Why so many Public Works items? Budget overruns. Supply chain disruptions. Staff shortages. No magic return to February 2020. Green bike lanes and TWO! Ped refuge islands for Kitsap Way, one at 11th, one at Brother Don’s. 87% paid for by grants, yay PW grantwriters. Marine Dr water main replacement to get a contractor for oversight, as new position of overseer, approved by Council recently, is not yet filled. New Councilmember Dennehy sworn in and seated.

2. SWEARING IN CEREMONY – Judge James Docter will administer the Oath of Office to newly appointed District 4 Council Member Quinn Dennehy, who will then be seated

3. MAYOR’S REPORT  (My Zoom conked out, but apparently this was good news.)

4. PUBLIC RECOGNITION

Marji Singleton asks for Classic Car show to be moved away from Kitsap Bank, as it’s a very noisy affair & someone backed into her air-conditioner in her building’s private parking lot. I note that Council’s Zoom is only showing speaker, no option for Gallery View, ask if all are seeing same thing. Gorman thanks me, doesn’t answer, moves on to … Kiaha Long re Transit Services – Sunday service might be established? Couldn’t follow his comments on budget figures’ availability.

5. CONSENT AGENDA

A. Claims & Check Register

C. Minutes of Special Meeting – July 14, 2021

D. Minutes of Study Session – July 14, 2021

E. Confirm Appointment of Paul Dutky to the Parks & Recreation Commission

F. Contract Modification Agreement No. 2 with KPFF Consulting Engineers for the East 11th Street & Perry Avenue Complete Streets Improvement Project

G. Professional Services Agreement with LNS Engineers, Inc. for the Downtown Library HVAC Systems Project

I ask about filtration in the HVAC sufficient to keep vulnerable – kids, older people, immunocompromised – safe in face of the wildfires we’ve been having. Knuckey says it’s industry standard. They’ll get back to me, as Gorman cares about this issue too. Approved unanimously.

6. GENERAL BUSINESS

A. Local Agency Contract with Active Construction, Inc. for the Kitsap Way (SR310) and Warren Avenue (SR303) Traffic Signal and Multimodal Safety Project; and related Budget Adjustment

Andrea Archer-Parsons repeats her study session presentation. Randy Sweeton inveighs against green paint on bike lanes; Kiaha Long asks that contracts be awarded to Bremerton companies, approves the action in general; Shawn Cupples says green paint is slippery for skaters; I applaud the action & say green paint is industry standard, very happy about ped islands.

The motion is read. Daugs asks if green paint is mandated, Shane Weber says it’s best design practice. Daugs asks about slipperiness, Weber says thermoplastic paint they’ll use lacks the slipperiness of the old green paint. Daugs asks why Kitsap Way gets signal upgrades, pavement markings, ped islands, and green bike lane markings, but Warren / Wheaton only gets signal upgrades. Weber says City applied for both areas to get same upgrades, but grants only came through for more-than-signal-upgrades for Kitsap Way. Goodnow asks about the 1-1/2 intersection at north part of Wheaton/Warren where County has jurisdiction (Riddell crossing)– how does that work? Good relationship with County traffic, so this will work out well as have previous similar projects, per Weber. Sullivan asks about opening bids, is it City’s responsibility to accept lowest responsible bid? Archer-Parsons: Yes. Sullivan says ok, this is why we can’t give weight to local firms. She asks is the paint on Washington Ave downtown also thermoplastic? Weber doesn’t know, will get back to her. Simpson asks again about ped data for 11th/Kitsap intersection. He instructs Weber that he needs to be looking for drag coefficient on thermoplastic, which “is pretty easy to figure out”. He goes back to ped data, saying it’s very low for 11th/Kitsap, 18 people at peak commute hours, no justification for spending $163K when we have whole areas that need sidewalks. Weber puts up a slide that shows ped data, Simpson explains it all to us. PSNS contributes a great deal of traffic  Younger reminds us all that original leverage (Brem’ton $$ vs gov’t $$) was 2% (we pay two cents on every dollar of cost); cost overruns have taken it to 13%, that’s still pretty close to the average 10% for such leverage, so kudos to Public Works. Approved 6-1, Simpson opposing.

Knuckey repeats his study session presentation.  Shawn Cupples asks about budget details. “Can you help me understand this a little bit? Because it seems like it’s coming back to the well.” Knuckey reads from the contract. Explains, very patiently, I must say, that construction costs have gone up since pandemic. [A shock to Simpson when he returned from Japan at end of April.] Shawn Cupples is allowed a second question! No objection! No, “we don’t typically hear from the public more than once” that I have so often heard. He asks if $$ and labor and materials could be transferred from this project to another? Knuckey – You’re asking us to change direction, including planning, design, materials & labor assembly, in the late middle of the construction season?

