City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome, everybody. Thank you all so much for coming here tonight. I'm going to open the meeting. I don't have a script like I normally do, so I'm probably going to talk too much because that's kind of how I roll. But thank you all for coming. I am not going to run this meeting. We've hired a facilitator, Bruce, to run this meeting. And I'm just going to call you Bruce because I'm not going to try to pronounce your last name with no practice. So I'm going to kick it over to Bruce. Bruce, thank you so much. You can take it from here.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Welcome, everybody. My name is Bruce Grunewski. I'm with Gallatin Public Affairs. And it's my pleasure to be here tonight to help facilitate what I hope is going to be a very interesting and productive conversation between two different governing boards coming together for the first time. Very interesting. I'd like to start tonight with some introductions. And I'd like to start with Quan here and go around the room and ask each person to introduce yourself, your title or your role. And in a sentence or two, tell the group, what issue are you most interested in understanding tonight? And we'll start with you, Quan.

Kwan Wong, Bothell's City Finance Director. Good to see everybody here and good evening. So what I'm looking forward is really to have a common understanding, have conversations and see where we go from here.

Good evening. I'm Claire Corey. I'm the deputy city manager for Bothell. It's nice to see all of you. Um, I'm newer to the city of Bothell. I think I'm on maybe week six. Uh, but since I went through the interview process and have joined the organization, I've heard that this is an issue that we've spent a lot of time talking about. I know tonight is a big milestone for everyone and so I'm just happy to see all of us gathered and hopefully We'll have some fruitful dialogue tonight that will help us make some decisions in the future.

Hi, I'm Commissioner Rick Webster with the Shoreline RFA, and I've been a commissioner for about seven years now, and my goal when I became a commissioner was regionalization, which this is what we're working for here, and so I'm participating in this meeting to answer any questions anybody has that I can give answers to, and also to learn from what Bothell's standpoint is. So thank you.

Hello everyone, this is Prasad Anguluri, Botel City Council member, newly elected. I've been living in Botel last 19 years, almost 20. So I think a couple things I wanted to make sure that I understand. So I know this is a big decision for Botel City and if we make this decision, how well we can serve our residents, I mean, how better we can serve our residents, that's number one. I think I want to make sure that We still serve our residents very well. So that's the most important thing we want to make sure, I think. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. I'm Deputy Mayor Jenny Alderks. And one of the things that I've really been paying a lot of attention to over the last several years is our EMS and behavioral health supports like mobile one and crisis response. And so I'm particularly interested to see how a future relationship might improve or maintain the quality of that service. Thanks.

Hi, I'm Kim Fisher, board chair for Shoreline RFA. Lisa Wollum is online, and she can't hear anything. She says that she's muted.

She's muted.

Are we muted?

Laura will fix it.

Oh, yeah, Laura, we're muted on Bothell City Council.

Lisa, can you hear me? I can't hear anything.

We can hear you.

Not that you can hear that. Yeah.

Why don't we continue while we're working through that?

It's showing up on my screen that it's muted.

Yeah. Okay.

Mine says Bothell City Council is on mute.

Does anybody else feel like it's COVID?

And Deanna, I don't know if you guys could hear her, is not able to hear anything either. No, I can't. We have an open chat tonight. I was trying to figure out how to, if it was me. It's not you.

All right, they're working on it. Let's continue with the introductions. Kim, would you continue with yours?

I'm interested in how the financial piece is going to fit into all this.

Oh, I think we're good. Are we good, Lisa? Thank you.

I can hear now. Okay, good. Great. Thank you so much.

My name is Mason. I'm the mayor of Bothell. I'd say the two things that I'm most interested about are kind of the financial pieces of it and the governance piece, because it's been a difficult thing for me to wrap my head around giving a different entity taxing authority in my city. So just want to get my head wrapped around that. And I've read through it. I think we're in a really good place with it, with everything I read through in the prep and I'm gonna stop talking now.

Thank you.

I'm Eric Adman and I'm a North Shore Fire Commissioner. I'm on the Shoreline Regional Fire Authority Board. I also am a Kenmore City Council member. I was a Bothell firefighter at the beginning of my career for about the first 12 years of my career. And I was also a Shoreline paramedic. And I've seen how the organizational integration has happened between North Shore and Shoreline when that took place, and I have a lot of contacts within the fire department at all levels. So I'm interested in regionalization, and I think I have a good perspective on it.

Good evening. My name is Rick Nye. I'm a Shoreline RFA member, and pretty much everything I'm interested in has already been summarized. Thanks for having us.

Hi, everybody. My name is Amanda Dodd. I am a Bothell City Council member. I'm interested in everything everybody's already said. I think we're going to run out of stuff.

Thank you. We could say some of it over again for Lisa.

Hi, I'm David Harris. I'm a shoreline fire commissioner for the past 15 years. And my interest is on the governance and how we're going to blend a city with a fire district.

Hi, I'm Rod Hevelin, I'm a Shoreline RFA Commissioner. I've been affiliated with Shoreline for a long time. I was one of the employees out fighting the virus for about 30 years. And after I retired, I decided to get into this side of the business and do what I can. I'm pretty much a community activist, so I want to make things run smooth for everybody.

And I'm Josh Pratt. I'm a Shoreline RFA Commissioner, North Shore Commissioner as well. And I'm just, I'm excited to be here. In the seven years that I've been serving both as the North Shore Commissioner and now the Shoreline RFA Commissioner, like Commissioner Webbs, you're working towards regionalization and the strengths and the efficiencies that it brings to the fire service. So happy to be here.

Welcome everyone, good evening council members, good evening board members, it's great to have you here. I'm Kyle Standard, I'm the city manager here in Bothell, and I think my big interest about getting to tonight, I'm gonna paraphrase our former interim fire chief, Mark Rison, who once told me, Kyle, when two fire chiefs get together and talk about something, it's called lunch. When the elected officials get together, it means something a little bit more than lunch. And I feel like that's why we're here tonight is that Um, this is a milestone of being able to get to some clarity and, and Bothell has been considering next steps for quite a while now. And I think tonight's meeting is a significant step towards that, uh, understanding what that next step might be.

Thank you all for being here. Uh, it's really great to see you all, uh, Matt Cowan fire chief. Uh, I'm coming up on 34 years in the service 13 with shoreline and the last two with, with Bothell. So I'm excited to see where we can go. This has been a, well, for some people, it's been many, many decades in process. So I'm excited that we're here talking about it.

We have two people joining us online. Lisa, can you introduce yourself and in one sentence or two, tell the group what you hope to, what's the issue you're most interested in understanding tonight?

My name is Lisa Wallum. I live in Kenmore. I'm North Shore Commissioner, also RFA for Shoreline. I think I'm just looking at the regionalization piece. I feel like we all work together really well right now, but I want to bring that together even better and make it more efficient and better for the community.

And Deanna, same question to you.

Good evening, everybody. I'm Deanna Gregory. I'm a partner of Pacifica Law Group, and I've been working with the city on answering questions and moving forward on this undertaking. I'm a public finance attorney, and I work with a number of regional entities. So I'm happy to be here in case there are questions.

Thank you, everyone. I sense a good momentum here, a good sense of excitement about tonight. But before we get into the meeting, I'm going to turn it over to Laura Hathaway. We have some public comment tonight.

We do. Thank you very much. We have David Mehran signed up to speak. David, if you'll step to the podium, state your name for the record. You'll have three minutes.

Hello, my name is David Marin. I'm a Kenmore resident. I've received services from the RFA and I support regionalization and I think while this is a difficult decision for Bothell, I hope you get the information you need to proceed forward with confidence. I have 30 years experience with the King County Sheriff's Office providing a broad range of regional law enforcement services. I served at the North Shore Fire Commission for 20 years, participated in three different studies of consolidation, one of them between Bothell, Woodinville, and North Shore, one with Bruce here, and... there's always some trip up in the process. But I have to tell you, a regional force can provide a better, higher quality level of service simply because it's a larger agency, has more capabilities, and a deeper talent pool. But what I would ask you to do in your process here is to be transparent with the public on what it's actually going to cost. It's easy to kind of be optimistic about what the numbers are. In fact, I sent a document to you. I'm not going to go over that tonight, but it has some comments about some of the numbers that you have. And, um, For instance, when you reduce your reserve buy-in by $7 million, I think that money's going to have to come back someplace at some time. So just be honest with the public. You're going to need their support. You're going to need their vote. And it's going to be hard for them to leave their Bothell Fire Department as much as it is for the city to lose their, or to transfer their department over to another group. So I wish you the best, and thanks a lot.

Thank you, that is all I have signed up for this evening.

