City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. I now call the September 15th, 2026 regular city council meeting to order. I'm going to pass it to the clerk this time.

Thank you. Please say here when I call your name. Council Member Ongulary?

Here.

Mayor Thompson? Deputy Mayor Alder?

Here.

Council Member Curd?

Here.

Council Member Miles? Here. Council Member Dodd? Here. Council Member Acabra?

Here.

All present with the exception of Mayor Thompson, who is absent and excused.

Thank you, Clerk. We'll now pass it over to the city manager for the meeting agenda approval.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor, and good evening, City Council members. While there's fewer topics on our agenda tonight, that is done with good intent in the fact that we will be having the real kickoff of the budget conversation. Last week, we introduced the budget, and tonight will be the opportunity to get all the questions on the table that we can and start going through the process and putting a schedule together of how we'll walk that through together. So tonight, on your agenda, what you'll see is we do have two proclamations. that will be presented to our guests. And then we also have a staff report, which is an update on the Canyon Park subarea work that's going to be kicking off to make sure everybody's starting from the same place and expectations. And then, as I mentioned, the budget conversation is the study session. We also have a closed session at the end of the agenda. And just for everyone's sake of what that means is that we will be exiting the public meeting, ending the public meeting, and then going in and having a discussion around collective bargaining. Consent calendar has a few items on there. Really the theme is partnerships and water tonight. We do have one set of minutes, but then also an interlocal agreement around building services with Snohomish County for surface water. We also have an interagency agreement with Washington State Department of Enterprise Services for energy savings performance contracting services. and then also a planning ahead for water shortage contingency. All of those items are ones that I would recommend for adoption. And with that, I will turn it back over to the council to consider tonight's agenda.

Thank you, City Manager. Are there any changes to tonight's agenda? Council Member Kurt.

Thank you. I'd like to pull from consent the agreement with Snohomish County Surface Water Management. I will need to abstain from that vote.

Okay, and so do we need a second to?

No, only one council member is needed to pull from consent agenda. You just need to find a new place on the agenda for the item.

Okay, so how about we move that to ordinances, like we're going to create a little ordinance section after the consent agenda and before the study session. Okay, let me make a note of that. Okay, thank you. And with that, are there any other changes to the agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll move to public engagement opportunities. All right, we are working to build a community where everyone feels welcomed. So join us at an open house to learn about our DEIB roadmap and share your experiences and input to help create a more equitable Bothell. That will be held here at Bothell City Hall on Wednesday, September 16th from 6 to 7.30. You can learn more on the website. Unidos en Cultura, United in Culture, all are welcome to celebrate Latin Heritage Month at this free, family-friendly community event. Enjoy food, salsa dancing, music, field games, and community resources, and cheer on your favorites in the Bad Bunny Lookalike Contest that will be held at Cedar Grove Park on Saturday, September 26th from 2 to 4 p.m. You can find out more on the Bothell calendar. We also have an art celebration coming up. Join us to celebrate the artists that helped make Bothell so vibrant with two art celebration this month. There is the mural dedication on Saturday, September 26th at 2 p.m. in conjunction with Sustainamania at Triangle Junction in downtown. And there's also a closing event for gallery artist Victoria Likes on Tuesday, September 29th here at City Hall from 5 to 6 p.m. And those events are also on the calendar. All right. Next we have proclamations. Do I have proclamation folders?

I will go get them.

Okay. And I'm going to read from the agenda. Hold on just a second. Okay. Yes, I can do that. Okay. Thank you for looking out for me. All right. Whereas Hispanic and Latin Heritage Month is a month-long celebration observed each year, September 15th through October 15th, to recognize the culture, heritage, and countless contributions of those whose ancestors are indigenous to North, Central, and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Spain, and whereas the day of September 15th is culturally significant as the anniversary of independence for Latin American countries, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, while Mexico, Chile, and Belize celebrate their independence days on September 16th, 18th, and 21st, respectively. And whereas, though the city celebrates our Hispanic and Latin community members and staff beyond this month, we take this opportunity to give extra recognition to their historical, cultural, and contemporary contributions to Bothell this month. And whereas, we honor the invaluable ways that Hispanic and Latin Americans who live, work, and learn in Bothell influence and enrich our community and reaffirm our commitment to addressing the barriers to opportunity that many still face. And whereas Bothell is home to Hispanic and Latin people whose families have lived in Bothell for generations, as well as new Americans, refugees, and recent immigrants, all of which are vital to our community. And whereas the city is committed to fostering meaningful relationships with our Hispanic and Latin community members and creating a community where all members feel safe, welcomed, and valued. Now, therefore, I, Jenny Alderks, and on behalf of Mason Thompson, Mayor of the City of Bothell, do hereby proclaim September 15th through October 15th, Hispanic and Latin Heritage Month in the City of Bothell, and invite all to celebrate the rich diversity of the Hispanic and Latin communities and the many ways they contribute to our city. And I'm going to introduce our DEI coordinator, Gabby, to introduce our recipients.

Thank you so much. Hi, all. My name is Gabby, and I have the honor of introducing our recipients tonight. The group that's here is a group of teenagers who care deeply about their community. For the last three months, they've been meeting every Wednesday night at the Bothell Library to organize the upcoming event, which is this Saturday, September 19th, from 2 to 4 p.m. in Cedar Grove Park. And they've been working tirelessly to provide food, games, entertainment, and all sorts of very cool things. I don't know if you've heard Bad Bunny Lookalike Contest. That's all led by the amazing teenagers who I've gotten to spend every Wednesday night with for the last couple months. So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to them because they have an amazing voice and lots to say. Thanks.

Thank you, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, counselors, and community. Thank you for this proclamation. We're a group of teenagers who volunteer to make the community better by celebrating the cultures of those in our community. This Saturday at Cedar Grove Park, we're hosting an event to celebrate Hispanic and Latin American culture through the Bothell Library in conjunction with the City of Bothell. Our event will feature a combination of dance, food, entertainment, and resources. We invite you all to come join us. Thank you for your support.

Thank you so much. All right, usually how we do proclamations is that I'll read the proclamations, and then at the end, we can take turns for pictures. So we would love to get a picture with you guys receiving the proclamation folder. Next up, we have a proclamation honoring National Co-Responder and Crisis Responder Week. And we'll have Brooke Buettner from RACER to accept. Let's see. I'm waiting for a proclamation to read. I'll read it first and you can join us. I'll get there. Okay. Whereas a crisis responder is a trained professional who provides immediate, on-site, or remote support to individuals experiencing mental health, behavioral health, or substance use crisis. And whereas co-responders and crisis responders provide critical services by working collaboratively with law enforcement, emergency services, healthcare providers, and community organizations to ensure a safe, appropriate, and person-centered response to crisis situations. And whereas the work of co-responders and crisis responders promotes de-escalation, connects individuals to services, and upholds the dignity and humanity of those experiencing crisis. And whereas the Regional Crisis Response Agency was formed in 2022 as a collaborative effort among the North King County cities of Bothell, Kenmore, Kirkland, Lake Forest Park, and Shoreline to provide consolidated and standardized regional mobile crisis response services for the five-city region. And whereas the services provided by the Regional Crisis Response Agency begin with a person-centered approach, focusing on compassionate and immediate crisis response, de-escalation, resource referral, and follow-up tailored to the specific needs of those experiencing behavioral health challenges. Now, therefore, I, Jenny Alderks, on behalf of Mason Thompson, Mayor of the City of Bothell, do hereby proclaim September 13th through September 19th, 2026 in Bothell as National Co-Responder and Crisis Responder Week to express our appreciation and gratitude for all co-responders and crisis responders working in the City of Bothell. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Go ahead, right over there.

Thank you so much, Council. It is because of Bothell City Council and the other councils in our region, because of city staff in Bothell and our other cities, and because of our police partners like Chief Suberlich, that we are able to do this transformative work. And it is really astonishing to me to see the level of commitment in our North King County cities to doing things in a different way and making sure that people experiencing behavioral emergency get the resource that they need. And I am really proud to be joined tonight by two of our crisis responders, Sarah and Toshawa, who operate here in the city of Bothell and who are the reason that we're able to provide such incredible services to folks experiencing emergency. So thank you, Council. Thank you.

Would anybody else like to speak? You're welcome to. You might be in a more one-on-one role. Thank you so much for being here. We will pause and invite our groups to come and do pictures with council if you would like.

That sounds great, though.

Next up, we have public comment. And before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that we are in election season and there are certain campaign-related restrictions regarding public comment on ballot measures. Public speakers generally cannot specifically address a campaign or ballot measure at a public meeting or during the public comment period. RCW 29B.45.101 prohibits government agencies from allowing the use of public facilities directly or indirectly for campaign purposes. Allowing speakers to speak in favor of or in opposition to a ballot measure or campaign during a public meeting or during a public comment period would violate this prohibition. That said, the City has accepted public comment in writing as well as accepted sign up for those who wish to speak at tonight's meeting. Written comments submitted to the City Clerk no later than 3 p.m. today were forwarded to all City Council members and are part of the record. When the Clerk calls your name, you will have three minutes to speak. Please note the Council will receive your input, but we do not engage in discussion of these topics. Staff will make note of items requiring follow-up. Clerk, do we have any visitor sign ups?

We do not, however, if there's anybody in the audience who wishes to speak, please step to the podium, state your name for the record and you will have three minutes. If there's anybody in the virtual audience that wishes to speak, please use the raise hand function and I will panel you in for three minutes. I'm not showing anybody, thank you.

