The Mountlake Terrace City Council at its Monday business meeting approved a $1.1 million contract with ARC Architects for design of the Civic Campus project that includes a new city hall and police station expansion.

The city is hosting its first Civic Campus Design Community Meeting on Thursday, April 5. The goal is to have officials and neighbors will work with the architect team to discuss imagery that reflects the values of Mountlake Terrace and the vision for the new City Hall and the police station addition.

The meeting will focus on the lobbies and customer service areas, council chambers and future gathering spaces.

Also at its Monday night meeting, the council appointed members for the 11-member Mountlake Terrace Town Center Task Force. The task force will assist in the development of an updated Town Center Plan, which was originally adopted by the City Council in 2007.

The council had six positions to fill; the remaining five positions were appointed by the newly formed group called CLEAR – which stands for Civic Leadership Educating Achieving Revitalizing – and consists of local developers, business owners and residents.

Those appointed by the council were Linda Rogers, Adam Bettcher, Sarah Bayle, Steve Cox, Jerry Osborn and Ronald Skinner. The CLEAR representatives are Victor Eskanazi, Joe Mustach, Wade Heyer, Marie Landsverk and Mike Lavigne.

The council also approved — after a public hearing — regulations regarding “small cell” wireless sites. Small cells are short range mobile cell sites used to complement larger macro cells, or cell towers. The only people testifying at the hearing were representatives of affected wireless carriers.

And it approved the agreement for the annual Tour de Terrace event.

Also on Monday night, South Snohomish County Fire & Rescue Chief Bruce Stedman and Assistant Chief Doug Dahl provided South Snohomish Fire’s annual report to the council.

The agency was known as Snohomish County Fire District 1 prior to its merger with the Lynnwood Fire Department under a new Regional Fire Authority approved by Lynnwood and unincorporated south county voters last November. South Snohomish Fire continues to contract with the City of Mountlake Terrace to provide fire and emergency medical services (EMS).

Assistant Chief Dahl noted that the call load in Mountlake Terrace has risen 37.51 percent since 2007, and the response time for the agency also continues to climb. “That is an expected outcome of more calls,” he said, adding that the fire department has the same number of staff working as it did in 2007, even though calls have increased.

Dahl also pointed to another statistic, the department’s unit hour utilization, which shows how busy a station is at various times during the day. Fire officials become concerned when a unit is busy 20 percent of time, and when that figure gets to 30 percent another unit needs to be added.

During the peak time of 8 a.m.-8 p.m., Mountlake Terrace’s fire station is seeing its figures “well into the 20s” and at times close to 30 percent, Dahl said.

“We need to stop the response times from increasing,” Dahl said. “It’s time sit down and talk about options.”