Good afternoon.

I'm calling to order the July 28, 2026 at 430 p.m.

committee of the whole for box and environment sustainability.

All council members are in attendance, and we have a very backed agenda tonight.

So, you know, let's uh jump right into our um agenda one.

There are seven items on our agenda.

And our first agenda item is park impact fee schedule update, and we have Fox Director Lauren Hamilton.

Good afternoon, City Council.

I am joined today by Cameron Zapata, our senior parks planner, and our consultants from FCS on this park impact fee schedule update.

I'm just gonna hand it over to Cameron to present this item.

Great, thanks, Lorene.

Uh, and good afternoon, council.

I'm here today to bring back the park impact fee schedule update.

Last time we came to you, we provided three methods for calculating park impact fees, which included the current method, and then two standard-based methods, one which calculated uh which was calculated using projects from our park's six-year CIP, and then one using the park's 20-year CIS.

Since we last met in June, staff invited folks from the development community, including one Redmond and Master Builders Association to a public engagement session where we shared information with them about the update and then sought their feedback.

The meeting had representatives from the Master Builders Association and a multifamily housing developer.

From that meeting, we heard that participants express expressed general support for shifting a fee structure based on residential square footage rather than bedroom count.

And they emphasize the importance of clearly defining what areas of the home count towards a square footage calculation to ensure consistency and fairness.

We also highlighted, or they also highlighted that predictability is also important for project planning and encourages city to clearly communicate the fee schedule and any applicable credits and then the indexing methodology, which generally takes place annually and along with every park plan update.

This clarity helps them to incorporate costs accurately and then avoid any surprises later in the development process.

Um and then they also supported regular regular inflationary adjustments to prevent large and infrequent uh fee jumps.

Lastly, participants expressed uh appreciation for the city's proactive outreach and transparent communication throughout this process and emphasized that early engagement with the development community builds understanding, builds understanding and strengths strengthens trust and helps address concern before the decisions are finalized.

Um additionally, we did receive some questions via email from council that we'd like to address now, and I'll hand it hand it over to Zach Hazel from FCS to help answer.

Okay, thank you, Cameron.

Yes, I've got a couple questions.

I'll summarize the question briefly and then I'll provide my answer here.

Um so first question is about the park impact fee schedule for a the non-residential land uses.

And the question was if because this is based on an estimate of demand created by employees, is the are the employee estimates based on full-time or part-time estimates?

And um we are using the Snowhamish County uh buildable lands report, which provides a number of jobs per 1,000 square feet.

And so it seems based on my reading of that that would be inclusive of both full-time and part-time uh employees.

Um there was also this statement that most uh cities and counties in Washington only charge park impact for use for residential construction.

That is true.

There are several in Washington that do charge to non-residential land uses, uh, such as City of Topwilla, City of Camus, uh City of Fife.

There are a couple others out there that charge non-residential uh land uses as well.

Um next question is about the why is the fee for mini storage so minimal in comparison with other businesses.

And the reason for that is simply that mini storage uh land uses create very few jobs, and if they're creating very few jobs, that means they're they're bringing very little in the way of employment-based demand for park facilities.

And so that is why the fee is so much lower for those mini uh storage land uses.

Okay, next question is about how the uh fee for non-residential land uses was calculated.

Um this is essentially the impact fee per residential equivalent, so $3,783 multiplied by the residential equivalency factor of about 0.11.

And that equals in our um present in our model and in our report about 414, which is a little bit different from what was calculated in the question I provided at 416 dollars.

And the reason for that is simply that our model and report are using the unrounded figures um from our Excel model.

Um so apologize for the uh confusion there.

Um so the other two questions I received along those lines were about examples for manufacturing and restaurant and maybe highlighting that they didn't match a schedule.

And the reason for that again is just because we're using the unrounded figures directly from our model.

So that explains the difference.

The next question was about where technology sector would fall.

Um would it fall under services or some other uh uh code?

And um if I'm understanding technology sector to mean software, then that would typically under my understanding fall under the finance insurance and real estate category.

Um I went back to the the source we had for this to try and find which snakes code they were using specifically for other services, and I was unable to find it this afternoon, but I can dive into that more if needed.

Another option that the the city has in this case is to just collapse the uh the schedule down a little bit, which is something we we showed in exhibit 10.

So you can just have one offices category if you prefer not to dive into the differences between different kinds of office land uses.

And then the last question I had was about the updating cate cadence, like how often should these be updated?

Um generally it's good to update the parking back fee as new data arrives, and specifically that's that occurs in the form of a park plan update um for park impact fees, of course.

And I believe, if I remember right, talking to city staff that that's plan for 2030 would be the next major park uh park pan update.

And then in between those major updates to the park plan that would that would spawn a new PIF report.

Um it it is recommended to annually update the um park impact fee based on uh cost inflation, and that will kind of minimize any jumps that you might see when you get to the the end of a planning period.

You can kind of slowly raise your fees over time rather than having huge jumps up or down.

So and those are the questions I received.

So unless there's anything else, I'll hand it back over to Cameron.

All right, thanks, Zach.