City Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order the City Council meeting of September 15, 2026. Before asking the clerk to call the roll for tonight's regular meeting, I want to note that Councilmember Paschall and Councilmember Falcone will be absent from our meeting tonight. Is there a motion to exclude Councilmember Paschall from tonight's meeting?

So moved.

Second.

We're going to do them separately. Thank you. All right. It's been moved by Council Mayor Prim, second by Council Mayor Arnold to excuse Council Mayor Paschall. Is there any discussion? The question is on the motion to excuse Council Member Paschall. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 5-0. The next motion is on excusing Council Member Falcone from tonight's meeting. Is there a motion? So moved.

Second.

Thank you. It's been moved by Councilmember Prim, second by Councilmember Arnold to excuse Councilmember Falcone from tonight's meeting. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 5-0. City Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Tim Chisholm. Here. Councilmember Prem. Here. Councilmember Arnold. Here. Deputy Mayor Black. Here. Mayor Curtis. Here.

Our study session tonight is on two items. First, we will discuss the proposed utility rates for 2027-2028. Second, the Council will discuss the Human Services grant funding recommendations. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 7.30. City Manager.

Okay. uh thank you madam mayor deputy mayor members of the council so this is your second discussion of the utility rates we're going from preliminary rates to proposed rates and you're going to get a chance to vote on these um in a month about a month or so so here to lead you through this presentation is jenny gauss who's our strategic water advisor and our deputy city manager tracy dunlap and also uh bructacia who's here from our consultant team So with that, turn over to Jenny.

Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the Council. As Kurt said, we are here to talk about the utility rate update process. And we have Brooke Tisha, who's with FCS, a Bowman company, and has been running the modeling for this effort, as well as Tracy Dunlap and Julie Underwood. And in the audience, we have Grant Ropp and Veronica Hill in case questions come up.

So thank you all for being here.

And again, this is the second of our three meetings where we will discuss utility rates. Tonight, we will have the proposed rates that have been updated based on your input and budget as Brooke will give you the details. And then we will bring back the final rates for adoption on October 20. So with that, I will turn it over to Brooke.

perfect thank you jenny and thanks you all all of you for having me back tonight um it's a pleasure to be here to talk through what will be the proposed rates for the city's utilities So just in terms of our agenda we're going to do a recap of the August 5th study session we aren't going to dive too deep into the regional advocacy discussion, but just wanted to let you all know that staff is still active and that's underway. we're then going to move to the updated revenue requirement results for the water sewer surface water and solid waste utilities in that order and then we're going to wrap it up with a discussion of next steps. So first here, just taking a review of the August 5th study session. Since that time, we've made some minor updates to the models around their 2026, 27 and 28 budget information. We've also updated the operating cost inflation assumptions as well as capital project costs and funding sources. All of the strategies that you're going to see tonight will also now include service packages. And we will be revising those strategies now to meet our operating reserve targets by 2032 based on guidance that we received from Council during that August 5th discussion. We saw a little bit of that with sewer the last time. We're going to be spreading that methodology to our other utilities with this update. And then we're also going to look at reducing rate funded system reinvestment solely for the sewer utility with this iteration with the goal of mitigating rate increases, especially in the near term. So here we're gonna shift to our first set of results for the water revenue requirement. Taking a look at what's changed specifically for water from the preliminary touch point in August to now what is the proposed rate schedule, we did again reduce the operating cost inflation to 3.8%. Cascade Water Alliance charges have been updated based on recent projections. We've also gotten year-end updates in for 2026 and the insurance estimates updated as well. again we'll include service packages with this iteration and although we haven't changed the overall debt amount we are now assuming 2.5 million of the total 12 million or 12 and a half million excuse me comes from geo funding and 10 million from low interest loans So here in a comparison of our preliminary rate strategy compared to our proposed, we'll see initially in August, we talked about an 8.5% rate increase in 2027, followed by a few years at 6.5% and then dropping down to 5.15%. With the most recent updates as well as guidance that we received from council, we were able to drop the 2027 rate to 6.75% and we'll see 6.75% annually throughout the study period here. Taking just a closer look at what that looks like in terms of the sample single family bill, that top table is looking at the preliminary rates from August 5th, where we were assuming an 8.5% increase. That would have resulted in a $4.81 impact to the single family bill on a monthly basis. with this revised strategy at a 6.75 we were able to shave about a dollar off of that impact in 2027 down to about 3.82 and then you can see we've we've smoothed that rate strategy into the future And just a last look here for the water side, we wanted to show you the results on the operating reserve. So as I mentioned, one of the strategies that helps us smooth rates across this timeline is by letting our operating reserve dip below target for a few years and recovering fully by 2032. So the graph you see on the left was our preliminary operating reserve balance compared to Target where we met that target in 2027. And you can see that updated graph on the right is our proposed strategy which lets that reserve fall just slightly throughout the study period coming to Target by 2032. So I'll shift here to sewer. We're going to follow the same format with the updates for the sewer utility. Taking a look at what's changed since that August 5th meeting, we have a lot of similar updates across these utilities. So the same change was made to the operating inflation there at 3.8%. We've got our year-end estimates in as well as our insurance updates. We did have an increase to the general sewer plan cost and that's been incorporated as well as the service packages included in these scenarios. We were able to increase the sewer capital fund balance by about $3.4 million reflecting projects that were moved to unfunded. And then as mentioned previously, we are reducing the rate funded system reinvestment strategy across the study period to help us mitigate some rate increases for the sewer utility. And then just to note the 2020 King County wastewater treatment rate is based on a projection as well. It has not been adopted by the county. So if we do find that that comes in higher than we are currently projecting, we may need to revisit the rate strategy. So similarly here for sewer, we're taking a look at the preliminary rate strategy proposed in August compared to the proposed rate strategy here tonight. So we were proposing 19.5% in 2027, again, to maintain reserve balances where they're at today, and that would drop to about an 8.95% thereafter. With our reduction to the rate-funded system reinvestment strategy, we were able to reduce that near-term rate increase for 2027 down to about 8.85%, and we'll follow that smooth rate strategy throughout this study period. So again, just taking a closer look at the comparatives in the single family bill between the August 5th rates and tonight's proposed rates schedule here, we would look at 2027 initially was about a $16.25 impact to a single family customer. With our revised rate strategy in 2027 down to an 8.85% increase, we would look at about $11.90 for that single family impact in 2027. And I will just call your attention again to this bottom table. It does show the planned reduction to the rate funded system reinvestment strategy. So we would need to pull back to about 50% of depreciation this year, increasing to about 90% in 27. We'd have a few years at 125% and then we would rebuild back to the 165% target by 2032. So here again, we're gonna look at both the operating and the capital reserve for the sewer fund because it is impacted in both cases. So when we take a look at the, again, the preliminary projection on the left there, we do see that our capital or operating reserve, excuse me, was below target and that we were rebuilding by 2032. Now in our proposed schedule, because we are reducing our rate funded system reinvestment, so we're reducing the transfer to capital, we're able to immediately meet our operating target this year and throughout the study period. We are going to see the impact when I shift here to look at the capital fund. Because we're not transferring as much annually to our capital fund, we are going to be utilizing some of the reserves that we have in place. so that graph on the left is showing you what our capital reserve looked like in our preliminary strategy we had by the end of this term in 2032 just shy of 16 million in our updated strategy where we're pulling back on that refunded system reinvestment we will utilize some of those available reserves and end 2032 at about six million dollars

All right, so moving.

Sorry, just before we go, we have two more. Absolutely. But just I wanna see if there was water or sewer questions. Sometimes it's hard to remember if we go all the way through what people may have had a comment or a question on, so I just wanted to double check. Okay, thank you. Perfect, thank you.

Thank you.

Awesome.

All right, so moving. Coming in late. Sorry. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I did come up with a question. Cuz I don't know if we're gonna be talking about fund balances in connection with the other utilities, although we very well might. But since we are talking about it here, you mentioned at the outset that the staff is going to continue to be committed to the regional efforts. Advocacy. Yeah, advocacy at the legislative level with respect to utility rate savings. What is our strategy looking at these fund balances? I mean, some of them obviously give pause to me. I'm sure they give pause to folks in the public. If we do see those reductions, if we do see success on the legislative advocacy, will we be reducing the rates in those years, 30, 31, 32, or we'll be trying to meet our targets for fund balances? And I don't know who that's a question for.

I'll give my answer and then the panel can answer. So that's really a policy call up to the council, right? How you want to do it. And so depending on how much we're able to succeed and how much we're able to reduce the regional rates, I think we'd probably propose a combination where we'd have some rate impact and we'd also catch up sooner. But it really depends. That's kind of my take.

I think there's, I'm sorry, go ahead. one other consideration is both the water system plan and the sewer plan are going to be updated the water system plan sooner and then the sewer system plan and the capital needs that are likely to be identified in both those plans may exceed what's built in here at this point so i think that's one reason why we really focus on 27 28 and then we'll make adjustments as all of the above become available and that really applies to all the utilities but particularly in water and sewer where those plans are pending.

