City Council - Regular Meeting

All

right. I'd like to call the order of the City Council meeting of 01/20/2026. Before I ask the clerk to call the roll for tonight's study session, is there a motion to excuse Councilmember Tim Chisholm?

Moved. Second.

Moved by Deputy Mayor Black, second by council member Falcone to excuse council member Tim Chisholm from tonight's study session. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries seven zeroes.

On the roll call.

Yes, I was about to say that.

On the roll call, Council Member Arnold?

Here.

Council Member Prem?

Here.

Council Member Falcone?

Here.

Council Member Pascal?

Here.

Deputy Mayor Black?

Here.

Mayor Curtis? Here.

Next page. All right. Our study session tonight is on two items. First, we'll have an overview of the Kirkland Community Court Services. Second, we will receive an update on the city's King County Sexual Assault Resource Center pilot program. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 07:30. City manager.

Okay. Thank you, madam mayor, deputy mayor, members of council, and the honorable presiding judge, Olson. As you mentioned, this is our overview of community court. This is the second of our criminal justice system overview presentations. This was supposed to happen last year. We had quite a bit going on in November, December, so we appreciate the judge's patience in allowing us to move this forward to this meeting. The judge and Travis Locking, who's the community court coordinator, are going provide you an overview. We're asking to go through the presentation first and then have questions from the counsel at the end of the presentation.

So with that, I'll turn

it over to court judge John Olson.

All right, well thank you for having us. And as Kurt said, Travis Locking is our community court coordinator. He's been doing this for the past two, three years? Four years. Four years, close. And as you'll see Travis has a real passion for community court, the opportunity that it offers and the good things that we've seen from it. So I think I'm excited to hear him give his presentation hereto today. Community Court, first we first explored it in 2019. And I remember coming to a meeting here with the new council members and I remember Dave Asher. Judge Olson, you've got to look at this program.

And we had heard about it before and we had discussed it as something to look at. And so we put together a group of, we think, talented people. Tracy Dunlop was a part of that. We had our public defender law firm, Stuart McNichols, they participated in it. Our prosecutors, Mobley Roberts, they participated in it.

We had Tracy from the staff. I think we had two or three people from the city staff. We hired an outside consultant, Marilyn Littlejohn, who had started some community courts. And we began to meet on a semi regular basis. And then unfortunately, COVID hit and we kind of had to go into shutdown mode.

But we started up again and we were able through some good collaboration to come up with a program to begin in I think March 2021 is when we started. And so the whole concept of community court is to look at different ways to work with offenders in your community to try something different than traditional court. I know we're all committed to that. And I know our court, we try to do that with everybody that we see. But community court specifically, we see a different group of individuals that need a little bit more fine tuning and some close care.

And that's what's kind of come or developed in community court. We look at problem solving and we talk about addressing some of the underlying issues that these people face. And the longer we are in it, the more issues we see. I think when we first started the community court program, we had people that maybe had been involved in the law, maybe been drunk in public, disorderly conduct, fighting on the streets, maybe some criminal trespass. But that was kind of the standard type of individuals we saw.

And we have now come to a position that we see so many different issues that these people that come before us are trying to address. Most of them have some type of substance abuse issues. A lot of them have mental health issues. A good number have both mental health and substance abuse. A lot of them have housing issues, education.

They may have stopped or didn't complete school, housing is a problem. So these people come to our program and we try to fix it. And it's difficult, We've got some great people from the community our staff that are willing to work with this to address the underlying problems that they have and to hopefully get them over the hump that can get them to change some behavior habits that they have. And one of the neat things about community court is once in a while you get just a little speckle of positive that kind of turns the whole calendar around. And I can think of individuals that have been unhoused for time and time again.

And because they're unhoused, they have to they're sleeping on the streets or they're breaking into buildings or they're doing a lot of things that they have control over, but it's just part of being unhoused. And when you see that individual come to Community Card and tell us that they've finally gotten their housing and the look on their face, it's incredible. Just little things like that can make. And we have to, I guess, deal with those little tidbits of positives that we get because we have quite a bit of negative things that happen too. But it's one of the good things about community court is everybody is together on this.

You can't tell when you come to a community court calendar really what the person did. And I have no idea when I'm on the calendar what type of offenses these people committed. And it's everybody working together to try to get them the help they need to, I guess, complete their community court commitment and hopefully move them on to a different step. That's what we try to do. The community courts are kind of like specialized mental health courts, we're dealing with I said, a number of issues that other courts of this court hasn't dealt with before.

So it's a we call it a problem solving court. We look at the underlying issues. Guess traditional courts in the past had a bad name of simply using by using I guess incarceration or monetary penalties to make change in individuals behavior. I don't think that's necessarily true but we do look for other ways to maybe help a person find the path that they need to get over their humps and do what we've asked them to do and get through the program again and be successful. We've had since we began in 2021, we have had two seventy five referrals.

70 have graduated. Sometimes the numbers, they don't seem great, but when I look at it today, I think it's pretty good, and Travis will talk a little bit about some of these numbers as far as who we have in the program and our rate of success. And the program is not for everybody. We have a lot of people that do, will come and watch one of our community court calendars and listen to what's happening and after a day or two of watching the program, they're gonna make a decision, I don't want to do this. It's pretty intense.

They have to come every week for a minimum of sixteen weeks. And when someone doesn't have housing, they don't have phones, it's hard to get a computer, It's difficult for them just to make it to community court, let alone make the changes we're asking them to do. And Travis, I don't know if you want to talk about your chart you

basically made a pie graph here of all of our referrals and what you can

see Do from you mind pointing the microphone to the What

we can see from the referrals is forty five percent never opted in, meaning that they might have never showed up to observe. So that's a big chunk, but we never had contact with them. What we see here is our graduation rate of twenty five percent, which is that's for all referrals. That's I was surprised by this number. And I ran it again today because the numbers have changed.

We we had a graduation last week. We're gonna have one tomorrow. So the graduation rates, it's it's up there. Revocation fifteen percent of all people that enter into the stipulated order of continuance which is a contract they're going to enter into when they agree to opt in to the community court. Fifteen percent of those get a revocation and then four percent of our SOC participants are in warrant status.

And you see the two point two percent of deceased, which is six individuals. So that that hits hard because we do invest a lot, and the judge does a great job about getting to know their story. And we'll get into that more, but it's so important for the judge's role. Is if he's active with each participant for a minimum of three minutes a week, it boosts their graduation rate, like, eighty percent. So if he can just stay engaged and he does such a good job about knowing about their kids, what's going on from week to week. This isn't his only calendar. He's doing so much so that, but it's so important for this program.

It's amazing. Unfortunately, the people that come through court, we do see a lot. We do see some fatalities and it's sad. But these people, we know them so well. Talk to them by their first name, address them by their first name. We know what things are working on, what's going well for them, what's not. And so When one of these people passes, it's tough. It's tough on me. It's tough on the defense attorneys that represent them. And so we are kind of a family.

If you watch us, we have about 12 to 14 people involved in community court, and that would be a judge, Travis, a clerk on the computer, just staff in our office. We have two prosecutors, a defense attorney. We've got two navigators that help take these people into our resource center and help them get housing aid or health care aid or library cards. It's amazing what little things can be a big stepping stone for these people. So we all work together and I think it's one reason why the program, at least we feel is successful is because I think the people honestly feel that we care about them.

And I remember one of the first individuals we had in community court, he rode a bicycle from Everett to Redmond to get his drug assessment. That amazed me. He was living out in the woods. And one community court calendar, he said, I don't know why you guys are so nice to me. I mean, here I am stealing from your community, and all you do is try to help me. So things like that make it easier to keep going forward on it.

Judge, can I interrupt you? I think Deputy Mayor has a question.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, your honor.

I

don't want to interrupt your flow too much, but I

I need to get off flow, so

No, no, no. I wanted to understand a little bit more about, if we can go back to the previous slide, and Travis, this might be a question for you too. Can you talk a little bit, for our benefit, but also maybe for our public, who's helping to fund the community court, really quickly about what the opt in process actually looks like.

That's going be in a couple slides.

Oh, okay.

But I was told not to go ahead it myself.

Okay, okay, okay. That's great. Then you can answer that question. Then one thing, our residents at home can do the math themselves. But you actually we're going to learn about the folks who have opted out. If we take them out, we've got about fifty four point nine percent of people opting in, and a graduation rate on that is twenty five point five. So that's about forty six percent of people who opt in are graduating. So the numbers aren't as bad as they look. And in fact, they're even better than that because 7.3% of the pie is actually current participants. And if half of them graduate to we're getting closer to one out of every two people participating are graduating.

Thank you for saying that. But I wanted to get a complete picture. But, Bright, we've never had contact with that 45%. They've never checked in. So they were referred, technically, but we've never had the opportunity to help them.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Let's hold our questions to the end so we don't interrupt the judge's flow.

I lost it anyway. So we try to focus on less serious, non aggressive violent crimes. And so the majority of things we see are thefts, assault, malicious mischief, disorderly conduct, criminal trespass, possessing drugs or drug paraphernalia, vehicle prowl. Those are the type of crimes that we see most of the time. And we do not take serious offenses, serious felonies.

If somebody has a felony charge that's less than five years old, we won't or less than five years prior, we won't take those individuals. We don't take sex offenders, driving offenses, animal cruelty. Those are left to traditional courts. So we have a pretty consistent group of individuals that we feel that with our program, the things we can offer, we can help them through the process. So the key element in the program is what we call an SOC or stipulated order of continuance, that's the contract that the defendant enters with the city.

We do SOCs in traditional court too and it's a contract that I'm not really involved with except at the end of it when they are successfully completed. What we've asked them to do, I sign the order of dismissal, which is their part of the bargain. If they do what we ask and do it in a reasonable manner, we'll go ahead and graduate them and dismiss the case off the record. So that's why they're in the program, to try to keep this offense off the record. But they have some things they have to do. They have to weekly attend community court, 01:30 every afternoon. And if they don't, then

they're going

to have some issues they're going to have to deal with. They can't have any new offenses why they're in community court. We ask them to do community service. And it's amazing what these people that have done community service, what they come back to us and tell us how beneficial they found the community service was. And these are people that are struggling day to day just to get by.

And to hear them talk about what community service meant to them is great. And I think it's kind of it's important for them to understand what being a part of the community means because they're committing their offenses in our community and what it means to give back to their community. So that's been a big component. And unless a person is just physically unable, we ask them to complete community service. It's usually about ten hours or so at the most and we've got some great options and opportunities in the area.

One of the harder things in the SOC though is a lot of them, I would say, three quarters have either a drug or mental health issue they have to address. And that means they need to go to a specialist, have an assessment and then comply with the treatment that's been recommended for them. And that is a struggle. It's a struggle monetarily. It's a struggle to make their not only make our 130 commitment every week, but to make it to their SUD assessment and their treatment.

Sometimes they have to meet three days a week. They have to have group meetings. They have to have individual meetings with their counselor once a month. And those are difficult and those are the ones we have to keep pushing them to make sure they are successful. It's hard to fail community court and we never I don't think Travis we've ever had somebody revoked from community court after one miss.

We give them quite a few opportunities and as long as they, good faith, are trying, we're going to keep them in the program. Our goal is to make successful, not one of our ones that fail the program. They give up a number of rights when they're in community court. They give up their majority of their constitutional rights: right to a speedy trial, a right to cross examine witnesses, right to have an appeal to a higher court after a conviction. They gave up all those rights.

And they also stipulate to the admissibility of the police report in the SOC. And so they know that if, for some reason, they commit a violation and it's going to have to be a pretty serious violation or they have had numerous opportunities to complete the task that we've asked and they have just failed and shown really lack of diligence and not really a real they don't care as much as we would hope they would about being successful in the program. So if that happens, I tell them that if you are unsuccessful and the city comes and asks the court to revoke the SOC, I'm going to simply review a copy of the original police report that was submitted in your case and the court will make a decision whether or not you committed the offense based upon that, solely upon that. So they understand that the consequences appear pretty serious if they're unsuccessful. I think they understand once we get there what that means though.

And what else happens the community court or the SOC program is there has been an assessment prior to them coming in where Travis will meet with all these individuals. He has a series of questions he asks. He comes up with a list of things he thinks that individual needs to work on. He gives that to the prosecutor and defense attorney. They talk and meet with the defendant and they determine whether or not after watching community court if that is something they're willing to do.

They're not the most difficult conditions, but they do have to meet a minimum standard to keep in the program. If they are, like I said, successful after sixteen weeks, we'll go ahead and dismiss the case. We've had some people that have gone through it in fourteen weeks and twelve weeks and have done great. We have some that have been on for almost a year but they're plugging away. So they keep at it.

Key principles of the program. I mean it's individualized as much as we can make it. We like we look at the individual, what are their needs and why are they here and what can we do to help them. And like I said, we've had library cards turn somebody's life around, ORCA cards, housing, healthcare. It's amazing what little things we can provide to these people that is kind of the big push that gets them going forward.

We get the community involved. We have two individuals that are on our community court program or two of the people that come to court every week that serve as navigators. And these people are crucial. They meet with these individuals. They'll take them into what's called a breakout room.

We take them to the resource center that's virtual, and they'll go looking for is there anybody there today from DSHS that can talk about some housing or some medical care for this person? Is there somebody from Lake Washington Votech that can talk about some job training? Is there somebody there that can help this person write a resume or work on a job application? So these are all things that are available and these two individuals from our community core team have been doing it so long. Now they know who's good, who's there, what type of help they can get.

The nice thing about the resource center is it is open to anybody. Anybody can come in. Don't have to be a criminal. You don't have to you can just be someone passing through, but you want to access some community service availability in the area. And we'll let them come in. We'll put them give them a navigator and let them go forward with it. And it seems to be an integral part and works very well with the program we have going on right now. I guess the last thing, and I'm going to just talk about this quickly, this is Travis's chart. So he's a chart guy. Can look at it.

But the way the program works is every Tuesday, we have arraignments. And Travis and I will look at the arraignment calendars initially, look at the charge, and there'll be some CC question marks that Travis or somebody puts on the arraignment calendar we look at. And that's just prosecutor, defense attorney, when you talk to this person before their arraigned this morning, you may want to mention community court if that's something they may want to do. So we look at that. The prosecutor and defense attorney may talk to the this person may be a good candidate for community court.

If they are a good candidate for community court, they will ask to be referred. We'll send them to Wednesday community court just to observe. And they'll watch for one or two days, depending on how much time they need to understand what the program is. If they think that this is something I want to do, we schedule an assessment with Travis. Travis will set up a date. He'll meet with him. He'll do an assessment, sends that to the attorneys. They look at it and come up with a program for that individual. And then from there, we're off to the races. They come to their first meeting, we talk about what they need to do.

If their first major obstacle is some type of alcohol or drug assessment or mental health assessment, that's where we send them first. We need to address those things before we go anywhere else and then we simply go down the line as we go through that. If they continue and progress, we take them out to the sixteen weeks. Sometimes the last thing they have to do is community service. But once we get that done and once they're in good compliance with everything else, it takes probably more like twenty weeks than sixteen.

