovernmental Relations Director, said that expenditures vary from year
to year, as do the neighborhood associations applying for grants. Except for the
Moving on to the City
Attorney’s Office,
There was a brief discussion
of the work of the domestic violence advocate and the prosecuting
attorney. Mayor Jepsen
wondered about the workload of the domestic violence advocate and Councilmember
Gustafson asked whether the City has improved its handling of domestic violence
cases since this service was taken in-house.
Police Chief Denise Turner
provided statistics from 2002, noting there were 366 domestic violence-related
cases in Shoreline, an increase over 2001.
Mayor Jepsen
then commented on the 7% increase in the costs of the prosecuting attorney for
2004. Mr. Sievers explained that this is
an estimate that includes a contingency that will probably not be required and
the actual expenditure will probably be closer to 2003’s $110,000.
Responding to Councilmember
Ransom, Mr. Sievers said the public defender is funded in the Criminal Justice
budget so there is no conflict of interest having both the public defender and
the prosecuting attorney in the same department.
Mr. Burkett commented that
during budget development this year staff was told that new positions would
only be allowed if there is a way to pay for them without additional funding.
Ms. Tarry then reviewed the
Finance Department budget. The overall
decrease of $403,082 (9.97%) is mainly due to reductions in the Technology
Plan. She also noted that the Grants
Specialist position has been moved to the Finance Department, with funding
spread across the CIP, Finance and Human Services.
Ms. Tarry concluded with a
discussion of the citywide expenses category, which is $1.4 million and
includes liability and property insurance, election costs, citywide
memberships, copier equipment and maintenance costs and the various budgeted
contingencies. The contingencies
include:
§
Insurance reserve
($255,000)
§
Operational ($250,000)
§
Health insurance
reserve ($18,000)
§
PERS increase
($67,749)
§
Police communications
equipment ($85,000) and
§
Wedge development
($55,400).
She explained that generally
the contingency funding is not expended.
Councilmember Hansen suggested that staff double check the reduction of benefits on page
112 of the budget. He also asked for clarification
of the increase in intergovernmental payments, which Ms. Tarry attributed to
higher election costs and the police communications equipment contingency.
Mayor Jepsen
asked for clarification of the differences between the IT programs. He wondered why the FTE count should be the
same if projects have come on line and the investment in technology is being
reduced. He noted his belief that
project managers should not be retained on staff after the conclusion of a
particular project unless they are assigned another project. Ms. Tarry responded that although the City
has completed the purchase of several major software systems, the IT staff has
as much internal work to do in the next phase of system integration.
10. ADJOURNMENT
At
_________________________
Sharon Mattioli,
City Clerk