Okay, so we're going to take this question up when the time comes. Maybe we see the legislative advocacy success, we see the savings, and then we'll have to figure out what has changed in the plans that might be more expensive, whether we can share the savings among our fund rebalancing and our utility rate payers. Okay, thank you.

every two years every two years at a minimum we'll come back anyone else

I did that look away from the mic thing. Okay, go ahead, thanks Brooke.

Perfect, so moving on to surface water here. Again, just taking a review of what's changed since the preliminary discussion in August. Same change to the operating inflation, 3.8% down from four. Updates to year-end estimates for 2026, as well as the insurance estimates, those were updated as well. And then we've got service packages included for surface water. So again, taking a look at our August 5th presentation compared to where we're at today, we were projecting 7.15% increases from 2027 through 2029 before dropping to more inflationary level thereafter. In the most updated strategy, we're looking at 5.9% rate increases across that full study period. So this again was an area where we had some excess reserves and we were drawing those down in our operating fund to meet target here. So just a closer look again on the impact to that single family bill. If we're looking at a 7.15% increase in 2027, that was about $1.65 a month to the single family bill. Dropping that to a 5.9% will reduce that impact to about $1.36 in 2027. And then again, we'll just take a look here at the operating fund for surface water to see the impacts of the change. So as we've talked about with all the utilities, we are allowing the operating fund to fall below target throughout this study period, but recover back to target by 2032. So seeing that dip in the chart on the right is what allows us to smooth the rate schedule a bit in the near term. And then finally, moving into solid waste. Again, looking at what's changed since our last discussion in August, the same change was made to our inflationary factor, dropping it to 3.8%. We did have some increased costs for King County disposal in 2026, and that also follows through into our forecast thereafter. So some updated costs around that. We did have our insurance updates as well as our tax calculation changes. to right size those in terms of what we'll see paid out in taxes and then we have service packages included for solid waste as well. One note here before we move into the graphs is that the last time we talked in August we were looking at solving for the full 20-year forecast so we did see some fund generation and our operating fund before falling back to target. Now we're going to be concentrating on hitting that target by 2032 recognizing that we'll be going through some contract negotiations at that time that could change future projections. So again, just taking a look at comparisons from the August meeting to now, we were looking at a 6.75% increase in 2027, followed by just under 4% thereafter. With this most updated strategy, we're looking at 5.3% in every year of the study period. So again, just taking a look at what that means to the single family customer, at a 6.75% increase in 2027, our impact was about $3.55 to the monthly bill. Now dropping that increase to 5.3% in 2027, we'd be about $2.79. That would increase to about $2.93 in 2028 as we hold that 5.3%. So again, just taking a look at the operating reserve for the solid waste utility, and this is where, during the August discussion, we showed some accumulation of operating reserves as we were preparing for that 20 year timeline. You can now see on the graph there on the right, we are allowing that reserve to fall below target, but to recover to target by 2032. In summary here, we'll just bring together the combined utility bill forecast across the study period in both the August preliminary rate forecast compared to tonight's proposed forecast. So preliminarily, forecasting an 11.1% increase in 2027 before falling to 8% for a couple years thereafter. We're now proposing that 2027 combined bill at about 8.4% or about $22 per single family customer on a monthly basis. And you can see we hold pretty steady at the 8.4 to 8.5 for the next four years or so with this forecast. I can go ahead and turn it back to Jenny.

Jen, let's pause for a second. Council, do you have any questions on Brooke's presentation?

OK. Thank you, Brooke. OK. So in terms of future actions beyond this rate setting period and continuing through it, it will be continuing regional advocacy efforts both by elected officials and by staff through the Cascade Water Alliance, King County Solid Waste, King County Wastewater, and really continuing to work on both the technical level on plans and also on the regional level with policy. And then the second part of the cost of service or utility rate study will take place in 2027. That will include looking at various aspects of the cost of service, benchmarking our rates relative to other jurisdictions in the area, conducting some analysis of reserve policies, and wrapping all that up at the end of 2027 to be ready for the next rate setting process. And then finally, incorporating, as Tracy mentioned, the system plans, the water system plan, the sewer system plan and the surface water aging pipe implementation plan, all of which will be coming out in the next couple of years. And so.

and again uh hang on council yeah just um just one quick comment i'm as part of the advocacy that we're gonna be doing i i do wanna see if we can push king county to do that affordability summit um so that we can actually sit down and kind of talk about what's Legally required like scientifically needed to have safe and reliable and environmentally responsible sewer systems for an example And just I I think the the urgency is quite critical right because these rates are going to be implemented early next year, so In order for us to actually be able to advocate for something I think it's important for the right people to get in a room and actually talk about what's possible possible. So I know on my end, I'm going to be pushing for that. And I encourage everyone else to also do the same. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else?

I do have a question that may be well, adoption on October 20th. When is King County supposed to adopt these rates? Because you said King County's decision will impact.

That's for 2028. So King County has adopted 2027 rates, but they are on sort of a... their two-year schedule doesn't align with ours is the issue okay awesome thank you go ahead yeah okay so uh based on tonight's feedback we would be bringing you back uh final rates for adoption at the october 20th meeting that would allow water and sewer rates to become effective on december 1st and surface water and solid waste rates to become effective on january 1st of next year so thank you is that it okay don't go yet council any final thoughts deputy mayor

Uh, thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, one thought sort of springboarding off of what Councilmember Prem said about the regional rate summit. I think the last time we talked about this, we heard that Executive Zahalai does have, um, a second rate summit, regional rate summit planned. Have we heard anything new about the timing of that, especially given what Councilmember Prem said, which is true, which is the urgency? No.

Other than we heard from their wastewater treatment division that the intent is to have one. We don't have a date yet or anything else yet.

Okay. That's helpful. Obviously, we'll continue to do our advocacy to not only to have the rate summit sooner rather than later and as well as speaking and having a meaningful contribution to that discussion. Okay. Oh, one more question. Sorry. In the materials, there was a comparison of our peer cities with respect to reserve policies, which is helpful, and I think that's a direct response to questions the Council had at the last meeting. Just for the benefit of some of our members of the public who may be joining this conversation right now, I know the answer to this because we've had this conversation about utility rates for Kirkland and our region and our peer cities many times over the last year. But what we're seeing as far as these level of rate increases over the next whatever it is, six years, these are our other peer cities in our region are having the exact same discussions we're having and are coming to a lot of the exact same conclusions and forecasts and having to make some of these same tough decisions for their ratepayers. Is that true?

I speak to this too. I participate in the statewide public works directors monthly call and I asked this question. Where are you all in your rate discussion and where are you looking as far as rates go? Bellevue was there and they are about 8%, which is where we are. But across the state, it varies from 5%, 6%. So we're seeing, I mean, very, very, very much consistency in the rates being about the same. Probably FCS can talk to this too, but across every system, I think we're seeing increases.

yeah i can absolutely second that and certainly work with a number of of utilities both locally as well as regionally and absolutely are seeing and feeling the pressure in many cases even into the double digits and you know making some tough choices about what gets done on the capital front so you are not alone i can certainly and thank you

And I just wanted to echo one thing. I did a seminar for the Association of Washington Cities in August that was half elected officials, half staff from across the state. And again, what everyone said was echoed, but also The utilities are not necessarily as well prepared as we might be in terms of that we had reserves that were actively replenishing them. And so coupled with the affordability issues, if utilities weren't thinking ahead until into the fluctuations or the growth in costs or the various things that are there. They're really struggling with the health of their infrastructure to not just the rate levels, but keeping their infrastructure viable. And so I think that's one reason why replenishing the rates and making sure we continue to put the money aside for the reinvestment is a key recommendation, and why we couldn't go further, perhaps.

Thank you.

Council Mayor Arnold.

Thank you. I represent Kirkland on committees involving solid waste, Council Mayor Pascoe on Cascade Water, Council Member Prim generally on SCA that looks at all these rates. Just building on what the Deputy City Manager said, really appreciate the team's work here. What I'm seeing at King County at this point is More and more bad news over time and really appreciate the work that you have done that has given us some options to smooth rates and and look at things that we can do. Um, it's as we join with this at this at the county level, it is, um. very frustrating and scary at what they're looking at. And we're not yet seeing the same level of options to say, how can we prevent these stacked double digit rates? So thank you for your work locally.

Anyone else? Yeah, I want to echo what Councilman Arnold just said. Thank you for this, for sharpening the pencils and smoothing these rates out. And I'm very aware that behind you sits the Human Services Commission, our Human Services staff, where we're going to talk about funding. And this this impacts the affordability of our families and and pushes them into housing and security. So and thank you, Councilman Prim, for talking about the advocacy. I think that when in your Public Issues Committee Every time good the order comes up. It's like what about the affordability summit? So I think we're all worried about this But you did a great none of us like seeing our reserves drop, but you did a great job of smoothing us out. So, thank you All right

So as this topic comes to a close, we are having some technical difficulties with our transmission. I don't know if the city clerk wanted to make a comment, but I think we want to ask for a short break so we can see if we can recalibrate it as we move between the two presentations.

Okay. Thank you all, and we will take a quick 10-minute break. Yes, please. All right. We'll be back at 6.10. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think we're ready.