But once they're there, it's great. We have a little graduation party like we'll have tomorrow. We acknowledge the work the person has put in and ask them to keep in touch and send them on their way. And for the most part, I think they're pretty at least the ones I've seen have been pretty excited about the program. So it has some real neat things about it that make us feel better like we're addressing something maybe it's more difficult to do in traditional court.

But it is very people intensive. We spend just a ton of time. And so sometimes I feel bad that, geez, I wish I could spend this much time with all these people because traditionally a defendant will be in court once every forty five days, sixty days. And so we don't have that day to day, how are you doing, what's going on. Jim, how is he had a job interview. We just had a guy that had he was driving UPS truck or he was a box loader or something like UPS, but he applied for Boeing and we found out last week he got hired by Boeing. I mean that's huge for this guy. He's now out of where he was and he's on the road to be successful. So I'm going let Travis take it from here and then at the end if you have any questions we'll be glad to answer.

Well, thanks for having me here tonight. Our next slide is about our community corps volunteers. Judge Olson has talked about our volunteers. He's talked mainly about our navigators, Marilyn and Steve. All three of these individuals show up weekly. They have I've been a part of this four years. They've been here since day one. I couldn't do what I'm able to do without these individuals. They are amazing. So Marilyn, she's the guru. She's she's volunteered forever. She, they're all citizens of Kirkland, so they know the territory. These are individuals that will go above and beyond. Marilyn's actually picked up a one of our participants and taken them to Helen's Police, which is our homeless shelter here. Amazing.

Steve, he he actually wrote, he helps with resumes. He he he's great about finding community service. But what he's actually done is he's helped the participant write to their boss about trying to get an increase in wage and she was successful. So these are some people that go above and beyond and they are there every week. Amy is our note taker, once again very passionate about what she does and helps keep us all on track. She will pipe in at our staffing. We have staffing every Wednesday from one to 01:30. Amy will be there to clarify if there's any questions. So couldn't, our program is awesome. What I do know, I'm pretty involved with the other community courts in area, well, in all of Washington State.

But right now, Bellevue has no volunteers. This is this is what separates our our community court from from a lot of other community courts is that we have these built in resources. They like doing this, and they make us better. So just a shout out to our volunteers. Okay. Community court closet and essentials. This this is a picture of me in our in our community court. Now we've changed to a boutique because it's grown so much. What this started was three years ago, I just said to judge Olson, man, it would be great if we could have, like, a jacket or a coat or something here to help out. Well, judge Olson, the next week brought in things, and we just kinda kept it in the back there, and we'd have it, and then it grew and it grew and it grew.

And now we actually have the jury room and courtroom too as our boutique. This is just above and beyond something we can offer our individuals. Judge Olson talked about the hierarchy of needs. I didn't understand this, but if you don't have a house or a a place to live or sleep, it's really hard to maintain your sobriety or to better yourself or to get a job or do any of these things. So trying to understand, like, if you don't have a coat, you're cold. It's tough. If you're hungry, it's hard. So we started this boutique, and I'm really proud of this. So we use this. It's open during court hours, and we're always taking on donations, but we've expanded it to hygiene items and we keep growing that.

So that was just something that came out of really just a conversation that the judge and I had. The community resource center. Judge Olson talked about the virtual resource center. This is shared with with Redmond. Shoreline uses it on Tuesdays. Redmond uses it on Wednesdays. W use it on Thursdays. We're there. We don't utilize it as much as we once did. They're starting to go back more in person.

Our navigators are wonderful about if we have an issue, judge Olson talked about the medical coverage, insurance. Well, now our navigators take them to Department of Health and they'll fill out the paperwork with them. We talked about getting a license, an ID. Those are the things our navigators can do outside of the virtual resource center. We don't utilize the virtual resource center as much as we once have because we don't need to. Now if we need to go connect with Lake Washington Tech, they're usually always there. Great. K? We just connected an individual two weeks ago to to Lake Washington Tech. That's great.

We know who's there on what days, but once again, goes back Marilyn. She's so in tune with what's happening over at at the virtual resource center. Here are a sample of some things that are available in ID, employment education, food cash. But I would say the number one things are the health and medical and our housing. So we'll get to our housing and some of our networking here in a few slides but I want to take this opportunity to talk about recidivism.

I think that's kind of what it comes down to, right, is these recidivism numbers. Granted our program is only five years old. So the recidivism numbers really spike after five years. We can see people returning to their behaviors. But what we have right now is an eight point seven percent of our graduates have a new conviction, which is outstanding. But also we are pretty new. I remember we had the zero percent recidivism. Fantastic, can we maintain this? Well that's not realistic and as we look at state numbers and federal numbers we see that it hovers around fifty percent. If we can keep it at 10 to 15%, we're doing good.

The goal was to reduce recidivism by addressing the underlying issues that cause the criminal behavior. Okay? But that's gonna enhance our public safety, improve the quality of life for participants and all of our community. So it's good for everyone, but specifically these individuals that are dealing with whatever underlying issues they're dealing with. As you also talked about the disorders, when we first began, we didn't have a lot of mental health or substance use disorders.

Not what the assessments came back saying. Now I would say our numbers more like ninety percent of our participants have some kind of a mental health or substance use disorder. But really what we see is co occurring disorders where they have to be substance use and mental health which is kind of a new term for us. This was not anything that we were set up to handle but we figured out a way to get through this and handle it. But the judge is right. Phase one would be getting your assessments done. Phase three would be we have three phases. Phase three would be completing our community service. Right? Best practices.

I love best practices. This is how we we get a little bit better. I for one, I love the opportunity that I have to work with Kirkland and and do this because I'm always learning, growing. I have opportunities to implement new things. When I first started, I wanted to be a mentor court. So I watched Olympia. And and one of the things that the Olympia judge said is there's three rules nationwide for community courts. Show up, try, and be honest. And that's we're still the same. Same. Just show up and try and be honest. We can work with that. We can. Our best practices show that. Over and over, we try to implement our best practices.

So we have a policy and procedures. We are constantly growing. We're innovative and we're always evolving to meet the needs of our community and our participants. So that's our best practice. Judge Olson, he he sends me to conferences. I want him to go, but it's not always possible for him to go. So I go I've gone to Florida, Anaheim, Oklahoma, and I absorb these different things. I I see what other courts are doing. I see I ask them what's working, Why

does

it work? I bring our issues, what I think might work, and this has helped us. It sharpened our court, and we used to do assessments virtually. I need to do them in person. I can get so much more if I'm engaged if they're sitting across the table. We can kinda find out a little bit more. I think that we've been a lot more successful, and that was me suggesting to judge Olson, hey. I think we might be more successful if we can have these individuals come. So they come one time and observe, and then the rest of it's virtually. Judge Olson's concern was always they don't have a car or transportation. We don't want to make life harder. And he said sixteen weeks. Yep. The people that graduate early are the people that show up that are already engaged in treatment, have their paperwork presented at the assessment. I I can tell immediately this person is gonna be successful.

We also have those hard conversations where I'm sitting across the table from somebody. I already read the police report. I know that drugs are a factor. They will not own that. They they don't want to fix that. That's not an issue. It was a misunderstanding. And I say, hey. Maybe this isn't the program for you. That's okay too because we don't want waste the court's time or your time and I don't know how much help we can be if they're not going to own that and that goes back to the honesty element. So best practices, huge on the best practice. All the same procedures. We talked a little bit about the purpose. The community courts are unique because they're gonna differ from community to community. So Kirkland's not gonna be the same as Redmond or Bothell or Monroe.

Monroe is a lot different than Kirkland. So we can adjust our court to address the specific needs of our community, of our neighborhood, of what you guys want. We can kind of direct that and say this is what's important to the community. So I love that and he's so open that we can talk about it. And we have that staffing every week where we can talk about these things, and it it's a safe place to go. So I I love that. We have our mission, promote public safety. But for me, like I said, I we we have an opportunity to help. And let's take this opportunity and I'll have that moment when the them and I say hey you have an opportunity here to really turn some things around. What are the biggest obstacles that you see?

And that's one of the first questions I'll ask. It's not a trick question but I ask why are you here? What services could you identify that might be able to help you? Let's have that honest conversation. If they can articulate that, fantastic. If not, we're gonna come back to that at the very end of my assessment and we'll ask again. Here's what we get in the networking team. This is Annette. She's a jail navigator. When we started the community court boutique, we never thought that it would take off like it has, but the person that's used it the most is our jail navigator. People for reentry. They have nothing. So she'll come over often and be like, hey. Do you have a coat or do you have shoes? Somebody needed a size thirteen pair of shoes.

We had it. That was awesome. So having the networking and the teamwork, much like our hard team, which we're gonna get into on the next slide, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We have people in place that can help. And how can we help other people? I I think the networking and teamwork is awesome. That's why I go to those conferences. That's why I reach out to Bothell or Redmond or Bellevue or Sumner or whoever has community court that I might be able to get some information So love that networking and teamwork. Let's go to the heart of Hart, Melee. This was a game changer.

Once I was able to be a part of the Hart team and I understand what they did, got to really know Melee, said, you know, you should come up and watch what we do. She shows up every week, and that's been the biggest game changer, I think, for us, is connecting people with housing. Not only that, she'll go to them. She's provided IDs for individuals. She'll pick them up, take them different places, meet them where they're at.

That has been a game changer for our program. So I can't say enough positive things about the heart, but Melea in particular has just been amazing for us. So I I love that, and she she helps me. She helps our court be a better better court and really addresses underlying issues. Housing is fundamental.

One of the things that I do is I keep a spreadsheet. Part of my job is my position is funded by a grant. So I write for a grant, I do quarterly reports, but I track everything. I don't know what they're gonna ask me from from quarter to quarter, so I track everything. What we found, what the data is showing is people with multiple felonies, five or more, they don't do well on our program. So this is something I've informed the prosecutors and defense attorneys. We've had one graduate of the 70 that had more than five felonies. So okay, that's why we track this data. But I I like this quote about planting seeds. To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow, and that's what we're doing.

Planting seeds. That's that's all we're doing is planting seeds, planting seeds. What's going to take One of one of my job roles at the court is I facilitate DVMRT, and I do anger management. And this is all about planting seeds. How can we modify our behavior? I'm not gonna we're not gonna be able to address it in sixteen weeks. But if we can plant these seeds that maybe aren't gonna take root today, but they will down the road. And you gotta believe that. So every every small action can create ripples. We talked about this. Judge Olson talked about this, how there's a community. We've seen participants step

up and

help other participants while they're crying. There's been some touching moments. So it is just planting those seeds and having the individual believe in themselves. So I love that and I'm huge on the planting seeds. Looking forward. So like I said, I wanted to be a mentor court when we started and somebody asked me what does that look like? I'm like, you know, I don't know. What is a mentor court? What I found is somebody it's a court that did something particularly well. I like, we have an opportunity here and what I see is a lot of our participants, they struggle with time management.

They struggle with the little things. So how can we meet our individuals? How can we help them? They struggle with community service hours. That's always going be an element. That's one of the things that's nationwide. There's going to at least be five hours of community service. A lot of our people have fifteen hours. I thought, well, maybe there's something we can do to implement that would help our corp be a little stronger and we came up with our life skills program. This is a curriculum that we created over the last year and a half. It is applicable to 100% of the participants. So it's nothing about parenting because not all of our participants are parents but it is about time management. It is about boundaries. It's about personal well-being. It's eight modules that's designed to go along with the community court that I could facilitate on my own.

We hope to launch that program, but that is an opportunity for us to be innovative. That's an opportunity for us to set Kirkland's program aside from everyone else and say this is what we're doing. And it would be mandatory. That's why I would like it to be mandatory. So instead of doing fifty hours of community service maybe they do five and then they have to complete this eight hour curriculum. But there's gonna be great things. There's gonna be no harm done and only planting seeds. So I love that opportunity. We continue to grow. We continue to collaborate.

We have a growth mindset, but it it does start with the judge, And and he's been he's facilitated all of this. This was his baby. The closet was he started with the first donation. So that's pretty much what we have. The the final two slides are about best practices. This goes about what I was saying earlier about the judge talking. If you can just spend three minutes with each participant, their graduation rates skyrocket. And we're gonna continue to grow. We're gonna continue are happening all the time and so I'm pretty plugged in to nationally what's going on and we'll try different things. We'll tweak different things and I think we have a really strong program.

Finally, the view from the bench, notable achievements. This goes back to some of the stories that stand out for Judge Olson, but what we've done in thank you, Deputy Mayor Black, for pointing out the graduation rate because it actually is a lot bigger than that. So I think that's really awesome. If we if we did have 50% of our people that opt in graduated, that's fantastic. I was happy with twenty five percent.

Just because I'm there all the time, you don't realize that we are making an impact. Memorable graduation moments. We have a person that I worked with them. I worked with all of them, but this individual needed to prove that he was special needs. And so we called the high school that he was from back in Georgia, and he's just struggled. He has anxiety. There's mental health issues. No substance use, but mental health. But on the final community court, we were talking to him, and he talked about how he he has he's utilizing his planner. And we were so happy that he not only did he not lose his planner, but that he's actually utilizing it and and he's in in the way he's supposed to.

So he grew so much. That was awesome. Watching parents reconnect with their children. Amazing. The participants helping participants, that's that was my favorite moment when we had a participant that was breaking down and another participant stepped up and was like, I think we know each other. And if you need help, I can watch your daughter. And it was the most touching moment that I that I remember as in the community court because I'm like, this is exactly what the community court is for. How can we help one another? So I thank you for your time, and I think that's everything that we wanted to say.

I just wanna break out in applause. Thank you both for your passion around this. I mean, obviously comes very clearly from the heart. And I can't believe it's been five years, because I remember when we first talked about this. But I just can't thank you enough for the work that you do. You are significantly making a difference in these people's lives, and it's obvious that you care about it. So thank you very much. Councilmember Falcone.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll be brief. Just a quick question and quick comment. The question is, it looks like you currently have about 20 ish participants. What's your maximum kind of capacity that you could?

We haven't talked about it. If we had 30, we'd be doing 30.

So So you're not at that yet? No. Thank you. The other question, if you could just well, I will just mention Slide 11 where you talked about the great picture of you, Travis, in the boutique, and there was a list of items that can be donated. It was like a blue and cinnamon color box. Where can folks donate and when can folks drop items off? We have a lot of folks who want to help various programs in our community and just for the public. How do they drop those donations off?

Coming to the court, I'm usually there every day, but somebody can help bring in the whatever they have, and we can put it in our jury room too. Then Annette and I will go through it and and kinda say we one of the things is dignity. So if it's got sweat stains or if it's got holes in it, if I wouldn't wear it, then I'm not going to put it in our boutique. So I actually have a bunch of stuff in my van to drop off at the Goodwill St. Vincent de Paul and then when I can because they're just not going to be they're not exactly what we're looking for. So, yeah, bring them on up to the court. That's not an issue at all.

Thank you. Thank you both of us.

And it's the the community court or the closet, it's open to anybody. So especially this time of year, it's colder outside. And people, if they come to court, I mean, I'll let them sit inside just to stay warm and dry. If they need a jacket or Melly brought us this huge box, socks are amazing, what they can do to change people's attitude. We've got a big box of So anybody that needs it, don't care where they're from, why they're here, we'll help get it to them.