Okay. All right, let's get into it. So before we get started, I wanted to just make some strategic framing notes for tonight's discussion. And the first one is, this is a governance conversation, it's not a sales pitch. The goal of tonight is to make sure that the issues that need to be raised are raised, that they're discussed. If we can reach consensus on some of the key issues, that's great. But we don't want to force conclusions. We want to make sure that the process continues. works the way it's intended to. So for example, we may find that some things we don't address tonight. We have a parking lot for that. Some new issues may come up that we didn't anticipate. We have a potential list for that. The second thing I'd like to frame is that I want to distinguish between policy conversations and more operational technical issues. So there's the council, the fire commissioners, the staff, you've come together with a great list of, I think, 14 questions. Some of these rise to the level of policy discussions. Some of these are more technical or operational, and part of tonight is to figure out how we wade through those and how we move some of those technical operational ones to staff so they can be authorized to move forward with that. The third thing I want to mention is what I'm calling taking the temperature. So we're not taking any informal votes tonight. We're gonna discuss a lot of things. We're gonna talk about service levels. We're gonna talk about governance models. We're gonna talk about finances and we're gonna have presentations and we're gonna have discussion and we're gonna see if we can arrive at some sense of agreement uh but the sense of agreement is just directional we're not we're not making a vote we're just hoping to provide direction to the staff to move forward any questions about that framing okay great so um thinking about this meeting i came up with four ground rules one Policy level first. So there are so many things that we get mired and detailed with. I'm going to make sure I continue to bring this group back to policy level discussions. And let's all keep that in mind. Second, as we're talking about all of these different issues, before... Advocacy, let's have shared understanding if that makes sense, right? Let's make sure the conversation is fruitful and reaches its logical conclusions before people start advocating positions one way or the other. Let's keep in mind that this decision or set of decisions has a future voter lens to it. We need to be asking ourselves, What would voters need to understand and trust with all of the issues that we bring up and discuss tonight? And then finally, one conversation at a time. Everybody here has a lot to say, everybody's smart, everybody is engaged, and I'll try to keep things in an orderly fashion. Any questions about the ground rules? Okay, we're going to move to the first part of the agenda. We're doing great on time. The first part of the agenda is background. Now, you have received a lot of good information, not just in this packet, but in previous meetings and briefings with your city manager and presentations from the chief. So you've got a lot there. But we wanted to just cover some highlights. And the background discussion is two part. The first part, Chief Collins is going to give a brief presentation on regionalization with a specific lens on the shoreline RFA. And then the second part... uh the city manager is going to give a presentation on the city of bothels perspective and that process there and at that point i'll ask for some clarifying questions about context and background and we'll move right into our three major items for discussions any questions all right chief it's yours thanks bruce um at the risk of being a little redundant i know that some of you

have heard me talk about governance before, but as Bruce alluded to, I want to touch on a few higher points on this. And first and foremost, this is not new. This is not new for our personnel in either fire departments or even people, you know, sitting around this table. It's not new, uh, for the county. Uh, we're starting to see some of the transition there, but this is something that is newer for our area. We've seen a lot of regionalization and other counties around us, Snohomish County, Pierce County, uh, Kitsap County and States, Oregon and California are leaders in on the West Coast at least. with regionalization, so this is not a new topic, and there's a lot of reasons for regionalization, but first and foremost, bigger isn't always better. You need to do it for the right reasons, the right timing, the right motivation, and I agree absolutely with the right transparency. And to do that takes a lot of effort and intentionality and even the right timing. And that's also, I applaud the city council for making the decision, I think it was about four years ago now, of looking at what the future looked like and not just jumping back in and hiring a fire chief. We contracted out for executive services to try and buy some time so that we could get comfortable with this decision and moving forward. There's a lot of details in your packet, again, as Bruce alluded to, but for me, it's always first and foremost about levels of service, and that's both operationally and administratively. The only time that I'm not talking about levels of service is if we can't financially afford it. and then you have to take some really, really hard looks at what you're doing. Finances are absolutely important, and it's a close second, if you will, I guess. And that's why we're all here, is to dive into some of those financial questions, too, to make sure that we're all comfortable with what that looks like moving forward. Our approach with this some years ago was to look at regionalization across the whole North End, and then it was, you know, there's some false starts, and there were some different opportunities. We ended up into a full-services ILA with the North Shore Fire Department, I think it was about five years ago. And we formalized that relationship with the RFA last year. And some of the reasons why we did that was to ensure that the partnership that we had started to develop was enduring and long-term, and that we could get some more financial and operational and administrative efficiencies out of it. It was to ensure that there was governance, I'm sorry, geographical governance on the RFA Board which I know is a very important topic to the city council as well. And so we were very intentional about it. It would have been way, way easier for us to have merged the two fire districts together. But a lot of that was to get the governance and to get those efficiencies, but also to set the table. and to allow it for Bothell to consider joining the RFA as well. That was all intentional by our board. I think we're at a similar point between Bothell and the RFA. We're at this point where we have partnered on many different things. I think we've collaborated on many different things, and I'm going to talk about a few of them here. But I think we're at a similar point of looking to the long term and formalizing that relationship. I'll give you some examples of what we've partnered on over the even decades. Starting with our ALS program is as commissioner admin, you know, mentioned, uh, he, you know, he was a bottle firefighter that became a shoreline, uh, paramedic. Uh, that is not an opportunity that is open to everybody in the county. And we were intentional about that a long time ago about making sure that we were representing our communities. We have a mobile integrated healthcare program, which we're looking at expanding. And we're partnering across the, well, it was across all of the North End, but actively with Bothell and Shoreline and Kenmore Lake Forest Park. And even looking at doing some partnerships with Kirkland. We train together. We have a training consortium that trains all of our personnel. And we work out of Station 51 in Kenmore to do that. As I've mentioned before, we have our executive level services ILA that I believe has been very good for both communities, or all of our communities, but both fire departments. We have partnered on our fleet service. We now maintain the Bothell fleet, the heavy apparatus, the fire engines, the ladder trucks and aid cars. And we have alignment through our operations and common language, operational language in the CBA and policies. that also allows us to act more interactive and collaboratively on calls and even during training and all that. And finally, we're also starting to, our day shift BCs at Shoreline help manage the staffing management program to allow for better collaboration, again, when we are managing staffing levels for the apparatus and payroll. And finally, I just believe that this is a long time coming. This is a logical evolution for us to ensure our long-term continuity and sustainability, and so I'm really hoping that we can continue moving forward. Thanks.

Thank you, Chief Cowan. Mr. City Manager, could you provide us with the Bothell perspective?

Yeah, thanks, Bruce. And that makes it sound like a debate, which fortunately it isn't, because a lot of the things that really are aligned, as the chief mentioned, you know, I had my menu of what are the things that we've done? No, it's exactly right. What it shows is that we've been working together, and I think that's such an important part of of what we need to consider is the the things again from before even my first day that I was aware of our partnership with Shoreline what I wanted to just share is that I think as I've heard about the history of Bothell considering operations of the fire department and whether or not to consider a regional model what's really has been striking to me when I hear those stories is that historically there's been a temptation I'll say of the city focusing on one option that's in front of us and then deciding is that the one or not. And so intentionally as we started having these conversations back in 2023, the decision was to take a step back and look at all legally available options. So we weren't just gonna consider is annexing into an RFA the right thing to do. We wanted to look at what are all the different things that Washington state law allows the city of Bothell to consider And we started with the list of eight, and we've pretty much narrowed down to two. One of them is annexing into the Shoreline RFA, and the other is remaining as Bothell Fire. So those are the things that are in front of us, and what the Chief mentioned about our regional partnerships are such a big part of that. The two that I'd add is, our City Council was considering what the right next step might be to explore and getting into a potential regional partnership are the two things that we have in common that aren't necessarily just a one-to-one relationship with our agencies but that is our NORCOM dispatching as well as our the Deputy Mayor mentioned RACER, our regional crisis response system of which we share among the five North King County cities of which, if you include Bothell 4, are part of this RFA. And the reason that's important to us too is that for the commissioners to know, up until very recently, the city was continuing to dispatch our police services through our own dispatch center here in Bothell. And so our fire services were dispatched by NORCOM and Bothell was dispatched for fire. And so our residents, when they had a 911 experience, were greeted with the question when they call 911, police or fire? As you can imagine, as you're having an emergency, that's not really a question in our brain processes. What you need is you need help right away. And so as we made the decision to transition our services and get out of the business of dispatching directly for police and moving to NORCOM, one of the things that was certainly imperative to our council is that we wanted to continue on in partnership with another agency that was dispatched by NORCOM. And then again, the other piece is that alignment that I firmly believe as the executive board member for RACER, I think we're gonna see just more and more alignment between the different responses that can be made from what has been an emergency management traditional police and fire response for people who need help to having a crisis responder helping them that wear a different type of badge. So we're looking to how do we build and strengthen those relationships as well. So the last thing that I'll just note is that in terms of what the city has maintained a commitment to as we consider how to make this decision is that the city council approved some guiding principles that included We really want to make sure we're maintaining or improving response times, which you're going to see part of that conversation when the chief covers service levels. We want to have a mind towards long-term financial sustainability. And I think we've heard that in a couple ways, both in public comment, but also the mayor mentioning the importance of governance to the city in terms of knowing, we know what decisions the council would be able to make, but in an RFA, we look to this board as well. Be able to provide stable and executive leadership and administrative support. We've been extremely fortunate to have the leadership of Chief Cowan, who is an exceptional fire chief, and we're very thankful for his working with us over the last two years, as well as adapting to future service demands and regional needs. And I think as we look at the growing needs for fire response, again, there's an aspect here of size and the right size matters, and being able to have the resources to move into the right place is important. And the other piece though, as well, that does not go unmentioned is transparency. And so for anyone watching, but also for the board members who are here, if you haven't had a chance to look, we have maintained the information that the city council considered along the way in this journey. So if you go to Bothellwa.gov, our webpage, and search fire services study, you'll find our webpage that has all that information. And we'll continue to keep that up as we, make next step decisions through this journey. Thanks, Bruce.

Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Before we move to the next step in the next phase of the agenda here, the discussion items, which is really the heart of tonight, and we're doing great on time. I wanted to ask, are there any clarifying questions about what you've heard about the process about the facts before you? Okay, great. All right, so we have three kind of large areas to discuss tonight. Service level considerations. plan of governance, and financial considerations. In each of these three sections, we're going to follow a kind of a similar order. The staff is going to give a short presentation to frame the issue. Then I'm going to call for clarifying questions so that we can make sure that all the information is on the table, and that'll be followed with a policy discussion where folks then are likely to advocate different positions. Any questions on that process? Okay, all right, well, we're gonna get started right away with the first discussion item, which is service level considerations. Chief Cowan.