All right, we are back after a brief break to address some technical difficulties. We are now on our second study session, which is second item on the study session, which is the 2027-2028 Human Services Commission Grant Funding Recommendations, City Manager.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the Council. So yes, this is your check-in on the Human Services Grant funding recommendations. It's our privilege to have most of the Human Services Commission here today to answer questions. And the Chair, Sri Rajagopalan, will make a lot of the presentation. We are really happy to have you here today. I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Jen Boone, our Human Services Manager, to give the introduction. And we look forward to Council feedback and questions.

Thank you, Kurt. Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the Council. We're joined here to do a first review of the 2728 grant recommendations. I'm joined by several folks here on the Human Services staff that supported the development of the recommendations. So I have Annie on my right, and I have Reggie and Becky. We also have our director, Linz Wagstra, and then joined is our Human Services Commissioner, Chair Shree. Christiane was not able to attend tonight. And I also want to make a note that Amanda Judd on our team was also pivotal in the development of these recommendations and also was not able to be here. so we have 17 slides for you this evening it'll take about 20 minutes to get through the presentation and then we will open it up for council discussion so we are seeking your direction and input tonight on the proposed recommendations approved by the human services commission this will help inform the city manager's proposed budget for 2728 There is no formal action that is being requested of Council this evening. However, the discussion and direction you have may impact the final recommendations, in which case staff would take that direction back to the Human Services Commission and come back with updated recommendations later this fall. So a quick agenda before we jump in, we'll start with some numbers. We'll take a look at the history of human services grant funding. We'll also take a look at what the base budget is that the commission started with. We'll also take a look at the human services landscape and what the commission has learned that led to the development of their priorities and the framework in which we're here to present on today. And then we'll do council discussion. So to quickly touch on history of grant funding for the city, the human services element of the comprehensive plan establishes a city goal to ensure that all community members have access to opportunities to enhance the quality of their life. This is through meeting things like basic needs, physical, economic, and social. and the city has funded human services nonprofits since 1986. So funding has come from ongoing base budget dollars in the parks budget as well as ongoing, or excuse me, one-time supplemental funding approved by council as part of the budget process. over time in order to meet the needs several funding sources have been added to be able to allocate those additional one-time funding dollars so some of those are federal like cdbg cares and arpa dollars which were special dollars allocated as part of the pandemic response We also have state as well as local dollars that have contributed to the budget. So currently our base budget consists of ongoing general fund dollars, CDBG, Prop 1, and MFTE. The last few cycles we have had House Bill 1406 dollars. Those were redirected to ARCH starting in 2025 and those were replaced by general fund dollars in 2025. So I want us to take a look at this history of human services grant funding over the course of the last decade. For those who have received this presentation before, this might look a little different than what we have presented in the past. Historically, how we've presented the budget has been by funding source. but staff took a look at this and kind of the first pass of sharing this information with you is at your May council retreat. And so what we've done here is actually separated out the base budget and then the one-time funding dollars. We felt like it was an easier comparison to track the deeper investment that council has chosen to take over each of the biennia. So as you can see, the base has steadily increased since 2017, but where we're really seeing that greater per capita investment is through the one-time funding dollars, and you see that through option B, option C, and the rapid response column. We did include rapid response. These were allocated dollars outside of the 2526 Human Services grant funding cycle. They were approved by Council last fall, but they did go to six previously funded agencies. So we did want to include them here for a comprehensive understanding of the total investment to date. The other item I wanna acknowledge that was outlined in your packet is if you take a look at the final numbers that were adopted in 25-26, and then you look at the totals here, we actually see a slight dip in the total grants budget. Staff are currently considering removing two staff positions that receive set aside dollars as part of the grant funding recommendations historically out of kind of representing what the total grants budget is here. The funding is not being shifted away from those positions. It's merely representing what the total amount invested is that's going out to nonprofit organizations and less so supporting staff. So this is not a final decision. It's just something that's under consideration. But I did want to make a note in case you look at the 25-26 numbers and go, that looks like a slight decrease. That's the reason why. And then that's represented here in the base budget for 27-28. So moving into the 27-28 grant budget for our base budget, we're sitting at 1.8 million per year, which is 3.6 for the biennium. When you met with the Human Services Commission back in April, you did direct them to prepare two one-time options for your consideration. That is option B and option C in your packet. As from previous direction, from previous cycles, because option A is what's budgeted, the commission has allocated the highest need priorities in option A, and option B and option C, while are important, are not top priorities for the city to fund based on their recommendation. Now I'm going to turn it over to Annie to talk a little bit about the commission's work plan and the current human services landscape that led to these recommendations.

Thank you for having us here today, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council. So I'll take you through the next few slides, starting with arguably the most critical aspect of this process, and that's the human services landscape. staff begins the conversation with our human services commission about how to spend their off year we also refer to that as our education year and this is the year that happens after our review process is complete so there is very little time where the commission has to rest they start right into their their next process right as soon as we're done so the commission during this time will build out their work plan so for 2025 this commission um began Building out their work plan at the end of 2024. And as part of that, um, I, I have to commend them because they have the forethought to look at how. There could be a change or likely was we're going to be a change in the administration and how that could impact the Kirkland community. Um, and these human service providers who are providing these really critical services to our community. So, um. this education year really provided them with an opportunity to learn from a variety of resources including non-profit organizations and the communities that they serve so the learnings that they came away with in 2025 culminated in what they used to adjust their equity lens for this year's grant application review process so that is reflected in what you're seeing on the screen Of note, I really want to elevate the Commission's work on the Rapid Response Services grant funding recommendations. This was an initiative presented to the Council back in September of 2025 and was one that came directly from Eastside communities, the insights that they shared, and that was coming through the agencies that provide services to them. So we had a panel conversations conversation in April of 2025 that really focused on immigrant, refugee and asylum seeking communities and those impacts of federal policy and funding changes to the services that they were receiving from those agencies. So this recommendation made to the city council resulted in additional one time funding that was awarded to six Kirkland serving agencies. So thanks to our city manager and council for your hard work on that. so 2728 request funding um here are a few points that we just wanted to to elevate in this conversation really over the last six years we've seen what i would consider three very significant inflection points and those are really around social justice and civil unrest COVID-19 pandemic and federal policies and funding changes that significantly impacted the safety nets and sometimes completely eliminating those supports. So all of these are interconnected and they're compounding those already existing gaps in human services. So what we've seen is an increase in the amount of individual agency requests this cycle and also a widening of the boundaries. We talked about this before that we're seeing requests from further out still within King County, but in cities that had not previously requested funding from the city of Kirkland. So we've also seen new programming being offered that is in direct response to the current changes in policy, especially at the federal level. And they impact those folks who may still be feeling pandemic era impact. So as I've mentioned in previous presentations, many organizations are also providing services that have been born out of necessity and really without any funding to support those. So I'm just going to briefly touch on a few items here the 2728 requests of funding so you can see here the evolution over the last more than a decade of what the funding requests and total funds available look like. And as you can see those last two lines are same duplicative but they're not actually that top line is really focusing on our base budget and what the percentage 25% of our requests would be funded if awarded the base budget and then that bottom line is reflecting the one-time funding through option B and C if that was also awarded. so taking a look at the grant recommendation framework some of these items jen has mentioned already in this presentation so i won't go into too much detail in the municipal code evaluation or the city comp plan but really looking at the united way community goal areas there's a kind of the the north star if you will of our process so this is a goal areas that are used at local jurisdictions including seattle and the greater king county this list that i'm going to share with you i'm going to read off is not ranked in order but given what the landscape shows us on any budget cycle as we discussed before these individual areas can certainly change in how they're weighted in this review process so Looking at goal area one, that's food to eat and roof overhead. Goal area two, supportive relationships with families, neighborhoods, and communities. Goal area three is a safe haven from all forms of violence and abuse. Goal area four covers healthcare to be as physically and mentally fit as possible. Goal area five includes education and job skills to lead an independent life. So we also consider past performance and I'll talk about that briefly on the next slide before I turn it over to the chair. We also had equity training, which we've been doing over the last three cycles that Jen and I have been here. And so this is a joint process that we, we. a joint process with our neighboring cities of issaquah redmond and sammamish and this is led by a local organization non-profit called communities rise so this is one of the more intentional and i would say influential of the framework areas and helps the commission in the formation of the next item, which is the commission priority areas. So Sri is going to be covering that a little bit more in depth. So I won't speak on that other than to say that this is a more focused list and it's taking into account all of the above mentioned areas. And it also looks to what the community is sharing about needs and gaps in Kirkland. And so I did want to touch on the area of how we measure performance for our agencies. So I know this was a question that had come up. So I just want to give you a high level overview of how we measure that and how we monitor grantees who are contracted by the city of Kirkland to provide human services. so this this process really starts at the grant application this is where agencies and organizations are providing a proposal and that includes what they will provide as services to their clients and that's specifically city of kirkland residents And so that is identified by service units, and that's the measurement or the widget of their services. So as an example, and again, this is really oversimplified, but you'll get an idea. A food bank will set a goal of providing 2000 pounds of food per year, and they will also set a goal of serving 200 households per year. So that's just kind of a really broad, simplified, and we can get into that later. So number two on your... Councillor Primm.