Thank you. Anybody else? Councilor Pascoe?

Thank you. Great. Remarkable, I think, what you all are doing and it's really impressive. A couple of questions. One is, kind of just thinking about the program overall, I assume it's a sustainable program. And if not, what are those things that aren't sustainable for what you're doing? Is it the size? Is it funding? It mean, do you see as One

of the problems that we see, at least I see Travis can chime in because he's got some great ideas too, finding somebody to go to get a drug and alcohol assessment. I mean, most of them don't have insurance. So they have Apple insurance and so there's only a few agencies they can go to. To get them to go there and to be able to go to treatment, that's huge. And I don't know how to get by that.

We didn't talk about we have one of the representatives from ICRON, which is a treatment agency and they do take low income people. And we have a gal that participates almost on a weekly basis who will come and help bridge the gap to get these people there. Every week she'll tell us, well, Jim missed his three meetings he was supposed to have last week, and he didn't give a UA. And so she'll kind of keep us involved in what's going on. But that's only for her people. But for me, that's the biggest hurdle is finding the mental health or the SUD treatment programs that these people can access.

That's a problem for for every therapeutic court. This is what we're running to. And if you Lakeside Milam is great. They're right here, but they were not gonna take Apple the Apple Health. So that is a big hang up. Icon is located in Bellevue. Like I said, most of our individuals do not have a way to get around. One of the things we'll do is get them an ORCA card right away, but still getting on the bus. And and judge Wilson talked about it. Three times a week going to treatment, but he didn't tell you about that they gotta call in every day to find out if their caller's being called to go take a UA, which is tough. So that is a hard thing, and that's my job is I need to go find better treatment, more treatment providers, somebody that can help. So we're working on that.

Travis, one of the things that you had mentioned was that you've traveled around and kind of seen other community courts and really looking at what they're doing well, what they aren't, and kind of taking that back to this court and the other courts that you're working in. And you said one of the things that makes us different is the volunteers in Kirkland. But you also talked about the teamwork and the collaboration amongst all the different departments and different resources we have, whether it's HART or the community responders or something. Would you say that that's also a a big difference in Kirkland compared to other courts?

Yeah. I, you know, I I I don't know if the other I don't know if Redmond's outreach homeless outreach coordinator attends, but ours does. And that is, I think, of all the thing our volunteers are fantastic. So I can't say one's more important than the other, but the biggest impact that I've seen since since I've took taken over the program is having Meli there and having that there. And, no, there this is not happening. But our volunteers, these are people that are retired in our community that they don't they don't need to do this, but they show up. And Marilyn was very sweet a few months ago. She said, hey. Look. Steve and I are getting older, we kinda wanna travel around more, and you guys might wanna think about finding more volunteers.

Great. I'm open to more volunteers, but it's just finding someone that's gonna show up every week is something, plus the wisdom that they have. So they do make our program very special.

You. Councillor Muprem?

Yeah, thank you so much for this. This is great. Just a very quick question, and this may be a very easy answer. I was just looking at the community court flowchart, and it looks like the second or third step here is the prosecutor reviews the report and screens for community court. How much discretion does the prosecutor have to decide whether or not someone should be referred to a community court or not, and whether there's a predefined checklist that they go through to evaluate that?

We're pretty open. I don't think I've turned anybody down. I may have questions about, are you sure? This person has five or six drug convictions in the last year. Do think you they're going to be able make it. But if they want to try, we give everybody an opt in and they're going to have to opt out if they want to leave. We're open.

Okay, thanks. Thank you. Anybody else? Thank you both, sincerely. And Travis, send me a note when there's graduations coming up, I'd like to come.

Okay, all right, yeah, will do.

All of us.

Awesome.

Other council members too.

Thank you, Yeah, thanks for the opportunity.

And we can send it because we're virtual too.

You both.

Travis does a great job.

Thank you both.

Alright. We're gonna do a change, and we're gonna move on to the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center pilot program update. City manager.

Thank you, ma'am. So while we're changing out, folks, so, when we created this pilot, the council asked for a six month check-in to see how it goes. So this is your official six month check-in. It's going very well, as you'll hear. I'm here to pre make the presentation. We have our interim government affairs manager, Anuradha Campbell, who helped set this up when she was acting as our management analyst. We also have our sexual assault legal advocate, Joao Goldstein, here and CaseArc CEO, Kate Garvey, and they're going to make the presentation together. So welcome.

Thank you both. We're happy to see you.

Thank you for having us. Thank you, Mayor Curtis.

Thank you, City Council members.

I appreciate all of your time and energy on this. Why thank you.

Thank you, City Manager. Good afternoon. I guess it's the evening now. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the Council. We're very excited to be here tonight to provide the first update on the pilot program in partnership with the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center.

As the city manager mentioned, I am joined here today by two members of Team Case Arc, one being our very own dedicated sexual assault legal advocate, Goldstein, and Kate Garvey, the CEO of CaseArc. So thank you both for being here. This update is really intended to highlight the progress of the pilot program so far, talk a little bit about some of the outcomes that we're seeing, and a little look ahead to the future for the remainder of this pilot. So with that, I will hand it over to Kate to walk us through.

Thank you.

Bring this a little bit closer. So once again my name is Kate Garvey and I am the CEO of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center or CASARC as we'd like to call it. I'm going to do a little bit of overview of all of the services that CASARC provides to the community in King County and of course in Kirkland. I have been the CEO of CASARC for about two and a half years now. My predecessor Mary Ellen Stone was there for forty four years and we still work very closely together but what I'm sharing with you now is fifty years of knowledge in this field of victim services specifically of sexual violence, sexual assault services, and being able to just work with this incredible group of experts that we have here at KSARC, these therapists, these legal advocates, these prevention education specialists has been just amazing and I'm really grateful to have them here in our community to be seated here with WA today.

So once again, thank you all for allowing this opportunity to pilot such an incredible program, but also we've been serving Kirkland for many years, and the first way that survivors of sexual assault get in touch with KSRC may be through our twenty four hour resource line. And this is you can reach out to us twenty four hours a day as it implies, seven days a week, even on holidays. We are one of the few resource lines that are operated by staff that are fully compensated, so they are on payroll. And our staff has some longevity to them. So KSARC is 50 years old, and our resource line is one of the first ways that we started serving the community.

And on our resource line we have individuals that have been there for thirty years, twenty five years, twenty years. There is a great depth of knowledge and warmth and understanding when that phone is answered. And we encourage you to call this line even if you have a question, so you don't necessarily need to call us to report something, you can call us to say, very simple question, what is sexual assault? Or my child asked me about sex today. So these are just questions that our resource line advocates are asked quite frequently and we love taking these calls.

Legal advocacy. So I'm going to turn to Juan a little bit after I go through all of these services to talk a little bit more about what legal advocacy is, but our legal advocates are there to help you if you decide that reporting is right for you, and this means if you want to go to the criminal route. So if you call our services, you call our twenty four hour resource line or perhaps you call our front desk, just our regular phone number, you might get connected with our client care team and that team is going to talk you through what you might want to do next or what your options are or do you just want to discuss more options with other staff members? And one of those options would be legal advocacy, and that is going forward with a criminal complaint, working with the different offices through law enforcement, and all of that is really just overwhelming. And if you did not go to law school, if you are not one of our legal advocates who are completely thrown into this, it is overwhelming to understand everything that's happening around you, to fill out these forms, to answer these phone calls, to be in a courtroom and then suddenly realize this was cancelled and it's been moved to a different date, all of these things can help you, can lead you to disengagement, to disqualify yourself, or just you're done.

You're done. And that's what our legal advocates are there for. They're there to help you walk through this process. They are there to help you understand what's happening. They are not there to provide legal advice.

Attorneys. All of our legal advocates are experts though in the system that you are navigating. Next we have our medical advocacy and we also have general advocates. So our medical advocates are there to walk you through the process of perhaps you are going to experience a sexual assault nurse exam or a SANE exam or a sexual assault forensic exam, a SAFE exam, and these are terms that you hear about a lot here especially in Washington because Washington was the first state to successfully get rid of the backlog of rape kit tests. So a SANE exam is when you would get that rape kit test, and so you might call up our resource line or talk to our client care group and they would explain to you what to expect during that exam, where you can get that exam done, connect you with one of those offices that can help you get that exam done, and then talk about if you don't want to have that exam done.

Are the reasons why it's okay not to have one or to get one? So you're the leader of this conversation. Whatever you want to do is what you should do. We're here to just provide you with all of the information possible. Therapy.

We also provide clinical therapy services that are focused on trauma informed care. And all of these services, everything that I've already talked about including therapy, is never going to be a cost to you. Yes, we can take private insurance, but you may not want to use your insurance because you may not want to have anyone in your family see what's on that, or maybe you are still on the offender's insurance and you don't want the offender to see that you're receiving sexual assault services through us. Or perhaps our specialty therapy services are not covered by your insurance. It doesn't matter we're still going to provide those services to you.

Family support: we also support not offending parents and caregivers of children that are receiving case ARC services because this is just upending your world as well, and you don't know how to be a parent anymore. You now have a child who is a survivor of sexual assault and they still have homework due and they still have a bedtime and perhaps they're acting out and misbehaving. How do you still do those things? And maybe they don't want you to tell your friends what happened. Maybe you don't have anybody else that you can lean on.

Well, have a parent group of parents who are, as I said, not offending parents and caregivers of children receiving services, and they know exactly what you're going through because they're going through it, too. And we have an area where you guys can just talk together and meet. It's really incredibly important. And all of our advocacy and therapy services are available in Spanish by bilingual, bicultural, CASARC staff. That's every single one of our services.

We do offer other languages but not in every single service area. So for example, we do have legal advocacy that's offered in Somali, in ASL, as well as Mandarin, but all of our services are offered in Spanish. And finally, one of the biggest areas that we like to promote is our prevention education because in order to stop sexual violence, to meet it head on, it is talking about it before it starts happening and talking about what consent looks like, what it means to be an ally, what it means to support someone, what it means not to commit sexual violence in the first place. So being able to talk about that and identify it early on is critical. So finally, I want to jump into our Kirkland pilot.

We are very excited about this. CASARC is what is known as a Community Sexual Assault Program or a CSAP. There are 56 of us in the state of Washington and that means that we received a certain accreditation that allows us to provide mandated services to individuals in the state. Those services are also covered by an RCW through an RCW that protects our advocates. And this RCW basically says that they have the same rights and privileges as our therapy our therapists do, so they don't have to share certain information with law enforcement.

It's once again something that's being led completely by the survivor as they see fit. We can suggest to them conversations that they should be having or nudge them well, no, never or we can share with them different avenues they could take, but we're never going to direct anybody nor are we going to share their information. As a community sexual assault program, all of those programs that I discussed earlier are part of our core mandated services, and our biggest service of all is our legal advocacy program, and being able to pilot a legal advocacy dedicated program here in Kirkland has been amazing, and it's only six months. And we feel that we have been able to do so much in terms of direct survivor support, being able to coordinate with law enforcement here in Kirkland, as well as with your offices here at the city level, and your outreach has been tremendous. I just wanted to share that now.

So the report that I'll be sharing with you today are just from July to December, so six months. And overall in that six month time from July to December, the total survivors that were served by WA was 43, and the primary referral source was the Kirkland Police Department, is amazing. So our quarters here that you'll see me reference on the different slides are internal quarters for Case Arc, and they kind of match the county and other city reporting. So that's July to September, which we saw 24 clients, and October to December 19 clients. One of the things that people are most surprised about when we talk about services at KSARC is that the county as a whole, we serve about 4,500 individuals each year, and about half of those individuals are under the 18, so children, And that seems right on par here with Kirkland as well.

In fact, your youngest survivor happens to be four years old this year, so forty seven percent of the clients that we're serving here in Kirkland are children. Kirkland clients receiving all of our programs, so there are folks that reach out to us through the resource line, through therapy services, or through other means that don't necessarily want to work with a legal advocate but they're still receiving services. So total clients served in 2025, '54. Total Kirkland clients served overall in 2025, a hundred and one. And then in 2024?

'92. So there's about a 10% increase in total Kirkland clients from 24 to 25. And as part conversations with survivors, we do ask for their feedback. So ninety percent of survivors are reporting that they're feeling supported through the Kirkland program, and ninety three percent feel that they're able to identify their next steps, which is incredibly important for us. This is phenomenal, so I will hand it over to Wah to talk a little bit more about your outreach and education work that you've been doing, but in total there's been 13 coordination meetings, 21 outreach and education programs, and that 274 number is just for the 21 outreach and education presentations.

If we are talking about coordination meetings as well, that's an additional 174 individuals. So there are a lot of eyes that have been on this program and conversations that we've been able to have. Would you like to share a little bit about your outreach that you've done thus far?

Yeah, thank you, Kate, and high council. I I'm a legal advocate to begin with. So because of this pilot program, it's it gave me expanded my role a little bit. It gave me the opportunity to be able to do the outreach. So I was totally surprised, to be honest, when I did my first tabling, how many people want to come to talk to me and how many people don't want to come to talk

to me too.

And, also, I was surprised how much people are willing to share. They you know, the long time drama I witnessed. So I'm very touched by people's trust, and I'm also very grateful that I can be in the community, actually have that encounter with the community.

Go ahead to the next slide. So key takeaways for us on the CASARC side of this is that we always felt like we had a very good relationship with the Kirkland Police Department, and we feel like this has only strengthened it. The program is reaching survivors that are disproportionately impacted by sexual violence in Kirkland, and I can share a little bit about those demographics in a minute. We're getting high satisfaction from our survivors, and as far as I can tell anecdotally from just meeting with WA, there's a growing demand for services and sustained community engagement. A little bit more about the demographics just in this last six months.

So as I mentioned, it's children zero to 17 at 47%. In terms of ethnicity, the majority of the individuals that we've seen thus far, 59%, identify themselves as Caucasian or white, 16% identify themselves as black and African American, 9% American Indian or Alaskan native, 9% Asian Pacific Islander, 3% Middle Eastern, 3% Mexican Americano Mexican or Mexican American. Ethnicity wise sorry that was raceethnicity wise, Hispanic 11%, non Hispanic 89%, and gender is majority female at 81%, male, 9% transgender, other nine percent. And that's

all we have to share.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you both for this work, and we are very excited about this program, and we appreciate that you're here. So counsel? John? Councilmember Pascal?

Well, good to see you both. Thanks for being here. Yeah. Proud of this program. Glad to see it begin and and see some of the the results so far.

You know, I I think one of the things just in some discussions with you privately that I that I've seen is that, you know, this is a new model. And so it's it's really good that we're exploring this in Kirkland, but it also means that it could be something that could be used elsewhere in other communities. So I think that's part of, you know, the success is to to reach people here in Kirkland, but also to share on that success with other communities somehow. So the more that we can preach that and share that, the better. And I know you are, but that takes more than just you two sharing that here in our community.