All right, thank you. So to first start off, Shoreline Fire Department, RFA, is an all hazards fire department organization. We've... We were established back in 1939. We've been serving ALS since the late 70s. We not only do ALS and BLS on the medical side and fire suppression, We have Tech Rescue, Swimmers, our MIH team, Mobile Integrated. I apologize right now if I use acronyms, by the way. Yeah, thank you. I will try and do better. Our Mobile Integrated Healthcare team, we have our own training division, fleet division, facilities division, IT division, HR division, finance division. The only thing we don't have is HAZMAT, but Bothell has that, so we're in good shape. We're in a very good financial position. I've worked really hard over the last 13 years to come out of some interesting situations that I inherited when I got to Shoreline. But we're in a very good financial position, and we continue to do very good long-range planning, especially on our capital replacement strategy. I'm gonna get into some of the fire service level considerations. It's in your packet. I'm not gonna read them all. I'm gonna read a few of these which I feel are a little bit higher topic or maybe a higher point to make. So starting off with stronger and more consistent emergency services. The RFA, if we were to join together, would have a standardized higher capacity fire prevention, public education, clinical oversight, training, and tech rescue services across the RFA. We also would have improved recruitment competitiveness for both operational and administrative personnel. And Bothell would have full access to the RFA's dedicated training facility in Kenmore at Station 51, which is significantly expanding training capabilities currently limited at Station 42 and Bothell Fire Department facilities. And I'm just going to go into these different groups, but if you have any questions about any of this, please let me know. We would also have an expanded workforce capacity and leadership development. by increased promotional and career advancement opportunities for firefighters and officers. We'd have greater administrative and technical support capacity, including information technology, analytics, and operational support functions, and expanded succession planning opportunities through a larger employee base and broader candidate pool. I'm sorry, I should have probably said that. We're in attachment one, page one. Well, in your packet, it's probably a different number. Attachment one. I didn't find it either. Eric had to tell me. Well, I'll just keep on moving along. If you have any questions on any of this, please let me know. As for greater financial stability and sustainability, we'd have a larger tax base to distribute operational and capital costs across a broader group of property owners, particularly for future fire station investments in South Bothell. And I'm going to talk about that in a little more detail in just a minute. We'd also have long-term operational efficiencies through economies of scale and enhanced bonding capacity, supporting lower overall levy rates over time. We'd have reduction of duplicate administrative and support functions. And finally, potential improvement in the community's insurance protection classification from a Class 3 to a Class 2, which is an improvement, which may result in lower insurance premiums for property owners. Shoreline right now is a class two bottles of class three there's There's only one class one in the state and we are in the top I want to say three percent in the state with the class two and the class one in Seattle Any questions on any of that? Councilman

That's okay. I have a first name. Around the questions of the class three to class two, it says may result in lower insurance premiums. Is there a chance that that may not play out down the road? And is it possible that Bothell joining wouldn't actually pull? Is there a chance that it might pull the class two down and not pull class three up?

It's a good question. I'll start with the cost savings. Especially with commercial and multifamily property owners, I can almost say with pretty 100% certainty that you would see lower insurance premiums. Single-family residence, it depends on what insurance company you work with. We're on the second half of that question. We're in the middle of a Class 2, so we've got a little bit of play. But in reviewing how Bothell operates and the infrastructure and so forth here, I believe that we can actually, all of us, be in the Class 2 somewhere. I don't believe that we would get pulled up to a Class 3, but that would yet to be determined. I have Deflected and deferred are we are about to get rated in Bothell For the last nine months to a year. I've been wait telling them please wait, please wait Please wait so that because they only do it every but they're trying to do it every you know three or four years was really about every five or six years and So I've been waiting until we've had this decision made So that I can hopefully get an immediate rating and get to a class two for Bothell as well.

I

yet to be determined. I can't guarantee a class two, but I believe I have some pretty good confidence that we'd be in class two altogether.

Are you done with your presentation?

Uh, one more thing.

Okay. Let's not take questions until you're done. Okay.

Uh, enhancement of our ALS program, our advanced life support program, a consolidation of all our pair making is under one single governing authority would be a benefit. And my final point, increase regional influence, we'd have enhanced competitiveness for state and federal grant funding opportunities. As a larger entity, we would be able to levy that and leverage that through our grant opportunities. Okay, now I'll take questions.

Okay, thank you very much. Thanks for that great presentation.

I do still want to talk about the UTGO, but let's talk about these first, I guess.

Okay, all right. Are there clarifying questions or questions people have about the chief's presentation?

Yes. Thank you. This is super basic, but for enhanced competitiveness for grants, is that because it'd be one bigger department versus two smaller entities?

Correct. when they give the grants, I'm trying to stay away from the mic. If they give grants, they look at the impact and the bigger the entity, a lot of times they'll say they're more bang for the buck, they weigh those within the classification, they weigh them heavier and more likely to award them. Awesome, thank you.

There's no such thing as a basic question tonight, we're all learning. Any other questions about service delivery? Yes.

Thank you. Jenny Aldrich here. I'm wondering, is it possible on the service level considerations to also add additional information about RACER, NORCOM, and the training consortium, as well as some maybe basics around the MIH unit? Because I think without those included here, we're not actually seeing the full picture.

That's a great point, and I know you're very in tune with this part of our service delivery. We are looking at expanding the MIH program, the Mobile Integrated Healthcare program, to also work more collaboratively with RACER and with our crisis center and expanding it. We're also looking – I have some really great people that have – really interesting and cool vision for the future and it's a multi-phased approach that when when people go to conferences and seminars sometimes there's some really good things that can come out of that and um you're i think you're going to see a lot of fire departments shoreline included in in ramping up a lot more on the social services side not just with racer but within our mih program and how we operate

I'm glad to hear it. One additional connection point I would make is with the Washington Thriving Strategic Plan for Behavioral Health. You might want to figure out how those pieces connect to that work. They're also figuring out that too. So it would be an ongoing conversation over the next few years.

Just one thing I'll add to in addition to what the chief noted is that in both of the additional agencies of which our entities are part of we actually it's what currently and would continue to have representation together in that on the NORCOM board that the City of Bothell is a principal agency and so we do have a seat on the board as does Shoreline Fire and so we're currently currently Chief Suberluck our police chief is serving on the board Claire mentioned as deputy city manager she's in week six we'll probably give her to like week ten and then she'll transition back into that seat our previous deputy was the incoming president of the board so Claire is fortunate that that wasn't a week one thing and then the second thing is is that while the for racer the board as you probably know is made up of the five principal cities that are members and additional cities that joined would be part of it there is an operations board of which Shoreline participates so the city would continue to have operations representation for both for our police department and would be covered through shorelines participation, through the fire department. And I think then putting those things together, it gives us common conversations. And when we get to governance, we can talk about where there's some overlap there. But then also, as I've talked to my peers at cities who are part of RACER and are covered by the RFA, those check-ins with the Chief of Shoreline, and being able to have conversations too about where there's alignment. So there's some things there too that might seem like we currently have in common only because of the contracted ILA that we're part of for administrative services, but just wanted to assure for everybody that those are actually, those are commitments that would be true agnostic of the ILA that we have together for fire leadership.

Thank you. Other clarifying questions? Anyone online? No. So this is where we would normally go into a policy discussion, but I'm not so sure that there's a policy. Is there a policy issue you want to bring up, Chief?

I wanted to talk about the UTGO. Yes, please do talk about that. Our stations. I didn't want to have it in the other part of this conversation because it's a big enough topic that there will probably be questions on it specifically to that. As you all know, growth is occurring. Population is increasing strain on our services is ever increasing and we're asked to do more and This is not a new phenomenon to shoreline or to Bothell but we are seeing growth around the city that is straining our services and in fact our downtown station 42 is what is what I call unreliable, and by that I mean that they are busy enough, that they're not in service in quarters enough to make that station perform at the higher level that we all expect it to. This has been a known issue for decades, and it's growing every year. And so one of the things that we are working on as a strategic plan in the city is to look at building a South Bothell station. This is very like the situation that we have in Shoreline, in the northwest corner in Richmond Beach. It's not at the same level, but it's very similar in the sense that we have calls that are creating a need for that station to have some support in some way. So one of the things that, I'm just being transparent, one of the things that is a high priority us as we move forward if we are coming together as an RFA is to do a UTGO, which is an Unlimited Tax General Obligation Bond. It's what you normally would call a capital bond. It's voter approved. It's a property assessment. And as a whole RFA, this minimizes the impacts. And I can't quote you exact numbers or anything like that, but as a new RFA across all of our communities and all of our cities, It homogenizes everything and makes the impacts very, you know, as little as it can be and lessens the impacts to our taxpayers. And so it's something that when we talk about levels of service, that is a big, it's a significant increase in the performance that we'll be able to have in Bothell, Kenmore, and Shoreline. when we build the two stations. And so that it would be an intent for us to go out probably early this next year to do UTGO as well. So that would be the biggest level of service improvements when we talk about these considerations.

I'll just say that you answered my 16-year-old's question because I was told, like, first I had to report what the topic of the meeting is tonight, and then there were questions. And the number one question was about the functionality of Station 42 and maintaining a high level of service there and helping them be able to continue doing that work. So thank you.

One comment I want to make is that the capital bonds, The current capital bond that Bothell has will remain even if we become an RFA, if they join our RFA. That bond will stay to Bothell taxpayers the same way North Shore's capital bond is. I just wanted to make that point.

That's one of those financial questions.

Yeah. Other questions? Yes. Go ahead. Oh, Mr. Mayor.