Sorry. No. So I just want to clarify. So like the goal you're talking about, those goals would be specific for Kirkland residents? Correct. Okay. Thank you.

And so number two, contract development. So if these organizations, their programs are awarded funding, this begins a contract development process. And this is where we work with agencies to align service units, residents served, with the amount of funding that they're awarded. So as part of this process, goals are set for service units, residents served, and outcomes. And again, that's kind of a simplified, but it gives you a good idea of what ways that we're implementing to monitor and track. Number three, quarterly and annual reporting. So with all of our contracted agencies, they are required to provide quarterly reporting. That includes service units and residents served in those reports. So this gives us an opportunity to see where programs fall at any given point in the year. And so remember, we're in a biennium, so we do one year at a time. And we're able then to make sure that they're on track to meeting and completing their contracted goals. So there is also a requirement for annual reports and that shows their achievement of their outcomes. So those measured by percentage. And so we also received demographic snapshot at that time. So this information is posted on the Human Services dashboard. So if you want to take a look at that, that gives more specific details. And then number four is the monitoring visits. And these happen about every other year, along with other East side cities, the human services in this human services funding collaborative, we've set guidelines and policies for this process. So this typically involves a request for additional policy and budget documents, and then scheduling an onsite visit when possible with the agency staff and their leadership. And so now I'm going to turn it over to our Human Services, Chair Tree.

Thank you, Annie.

Thanks, Annie. Hello, council members. So Our priorities are informed. I mean, Annie talked about our landscape. So as she said, we saw Hopelink study. We also talked to a bunch of nonprofits. We had panel discussions. And all of that basically informed us in terms of what we think is happening. And we always try to take a city lens to what's happening in the city. And we use that to come up with this list. It is pretty much, the top three are pretty much strict priority order, is how you should think about it. And so basic needs, one of the things we did with basic needs this time is we kind of said, given what's happening with healthcare, we think of healthcare as a human right, so we elevated that into kind of the basic needs bucket, which historically has probably been separate. But we said, hey, given what's going on, this is really important for us to support, so we put that there. And for us, that's both youth and adult, you know, so that's kind of when we think of behavioral health, so we put that in there. For homelessness and affordable housing, it's the standard stuff, it's about emergency shelter, it's affordable housing, it's financial assistance, rent assistance, legal support, all those things that are around the housing and affordable housing part, so that's just the same bucket as before. On the critical services, which is really services we think are really important. These are support services that are really important for people in our community. Domestic violence and sexual assault have always been there. We decided this year that aging and disability services is something we wanted to pay more attention to. because in the past we felt like maybe we haven't given them the level of attention that they need and we haven't a population in our city there is a lot of people who are aging in our city and we want them to be able to age in place and thrive in our community so we prioritize that higher and on the legal assistance again given the federal context immigration support was something we felt needed more support historically we've not done that but we added that in to our list of priorities for this critical services bucket That last thing there for what it says, BIPOC organizations, that's really our equity lens. That is what we used to say, OK, how do we make sure that all these investments are taking equity account? So BIPOC organizations are one of the things. But this cycle, we also looked at communities like immigrant, refugee and asylum seeking communities because we feel like those are communities that there's there is a lot of need and fear, and we wanted to support those communities. So I think we put that also as a lens when we prioritized across all these other buckets to kind of look at that as another way for us to fund. So that's kind of these priorities as we get into the next buckets where option A, B, C definitely guided the way we picked the organizations that we funded in our base and option B and C buckets.

Thank you. I'm going to pause for a second. Council, do you have any questions on the priorities? Deputy Mayor?

Uh, thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, and I want to thank everyone, um, both for being here and presenting this and also all the hard work that goes into, um, the grant funding recommendation, recommendation. So thank you. Um, this could come up later, perhaps when we're talking about, um, some of the applications that are not being recommended for funding, or we can talk about here. I'm going to talk about it here. I just want to understand a good example. Under access to critical services, we have domestic violence and sexual assault survivor services. One of the things we know as a council and the public knows if they're monitoring us, and I know the Human Services Department knows, is the council has invested in programs, initiatives related to assault survivor services or sexual assault survivor services and domestic violence survivors. How is that factor in, like when the council approves dollars and investments in city operated other programs and initiatives, does that come into account when applications come in for those same services? Just want to understand that. And is that maybe perhaps why we see actually a couple of examples, I think at least one example on the list of applications that are not being recommended for funding that are related to domestic violence and sexual assault.

that question make sense okay great i'll start and then i'll see if kurt has anything he wants to add um so as part of their education year we actually did have the case arc advocate come in and talk about her work so that's part of the holistic education we want them to make sure that kind of holistically what is the city doing in regards to human services we also see that with our human services issue paper making sure that we're representing kind of holistically across all departments what that looks like I wouldn't say that if the city chooses to contract a position that we would necessarily see a decrease in funding. I think when we have specific positions that are able to provide direct services to Kirkland residents, we recognize that while we're tracking Kirkland residents with our funds, often our funding goes towards general operations. we see it as supporting the larger infrastructure around sexual assault response and support. So if a Kirkland resident calls, we're supporting the operations that then allows them to hand them off to the advocate. So I think it's investing in different arms, but making sure that we're still supporting those services.

I would just also add that when we created the pilot with case arc that was a really detailed part of the discussion which was if we were to make this investment in the pilot that they would not see a reduction in the grant program because otherwise if it's just a shift for them it wouldn't have added impact and for the council wouldn't have either so in the particular case this pilot it was we keep those two things separately and treat it as it was before in the grant program and then we have this dedicated investment on the city side. Okay thank you.

Anyone else? Yeah, I just had a question about kind of the And first of all, thank you so much for doing this work. I think it's really hard, especially given where we are with lack of funding available to prioritize because the need is just so great. So I know it must have been a very hard job to get to this list. So really appreciate that. In regards to like the bigger ticket items, right? So the things that are like 100K and above. I was curious about how far back do we go to see like the like the performance or the number of Kirkland residents that were positively impacted for us to then make a decision moving forward that yes, like let's put in a, you know, a decent chunk of change to invest in this in this use case? So do we look like one year back, two year back? Like what is kind of your policy or procedure around kind of evaluating the more larger investments in various programs?

would say historically we look at several biennia so there are a few programs that are not being recommended for funding that have restored have historically received funding and because of performance over the last few budget cycles we're not recommending to fund so we do look at trends over time we also try to understand if an agency is underperforming why one of the things that we learned during the pandemic was well we've had to adjust our staff model and so we actually can't serve the same number of residents because now we're going to people's homes instead of having them come and access services we saw that with some of our food banks so anytime we have an agency that's underperforming staff reach out normally with other cities that are funding to understand Help us why we're seeing these numbers. What are we not seeing? How can we represent it to folks that are asking? And so we normally look at trends over time. So I would say three biennia, normally before we make a decision to reduce funding or recommend elimination. We often don't see increases in funding because of the need we see right now. If agencies are performing, we're really hesitant to take that funding away. We really try to fully invest as much as we can. So we call it the peanut butter approach. Our commission is probably tired of staff saying that, but we really try to avoid that. So our programs can continue to run at the operation level that they need to. So I answer your question.

Yeah, it does. And then one just follow up question. Do we do we make those determinations based off of. like the self-reporting, like the quarterly annual reports that come in versus like the monitoring visits. Like are the monitoring visits like audits or are they just visits?

They're program monitoring visits, so they're not audits specifically. But we can go into kind of what we ask them to submit to us depending on the program. We do look at case files. So for our financial assistance programs, we do take a pool of case files that they have.

Thank you.

Lynn, did you have something to add? Yes, thank you. I did want to add something to Jen's answer. Several of the big ticket items are actually historical regional agreements, in particular as it pertains to housing. So many years ago, the cities entered into an informal agreement about providing different shelters in the different cities with kind of agreement that all the cities would fund all of them together. So those are several of the big ticket ones as well.

Thank you for adding that.

Yeah.

Um Jen back to you. Oh Councilmember Tim Chisholm.

Thank you. Um I saw the Helen's Place funding and that that is something that I fully support. I'm wondering if the addition of the permanent supportive housing um has any impact on what we need to fund and how we um to view the possible relationship between Helen's Place and the permanent supportive housing?

It's an excellent question. So thank you.

One of the thought of myself.

What we hope to see as part of our local referral network is some movement in a lot of the shelters that we currently fund. So the men's shelter and then the women's shelter. Right now we're seeing extended stays of six months plus. So it's not really operating as intended, which, and a best practice for an emergency shelter is less than 90 days. So with the permanent supportive housing opening in Kirkland, there's also a new project opening in Redmond later this year. We're really hoping to see an alleviation of a lot of the beds that have been filled for an extended period of time. This is not a healthy housing update. However, we have seen a pause in move-ins due to some plumbing issues. And so I think the outcomes that we are hoping to see with our shelters will be a bit more delayed than we anticipated because of that delay.

Okay.

But there is a connection point between movement and those shelter programs and folks moving into permanent housing.

Well, great. Well, keep us updated if the needs shift. Thank you.

No one else. All right, go ahead.