Thing that one of the things that struck me in listening to you and kind of reading the materials and some of the background information is how having those local connections and outreach are so important amongst the other resources that are available, but how you can better connect to people. And then when forty seven percent are under the age of 18, how more important that becomes becomes because the localized having that localized resource, I think, is becomes even more important. Those those survivors at that age, you know, aren't likely to it's gonna be harder for them to to seek resources outside of the area that are harder to access. And so having someone here that can help them navigate, I think, is something that's really great to see. So thank you for reporting on that.

And then lastly, think you didn't share on this and it's fine. It's something that we can we can talk about later. But, you know, I know CaseArc and other organizations like yours are having some real challenges of funding wise of particularly from the federal government side, which very dependent upon some of that money. And that's there's a lot of uncertainty there, and that's going to be impacting people. Luckily in Kirkland, we're funding this and that's not going to have as big impacts for the time being, but down the road it could.

And so I think the more that we look at kind of programs like this to look at that, you know, ways in which to provide these services to survivors is good. And so there's a lot changing around us, and I'm glad that we're looking at ways to address it. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Mayor Falcone?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, thank you both for being here tonight for the great presentation. It's good to see the successes so far, the early successes with this program. I appreciate in particular the slide with outreach and education and wondered if you could talk a little bit more about what the main messaging is in outreach and communication with folks.

Yes. When I first at the initial meetings, generally I'm trying to introduce the pilot program, and also I go over the entire services provided by CaseArc and then to see then, of course, discuss how I can meet the needs of their individual or community depending on who I talk to. And also, sometimes I seek how we can collaborate today because I'm not only talking to community members, I'm talking to organizations here, like Kirkland Library, just one example, how we can connect. So we can seek that collaboration, so how to better serve this community. Thank you.

I really appreciate that. One of the reasons I'm asking is it's really an important need in our community is also reaching folks who choose to not press charges and go the legal route. A lot of folks just want to mention have very valid reasons, as as you know, for for choosing that for their own personal reasons. And I think that this is a great program, and I want to make sure also that we sometimes the folks who have not chosen to go to legal route are some of the toughest folks to reach with services, as you know, and you mentioned children in particular. And so would love to see and hear more about aspects some of those of your programming and how we can include those into our programming here in Kirkland.

I feel like this is, you know, one slice of the pie of the need, but there's certainly, I think, know, one could argue that perhaps those most in need are those who are not pursuing the legal route, who already aren't identified and receiving services elsewhere. So that's a particular passion of mine that I want to make sure that we're also addressing through this. And so I'd love to hear just options for how we could perhaps morph the program over time to include that as well to help reach some the folks. It sounds like you have a lot of great stuff with not just legal, but medical and therapy and family and other services as well.

I'm so glad you bring this up because for my caseload, since I can start working here, what I see is not I'm, you know, providing the legal advocacy services. My client, I provide other services. I connect them to other services, you know, even they don't want to engage. Like, exactly you said, they don't want to engage with criminal proceedings. Sometimes, you know, we meet where they are. Right? So my, like, services in that particular category is increasing. So that's the benefit why I'm here. You know, sometimes I got a call from the lieutenant to say, oh, I have someone in the lobby. You know, I'm here, so close.

If I have nothing on my schedule, I pick up in the car and drive there. Five, ten minutes, I'm there. I caught up a client in the parking lot. That's the amazing part about this program.

Thank you so much for that. I really I mean, as Councilor Pascal mentioned, having that personal aspect of it being a local, a hyper local resource to our community members is really big. Like I think about like how I think, you know, our preschools, our elementary schools, our middle schools, our high schools, our, you know, colleges, our young folks, how are we getting the messaging out about this program, right? And I think it's one thing to have a poster on the wall that says, these the 800 numbers you can call It's quite a different thing to put a face to the name and go into those schools and talk not just to the parents as we know to the children as well directly into the counselors of You know introducing ourselves and I'm a resource to you in our community I think is you know would be really meaningful for the young folks in our community.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Councilmember Arnold.

Thank you thank you for being here. Really appreciate the work and the progress that have made in a short six months. You were in the audience where we did the review of the community court. This whole program is where this whole year is kicking off the council looking at our criminal justice system overall. Councilmember Pascal had asked the judge about barriers to scaling and serving.

Within the people that do choose the legal advocacy route, is there anything process or procedure arise that are barriers through that legal advocacy and medical advocacy that we could be thinking about to make changes to address people that do choose to proceed down the legal path?

Go

ahead. For legal advocacy part, the lens I mean, it's a systematic, and I guess, challenge we we are facing for this for our type of case. It's the lens. It's dragging. You know?

Very often, the case take two years, five years, you know Mhmm. To come to an end. You know? So that kind of a continuous support to the victim and the family is really essential. So how I don't have a quick solution to that challenge, though, but I I just want to point it out how much you know, how dedicated our victim and family are to stick with the process.

I think I would agree with that. The superior court process for these felony level sort of proceedings since COVID has been the timeline has been extended greatly. I do know that the prosecutor's office, because we had written two reports about it, did make some big changes to make sure that they could address those timeline issues. What we saw then was that a lot of the cases were getting pled down, which is also just as sort of disarming to a survivor to just suddenly hear that something that was started off as, you know, a felony level assault on them to then be dropped down to a misdemeanor is incredibly upsetting and especially making sure that they're part of the conversation. Many times the only conversation they're having is with our legal advocates.

We're trying to change that and open those lines of communications up, and what I'm discovering at the end of the day, a lot of this has to do with funding and resources and capacity. So just what Councilmember Pascal hinted at, we are at a deficit victim services as a whole in the state of Washington. Commerce put out a decision package before the governor's budget that said victim services for the state of Washington needed $456,000,000 just to operate at a status quo level. And we put out a request for $21,380,000 and in the governor's budget it was 12,000,000 and we're grateful because this is a tough, tough budget. But we're still fighting for that 21.38, and that is for victim services across the board.

And we are hoping that this also means that if we're able to lift up victim services, we're also able to lift up law enforcement and their needs too. When law enforcement and the prosecutor's office and all of these entities that are involved are working at a deficit, it's the survivors who suffer. So it's not just community service organizations that need this level funding and this great funding. We want to make sure that it's up for law enforcement, that it's up for the prosecutor's office as well, so that survivors will have an easier process, too.

If I may, I want to add also. When I listened to the presentation, earlier presentation, I was seeing all this resource. I was thinking, you know, my client and the family need sometimes they need those kind of resource, too, you know? So I remember when we had almost, like, first meeting in here, and I actually on the call because it's I started, like, right before school starts. So I'm on the phone with to call because my young client needed clothes to go back to school.

She wants some, you know, kinda like go back to school clothes, something new. I have to make a bunch of calls just to, you know, to find that resource. So, you know, it's like that closet, it's useful there. So I just want to point out, you know, so I can see, like, housing too. You know? We have client need housing support too. You know? So all those services, there's always for legal cases, very often there's two sides in there. You have offender side, then you have the survivor side.

You, Hua. Thank you, Kate.

Thank you. Thank you. I keep on still calling you Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Councilor Arnold, for that question. And it really helps us figure out more ways that we can support you and what synergies we can look for. I mean, bringing up the Clothing Closet is a really good point. So, thank you both. Anybody else? Deputy Mayor.

Thank you. Yeah, just as you were talking about that last point, and the mayor talked about synergy, and I was thinking before she made her comments about intersectionality. And we have so many people in our community who are vulnerable, there's so much intersectionality for a lot of them, and we're serving those needs in so many different ways with a mobile integrated health system, with a regional crisis response agency, with a crisis clinic, with your legal advocacy for survivors of sexual assault, our community court. We're talking about all these different things, and they're all systems that I'm proud to say that, you know, Kirkland has kind of launched all collectively over the last five, six years. I want to if you can talk about just how all the I also forgot our homelessness action response team and our homelessness outreach coordinator.

And with all that intersectionality, with all the synergy, just how all those systems are working from your point of view, as far as the coordinated effort to serve people in Kirkland who are vulnerable, and especially if they have these intersectional

Yeah, that's actually something I had a little paragraph prepared, but I want to share, actually. Like we all know, this is a pilot program. It's one of the first of the in this region that I mean, as someone in the field, I'm very grateful that this the creation of this program. Appreciate the support from Kurt, from Anna, from all the other CT staff, you know, I see Mark in the back, and the support from the police department, the support from the, like, the local community and the organization from CaseArc of this, because I'm the one I mean, it's new. It's a first.

So, you know, there are aspects that we still need to work on to figure it out. Right? But from my perspective, I already see the benefit of this huge program because it's truly, to me, it's truly bringing, like, the strengths of all the partners together and to better serve the community. And I see that I'm grateful to be I'm I'm doing the work, so I'm really grateful I see the result. So I really, appreciate the continued support.

I'm hoping for the continued support of this program. And it's really helped me to, besides the direct services to the high end, and also helped me to understand the community resource, understand the commune understand this community particular community, and also build the relationship with all the community partners so I can better personally also just connect them to the resource. And all those it's almost like a win win win situation because you bring the strengths to the table. Everybody brings the strengths to the table, then, you know, you created a better result. I truly hope you know, I do see this program can set an example for the others and can provide potentially can be one of the new ways we do the advocacy work.

I do love the way it fits into the overall fabric of a mosaic of solutions for people with all kinds of different vulnerabilities. Thank you. Thank

you both for being here. This has been really information. Informational.

Thank you all. We appreciate you. Thank you.

All right. We have finished our study session, and that concludes it for this evening. We'll take a break, and we'll be back at 07:30 for our regular meeting.

Receiving the proclamation is Anna Aguirre, who's a past Kirkland Cultural Arts Commissioner. She's also a dual language program teacher and a healing arts professional. We're very happy to have her with us tonight.

Alright. Well, first, I'm gonna hand you a copy, and then I'm gonna read I'm gonna read a proclamation of the city of Kirkland, proclaiming a day of racial healing today, 01/20/2026. Whereas in 2017, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation created the first national day of racial healing to acknowledge past injustices and bring people together around a shared understanding of the ongoing issue of structural racism to heal as a community.

And whereas the city understands and recognizes that there is a racial divide in our country that we all must work on bridging to help heal the wounds created by historical and current racial, ethnic, and religious bias. And whereas reminders of racism and inequality persist in our society, with the tragic killing of George Floyd by a police officer on 05/25/2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the death of many other black people and people of color. And whereas the rights and freedoms of individuals across the nation continue to be threatened by a broad landscape of regressive policy decisions, institutional practices, and rising intolerance that undermine equity and justice and whereas every person has the capability to make changes within themselves through reflection, learning, and conversations about race that can collectively have a profound effect on our entire society And whereas dedicating ourselves to the principles of truth, racial healing, and transformation can help bring about the necessary shifts in thinking and behavior, that will create a community and country where racial biases and structural racism will no longer plague our society. And whereas racial healing is a vital and crucial commitment to the health, safety and economic well-being of all people.

Now, therefore, Mayor Kelly Curtis, on behalf of the City Council, proclaims this Tuesday, following Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the day of racial healing in Kirkland, and calls upon the people of Kirkland, Washington to promote racial healing and transformation in ways best suited for them individually, to work together to ensure a more just and equitable world. Thank

you. I would like to approach healing from the perspective of trans languaging. And I want to say thank you, but the whole languages that an individual can use to express, that is translanguaging. And when we are free to move through this to express our feelings, I am very thankful for this opportunity to say that language to be a bridge, not a barrier. Always support belonging.

Our ideas and our belief creating healing because in that freedom, we can be who we are. And our identity can bright can be bright and can hear and seen. Thank you.

All right. We are now moving on to items from the audience. This is the time in our meeting when we normally hear from the public. Minutes. We will provide up to a total of forty five minutes for our items for the audience, no more than six speakers on a subject, regardless of their position on a subject.

To address the council during items from the audience period, please sign up using the online public comment instruction link or the posted QR code in chambers. For those participating by phone, please dial 9 to be recognized to speak. Items from the audience is an important part of our business meeting, and we ask that everyone be treated with kindness and respect. Please do not clap or applaud or otherwise openly express your agreement or disagreement with the speaker. When that happens, even when you are supporting a speaker, it can be disruptive to our meeting and discourage others from sharing a different viewpoint.

We discourage people from using obscenities and making personal attacks against others, and we ask that you direct your comments to the Council, not to staff or audience members. In addition, because they can be disruptive, signs and placards are not allowed in Council chambers during our meetings, regardless of their content. Kirkland prides itself on being a respectful, welcoming community. We want everyone to feel like they belong in council chambers expressing their viewpoints. City Clerk, who do we have to sign up?

Thank you, Mayor. At this point, we have two guests wishing to speak, both on-site, Lolita Hawkinson followed by Alex Zimmerman.

Lolita, welcome.

Hi. I'm Loretta Hawkinson. I live in the Norcirk neighborhood. I've lived in the same home for fifty years this year. So I've I'm want to have put my 2¢ in about the speed limits or the signs for at the school crossings.

And there was a long meeting, last council meeting, about flashing lights about, if they should say, 20 miles an hour during those hours. 20 miles an hour always, 20 miles an hour when kids are present. A lot of these are very confusing, like when kids are present, right, and everybody kind of agrees with that. I would like to say, I think it should be always 20 miles an hour. We never know when kids are gonna be in there.

The times when they you know, when you put the times up, people distracted driving is the worst thing that can happen in a school zone. So people are going to look down at their dash to see if their speed limit, make sure it's under 20 or at 20. But if you give them the time, they're gonna look again and have to see what time it is to see. Those are eyes off the road, and that is what's causing I mean, that's just dangerous. So I would like to suggest we just have 20 miles an hour.

You can save a few dollars for the first few years by putting stickers over em. They make great stickers that last two, three, four years until the signs would naturally have to be repaired or replaced because they were fading or whatever. And so that's just what I think. Oh, and the flashing lights. That should just warn you that they're double, double fine.

It shouldn't mean about the kids aren't present or you're in the school zone. It should just warn you so that you don't have to have that next bunch of people that have to make the calls and say the phone, the lights were kind of askew and don't issue tickets for that time. 20 miles an hour is 20 miles an hour. Not confusing. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you. Alex Zimmerman.

Hi. My name is Alex Zimmerman, and I want to speak something about absolutely critical. Absolutely critical. I want disabled men, low income, opposed to behalf of housing. In country housing authority, for example, I know them for almost forty years. Yeah. So situation very simple, absolutely idiotic. Forgive me. This word idiot is absolutely legal. So one year ago, Trump made a decision so all government housing possibly belong only, only I repeat, to American citizen.

So a few weeks ago, heart department, federal department for two weeks checking and find 200,000, 200,000 housing what is belong to people, what is not supposed to be hubs. It's only iceberg. This is not simple, you know, what this mean. And I explained to you, they steal more money. This government who do this, you know, like in country housing authority who have five commissioner, mister Black one from this commissioner.

Yeah. They steal money from us. Why? Because these people who not supposed to be half, the government pay American citizen money, 2,000 per month for each or 25,000 per year. When we multiply only 200,000, what is government? Fine. We're talking about billion, billion in dollars. So when I come to King Country Council, to King Country Housing Authority, you start talking about this, they give me trespass and council support this. My question very simple, who's criminal? Somali criminal who's stealing $10,000,000,000?