Yeah, I do think it's important to have that conversation, though, and like really drill down on that because our residents are already paying and will continue to pay a levy and a bond for some time. And if we go out to ask them for another levy and a bond, I think we're going to have to have a really cohesive story to tell them about why it makes sense financially. So as we as we go through and have these conversations, like I mean, I love the sound of a South Bothell fire station is somebody who lives in South Bothell. Again, not just me, all my compadres, higher surface level is good. But I want to make sure that we think this through and get ahead of it when we go out for a ballot measure to give it the best chance of succeeding. So we need to really think that through.

I have done some cursory analysis to try and figure out, to conceptualize what those numbers look like. And in today's dollars, not next year's dollars or anything else, and just looking at the fire stations, it's probably about six to six and a half cents per thousand over a 10-year bond. Again, please, please, please do not quote me on any of these numbers. This is very cursory. And That would be a dramatically less amount than what it would be if Bothell was to go on its own. One way or another, you know, Bothell needs to look at building a south Bothell station. Shoreline needs to look at a northwest corner station. And it's a multi, if I had my way, it would be a multifaceted or pronged approach on how to fund it with LTGOs, which is limited tax general obligation bonds. We have one currently in Shoreline to help pay off the Station 63, which we use impact fees to pay for, which you can do. I would try and take that same approach in South Bothell, and that would lessen that number if we were able to do so. So there are different things that we can do to lessen the impact. I am absolutely aware. And I wish it was different, but I understand the impacts to the Bothell taxpayers, and I completely agree with you that we have to have a coherent message about what that means.

I had a question that just came up from something the Chief said. I'm sorry. Obviously... Bothell wouldn't get fire impact fees anymore. Like, that's something that the RFA would get. Like, would those change? Like, does Shoreline Fire have higher fire impact fees? Are those something that, like, is that a decision that you would make as the executive? Like, is that a board decision? Like, what does that look like? Great question.

And Quan and I have already had a conversation about me being the Bothell fire chief about approaching the council later this year about reviewing impact fees here. Shorelines is quite a bit more. And it's been a great boon for us to minimize or even negate the impacts to our taxpayers, you know, to pay for the impacts from new developments that are occurring, the mitigation of those impacts. So I truly believe in the impact fee program because it puts the weight on new developers that are coming in and profiting from the infrastructure, you know, that occurs. And there is a balance there for sure between encouraging new development and all that. But I also believe that it shouldn't be on our current taxpayers that have already been paying into that infrastructure for decades to pay for these impacts that are coming in. Station 42 is a busy station. And this is regardless of joining the RFA or not, this needs to be looked at.

One thing that I just want to surface just so we're all on the same page, our city council has been really at the forefront and leading on getting new housing built because we have a severe housing shortage in the area. And, you know, when we have expenses that go on new construction, ultimately the developers don't pay for those, the new residents do. And anything we do to add cost to new housing makes housing more expensive. So, like, I would love to see kind of some numbers on that and email later. I don't need to know now on what that looks like because that does cause me some concern.

And I didn't fully answer your question. Regardless of the RFA, this is a city decision. Oh, okay. This is not my decision. I'm sorry. I kind of glossed over that. This is a city decision. The impact fees cannot be collected by the fire department, fire district, RFA, doesn't matter. Okay. The cities are the ones that are empowered to collect that money.

Okay.

So it would... I will make a recommendation to the city council, you know, and then it'll be a city council decision.

And then we have to decide if we want to be like good neighbors or not. Well, we have that because we want to be good neighbors, but we also want to get a lot of housing built.

Yeah, I am for more housing, but I think that there's a sweet spot, a compromise in here.

We'll try to make it up for you with quantity. How about that?

Thank you. It's really interesting, the impact fee discussion, just because I know it's not the same, but the North Shore School District spans multiple cities, and not every city collects and passes through impact fees. And that is a topic of discussion for people. So making sure that we're all kind of, I don't know that we can all be in lockstep as individual cities, but making sure there's comparable efforts amongst the cities as part of an RFA would be important, I think. I was going to ask a different question before the mayor got me off course. Okay. Talking about a potential future bond, I think that's great. I think it helps tell people, you know, we want to see system expansion, not just change how it's run. but what i didn't see in the financials is and i realize it sounds like we don't have one yet but an estimate because i think it would be irresponsible to go to voters and say approve this it costs this much and then in a few years say now it will cost that much if we're going to talk about it by talking about the new stations we want to build we should be able to give some kind of estimate as we talk about that so it's not just things will happen new stations

I did ask for an estimate from, we have an architect and engineering firm on retainer, and I did ask for a very gross estimate of what a station would cost in today's dollars. And it's roughly about $20 million for the station, the size of station that we'd be looking at in South Bothell. If you throw another $4 or $5 million on there for a property, it's going to be roughly, I estimate, about a $25 million project.

Yeah. And that makes sense. And for me as a homeowner, I'm like, well, that's more than my house. So I think just the ability to go to people and say, you know, if you vote for it right now, it's X amount per thousand dollars. We expect that that will go up to Y amount, you know, if we pursue adding more stations, just so we can, I don't want people to feel like they voted for one thing and the rate was what they were quoted at the time. And then they go and they vote like it becomes more. So it sounds like it would be a little more, not a crazy amount more, but I just want to be able to say that by the time people are voting.

And that's why I'm talking about is to be transparent. I don't want anybody to feel like I'm surprising anybody or anything. I don't think, yeah.

And I think, Councilmember, if you go back to our May 5th conversation, too, I mean, that is a big part of where I think as we have information, what the city can put out to our voters, it's absolutely right, is that we need to be upfront about what are the investments that Bothell needs to consider and where does the regional approach benefit um residents from everything from levels of service to the bottom line and um again as we think then about what would be the impact of what does it look like to build a new station in south bothell if we stay bottle fire versus if we're part of an rfa but also recognizing of Part of where I think your questions from both bodies really help is thinking about that story on so many factors, and in this case in levels of service too, but of where are the benefits, no matter where you live in the district, and knowing that ultimately the decisions can be made by both voters wanting to know where is it in the city.

And I want to compliment the whole RFA for the way that you shared good information in the recent election. Like, to be clear, that was really admirable. So I have no concerns. I just wanted to get that on the list of things.

It's obviously very clear that when we talk about service delivery, we also know that it's entwined with our financial discussion that we're going to be having in a short time. We have another question here from the mayor.

Real quick, is that six cents per thousand number? Is that an annual number that you gave me?

That's in today's dollars if we were looking at it roughly. Okay.

But that's annually on the property tax. Correct.

So six and a half cents assessment per year per thousand. Thank you.

Other questions? Yes. Commissioner Pratt.

Yeah. Sorry, not a question, but more of kind of some perspective. Citizen of Kenmore. fire captain in city of Kirkland fire department and so I provide operational service to South Bothell on a consistent basis and recognize the pattern of increasing call volumes and so as call volumes increase the service level out of station 42 decreases right and so city of Bothell eventually is going to have to provide service with an additional station down there It's not a question of if, it's when. And so with movement towards the RFA, that tax burden on your citizens is significantly less than if you did it by yourself. So just operationally, it has to happen. And you already know that. So just a little bit of perspective there.

Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, Commissioner Fischer.

These things. When does the current bond here in Bothell sunset?

Yeah, that's one of the things that we'll be covering here later. But it will be fully retired in 2040. 4-0. 2040. Yes.

just want to make a couple other comments with chief brought up is that mitigation fees that were collected in Bothell will have to be spent in the Bothell city limits and that will go directly towards it we put it towards building that new station but the rest of that cost of the station would be spread through the whole RFA so Like we said, there will be a significant cost decrease to the Bothell citizens. And mitigation fees that you do collect, whatever that will be, will be able to be spent. Not necessarily just on the station, it might be on it. Isn't it equipment also? There's requirements, state requirements on that, correct?

So you're going to laugh at me. It's quicker to build a fire station than to build a fire engine right now. So one of the things that after I got the quote for six and a half cents, I started thinking about what else do we might, we want to put on there and we might want to look at a couple of fire engines and some other things as well. So, To your point, I would like to try and keep it very focused because this is going to end up being in front of the voters and recognizing that it's going to be doubling up on a capital bond. So I'm very sensitive to that. So I want to make sure that it's clean and intentional about what we're trying to do, but there might be some other things that we'll want to put on there. But that would be a board decision.

Okay. Okay. I think we need to pick up the pace a little bit. I want to just throw this out here because we need to ask ourselves this question when we are talking about every discussion. What do the voters need to understand and trust about service delivery? That's the question before this group when it comes to communicating with your citizens. And I think... I'm sure the chief and others have ideas about that. But I'd be interested in your perspective. What do you think that the voters need to understand and trust about service delivery under the RFA versus standing alone as a boff of fire department? Is it response times? Is it a new station? What is it?

I kind of feel like we just had that conversation. So if I don't have anything else to say, it's because I've been talking about that.

I was just trying to summarize there. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. I think we've got enough then. All right.

I'll bite if you want me to.

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

Okay. Um, I think it's a combination of cost efficiencies and maintaining and or improving upon our service delivery that it it's really both coming together. It's not about, um, saving money. Um, but it is about making sure that, um, our firefighters have what they need to do their job well and, um, and that the community is receiving the service that they deserve. And it just so happens that there are some cost efficiencies that come along with that, and that could be a really great thing for all of us. How did I do?

Excellent. And this is kind of leading up to taking a temperature check here, so I apologize. But how do people feel about that? How do you feel about that statement? Does that summarize kind of how you think what the voters need to understand and trust and Does that make sense? Okay. So I think we're ready to move unless there's any other final comments to the next section of our discussion, which is plan of governance. And Mr. City Manager.