So this is my final slide, and this will be pretty brief. So additional considerations. I will say that these considerations have remained consistent since our last funding cycle. What I do want to highlight is the city and the commission's continued commitment to minimum dedicated funding to organizations serving our black indigenous and people of color. serving communities, organizations serving those communities, BIPOC communities. And this is in direct alignment with the Kirkland priorities. So with that, I'm going to pass this back to Jen.

Okay, so I'm just going to do a quick snapshot of what option A, B, and C look like. There is a much more detailed level of this in attachment one of your packet, but option A is the base budget, so that's 1.8 million per year. Currently, the recommendations are recommending funding for 31 programs, so within those 31 programs, the priority areas are emergency shelter, housing stabilization and prevention, so things like rent assistance, youth mental health, food security, and culturally specific services. It also includes a $220,000 set aside for youth Eastside services and for Tomorrow, providing on-site services in partnership with the city as part of the hybrid model operating there. Option B and C look a little different than how we've packaged it in the past. So option B is partial continued one-time funding. So that's $634,000 per year that would continue funding that is currently approved for 25-26 as part of option B presented then. so this would require council action if you were interested in funding and these are priority programs there's 22 of them includes housing domestic violence legal support and culturally specific services it also continues funding for the smaller agencies who received rapid response fund dollars in 2025. and then option c also is continued one-time funding so 511 000 is essentially maintaining flat funding of where the city is currently sitting for 25 26 plus an additional one-time funding request of 69 000 and that continues investments in hopelinks food programs so that would be an increase to them and then also includes adult mental health programs culturally specific services and medical

How many programs, Jen? 71. And option C, I can count.

Oh, option C is 22.

Thank you.

OK. I am going to shift over to Sri to talk about option C and the prioritization of this list.

Thanks, Jen. So we spent a fair bit of time, Commissioner Sierra and us, talking about option C because we wanted this to be more of a ranked list just because of the budget guidance we got from the council before. So we spend more time on really ranking this A and B. We spend more time on looking at our priorities, but C, we spend more time ranking. And we basically ranked it in the order that's showing on the slide, which you will notice is slightly different from our strict priority order. And the reason we did it this way is because we felt like if there's additional funding, we wanted to balance things out. Because if you look at just A and B, about 65% is basic needs. and this is and when we say basic needs most of that is food and other stuff because we prioritize youth mental health in option a but adult mental health is an option so we kind of did that just because we felt youth mental health was getting a lot more we're hearing a lot more in our community thing about the need there compared to adult mental health so we just we made that decision So that's kind of one of the reasons why we approached this a little bit differently because we felt like there are services, if there is additional funding that the council can find, then there are services we'd like to fund that we think will make it more of a holistic approach to how we support the community. So that's kind of why we did this. So we kind of looked at adult mental health as kind of our top priority in this bucket. and then we looked at a lot of the support services that Jen was talking about, the cultural support services, support for immigrants, these kinds of things as the next bucket. There is a small amount of stuff for affordable housing that we wanted to come to, which we deemed as slightly different from the other priority ones that we did, so we kind of put it up here. And like I said, our aging and disability stuff and the food stuff, we kind of put it down here. So this is kind of a strict order is what I would say. In each bucket, there are multiple programs in many of these cases. And for those, we use the BIPOC prioritization thing we talked about. So the BIPOC programs are more prioritized higher in the list in each bucket compared to the others. And so that's kind of as close to a stack rank that we could come. given what we know at this time so i think that's this was our attempt so that if you as the council are looking through it you can pretty much say hey if we draw the line here what's it looking like kind of you know so that was kind of what we wanted to have have in front of you to look as you make decisions about the funding and what's available for us and based on the number you give back to us we'll obviously take another look at the whole list and see you know what's the best way for us to manage the the dollars that we do have to allocate on in the option c bucket

Thank you. Councilman Arnold.

Thank you, Sri. Thank you for the work on this. It does a tremendous service for us to be able to say, okay, option A and hopefully option B are done and focus on some of the trade-offs. The budget process is very complicated. Dynamic but also iterative. We have not yet seen the city managers recommended budget. Um, I for one is hopeful that option B gets funded in there. That would save a lot of. Challenges and that's trying to make that happen. Um, and then as we look at other things that are not in the city managers budget. you're the first one that we've heard of saying okay if you have more money here's some things to spend it on there may be others and trade-offs and we don't even know yet what those what those are as we're looking at option c i want to make sure i'm understanding how you've done this so if i look at the first category of option c access to basic needs um if We can find funding for $260,000. You'd say that stuff in green is the first set of things that you would want us to fund.

And that is correct.

Okay. And then but if we let's say we're only looking at $100,000, it might be the first the first three of those for tomorrow and Asian counseling and referring service would be the top priorities within that.

for the most part yes and this is where we said you know as as a commission we would say hey if it's 100 000 It would still all be in that green bucket, but maybe we would, depending on the money saved, we might want to rebalance a little bit here and there based on what the number is that we need to go ahead. So it was hard for us to get to that level of precision at this point, but I think it's approximately pretty close to kind of what you're looking at.

So that gives us some idea of what we'd be finding, but you'd like the opportunity to refine that if we're looking at some level of partial funding of option C.

Yes, if, so the way I would say is if your funding covers the entire bucket, there's no need. If the funding available gets into the middle of one of the buckets, you can partially fund a bucket or not the other, that is the scenario where we would like to be able to kind of follow up and come back and say, hey, here's how we would adjust if we have that flexibility, we would do that. So that's kind of, that's the way to think about it. But within each bucket, if it's fully funded, That's it.

I understand. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful feedback for us to take into consideration. Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm glad Council Member Arnold asked that question because it answered a lot of my questions. I think to that point, though, just springing from it, I think the last time, two years ago, the Commission, we did ask the Commission to meet and come back with recommendations based on how much of I don't remember the exact details but you we basically said okay we don't have enough for all of it if we don't have enough for all of it how would you prioritize it so this is your scenario where we're within a budget or sorry within a bucket is that does the Commission have a meeting scheduled at the right time to provide us that feedback if and when we need that feedback because we are, let's say we are inside of one of these buckets.

So they are meeting next week and then they have a meeting in October. So it's the fourth Tuesday. I don't know the exact date. Might be the 24th.

i would just want us to i'm looking at the city manager now i just want i'd want us to plan to have the commission meet on the right um cadence to be able to provide us that input if we if we do need the input that the chair was suggesting yeah we probably need to have a special meeting of the commission your main where you're going to hear the main presentation on the budget at the end of october so that's where you really have a sense of the whole balancing and what

things you might want to um give direction on and where this may come into play so it'd probably need to be after that okay i will just since i have the mic say that i i have said as a target in the budget you get at least funding a and b and so and i've shared that with you in the commission that that is definitely um currently built into the budget that i intend to send we are balancing this week and next week and we are we're it's it's tough so we are not i can't say with great certainty what everything is going to be in there yet but i can say that the goal in the budget is to fund a and b for sure and then after that we'll have to see because there are a lot of other challenges that we're trying to address i appreciate that this small thing but next time we see this table which is amazing table the green it would be great to have the

subtotal of each of the buckets that'll help us when we do the budget conversation in october Thanks.

Thank you. Anyone else? I did want to add one thing to Deputy Mayor Black's thing. Last cycle, because I was part of it, you funded close to 90% of options. Our job was a lot easier. We're not necessarily thinking that our job is going to be the same with this time, given the challenges, but this was our best attempt to be ready for it. Thank you.

Councillor Tim Chisholm.

I don't know if this has already been said, but Thank you so much for the work you've done. My only fear about funding a lot of stuff in this year is that the next two budget cycles may be worse than this budget cycle. And so I wouldn't want to create a dependency by funding something that we can't fund in 27 and 28. Thank you.

Jen, back to you.

back here i will breeze through this we are almost done so just to do a quick summary of what we have put in front of you so between the three options the commission is recommending funding at just over three million per year six million for the biennium If all three options were funded, 71 programs would receive funding, which is 40%. That second number on the table, Annie walked you through. And we would exceed what the 10% and 15% goals were for investment in BIPOC organizations. And to be transparent, I mentioned this earlier, but there are a few programs that are not receiving funding that have historically received funding. So we did want to call that out, but that is in alignment with commission and city priorities. Recognizing funding is tight. So we have these discussion questions. I will hand it back to the mayor to lead discussion.

All right. So council, why don't you take a look at these questions, see if you have any other input that you want to share. And while you're doing that, I also want to share my gratitude and appreciation both for staff and the Human Services Commission. I do recognize this is heartfelt challenging work. It's very difficult to not fund all of these programs because the need is very great. So I recognize that there's emotion involved in making these decisions. So thank you everyone for your commitment and your hard work. Council, do we agree with the grant priorities? We talked about option C, prioritization. Do we need any more additional information about any of these programs to help with our decision making? We trust the process.

Council Member Arnold. Thank you. I mentioned this to staff, but especially as we're looking at option C, you mentioned that a number of those were things that we fund today and some of them are new. And I want to make sure it's clear in the chart, which are as we look at how much of option C that we're funding, which is existing, which is new, which existing type programs, which is new. Thank you.

Councilor Primm, did you have a question?

