Speaker 0: And with that, we move to agenda item seven. This is this item is a motion to confirm the executive's appointment of Rick Brady as our new director of the Road Service Road Services Division of the Department of Local Services. Mr. Brady has been with the county for a number of years and is currently serving as the interim director of Roads Services Division. I'm Pat Hamacher from our central staff will brief us on the motion and then Mr. Brady is here. His questionnaire is in our packets and he's here to speak to us in person about the appointment. Mr. HAMACHER Thank.
Speaker 2: You, Mr. Chair. For the record, Patrick Hamacher from council staff and the staff report begins on page 25 in your packets. And I'll just note that I'm pinch hitting for Nick Bowman today. He prepared the work he actually included in the staff report, a relatively extensive history around how we got to having a roads division, road services division within the Department of Local Services. But since you're all aware of that, having just stood up the department in January, I think I'm going to skip that background piece and focus on the appointment that's before the council. Mr. Brady has been a King County employee for 17 years. He began his career as the County Engineering Services Section manager and became the county road engineer in 2013. Most recently, Mr. Braider was appointed as the interim director of the Roads Division on October 1st of 2018. This is back when I would have still been in the Department of Transportation and transitioned to the Department of Local Services when it became a stood up as its own department on January 1st of this year. Before joining the county, he worked as in a number of engineering roles for Washington State Ferry Ferries and his full appointment packet, including the questionnaire, as you mentioned, Mr. Chair, is included in in the packets in your packets on the dais. He has been transmitted by the county executive and all of the transmittal, documents and materials that we would expect for a division director have have been transmitted are included in your packets as well. And with that, I would be happy to answer any questions that you're as you noticed, Mr. Brady has joined us at the table. So he's here as well.
Speaker 0: Any hard questions for Mr. Hamacher? CNN will turn it over. Mr. Rader, good afternoon.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, good afternoon. On a beautiful, sunny, warm day with no snow. It's an honor to be here and to be considered for the position and role as the division director. I think the road services division is one of those divisions that maybe on a daily basis touches almost every person living in unincorporated King County on a daily basis. So again, it's an honor and a privilege to be here and be considered for this position.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much, very much. I might start with the first question, and that is, is reading through your materials submitted to the council, I was pleased to see an emphasis on stakeholder engagement and constituent services. Can you share some ways that the Remote Services Division might improve customer service and communication with residents and users in unincorporated King County?
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I think one of the key things that's happening and is exciting is that with the standing up as the Department of Local Services and the new emphasis on the unincorporated area and the outreach that's going to occur within that and as part of that department, the division is going to be fully engaged in in a broad spectrum of the communities around King County, across King County. And I think that's going to be very helpful in making sure that we, as a division, are delivering the services that the residents want and that we're really encompassing all of the residents and all of their needs throughout the whole broad range of unincorporated King County.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Lambert.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, as you know that I serve on the statewide crab or the muni community Roads and Administration Board, and I knew we had a great county engineer. But then when I heard the other engineers talk about him, I was even more impressed. Because when your peers say good things about you, that is pretty impressive. I was worried they try to steal him away when they needed a new engineer for the state. So I am very impressed with the work that he's done and the long hours that he's put in for years and that we've worked very closely for many , many years and. Underfunded formula that he has to work with, with roads and bridges, and the very difficult decisions that he has to make on a daily basis because his department is grossly underfunded because of the state formula where only the people living in the unincorporated area pay into the county roads. And at this point, we're paying $1.88 per thousand dollars of assessed value as opposed to the 225, which is allowed under law with 100,000 less people paying into this account and expect to do the same things that we were doing before with so much less money. So with his hands tied behind, his back is still able to do amazing work. And so there's lots and lots of challenges that he faces. And so far, he hasn't pulled his hair out, which is good. The other thing is we just came through a very big emergency. And as I left my house this morning, there's still four inches of my snowman that has not melted. And it's been quite some time that we've been past the snow, but there's still remnants, including on my front lawn. So this snowstorm was the worst in 70 years. And I just want to say to roads, all the employees, roads to Rick and to John and to all the team and also Casey and our executive down there were a lot of people that put in long, hard hours and some as many as 20 hours a day during that time, many on 12 hour shifts for three weeks, 28 days.
Speaker 2: 17.
Speaker 1: Days, 17 days only seem like 28. And that's a long time when you're working 12 hour shifts out in the cold with pretty much crazy conditions, ice being so heavy that we had to bring in graders to cut it up before we could plow things that you wouldn't normally expect. And they did it and really helped the citizens. And we discovered a lot of things that you always learn during an emergency that they're going to be sharing with us. But we got through it as well as we did because of the great work. So I want to thank you and your team for the great work that you did and the dedication to work 17 days on 12 hour shifts. So thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilmember.
Speaker 0: Councilmember Dunn, I.
Speaker 2: Want to echo Councilmember Lambert's words here today. Appreciate all the hard work, especially through the snow circumstances. And in echo, also that state law probably is the biggest hurdle, I think, that I see in you doing your job effectively. And boy, I'll tell you, it's never good when a law stands in the way of trying to get a basic government function done. And that is the we reached our statutory maximum in terms of what we can levy for the unincorporated roads levy, largely because this councilmember never mentioned annexations and and corporations have brought the population in a different direction than an increasing tax base. So I just want to let you know that I stand firmly behind you and your efforts and the department's efforts and the new divisions efforts and the executive's efforts to try and get that antiquated tax system restructured in a way that allows us to continue to repair our infrastructure out there so folks can get around to their jobs, to their families, to emergency services and hospitals and many other things that I think are basic service. So thanks for your leadership and look forward to working with you. Thank you.