Thank you so much, Bruce. And I think we can make up a little bit of time just in the setup for this one because I'm pretty confident that the board has had conversations and I know the council has had conversations about a plan of governance going forward. And this is one where I definitely, when former Chief Rison's words come to me, this is, an area where it makes the most sense so um as uh you the the board you have more experience at this of having recently gone through coming together as north shore fire and shoreline fire and figuring out how we're going to work together but also knowing that there might be other things coming including whether or not Bothell would annex into the RFA. And so what we wanted to tee up for you tonight is to have that discussion and really to put a point on it. The city council, as we've had conversations here in Bothell have been very clear to me in that as the mayor mentioned in the lead up to this, there's a strong importance of as we talk to our voters about changing the representation and how operations gets done. I think, again, operationally, the chief has given some great background of how the level of service is going to look. And as our city council, they also want to be able to look to this community and be able to assure them of they still have some level of say in how are things going to be operated. And we see this, just for the board's understanding, we see this in other places too. Most notably, a lot of times as residents, we don't necessarily think about who's making decisions about our schools. And so even if you put your name on the ballot, you probably know that that the school board is represented by some other people, but our city council will get questions about school decisions from time to time. And we can certainly presume that there will be questions that come to the Bothell City Council about fire operations from time to time as well. So being able to be clear of saying, here's how we still have voice for you. So I want to turn your attention to, in the packet, Attachment number two on page 10, the chief has provided a rough sketch based on the conversations that have been having. He's been paying attention here in Bothell as well as for the board of what a proposed plan could look like, building off of the existing shoreline and North Shore Fire Department regional fire plan, what changes would need to be made. essentially what the council has expressed interest in it was would be three seats we know you currently have 10 members and i think there's some concept going forward but not necessarily a timeline of reducing that number but really i think for the discussion tonight that is is what are the what are the concerns what are the thoughts and um while we're getting good practice of having a joint meeting tonight, what would the future look like of the Shoreline RFA governing board having meetings if Bothell were to join?

Thanks, Bruce. Thank you. All right. With that, are there clarifying questions about governance? Yes.

In the introductions, we talked about how this is kind of a long time coming, lots of different iterations of this discussion. And I'm noting that there's been a lot of change in the governance structure in the recent merger. And so if we proceed forward, then we add three members of the Bothell City Council. Are you in discussions with any other city or area about further annexation that would then shake up the board more?

No.

Okay. Thank you.

Another question, Mr. Mayor.

I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this because I am cognizant that I'm sitting around with elected fire commissioners, but as we talk about, obviously there's no timeline for reducing the size of the board because that's a board decision and that has yet to be made. But is there a concept of what is reasonable or what we would outline as potential times that would start a conversation around that? As we look at getting it to nine.

I can't speak for the board on this. Commissioner Fisher wants to take it on. We've talked about this because of the size of the board and the potential of Bothell joining that. And having a board of 13 is a bit. But as far as the timeline, we have not set that. That would be a governing board decision. I can't speak for the board.

Do any board members have thoughts? Is that conversations that you've had?

We as a board have not really pinpointed anything. We've kind of bounced it around a little bit that maybe someday. But there's no timeline that's been put to it. Right now, because the RFA is still rather new, the two entities joining, think that all board members well I speak for myself would like equal representation for the time being so no there has not been any talk of attrition or anything like that just you know sometime in the near future possibly people turn off term off and you don't want to run for their seat again yeah we're not quite sure how that's gonna work so again we haven't totally yeah I get it it's kind of on the table or you know there but hasn't been talked about

Go ahead, Josh.

Mayor, I would add that while a timeline isn't there, one of the values that we have is that all the jurisdictions are represented and represented well. And so however we get to that point, it's proportional representation for Bothell, Kenmore Lake Forest Park, and Shoreline.

I'm going to ask something that I haven't talked about with Matt or Kyle yet. So I'm sorry. I don't like surprises. I totally agree with the proportional thing. And honestly, that's why I'm asking. Because us is, you know, three seats out of 13 is very different than three seats out of nine. And there's... probably a legal question to this too but like is there a way that until it goes down that like we would have five seats on the board and then that would go down to three when it goes down to nine so the proportion and the math works out super well because three into nine and five into 15 go the same amount every meeting would be a quorum of the city council which would be pretty problematic we just have to notice it i'm just saying no

I feel like this is a pretty significant issue that might be our first parking lot issue. There's some stuff here we're not going to solve tonight because there's some legal issues, right? But it's a great, great issue. So, I mean, we're going to continue this discussion, but I want to parking lot this because there's going to be follow-up.

I don't expect resolution on this tonight, just to be super clear. Like, I'm not—

Deanna, do you have any legal input on this topic of governance?

From a statutory perspective, there is flexibility to have as large of a board as the parties determine to be necessary. There's no restriction, another way to say it. So the only thing that I can think of That would be a consideration that would not be an issue if there were three members of the Bothell City Council is exactly the issue that was raised, which would be in the event that we would have a quorum of the City of Bothell City Council every time that the full RFA board met. And it would need to be noticed and we would just need to be just very careful about how it's handled. It makes it a little more challenging from a procedural aspect, but legally speaking, it's permitted. I can't think of why it wouldn't be.

And I think from the parking lot perspective, something to consider in how this is solved, too. I've shared with our council before, and I'm not proposing this, please. But the jurisdiction I was part of, previous to Bothell, was a member of an RFA. And I think for those very same reasons, in terms of maintaining proportionality and thinking about quorum, how they handled it was there was three council members who served on the board and the city manager. So it's then you looked towards non-elected representation to avoid quorum issues um but clearly you would want a deputy city manager obviously no i'm just kidding no i mean i think we would look at we would look at what uh what are both bodies looking to accomplish look at options and i think there's probably a lot of more sophisticated methods of solving it but i think these are issues that have been faced before so it's always the good news that there's nothing new under the sun and claire gets to go to some more meetings

And I will add, oh, just really quickly, sorry, I will add to that just to follow up on Kyle's point is that the only restriction within the RFA statute is that members of the RFA Board of Commissioners do need to be elected individuals. And so they will, we will need to pull from the city council and also the original jurisdictions who feed into the RFA. The only other option is, of course, commissioner districts, which I know we're not talking about. That's not on the table right now, but individuals in an RFA case do need to be elected officials. Kyle, sorry, you can't do it.

And I was also going to add that to reduce the number of five and five from the legacy North Shore and Shoreline Fire Districts, it would take a vote of those communities to reduce down to three each. It's not something that can be done without a vote.

I think in our initial discussion of potential governance model, we had originally thought, well, it would make sense for Bothell to have five since... Shoreline and North Shore each have five, but we just felt that that would be burdensome because of the quorum and the issues that that brings. I guess the other thought would be, you know, North Shore actually represents two cities. North Shore Fire District is Lake Forest Park and Kenmore. And there's five commissioners there, but it's actually two cities. So it's not really, you know, Shoreline is a city, Kenmore is a city, Lake Forest Park is a city, Bothell is a city. So it's still not exactly, you know, Kenmore doesn't have three members and Lake Forest Park doesn't have three members on the RFA board. I think the key thing to think about would be just ensuring that Bothell has an adequate voice and say, and I think there's, it's seldom that votes, I don't know, Votes are generally aimed for a consensus base, so I think that Bothells would have a voice and a say, but I doubt that they would find themselves getting outvoted on an issue that benefits one part of the district over another part of the district.

was just curious mayor if um if the bothell city council had thoughts or interests in an appropriate timeline to get to that point

No, not really. I mean, I have no specific concerns here. Like, this is just like my general anxiety, like giving up taxing authority in my city, like and just making sure that we have a say in that. I mean, the timeline is the board's decision, and I am not currently on that board. So like, I don't want to be presumptuous and set expectations for you, especially as we look to send this to the voters like i really want this to be a productive good relationship i i'm not really interested in rushing anything but i just do want to make sure that our residents have proportional representation on the board what do the voters need to understand and trust about governance

representation. That's right. So we're going to parking lot this issue. And, um, do you guys have what you need? Uh, okay. Do your work. It has the council and the commissioners. You feel like you've had all the conversation you need on this issue.

Sorry, I've got a quick question with regards to the revision. Um, so is what's stated to get rid of the need for Changing of the size of the board to not go to the voters. Does that make sense? For what stated So under section 5 it's got adopted and then revision is the second bullet down in the box It says the governance and organizational structures section of the plan may be amended by a majority vote of the RFA governance board And what's crossed out says the governance and organization structure section of the RFA plan is subject to amendment or revision only by submission of a revised RFA plan to the electorate for approval.

And I can speak to that because that was one of my clarifying just comments, just an effort to clarify that language, because later on in the RFA plan, at the end of that section, it says that that section can be amended by majority vote of the RFA board. So it would be, I think it would be worth digging into a little bit more, just looking, you know, hearing your comments, Chief Cohen, about the, whether a vote is necessary to switch from a board of 10, as you currently, as the RFA currently structures with five and five and the original legacy partners, if you will, To something that's different. With still using that same structure and not going to. Commissioner districts, commissioner districts would require a vote for sure. But I thought there were examples out there of other boards. altering the size and that composition of their RFA board without having a vote of the full RFA. So I think it would be worth exploring that a little bit more and looking at other examples to see what exactly is necessary from a voter perspective, given the original approval that happened with the Shoreline RFA.

Thanks, Deanna. Maybe offline we can have some more conversation about it.

Yeah, no, I think that would be really helpful, just given that historical, you know, what voters approved originally, you want to make sure that we uphold the original voter intent.

Sounds good.

Thank you. Anything else?

I just have one quick question that I'm not sure fits in here, but I'm not sure it fits in anywhere, so I'm going to ask it here. You know, as you guys have come together and formed a new organization pretty recently, Like, has there been any conversation, especially as the RFA looks to expand around changing the name so it's not named after one of the cities in the RFA and is something that more accurately represents the area? Oh, did I hit a source bot? There's lots of giggles.