Yeah. I also would, you know, I'm fairly new to council, as you know. And so there's a few of these programs that I don't know much about. So I may set up a meeting with you to just kind of go through some of these programs and just also to figure out, find out, you know, how many Kirkland residents do they, have they helped in the past? And then kind of what the criteria was in determining that yes, these are the ones that we want to prioritize. So kind of maybe even walking through a couple of very specific examples, like their applications, and, you know, what was in those applications, and then how we determine the funding level. So I may, I may bug you. Thank you, please do.

Any other comments? All right, thank you.

I did have one go ahead to add to Council member Arnold's question about new programs. Um, 1 thing I think we owe you the data. So that's, you know, that's something. And I'm sure our staff will follow up with you on, but. Generally, 1 of the hard trade us for us is we were able to fund very few new programs just so, you know, out of the. the number of requests that we got. I think maybe five or six were at most the number of new programs we were able to fund overall just because of the tough budget situation. So that's actually one of the things that, you know, it was a hard call for us to make, but it was the right call to make.

actually do have the data if you would like us to share new programs and then currently funded that are not recommended yeah so there's two new programs that are currently being recommended for funding in option c and then there are six programs that are currently receiving funding that are not being recommended for 2728. and if you want the specifics i'm happy to give those to you okay so this will follow up on

It can happen offline. That way I don't have to try to type. Thank you.

Did I see your hand raised?

OK. All right. I think that's it. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

All right. That concludes our study session. Oh, yeah. We will resume our regular meeting at 730.

service.

Okay, let's just start over. Hi, everybody. We are back to our regular meeting. We are back in session following discussions on the proposed utility rates for 2027-2028 and the 2027-2028 Human Services Commission grant funding recommendations. Before I begin I want to acknowledge that council member Pascal and council member Falcone are not in attendance this evening And their absences were excused by council earlier tonight. So we are a small and mighty team We will start tonight's meeting with honors and proclamations. I'm going to turn it over city manager. I

all right so thank you madam mayor uh deputy mayor members of the council so we're going to be proclaiming october 4th through 10th freedom to read week in kirkland a special guest several members of the library board are here and receiving the proclamation tonight is rachel briancao who is a lifelong kirkland resident who serves as the chair of the library board she's also a washington state certified librarian with more than a decade of experience across a range of disciplines And she holds a Master's of Library and Information Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She's a strong advocate for freedom of speech for all, equitable access to information, and lifelong learning. And we're going to ask them all to come up when the proclamation is read.

Thank you. You can join us up front. And Council Member Prim will be reading the proclamation.

Freedom to Read Week, October 4th through the 10th, 2026. Whereas Freedom to Read Week, also known as Banned Books Week, highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community, librarians, educators, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers of all types in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas. and whereas in 1982 judith f krung the director of the office of intellectual freedom within the american library association launched the annual event in response to a sudden surge of books being challenged in libraries bookstores and schools and whereas the freedom to read is essential to our democracy and protected by our constitution and reading is among our greatest freedoms and whereas in 2024 the washington state legislature passed house bill 2331 making it much harder to ban books in washington specifically the improper exclusion of material on topics of two-spirit lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer questioning intersex asexual plus black history and other black indigenous and people of color titles and authors And whereas no books or resource materials should be excluded or censored solely because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation, and all library books and resources should be accessible for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all. And whereas to learn more, visit online resources such as the American Library Association website at ala.org or the Unite Against Book Bans website at uniteagainstbookbans.org. And whereas the city is committed to protecting its community members' freedoms through Resolution R5693, reinforcing the city's commitment to exclusivity, inclusivity, not exclusivity, and safety, and welcoming to all, Resolution R5548, adopting the DEIB five-year roadmap, and the Kirkland Library Board, the advisory body to council, the city manager, and King County Library System regarding library service issues and community interests. Now, therefore, Mayor Kelly Curtis on behalf of the City Council does hereby proclaim October 4 through the 10th 2026 as freedom to read week in Kirkland and calls upon the Community to learn more about book censorship and support people's right to read all perspectives without restriction.

Good evening. I am Rachel Brenco. As chair of the City of Kirkland's Library Board and as a librarian myself, it is an honor to accept this Freedom to Read Proclamation on behalf of our community's libraries, readers, and lifelong learners. I'm joined by other members of the Library Board today, Emeritus Chair Ellie Peterson, Rising Member Graham Haas, our Board Liaison DEIB Manager Erica Mascoro, and by KCLS Regional Manager Denise Bugalo. This recognition affirms a simple but powerful truth. The freedom to read is essential to a free society. It protects our right to explore ideas, encounter different perspectives, and decide for ourselves what is true, meaningful, or valuable, free from censorship that would restrict access to books or silence viewpoints. We are grateful for the City of Kirkland's support of intellectual freedom and for standing with libraries as open, welcoming places where every person can discover, question, and grow without fear of banned ideas or restricted knowledge. Thank you, Kirkland City Council, for this proclamation. We accept it with appreciation and a continued commitment to defending the freedom to read and opposing censorship for all.

Okay.

We are now going to move on to our Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month Proclamation. Council Member Arnold will do the honors. City Manager.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. I will be declaring September 15th through October 15th as Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month in Kirkland. Here to receive our proclamation is Guillermo Memo Mendez Jimenez, who is a Crooked resident and a business owner of the Almanos Mexican Kitchen Food Trucks that offer classic Mexican street food. He has worked in the food industry for over 28 years, has been a business owner for 14 years, and has been joined here by his family. I welcome them all to come up and receive the proclamation. I would note as they're coming forward, there are also events and resources in the memo and online for more about the proclamation.

Welcome.

I'll be reading the proclamation for Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month. As an English speaker, we've chosen the term Latinx and there's a description in the memo of why that term was chosen with me reading this proclamation in English and what it signifies with all the things it includes in Spanish. Whereas Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month celebrates the vibrant cultures, histories, languages, and traditions of those whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. And whereas Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month commemorates the anniversaries of the independence in mid-September for the Latin American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Chile. And whereas the Hispanic, Latinx, and Chicanx community has significantly contributed to the social, economic, educational, artistic, and civic life of the United States and more locally of the city, and whereas celebrating Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month aligns with Kirkland's values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and it reflects the city's commitment to fostering a welcoming and respectful environment for everyone in this community. And whereas community members are encouraged to learn more about Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month by visiting local resources such as Centro Cultural Mexicano in Redmond, the King County Library website, and attending events like Dia de los Muertos at Peter Kirk Community Center. Now, therefore, Mayor Kelly Curtis, on behalf of the City Council, proclaims September 15th through October 26th as Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month in Kirkland, and encourages all community members to learn about, engage with, and celebrate the rich cultural legacies and contributions of the Hispanic, Latinx, and Chicanx communities as part of Kirkland's diverse and inclusive community.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for the, well, first of all, thank you everyone to be here. Thank you for my family and friends to support me. I'm very thankful for the communities like Kirkland. They welcome Latinos like myself and forever grateful for the opportunities this country has given to my purpose of my dream, owning my own business through which I am able to share a little taste of culture, my culture and recipes made from mostly my mom and my dad. And . Muchas gracias. Today is Independence Day in Mexico. Viva Mexico. Thank you very much.

All right, we are now moving on to items for the audience. This is a time in our meeting when we normally hear from the public on matters that are not quasi-judicial. or are otherwise scheduled for a public hearing. We do have a public hearing this evening. It is item 6A on revenue sources for the 2027-2028 budget. On all other matters, please limit your remarks to three minutes. We will provide up to a total of 45 minutes for our items from the audience with no more than six speakers on a subject regardless of their position. to address this council from during this 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 star 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 supporting a speaker, it can be disruptive of the 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 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. as a reminder state law does not allow items from the audience to be used for promoting opposing or discussing a candidate's campaign or a ballot proposition kirkland prides itself on being a respectful welcoming community we want everyone to feel like they belong in council chambers expressing their viewpoints thank you city clerk who do we have signed up

Thank you, Madam Mayor. At this point, we have six guests wishing to speak. All of them are on site. We'll take the first three in this order. Jennifer Koukomides, Christina Mendieta, and Susan Davis, please.

Jennifer, come on up.