They criminal? No. Commissioner in King Country House and authority criminal? No. They steal money too. How many billions is a question. Nothing care about this. A commissionaire who possibly controls this everything give me support in country housing authority, my six months trespass when I spoken only for three times because they don't want what is Alex Zimmerman is freaking old idiot. You know what this mean in coming talking. Guys, you are criminal.

You steal people's money. 2,000 per month for thousand and thousand people who not supposed to be half this. I cannot be dead because I don't have my King Country Housing Authority possibility. I'm a citizen for almost forty years. Why I cannot doing this? Because commissionaire like mister Black decides, so this is not so good for business. Trump is good, hot federal good, and Alexander man not good. Why? Because I come and talk in your criminal bandita. We have a Trump.

We have a new American revolution. Stand up, slave, and happy cow. We need sue them for stealing us money, billions. Thank you very much.

Alright. Is that it, city clerk? That's it. Alright. We are closing items for the audience, and we are now moving on to our special guest. Are going to first agenda item under special presentations is the Lake Washington Institute of Technology update from President Doctor. Amy Morrison. Welcome. City manager?

Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor. So there is an excellent biography of Doctor. Morrison in your packet, but just want to point out that she's the ninth president of our institute. She joined LW Tech in 2013. I just want to say personally, she's been an amazing partner for the city and particularly for the city staff. And we are grateful to have her institution in our city, we're very grateful to have her as our president. So welcome, Doctor. Morris.

Okay. Thank you, city manager. Good evening. It's great to be here with all of you this evening. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you and provide you with a brief update on how things are going at Lake Washington Institute of Technology.

So once again, Amy Morrison, President for the past thirteen years. City manager and I have been very good partners our entire terms, respective terms. Thank you Mayor Curtis and members of the council. I know all of you have spent time at the college and look forward to welcoming you council member Prem to the college soon. I also just want to thank the city staff and the interim police chief who also in addition to the city manager continued to be great partners for the college.

So we just have wrapped up our seventy fifth year serving our college and the community. Let me go the other way here. So just a couple of quick historical notes. We were founded in 1949 as part of the Lake Washington School District. In 1991, we joined the then community college system to become the Community and Technical College System.

And then in 2011 Lake Washington Technical College was renamed as Lake Washington Institute of Technology to reflect our bachelor's degree offerings. Certainly what not what has not changed is our mission and that is to prepare our students for today's careers and tomorrow's opportunities. So all of our certificates, degrees at the two and four year levels help prepare our students for meaningful careers and workforce opportunities. So today we have 13 bachelor's degrees and 42 associate degrees, well over 100 different professional and technical opportunities for our students. All of our associate and four year programs have industry advisory committees, so we certainly partner with business and labor to make sure what we're preparing students for is relevant and exactly what they need to succeed in today's ever changing workforce.

We have a number of different schools. Certainly our largest are clustered around information technology and health care. Some of you may know we have a very robust set of high school programs. We have our own Lake Washington Technical Academy, where students leave their home high schools and come to work with us full time while they meet their graduation requirements from the state of Washington while also earning a number of college credits. So if you were to come to one of our high school academy graduations, you would see a very smart group of 18 year olds who are graduating not only with their high school diplomas, but many of them graduate with their certificates, if not two year degrees, at no cost to them or their families.

And certainly, we have a number of other really important programs serving the community in our transportation, trades, welding, machining, etcetera. Here are just some statistics on our student body. The head count and then the FTEs we serve, that's a full time equivalent FTEs. Median age is 28. We are seeing that come down a bit.

Some of our students are getting younger and younger as they graduate right out of high school and come to our college. Our top enrolled programs so that you know is English language learning, early childhood education, and I'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment, health sciences, not surprisingly, and then funeral services education. I will just say we are the only public college in the state of Washington that prepares funeral home directors and embalmers. Our graduates go to work for a variety of employers in the community, certainly many of those you'll recognize. We have fantastic partnerships, especially with Evergreen Health here in Kirkland, Microsoft, Amazon.

You may have heard about our new partnership where we have a one right now it's a two quarter certificate, but we're going to merge it into a one quarter certificate where Amazon will help prepare them to become satellite technicians at their manufacturing center here in Kirkland. I thought it might be helpful for you to also think about Washington Tech as one of the top five employers within the city of Kirkland. We have over 600 full and part time employees, three unions with whom we work very successfully with, with locally bargained collective bargaining agreements, a $60,000,000 annual operating budget, and currently, which I'll talk about in a moment, we have over $45,000,000 in capital construction happening on the campus. And if you drive along one hundred thirty second, you will see that construction in full display presently. So let's talk about this Center for Design for a moment.

We are very excited to be under construction as we speak. Our newest instructional building, nearly 50,000 square foot facility that will house some of our highest demand programs in gaming, architectural engineering, applied design, art illustration, to name a few. That will be partnered alongside the LWTech Event Center, which will seat nearly 500 in that event center alongside a catering kitchen, and we're very much looking forward to offering that not only for our college community but to the external community as well. And we're putting together those plans as we speak. Atop of the event center will be a solar array that will be accompanied by an additional solar array, which received we received federal funding in 2022 to put online nearly $1,000,000 of solar panels, battery packs and additional EV charging stations for the community.

I'm very excited. You can see here an illustration when we are able to build state buildings in the state of Washington, as you know, we were able to put aside 1% for art. So we were able to partner with renowned Coast Salish artist James Madison to commission an original art piece, which you will see a rendering of here. We're hoping to have it installed in the next couple of weeks. It will be 15 feet high and nearly 1,000 pounds.

And so it depicts the story of the formation of Snoqualmie Pass. So that is very exciting. We will have the grand opening of the Center for Design this fall. You will all receive invitations, so I look forward to that. Also, you know, something that the city has been a fantastic partner on is our early learning center, and I'm very pleased to say the furniture was moved in today, And this has taken a little while, but we're almost there.

Certainly, we all know the essential role that childcare plays in our community and certainly but also for our employees to have quality child care so that they can be successful at work and for the broader community. Our child care center has been open for over twenty five years. You can see in the picture, those are our well loved portables that we bought used twenty five years ago. So those are finally coming down, and we've been able to replace them with brand new, premanufactured classrooms that are fantastic. Most importantly, we're able to expand the early learning center to serve more students and more employees as well as more members of the community.

We'll look forward to extending an invitation to all of you to help us celebrate the grand reopening of our early learning center this April. I will say that just one other note as I mentioned earlier, early childhood education is one of our largest programs, both at the associate level and also at the applied bachelor's level, and that program partners very closely with our early learning center to create lab like opportunities for our students. So here are a few before and after pictures. So very much looking forward to giving you a tour. You can see the row of well loved portables that will be replaced.

The area that looks a bit like an ellipse will eventually be the new playground, and it'll look into the green space that is the frontage of our campus. So that's a very quick update. I'm happy to answer any questions. But before I do so, I do have an ask of all of you. We are, as a reminder, funded through the state board for community and technical colleges.

So legislative sessions are very important to us. Right now, the governor has requested in his budget a 1.5% for community and technical colleges. That's still about $650,000 for Lake Washington. So as you have opportunities to talk with your legislators and the governor to please ask now more than ever when our fellow neighbors are coming to us for English language opportunities, for workforce opportunities, please don't cut the solution, which is community and technical colleges. Once again, I'm happy to extend an invitation to you to our annual open house.

If you haven't been, this is a great opportunity to see all of LWTech's programs, talk to faculty, talk to students all at once, see our labs. So if there's anyone in your world who's interested in the opportunities at LWTech or if you'd just like to see the inside of the college, this is a great, great event to come to. So that's April 30 at five p. M. I'll certainly send you an invitation to the Early Learning Center dedication.

Also, if you know of families who are looking for high quality childcare opportunities and are interested, please ask them to just drop us an email to elclwtech dot edu. And then finally, I'm very much looking forward to cutting the ribbon on our new Center for Design this fall.

Thank you, Doctor. Morrison, and thank you for your partnership. And so many amazing good things are happening, and I we want to support you. So I appreciate that you brought your asks also. So good job. Counsel, any questions for Doctor. Morrison? Deputy Mayor Black?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, thank you, Doctor. Morrison, for being here and presenting, and we're so proud and thankful to have you in our community. As you were talking, were one of the things you mentioned was that you're one of the top five employers in Kirkland. And I was thinking about some of our other large employers.

Evergreen Hospital, I think, is our largest, or at least traditionally has been our largest. Collectively, all of our K-twelve schools, collectively, if you aggregated them all, would be probably one of our other larger employers. When we talk to our the administrators at Evergreen, when we talk to the administrators at all of our K-twelve schools, one of the things they talk about is how difficult it is to attract and retain the best employees because of the lack of affordable or accessible housing in Kirkland. Can you tell us just a little bit about any struggles that your institution has in that regard? You have, I think you said, six fourteen total employees.

Before I do that, I just want to underscore that we partner with all of those organizations very closely that you mentioned. Certainly, Lake Washington School District, we're very proud to have the Regional Skills Center on our campus and work very closely with them. Evergreen Health is a very strong partner of ours. They hire many of our students. We hire their nurses to be our faculty, so we've had a very close working relationship.

The retired CEO is on our Board of Trustees, so we work very closely with them, And in fact, we have a Bachelor's of Science in Nursing, a very strong pathway partnership with the University of Washington Bothell, our LWTech to UW Bothell Nurse Scholars Program, and we're in the phase one of two phases of getting approval from the Washington State Board of Nursing for our own BSN at Lake Washington Tech. And the primary reason is to meet the workforce needs of our partners such as Evergreen Health and then Overlake and other regional partners. I will say that on the housing front, we have to be very attuned to the fact that we have students and employees coming from around the region to work at our college. And like all of you, we need to be flexible and attuned to those needs, especially now as traffic concerns continue to rise for many of our employees. So while we are serving students in both an in person and hybrid flexible arrangement, we try to accommodate employee needs while also, first and foremost, accommodating the needs of students on our campus.

So some days, that's easier than others. And our employees do live on the East Side, and then they do live in further regions so we work closely with them to try to accommodate their needs as well always while keeping the needs of students first and foremost.

Great thank you.

Thank

you, Doctor. Morrison. We appreciate you taking the time.

Yeah. Have a good evening. Thank you so much, and I'll look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks.

All right. Our second special presentation is the 2026 Sustainability Strategic Plan Annual Report and the 2024 greenhouse gas emissions report. City manager.

Thank you, madam mayor. So as you said, this is our check-in for the annual report. I want to highlight two things that were covered in the memo, which is today is a report. I know this is a important priority for the council, environmental programs. We are gonna be coming back and checking in with you throughout the year to ask for further direction on the next priorities and investments. So I'll end our May retreat for financial discussion, but also as we build the budget going forward. So today, I asked our senior planner, David Barnes, to do is just provide the overview, but not ask you a lot of questions about where to go next. But that will be coming, so I just want to assure you all of that.

We shouldn't ask a lot of questions about where to go.

All right.

Got it. Well, you always can.

Did everybody see the email today from Sustainability Ambassadors?

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council and City Manager. Am happy here tonight to talk a little bit about our fifth year sustainability strategic plan implementation, SSP. We have 10 total active slides tonight. First, I wanted to let you know the status of the plan's actions. For reference, we have eight focus areas in the sustainability strategic plan and our implementation plan is embedded within the actual plan itself.

It helps keep us focused on what needs to be achieved. And soon after we began working on our actions, we started to acknowledge that many of the actions, once you start them, they are ongoing forever. They don't go away. Another observation about the actions we have completed so far is that we have done a lot of the actions that were considered the low hanging fruit. These are things, quick wins, things that staff could do easily or that were low cost.

A lot of the remaining actions are quite the opposite. So we just want to acknowledge that. One thing that's clear, as you can see from my condensed slide here, is this is a ten year plan. This is year five. We have either started, completed or are ongoing, working on 152 out of the 195 actions of the plan.

So I think that's pretty amazing. That is clear that we're doing a lot of sustainability work every day of the year, even if it's not just the actions that I chose to highlight in the report. I want to make that clear. And like I said, just amazing feat of achieving this percentage of completion over the last five years. So one of our focus areas is energy supply and emissions.

And we have a tremendous opportunity here. We have the technology. We have the need for new, clean, renewable electricity on a massive scale. That's going to take a little while to accomplish. But it needs to happen.

There's ways to continue on a smaller scale that we can do in our community to not only create power in our homes and our businesses, but also power our cars as well, as long as they're electric. We don't have to start from zero. As I outlined in my report, we're achieving about a 10% increase in solar deployment year over year. It's really great news. I also talked about how we're going to hit our target that we set in the plan for an additional 10 megawatts of energy created by Kirklanders since the plan started.

And also to help in this energy, renewable energy revolution is partners like PSC, our utility. And they will help us incentivize the use of solar through net metering. And that means that when you produce a kilowatt of energy, they put it in a bank if you don't use it. And then when you need to use it, you get it back. That's an incentive. Also, to support this transition, there's battery storage now available. And PSC is incentivizing that. And that really helps out when you have an electrical storm. You've got a battery backup. Well, you just hit the button.

All of a sudden, you're using the energy that you have stored. And when you combine solar plus those batteries, you have community resilience. So these are some of the concepts that we have been working on and that we're really going to with EnergySmart Eastside going to really, really focus on pointing the community towards the existing incentives. As you know, don't have the same solar incentive, federal incentive that we had in years past. But there are still lots of great ways to promote this and also to educate the community that solar is very, very efficient.

The costs have come down over 40% in the last ten years. The panels are getting smaller and they're producing more energy. So these are all good things to hear. And also, I was really encouraged to hear about Lake Washington Tech's solar community solar. I had no idea, so it's super exciting.

And this bottom left hand part of the slide shows more of that community solar. And I'm hoping to work with the management with PSC to try to get more community solar through the existing program that they have. A lot of the resistance has been community solar is challenging and difficult, but they have a program that can put this on the roofs of larger institutions and buildings. So hoping to promote that to create more resilience within the community and on the East Side through Energy Smart East side. And then under the building infrastructure, energy efficiency is the keyword or words.

And that is ensuring that existing structures are actually pretty darn efficient because the requirements are for the energy code. Year over year, every two year cycle, they get more efficient, more efficient. And we require buildings to become more efficient. But existing structures, and there's a lot of them in Kirkland, need help. And so one of the things that it's not just about getting a heat pump and making your heating system more efficient.

It's about what can you do that's not the kitchen remodel, the sexy thing that people like to do with when they remodel their homes. There's things like insulation. There's things like air sealing around the doors and windows and finding places where energy escapes that causes people to spend more money and also drains our grid of energy that might not need to be expended. The good news here again and EnergySmart Eastside, the city are in a perfect place to help promote Puget Sound Energy's efficiency programs. Unbeknownst to me but now known and hopefully getting out into the community, anywhere from 50% to 75% of those types of energy efficiency improvements can be reimbursed by PSC.

And a lot of people just don't know about it, A, or they don't know how to access it. They look at the website and say, I don't know what to do. The good news here is we have energy advisors as part of Energy Smart Eastside. We've been training people in the community in Kirkland to answer questions about energy efficiency. And hopefully, we hope to steer them so that we can continue to make progress on reducing our emissions.