We originally talked about changing the name five years ago when we were joining the North Shore and Shoreline Fire Departments together. What we found was that, surprisingly, that a lot of the legacy North Shore personnel, if not all of them, were happy to become Shoreline Fire, the name. And one of the things that we struggle with is what would that name be if we were to change, because most of the time fire departments are named after a geographical location, and we don't want to alienate anybody, whether it's Shoreline, Bothell, Snohomish County. So we have not discussed this as a board. It was something that we had talked about many years ago, but since then we have not discussed it.

Cool. To be clear, this is very far down any issues of concern I have. I was just curious, and this seemed like a good time to bring it up.

Eric, go ahead.

This makes us smile because this is something that we did originally talk about. And originally, it seemed like it would make more sense to come up with some kind of a new name. But I think what it boils down to also, ultimately, is that... most because i i've experienced this when i was working in a baffle fire station wearing a shoreline patch and then showing up in a rig that said shoreline is that people would maybe ask you a question you know hey how come that says shoreline and you'd explain it but most people who live in the district really care more about the fact that you show up on a prompt manner and respond to their emergency than they really do about the sign on the On the truck or the name. So I think the name is less of a big issue than, you know, than we originally thought it was. It's mainly just that you provide the service. Yeah. Hey, look, it's red and it's here.

Yeah.

Okay. And I would also add, too, that we didn't just wholesale make changes to the North Shore fire engines. And, you know, they still say North Shore fire engine or fire department on it. And there is a pretty significant cost, actually, in changing names. So it's something that we would have to be pretty intentional about. And it's just one of those things, like you said, it's a little lower issue right now.

So let's see if I can summarize this. We have a parking lot issue here around governance. And is... Is the sort of desire to have staff come back with a couple of options? What does a 5x5-3, what does a 5x5-5 look like? And what are the puts and takes on each of these for this group to consider? Does that make sense?

Yeah, I would just say in a more general sense, like I don't want to look around the room at my potential future colleagues and be like, so who's going to quit and win?

Yeah.

But at the same time, I want to make sure that our residents have proportional representation. So some way to accomplish that is what I'm most interested in.

Okay, great. All right. We're going to move to the final discussion item here, which is financial discussions, which is probably going to be the most in-depth we have. I anticipate we'll have some parking lot issues here because there's quite a few things that we want to discuss. There are kind of three big, big issues, and some of these we've already touched upon a little bit. There's reserve and capital budget alignment issues. there's existing levy and bond issues, and then there's projected impacts to Bothell residents. So I'm gonna turn it over to the city manager and let him brief us on this, and then we'll open up the discussion.

Thank you, Bruce. Real quick, I am sorry, but is there any chance we could take like a five minute break?

Five minutes, let's go. Let's do it.

So that'll be, we'll start back up at 6.56.

If I did, then I will officially call things to order.

Alright. I'm looking at faces. I think we're getting close.

So I rolled my sleeves up for the last half hour. Let's get through this. Let's get through this financial discussion. All right, Kyle. All right.

Thank you, Bruce. And to everyone following along, in your packet, there is certainly more information. And Bruce alluded to 14 questions earlier. And in this case, a number of those questions are really what made up the primary aspect of this. tonight's meeting, and then there's some additional in the attachments. But what we're focused on for financial discussion tonight are really three, which is what's the impact of Bothell annexing into the RFA in terms of existed voter levy and bond measures, what are the operational reserve and capital funding considerations that need to be decided, and what is the productive financial impact to Bothell residents? So these are the three things that really seem to rise to the top for our elected leadership. We've touched a little bit on the question number one under financial discussions earlier about there was a question about the bond for fire stations. So there's really two things in Bothell and then one in Shoreline. For Bothell, we do have a public safety levy, which helps fund some police operations, fire operations, as well as We do charge our racer portion to that, which has been discussed earlier. That levy runs through 2031. And for all of the voter-approved measures that currently exist, by law, by statute, and by morality, would continue to be collected by the jurisdiction that it's been paid for. And this is a situation of where Bothell then would be paying the shoreline, the equivalent of what we collect. And so you'll see that. The public safety levy then expires at the end of 2031. And so then starting in 2031, the 10 positions that are currently funded through the levy, that would go off of the Bothell taxpayer books and it would be up to the board to determine how to balance balance your books and then in terms of the capital bonds again Shoreline has a bond that was retired in 2025 and another the North Shore Fire District that a bond is expected to be retired at the end of this year 2026 for the city are two fire stations that are being paid for that would go through 2040 and again that would be collected here in Bothell and then the funds would follow over to Shoreline. Something else that I want to mention, and this really gets to question three a little bit too, is that as Chief Cowan would explain, because of the timing of when we would potentially go to voters of doing this in a November ballot, it'll be past the point of flagging to the counties of a shift in where collection happens. So really for year one and even portions of year two potentially, really what we would see in terms of a collection of of all rates from Bothell taxpayers would be business as usual. We would still continue to collect here in Bothell and then we would be having an administrative contract to pay Shoreline Fire for what we collect both in terms of property taxes as well as EMS services and Medicare reimbursements and the like. The second area of focus is around operational reserves. And again, as elected officials, this is something that's really important for policy considerations for both sides. And in the discussions that we've been having, there's a recognition of shorelines uh reserve policy of having a 15 annual operating ex operating expenditures in your reserve bothell has set to a 10-year policy um and we're currently at seven percent this is something that the council is committed to in the last few years and i'm in are doing a great job and hopefully the economy will consider to support their great intentions of continuing to build our reserves and all the benefits that apply to the city are the same for the for the board too in terms of bond rating, and we take that very seriously. So I think this is an area of where negotiations between staff really need to be informed by our elected officials of what are we willing to do. I think as we look at this from a Bothell perspective, purely from ours, what we would also understand is we certainly see where Shoreline's coming from in terms of your 15% policy. We also are looking at it from the standpoint of we've got two properties at about $8 million each that we'd be transferring over from the city's holdings to Shoreline. And so we're making financial contributions through the apparatus, through the brand new buildings. And so that's... certainly an issue where we have some focus on in our conversations. And then third and finally, the projected financial impact to Bothell residents. We had a great conversation earlier about the potential need for a new fire station and how that would be funded and how the benefit of spreading that across the district for the benefit of the entire district and not just Bothell. As we look at Bothell Fire Department specifically too, we've had this conversation with our council just a few weeks ago is that As we look at the inflationary factors and what we're anticipating, what currently costs a projected $9.9 million to operate in 2026 will become about $18.8 million by 2035. So we know that there will be new investments. In addition to that, as the chief mentioned of operating apparatus, in that 18.8, we've put into the staffing that it would take to open a new station. And so that's something that's concrete that we can talk to our voters about. In terms of then what happens in terms of balancing things out, as I mentioned, not to be evasive or sound squishy, but we know in year one we are going to continue to collect every dollar that we would have for the operations of the fire department. And so that is something that we would have to reconcile. through an administrative agreement. And then in terms of what would the city do once we were past that, that is something that we still, we need to navigate with the city council of recognizing where we are financially, what we hear from our voters of what they value and what they want to see invested in In terms of, you know, we get a lot of feedback of we want more parks, we want more amenities, we want more things. So what would we look to in terms of how do we communicate to our community of what the financial impact or trade-offs would be? And overall, that's something that still the council is yet to make a decision on. With that, I'll turn it over for the conversation, because I do think those are three areas that certainly elected official input is very important. And I'm also, again, just grateful that our finance director, Quan Wong, is here, who will actually answer the questions when I look at them, because I won't know.

Thank you very much. Okay. With that introduction, let's open the floor to clarifying questions. No questions. Yes.

Thank you. Jenny Aldrich here. I guess it's been brought up previously, but now that it's Quan's turn to answer questions around the bond of how does the voter approved bond that is already being paid for work into layer on top of this transition. And like, how, how do you describe, like, how would you, well, how would we describe to voters how that works?

Um, so we are still, uh, paying for the two new fire stations until 2040. So, uh, we are collecting the money to again, uh, try to retire the bond. But the titles and the property will likely be transferred to the RFA if the voters chose to do that. So what we will need to do is, again, negotiate the transfer and the timing of the transfer. So we'll be enlisting Deanna's help, because that's a lot of work. legal issues associated with that. So to answer your question, yeah, we'll be still paying the bonds until 2040.

I'll make a comment. We at North Shore had to transfer our properties over to the RFA, and we had an open bond for Station 51, and it transferred in, but our district continues to pay that bond off, collect the funds, and it's paid off until it pays off. 2027, I think, isn't it?

Yeah, I was just going to say something similar along the lines to what Commissioner Webster is saying, is that entering into the onset of an RFA each of the different cities is going to have different levels of bonded debt that stays with the city that, in like our case, you know, paid for a fire station. So there's, you know, so each of the cities will still have that variable level of bond that they're paying for. You know, on top of that, there's a base levy rate and benefit charge structure that collects the basic operating revenues for the city. the RFA. So there's a little bit of variability that will just stay with the districts until it times out eventually.

I have a question to the city council members. What financial risks or inequities are you most concerned that voters are going to focus on if you decide to bring this to the ballot?

I actually have a question for Quan. How much money is outstanding on those until 2040? What is that dollar amount? Do we know?

I can get back to you. So let me get back to you. I don't have the numbers in front of me.

