Livetweeting tonight's Bellevue City Council Meeting. Only major things on the agenda tonight are an MFTE discussion and an update on the city's Q1 Cultural & Economic Development progress. However, last week's events show that it's actually easy to miss important events.
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I only found out about the EBCC drama because I stayed to the very end of the meeting, where Council announced the resolution to approve $40k in legal fees. As noted below, this was neither on the published agenda nor in the city news release the next day.
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The item is *still* not mentioned in the meeting's materials online - presumably the only way to know about the resolution, had I not reported on it, would've been to watch the video or wait for meeting minutes to come out in another bellevue.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.
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If there's a change made to a meeting's agenda in the meeting, imo the meeting materials should be updated after the fact to reflect that. This controversy is important & would've likely gone unnoticed if I hadn't stayed on til the end of the meeting for the hell of it.
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Starting off the evening with an acknowledgement that tomorrow is the one year anniversary of George Floyd's murder, they split up a statement amongst themselves. CM Lee had the only part that was pro-policey, all other CMs had good statements about social equity & racial justice
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Rep from Seattle-King County Realtors testifying in support of expanding the MFTE program to all MF areas in the city & increasing utilization by raising the benefit to units at 80% of AMI.
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Two appointments to the Transportation Commission are up this evening - Nik Rebhuhn and Jonathan Kurz. The former is a managing broker with Windermere Real Estate, the latter is with Verizon's Traffic Data Services department.
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Tonight's presentation is taking the direction that Council provided at their April 19th study session and getting further feedback, with the goal of drafting a complete proposal for a final vote at a later meeting.
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Summary slides of the direction provided from Council so far. Discussions have revolved around parking requirements, affordability levels, overlaps with other incentive programs and the associated change in requisite AMI levels that would come with that.
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Staff is estimating that these changes would net about 60-100 extra MFTE units per year. As of right now, usage of the city's MFTE program has been lacking beyond the projects from the city's 2017 Affordable Housing Strategy.
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Staff also coming in hot with the detailed breakdown of which strategies are working and which aren't.
Of particular note is MFTE - the plan foresaw the addition of 65 units per year, but only *39* have been added in the last 3.5 years.
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Currently, a property must offer a minimum of 15% of their units at 2+ bedrooms to qualify for MFTE. The new approach would allow alternate pathways for properties that don't meet this threshold to qualify for the program: by providing deeper affordability or more AH units.
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A legit cool change would be the introduction of a maximum rent increases of 3% each year for renters who renew MFTE units. The benefit to property owners is that this would also allow "catching up" - if HUD baseline rises <3% one year, they can still increase by 3% to catch up.
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Staff notes that this would have a compounding effect over several years, especially since median income has increased more than 3% annually in *4* of the last five years!
King County's expensive, more news at 11.
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Staff is hoping to be able to come back with a resolution on the Consent Calendar on the 7th, for a public hearing on June 28th. Code adoption would then begin in July.
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CM Lee is ready to support moving this to consent, appreciates staff listening to his concerns at the April 19th meeting and has no further comments. CM Stokes is also excited, is hoping that the program will deliver even more units than the 110-160/year forecasted.
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CM Robertson thanking the Bellevue Chamber & Housing Development Consortium for working to find a compromise approach. Excited to move it to the Consent Calendar and a Public Hearing.
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CM Barksdale noting the importance of tracking metrics going forward to see how each of these proposed changes is working. Also asking if there's a way to capture qualitative feedback from AH tenants. Staff will look into that further.
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DM Nieuwenhuis appreciating the compromise and public-private partnership approach of this resolution, cites the layered affordability of 65% as an example. "Developers might've wanted 80%, ARCH 50%, we went w/ 65% which is right in the middle and is a good compromise."
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CM Zahn notes the urgency needed to address AH, mentions the recently-published Regional AH dashboard. Asking who will cover the administrative costs for compliance verification. Staff says it'll be a combo of the city, ARCH, & individual project managers. kingcounty.gov/depts/communit
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CM Zahn also asking for more information as the program rolls out on how the parking costs will impact low-income residents and keeping tabs on what approaches other ARCH cities take in addressing parking costs. Staff says they'll add that to their monitoring.
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Mayor Robinson says that this is the first time she's seen developers & affordable housing providers compromise that they both feel is going to work. Notes that it's not any one of these aspects that will make a difference, but all of them together.
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What the timeline will be for tracking & potentially making amendments? Staff would like a few years of data before making big changes. Q: where will the city funding for administrative costs come from? Staff recommending they look at that more comprehensively down the line.
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Motion for final action at a future meeting on the MFTE program amendments passes unanimously, now moving on to the Q1 update on the Cultural & Economic Development program. Just an informational session this evening.
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Bellevue's Al Fresco dining program just kicked off last week and will run for the next four months at over 40 restaurants throughout the city. 80% of the people surveyed wanted the program to be an annual fixture.
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