In addition, in 2026, Energy Smart Eastside is also going to be rolling out a weatherization pilot program to kind of see like what can we do because we've kind of seen what the difference in installing or incentivizing heat pumps has made in the community. What can we do for energy efficiency? So I'm sure that I'll be reporting on that in a future time. This is my favorite slide. So if you think about this, everything planning and transportation project wise is a sustainability project.

So we're looking to optimize the situation, whether it's creating housing or enhancing a neighborhood or providing a venue for commercial services to making a place that is more walkable so that you don't need to drive everywhere you need to go to get the things you need. And also making transportation improvements. It's really important that we take the equity lens when we consider how we use the right of ways and how we make space, both physically and psychologically, for new users to commute or to move freely and safely throughout our community. It's also imperative to look at these types of projects and improvements as not just that we should build them, but it's how we build them and using the most sustainable materials and durable materials that last a long time because that is sustainability. And it's a challenging balancing act, for sure.

But I was really impressed by all of the transportation projects that my friends in the Transportation Division and that we at the City have been doing. But this is just one that I wanted to highlight. Projects like the Kirkland Scramble, they activate sustainability, make a statement to the community about what we value and how we share the roadways with all users and all forms of mobility. And as I look at this picture, I'm just thinking, Okay, John, Ringo, Paul, George. And the third person should be barefoot, but anyhow.

Well, he took his shoes off. He's in his socks.

Oh, okay.

Good job. Good job. So, in my report, we talked a little bit about what we've been doing to kind of monitoring our waterways and creeks and streams and stuff. But now we're going beyond just measuring the health in our creeks and streams with Lake Washington Tech's Auto Shop. And we've got a partnership and we're encouraging the prevention of contaminants in our waterways.

So it's so exciting to see everything that's going on there. And I understand there's plans for a car care clinic. Residents can drive in and auto shop students can assess their leaks. Some of the many benefits that could happen due to this are that simple leaks will be fixed on-site, larger leaks can be fixed at local businesses for a discount, residents can get their leaks fixed and stop polluting, and LWT students can get service hours. So the storm water outreach team has been also working with auto shops, the auto shop to help students understand pollution prevention.

So no matter where they go afterwards, they understand that. And we hope this partnership further strengthens our connection between our learning institutions and our community so that we don't see pictures like the one on the bottom left here in our community. So sustainable materials management is another focus area. Some people call it solid waste. I call it sustainable materials management.

And the twenty twenty five pilot initiative, Waste Stations, at select events was highlighted at City Hall for All, and many of you saw it there in action, and has proven to be a great educational tool for community members that help them understand the importance of waste sorting. I know it's challenging. I'm really like, get into that, you know? But sometimes I'm like, 'Wait a minute. I don't know.' So this is really important because people are able to see this, get down to the basics of sorting their waste correctly and creating awareness about the social, economic and environmental benefits of waste sorting.

And socially, these events foster a sense of community responsibility and participation in an easy way. And economically, they help prevent or create cost saving opportunities and reducing landfill waste and promoting the use of durable dishware, which by the way, that was a tremendous success at the City Hall for All event. And some amazing statistics here. We only produced at the event 25.3 pounds of garbage. It's shocking and amazing, all in the same sentence.

22.2 pounds were recycled, 39.1 pounds were composted. So over 80% of potential waste was diverted from the landfill. So this metric not only highlights the success of the program but also provides a benchmark for future improvements and events. And due to this waste station sorting's success, we are hoping to use it further in 2026 and 2027 to reach more people and provide more environmental impact. And we just look forward to sharing with the community increasing the ways to divert our waste and use our best practices.

In our sustainable business, one of the things that was talked about in the plan was to create a sustainability resilience plan. But there's so many different ways to achieve that. And some of Kirkland's economic resilience efforts are now focused on strengthening the local economy by supporting small businesses, diversifying economic activity and investing in places and programs that help businesses and workers adapt to change. The city has been prioritizing business retention and expansion, supporting entrepreneurs by the many events I know many of you have attended, workforce access, reducing barriers through streamlined permitting and technical assistance. Kirkland also leverages its place based investments, arts and tourism activities, regional partnerships, to sustain activities during economic shifts.

Together, these efforts ensure the local economy can respond to disruptions like we've had in the past few years, maintain jobs and services and continue to evolve in ways that support long term community vitality. In 2026, new efforts to support businesses to adapt to change could include surveying businesses to better understand topics of interest, hosting economic resilience workshops and creating more robust resources on the economic development web page. So I broke my own rule here. I usually don't try to duplicate anything that's been in your report, but I had to. And there is a precedence for this.

And that was when one of the actions was kind of promoting the use of battery powered leaf blowers as compared to the gas. And this is one situation that I really wanted to highlight and I didn't know anything about it until earlier this year. And so this is an example of when staff in a department or division, in this case IT, goes well beyond what was envisioned in the SSP. So we have an action, SG 1.4, that talks about registering our electronic purchases and making decisions based on this registry. And of course, that registry requires Energy Star appliances.

But what's going on here with PCs for people just goes way beyond that and it's super encouraging and exciting and all the stats are in the report about what we've done. But the

fact

of the matter is that this is a perfect marriage of diverting waste for usable resources and kind of marrying it with equity. And only like 5% of our electronics actually potentially goes and becomes e waste. And it's not even really e waste. It's kind of being recycled. So anyway, I just really wanted to highlight that for this purpose.

And I hope that as people look at the act and staff looks at actions that are in the plan currently, that they can see an example like this where they can go above and beyond because it really makes a difference. So part of a healthy community is having housing for people and we're well aware of that. And housing fulfills basic needs, whether it's affordable housing, market rate housing, rental, or some other type of housing typology. The good news is we have the basics in place in our zoning code, but it takes time to develop that housing that's going to need to be rectify the deficit. The last major housing boom was when I was born, sixty years ago.

So we've got some distance to go. The good news is we have creativity. We have a vision of the city as a place that can host a diverse set of users, people and to meet the needs of a growing city. And one consequence of not doing that is that we're just putting more pressure on the existing housing stock. Some examples are shown here. I've seen the stacked flat example here on the left. They're building them in Spokane right now. I think they're beautiful. I like the concept of having three families there. Grandma and grandpa on the bottom, the growing family on the middle, and maybe the brother hasn't gotten married yet on the top.

And perhaps we'll see some of this in the future. And I could see how it would really kind of blend in with Kirkland's housing typology. Some of the other things we've got going for us is some of the solutions that you've approved through code amendments, co living, and creating common spaces. So it's just having that code in place is so important, as you know, because without it, somebody can't contemplate it and do it. Now they see it, they can be inspired by it and when the right time comes, can actually utilize our code.

So lastly, none of these things that have been described in the report of what you've seen in this presentation could be achieved without the amazing work of staff, support of management and from you counsel. So I want to thank you very much. And that's the end of my presentation.

Thank you, David. Well done. And nice shout out for PCs for people. I was very interested in that when I read it in the report. Council, any comments, questions for David?

Deputy or Councilmember Arnold?

Thank you, David, for not only that highlighting some interesting things in the presentation, but the very thorough information in our packet on the work and the progress that we're doing. One of the things that I want to ask about on Healthy Communities is a goal to monitor local and subregional job types, wages and housing stock to ensure that housing is affordable to employees of local businesses. The memo mentioned a lot of work that we've done to ensure that we're generating affordable housing stock, what research or benchmarkees plan to say, Okay, how does that match up with our workforce and employment base?

That's a great question. I'm going to need to phone a friend for that because a lot of the information I got from Scott Guder, and that particular action is something that he's talked about that we've just started doing. So in order to elaborate on that, I'd have to consult with him unless Adam or Allison has something creative to say about that.

Go ahead, Adam.

Okay. Thanks. A couple of ideas, Councilmember Arnold. One is that we work really closely with King County to monitor housing affordability in our city in terms of the amount of people who are cost burdened or severely cost burdened who are paying more than 50% of their incomes towards housing. So that's something that we track really closely.

We also track median wages and how that converts to median income the city and in the region as well. But we're also coming up on our housing strategy plan update as well, right? So I think looking at different metric in relation to how our workforce is able to afford housing is something that we can explore more as part of that as well.

Okay, I look forward to future discussions. One thing you've done really well, David, is tie the work we have in the plan overall and how it relates to each other. And so I think this will be some interesting data for future discussion. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, David.

Thank you very much.

All right. We are moving on to the consent calendar. Before we have a motion, I'd like to ask Deputy Mayor Black to present the audit of accounts.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We had payroll in the amount of $8,104,706.92 and bills in the amount of $5,821,500.94

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? Moved by Councilmember Pascal. Second. Second by Councilmember Prem. Is there any discussion? Questions on the motion to approve the consent calendar? Can't say approve tonight. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries seven six zero. All right. We are going to move on to our first business item, which is adoption of the design review amendments. City manager.

All right. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So we are looking for action tonight. This is your final check-in on design review guideline change that are required by state law, especially particularly that affect design review boards. And here to give you that presentation is our senior planner, Tony Lovett.

Alright. Thank you very much. Good evening. Levitt, the playing department. So I'm going to do a brief 10 slide presentation to kind of go over what would summarize the proposals that are reflected in the ordinance.

Again, this is to address, changes in the city's design review process and design regulations. Again, I'll start with the staff presentation. Following presentation, I'll be open to any questions that you may have. And then finally, council will deliberate and consider the proposed ordinance for adoption. At the November 18 council meeting, the council held a hearing to consider the chapter 142 amendments that focus on the design review process.

The amendments that were considered included the establishment of administrative design process including application types, the expansion of the public noticing to include owners and residents within 300 feet, and the establishment of design modification process reviewed by staff and the alternative compliance process reviewed by the design review board. So, to back up a little bit on how we got here. So House Bill twelve ninety three, which was obviously enacted by the legislature, amended RCW 3670A point six three zero. Some of the key elements of that state law included that the cities must make its design regulations clear and objective, and the design review process cannot include more than one public meeting. So as we approached this project, our overall approach was to convert the design guidelines that we have currently that are reviewed by our design review board into regulations by ensuring that the intent and outcome of the guidelines were retained.

With help of our consultant framework, we reviewed existing Chapter 92 zoning regulations to see if the guidelines were already addressed. If they were not, we modified existing regulation or added new ones to address them. We also reviewed regulations for applicability and feasibility. We tried to limit new substantive design regulations and gave applicants more design options to comply with the regulations. The new process will keep the guidelines in place as they will be used by the decision maker as part of either design modification process or the alternative compliance process.

This is an example of how we approach that. This is how we converted an existing guideline that talked about pedestrian oriented plazas and how we converted that into a regulation. Obviously, the regulation provides more detail, more specifics on what we're looking for in the design of those plazas, and also provides a new graphic that kind of shows how the spaces should be designed. So just wanted to give this as an example. One of the key changes that we did make in the regulations is how we address the modulations of buildings.

In zones that have existing modulation standards like upper story setbacks, stepbacks and setbacks, we require less or no modulation. In zones where we have zero specific, I'm sorry, no zone specific standards, we give the applicant the flexibility to select from a list of modulation options. Some of those options include, first one is the street width to building height ratio option, which is a new design standard and is for all facades of a building subject to modulation standards and tall enough to incorporate the required upper level setbacks. This option allows for more flexibility in the size and location of a step back or upper level step back. The other option is the roofline variation, which allows a project to create visual interest with changes in the roofline of all facades of the building adjoining a street or public park.

The multiple smaller form option utilizes vertical modulation to break up this building into smaller forms. It gives the applicant flexibility to adjust the size of modulation as long as the area required is met. The upper story setback option exists with the current code and is carried over. And finally, the new step back option is based on current zoning regulations in some zones but utilizes a smaller average and minimum step back. Finally, there are district specific massing standards that have been carried over from the existing code, but we've added the flexibility to adjust the size of the modulation as long as the overall area requirement is met.

This slide highlights the articulation options that are available to add human scale to a building facades and including a new horizontal definition option, an existing bay window option, a balcony option, covered entry and finally, a window design option. On December 11, the Planning Commission held a public hearing for the amendments to Chapter 92, amendments to various code provisions and the amendments to the design guidelines. During the public hearing, one member of the public testified with concerns about the process change from a DRB public hearing to administrative review by staff. Staff noted, following that comment, the due process will include expanded public noticing to allow for more public review of the project documents and comments similar to the existing process. Projects that are currently noticed as part of the DRB process will continue to be noticed as part of the new administrative process.

Following I'm sorry, following the close of closing of the public hearing, the Planning Commission deliberated and recommended that the proposed amendments be adopted. At the beginning of this process, framework did reach out to development professionals who had design review experience in Kirkland to participate in a survey and focus group. The key items that participants mentioned, including they wanted a strong support for a predictable process. Participants also expressed a strong desire for guidelines that are clear, objective, and prescriptive. The proposed amendments addressed these items, and staff had not heard any negative feedback from the development community.

Staff also met with the DRB subcommittee to review the amendments, and there was overall support for them. They did have some concerns, kind of like the council did when we were discussing this earlier, about their involvement in the process. And we did mention to them, you know, we would check-in back with the council in a year regarding the process, and we keep them updated. And so that some positive feedback we heard from them. And then as far as public hearings, obviously, feedback of the hearings was, in general, supported the streamlined process and the new public noticing.

There was some concerns that there wouldn't be some of these projects would not be shown in a public setting. We did provide information about how that public noticing would occur, the opportunities that people will have to be involved in that process. So tonight we would like you to consider the adoption of ordinance 4,922, which incorporates all the amendments that I mentioned. Finally, staff, following the approval, will update the city's webpage, will work on updating applications, forms and information to the development community. Thank you.

Thank you, Tony. Any questions for? And I will entertain a motion.

Madam Mayor, I move adoption of ordinance 4,922.

It's been moved by Councilor Mayor Arnold, second by Mayor Falcone to move forward ordinance 4,922. Any further discussion? Oh, city clerk, will you please call the roll?

On the motion to adopt ordinance 4,922, Council Member Arnold? Yes. Councilmember Prem? Yes. Councilmember Falcone? Yes. Councilmember Pascal?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Black?

Yes.

Mayor Curtis?

Yes. Ordinance passes six-zero. Thank you. Thanks for your hard work on this.

Thank you.

Okay, we are moving on to item 9B, which is our diversity our 2025 diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging annual report. City manager.

All right. Thank you, Admiral. So this is another topic that was originally scheduled for the end of last year. And given the length of those agendas, we went ahead and moved it here to January. So I here to provide you with what happened in 2025 with our DIB annual report is our DEIB manager, Erica Wasquero.

Welcome, Erica.

Thank you, city

manager. Good evening, mayor, deputy mayor, council. It's a pleasure to be here tonight to present to you a brief overview of the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging here on after referred to as DIB annual update. The memo contains a lot of information that I will lightly cover in this presentation. Before beginning, I do want to thank my team, Daniel Lasso and Abi Herod and all of the staff for all of their hard work.