OK. And to answer your question, I think the biggest issue for the voters is I think there's always a little bit of a reticence to add a layer of government. And the concern is that now we're going to be taxed by another different taxing authority. So I think the biggest concern, I mean, I think the case for service delivery and service level is open and shut. It's really easy to make. And I think in a vacuum, people would choose that 100% of the time. but nobody likes it when their taxes go up. So I think that's going to be like making the financial case to the voters. And as the gentleman said in public comment, doing it honest and upfront, like be very, very clear about what's happening is going to be the biggest thing, especially because, I mean, North Shore, the bond they had is expiring like pretty much now, but we've got like 14 years left on that thing. I think the prospect of appearing as if it's double taxation is going to be an issue we need to work around and something that a no campaign could could grab a hold of are there any any policy oh go ahead so I guess I'm the only Snohomish County resident

And so I'm, I will ask the question. Um, I am reading on the attachment three, the question about, so once a year we, and we recess our Bothell city council meeting and become the Bothell urban EMS district board. Um, and we either, um, we talk about, should we take our 1%, you know, tax increase. Um, we've run a levy in my time on the council because the Snohomish county part of the city is not subject to the King county tax. that funds ALS. So we levy the same tax rate on the Snohomish County part of the city so that everybody pays the same for the same service. So reading this, I'm just wanting to make sure I'm getting it right. So we would do that until the next time the levy is fully up, and then the RFA would take on that.

That's correct. That is correct, yes. And just for the board members to understand the timing, when King County does the ALS question out to voters, we then lag about two years because then what we do is we look to see what's the proportional impact for a Snohomish County taxpayer. What would they pay? because the rate's slightly different because the assessed value is slightly different. So we intentionally stagger the question, but we go out to Snohomish County voters and say, if you would like to have the same ALS level of service that King County residents have, you're part of Bothell, this is what you can do. So that collection would be, you can anticipate that would again be a pass-through that we would continue to collect in Bothell, transfer over to the RFA until the time that that expired.

Okay. Um, it is one of the nerdiest bits of governance that I've run into in this role. Um, the other thing that was interesting to me is the, the unincorporated areas served by Snohomish County fire district 10. So what would that fire district then contract directly with the RFA or what would that arrangement look like?

They're considering the same type of, potentially even November. I don't want to speak for their board, but it's possible that they could go in November, but they're waiting to see what happens with Bothell. And then they would likely pursue, again, I can't speak for the board, but they would likely pursue joining the RFA as well.

Okay, thank you. Snohomish County out.

Yes.

A couple questions. In our earlier documentation, you mentioned we are in a good financial, shoreline RFA is a good financial situation. Does that mean that RFA has a very good reserves? Can you elaborate on the good financial situation?

Yes, our audit, in fact, we just were audited and came back clean, completely clean.

And with this merger, what are the areas where we will be saving more as a bigger organization? What are the main categories of human resources? Where is the major efficiency in the financial benefits?

There would be efficiencies across all divisions in different ways, some of them more significant than others. I would say that in this case, probably administratively, is where you would see the biggest deficiencies. There would be some operational efficiencies in some of this staffing, but the people that you see out on the apparatus in the fire stations right now, that would not change. If anything, we would improve on some of the staffing levels within those apparatus, as we lean towards the South Bothell Station, and then we would see a dramatic increase in performance. But there would be some staffing improvements and efficiencies, but most of them are administrative.

One thing I'll just note too, I think a great question, Council Member Aguilari, is that in the considerations, as you mentioned, we've already seen some of the alignment that's necessary to really experience that in terms of last year before you had joined the council, we did align our timekeeping system, which also meant that we aligned the rules that go behind that too. So from a staffing model standpoint, we have alignment of the staffing. And then where you'll see things is, again, there's, I think we've talked about this a little bit, but there's not a one-to-one relationship of if you need a position that you hire one person because of the fact that this is a 24-7 operation. There's a lot more. And so in terms of staffing and recognizing that people do have life events and they have injuries and they have different things that the size really, that will help there in terms of the efficiency model. as the chief mentioned, it's definitely at the administrative level is where we'd see some things too. Just starting from the top of, we'd have one chief instead of two. And what I also just wanted to share, and just a thank you to the board members, but also to the chief, is that very early on in this, we took a look at the beautiful thing about public agencies is our books are open to everybody, not just to each other, but taking a look at the Shoreline RFA books as well as the audit findings over the last several years. Really, kudos to the good, sound financial management from the board that puts you in a good position to make decisions like this. So that was noticed by us quickly, and we appreciate that.

Thank you. Other questions? What must the public understand and trust about the financial impact of a potential RFA?

I have some questions about the medical liabilities, sick leave, and reserves, or not necessarily reserves. Okay. Give me a second. I wrote it down, so I'm just going to read what I have because it made sense to me at the time. Left one. That's what I was thinking of. I don't love retaining the liability for those things because we'll be giving up the tax revenue that we would normally use to pay those liabilities. Right. And it feels like it makes sense that the liability should follow the taxing authority. You know, telling our residents that we have to use our regular tax revenue for fire services when they're already paying a regional fire authority taxes is another one of those double taxation things that it seems like a no campaign could really grab a hold of. I mean, on top of just if we're giving all of our assets and all of our taxing authority, I don't know why we're keeping liabilities. I'm not asking that rhetorically. If there's something I'm missing, tell me, but that doesn't really track.

Yes, so the liabilities, they go with the new authority. So it's a matter of timing. And again, January may not be the effective date, but we will eventually transfer the liability as well.

On the left one? left on this I think in the negotiation the position it says here is the preferred approach that this is that the city retains this liability and that's what I'm saying is that is not my preferred approach but I am open to hearing a case for why the liabilities shouldn't follow the taxing authority in the assets I'll I'll take this one I guess

It's a significant liability. It's one that sits with the city. If we were to absorb that liability, which can be very expensive, I would need a transfer using the model, the Gatsby 75 model, and that formula for what that liability looks like. I don't know how many left one liabilities there are, but this would be How many left one liabilities? How many retirees do we have? Do you know, Quan?

I think that's what we are in the process of doing the calculation.

Okay.

And so we need to confirm that.

Using the formula and, you know, if it's seven or eight, that's probably 1.5 to 2 million in that neighborhood. Um, and that's not a liability. I, I can't speak for the board cause that's, that's a board decision, but that's, it's either transfer that, that money or keep the liability.

Um,

I did, but it left my mind. Oh, I was just going to say, like, it also seems like the taxing authority is also significant. Like, if the liability is significant, potentially, and now we have no revenue coming in to offset that, like, that's my whole beef. Exactly.

Let's put this on the parking lot because there is, I think, part of the whole overall negotiations of things. I think it's where we have to look at, similar to like reserves and everything. But what's the total? It's a significant thing. What's the total impact financially and how do we? We know that at a certain point, right, it's not forever, but it's for a certain time. So we can map that out.

And that's why I asked earlier about like what the remainder left on our bond is just so we can get an idea of kind of what we're going to still be paying afterwards too.

So I'm going to just jump in here with a comment. So I think, so we're talking about left one liability just so everybody knows what that is. So for police and fire employees who were hired before like 1977, they were part of the law enforcement officer and firefighter retirement system one. And as a artifact of that system, My understanding is that, and one of the reasons why they probably went away from that system, is that part of that system was the final employer of that person in their role as a firefighter or a law enforcement officer was obligated to cover their medical expenses for the remainder of their life. So that Obligation was incurred while they were employed by the city of Bothell and so that historically is how that has gone is that liability has gone with the last employer that they worked with so That's just kind of an artifact of how the system works and I'm just trying to remember what happened with the North Shore left one liability and We did transfer. Yes.

Well, wouldn't the whole RFA be paying for any of the existing shoreline and North Shore liabilities? So that's, I think, the question is Bothell paying for Bothell makes sense if we weren't going to pay for the other ones. But if we're part of the RFA, I think that's a bigger conversation.

North Shore transferred their left on liabilities, and I believe it's a little over $1 million. Okay, $1.5 million. And I believe they had five or six retirees.

Councillor Dodd brings up a really good point like under this like model that we'd be talking about Bothell would retain 100% liability of its left one and 33% liability of everybody else's left one as well and that I Won't provide any color you can assume what I think about that probably I cannot And I also just went through the process of procuring hospice for a left one retiree. So I am oddly deeply familiar with that.

Mayor, city manager, I'm curious. So... kind of just based on some assumptions I'm making from hearing the conversation is that the city of Bothell intends to give up the taxing authority it has for EMS. Because that's an important piece that we'll have to communicate out to the citizens, is that they're not going to be being double taxed, right?

So the Snohomish EMS, of course, we already talked about that, will be retired when the next EMS is up, so that's given. For the King County portion of the EMS, we'll be right now transferring whatever we collect, and then eventually that's the Texan authority going to the RFA.

And to clarify, so for Snohomish County residents, it wouldn't go away, but the question would become one that the Shoreline RFA Board would be responsible for asking. And Council Member Dodd referred to it as because we're asking a question of only a portion of our community and maybe some other reasons, but my simple brain, that's what I hold on to. The council actually has a... separate entity that they recess into. I can't remember what you said more eloquently, but we really do make them recess out of the Bothell City Council meeting. They become the Snohomish County EMS board. They vote on things of just that one issue for Snohomish County residents. and then come right back to be the Bothell City Council. So they changed titles and roles and all sorts of good stuff. But that's how we operated a bit. And again, because of that county piece, it's something that is very important to us of being growing closer to a 50-50 community of half of our population living in one county and half in another is that we don't ever want people to have to consider what side of the county line did they just have their heart attack in right we want if you're in bothell you have assurance that you're going to be getting the same world-class service that um that you would have no matter where you're at so that's that's the question that comes into that but again it wouldn't go away it would just be that the question would be there would be a new uh very specialized board that would operate under the shoreline

And to answer Commissioner Pratt's question, that would then be the decision of the Shoreline Fire Board. So we would be giving that to the Shoreline Fire Board. And I'm not sure whether to say I'm giving that to you or I'm giving that to us, because it would be us in that case.

