Everett City Council Update

Tonight’s Everett City Council meeting covered a variety of topics. Here’s a sampling…

Prior to the full council meeting was the first meeting of the year for the Everett City Council budget committee. Councilmember Jeff Moore was chosen to chair the committee. The other members are Brenda Stonecipher and Scott Murphy.

A couple of notable items before the committee included an inquiry about changing Everett’s budget process to a two-year calendar instead of the annual budget that’s the current practice.

The committee also expressed positive reaction to a plan to lower the annual business license fee for an Everett business that does less than $20,000.00 worldwide to just $10.00 a year.

They also got word the city is in the process of hiring three parking enforcement officers and getting them updated equipment with an eye on stepped up enforcement of parking limits in the downtown core and near the college and hospital. Later this year you’ll see a lot more parking tickets issued in Everett.

The full city council heard of plans to bring Everett’s drug paraphernalia and marijuana laws in line with Washington State law that did away with mandatory minimum sentences for violations. Judges will still have full discretion.

In a unanimous vote the city council approved the use of crumb rubber in replacing soccer fields at Kasch Park in south Everett and awarded a $2.8 million dollar contract. Multiple council members said they still wanted to keep on eye on studies on the safety of crumb rubber but saw nothing that would convince them to halt replacement of fields 2 and 3.

A Lake Stevens company got the nod on a $2.7 million dollar contract to improve freight mobility between 41st street and the Everett waterfront to speed the movement of oversize loads between the Port and I-5.

Final approval was given for 82 homes to be constructed in the Alpine Heights development at the site of the old Jazwieck’s mini-golf and Bumblebee special train on old Broadway just west of Interstate 5.

Over the last year site work was being done and now the actual construction of homes will go forward.