The much-debated Edmonds City Council Code of Conduct draft got a new lease on life Tuesday night when the council agreed to form a subcommittee to study the matter further.

The vote was 4-3, with Councilmembers Laura Johnson (who drafted the proposed document), Luke Distelhorst, Susan Paine and Adrienne Fraley-Monillas voting yes. The three councilmembers on the losing end — Diane Buckshnis, Vivian Olson and Kristiana Johnson — were unsuccessful in attempting to postpone creation of the subcommittee indefinitely.

The council did approve a motion by Buckshnis –on a 4-3 vote with Olson, Kristiana Johnson and Susan Paine also voting yes — to have the subcommittee appointed by the council, rather than by the council president. Buckshnis said her intent was to ensure balanced subcommittee representation and thus avoid what she described as the council’s frequent pattern of 4-3 votes — and instead have a code of conduct that can be supported by the entire council.

Distelhorst disputed Buckshnis’ characterization of the 4-3 vote pattern, stating “I don’t think it’s appropriate to continually refer to 4s and 3s. We have seven independent councilmembers who all have independent brains and can vote independently, and I would like that to be respected please.”

Buckshnis and Councilmember Kristiana Johnson also stressed the importance of reviewing background material — including the council’s current Code of Conduct, passed in 2013 — as part of the  subcommittee’s work.

Councilmembers agreed to delay until next week further discussion about how many members the committee would have, and the council’s process for appointing them.

Also Tuesday night, the council heard an update on various activities of the city’s Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Department, and also a proposal for a new program aimed at providing an on-site recreation program for elementary-age students.

Summarizing capital projects underway, Department Director Angie Feser noted that construction is continuing on the 26,000-square-foot Edmonds Waterfront Center, with completion set for October. This project — a partnership with the Edmonds Senior Center — includes a city project to restore the beachfront next to the center, a renovated walkway and parking lot. Feser also said that the city is revisiting next steps for the Civic Park project, which received two bids that were well over the engineer’s estimate. The plan is to rebid the project in early 2021, she said. As for Marina Beach Park, the city is in the middle of preparing two $500,000 grant applications from the State’s Recreation and Conservation Office.

Feser also talked about how COVID-19 has impacted park operations, noting that the priority has been public and staff safety, sanitation and preservation of city assets. The city has followed federal, state and county guidelines in determining when to reopen facilities, she said. While all parks, trails and open spaces are open to the public “and heavily used,” playgrounds are still closed. Yost Pool and the Hazel Miller spray pad didn’t open this year. The parks maintenance crews are working staggered shifts and no longer work in pairs, and the city has had no coronavirus outbreaks among maintenance staff, she said. To address increased sanitation needs due to COVID, the city is now cleaning its public restrooms twice a day.

As for the proposed recreation program, it’s called LEAP (Learning Enhancement & Activity Program) and would repurpose the Frances Anderson Center to support children entering second through sixth grade. It would operate Monday – Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m and would provide day camp activities while supporting Edmonds School District distance learning due to COVID-19.  The proposal includes the hiring of two new staff, but would be covered by registration fees.

Because the start of the school year is just around the corner and new positions would need to be hired quickly, a vote on whether to approve this program was originally scheduled for Tuesday night. However, councilmembers agreed at the beginning of the meeting to delay action until next week.

According to Feser, city staff have identified nine classrooms inside the Frances Anderson Center — originally built as an elementary school –that would accommodate social distancing between children and staff. The proposal calls for grouping similar grade-level kids and staff into “weekly pods” in the classrooms. Room capacity varies from 10 to 24 and each room will have at least two staff members to provide a 1:10 staff/child ratio minimum. The city said this ratio allows better safety practices, facilitation of distance learning support and will provide the ability to keep pods isolated from one another as much as possible to reduce potential COVID exposure. It also helps contain any potential outbreak to just one pod.

The goal is also to keep the schoolchildren isolated from the other Frances Anderson tenants, which include a ballet school, a day care and a Montessori school, Feser said.

Supplemental programming would come from the city’s environmental education and cultural arts divisions as well as community partners like Sno-King Youth Club to provide additional day camp programming.

Weekly registration is $300 or $345 for non-residents, with need-based full scholarships available for a minimum of 20% of the participants. Program capacity is 100 participants.

There’s a need for these types of programs, as Edmonds has 3,052 students going into the 2nd-6th grades, Feser said. The program is also flexible enough that it could adjust “whether to proceed, modify or discontinue” if the school district decides, for example, to move away from remote learning.

In addition to hiring two recreation leaders for the program, the city will need to employ 18 full-time equivalent and four part-time equivalent employees for the program. One quarter to a third of those staff can be current city employees who have been laid off or working significantly reduced hours due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Staff would be hired as temporary employees until more information is known about the school district’s plans for remote learning, Feser said.

Councilmember Laura Johnson expressed enthusiasm for the idea, noting that child care has been identified as “a huge need” as parents scramble to determine how to continue working while their children are learning remotely. “I see this as helping parents who might otherwise not be able to work, or who might have to make the choice of leaving the kids at home in order to work. It gives the kids a safe place to go to. It creates jobs within our community,” and also restarts the city’s recreation programming, she said. Johnson encouraged the council to look at funding options that could expand the city’s ability to offer full scholarships to more than 20% of students.

Other councilmembers also signaled support for the idea, but requested that Feser supply more detailed information — including cost breakdowns — before they take a vote next week.

Councilmember Kristiana Johnson pointed out that “only 100 kids will be served by this program” out of 3,000-plus in Edmonds in that age group. “That’s only 3.3% of the students who will be served. So I think that we need to put that into context to understand while it’s a great program, it’s only a piece of the puzzle,” she said.

In other action, the council:

– Unanimously approved the city’s 2021-2026 Six-Year Transportation Improvement Program.

– Vote to fund — via the council’s contingency budget — an information panel for the former Edmonds High School portico, now located at Salish Crossing. The 6-1 decision (Kristiana Johnson opposed) reversed a council vote taken in February 2020 to remove portico signage funds from the list of 2019 budget items carried into 2020. The information panel funding of up to $4,000 had originally been approved by a 5-2 vote last November. The goal of the panel will be to educate passersby about the significance of the 1909-era portico, which Salish Crossing developer Lindsey Echelbarger saved from the landfill when the former high school was remodeled to house the Edmonds Center for the Arts. Echelbarger funded construction of a support structure for the portico and placed it at the southeast corner of the Salish Crossing parking lot, with the idea of showcasing it as part of the city’s history.

–  Agreed to place on next week’s consent agenda a compensation proposal for the council’s legislative/executive assistant, Maureen Judge, that includes an additional 32.56 hours of vacation to compensate her for a previously delayed wage increase.

— By Teresa Wippel