Right. I guess what I'm trying to parse out is there's, on top of the King County EMS levy that the county imposes, The city of Bothell has a certain level of taxing authority to provide fire and EMS. Correct?

Above and beyond our general levy? Are you talking about, so we have a levy that's specific to fire service that was brought up earlier, and then we have our general levy. So I guess what are you, clarify.

Within the general levy, there's a portion of that that is tied to you providing fire and EMS.

I'm going to defer to my experts here.

Commissioner Pratt is talking about potential. You're talking about existing today, what we levy. But you're saying the authority to potentially levy a charge. Yes. OK. Sorry.

I mean, I would assume. I'm not going to assume. Go on.

Correct, but we are not taxing just specifically for fire services. Our general levy is just for every programs and services that we do, and fire department happens to be about 22% of our general fund expense. So that's how we do our general levy.

Okay, I'm going to step in here in the interest of time. We have four minutes. Do we have any final questions? I assume we want to end at 7.30, right?

I think this is an important enough meeting that I would like to extend. There are things that we haven't gotten done yet. I don't want Commissioner Pratt to be like, we didn't fully flesh this out because of an artificial time limit. I want to make sure we're good and all on the same page.

Is that good with everyone else? Good with me. Okay, let's continue the conversation. So, did you have some additional thoughts on this topic?

Because it's going to be important for the citizens of Bothell to know that they're not going to be taxed at the same level by the city of Bothell and then have an additional layer of EMS taxes provided from the RFA. The city of Buffalo is going to be sacrificing a portion of its taxing authority and granting that to the RFA.

That'll be a decision that the city council gets to make in terms of what they want to do with the overall levy rate for our general fund. But as the finance director mentioned, it is true. We don't segregate out how many cents per for a dollar go to different services. The pie chart doesn't cut that way. We have a general fund that pays for general funded approaches, including about 22% goes to fire. And there may be a commiserate reduction that council wants to consider with that. And, yeah, we will absolutely communicate out to the community what our intent is to do. But, again, very significantly what I want to make clear is in year one that isn't true because we will continue to be collecting and paying. So it's one of those things where, like, it's a – We want to acknowledge it's a complicated message that we have to make sure is as clear as possible to the community. And I think as staff, our first question to our council has been is, let's make sure that we're in a position where that's the message we want to put together. And if the answer is yes, and we're going to move forward with joining the RFA, then we need to really focus on that so if you look at attachment three in your packet tonight that is our full financial analysis right now of what the different options would be and where there's four financial scenarios that were put forward to the papal city council they've yet to make the decision of that that's a range of options and where on the menu they want to select

And I will just say that if we were not to reduce our general levy, that seems like a really good way to get the ballot measure to fail. And I can only speak for me, but I am not going through all of this work because I want it to fail.

I agree. I may need a little bit more clarification. I'm also new. So the taxpayer impact, the sheet, we have a taxpayer impact. Is this for a million-dollar property, a single-family house, what we have here?

Correct. I mean, the average property value for a single-family home is about $940,000. Okay, so this is based on... Based on, yeah.

Okay. In case if we don't reduce our general levy, me as a homeowner, if I have a million dollar home, I would be paying additional, let's say scenario one, $400 more on my home.

Is that right? That's one of the scenarios, and that's not the only one. And we have made a lot of assumptions in our 10-year analysis. We're also not comparing Apple to Apple's at all because the fire department, they can charge a fire benefit charge. We don't have the authority to do that. So we are just strictly using the property levy to fund the fire services. And we also do your other taxation, but those are sales tax. They are not dedicated to the fire department.

So the reason I'm asking, let's say we go with scenario four, if the property is $2 million, so we are asking the homeowner to pay $1,100 additional, let's say if we don't reduce our levy, general levy, is that right?

Well, that's per $1 million, but if your home value is $2 million, yeah, that would double.

Yeah, if we don't reduce our Bothell City general levy, so we are asking homeowner to pay every year additional $1,100 if we go with the scenario four, for example. Is that right?

That's the basic assumption, but again, there are so many scenarios that can go back in.

There's a, this is, and I agree with Quan on this, there's some, this is a very general assumption and approach and does not look at the specific impacts of the fire benefit charge, which varies from single family to multifamily to commercial and there's there's a different gradient of impacts that would need to be to when you say a homeowner that's not correct because that this is an average what's been averaged here would not be what a single family homeowner would would have an impact of just like it's not the accurate for a multifamily or commercial if that is the case shouldn't we counsel have different properties if there is a

townhome which is a 500,000 so that yes we are talking to somebody okay it wouldn't be a townhome it'd be the difference between yeah single residents a rented property so if you have a structure that is an apartment or commercial and if council is interested in moving forward and entertaining an RFA we can get some more granular scenarios for you

Yeah, if a resident is asking the question, just wanted to see if we are prepared, oh, this is the impact, if we are not reducing our general levy is what I'm trying to understand basically.

That's correct. You can ask us for additional analysis, but those four scenarios are the basics, and we can get into, as the city manager said, more granular. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Jenny Aldrich here. So I'm looking at the four scenarios on page seven of the packet that we had for tonight. And if I am understanding correctly, this is a clarifying question. When you say Bothell reduces its levy by the rate, the fire rate equivalent, is that the 22% that is the...

No, it's not. The 22% is our expense, but the 48 cents that you pointed to is what that portion to the general levy would entail. So if we save the operating budget by about $9.9 million, that's the so-called FIRE equivalent rate that we would be looking into the property levy.

Okay, and do we have the analysis that shows how that breaks down, like, per your average taxpayer?

So the taxpayer that we have analyzed is... deny 140 or so thousand dollar assessed value so the impact would be like 400 as council member arguably said about 400 dollar more in that scenario right and and so like i guess if we're offering direction tonight not necessarily making decisions

it doesn't make sense to me to maintain a current levy, um, for fire and paid twice.

So are we not doing the direction you would be? We're not looking for directions where as the city council, And in the next steps that you'd be talking about would be whether or not you'd be wanting to entertain, does Bothell want to continue on this journey? And in that case, that is the Bothell City Council. I'd consider that you'd have that conversation. But it is something that while, again, there is an impact of the Shoreline Fire Board, because as the mayor said, nobody wants to put forward something that's destined to fail. it is a decision that the City Council needs to make. So if, again, since there is a significant amount of analysis, we've given you the top line to consider as you have narrowed down your options down to two, which is remain Bothell Fire, or to consider the RFA. If you want to more seriously consider the RFA and going out to the voters in November, we will bring you further details to help that decision.

And is it fair to say, as we discussed before with Chief Cowan, this is a permanent decision. Once we make a decision, once waters make a decision, this is a permanent decision. So once we make this decision, let's say, hypothetically, this is all for our understanding. Hypothetically, Bothell City decides, as a council, and we decide to reduce our general levy so that we are benefiting on that front. We are not taxing double, basically, is what I'm trying to say. We are reducing on one side, but the other side, we as a bottle city obviously do not have any control. Once it goes to the RFA, RFA will decide. Of course, we are part of the governing body, too. So RFA will decide whether it's a higher or lower. It's basically going forward that taxing homeowner or the resident is all RFA. Right. So that we will not have any. I mean, I think I'm just making it making summarized. We only have control on the general levy, but going forward, we'll not have any.

control on the rfa whatever the levy you guys do yeah you have some options now in terms of and once you much like joining the rfa once you lower then it can only increase by one percent unless it's a voted levy so when you when you lower what you know is like if you lowered it X percent, if anything more than 1%, that's as much as you can grow. And then, yes, in terms of future decisions about the fire portion of it, it's a governing board decision, which is why the governance is so important.

Other questions? So how do we bring this financial piece It sounds like a more granular RFA piece is needed.

Yeah, I think there's some more to that. I think we had some financial impacts. And then I think, ultimately, just to come back to that discussion of the value of our two elected bodies getting together is that... As we leave this room, the conversation will shift back into the board and to the council, having conversations and directing your fire chief and your city manager to do things. And again, I'm really thankful for the great relationship that we've formed with Chief Cowan, both as our fire chief, but also in this aspect as a potential partner. So I think what we'd be looking for tonight too is just that acknowledgement of, We're going to continue working together until this thing is done, and so looking for at any point if there's something where the board has questions of me or a council has of the chief, we will do whatever we can to bring you that information either in person or in writing. But tonight was the great opportunity of let's put those things on the table so we know what are the things that need to be discussed, what are you going to direct your staff to carry forward, and what are the things that you want to hear directly.

Since it appears that we're wrapping up, I just wanted to say thank you so much to the board for coming and having this discussion with us. I hope it hasn't been too hard hearing our concerns about this. The reason that we're here is because we think exploring this is the right thing to do and we just want to make sure that we get our concerns met and figured out um but you know as we become potentially your colleagues on the board like we we want a good relationship with you we want it to be up front we really appreciate you coming here and joining us tonight

Thank you. Just one final thought. We talked about a lot of issues tonight. I want to make sure that all the issues that both boards are important to both boards have been surfaced tonight. Do we feel like we've had a thorough discussion? Okay, great. In terms of next steps, obviously the city manager and the fire chief are going to be working on these issues in the parking lot. Do we need to meet again?

Probably depends on what conversations happen from the parking lot. Maybe that's a decision we don't need to make right now.

Okay, fair enough. All right, well, it's been great. It's been my pleasure. Everybody has participated, which is wonderful. And it's been a great discussion. So thank you for letting me be a part of it.

Thank you, Bruce. And with, I don't have my gavel with me. And with that, we're adjourned. Do you want to hit it together? Ruled.