Okay, next up we have the city manager report and staff presentations.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor, and as staff comes to the table to kick off, I'll just note as we transition, Executive Director Buettner was very kind to thank the partnerships of the cities. And I know I echo council perspective too, that we're very fortunate to have her leadership. And I'll also note that while declined comment, Toshua did join the last executive board meeting and shared a little bit about what her experience has been, including just recently transferring into Bothell as one of our assigned racer responders. They're mobile, they go to different communities, but there is a place they start from and it was a great ticket to hear a little bit more about her background and what she's saying and the service that's being provided to the community. So very thankful for their partnership and so glad to see this proclamation move forward. With that, we do have one item under the city manager report tonight. And as I mentioned in the overview of the agenda, this is an opportunity to kick off the conversation about the Canyon Park subarea plan. The council will recall earlier conversations that initiated this in terms of there had been some inquiries about comprehensive plan amendments and the decision. the desire was to do a more holistic look at the area. As you'll recall from those conversations, Canyon Park is one of Bothell's primary employment districts and was redesignated just recently by the Puget Sound Regional Council as a regional growth center here in March of this year. Staff's seeking council feedback tonight and just some overall awareness of what the proposed approach will look like You're going to be having several touch points going into next year, so if there's anything that you're seeing with the overall plan as we march towards adoption sometime next year as part of the annual comprehensive plan amendment process, this would be a great time to flag those early. With that, we are joined tonight by Katie Posler, who will be doing the presentations. She's a senior planner who we met recently from Community Development, and she is joined expertly by Jason Greenspan, our Community Development Director from Community Development as well. With that, I'm going to turn things over to Katie to lead the presentation.

Good evening, Deputy Mayor, Council Members. My name is Katie Posler. I'm a senior planner in community development, and I'm here to present the kickoff to the Canyon Park Subarea Plan Update. No action is required of you tonight. You'll receive a briefing on the proposed Canyon Park Subarea Plan Update and provide feedback on the proposed project approach, areas of focus, and public engagement strategy. Just for some timeline and background information, Canyon Park is one of Bothell's primary employment hubs in the city, and it was designated as a regional growth center in 1995 by the Puget Sound Regional Council. And the current subarea plan development regulations and planned action ordinance was adopted in 2020. That established a long-term vision for a more walkable and mixed-use development within the center. PSRC certified the plan in 2022 and identified some areas for future work within the plan. And then in 2024, we adopted the Imagine Bothell Comprehensive Plan, which as we know, established an updated growth and policy direction for the entire city. And then most recently in 2026, PSRC re-designated Canyon Park as a regional growth center within their updated regional centers framework. And our game plan with this update is not necessarily an entire rewrite, but it's to look at the 2020 plan and identify areas that have changed and areas that we want to amend. We'll evaluate many different topics, starting with existing conditions and plan implementation. There have been some changes in the center since 2020. Some examples are the Canyon Park townhomes, the Bristol Myers Research Facility, the replacement of the fire station number 45 within Canyon Park. There is the North Creek Regional Trail section number four that was completed as well as some items under construction like the Sound Transit, Bus Bay North, and the four or five improvements. The next major topic is land use housing and economic development will seek to accommodate more housing and mixed use development within the center while still maintaining it as a major employment hub. We'll also need to update the growth assumptions that came out of the 2024 comprehensive plan. There have also been some changes in regards to state law. There's transit orientated development requirements as well as some requirements to allow residential within mixed use and commercial zoning districts. We also had two docket requests in the past to allow for residential land uses within employment zoning districts. So we'll be taking a look at that as well as the TDR or transfer of development rights that exists within the Canyon Park code. In addition, there were some recommendations from the certification in 2022 that we'll be looking at. Next up is transportation and mobility. So we'll be updating the plan with more recent information involving the stride of swift and four or five express to lane improvements. And also looking at the new way to measure level of service, which is the multimodal approach. that changed in 2024 with the new comprehensive plan shifting away from vehicle delay and the updated concurrency along with that we'll also be taking a look at bike pedestrian and transit connections that go through canyon park There are some plan connections we'll be evaluating if they still make sense or are appropriate for those areas. And then environment, infrastructure, and the public realm, we'll be taking a look at water, stormwater, and sewer capacity as Canyon Park grows, as well as improving walkability and public space. Our approach to this update is the first step would be project preparation. As I mentioned, we'll be looking at the existing conditions, the scope of the update, and also coordinating with different city departments, including public works and transportation. They'll be our partners on this project. Next will be community outreach. As always, engagement is a really important part of this job and also barrier updates. So we'll be working with the property owners, business owners, employees, residents, and development community. So they'll be open houses just like there was for the downtown sub area update and then next would be planned development So greeting those amendments drafting the amendments and then we would hope to get the community to review those proposals We've done that with the downtown sub area plan update and housing action plan that was posted on engage a bottle and we've received comments that way and So we would want that feedback. And then this would be a part of the 2027 annual comprehensive plan amendment. So it would hopefully be adopted at the end of 2027. Just kind of like how the downtown Siberia plan update is a part of the 2026 annual comprehensive plan amendments. The Canyon Park would be a part of the 2027 annual comprehensive plan amendments because it's part of the comprehensive plan. And we can only amend that once a year. So in terms of next steps, we'll continue coordination within the city departments and start a community outreach plan. We'll evaluate the existing conditions and implementation progress. We'll begin preparing the proposed amendments and we'll be returning to planning commission and city council through the remainder of 2027. There's no action required of you tonight, but we'd love to get your initial feedback on the proposed project approach, areas of focus and engagement strategy. Thank you.

All right, thank you for being here and presenting this to us. Does anybody up here have any thoughts to share? Council Member Curt.

Thanks. Thank you for the presentation. Feels full circle because I started working with the city and the planning department on this very thing back in the last decade. So I remember back to the previous cycle of Kenyon Park sub area updating. And one of the stakeholders that we want to bring on board early and engage often is the Business Park Owners Association. And I'm just wondering if you have regular connection with them or if you have plans to engage them kind of regularly or just during the outreach phase. What's your plan there?

They would be a key stakeholder that we would contact early in this process. And although community development doesn't have as much connection with them as we anticipated over the past five years, I know other departments, particularly Public Works, has a lot of communication with them through the lens of multimodal transportation and circulation improvements in that section of the city. So we would very much be including them as the key stakeholder early on in the process.

That's great to hear. The other stakeholder I was thinking about is you mentioned the express toll lane improvements that are running right through the sub area. There's been curiosity in our community about how tree mitigation for some of the impacts to the improvements from WSDOT are going to be planned. canopy improvements throughout Canyon Park because that's the area where trees are being cut for the the project and so I'm wondering if that is an element of this process and if the community will have a chance to review you know some of the mitigation efforts as part of tree cutting I think we can definitely work with wash out to get information on that and work it into the sub area update That's great. Yeah, I think that as part of our tree canopy goals and urban forestry initiatives, I think that Canyon Park is a really critical puzzle piece there. It has a great riparian corridor that needs a lot of protection. So I would love to learn more about that, and I'll be eagerly awaiting the next updates. Thanks.

Councilmember Dodd. Thank you. I don't have a ton of questions just because this is pretty preliminary, but I'm excited to look into it. I got to work on kind of the end of the last update as a planning commissioner. Another stakeholder that I don't know was either as relevant or as involved last time is the school district. There are two high schools in the business park, which is... different and fun and i think it's important that we hear from them to because those needs are i don't think going to be expressed through the business owners association and on that note there's a way to sort of get feedback from people who who there are some people who live in Canyon Park but also who work there I recently started working in the park and I was actually gonna ask somebody today because like there's a lane that just ends in a way that I've never experienced on a public road before so I'm curious about other people's experiences as they navigate and Kind of the the line there when it's private roads and all that stuff So yeah, thanks for all the work on it. And I just wanted to put that out there.

Appreciate it All right, go ahead Councilman Al Capra.

Thank you. I just want to say thank you for all this I read through the packet So everything looks great and I am very impressed that you actually memorized everything that you talked about. Because you were staring at the screen. I looked back. Where are all those words? They're in the packet. So really good work. Thank you.

It is clear you know what you are talking about. Thank you. I will also just add that way back when I started out on the planning commission too, and this was one of the very first things that I got to participate in was the sub-area plan. And so there was a lot of conversation, talks, dreams for the area. And so I'm looking forward to hearing the update on maybe how... how far have we gotten to sort of the vision that was laid out those five years ago? And what are opportunities that exist? And so I'm really grateful that you're coming back to us with an update on changes that have occurred because it is different and it's on its way. So it's an appropriate time for an update. And I think that the plan that you've laid out is very logical, makes a lot of sense. And it um, follows the pattern that we've seen of engaging the community and bringing community voices in. And that's a very important part. And so I'm grateful that, you know, we have that routine going and we have a communication staff at the city who are working to get that information out to people and inviting people in. So yeah, excited to see it move forward. Thank you. All right, we will move on to council reports and conversations then. Council members, any updates?

I have something. I wanted to speak to our discussion last week about Washington ballot initiatives and they are specifically 26001 and 26638 concerning sex verification requirements for female participation in interscholastic sports.

I've had a chance to formalize my thoughts on whether city council should take a position on the measure and I'd like to share those thoughts for the council's consideration. I recognize that this issue matters deeply to members of the community. Individual council members and residents can engage in the public conversation in their individual capacities. My concern is that the city may be considering a pronouncement on a state ballot measure that would amend areas of law relating to schools and education where the city has no direct role, authority, or responsibility. I think we need to distinguish between individual council member views and an official position of the city council. My question is whether there is a clear municipal purpose for the city council to take a position on this matter. If an issue falls outside the city's authority and responsibilities, I don't think we should make an institutional pronouncement about it. For me, this is about maintaining a clear distinction between our individual civic participation and the matters on which we speak as the governing body of the city. Thank you.

Council member Al Capra. Thank you Deputy Mayor. I wanted to bring something I learned today about you know a dear member of our community. He and I did not always see eye to eye. I learned about him five six years ago and we had some interactions but he always just like we get agenda packets every Thursday night, he shows up every Tuesday night. And that is Terry Losh, may he rest in peace. I just learned of his passing recently and I just wanted to send my thoughts to his family and say we're gonna miss him as a community member.

I don't have to call him?

I really appreciate that, Council Member Alcabra. I got a text from former Council Member Mankey about it, and as I said to Ben, I really appreciate that he would show up, give an opinion, and respectfully disagree. I think that is an art that not everybody has mastered, and it becomes very important. So I appreciate you calling that out. Thank you.