Discussion: Sullivan – clarifies what we learned in study session, that even though Council created this position, there’s no one yet to fill it, though interviews ongoing. Simpson speaks. Wheeler at 6:45pm begins defending staff – calling City employees inefficient is just beyond the pale. Daugs asks Knuckey to clarify the process of authorizing a construction project – Knuckey says 43 this season – during the short dry season before the rains come. Younger relies on Director Knuckey and his expertise (a quote). He understands the opposing point, it’s an age-old one.

Second Round of Discussion Sullivan reiterates that she supports the motion, but still we should question why we have to contract out a job when we just approved a position that was specifically designed to oversee such projects. Simpson explains it all to us, 6:57- “We should have been told that this would happen before we voted on [hiring a permanent person to oversee this project] “The cow is out of the barn” and more bloviating interrupted by President Gorman on point of order who asks if Simpson has anything new to say. Dennehy asks about Water Fund, from which money stems, Riley jumps in to explain that Water Fund is like a business. [Wow!  What the heck???!!!] It has profit and loss. [Must look in to this later.] Approved unanimously, I think.

And here, dear readers, I gave in to the cold that had been attacking me all day and made spicy tofu soup and went to bed. Comment on the remaining items is predictive, based on discussion at study session.

C.Purchase of Wildland Fire Engine from Bud Clary Ford Hyundai of Longview, WA

Predicted: They will purchase, they will deplore that it won’t be available for 2021 fire season.

D. Increase City Auditor from 0.4FTE to 0.6FTE

Predicted: They will authorize the increase, especially since Auditor & Audit Committee caught the need for new HVAC at downtown library. Simpson will repeat that this should be a FTE position.

E. Acceptance of Lodging Tax Advisory Committee’s FY-2021 Funding Recommendations

Predicted: They will talk for a long time about groups that should have had more funding or less funding or any funding and why. Eventually they will accept Goodnow’s recommendations (he’s LTAC Chair).

7. COUNCIL REPORTS

Predicted: District Six Councilperson will, once again, say nothing at all about District Six.

8. ADJOURNMENT OF CITY COUNCIL BUSINESS MEETING

Extra: City Council meetings are now accompanied by a transcript. Here are comments from the transcript given by Simpson re bike lanes & ped islands on Kitsap Way: (lightly edited for transcription errors, e.g., “kids halfway” edited to Kitsap Way)

18:18:35. OK. And so we see that, you’ve got to you get peak times for January in the morning and it has two people that are heading north that are heading in westbound off of 11th in the two people that are two bicyclists that are that are headed southbound.
And I don’t think that the pedestrian pedestrian islands would make the difference for the, for the bike lanes, that’s actually there.

And then there’s the other slide that you had that had the peak times during the afternoon, and we’ll move the to peak times that are chosen, or to Peak times that are during the peak commute hours for for our largest employer which is near the area but not exactly on Kitsap Way or 11th Street, and that will be the PSNS that contributes to a significant amount of our traffic.
18:19:33

And so, pedestrian islands do have I do have an impact for for improving traffic safety but since we don’t have. We can’t get a 56% improvement on zero. And that’s the that’s the net benefit here, if we’re going to make an improvement to our traffic situation. We’re going to spend that $163,000, we can better spend that somewhere else where we’re actually having problems. And that’s why I would urge against alternate one.

And, you know, since we don’t have any data that actually shows what our what our traffic counts are going across kids at way in front of brother Dons putting a putting a pedestrian Island there at the existing crosswalk with the that already has a light. I don’t think that’s a good, good. It’s not, not a good source, or not a good place to spend the money. [This is exactly the argument given when Title IX started: why give $$ to girls? Girls don’t play sports. Except! They do now, now that there’s money for coaches and equipment and all.]

And we might be better off, spending the money on a place like 11th and Naval where we have visibility issues, Twitter, during it to peak to peak weeks. In the year where you can even see the light, let alone see the little girls across across the crosswalk and get hit by the cars, and you know that’s a place that we need, we absolutely need to make improvements on our on our infrastructure.

These two spots for Kitsap Way. And, and 11th. i don’t think we’re good, good spot to do that. 11th & Naval. Definitely. Thank you.


Simpson continues his comments on bike lanes and Ped Islands on Kitsap Way:

And based on what staff is saying it sounds like we’re going to get a mixed bag on whether whether was going to fund it funded up to the up to the base bed, which would be fine, or whether they are firm and fixed in their IDea that it must be based bid plus alternative alternative one. And that would be that would be the one sticking point for this, if, if we could utilize the money that is being proposed for the, for alternative one and you use it for something at some other traffic safety improvement in a different location. That would probably would probably work out fine.
But we’re kind of getting a mixed message back and forth on it so that remains to be seen.