Thank you. Together as an organization, we have completed 59 out of 68 objectives on the city's DIB five year roadmap over the last three years. And I want to thank you counsel and our city manager, Kurt Triplett and Deputy City Manager, James Lopez for allowing me to continue to carry out this work when there are so many places across the country that don't have that opportunity. It is your strong values and deep commitment to DIB that makes our city stand out as a welcoming place where everybody belongs. What is DIB and what is the DIB roadmap?

We can define diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and we have literally done that on the roadmap itself. But in short, DIB is about valuing our differences, ensuring fairness, fostering participation and creating safe places where everyone feels like they truly belong, so that everybody can participate showing up authentically as themselves. The DIB five year roadmap is the city's strategic plan outlining the organization's goals, priorities and actions to advance DIB. The City Council adopted the DIB five year roadmap on 07/05/2022. As previously mentioned, the roadmap is made up of 68 objectives across six goal areas.

Each goal area contains several goals, some of which I will talk about later in the presentation. Each goal is further broken down into objectives and each objective outlines specific action items, responsible departments and expected deliverables. All of these elements are provided in my memo to counsel. Before I move on to the third slide, I was made aware that some of you had concerns regarding objective 1.6 being marked complete. On the memo, Table three titled Status of Roadmap Objectives, the second column has the ongoing type objectives carry an O in brackets to show that the objective action item is complete and institutionalized, but the work of the objective as a whole is ongoing.

This means that you will see these objectives again on roadmap two point zero with new action items. Our city values. This work is grounded in clear and consistent council direction through Resolution 5,240, declaring the city to be safe, inclusive and welcoming Resolution 5,434, the safety and respect of black people Resolution 5,548, DIB roadmap adoption Resolution 5,686, the 2SLGBTQIA plus rights and the Resolution 5,693, reaffirming belonging. The council has repeatedly affirmed the city's commitment to being a welcoming, inclusive and safe community. While each resolution addressed a specific moment, together send a powerful unified message about belonging, fairness and the city's responsibility to raise quality of life for all Kirklanders.

The DIB roadmap is the operational expression of that shared commitment. Tonight, we are not only sharing an update, we are also seeking counsel's feedback and guidance. We are looking for your direction on how to prioritize the next phase of this work and how you would like staff to approach the development of Roadmap two point zero. Your insights on focus areas, pacing and progress will help ensure that the next iteration is aligned with council's priorities and grounded in what we've learned together. To support that guidance, the next several slides highlight key features of existing roadmap work that staff has seen work well in practice.

These examples are shared to inform discussion, not to predetermine outcomes and to provide real world insight into what has helped move the work forward. Ultimately, the strategic direction and priorities remain with counsel. National recognition. One strength of the current roadmap has been an alignment with national recognized frameworks. In one case, Kirkland became the first city in Washington State to achieve national certification as a welcoming city, an important milestone and a strong foundation for continued implementation.

Similarly, the city's AARP age friendly city work represents a significant long term commitment while progress has been made. Much

of

the work lies ahead and staff views this as a priority moving forward. Looking ahead, this model potentially including additional national certifications could be an effective focus area for Roadmap two point zero. As one example, staff has begun exploring similar initiatives focused on veterans aligned with community needs and best practices. Equity in contracting. Over the life of the roadmap, the city has embedded equity into its contracting practices in a consistent and durable way.

The equity in contracting policy and program is now institutionalized helping reduce barriers for small minority owned and women owned businesses. Technical assistance, clearer processes and community workshops has strengthened access while maintaining transparency and accountability. Hiring and trainings, the city has also strengthened equitable hiring practices across departments. Standardized hiring panels include DIB interview questions, improving hiring data and tracking and have increased consistency and transparency. Expanded recruitment strategies particularly in public safety are helping broaden applicant pools and better reflect the community we serve.

Overall, the city's employees population demographic have expanded closer mirroring the demographic split of the city. Training, the city manager's office in partnership with human resources department hosts regular DIB training opportunities for staff. These training courses are designed to help employees strengthen their understanding of DIB principles and apply them intentionally in their daily work and interactions with each other and the community, making staff better service providers. Community events. Sponsoring community events has been a critical part of the city's DIB work.

These sponsorships demonstrate support not just in words, but through meaningful action and investment in the community groups that make Kirkland diverse and vibrant. In 2025, the city sponsored 17 community events, reaching an estimated 1,000 attendees. These efforts strengthen relationships, build trust and send a clear message of commitment and belonging. We are especially proud that one of our East Side largest pride celebrations recently chose Kirkland as its host city, an affirmation that this work is being felt in real and tangible ways. Looking ahead, staff seeks to build on this momentum by strengthening the city's commitment to sponsoring and supporting diverse, inclusive and belonging focused community groups.

Next steps. This slide outlines the draft timeline for developing DIB roadmap two point zero and is shared as a starting point for council feedback. From January through June 2026, staff will focus on community engagement. This includes conversations with council members, city staff and community stakeholders to understand priorities, lessons learned and emerging needs. During June and July, staff will consolidate the feedback and work with city leadership to identify key themes, areas of alignment and potential focus areas for the next roadmap.

Staff will also consider the need for broader community feedback. This timeline is intentionally flexible and designed to reflect council's guidance on both the substance of the work and the process for shaping it. Looking ahead, as outlined in the memo, we are seeking counsel feedback on the roadmap as a whole, what is working well, where refinement is needed and how we should shape the next iteration. Building on this insight and expertise gained over the past two years, staff looks forward to working with counsel and the community to develop Roadmap two point zero, one that is focused, responsive and aligned with Kirkland's values and future priorities. Thank you, counsel.

Thank you, Erica. Just remember when we did one point zero, it's pretty amazing that we're moving forward to two point zero. Council, any discussion, any questions? I know Councilmember Falcone. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll keep it brief.

Thank you so much, Erica, for your presentation tonight and for all the work that you do. It's really important work that I know that the City Council values very much, so thank you for that. I'm not sure in the that sounds like an ask that you're looking for our guidance tonight a little bit on that, and I'm happy to chat more later. But generally speaking, I think that this Council has given feedback since before the approval of the one point zero that we're looking for the next iteration to be more externally facing, that the focus of the first roadmap was really internally facing. So that's something that I haven't forgotten and that I'm really hoping to see out of the two point zero. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Arnold.

Thank you. And thank you, Erica, for recognizing the work in Goal 1.6 on decreasing barriers to serving on council is not done. And as we look at what can happen in the next version of this, a couple of suggestions. One is supporting legislation on ranked choice voting as a potential way to avoid polarization and provide interesting ways to have the community voice their choices in council positions. And the other one is Kirkland's donation limits on campaigns for running for ir that.

To I we're think we should look at standardizing do the donation limits for Kirkland City Council races to match what they are elsewhere in the county. Couple things to consider for the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? I also want to echo Councilmember Falcone. You have heard that the next one needs to be externally focused. I also support Councilmember Arnold. There are a number of barriers that the council faces, people that are interested in council. How much are our out of pocket expenses, things like that. So I think we need to focus on that. And I have much more, but one tiny thing. I love the city employee demographics dashboard, and we should include our boards Commissions and our Council in that dashboard, too, and see how the imbalance is unfolding or improving.

So thank you very much for the presentation, and we look forward to having our one on one conversations with you.

Thank you so much, counsel.

Counsel, I'm going to call a quick break because I think the legislative session update will take a little bit of time. So and we can do it five minutes, come back at 08:51.

Okay, we

are back from a short break. We are now moving on to item 9C legislative session update number one, city manager.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I don't have much more to add than that except this is your update for the session, and it's also the first update presented by Andriana Campbell, our Interim Government Affairs Manager. So excited to have her here today.

Thank you, City Manager. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the Council. I have six slides tonight. As David Barnes, senior planner, said, six active slides. I like that.

I'm going to adopt that. Beginning with the ask, so first, the legislative work group has flagged a handful of bills to elevate for council awareness, and then the second is to provide an opportunity for the council to affirm or modify any of the positions on the bill tracker. All right. So I'll touch briefly on how session is going so far, what legislative actions the workgroup has taken, elevate bills for full counsel awareness, and then end with a look at session timeline and some important dates. Okay, so this is day nine of the sixty day short session.

Staff has already completed roughly 300 bill reviews. It's pretty phenomenal, honestly. The legislature is currently in committee mode, with the occasional floor action until policy and fiscal committee cutoffs on February. During this time, the workgroup has the opportunity to participate in public hearings, work with our legislators to refine legislation to align with Kirkland's goals. Governor Ferguson released his budget proposal in mid December, and the legislature has introduced budget bills and begun discussing them in committee.

The legislature will release their own budget proposals later in the session, likely to be in line with what the Governor has been stressing, and that is to close the budget shortfall through cuts rather than new revenue. Over the last handful of days, the workgroup has taken following actions on bills in alignment with the amended and adopted twenty twenty six legislative agenda's general principles, priorities around affordable housing and transportation revenue tools, and e motorcycle legislation. So the workgroup has signed in, in support of House Bill two thousand two and seventy eight, starting at the top of the chart there, as it makes updates to the statutory framework governing tourism promotion areas. These are locally driven tools that cities can use to support tourism related economic activity. The bill provides clarity and flexibility for cities that either operate or may consider establishing a tourism promotion area.

It is awaiting executive session. Workgroup also signed in support for House Bill 2,338 as it supports community scale weatherization projects intended to improve energy efficiency and reduce long term utility costs. It is also pending executive session. The workgroup signed in other for Senate Bill 6,026 as it requires ground floor residential development in commercial and mixed use zones. The legislative workgroup has concerns over the impacts to local land use authority that this bill has and has flagged it for Council awareness on the next slide as well, so we'll discuss it in further depth there.

And this bill is scheduled for exec session on the twenty third. The workgroup signed in support of House Bill 2,442. It would expand eligible uses of existing REIT for affordable housing related projects, provide a new local REIT option for affordable housing, and increase the six year limit on multi year voter approved property taxes to ten years. This bill has received a public hearing. It's currently under consideration in a fiscal committee as part of ongoing budget discussions this session.

And lastly, workgroup signed in support for House Bill 2,374. This bill clarifies definitions for electric assisted bicycles and electric motorcycles, promoting consistency across jurisdictions. Kirkland is also among a list of cities working through the Association of Washington Cities, seeking amendments to add a civil infraction and enforcement mechanisms at the municipal level for riders under the age of 16. This would help address safety concerns and provide law enforcement with a clear, consistent tool for addressing underage use. That is going to be heard in committee while we are down in AWC for action days, and Councilmember Falcone will be testifying.

Okay. Now the heavier substance of my presentation. This slide lists 12 bills in total, including companions, that have been flagged by the workgroup due to the potential impact they may have on the city. These are bills the workgroup would typically have taken action on given their potential impact, good or bad, but because they're not within the four corners of the adopted legislative agenda, elevation to the full council is needed to determine what action, if any, the legislative workgroup should pursue. And you'll see at the bottom, I listed Senate Bill 6,026, not because the workgroup didn't take action on it, but to highlight it for council awareness. Okay. Bear with me. I'm going to start at the top. I'll be as quick as possible. So staff has elevated House Bill 2,095.

This bill would assume that a driver is at fault if they injure or kill a vulnerable road user, such as a pedestrian or cyclist, when the incident occurs in a sidewalk, crosswalk, bike lane, or other space designated for those users. In a civil lawsuit, the driver would need to show they were not negligent in order to challenge that assumption. Staff's evaluation is that this change could make cases harder to defend, increase litigation and settlement costs, and lead to more lawsuits, including those involving minor injuries. This bill is currently scheduled for exact session on the twenty third. House Bill 2,137 and the Senate Companion 5,972 expands the definition of law enforcement personnel for purposes of interest arbitration to include correctional officers.

This bill would extend the same collective bargaining and arbitration framework currently used for other law enforcement officers to correctional officers, potentially affecting labor negotiations, arbitration outcomes, and related costs for jurisdictions that employ or contract for correctional services. The Senate companion is scheduled for exact session on the twenty third. It doesn't look like the House version is moving.

Anna Merrick, can I make a brief

Yes, go ahead, Karen?

For the first two bills, one of the reasons why the work group wanted to bring these forward is that the city is recommending an opposed position, and these are ones where bills are moving. And in some cases, Kirkland legislators are our sponsors. So we just wanted to make the full council aware of those positions.

Thank you, Councilmember Arnold. And I want to recognize that Councilmember Arnold is chair of our legislative work group. So I'm curious, what would be most helpful in this conversation? Do you want to talk about each bill individually, or should we go through all of them and then discuss them?

I would suggest that Andrea and I go through all of them, and then councilmembers call out anything they want to discuss.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, House Bill 21.63 and the Senate Companion 5,913. These bills seek to clarify caseload standards for public defense, for local jurisdictions aligning with the Washington State Supreme Court's interpretation of phasing in caseload caps over ten years rather than the Bar Association's interpretation of three years, meaning cities would have longer lead times to figure out the best approach to implement changes. Neither of these have been scheduled for public hearing. 2173, Senate Companion 5855, intend to prohibit law enforcement officers from wearing face coverings while performing duties and to allow civil action for violations. The Senate version was exec ed out with a handful of amendments, and the House version is up for executive session on the twenty second, so a lot of movement on both of those.

2,195 relates to city initiative and referendum procedures potentially affecting local governance and ballot measures. Has not been scheduled for a public hearing. House Bills two thousand three hundred twenty and two thousand three hundred twenty one both concern the regulation of firearm manufacturing, specifically the licensing and standards of three d printed guns, both sponsored by a Kirkland legislative member. 2,320 is scheduled for a public hearing on the twenty first. 2,300 '20 one is in the same committee but has not been scheduled for a hearing yet.

And then, finally, as mentioned, Senate Bill 6,026 and the companion House Bill 2,480 is being elevated to the Council due to its potential impact on future developments in the city. It is scheduled for exact session on the twenty third, the Senate version is. So I turn it over to you, Madam Mayor Councilmember Arnold as Chair of the workgroup for discussion.

May I ask a clarifying question? What is the difference between 2320 and 2321 because regulation of fire manufacturing Yes. Sounds exactly

They both have the same short title, so I'll do my best to provide the technical expertise here. So I want to say it's 2320 talks about the three d printer itself and the technology there, where manufacturers of the technology would have to sign under penalty of perjury that they will not allow their technology to be able to print guns. Like, it cannot be modified, it cannot be taught how to print the gun. And then 2321 amends in State law where it talks about firearms and what defines a firearm and includes three d printed guns.

Got it. Thank you. Well done. Councilmember Arnold, I'm going to defer to you on what would be most helpful.

Okay. Just to add some potential recommendations for discussion. I mentioned the first two would be where the staff analysis is recommending oppose. The clarifying public defense is something we would like to support. The use of face coverings by law enforcement officers.

The legislative work group is recommending a support with modifications position. The city initiatives and referendums is a recommendation of opposed. The regulation for firearm manufacturing is something the Gore Group did not take a position on. We wanted to flag it for council members for potential action that you could take as an individual. We do not have gun safety on our legislative agenda this year.

And then for 02/6026, we wanted to highlight that these were going to be part of legislator conversations in the next two days at City Action Days, highlighting the impacts to Kirkland when you don't require ground floor retail in commercial developments, how that would impact downtown, how that would impact other neighborhood centers and Totem Lake.