I'll also add that it's refreshing to see regular attendance from a community member at council meetings. And he's a great example of that. And so we won't be seeing him and that is missed. So thank you for sharing. And our most regular attender is not going to be attending with us anymore. And so my condolences go to his family I can share an update. So in the last couple of weeks, I've attended the Resilient Communities Committee from NUSA and sharing that there's ongoing work happening there. A lot of the conversation was around updates to KCRHA, which we did here, or at least the Human Services Committee, when we met yesterday. Was that really yesterday? I think it was. And we heard an update on KCRAJ as well as met to review the human services grants. And so if any of my colleagues on that committee would like to share reflections on that meeting, you're welcome to. But yeah, there will be updates coming forward from staff on KCRAJ as more information is available.

Today we had a successful LTAC monthly meeting. StreetSense, our marketing services vendor, provided a 23-24 matrix. All our committee members, we are full now. Thanks to the council for approving two new board members. We are a full seven member committee and also we met a consultant recently with Claire and Nick. So we are looking for a couple of options for the consultant to help on the new strategy that we wanted from our retreat with events and whatnot. So overall it's going fine. Yeah, just wanted to give a quick update. A lot going on, but a lot of questions we asked Street Sense, the vendor. Yeah, their contract is ending this year, but we are looking for an interim six months to extend just so that while we are working on the new strategy as per our retreat and, you know, so we might come back with a couple questions later on the policy direction but overall okay going fine thank you just want to let you know

I attended the MISWAC, Municipal Solid Waste Advisory Council meeting last week. Among stimulating conversation about solid waste rates and public comment for that, if you're interested, give me a shout, was kind of the legislative session. docket of items that are of interest to the folks in the committee. So I can share that out. I was also, I still get, somehow my Microsoft Teams is linked to K4C. So there was a lot of notifications during the meeting that I can't attend anymore. And I saw that that committee is also coming out with a legislative sort of wish list or list that they're tracking. And I'd love to see that list. I know it's probably going to be wrapped into our own cities. legislative priorities because we have that as kind of like a standing item but I'd love to see that list too so if somebody has it would love to get it by email and I can also share out the solid waste Advisory Council's legislative items if that's I can share it through the executive team if that's of interest

I have not seen that agenda or the legislative priorities, and a quick search of my inbox doesn't pull it up. And so I'm hoping that staff could maybe request a copy of that.

It might also not be ready, but there are people that were just chatting about it.

I'm working on it, yeah. When it's available, yeah. It hasn't hit my inbox, and I too would like to see it. Awesome.

I was going to confirm K4C is the Hotel California of committees. You are never off of it. Going back, Deputy Mayor, to your question about the Human Services meeting, I really appreciated it. It is... very true every time we meet that Anand does great work as our human services coordinator. And what I've been really thinking about since is Council Member Miles brought up the idea of really trying to put into words the goals around the grants and how they meet the things we've identified in our needs assessment. And so I wanted to put that out there to the wider council because three of us are smart, seven of us are over twice as smart in theory. So as we think about that, I think that'd be good to figure out because we don't want it to be so prescriptive that we don't consider new needs and new ideas, but also we want to be able to tell the story not only with words, but perhaps data. So that's... Kind of what's been sticking with me since we met 24 hours ago. Thank you.

And I'm glad. I'm just taking it from my job as a technologist is that I'm basically given money because I have to have data to support whatever I want to do. So, everything on that list in that spreadsheet is good work. And I don't wish to say no or be a bean counter, but we have to have some way to tell the story about what we're doing and why we're doing it. data-driven approach is something that I think is a great goal for us to get to well and I appreciate because I think

The committee is Council Member Miles, Deputy Mayor Alderks, and I. And you've come in when Anand's been here for a while, and it's more fully formed. I think when we started, anyway, it's evolved. And so I appreciate that you're seeing where it is now, and you're like, this is good, but it could be better. And I think we're like, oh, my God, we've come so far. So it's really nice. It's nice to have a spread of perspectives. Good. Thank you. I appreciate that.

I'll just throw in my two cents about the power of storytelling when we're talking about impact. And so not only can we collect the data to show impact, we can also tell the stories of how people are supported and helped through the human services grants. And I look forward to being able to not only have that shared to the council, but also to be able to share that to the community. And I think I heard there is a study session coming up not too long from now for human services. So that'll come back to council.

That is correct. It'll be a part of the anticipated flow of budget conversations to address specifically what the recommendation from the committee was. So the full council consider it, and then it'll be planned as part of the adoption of the budget.

Great. All right, if there is no more conversation, which thank you everyone for a lovely conversation tonight. I will move to projected agenda discussion. Does anybody have any items to add to a projected agenda? All right, seeing none, I will take a motion to approve the consent agenda. Councilmember Dodd.

I move to approve the consent agenda as amended. Thank you.

Thank you. As amended.

Second.

I have a motion to approve by Councilmember Dodd and a second from Councilmember Kerr to approve the consent agenda as amended.

Clerk. Thank you. Please say yes or no. I want to call your name. Councilmember Ongulary.

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Alder? Yes. Council Member Kerr?

Yes.

Council Member Miles? Yes. Council Member Dodd? Yes. Council Member Alcabra? Yes. Passes 6-0 with Mayor Thompson absent and excused.

Okay. And now we are going to move to the amended part of the consent agenda. So, um, count, uh, Snohomish County later local agreement to provide surface water billing services. So that's AB number 26 dash one six five. Um, is there any discussion that we need to have about this before we motion to approve?

I'm happy to give a brief summary, but council member Kurt, if you would like to speak first,

I think there was a lot of information in the packet and that was fine. I am going to recuse myself from this vote out of an abundance of transparency. I work for Snohomish County Surface Water and while it is a public entity and we're not making money off of the contract, I just wanted to be really clear that I separate myself from my work in the day job.

On behalf of Public Works, Erin knows that my long aspiration will be to be a Public Works Director someday. Just briefly for those who may not have seen the agenda bill in the audience, we are looking at extending an interlocal agreement that has existed since 2017. It was a 10-year agreement. It runs through the end of this year. We'd be looking for a 10-year extension, and in short, Snohomish County will collect the fee on behalf of the city. From an ROA perspective, based on the discussion about what does the data tell us, Snohomish County charges the city a fee of approximately $19,000 per year and collects approximately $3.5 million in utility fees each year. Pretty sizable ROI. With that, if there are any questions, we can do our best to answer them or bring this back at a later date. But if council has what they need and otherwise it was just a matter of making sure that we had clarity on who's voting, I would leave it up to council to entertain a motion.

Council Member Dodd.

Thank you. I move that we adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an interlocal agreement with Snohomish County to provide stormwater billing services to the city through their property tax billing statements.

Second.

All right. I have a motion and a second. City Clerk.

Thank you. Please say yes or no on account. Call your name. Council Member Ongulary.

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Alderks. Yes. Council Member Miles. Yes. Council Member Dodd. Yes. Council Member Acabra?

Yes.

Passes 5-0 with Council Member Curt recused and Mayor Thompson-Afton excused.

