Thursday, March 28, 2024

Chelan Council has subtle evening of considerations

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CHELAN – Reports and considerations consumed the night’s agenda during the regular city council meeting, Tuesday, May 8, held at City Hall.
Leading into the motion considerations was a proposal for obtaining services through Lisa Grueter with Berk Consulting to assist in the completion of short term rental regulations and update the sign code for compliance with Gilbert vs. Reed Supreme Court Decision. Planning Director Craig Gildroy began by explaining that “staff did start the process of updating short-term rules, or rental rules, by holding two planning commission workshops and presenting it to the city council workshop.” From the meetings, he continued, the decision was made that it would be best to hire a professional consultant on the issue. “The Berk scope (of services) specifically states to ensure that short-term rentals are regulated appropriately,” he stated, “and avoid impacts to their availability to the city year-round housing stock. So, that is definitely one of the goals that we want to have for short-term rentals.”
“The adopted 2018 budget did include $20,000 for professional services,” Gildroy began stating the financial aspect of acquiring the services, “we spent about $2,000 of that for an affordable housing consultant earlier this year, so there’s about $18,000 left. This scope of work is $26,000, so we would require a budget amendment in the amount of $8,000.” The motion was passed unanimously.
The next motion for consideration by the council was a fuel tax agreement with the Transportation Improvement Board (TIB)’s Relight Washington Program. City Engineer Jake Youngren began by informing the board of an application submitted by Chelan County PUD on behalf of the City in 2017. The grant application, he explained, was to “convert approximately 165 standard sodium fixtures with LED lights, and that grant application was successful.” The total grant amount was in the amount of $63,627, he continued. Part of the approval process is a requirement through the TIB that the City enter into a Relight Washington Grant Agreement. “This is one part of it,” he continued, “and we’ll also being following this with what is called an interlocal agreement with the PUD as well. Following Council’s approval.” The agreement, he affirmed, just makes the funds available to the City for reimbursement.
Mayor Mike Cooney requested further explanation from Youngren, stating “there’s ‘x’ number of lights in the city, how many are done now through the grant that we had previously and how many are left to be done?” he asked. “I’ve talked to the Project Manager, John Goodwell, with the PUD,” he began, “this is part of a larger, county-wide project, integrating over something like 4,000 lights, and this is part of that.” The grant agreement is for the remaining lights to be done, he continued. “Ultimately, there’s seems to be some good benefit to do it, on the City’s behalf,” he explained, “even though we’re not incurring any cost to do it, there’s power savings.”
After providing further clarification for councilmembers, the motion was unanimously passed.
Moving into the sole administrative report for the evening, Parks Director Karen Sargeant explained difficulties incurred in finding a replacement towing service for the City, after the discontinuation of services from Burkhardt Towing. “I was informed by Rob that he was no longer going to be in the towing service, because he bought the NAPA store,” she began, “he was switching careers … since that time, staff and I have been doing research on other options for the City.” Towing services are utilized very often by the City, she stated, “it’s more rare than anything else, but we do use them. We try everything we can to locate the owner before we tow anything.”
After some research, Sargeant stated that they discovered only two towing services that were interested in doing the towing services for the parks department in the city. “In light of that, I took a look at the towing policy,” she explained, “we had some issues with the original language, it kind of ties our hands. So, we wanted to implore Council that we need to change the language a little bit in the code.” In the original policy, it states that towing services should be done on a rotating basis, in order to spread the business throughout the towing companies. However, because the parks department doesn’t have the capability of dispatch services in order to track towing services utilized, the area of the code would be best to add a contractual section.
The next segment of the code that was recommended for amendment was on the location of the towing service’s impound yard, stating that it should be located within the city’s urban growth area. “We contacted all the towing services within the area here,” he expressed, “and, again we only had two that stepped forward, and neither one of the impound yards are within the urban growth area. So, this statement really ties our hands because we need a towing service.” She recommended revising the portion of the code to state that the impound yard is within a 50-mile radius. “We understand that we want to keep the impound yard as close as possible,” she said, “because we don’t want people paying huge amounts of money, which is why we go through all the hassle of finding the owner of the vehicle before we have it towed.” Seeing no other options available, councilmembers requested Sargeant return with a contract proposal from companies interested in working with the City.

Chelan, council, meetings

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