Hi, my name is Jennifer Koukoumides, and I am here today because of the continued noise pollution the Pursuit Church continues to do. We share a property line, and they have been violating the Kirkland Municipal Code 11.84A070 Section 4. They do so by the noise and music they put on. It is usually right up to the decibel limit, but the bass is excessive. It reverberates through my house. Even with the doors closed, windows closed, it is inescapable. You can literally feel it in the basement, upstairs, and of course outside. We are unable to enjoy our yard. It interferes with our peace and comfort everywhere. It is continuous and frequent. They have youth services Tuesday night, with practices starting at 5.30 p.m. for 30 minutes at full volume. And the concert starts at 6 p.m. for usually 45 minutes to an hour, followed by a brief quiet time, and then it resumes sometimes up to 9 p.m. They frequently practice on Wednesday evenings for an hour at full volume, as well as the occasional Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday starts at 8.20 in the morning and is often on until 2 p.m. Tuesday nights are the worst, but all of it is unacceptable and detrimental to my family. I come to you as a working mom of two neurodivergent children, one of which is autistic. The repeated noise from the church is especially difficult for them. Our home should be a place where they can settle down and feel comfortable, but the noise takes that away. I am sharing this because noise standards need to account for the real impact on residents, including people with sensory sensitivities. Neurodivergence is not reason to follow the code. It is just one of the reasons that their noise pollution causes that much more of a detriment and impacts my family as we hear the continuous thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. In addition, I am here representing my neighborhood. I bring to you 27 people who have attested that the noise pollution the Pursuit Church creates has violated the Kirkland Code. Some of the comments are as follows. The base is highly disturbing when sitting at my deck and even inside the house. This should not be OK. Tuesday nights are particularly bad. Band practices are also very disturbing. Thursday nights are starting to be problematic, and bus idling is also a problem. from time to time it is very disturbing evening and weekend music from building is too loud music and buses park in front of our back fence and run their engines create low frequency waves and diesel smell the music is too loud i can hear it inside and outside my house i live a block away the base interferes with the peace of our family for example it's hard to put our two-year-old and seven-month-old to sleep when the base is on the windows vibrate and wake them up We are asking for the city to enforce the current code as well as adopt formal base limits. Low frequency waves, base, travel farther and penetrate structures more efficiently.

Jennifer, I'm sorry. You have run out of time.

OK.

But thank you. We sincerely appreciate you coming forward.

And I have the stations.

You can give that to the deputy city manager.

And I also included Woodinville's policy on base limits.

Thank you. All right, next I have Christina.

Good evening, Mayor Curtis and council members. My name is Christina Mendieta. I am here representing Kindering, a nonprofit neurodevelopmental center that was founded right here on the east side over 60 years ago. Every year we have the privilege of serving over 550 children from Kirkland with diverse needs and their families. So I'm here tonight first to thank you for considering the Human Services Commission's recommendation of partial funding for Kindering's Families in Transition program. As you may be aware, this program supports families who are experiencing housing instability, family violence, immigration-related concerns, and other family stressors, and it provides one-on-one developmental supports, case management, and also delivers household essentials. However, tonight, I am also asking you to consider to reconsider the Human Service Commission's recommendation of no funding for our childcare and preschool consultation program. We respectfully ask this council to consider an additional appropriation to provide at least partial support to so that we can sustain this important service for Kirkland residents. Our childcare and preschool consultation program helps childcare providers successfully include children with diverse needs and of diverse backgrounds in their early learning settings. This is particularly important because children with disabilities and children of color are disproportionately at risk of expulsion and suspension from childcare and preschool. For families, of course, losing access to childcare can disrupt a child's development while also jeopardizing a parent's ability to work and therefore a family's economic stability. And our child care consultation program does work. Last year, 96% of the children who were served through this program were successfully retained in their child care program. For a child, remaining successfully included in their child care and early learning setting means continued access to learning, relationships, stability, and care. And for parents, it means being able to continue working, knowing their child is a safe, supportive place to learn and grow. We recognize that you have very difficult funding decisions before you, and we are very grateful for Kirkland's longstanding partnership We respectfully ask you to consider restoring at least partial funding for our child care and preschool consultation program so that we can continue providing this critical support to Kirkland's children, families, and early learning providers. Thank you for your consideration and for your continued investment in kindering families, Kirkland families.

Thank you, Christina. Susan.

Susan Davis will be followed by Karina O'Malley and Kim Faust.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Susan Davis and I live in the North Rose Hill neighborhood. I'm here about noise pollution and also the neighborhood stores and services amendments that you guys are gonna be making a decision on soon. Our neighborhood has been dealing with amplified music several nights a week, bass travels through their walls, they hear it and feel it in every window and door closed. They did what residents are supposed to do. KMC 1184A070 section four covers frequent repetitive sounds from a building that unreasonably interferes with peace and repose. They reported it numerous times to the church and got no feedback. They reported it to the police and many emails and I think some meetings with the planning director. Unfortunately, when a police officer came, he had done some kind of a cell phone noise and said it wasn't enough decibels. Well, the thing with it is, is this is not measurable right now for our city code. So unfortunately, planning director, said pound sand basically they can't do anything luckily they did they did um stop having the weekly helicopter land right next to their home which was awesome um that's one win and i hope it's still going to stay i know that the church is going to be I think, fighting that. Here's why. When the city measures noises, it uses the state's A-weighted standard, which discounts low frequencies. Base that shakes the home registers as compliant, so the code describes the problem and then can't measure it, and enforcement stops there. We were given no other kind of information from the city how they could help us, so we've been doing our own research. This project's own supporting policy, which is the neighborhood stores ED 1.9 commits the city to neighborhood businesses that minimize adverse impacts related to noise. I take that commitment seriously, but a policy is only as good as the enforcement behind it. And right now the enforcement isn't there. That's my concern. You're proposing to allow commercial activity in residential zones while the one protection residents have goes unenforced. If the city can't resolve a noise complaint today against one property, adding cafes, shops, and services next to bedrooms will not make it easier. It will multiply it. So I'm asking for three things. Add an objective low frequency standard before you adopt these amendments. Tacoma limits indoor seaway to decibels. Seattle uses DBC for nightlife. Woodinville and King County define plainly audible to include rhythmic bass. write the performance standards for amplified sound and hours of operation to the amendments themselves not into later guidance and show us enforcement and show us enforcement works now on the code you already have before you widen what needs enforcing i will also be taking this to the planning commission on october 8th when they discuss neighborhood stores thank you thank you all right karina

hi i'm karina o'malley long-term resident of kirkland i respectfully ask that the council repeal the recent ban on rv parkings on city streets in kirkland i believe that all involved had positive intentions but the ordinance 4946 missed the mark i believe that you made a mistake and that you can fix it i have heard the explanation that this new ban is not meant to negatively impact people who live in rvs but the fact is that if someone wants to follow the law they will stay out of kirkland this makes rv dwellers ineligible for outreach services from kirkland staff when they follow the law and don't park in kirkland I know somebody who is unable to pay current market rent, was getting sick of living in a passenger vehicle, so bought an RV to be her permanent home. She has always been scrupulous about following the law and staying out of trouble, and she won't be able to stay in Kirkland. Assuming that RV dwellers will violate the law on the promise of discretionary compassion is unrealistic, though some might. It seems perverse to pass a law that you do not intend for people to follow. The city will not achieve their goal of being a city that leads with compassion when the people who need services most will simply not risk being in Kirkland. If you could allow RVs to park for 24 hours at a time or designate certain areas of the city where RVs could park, then there would be an opportunity for outreach, connection, and services. I want my city to have an answer to the question, where should I go?

the current environment there is no answer just not here thank you thank you karina kim kim will be followed by alex timmerman and liz hunt thank you can we hand out some a couple diagrams to the council is that possible oh yeah yeah okay i'll start and she'll hand them out good evening mayor and council i'm kim faust with main street property group we're the developer of slate peak that's further on the agenda tonight i want to give you a quick quick highlights of our proposal we're not asking for any approval tonight just discussion quick recap of the project benefits a mixed-use building 170 multi-family units including a large portion of two and three bedrooms note 35 percent of our units are family size housing which is a significant number of large units in a multi-family building ten percent of these units will be reserved for um fifty percent of the ami so inclusionary housing including six of these will be family size units approximately ten thousand square feet of street level non-residential space note that covers 100 of available frontage on our two streets seventh and eighth we'll discuss that when i go through the diagrams approximately 192 parking stalls additional public benefit of below market rate retail space or a 200 000 contribution to cross kirkland corridor The commercial calculations are slightly confusing, and so I wanted to just make sure that it's really clear what we're proposing, as I don't know that the staff report fully explained it. So I provided this diagram, and I wanted to also show a section of our site, which is this other attachment. We have two frontages on 7th and 8th Avenue. There are different grades. So the grade on seventh is different than eighth. So I just wanna make sure that's clear. So we are proposing at grade, we have full frontages of commercial space. The only place we don't have commercial space is interior. We are landlocked. So both sides where you see parking, there is another property line. We also wanna make it clear that retail parking counts as retail, shared parking also can be included. A lobby also is a non-residential use. So when we do all these calculations, we're actually providing 65% of our floor plate as commercial, non-residential. Just wanna make sure that I think that the staff report stated something differently, and I just wanna make sure that we're showing the benefit of the commercial space that we are providing at a location that today has zero commercial space. Thank you. Thank you, Kim. Alex?

Hi. Yeah, my name Alex Zimmerman. And I come here for many years here. Probably I'm idiot. Because, for example, for last nine months, nobody answer question. Yeah, what does I give to you? And I talk about this in every meeting. Nothing happen. Consul look like, I don't know, play stupid or don't want to give answer because answer can be idiotic. Yeah, so that's up to you. It's number one. Number two, for the last few hearings, you cut me, don't give me a chance to speak, probably because my opinion is different than your opinion. So I start to understand what is going on, why you cut me when I'm supposed to have a public hearing.

Like today we have a public hearing, for example.