All right. So next up on the agenda, we have a study session. Since it does take some transition time to get down there, I'm going to propose a 10-minute break. Okay. We're going to do a 10-minute break. We'll come back at 6.54 down at the tables. All right. We are back. And next up, we have a study session on the proposed 2027-2028 budget. I will send it over to City Manager Stanner to introduce.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. And good evening again, Council Members. Tonight, we do have the one big show study session. And I think, as I said to many of you, we always want to make sure we don't start talking about the budget after 9 o'clock. So starting it a little bit before 7 o'clock seems like a much better time to do it. We realize there's a lot to the budget, and it is a financial plan and map for what the work is going to take place over the next two years in 27 and 28. So there's a lot to cover. I will tell you already, spoiler alert, on adoption night in my speaking points, I'll remind everybody that the budget will be incorrect as soon as we adopt it as well. So the good news is that what it provides us is a financial roadmap of how are we going to navigate. And then there's always opportunities to flex and change. And that is why we have conversations as we go. So I always want to take the pressure off of don't feel like we have to get the perfect budget, but we have to get a working budget. And as Quan reminds me by state law, we have to have a balanced budgets. So we are going to accomplish all of those things together. There's no action required tonight, but really as we go through tonight, what we are looking for is what questions do you have and what things might you want to explore in terms of possible changes with any addition means that there's also something that we can't do. So always keep that in mind too, of if you have thoughts or suggestions on that, or if you have information that would help you make those decisions. And then what we're going to do is tonight, if there are any technical or process questions, we'll certainly take a stab at them tonight. But our main objective is to collect the themes of things that you want to talk about, and we'll use that to inform a schedule of how are we going to be spending our time this fall, because there might be things that come up that if we answer just iteratively per question, it'll rob the whole of the conversation to really have all of the inputs considered at the same time. So that's what we're looking to do, and we'll see how it goes. And with that, I'm going to turn things over to Quan Wang, our finance director, and Miles Walker, who is our budget manager and has played a big role in putting together this budget this year. So thank you both, Miles and Quan, and I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, City Manager, Deputy Mayor, and Council Members. Miles and I are going to share the burden of presenting the budget to you. Again, as the City Manager mentioned, it is a balanced budget. By law, we will have to adopt a balanced budget. So we'll spend the first of many study sessions with you, and by the end of November, it's our target to pass a budget. And before we go to the so-called technical areas, I really want to recognize the executive leadership team. They are right behind us, the department directors, and mostly their staff, who really started working on this budget back oh, I forgot, January of this year, to start planning and do all the groundwork so that we can present a budget to you tonight. We still have many outstanding issues and we'll go through those issues with you and asking for your feedback. And so we are trying our best to identify those issues for you. And with our vigorous analysis, we hope to present to you decisions based on data, based on process, and based on partnership among the departments. As I always want to mention, it is one city, one budget. So it's both operating, capital, utility, and everything that you can think of. It is one city and one budget. And again, back in May, we had this budget workshop with you and got your feedback. And throughout the process, you will see a direct response to your direction. And again, thank you so much for the city council who gave us really the directive to make sure that this is a sustainable budget and we are very conservative physically in our budget planning and in our estimate. We will present to you revenue options for you to cut. to consider as a way to balance the budget. But for tonight, we are not requiring you to take any actions, but we'll give you the overview of the proposed 27-28 biennial budget, the 27-2033 capital facilities plan, and 27, 28 utility rates, and the 27, 1% property tax levy. And we will also propose to use some sales tax increases. A lot is going on, and again, we are prepared to answer your questions. So for tonight, we'll go through some highlights, and we will not be able to dig into the details, but in our following study sessions, we'll answer your questions. We ask you to identify questions either tonight or via email, and then for further discussions in the upcoming meetings in October and November. So council review schedule, again, this is what's planned. So we will have study sessions, an additional two right now, and public hearings in October and November. We'll go through budget, the CFP, revenues and utility rates and property tax. And council actions in November after the public hearing will ask you to formally adopt the ordinance for the 27 and 28 biennial budget. The 27 property tax rates, People start asking me, so what about the 28 property tax? Well, that is a decision in 27 to adopt the 28 property tax because right now we do not know what's the assessed value. So that will be a decision for you down the road. Revenue options as well. Of course, the 27 to 2033 CFP. It is a seven-year document, but most of the items are planned projects. We'll go through some of them with more details, but at the same time, it is a planned document. And of course, we'll present to you the 27-28 utility rates as well. So what are the better drivers? Again, the big drivers are, of course, cost of living adjustments. We used the June CPI-W, that's the Puget Sound CPI, and that came in 3.8%. So that was kind of a pleasant surprise. We were expecting more. But again, because of different factors into the inflation, we may see it higher than was the 3.8. But by contract with the labor unions, we are obligated to fund the cost of living at 3.8. That equals to about $6.5 million across the two biennium. Medical benefits, of course, everything is more expensive. For the next two years, $3.8 million. We have not gotten all the insurance rates yet. So again, as we develop the budget, more information will be coming and we'll keep up the forecast as we talk about the budget with you. Inflation and contractual increases, again, these are not new stuff. This is just to maintain what we have. Keeping the lights on. As you know, the city operates a large vehicle fleet, and police, public works, fire, they all use gasoline and diesel, so that is going to be a major impact. But where the price will be going, that's anybody's guess. But again, we are very conservative in our forecast, and we are trying to balance the budget. with what we know today. So revenue outlooks. Again, back in May, we gave you some indications on how the world would look like. But again, the world today is also quite different. So for the sales tax, We used to project between 5% to 6%. So right now, again, being conservative, and we're using King County Revenue Office estimates as well as comparing to other Puget Sound Regional Councils estimates. So again, very conservative, 0.56% in 27, and only 0.07% in 28. This is really a no-growth sales tax projection. So just want to translate that as a no growth. We hope the economy will pick up, people will stop buying, people will transact properties, but at this time we believe that it's more optimistic than what I'm used to. So right now is, again, your feedback, we are doing conservative estimates. Twenty-seven poverty tax Again, 1%, we'll propose a 1% in the November action. 1% is our limit. And the valuation is pretty stable. Two years ago, we got a drop in property values, but at this time, it is stable. we're still projecting a reasonable growth in the assessment, and by statute, we can only grow by 1%. Grants, and this includes federal grants and state grants. We, in our CFP, we are including a 39% in our budget that's attributed attributable to federal and state and other grants. This is really a drop compared to two years ago. Last time it was 51%. So more than half of our CFP was funded by outside sources. But this CFP, unfortunately, we are below 40%. So this is a reality with our funding agencies at the federal and state level. As you know, the state is also experiencing their own financial challenges. Property tax increases, we talked to you about several of them, but we got some consensus to move forward for your consideration. So we have not adopted the two yet, but for your consideration, 8.1% criminal justice sales tax, and that's about 10 cents per $100 purchase. Again, food and prescription drugs are not taxable. And another one that council showed interest back in May was the 0.01 human services sales tax. So we are presenting that to you, and that's $0.01 per $100 purchase. Later on, you mentioned about human services contracts. So in the October 6th study workshop, yeah, we will come back to you with what we are proposing. Okay, so with that overview, I'm going to turn the mic to Myles to walk through the cost of the budget. Miles.

Thank you, Quan. So tonight I'll just take a few slides to go through what makes up the budget because we're throwing around the word the budget a lot and we haven't really talked about what all that is. So I'll take a few slides to go through what exactly that is before I turn it back to Quan to go over what new investments are proposed in this budget. Before I dive into it, I'll say my goal here with these charts and percentages and numbers I'm going to throw at you in the next few slides is not for you to latch onto the exact numbers and percentages, but my goal is to go beyond that a little bit and hopefully communicate to you an overview of what the city does, because that's what this document is. It's more than just a bunch of numbers put together. It's a reflection of the services that we provide. So I'm going to hopefully provide some more insight and just give you some context of what we're talking about when we're talking about the budget. So a high level overview, the total expenditure budget citywide across all funds is $469 million in the proposed budget right now. And that's about evenly split 50-50 between 2027 and 2028. The biggest fund within that citywide budget is the general fund, which is the fund that pays for most services that you associate with city government services like the Parks and Rec Department and police and fire. And that fund has a proposed budget of $181 million for the biennium. So now I'll go into what makes up that $469 million number, the overall citywide budget number. So here are just some broad categories of services that the city provides across all funds. Again, so the first slice here I'll go through is the general government. That makes up about 12% of the citywide budget. And this is made up of general government services that may not be super public facing, like the human resources department, the finance department, IT, as well as risk and executive department, things of that nature. And that's about 12% of the overall budget. very large portion of the budget is public safety funding which is a vast majority of is made up of police and fire expenditures as well as the racer program that we heard about in the proclamation section of tonight as well as the emergency management department they all do very important work and that makes up a quarter of the entire spending of the city moving on to transportation spending this is spending on transportation and for everything except the actual concrete and the construction of those projects, which is going to be in the capital slice later. This is all the engineering, the design, the planning, and as well as some street operations that we have. That's 7%. The next category is physical and economic environment. This is a category that's in the budget book a few times, and it's not very descriptive. It's general government services that aren't the public safety, but do have a big impact in the community, and it is a very broad So included in this 18% of the budget is like the YMCA contract with human services grant funding, the regional coalition for housing, all the welfare programs, along with the parks and rec department, the planning and development department, and all utility operations are also in this slice. The city also has a small amount of debt service that we have to make every year. This category includes debt service on what you would think of traditionally with that service, which is big bond payments. as well as debt service on some like long-term loans and things that just for accounting reasons have to be categorized in accounts that show up in the debt service portion here. And that gives us the biggest slice of spending the city has citywide, which is capital and infrastructure funding. It makes up one third of the budget or $130 million in this proposed budget. This is a vast majority of funding the capital projects outlined in the 27 through 33 CFP. This is the first two years of that plan funded both in the capital improvements fund, as well as all the utility funds. And this also includes some other stuff like asset replacement. The city has about 10 million that we have budgeted to replace current assets. Switching gears a little bit, this is still citywide, but we're going into revenues now rather than expenditures. And switching how we're looking at it to think of the individual funds that make up the budget, because when it comes November and you have a budget ordinance in front of you, what you're adopting is an ordinance made up by a lot of different funds, over 20 different funds. So this kind of outlines some categories of those. The first one here is the general fund. This is the biggest independent fund in the city. And spoiler alert, the next slide is that number broken into this same level of detail. So I'll go into that later. But we also have the budget stabilization fund. This is, again, revenues. So we are contributing $1 million to this fund this year to set aside to protect us against any future unforeseen economic hardships. We also have the levies slash special revenue funds. These are funds that have a general government purpose but have a very specific revenue that has to be spent on specific services. You think of the Safe Streets and Sidewalks Levy goes into its own fund. The Public Safety Levy goes into a fund. We also have funding from the King County Parks Levy that goes into this slice in its own fund as well as a lot of impact fees and things get put into their own funds.

Does REIT go into that slice too?

REIT does not go into that slice. The debt service funds are, there's five funds the city has to pay off five separate large obligations that we have. And this is just the city taking resources from other funds within the city and putting it into those funds for the year so we can pay what is due for those bonds in that year. And the capital fund section has REIT in it. So we do collect about 10 million budgeted in the biennium for real estate excise tax. That's a very small percentage of the capital, $80 million. The largest portion of this is just grants generally. It's like $36 million between local, state, and federal grants. And there's a large contribution here as well coming from all the other funds, such as some of those special revenue funds, like the Safe Streets and Sidewalks Levy has some capital spending in it, or Street Impact Fees funds some street projects. And that's about $30 million that we are contributing to the capital fund as well. We also have utility funds, so $70 million over the biennium and the three utilities, the water, sewer, and storm water utility. 90% of that revenue is rate payer revenue from paying people and customers and businesses paying their utility bills to the city. And there is also a grant in one of those funds that makes up basically the difference. So it's almost entirely just rate revenue. And lastly, the internal service funds. I'm sorry that got cut off in the presentation. It's 6% or $23 million of the overall budget. These are three funds the city has to fund citywide operation type things that don't make sense to be in one fund. So for example, the city's vehicle fleet, all departments across the city need to use vehicles. So we budget those in a separate fund. And then all the separate funds like utilities and general fund contribute to fund those services. We also have an asset replacement fund. and a self-insurance fund. And another small one up here is we have one trust fund with some revenue. It's a pension fund, and it's a very small piece of this overall pie. As promised, this is the general fund broken down into more detail. And now we're going to look at specific types of revenue that we get within the general fund. Property tax, sales tax, utility tax, those are all the taxes the city collects in the general fund. That makes up 63%, so a large percentage, a majority of the general fund budget is taxes. The largest of that is sales tax. This is the sales tax rates already adopted, and this figure also includes the two proposed sales taxes. There's property taxes are the second largest source of revenue in the general fund, which is the general property tax levy, as well as the Snohomish County emergency services levy. And we also have utility taxes. These are separate from utility rates that go to the utility funds. These are taxes paid on utility bills to the general fund. So there's a lot of utilities. So that includes the city's water, sewer, and storm utility. Customers pay a tax to the city for that, as well as the largest piece of this, about half of this, is the electric utility tax. But we also have gas and telephone and cable utilities that pay us taxes. There's two very small taxes that make up $37,000 that I will not go into in detail. And that brings us out of the tax area into this new category of licenses and permits. These are fees the city collects that aren't a tax, but also aren't in response to some service we directly provide. So these are like building permits, business licenses, and franchise fees. We also have a grants slash entitlements is what the category is called. There is no grants in this piece. This is state shared revenue. So there's revenues that the state collects and then distributes to cities based on populations. That's the liquor profits and liquor excise tax, as well as marijuana tax and some other. There's a long list of these taxes that get paid to us here.

