For years, the Edmonds City Council has been discussing Sunset Avenue and various plans for the improving the pathway — or  not — that runs along one of the city’s most scenic viewpoints.

The council by a 4-3 vote in August 2014 agreed to add temporary striping to the current pathway indicating shared use between pedestrians and those on wheels (bicyclists, strollers or skateboarders, for example) and to redistribute some parking spaces, which included some angled parking. Then, the city could evaluate users’ feedback before pursuing additional grant money for a permanent configuration.

The issue at Tuesday night’s city council meeting was not about making the project permanent — there has been no grant money identified for that. It was whether to include it — along with dozens of other capital projects — in two sets of documents used to guide capital facilities planning and programming for the next six years or longer.

Councilmember Joan Bloom said the council needed more time to discuss the pros and cons of the project, separate from its inclusion in both the Proposed 2015-2020 Capital Facilities Plan/Capital Improvement Program. “I think this project is very controversial and we have a lot of strong feelings on either side,” Bloom said.

Councilmember Lora Petso added that she was ready to declare the multi-use pathway test a failure, given her observance of both near-miss accidents she has seen from cars backing out of angled parking spaces and walkers’ efforts to avoid sharing the pathway with bicyclists.

City of Edmonds Public Works Director Phil Williams noted that when the city applied for grant funding, it indicated the intention to make the Sunset trail a multi-use path. He recommended that the city complete a full year of data gathering during the trial before going back to the granting agency with a change of plans.

If observations indicate the temporary configuration isn’t working, the city may be able to work with the grantor to get the multi-use designation removed, Williams said. By removing the multi-use configuration now, the city runs the risk of appearing as though “we just changed our minds rather than having documented reasons,” he added. “I think we have to have information to convince them that it would not work.”

Council President Diane Buckshnis expressed a desire to keep the project in the capital planning documents, but to remove the $2 million budget amount associated with it, so that the council could maintain better control over the initiative.

Councilmember Adrienne Fraley-Monillas, who supported keeping both the project and the dollar amount in the documents, said she saw no point in continuing to discuss the issue, as both sides are entrenched in their opinions and no additional debate will change anyone’s minds.

Councilmembers Strom Peterson and Thomas Mesaros noted that retaining the Sunset project in the planning documents only means the project can be considered for funding should grant money become available, and that the city council still has final say over the project’s final scope, design and costs.

When the final vote was taken after much discussion, the council voted 4-3 (Councilmembers Fraley-Monillas, Peterson and Mesaros opposed) to continue discussing the issue at the council’s Nov. 25 study session.

The council also approved — after a public hearing that drew no comments — a 1 percent increase in the city’s property tax and an 11 percent increase in the Emergency Medical Services Property Tax Levy. (Finance Director Scott James explained that the EMS levy is a continuation of a measure approved by voters in 2008, which allows an ongoing assessment of 50 cents per thousand dollars of assessed valuation. As for the property tax increase, last year, the city council chose not to assess the 1 percent increase.This year, however, councilmembers unanimously voted in favor of it after James went over the list of “financial challenges” facing the city, including $1.2 million in new ongoing expenses for 2015 that include $978,000 for Fire District 1 services.

The council was supposed to discuss the 2015 budget but delayed that discussion to another meeting given the lateness of the hour.

However, it did address several other key issues:

– After holding a public hearing on amendments to the City’s 2014 Comprehensive Plan, which nobody provided testimony on, the council unanimously approved it.

– The council also unanimously agreed to notify the state Department of Ecology of its intent to approve a Shoreline Master Program for Edmonds, the first step in a several-month process that involves the Ecology Department’s review of the plan. The council agreed to include some adjustments to the plan that would allow for buffer adjustments to ensure adequate parking at the Edmonds Senior Center, an important component of the senior center’s plan to remodel its existing building on the waterfront.

– And councilmembers approved an updated Right-of-Way Tree Management Policy.

Also of note was Councilmember Bloom’s criticism of downtown business owners who came to provide a report on their 2015 workplan for Edmonds Business Improvement District (BID), a special assessment area established under state law that allows businesses to assess themselves to fund programs such as marketing or beautification. The Edmonds City Council approved creation of the Edmonds BID in January 2013; the group has since changed its name to the Edmonds Downtown Alliance — or ED! for short.

While acknowledging that the volunteer group had put a lot of work into developing the BID, Bloom said she has heard complaints from BID members that range from how the assessments are calculated and collected to how the decisions are made to spend BID money.

“There is a lot of conflict and there are a lot of people who are unhappy,” Bloom said.  She proposed several modifications to the BID work plan, all of which failed to gain council support. Councilmember Petso then proposed her own amendment requiring that any grant money awards allocated by the BID to its members are first reviewed by city staff to ensure compliance with city laws.

In the end, the council approved the BID work plan, as amended.