Speaker 0: I also wanted to ask about working with your staff. We ask a lot of road services division, not only in ingenuity and the work before them, but in particularly challenging circumstances when they don't have the full resources to do everything we'd like to do to protect our assets and maintain the assets that your division is tasked with maintaining and growing when possible. Can you speak to how we can best support staff morale with within the division and support them in the innovative thinking and creativity that we so strongly need?
Speaker 2: Sure, Mr. Chair. So first off, there's quite a bit of road staff right here. So so we're very, very fortunate to have such great and talented people working for Rhodes and for the county. I think like any organization, you kind of get into your groove and you don't really understand that other people know what you're doing and what you're struggling with and what the real problems of every day trying to maintain a system that's underfunded and overused and anything that you can do to just recognize that you understand the situation that they're in and what they're dealing with and the good work that they're doing goes a very long ways, very long ways and obviously good communication as we're dealing with issues in your district or anybody's other district. It's super helpful to know that there's a good understanding and a good partnership and a good relationship with council member. And it's just goes a long, long ways for people wanting to put in the extra time and the extra effort to to try and resolve a problem.
Speaker 0: Thank you. My office has appreciated working with you very much in some of the work we're doing with our constituents in unincorporated King County. And, you know and know that that very work is done by your staff within the division and making sure that we can be as creative as we can and also support them. Knowing what situation we are in resources is very important to me and I think to the entire council.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I look forward to working with you in the future indeed if confirmed.
Speaker 0: Other questions. Council Member Dombrovskis Thank you.
Speaker 4: It's a very particularized and local concern, but the north half of 145th Street is a county owned half of an arterial. What is your vision for that in terms of eventual municipal control? It's important because we're trying to connect Bothell and Lake City way to I-5 for light rail coming in a couple of years. And we've got multiple jurisdictions, Seattle Shoreline, the state of Washington because it's Route 53, King County, Seattle Public Utilities is in the right away. How would you take a complex situation like that and maybe use that as an example? And what do you see happening in that corridor?
Speaker 2: Thank you. So that particular section, there's a section of that street that's state highway and that actually trumps the county right away. So that's a majority of the portion of that particular roadway. So I get a little bit of an out on some of that. So there's the two ends of that corridor that are part of the county road right away. And it's mainly the intersections where there's a lot of overlap. And and in those areas, as we have in other situations, there's a great effort to partner with all of those interested parties, interested agencies, jurisdictions. I think that there's a strong will to make some of these regional systems function and work and acted in good, good partnership with all of the different interested parties and vested interests. And so I think we have a long history of being a willing partner to work through those issues and accommodate something that's for the greater good of the region.
Speaker 4: Would you agree with me that we really don't even need to be in that space? I mean, that is absolutely.
Speaker 2: So what's the path out? Well, unfortunately, the county has a history of what we call our orphan roads. So we have these little segments of roadways all over King County that through annexation and incorporations have been left behind. And there are little islands of roadways that are basically in limbo. And in in that end, we've been trying to work with the state legislature, with the jurisdiction that's on the other side to try and see if we can get them incorporated into their. Respective jurisdiction. However, it's not been an easy task and we would certainly look forward to any support and help we could get in helping those other jurisdictions be willing to take them in. They're not large sections of road, but they do task our maintenance efforts in terms of being outside of our main service area. So it's something that we've been working on. We've had a few successes, but not a lot of them. And so it's something we're going to be working on throughout the future.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 0: Councilmember Lambert.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I mean, actually, three very quick questions. Okay. Number one, how many orphan roads are there in the county?
Speaker 2: It's roughly 60, I.
Speaker 1: Think that is the number ahead. Thank you. So there's 60 of them in the county and we went to the state, I think it was three years ago, asking for them to take the orphan roads and to say it was an unpleasant debate would be the understatement of the week. And the cities were not helpful. And so we came away with a bill that was completely gutted, that did absolutely nothing. So we're still in the same place, virtually, that we were before we went to the state. And they have done nothing to change the formula, which is the problem. But so that's that's it. And then the next thing is, seven years from now or six years from now, how much money will be in the roads, capital budget?
Speaker 2: So you're talking about the decline of our funding and what we can actually provide for our capital program. So in that period of time, the capital program will decline down to zero and we will have no funding available for our capital program.
Speaker 1: So I think that when you get to that budget of zero, it's a pretty good indication that there's a crisis and we don't have time to mess around with this. This has got to be change and the state needs to know that they can no longer continue this deprivation. And it means that 70 miles of road and 35 bridges. Tell me if that's correct. Will be substantially impacted. 35 bridges having their weight bearing changed or closed, some with bad detours, routes as far as length and 35 roads that will not be in good condition. 35 miles of roads will not be in good condition. This is not how we preserve a $40 billion asset. So I appreciative of the fact that we have people who are willing to work with us and try to get the state to do what needs to happen. Thank you.
Speaker 0: With that, Councilmember Lambert, would you put a motion before it?
Speaker 1: I would be happy to do that. Thank you. I would like to move a proposed motion 2019 0048 with a do pass recommendation.
Speaker 0: Councilmember Lambert has moved adoption of Motion 20 1948 for the discussion. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Belushi. Councilmember Dombrowski. Councilmember Dunn. Councilmember Garcia. Hi. Councilmember Colwell. Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember of the Grove. Councilmember one right there. Mr. Chair. All right. Mr. Chair, the vote is nine no nos.
Speaker 0: Thank you. You've given unanimous to pass recommendation to most in 2000 1948, and we will put that on the consent agenda in full council on March 27th.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 0: It's not it's not often you have the interim general director showing up in your support. The next agenda item is Motion 2000, 1930. And last September, the Council adopted a motion to formalize the establishment of the Legislative, Branch, Equity and Social Justice team.
A MOTION confirming the appointment of Rick Brater as the director of the roads division of the department of local services.