So that means we should encourage more usage of that to increase that fund, no? Joke.

And then we have charges for services is another pretty large slice. It's the largest non-tax source that the general fund has. And these are fees that we collect in response to a service that we provide somebody. So this would be like the Snohomish County Fire District number 10. We provide fire services to them, and they pay the city for that. That's a very large portion of this. It also includes CFP transfers. The city's general fund pays for all the city's engineers to do all their wonderful engineering and planning work. They bill their time to capital projects, and then the capital project fund pays a general fund for their time. And these also include planning and zoning and development fees. This kind of moves us into some fines and forfeitures categories. So there's miscellaneous court fines and the fines and forfeitures, as well as the largest portion of this, over 90%, is the school zone camera program, and this budget includes the current programming level of that program. So no increased hours and no new locations. That's what the current cameras at the current hours, here's what we expect we could receive. And the 2728 biennium in that figure is about 4.6 million of this number. You have to have an other miscellaneous revenue section, which is the least descriptive name. Ever and 12 and a half million of that is interest. So we have a bunch of cash that we put in interest bearing accounts at the city and all that goes into the city's general fund. And there's some other miscellaneous revenues in that section as well.

Bear with me, but I'm very distracted by this. Why would something be categorized as a court remittance versus a fine and forfeiture? Because you mentioned the court under fines and forfeitures and it.

Yeah, there are four types of miscellaneous court fees that are not considered fines but are separate type payments. I do not remember exactly what they are off the top of my head. That's okay. But these categories are all using the state's accounting system. All the accounts kind of fall into these categories. So we use that logic. So you get some weird outliers like that.

So you don't get to decide if you like it. It's just the system you have to use. Just how it is. Okay.

Before you move on, just a quick question. Property tax, can you explain for those who don't know how it works? Because property tax are collected by the county and then distributed. We do not get 100% of that, right?

Yes. When you pay your property tax bill, you're paying it to the county, and that includes state, county, other jurisdictions, and city taxes. And the city adopts several property tax levies every year. So in general fund in this part, it's our general levy, but we also have like the safe streets and sidewalks levy and the public safety levy. And every year this body gets together and looks at how much money we need for the services that can only grow 1% a year. Once we have that number that gets poured in onto the county and then they calculate what rate gets then charged everybody's property. And we ultimately do get that remitted to us by the counties throughout the year.

Okay, since the deputy mayor emeritus brought it up. I've been working on this reverse pizza metaphor as Quan knows so Essentially because a lot of people don't even I didn't really for a long time understand property tax It's not that your bill goes up by how much your property value goes up every year. It's that as a city we decide or are prescribed depending on what it is how big of a pizza we're gonna build and then what everybody contributes is percentage based on the value of their property and then every year the size of the pizza can only go up by 1% but it's still a proportional share based on your property value as compared to the total we need to raise is that accurate yes okay reverse pizza metaphor fully thank you lastly we'll go through what all that general fund revenue funds and this is a

pretty narrow set of things because 80% of it is personnel. I had a former colleague who said we were in the people business and I think that's very true. A lot of the services we provide serve people and we employ a lot of people and that is the number one cost in the general fund. So it's 80% is just salaries and benefits for staff, And the other 20% is maintenance and operations, which is a little bit of office supplies, but mostly professional services, contracts that we have with other firms to do like engineering, as well as software licenses and all the good things that keep the city's daily business operating. There is a very small $40,000 capital expenditure in the general fund budgeted for 2027-28 and a Again, using the state's accounting system, we get a debt and interest category. That is really just a lease payment in the police department for a facility they use. Off to the left-hand side here, we have a table as well. I just wanted to go into two items that aren't on the pie chart here, but are things that get charged to the general fund, and they make up a pretty sizable portion of the budget. It's $15 million. These are inter-fund transactions and operating transfers. And this is some of the fun of doing fund accounting is that things go in and out all over the place. So the inner fund transactions here is contributions from the general fund to the city's fleet fund for the use of fleet vehicles, as well as a self insurance fund for the city general funds portion of risk for the insurance pool. And the operating transfers is general category of large contributions we're making to other funds so we contribute two million a year from this fund to the asset replacement fund this is where the budget stabilization fund transfer is happening and this also is servicing debt for the downtown property bonds that were issued earlier this year so I will pause here and take any questions about this before passing it over to Quan I'm happy to go over any of the slides I just went over again if anyone has questions

I have some questions that may take us back a ways in the presentation. Yes. So in the proposed new revenues, that was back, that was probably when Quan was presenting earlier, will there be a separate study session on the public safety budget and how the criminal justice sales tax might go towards the public safety budget?

Yes, that will be up to schedule October 6, but I will also highlight some of the major Points to you tonight.

Okay, cool. Yes. I'm looking forward to that. Thank you and then Back when talking about debt service is the mortgage on City Hall included in that? Yes, okay just making sure and then you mentioned that the the school zone camera fines and forfeitures only includes what we're currently collecting based on like projections of current use. Um, do you also have projections if the, uh, camera zone, um, is expanded and would create more fines and forfeitures in that category?

So that will be a separate discussion with you. We want this to be a policy discussion rather than related to the budget. So as you were briefed, I think, last week, and we're definitely coming back to you with proposals, but that's not part of the budget process. So again, we want to make that distinction that the expanded hours will be based on safety. and council policy. And that'll be in a separate study session and that'll come back to us.

Great. And then just because I'm curious, which PD facility is in the debt and interest expenditure line?

It's a vehicle storage facility.

Okay.

Those are my questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much for a great summary of the details. And to balance this biennial budget, are we borrowing any additional money for this term?

No, we are not borrowing. We are using existing resources. We are growing in some areas, but definitely not in sales tax. So we are, again, not borrowing out of our budget challenge. Thank you.

Alright, I'll pass it over to Kwan to go over the new investments in the budget.

Okay, thank you. So, as you may have heard, your other jurisdictions, including the state, are facing some serious financial challenges. But based on, again, even before me, the council directed staff to make sure that we have a healthy fund balance. So, that's enabled us to really storm this budget challenge. So, in the meantime, we are also making some investments. So, the almost $6 million may seem to be a lot of money, but at the same time, it is only 1.4% of the total $468 million. So why are we doing this? But basically, we are guided by three principles based on feedback from you. Definitely, the first one is a balanced, sustainable budget. So we have decided to maintain the essential services while addressing financial pressure. So we are definitely facing some financial pressures, but we are, again, able to weather the storm. Investing in Barthol's future, Even though we are maintaining what we have, we need to take care of our transportation and infrastructure, community safety, parks and utility, and definitely technology modernization. We cannot just stop doing things. So that's, again, based on the guiding principles, we are recommending an investment of about $6.6 million, and again, funding about 14 FTEs. But mostly, those new investments are focused on council and community priorities. We are emphasizing responsible stewardship, economic vitality, and reliable services. So technology, as we have been talking about, we need to keep up with all the upgrades, and that's why you see a lot of the contracts having increases because we need to upgrade. So again, we need to care. So I want to go into some budget highlights and I want to just focus on four major initiatives tonight. And again, I welcome any other additional questions if you have seen other budget that you want to give some immediate answer to. The first one is a proposed police body-worn camera program. So we are investing close to $2 million over the next biennium. We have been talking to the council, so this is not a new initiative. But since the last budget, we made an investment close to half a million dollars to do the planning. So we are coming to you this year to make that plan happen. So the $2 million will support about 80 cameras. They will also support secure digital evidence storage and two FTEs to manage oversight and compliance. This initiative will meet professional standards in Washington. And as you know, most of the regional agencies already use them. So a lot of the policies and security questions We are not reinventing the wheel. We are, again, taking best practices and implementing them. So, again, this is an initiative that will be before you and to fund that program using $2 million in general fund.

I just had one question. When we looked at this before, and this might have been predates me, was there an opportunity to get federal funding for this? And if so, was that moot?

Good question. So right now, federal funding, we are looking at our state funding. Last or two years ago, the state legislature enabled local communities to fund criminal justice program. And in fact, we are applying from that grant to be a possible funding source for this initiative. We will probably know the results around October, if not November. So that will be before Council adopts the budget.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

So the program will also improve transparency, strengthening community trust, and provide objective video documentation that will reduce complaints. And we strongly believe that this will support fair policing, lower legal and investigative risk for the city. So part of the discussion in next study session will be we are proposing the criminal justice sales tax, but that's not directly related to this particular initiative. The magic with that particular sales taxes, it can also go to all the qualified police municipal court, and also the other services that support criminal justice. So we have a wide range of opportunities and flexibility to use the additional sales tax that will be 10 cents on a $100 purchase.

So all you can eat.

I'm sorry?

All you can eat, then, sort of.

A buffet or a smorgasbord.

