HomeMy WebLinkAboutSurface Water Work Session October 16 20071 Whatcom County Council
2 Special Surface Water Work Session
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4 October 16, 2007
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6 Council Chair Carl Weimer called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m. in the Whatcom
7 County Civic Center Annex, Second Floor Meeting Room, 322 N. Commercial, Bellingham,
8 Washington.
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10
11 Present: Absent:
12 Barbara Brenner None
13 Dan McShane
14 Seth Fleetwood
15 Laurie Caskey - Schreiber
16 L. Ward Nelson
17 Sam Crawford
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19
20 SURFACE WATER WORK SESSION (AB2007 -025)
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22 1. COMPREHENSIVE WATER RESOURCES INTEGRATION PROJECT (CWIRP)
23 UPDATE
24
25 Paula Cooper, Public Works Department, submitted a handout (on file) and stated
26 they discussed the shared vision during the previous work session. From the shared vision,
27 the staff action team (STAT) came up with nine goals and the criteria. They are using the
28 criteria to determine the inherent benefits of the projects. The criteria applied to projects
29 are, in order of importance: human health and safety, habitat function, property (public and
30 private), timeliness and duration of benefit, based on quality information, public
31 involvement process, economic sectors, cultural resources, recreation, stewardship, and
32 contributes quality information.
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34 Nelson stated that is a lot of criteria for any one project. He asked if they will talk
35 about how to use the criteria. Cooper stated they will. Last week, the staff team talked
36 about the criteria and their weights. For each criterion, there is a detailed, weighted
37 question. The definitions are clear so people can score each criterion equally. Each
38 criterion has a range of numerical values, depending on the degree a project meets the
39 criterion.
40
41 Jon Hutchings, Public Works Department, stated a question is how to differentiate
42 between the different projects and planning efforts as they apply the criteria. To do that,
43 know which of the criteria are more important. One would expect core County functions,
44 such as immediate safety issues, to be more important. That's part of the calibration
45 process. The staff also recognizes that people value other things such as cultural resources
46 in Whatcom County. The next question is how to assign relative importance to the ideas
47 embodied in the criteria.
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49 Nelson stated some goals don't seem to be related to any criteria. Cooper stated the
50 criteria are to deal specifically with the benefit of a project, not implementation. The
51 application of regulatory compliance is an overlay to the criteria.
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Surface Water Work Session, 1011612007, Page 1
Crawford asked about the stewardship criterion. Cooper stated it is about getting
community members to take care of things themselves.
Crawford stated stewardship could mean many other things. He asked about value.
Cooper stated value is an overlay also. It's about implementation, not about the benefit of
a project.
The next step was to come up with how to weight the criteria. The consultants put
the staff team through a process to put a value on each of the criteria.
Hutchings stated that this direction is to represent the collective wisdom of the staff
team members. The process is about how they figure out a collective view from many
people who all have different jobs and personal opinions.
Cooper submitted a handout (on file) of how the criteria were weighted. The group
members all felt good about the values assigned.
Nelson stated he would like to see how this is going to lay out. These numbers don't
mean anything now, without knowing how they'll be applied. There may be projects and
plans with elements of this that aren't relevant. They may be equal in comparison to all
other plans. If they're equal, then they're not really a legitimate criteria for decision -
making. For example, if all projects meet the cultural resources criterion, then the criterion
isn't to be used to evaluate the project. Make sure they select criteria that are pertinent to
the projects they're trying to do. Hutchings stated that's correct.
Cooper stated they applied these criteria to all projects across the board. Many of
the projects may have scored the same in some of the criteria. That doesn't get to the
overlays. For example, a plan on the north fork and a plan on the south fork may have the
same kind of benefit. However, the costs may be very different.
Brenner stated she is uncomfortable with the private property criterion being
comparatively low. It should be higher. She asked about the economic sectors. Cooper
stated examples are agriculture and tourism.
McShane stated he has a concern about public property and private property having
equal footing. Cooper stated the definition allows a higher value for public property than
private property. They tried to make sure the criteria don't overlap.
McShane asked if one criterion should be scored blindly from the others. Cooper
stated that is correct.
Nelson stated this is for decision- making at a County level. Certain regions within the
county will have different criteria. They must keep in mind how they should make decisions
at a countywide level, and not on specific projects or areas. Cooper stated this will motivate
people in the individual regions to make their projects broader so there is broader benefit
countywide. People will try to get more points.
Nelson stated the criteria and weight would have to be supported with facts and
assumptions.
Brenner asked if the property criterion has to do with negative impacts to property.
Cooper stated it does.
Surface Water Work Session, 10/16/2007, Page 2
I Brenner stated she is fine with the score of the property criterion. She asked if a
2 project with many lower scores would end up equaling a project with scores only from the
3 weightier criteria. Cooper stated it won't. There is a mathematical formula that the
4 consultants will present at the meeting next month.
5
6 Hutchings stated the number of criteria is important. There may be a number of
7 projects that score similarly in one criterion. At some point, they need to separate those
8 projects based on some criteria. The questions they apply to projects that are weighted
9 less help them with that separation.
10
11 Nelson stated he would like the consultant to take previous Council decisions on
12 certain projects and run them through the formula to see how they come out during the
13 next meeting.
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15 Caskey- Schreiber asked about cost sharing. Cooper stated that is also an overlay.
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17 Caskey - Schreiber stated habitat function may be a key weight. There is more
18 opportunity for cost - sharing if there is a habitat function. Cooper stated that most of the
19 criteria are human- centric.
20
21 Caskey - Schreiber stated she fears that environmental projects will be lost. Cooper
22 stated that's one of the reasons why the habitat function criterion is the second - highest
23 weighted criterion.