Thank you. Council members, any other want to weigh in at this point? Okay. You three have already talked about Councilmember Pascal. No, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Okay. I just wanted to kind of follow-up since I won't be available to attend the AWC meetings, you all will have these discussions with our legislators about that last one on the Ground Floor commercial. You know, the you know, the one thing that I would maybe try to convey that's on my mind with that is the economic development supporting businesses that, you know, as you start to let's say, as just only residential developments start to take place, like, in the downtown, that can fundamentally hurt start to hurt the surrounding businesses because you're gonna start to change the entire kind of character. Because businesses tend to colocate. They tend to build off of each other and, you know, attract similar, you know, customers and things like that.

So it could really that's kind of the thing that I would focus on the most. That's what I think of that, and that's my concern.

Thank you.

Thank you. And I think that's an excellent argument. I think that we probably all agree that this is not a great bill. So most cities would agree. So I assume this is going to be a key talking point when we meet with our legislators tomorrow, Deputy Mayor.

Oh, I didn't mean to cut you off.

Oh, no, I was done.

I just wanted to add to that and emphasize it. The, at least the second element of 6026 with its barring cities from requiring ground floor retail, it'll fundamentally change our ability to be able to meet our objectives, not just the economic benefits, but certainly that and the benefits of small businesses, but our ability to create walkable neighborhoods, neighborhood centers that have the neighborhood serving retail that we want to have, to have a complete community where, you know, workforce families who work in Kirkland can live in Kirkland. It's, yeah, it's pretty fundamental. So, I think, I expect this to be a hot topic in our conversations at City Action Days tomorrow. I'm on the legislative work group, I feel like I'm speaking out of turn if talk quickly about these other bills, but

Proceed.

But the legislative work group needs direction I on

think we agree on 6,026. I personally support legislative work group recommendations. I'm interested in Senate Bill 5,855 simply because this is a comment. It is moving fast. And since it's scheduled for exec session on the twenty second, I expect to have a conversation also about this bill with our legislators.

And I did read the subject matter adviser, and I am looking at the police chief. And I understand your concerns. We need to make it better because I don't think we're going to this bill is going to stop. So I think that's a conversation that we need to have in the morning. So that's my input on these bills. I trust the legislative work group on their recommendations on these. So I go back to you, Chair. Is there any other bill that you want to discuss in more detail?

There was nothing else for Mayor,

there something you want to add?

There was something I wanted to add. On the we talked a little bit about the public defense caseload standards bill two two thousand one hundred sixty three and its companion, 5,913. Neither of those bills has a bill report yet from staff of the legislature. There is differing opinions on what that bill, what those bills would actually do. I've heard it described the way that our government affairs director described it as being a choice the cities would have between complying with the state Supreme Court's ultimate decision of a ten year implementation plan versus some public defense firms arguing that they are bound by the Washington State Bar Association's Board of Governors' original recommendation, which was a three year.

But lawyers that I know who have looked at this believe it goes beyond that, and it gives cities a complete opportunity to avoid compliance with even the state Supreme Court's standards. So I think we don't have a bill report. I don't know if we have a legal analysis of our own. Stand to just highlight there's a lot of questions about that bill and its companion and what it would actually do. So I'm just sharing that additional context.

I think I hesitate I guess I should say, I hesitate to have the city affirmatively support that bill with the uncertainty about what it actually its true effect on cities. I don't know where the city of Kirkland would come out on legislation that would say the state Supreme Court has mandated public defense caseload standards, but we as a city are going to ignore them.

Do you want to?

Yeah. I think the position that we're looking to take is having the flexibility to have ten years to comply. And if that's the direction that we can get from counsel, we can work through the details in the work group to make sure that the legislation gives us that flexibility.

And I would agree with that.

Andrea, anything else you need on this slide?

Yes. One thing I want to point out, while we've been focusing on Alvarado's Bill 6,026, because that's the one that's been moving, Representative Salahuddin is a cosponsor of the House version. So when we meet with him, we should How talk to him about

much time do we have with him?

Thirty minutes.

The other bill and maybe on a future slide I just I think we need to watch closely House Bill 2,489 which prohibits local governments from adopting or enforcing laws that penalize people that are unhoused. It needs some work.

And I'll comment on that Mayor. AWC is well aware of that bill. It has not gone through staff analysis yet, so the legislative work group hasn't looked at it, but well aware of the impacts and the need for amendments. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you. It's a slightly more dynamic conversation than we might normally have just because of its nature. I appreciate you letting me speak again. I'm going to speak to my colleagues here about the I know the legislative work group is not recommending support of 2320 and 2321 necessarily. We were talking about it tonight as topics bills that individual council members might want to take support on.

I would make a pitch that the regulation of ghost guns manufactured through three d printers is actually a topic that our residents care a lot about. It's reflected in the Police Prop one that they adopted by a huge majority in 2018, which includes funding for a lot of our gun safety initiatives, many of which are led by our Kirkland Police Department. And although it hasn't been on our legislative agenda the last couple of sessions and maybe for good reason, I think these are both common sense legislation that helps keep our communities safer and would keep our officers who serve KPD safer and all of our first responders safer. And I would just ask my colleagues whether they might be interested in taking a pro position on those two bills.

I would. Gounselor Prem, go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, I just I agree with with Deputy Mayor that I do think that this is something that can directly impact our community. And being on the forefront of it and supporting this bill at this moment, I think, is a good idea.

Thank you. Councillor Ray Falcone? Ditto. My question would be back to staff is, we would this require that we update our legislative agenda, or we could just choose to take a pro position on these

motion to support those two particular bills, and I would just add that to our bill tracker as positions of support.

Thank you. Councilor Pram, would you like to

make that motion? I move to support Bill two thousand three hundred and twenty and two thousand three hundred and twenty one and add it to our legislative agenda. Not going to add it to

our agenda. We're just going

to tracker. The Bill tracker.

Thank you. Second.

It's been moved by Councillor Primm, second by Deputy Mayor Black to sign in, in support of House Bill 2,320 and House Bill 2,321 and add it to our bill tracker. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries six-zero. Well done, guys.

I will add a column for future presentations that has the legislative work group's recommended position on here as well. Think that would be helpful.

That would be helpful, thank you. Alright, anything else on that

Two keyboards, two computers here. Very briefly, I love a timeline. I want to show we're kind of it looks like we're in the middle of session. We're not. We're in the middle of sort of the city's larger process, but tomorrow kicks off AWC Action Days. A handful of us will be going down there, talking to our legislators. Our two big kind of first deadlines are the policy committee cut off and the fiscal committee cut off there, the first and the February 4, the February 9, and then before we know it, it will be March 12. That is all I have for this presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. And next, Andrianna will be presenting item 9D, which is twenty twenty six City Council Committee Assignments. City manager.

Thank you, madam mayor. So as you're pulling that up, as you saw in the memo, the memo itself had been finished before the, mayor, deputy mayor proposal to the council was finalized. Therefore, Adriana emailed you all this morning the proposed list of committee assignments for each council member. We're going have a slide that shows you those, and we're looking for a motion to approve the committee assignments at the end of the presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, City Manager. All right. So staff is seeking a motion, as the City Manager just mentioned, to approve the list of appointments of the standing council committees. Oh, that's much smaller than I tested on my computer this morning. I'm sorry. But this is the list of proposed members and alternates. Madam Mayor, I turn it to you.

Thank you. First, I want to thank the Council members for being so collaborative on these committee assignments to make sure that your fellow council members were assigned their top priorities. I sincerely implement it. And if you were to do a head count, this is a nice, balanced selection of committees. So if there's no discussion, I would entertain a motion.

Go ahead.

That wasn't acknowledged. Deputy Mayor. You, Madam Mayor. A few seconds, I'm going make a motion that the council adopt these recommendations. I also want to highlight that over the last few years, the city has had a transportation ad hoc work group.

And there was several reasons why the city formed a transportation ad hoc work group at the time that it formed. Most recently, its members were myself, Councilmember Pascal, and Councilmember Arnold. And the original purpose for that no longer exists. We can always reconstitute a transportation ad hoc work group if the need arises in connection probably with particular major transportation projects in our city. And because of that, my motion is going to include just for the sake of formality, it's going to include a sunsetting of the transportation ad hoc work group.

Thank you.

Okay. So I'm making a motion to adopt the rec one second. City attorney, do you need that as two different okay, thank you. A motion to counsel to adopt the recommendations related to regional boards and committee assignments, along with the sunsetting of the transportation ad hoc work group.

All right. It's been moved by Deputy Mayor Black, second by Councilmember Falcone to approve the committee assignments as recommended. Councilmember Falcone?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. As we know, Councilmember Tincherson was not able to be here with us tonight, but I wanted to share that he has proposed an idea, and I'll do my best to share his idea

in his

absence. He's proposing to add a second councilmember to be appointed to the Chamber Policy Board, I believe, as an alternate, and I have been asked to fill that role and would be happy to do so if the council agrees.

Okay. Councilor Mayor Falcone has made a motion to recommend oh, you no. Deputy Mayor, would you like to make the motion? She doesn't want to nominate herself.

She does not. I know. So, what I was going to do is amend my own motion. Okay. So, I moved to amend my original motion to add Councilmember Falcone as a second member I'm sorry, Councilmember Frakowen, I want to be clear a second member or an alternate?

Do you know, Madam Mayor?

I think alternate is appropriate. Hopefully,

it's clear enough as an alternate for the Kirkland Chamber of Commerce Policy Board.

Second. Thank you. It has been moved by Deputy Mayor Black, second by Councilmember Prem to add Councilmember Falcone as alternate to the Kirkland Chamber of Commerce Policy Board. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries six zero. The question is on the amended council committee assignments. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, six-zero. Thank you, everybody. Well done.

Thank you.

All right. We are now you can go home because you have to drive early in the morning. We are now moving on to council reports. Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. It took me just a second So to realize that was one quick just thank you and celebration item and then one heads up for my colleagues. The first, just the thank you and sort of celebrate. I want to celebrate that I attended the Downtown Kirkland ice rink wrap party last Monday, the twelfth. And it was a fun wrap party because I got to skate around with some of my colleagues from the some of our city staff and whatnot, and also some folks from the Downtown Association and from our Downtown businesses.

So that was fun. And I just want to highlight how much I appreciate the creativity that went into the idea of a Downtown rink during our holiday season. I appreciate the work from the staff, from the Transportation Development Committee and our partners of the Downtown Association and many of our Downtown businesses. So everyone who was sort of involved in that, just thank you. I thought that was wonderful.

I want to give my colleagues a quick heads up. I attended on Wednesday, January 14. There was convened an elected leadersbusiness roundtable to discuss some of the topics that are likely to come up related to revenue proposals in Olympia. And I just want to give my colleagues a heads up that there may be a request or two that comes out of that roundtable discussion that was many business leaders, a few leaders in Eastside Chambers and also many elected mayors and council presidents and those type of folks. There may be a couple of requests coming out of that conversation.

I don't know what those might be yet, but cities may be asked how they view some of the revenue proposals that are being made by the legislature. Expect those requests will are going to once they're received, they're going to be run by the city manager, the mayor, and the legislative work group, and ultimately be considered by the council if they're outside the scope of the council's approved legislative agenda. So, just a heads up to be thinking about that and the fact that we may see something like that, and it'll be a topic of discussion. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. Just disappointed I'm not able to go to the AWC days. It's always a good time to talk with the legislators. It's just a busy week, and I have my state board meetings on tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. So that's that along with work, you know, makes it difficult to get away. You know? This is a glorified volunteer gig, so it's hard to to get away sometimes.

Thank you. Councilmember Falcone?

Thank you, Madame Mayor. Just a few highlights. One, I want to thank Cub Scouts PAC five, six, seven, I believe, for the invitation to to speak with them. It was that's always a highlight, getting to speak with kids in our community. It's so fun to hear their questions.

They had some great ideas about being even more inclusive in our city meetings. They had ideas about all kinds of things, and I hope to see some of them show up at some of our council meetings because there was a lot of questions about how to how to engage with the city and how to engage with city council. So thank you to to those Cub Scouts. Thank you to for deputy mayor for mentioning the the ice skating rink. You know, I I just wanna give a kudos to KDA and, in particular, Leanna for just all of her vision her vision and hard work in implementing that vision to make that ice rink come to come to fruition.

Deputy City Manager Lopez and I had a chance to sit down with her and thank her and discuss, you know, the what happened this year and plans for the future. And so I'm really excited about that continued partnership. And just, again, thank you to all the city staff who helped make that happen. I know it was not easy to to get all the approvals and everything done quickly, but I'm really happy that we have a culture of saying yes to good ideas like that and figuring out a way to make it work because that was just an incredible asset to our community this holiday season. Also, we had our quarterly meeting with Lake Washington School District, the coordinating committee last week, I believe, talked about all kinds of interesting things.

We talked about field lighting, we talked about the Kraken proposal, about snow response, about sales tax, the Arizona housing trip and what we learned there on using school surplus land for affordable housing. So we had another great discussion, and we're looking forward to welcoming Councilmember Prem to that in our next meeting coming up soon. So thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Prem?

No update for me, but I'm very much looking forward to these new committee assignments and participating and making sure that our interests are all well represented. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Arnold.

Thank you. I wanted to note from the PSRC Transportation Policy Board that the twenty year regional transportation plan is out for public comment. The website for the PSRC has put out there is phenomenal if you want to geek out and drill into maps and projects and all of the transportation planned at every level of government for the next twenty years, regional, county and city investments. The investments include maintenance and preservation, safety, climate and transit and they're looking for public comment through February 2. PSRC Transportation Policy Board will be looking to finalize the plan and then the PSRC General Assembly would adopt it at its meeting in May.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you. I have nothing to report. So city manager?

So no policy issues to report today, but two calendar reminders, and then I'll ask council for calendar updates. So the first, as you know, January 30, four to 6PM at the church up here, Penny Sweets retirement party. So you should have received the invitation on your calendars. Please forward that invitation far and wide. The party is open to anyone, and we'd love to have as many people as possible come.

We've tried to get it wherever we can, but please feel free to spread that. And then the theme of it is the sweet 16 that we have, sixteen years of petty sweet on our on our city council. So then also a reminder that we have our council retreat on February 27, which is Friday. We're currently assessing going back to the lodge at Saint Edward's Park. There are still some details we need to work out before we can confirm that, make sure that we could get her in this large enough and a couple other logistics so that might change, but we're looking for something like that if not if not Saint Edward.

So many more details to come on that. Also, the mayor and I have been working on a draft agenda, which we'll probably send out to the council this week for consideration. I'll probably be bringing it back to the first meeting in February for approval. So stay tuned for that. And that is all I have for updates. So just see if council has any other calendar changes.

Doesn't look like it.

Okay. Then I'm finished, madam. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. So we had two executive sessions on the agenda. Unless there is no objection, I'm going to remove our second item from the agenda, which was going to be a discussion of the potential acquisition of real property.

All

right. I see no objection. We will now go into exec session to discuss litigation as authorized by RCW 42.31.10.1i. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at approximately, I'm going say 10:00, I have. Only for the purposes of adjournment. So thank you, everyone.