So again, we have a deadline until 2029 to adopt this, but we encourage the council to really start taking advantage of this sales tax. And more to come on October the 6th. And the second initiative is again based on council's feedback. We have come before you several times to talk about the downtown parking and how to manage and enforce our parking zones better. So we are proposing an investment of $1 million, and most of the money will go to really technology, because right now we do not have the technology to support enforcement. So we will also support one FTE in the police department, maybe like a parking enforcement officer, a limited term or limited commission staff to go out there. And again, not to be enforced during the first phase, but to be a kind of an ambassador to go around the businesses and to issue kind of a early warning for people violators who part more than two hours. So this will be more like an outreach program as well as an ambassador program. And we heard feedback from the council that you want to see this as a silly staff. So we are proposing funding to pay for the salary and benefit of this silly staff. Again, this will be a multi-phase into the implementation. We will improve mobility and access in downtown Bothell, as well as addressing the increasing demand for parking around this area, including this municipal parking garage. So this will be part of that implementation. management and enforcement. So we'll create an ambassador model and transition into enforcement. We heard loudly that from the council that we really want to do a better job in community outreach as well as making sure that violators will have plenty of notices as well as knowing that this is a two hour parking zone. Down the road, there may be other technology help, including maybe more like mobile-enabled enforcement. But we're not there yet. And that won't be until probably a year or two years later. Questions about that? And we will be working very closely with the municipal court as well, because they will be handling any violation tickets.

This gets into a question that I have overarching, which is when we fund an ambassador, it's inherently a community outreach. position, right? And the community will also want to outreach to this ambassador if they notice things that are awry and need to be fixed or need investigation. And so as part of a wider story and one of our other council sort of ideas and goals is to look at our existing customer action requests and roll it into some sort of application or convenient way for the community to get responses and track stuff. So I'm wondering if that's kind of in this, or is it a separate line item, or how might we see it in the budget?

Just to note, we're kind of colliding in on, we're stealing all of Quan's best lines. So you'll see one of the investments we are making in IT is investing in new CRM software. So I wouldn't see that as a line item to this. We're actually looking at a standard loan of the customer service philosophy for the city. So I can't remember if Quan has a slide on it or not. So he might talk about it. Okay, good. I didn't steal your line then. But yes, to your question, we are looking at investing in that type of software, which I think will help as questions come up for sure. Great. Thanks.

Along those lines, will that also expand access to engage Bothell to more departments in the city?

No, those are not connected programs. Okay.

All right. Go ahead.

OK. I'm so sorry, . I think there's a lot of value in pairing up what comes through Engage Bothell to whatever CRM you end up using. So I hope that's a thread that you'll chase at some point.

We'll do business requirements gathering for the implementation of the CRM. But, again, the Engage Bottle, as it is right now as a platform, is not becoming our CRM. That's what I want to make sure. No, I wouldn't. We're making a separate investment in customer relationship management software, and we'll look at what's the overall arching of what needs to be done for the city. We'll gather all those business requirements before we do our RFP, and then we'll do a selection. So, yeah, it'll be a full project.

I appreciate it. You know how I feel about things that talk to each other. So, thank you.

And again, this is why we mentioned about technology investment. We cannot just stop where we are with things that is not catching up with what the community and our customers would deserve. Great. Moving to the next initiative, as I already alert to, we are proposing a 0.1% sales tax increase to fund criminal justice programs and services. To reiterate, this will be a $0.10 to a $100 purchase. Food and prescription drugs are not taxable. The money can support a wide range of criminal justice related functions. They include but not limited to the list up there. But as an example, court services within police, municipal court, jail, alternative response, and public defense. It can also fund strategies for regional crisis response, diversion program, domestic violence services, mental health crisis response as well. The state legislature also allows local jurisdictions to so-called supplant current money. So we have demonstrated about close to $15 million in ineligible Expenses that we can if the council allows us to adopt this proposal the two million dollar could replace some of the $15 million expenditures Of course, we mentioned about the police body-worn cameras. It is about $2 million. So this sales tax could fund that new initiative. At the same time, the police department has already applied for the criminal commission's grant. And if that happens, it could help us to... allow us more flexibility to expand other programs as well. So we'll talk more about this in the October 6th study session.

I'm really holding back until we get to the October 6th study session, so I'll let you get with this, because I have opinions on these things.

Yeah.

We can talk about them when we actually drill down.

Sure. Oh, somebody... really reminded me before I came in, so how do we fare compared to the other surrounding jurisdictions? So right now our sales tax in King County, the Bothell, if you come to Bothell and do business here or purchase here, The current rate is 10.3%, so this will increase to 10.4%. But compared to our surrounding region, Kenmore is 10.3%, Kirkland is 10.4%, Lynwood is 10.7%. So let me repeat myself, Kirkland is 10.4%, Linwood is 10.7%, Shoreline is 10.5%. But we do not know whether they will increase their sales tax for 2027. And as I think I mentioned to the council that we want to distribute the tax burden more equitably. So meaning right now, most of the property tax are on property owners, including both residential and commercial. Commuters like me, I come in, buy my expensive lunch, $10, and I contribute $2. But I also take advantage of your roads and beautiful sidewalks and parks. I should be paying into the improvements here.

I like how you are in 2015 where lunch was only $10. That's what I'm saying. He suggested a 2015 price. $10. Which is, I don't know where you can find a slice of bread. OK, so I can't hold it back. The sales taxes, I mean, you mentioned CPIW. That's how you're basing the contracts and all that stuff. And June was a different story than it is today. I'm pretty sure it's going to be different next month and the month after. So my point is, inflation is only going to rise. Unemployment is only going to increase. Expenses are only going to get more. Houses are going to get more expensive, or less people buying houses. And the 10-year Treasury yield hit 5% the other day. Mortgage rates hit 7% the other day. So things are not getting better. And when we add more of those taxes, I know we need them. The body-worn cameras is very important, I know. And the question I have is, can we consider alternatives where we can fund the absolute most urgent things without having to raise taxes right now? Maybe we can consider next year. Hopefully, economic situation will improve. I am not cautiously optimistic about that statement I just made, but you never know. So maybe next year we can consider doing something. Because I know, just like the city manager said, as soon as we sign off on this thing in November, it's going to be obsolete and we have to talk about it again.

And there is an expiration date on that public safety sales tax, though, too, of where the legislature has authorized it, but only through a certain date. We'll be able to give the specific date so I don't round inadvertently. But I think that is part of why this is before. Yeah.

So the criminal justice tax is just public safety tax you talk about? Yes.

It's June of 2029, I believe.

Okay, we have some time to consider it again if things improve, no? Like we can say that here's the programs. We prioritize the programs, body-worn cameras, court, whatever, you know, this and that. And then we say, well, here are the things that we actually have to fund right now versus things we can wait another year or two until we figure out when we can pass something.

And it's, I believe, 2028. But we'll put that in the memory bank. But to your point, it's not tomorrow.

I do want to, I appreciate all your points. I live a lot of them. austerity gets really challenging. I think we saw this city delay the 1% increases and any tax increase it could for a long time. And then we spent a long time catching up and our budget was a nightmare. I don't want to leave that legacy for our residents or the people who hold our jobs after us. But I also, in tough times, the balanced budget helps us give services to people. So I don't think it's the time for crazy increases, but I actually made a little chart of how much the proposed criminal justice tax and human services taxes would be on big purchases. I don't make $100,000 purchases very often, but it is a small bit that helps us offer services as people's needs are growing. So I just want to counterpoint that if we don't do the incremental things, as we need to, I really think we will be worse off by the time these deadlines show up.

I 100% agree. And one of the cities that I'm not going to name that Juan listed has actually faced that. And that's why the rates are crazy right now. It's going to get crazier. So I think I agree with you. My point was, as we're going through this exercise of budgeting, can we look at the alternatives and then decide which direction we want to go? Because right now, there's only one alternative I'm looking for.

Yeah.

Two or three, perhaps. I know it's tough and we have to make the tough decisions, but it's good to have those things and have those conversations.

I'm thankful for our finance director because he too is always looking at what are the other options we can look to. And, you know, again, I think it's some of the conversations we've had. There's not a lot of tools available to cities either, so... Again, that's where the confluence of budget and legislative agendas come together too, right?

Yeah. And those cities that you mentioned are also looking at other tax increases, including utility tax. So that is a bigger impact on people who have no choice but to turn on their lights, turn on their water, and turn on their or use their sewer system. we are not increasing utility tax. So we are balancing it already. We talk about maybe using the utility tax as a way to pay the general fund. And based on your feedback, we are not proposing that. We are increasing the rates, but not the utility tax. So again, we already consider how that would impact a family, a household. But again, I mentioned about the equity. We can always catch up, but that's really counting on levies, and levies are on properties. Again, talking about people like me, I need to pay into using this system.

Actually, speaking of that, maybe it'll be helpful to understand, to remind us, I'm sure, how many people like you exist, come to Bothell? Commuters, you're right. So that will be commuters to Bothell. Maybe that will be a helpful thing to talk about. Okay, that would be great. Because then we talk about part of the equity conversation.

Is it possible to split out sales tax by generated by? It's not, right?

It's a confusing story. So businesses, they do pay sales tax. And we hope to keep as many business and to attract businesses here. But based on the confidential data, we cannot segregate.

But I think what you're asking is just the overall, it's from our economic vitality work of who leaves Bothell to work somewhere else and who comes to Bothell to work and live somewhere else. We can certainly get to that. But yes, thank you for, Council Member Kurt, I appreciate you putting that on the table because that is something I often remind of like I know there'd be the temptation of thinking like of course we can we can get it down to the day or the business or the location and laws protect that so we know so yeah it is a there's there's data that could be analyzed that we don't get to analyze and that's yeah so we get we can apply other logic and see do our best do you get like you don't get day of the week splits or anything on the data it is collected by the state revenue department and they gave us

They're like, here's your money.

The net.

Okay. Because it would be, I'm thinking about like isolating like holidays, but then you'd have to know the difference between like a car sales holiday where we might be getting, you know. Anyway, thank you.

