Principal Planner Joyce Phillips met with Olympia's Planning Commission yesterday, September 7, to answer questions regarding the latest updates to the preliminary Capital Facilities Plan (CFP).
The CFP outlines the financial blueprint for the city’s infrastructure projects, and it was first relayed to the commission during a meeting last month.
“Around the end of October, we will be making any corrections or additions or modifications to the CFP before it gets forwarded to the council for its final version,” said Phillips.
Commissioner William Hannah clarified the part in the document showing a $6 million substantial increase in funding– he asked where it came from, and whether it is sustainable.
“The difference between the 2024 CFP, which was proposed at $46.7 million, which is $6 million over the 2023 CFP– it's made up of several projects,” said Phillips. “It's all of the projects combined. I think it's related to the new fire station being one of the biggest projects as well as the new waste resources building.
“It's a 14.9% increase over last year’s CFP,” added Phillips.
Phillips said that there is always an increase every year, especially this year when the biggest new project in the CFP, the new fire station anticipated in 2026, hasn't been incorporated into the previous CFP.
Mike Buchanan, Olympia Fire Department’s Interim Deputy Chief, explained about the funding source of the new fire station.
“It hasn't been identified yet. But primarily, it would likely go to a voter-approved bond or something like that, but it has not been determined yet,” said. Buchanan.
Budget and Finance Manager Joan Lutz added that the fund source for the station is still being determined.
“That is still being worked out. It's probably going to be finding some sources, such as a bond, or there are multiple levers that we can pull there, which is why it's in the other category. It hasn't been determined what color what path we're going to go down,” Lutz said.
Last month, the city council started considering the 0.1% tax increase to support transportation projects for the CFP.
“The council is considering a sales tax increase of 0.1% that would go towards implementation of the Transportation Master Plan,” Olympia Public Works Transportation Director Sophie Stimson said.
The commissioners also asked whether there is any work on prioritizing projects through an environmental justice lens to confirm that underrepresented populations or minorities.
Stimson explained that projects are prioritized mainly based on pedestrian safety concerns, and not on environmental justice or equity concerns.
“ every project type, there is some discussion for how we prioritize them, especially with the pedestrian projects. We’re precise about how we prioritize locations for sidewalks and pedestrian crossing improvements,” Stimson said.
Stimson added that they were very careful with the ranking criteria to ensure that they were helping people access the most basic services in the community.
“When we created prioritization methodologies, we were looking at things like ‘are people able to walk and bike to parks to schools, to trail entrances, to public buildings, and had a walk-in function to grocery stores?’, and we thought long and hard about access to food. So, I'm giving you a lot of information, but basically, we did our best to look into the data that was the most accurate,” Stimson added.
Commissioner Greg Quetin asked about the funding decisions considering the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Accessibility Standards on the parks.
“It is gratifying to see that we're making steady progress; it would be nice to get there as soon as we can,” said Quetin . “I'm still curious about how we're making or setting the kind of funding levels for making parks ADA accessible?”
“The funding source we use for our ADA deficiencies that we're addressing is our Metropolitan Park District. Each year, we set aside $200,000 to address those needs identified in our 2017 audit,” Parks Finance & Policy Coordinator Tammy LeDoux said. “We kind of have married that with our camp program, which is our major maintenance program, but we're tackling those projects with our CAMP (Capital Asset Management Program) funds, which are $750,000 a year.”
With those considerations together, the Parks, Arts, and Recreation Capital Projects have $950,000 in available funding for ADA accessibility.
A public hearing is scheduled for the full planning commission on September 18.
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