24
25 She showed preliminary sample results and stated most of the investments have a
26 benefit score in the middle range. The few projects with a higher benefit score have
27 benefits across many criteria. The top and bottom projects made sense to the staff team.
28 The spreadsheets are very conceptual at this point. The team is trying to figure out how
29 much staff each project would require. They are looking at costs over a 20 -year life.
30
31 Hutchins stated that a 20 -year planning horizon seemed to be a reasonable length of
32 time to capture the true cost of a project without introducing too much uncertainty.
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34 Brenner stated someone assigned the weights. Sometimes the criteria can be
35 applied subjectively.
36
37 Nelson stated these are based on facts and assumptions, which are also based on
38 facts.
39
40 Cooper stated everyone is redoing their project lists, which will be combined and
41 refined for consistency.
42
43 She showed a slide of the draft prioritization process. Once all the projects get their
44 benefit scores, they will be run through the overlays.
45
46 Nelson stated they need to call the score a criteria score, not a benefit score.
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48 Cooper stated the project, after being assigned a criteria score, will go through the
49 benefits, costs, and regulatory overlays. After they look at the inherent benefits of a
50 project, they need to look at the project independent from its benefits.
51
52 Nelson asked if the costs will have a range. Cooper stated each team member has
53 tried to estimate total costs.
Surface Water Work Session, 10/16/2007, Page 3
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2 Nelson asked if the range should be determined legislatively or administratively. He
3 asked if this is just to add facts and assumptions. Cooper stated it is.
4
5 Nelson stated costs are usually part of criteria. Anything in government has a cost.
6 He understands why they've taken out the cost, but the legislators may have to consider it
7 as a criteria.
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9 Hutchings stated the cost is part and parcel to the analysis. The first cut is to apply
10 those criteria to come up with a prioritized list based on the merits of the project, without
11 considering mandates or costs. Once it's run through that analysis, the next question is
12 determining cost - benefit and determining which projects may have outside money. There
13 will be an analysis tool to look at those things.
14
15 Nelson stated there are several screening processes. That makes sense. If they go
16 to a regional concept, some projects may not even come to the surface. Hutchings stated
17 some of those decisions will be policy decisions made at a higher level than staff, who focus
18 on the relative merit of a project. This method allows someone to pull out those projects
19 and rank them based on other criteria that are not intrinsic, but may be questions of money
20 or regulatory requirements.
21
22 Caskey - Schreiber stated this is as objective as they can get. The regulatory
23 requirement overlay should be called regulatory requirement or limitation overlay. There
24 are some regulatory limitations that hinder the benefits of a project. Hutchings stated the
25 staff team had a long discussion about the definition of a mandate. They need to know if
26 Whatcom County is required by law to implement a specific action. If so, they must be able
27 to flag it. If they don't follow a mandate, there will be major ramifications. That's why it
28 became an important analysis tool. However, it doesn't address whether that effort has
29 some intrinsic merit, other than the fact it is being mandated from above.
30
31 Caskey- Schreiber stated that conversely, they must also respect what is limited.
32 Hutchings stated they haven't considered that.
33
34 Weimer asked about a regulatory requirement that is from the County. Cooper
35 stated it gets one point versus two points.
36
37 McShane stated it goes to regulatory limitations. He asked about a scenario where
38 the benefit is high, but there is a remote feasibility. He asked how they stop something that
39 will end up never happening. Hutchings stated this looks principally at where they sit today.
40 Whatever phase of that analysis they are in today is what is getting analyzed for benefits
41 relative to other projects and programs.
42
43 Cooper stated that some of the projects that aren't feasible aren't scoring well
44 because there is a reason they aren't feasible.
45
46 McShane stated an example is Swift Creek. Cooper stated this will be useful to
47 compare alternatives on a given project. Some projects score low, but they can change the
48 project so it will score higher. There are feasibility issues with landowners, for example,
49 that they need to account for.
50
51 Nelson stated it will also help staff come up with different plans to propose to the
52 Council because they look at it from a different perspective.
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Surface Water Work Session, 10/ 16/ 2007, Page 4
1 (Clerk's Note: End of tape one, side A.)
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3 Brenner stated acknowledge that feasibility is about more than just costs and
4 benefits. Cooper stated she has noted that.
5
6 Brenner asked if this process can be used when they find obsolete regulations
7 through a code scrub. They may find regulations that no longer make sense when they go
8 through a code scrub. There may be other regulations that are clearer. They've layered
9 regulations. They may find regulations from long ago that get in the way of what they've
10 recently adopted. Consider that if possible.
11
12 Cooper stated the resource value overlay may be one way to differentiate among
13 several plans with the same score. She will take the councilmembers' feedback to the
14 consultant.
15
16 Nelson stated he appreciates the staff for working on this project. They've taken
17 time out of their workload to do this. He hopes everyone participating in this process is
18 acknowledged. He's anxious to see some examples.
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20 Cooper stated the staff team has done great work to keep this moving forward.
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22
23 OTHER BUSINESS
24
25 Weimer stated there were concerns from the Conservation District about the
26 Conservation Program for Agricultural Lands (CPAL ). The Conservation District has pulled
27 out of the negotiations. They will discuss it at the Council's next Planning and Development
28 Committee meeting.
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30
31 ADJOURN
32.
33 The meeting adjourned at 10:54 a.m.
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37 Jill Nixon, Minutes Transcri tion
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46
47 Vana• !•Cout$Eil Clerk Carl Weimer, Council Chair
Surface Water Work Session, 10/ 16/ 2407, Page 5