Only car dealers. Okay. Yeah, we'll get back. Great questions. We'll get back to you with additional information and data that is available. So the next big initiative is to increase the sales tax for human services by 0.01%. So that means it's $0.01 to $100 taxable purchases. Again, food and prescription drugs are not included in sales tax. This will support a dedicated funding source for essential human services for children and family. Examples include youth and behavioral mental health services, workforce development, shelter services, and transportation services for clients. So this, unlike the criminal justice sales tax, this can only fund new services or program. It cannot go to existing service level. We can expand the program or services, but this cannot supplant our current funding level.

Can you remind me for this? So a lot of the ways that we deliver human services are through a grant program. So when it, I mean, we do, fund the behavioral health program through the Y, but would it have to go to that or could it go through the grant program? Like what are the limitations?

Yeah, so we will again have the Human Services presentation before you October 6. So we'll talk to you about the recommendations from the Human Services Committee. But yeah, it's through the grant program, but last time we also issued new RFP to attract new services like the YMCA. So again, we'll talk more about how we could use this funding. So right now there is no program funded by the increase. I think the increase is about, we'll get about $200,000 a year. This is not much, but it will help towards some goals that we may want to achieve.

Until Amanda spends her $100,000, like she mentioned earlier.

I do have a question on how do you distinguish new going, and so this is maybe save it for October 6th, and that's fine, but If it's only ever for new services, then how do we renew a grant that we started? We saw some really great impact from this funding that was used, and then we want to renew it. Does it have to come from a different fund and not from the sales tax?

So again, for Deep Dive, we'll answer that question. And again, present options, because there are many ways to fund a current program or any add-ons.

I'll just say I'm really excited for that study session. This is an area that I work in and I have ideas and I'm excited about applying some of the research and best practices to how to correctly and steward and manage these funds well. So I'm looking forward to that.

Are we, is .01 part of the Human Services Committee recommendation or is that something you guys came up with?

No, we did not present this to them. This is a council decision. We want to get the policy direction from you. I know, but why that value?

Why not?

Well, the original discussion happened as part of the budget workshop in May. And as you recall, at the end of that meeting, the consensus of council was to bring it back for discussion. So that was, we've kept it at the council table.

No, I meant the number, 0.01. Yeah.

That's the statutory allowance. That's the statute.

So we could go higher. No, that's just it. Okay, got it. That's why I was hoping that we could potentially go higher because I was like one cent we don't use that denomination I thought pennies weren't in circulation anymore, but I digress

That translates, how much do we make with this increase? How much money annually we will be able to collect because of that 0.1 cent? It's about $200,000 a year.

I mean, not to sneeze at it, I mean, 200K is 200K, but that's just not a lot.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a drop in a bucket when you're looking at funding across all of these different agencies for their services.

So, again, This will be a restricted revenue, so we'll put the money in restricted fund. So you could accumulate. So $200,000, you may not have a lot of option the first year, but you could put into that reserve fund and let it grow. And with that, it will allow you to do... other programs. Just like again, I don't want to digress, but the opioid money, we put the money in there as we get the deposits from the settlements, many settlements, we grow that program and then you will have options to go back.

Compound interest. It's a miracle, isn't it?

Okay, the next subject will be the 2733 CFP on October the 15th. Yeah, we'll come back with a deeper dive. We'll do a deeper dive on what we are proposing in the CFP, but we only budget for the first two years, so 27 and 28. The rest are kind of planned, so you may have a discussion like how realistic are those being, those projects being completed, but a plan is a plan. So in this year, we put city facilities as a new category. Whether or not we have funding for a new city hall, that's not what is in the plan. But what's in the plan is how to maintain, and eventually if we need to replace another city building, how much would that cost? So we are putting that big picture in that seven-year plan. Not that we have money to fund every project, but in order for us to move forward, that's the purpose of the seven-year plan. In the proposed plan we have close to a hundred projects so majority of them are transportation projects and and the rest would be Parks and stop and then the utilities of course so transportation projects again thank you to the voters of both those they passed the all renewed the safe streets and sidewalk levy for the next many years so we are putting that into good use so those projects are reflected in the CFP And total secure funding is about $253,000. And as I mentioned, only 39% is funded by outside agencies as compared to 51% before. Okay, also any questions? Oops. No, we're not done yet. Okay, the last one is on utility rates. Again, one city, one budget, so we are including the utility rates in our proposed budget. So for the water department, the increase is 6.25%. Storm and surface water 5.75%, sanitary sewer 8%, and it's a larger increase due to the King County proposed or already adopted rate of 12% increase. So we are not asking our utility ratepayers to absorb that, and we are using some of the sewer fund balance to smooth out the bumps of the King County increase. So again, this is getting back to the issue of affordability. So we, again, as an ELT, we consider all the impacts on households, uh... commuters and and taxpayers so uh... we are definitely because They need to turn on their lights, they need to turn on their tap water, they need to flush their toilets. They cannot avoid paying those rates. So instead of giving a large increase on the sewer, we are right now just trying to smooth that out over the next few years using our fund balance. So this is again managing what we have to absorb the impact on the day-to-day residents, commuters, students coming to Bothell. And I wanted to reiterate, we are not proposing any increase in our utility tax. That is at 6% compared to 15, 20% in other jurisdictions. So that's what we are proposing.

So what you're saying is move to Bothell, we have good water, and it doesn't cost as much.

And I need to pay into that, right?

So, a question about this. So, are we gonna have a deep dive?

Yeah, on the six.

Just a question that I think will be good to address is, there's two questions. One thing, we kept talking about no increase in utility tax, but we increase the use. And maybe this has been discussed before and I'm completely blanking. Why do we have a rate and a tax?

question and then the other question where did we talk about this already in previous limited we talked about utility rates earlier in this year it was so we agreed to all this no no you are we presented some preliminary numbers in fact the number is different one of the rate is different from the original proposal so it's lower than the original proposal so they have not been adopted but but in On October 3rd, we'll give you a more in-depth presentation on all the projects because those are more projects related. In order to fund all the capital projects, we charge a rate, a user rate. The utility tax, they go to a different funding source.

So, yeah, we'll definitely bring information back on that. As Quyen said, the dial that we're trying to hit on the rate increases is making sure that the improvements and sustainability of the systems themselves are captured in there so we don't have big swings in what rates are, right? Whereas the tax, yeah, is a different animal. You have seen examples of some of our neighboring jurisdictions adding on a 20% tax recently and that sort of thing. And that really does serve a different purpose than maintaining the system. So we'll make sure to cover that and what the difference is for the repairs. I think it's a good thing to understand. And again, as somebody who pays my bills, not to the city in this case, but you don't necessarily look at that breakdown. So understanding what's being considered is very helpful.

I did want to ask when we come back for more on the utility rates, I'd like to understand the long-term response to the increased sewer rates and how long we can really fund that. My gut says expanding low income assistance in response could be more helpful to people who really can't pay the actual rate. And then I don't know off the top of my head what the utilities that aren't the city utilities are doing in response to that because we have like four wastewater utilities that serve residents so it should be roughly in line we also can't control what the other utilities do but i wouldn't want to get to a situation where king county then raises their rate again and we haven't caught up to charging what the actual cost is either so i think that long-term plan something I'd like more about.

And I truly believe that the utility staff, their team has already worked all those considerations including low income. We did another program in I think in the current budget, but obviously not enough. So they will be able to present to you their methodology. They use a consulting firm, and this is just updating what they have been analyzing for the past many years. So this is an update to their long-range plan. And they do have forecasts on the needs, and again, the needs are great and the resources are limited. So we have to make choices.

in past years when we've done the budget cycle um and and please tell me if this was some kind of like transitional uh plan but i really appreciated when we were able to just like throw questions at you either email team like all the ways we just threw questions at you and then you came back to us in council meetings like here's the questions we received and here's the answers like And so, will we have a question bank going forward?

Yes, we will keep a list of questions. Like last time, we will do our best in terms of timing, the response, turnaround time, and get to you the information even before the actual day of the study session. But of course, some of the questions would take a longer time to respond.

Can I add a question to the study bank? All right, Miles is ready. It's sort of along the lines of what Council Member Dodd was saying. So like why now? Why is it appropriate now to smooth out the utility rates? Like what are the chances that future economic instability is coming and it will get worse and it might be better to delay that strategy for a later time when the conditions are worse than even now. So that's sort of my question. Is this the right time to do that? I know we don't have crystal balls, but my question is why now?

We will come back with that.

That's why it's for the question, I think.

I mean, I've already sent six pages of questions. There you go.

To get that on the record.

That's right, for all those who are watching, the three people.

So we can answer questions right now, or you want clarification, more than happy to address them as we can tonight. But if not, this is the schedule that will come back to you. In September, like today, or even started last week, we are proposing the biennial budget in front of you, revenue ideas, our 27, 20, 33 CFP. So in October, starting with October 3rd, October 6th, we'll have council study sessions. The proposed budget is CFP, property tax, and regular levy, EMS, and the utility rates and revenues. So that will be in October and November. And then also one scheduled public hearings in November. So, and then the real actions will take place starting on November 1st, and that will be the criminal justice sales tax, the 0.1%, the human services sales tax, the 0.01%. So we need really direction from you if somehow you have other concerns or this is not the right time, you need to give us plenty of time because we'll come back to you with options like including things that we cannot fund moving forward. So give us early warning if this is not a consensus.

Actually, that would be a good thing. What can we not fund? Based on the earlier question, right? We don't have to answer it now, but in the future when we have those study sessions, it would be good to see if we don't have this revenue. I mean, these are the services that are being requested or required by our residents that we're not going to be able to supply.

So for the criminal justice sales tax, it's mostly impacting criminal justice services. But we'll come back with your other information as well to a deeper dive. And then on the 17th of November, we will need to adopt the budget CFP, and of course the property tax levy. We do have a deadline to file our 1% to the King County and Snohomish County Assessor's Office. That's by law that we have to submit before November 30th. Good memory. And then December 1st will be the 2026 Mid-Biannual Technical Amendments.

Yes. So we can ask questions now? Yeah, yeah.

Again, if we cannot answer, we'll come back to you.

Yeah, that's what Kyle also mentioned in one-on-one. First of all, I request my fellow council members, I may have a few questions, and I'm sure Council Member Alrix or Council Member Todd, you guys are very organized. So if something is in the packet, please feel free to let me know. I will note down which page it has. I can go back and look at it. So first question I have maybe for City Manager or the Kwan. Based on our retreat, we had our priorities. Based on the priorities, is there a section where we have budgeted for the specific priorities that we worked on?

So we have tried to accomplish that because most of the investments really in this year support current services. But what we do really reflect more than one priorities. Because one can argue that all we do is meeting those priorities. But if we can simplify that, we'll show you the overall category by investment.

Yeah, just in case, if we can have, if there is a section, I will go back. But if there is a section, okay, based on eight priorities, we are able to add an item to achieve that priority, $100,000 or $1 million. because we have eight priorities that we put together. Just wondering if there is a section we are adding.

And I think how you would look at it is what you're not going to hear is us coming back and saying we can't do this because it's not budgeted, right? So that's part of the calculation is we look at what is the council asking for, what's the implementation timeline for a three-year priority, and are we able to fulfill it? I think what could be helpful, there are some things that our investments... within the budget of like we can try and tie back if there are specifics. But as Quan mentioned, some of it is spread throughout programmatic budgets. So the commitment, again, the bottom line commitment is that if there's priorities, financially we believe that we can do them. And we will look at a way of highlighting maybe some more of those investments in the budget, especially where there are some things that are one-offs. Uh, we can do similar of like, there's also a number of investments that are part of the safe streets and sidewalks program of where. We made a commitment to the community of we're going to implement more because we're going to be bringing it more so we can we can try and break some things down to to give you some. Better connectivity to where. the past decisions are triggering future actions.

Yeah. First of all, I'm really happy with the very detail. And I loved the introduction, the demographics, top 10 employers, or whatnot. I really liked the demographics, community diversity. So it gives the first picture. So I really loved overall everything. I'm just asking some questions. Not necessarily I'm looking for all the answers wherever possible. That's completely fine. And when it comes to the personnel, are we adding how many employees we have as a city? How many employees we plan to add? Is there a section like we have 300 now, we are planning to have 350? Like number of employees.

When you adopt the budget ordinance, you'll adopt a section with all the numbers of what you're approving in the budget. And then the next table is an authorized position listing, which has all positions being authorized in the budget. It's not in the current proposed document, but it will be. to you before you adopt a budget ordinance.

And with the aforementioned memory bank, so what you will expect to is all the questions from tonight we'll capture and we'll put it in there. So that's a number we can provide you. So we'll put it so that anybody who's tracking going forward up to the public hearing and beyond will know what's proposed. Okay. Yeah, you'll see some of that in there, too, in terms of the new investments in addition to some of the, like, not all positions are general fund supported. Some of them, if they're tied to implementation of capital facilities plan, are as paid out of different, yeah, out of the levy, too. So we'll make sure to break that down for you. Okay.

Okay. Can I jump in? So actually this was some of the feedback that I wanted to share with staff is that I really appreciated attachment one. on page 85 and 86 of the budget because it broke down proposed budget additions and it even includes a column that has, you know, new hire full-time employees, so FTEs. That total at the bottom is 14. Yeah. And my request, really enjoy this table, but I thought we could make it even better by adding a column that would direct that would direct our attention and the community's attention to how do these fit into council priorities. And so, you know, for example, I'm guessing, you know, body-worn cameras would be under beloved community, downtown parking might be economic vitality, right? Like we could make those tie-ins. I think that would be really a great way to show how this budget aligns with and reflects the priorities that the council set out.

suggestion cool thank you and within the CFP that's what I was waiting to say is that if you go through the I like I got the book but whether you have the the physical version or the Kindle version you can see where a lot of the projects do align and further the council goals but it's also some of it is oh yeah that matches this thing so some of that direct correlation could help but yeah

some of the wish list that I have if I may add we talked about DEA downtown I think sub area plan we talked about DEA like a specific art pieces or something this could be part of some of the committee's but wondering the reason I'm asking is I just wanted to raise that so that we don't miss the opportunity of budgeting. If it is already part of any of the committee budget, that's great. Is it possible to have, like, some specific budget for specific art? Our vision is for a day or a lifetime, no matter who we are, where you come from, Botel is everyone's hometown, and we had a discussion on the downtown planning, where we can have some art pieces or something. When somebody's working in the downtown, we represent, first of all, we love, everybody loves Bothell City, and we are trying to see whether we can make an improvement. So is that something that we can put together some, just a question, can we put together some, whether it's $10,000 or $100,000, whatever is possible, I don't know. So you guys are the experts, if at all possible.

We'll start by giving you some background information about what is set aside for arts, and then we can go from there.

Sounds good. Thank you. The other one is we talked about youth internships. I think you mentioned city manager. Around 10, we do it right now. Even if we can do another 10 or 25 internships, would it be possible to add youth internships? I was looking at demographic data. that are at Cascadia and UW Bothell, which is great. We have a lot of students that are studying. I know we have businesses that are giving internships. How about City of Bothell also can give, like council member... Alcabara also mentioned about youth program starting it. So if we can add even another 10 internships, instead of 10, maybe make it 10 or another 10 or 25, it might be a good idea if we can have some budget, if at all possible, if we can accommodate that budget. So that's another item that I wanted to bring in. And then other one is economic vitality consultancy. I think we have two consultants right now, city manager, for the economic vitality, like you mentioned, Snohomish Alliance and then the Seattle Partners, Seattle General, I'm sorry, I forgot the name. So how much are we paying together? Is there a room that we can increase? Maybe Ashish, I'm sure he can jump in if needed. Can we bring more businesses in the next two years if any consultants can help? But again, just an item in case if you want to budget under economic vitality as per our vision priorities.

Yeah, we'll bring some information about our economic alliance partnerships and what they do and what they don't do as well, sure.

Thank you. Compared to previous budget, our current budget, 25-26 versus 27-28, are there any expenses that we removed or, like,

we have any just to have an idea did we remove any line items we can bring that back as well yeah we'll have some examples there's some good stories particularly from our IT department who we were able to absorb licensing fee increases from the software that we used by eliminating some of the subscriptions that we found other ways of providing things. So we'll, we'll have examples. One of the things too that, you know, I didn't, I think I highlighted last week, but just to put a finer point on it is that part of how we go about with budgeting is that departments are given instructions of no growth budgets, and then anything that is added has to be documented and gets reviewed by the executive leadership team across the city. So there's no assumed, you know, Inflationary factor for example of that. We're going to apply 4% growth to every department We actually keep it at the zero growth and then have to document what's new What I like about that strategy is then departments have to first look at how do we live within these means? What are the things that we can do trade-offs? So some of them don't rise up to the conversation standpoint They're just do it like departments make those trade-offs and in examples. So we'll put together some of those stories and share them with you. I

And maybe the last question, it may be there, are there any new revenue opportunities? One is the taxing. I think the tax increases where we can collect more revenue. Just a question, are there any Interesting ways we can have our did we find any interesting ways to make more money for city of bottle I know last time you mentioned about collecting the interest on our deposits That's a good money that we are making on the deposits that we have right now on the fixed deposits or something CDs We have CDs Maybe we have none, but are there any did we plan anything any interesting revenue revenues that we have opportunities I think that's all I have. Thank you.

Invest in Bitcoin.

Exactly. So there you go. We'll say any legal and interesting ways. Exactly.

We'd like to know our legal office.

It's legal. But anyway, what do you want?

I was going to add to what Council Member Anguleri said. I am unshockingly very keen to have the talk about how we can work with our lobbyist to push more revenue and more progressive revenue options for cities. So I don't want to bring it up all the time, because I know stuff takes time. But when do we get to talk about that, roughly?

So the state lobbyist has met with each of you individually and to put together a draft legislative agenda. She is scheduled to join you in person for a study session October 20th to have a deeper dive discussion about what would you look in there and then the goal would be is to adopt a legislative agenda before the end of the year ahead of the session.

So that's the agenda, but if we want to go to the legislature and advocate for options that don't exist today, which would be passing legislation, when do we work on that?

What the council would do is give direction to the lobbyist of looking at those options. The way that you've agreed to do the work of legislative work in Olympia is to having the collective discussion of what are our policies that we want to be focused on. You would need to have that discussion about what are the policies we want to focus on. And then as the legislature is considering options, that's where we go lobby. We'll also have our delegation come visit at the end of the year. to present what is in your legislative agenda and priorities and have the conversations about what you're looking for. So that's really where the opportunity of the city is. If you're saying of like drafting whole cloth bills, I don't think that is not contemplated.

Well, none of us are the kind of expert that could do that. But I think to find new options that aren't just the bits we have available to us now, like there... The options we are granted by the state at this time, I think don't meet the needs that we've identified collectively and October 20th through the end of the year is not a very long time

You know, big change. This is probably a bigger discussion, but big changes. If you're looking at dramatic shifts and how things are funded, really working through those partnerships with the association of Washington cities and other organizations is where your collective voice is going to have the most value bottle by ourselves of having three representatives, one in the Senate and two in the house. It's probably not going to move the needle. Getting more alignment of other cities to come together and advocate for things, that's what's going to get attention in Olympia. So I would encourage the participation in partnerships in organizations such as Association of Washington Cities is probably the best way to use the voice. And what we're prepared to support is if the council is looking for, like, to support bills that do just that, having that in your legislative agenda and priorities gives us the opportunity to support it. But I do think that if you're looking to radically transform things, we're gonna need partnerships beyond just what Bothell thinks into getting a coalition of cities to be involved. I think that's what Shelly would tell us.

With that, thank you for your consideration and feedback. So we'll get back to you on those questions. If you have more, feel free to email me as your point of contact.

Thank you so much for being here, for leading us through this process and being patient with us. So next on the agenda, we do have an executive session or we do have a closed session. So we are going to adjourn to closed session for 30 minutes, which would wrap up at 8.58 by the clock. And so we're not expecting any action and the council will adjourn from there at 8.58.