I will speak later. So situation very simple right now. I think it's because you scared what is this 100,000 idiot in Slav have different opinion. And I exactly are talking about something what is absolutely critical. And what is I talking, nobody talking, not only here, in Lolkin County, because I speak everywhere. So my question to you is very simple. When you start acting like civilized people, when you stop acting like what I call Nazi, Gestapo, fascist, mob, bandita. Yeah. Because Democrats right now don't want to listen different people opinion opinion is very important without opinion no one business can exist but government here in city in king country exists for this king country right now number one fascist county in america they cut everybody who have different opinion it's not only about trump It's totally not only about Trump. It's about something so people have different opinion. And I can go to King Country Council meeting many time, no one, no one talk about situation what is we have right now before Democrat and Republican, before democrat crook in trump who won't bring money to the people it's very interesting for me you know what does i mean because i try understand where it's come from i live here for four years and i remember king country nice beautiful location but right now for last five ten year they acting like a pure bandita nazi gestapo fascist mob in election all fake nobody vote for them more than 10 percentage from each viva trump with a new american revolution stand up slave and happy cow we need a separate different opinion no one businesses in this planet can ignore this thank you very much Liz.

Hello, council and staff. My name is Liz Hunt. I'm a Kirkland resident. I would like to speak to item 9D on your business agenda, the Slate Peak project. It was interesting to hear from Kim from Main Street Properties because that gave some additional information about the commercial spaces, which was not clear in the packet. But my overall question is, what's the vision for this area, this property in the southern Norkirk neighborhood on 7th Avenue and also 8th Avenue? It spans that space. In the late 2010s, this property was zoned light industrial, maximum height 35 feet. Then the big stationary project rezoned it, increased the height to 45 feet, and The new zone land use is urban flex district. So now we have a proposal requesting 65 feet. And I had some comments about the commercial space which is required in an urban flex zone. And it sounds like Main Street's been very thoughtful about putting that space particularly across the front of the buildings because that's one of the purposes of first floor commercial is to activate that space. When people walk down the street, they see something interesting and not just a blank wall and there's an inviting space possibly for a civic purpose or a coffee shop or something. It sounds like they put some thought into what that's going to be, but it is a very large building. um especially compared to the other buildings that are there so what is the vision for this area are we you know this urban flex zone that was going to be only 45 feet tall is this what's going in there instead and and maybe this is a great space for a 65 foot building with a lot of residential units there's not a lot it doesn't back up to residential it's like two lots away to the nearest home So maybe this is a great purpose, but I would like to see what the plan is instead of just a one-off here and a one-off there. My other question is, what should the public benefit be for that increased 20 feet of height that they've requested? They made two proposals, but that's 50%, again, as tall as the building is zoned for in that space. So is $200,000 of contribution to the CKC, is that enough? We need to really think about what 20 additional feet of a large footprint building is worth to our community. Thank you very much.

Thank you. City Clerk? We have one additional guest wishing to speak online, Joe Kunzler.

Joe, go ahead. Why, thank you, Madam Mayor. Joe Kunzler here. I was interrupting my Redmond TV viewing to call in and just say very clearly for the council and the audience, as I had to do with Bellevue, that Alex Zimmerman's claims of a Holocaust are absolutely, positively, definitely untrue across the board, and they're just absolutely unacceptable. For an actual Holocaust to happen, And the four letter N word ending in I from him, for those things to happen, there would have to be only one party of government on all the ballots. There would have to be a program to eliminate certain populations of people. There would have to be a destruction of democracy. The list goes on. I actually had to study this in college. Okay. So, you know, there's a certain community called Redmond that has a hate-free zone. And guess who doesn't go there anymore? Alex Zimmerman. Now, I don't want to campaign because the person who created it is on the ballot, so I'm not going to say her name. But if you do enough research, you will find out who the council member is.

Joe, be careful there.

Yes, ma'am. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. we are all concerned about you know dark money going into elections which brings me my other point tonight about the about the halfway point i am right now tonight sending out various emails uh trying to alert people that the pdc cannot go and i'm about to get to the direct the kirkland part of this i cannot look into dark money grassroots lobbying into local government i ask that you place on your legislative agenda please um calling out grassroots lobbying in the local government. Future 42 is doing this in certain places. I'm concerned you might be next. And with that, I hope I've conducted a bit of a public service here. I thank the mayor for her warnings. Appreciate your public service as well as all of yours. Thank you. Good night.

Thank you. Anyone else?

This concludes our speaker's list.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, everyone. We are going to now move on to our public hearing, which is on revenue sources for the 2027-2028 budget. I will now open the public hearing. City Manager. Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Prior to the public hearing itself, we want to give a presentation on the actual revenue sources in the budget. This is for the general fund budget only. Here to give that presentation is our financial planning manager, Kevin Pelstring. And then we'll open it up for the comments.

Thank you, City Manager, Madam Mayor, members of council, members of the public. Tonight I have the first presentation on the 27-28 budget development process, the most exciting time of the year, every two years. So tonight is the first of three public hearings that we have on the proposed 27-28 budget. The second two will follow on November 4th and November 17th. We're currently working hard on the preliminary, the city manager's recommended budget, and we'll come back to you, that will be available, sorry, on October 22nd for both the public and for council. We'll have a four to six hour light time going through the entire budget on October 29th to review in depth But the revenue hearing today is required by RCW for council to consider revenue sources, including possible increases in property taxes. So I have eight slides for you tonight. All right. The four revenues sources in tonight's memo, and I should specify real quick, this is related to general fund revenue within finance and administration. We consider a few different funds part of the general fund. So this, we're going to be talking about street fund and talking about development services fund. So it's general fund in a broader sense, but those are separated into certain sub funds in order just to expand accountability and transparency for the public. So the four revenue sources that we're looking at tonight are property tax, sales tax, utility tax, and business license fees, which together make up about 63% of ongoing general fund revenue. I should also specify that this does not include utility rates or other non-general fund revenues like discussed on the other parts of the agenda. And for context of the larger budget process, at the May retreat, the ongoing forecast showed a $6.4 million budget cap for 27-28 that went up to about $12 million or a little under, including one-time positions. So that's the backdrop for some of the conservative budgeting revenue estimates that we put into this budget tonight or that we're putting into the presentation tonight. Um, and the budget, the main budget principle, uh, kind of driving the city manager's recommendation that we're still working on is to sustain current service levels and council initiatives, including the crack and I specs and Kirkland community center. Uh, and then, yes, finally, we're building towards that October 22nd, um, date for providing the balance preliminary budget to council and to public. So a brief update on the property tax. This is actually the one piece where RCW requires affirmative change every year or affirmative action by council. So there's two pieces to the property tax budget assumption that we built in. The first is the 1% optional increase. And then the second is an assumption for new construction of 1.5% per year. And that's been the same for the last several cycles. So you'll remember that state law caps regular levy growth at 1% a year plus new construction. And the one small twist here is that the effective growth from the 26 budget to the 27 budget is showing at 2.3%. That's because the actual estimate for 26 is a little bit lower than budget, but we are showing that 2.5% increase in 2028 in the second year. So the table there on the right shows all the current year estimates in 26 as well as the estimates for 27 and 28 and what's going into the preliminary budget. Um, and just a reminder, all of the, uh, 2020, um, firing EMS property levy, the 2012 street levy and, uh, 2012 park levies all grow on the same basis, even though we show them separately. Um, and, uh, we're showing the 26 estimate total property tax across all those funds about just under 45Million rising to about 47.2Million in 2028. Retail sales tax. So we are estimating in the budget that for 27 to 28 are budgeting 36Million flat each year. That is based on the estimate of where we believe that retail sales tax will end 2026 based on collections through August. Um, that is following the 2 year sales tax lag. That's been the long time policy of the city. Uh, that's the adopted fiscal policy that protects the city against economic downturns. Uh, doesn't completely prevent downturns of course, but it does provide more buffer against, um, having to to make cuts if there is a significant impact to the city. Um, so that policy is is, um, held for criminal justice sales tax, which is a pass through from King County as well as the police prop 1. um, and those are both held flat based on the 2026, uh, estimates through 27 and 28 in the budget. Um, 1, new sales tax this year is the King County transportation benefit district who adopted a point 1% increase to sales tax. Uh, they adopted it in June 26. it goes into effect in 2027. Um, and it's shared 12.5% with cities by population. Uh, we've currently budgeted in the street fund. Um. And the amounts are there that's four hundred and seventy two thousand for twenty seven five hundred and sixty six thousand for twenty eight. The reason that it increases is because of there's a two month lag between when consumers pay the tax and when the city actually receives the tax. So we'll on a cash basis only receive ten months of revenue in twenty twenty seven. Uh, the next 1, uh, is the utility tax. So, uh, the electric, uh, utility tax is the, the single biggest increase that we're, um, showing in the 2728 budget. Um, and that's based on growth in 2026 to about 7.4Million against a 5.8Million dollar budget. Uh, and it's also based on the puget sound energy, uh, request to the state of a fifteen percent increase in twenty seven. Uh, and, um. I can't remember what the second, uh, three point eight percent. Sorry in twenty, twenty eight. Um, we haven't assumed the full amount. Um, there's a few different pieces that go into there. One is that demand is rising for electricity. Uh, the 2nd is that, uh, we're assuming that the, the, um, utility. And transportation commission is not going to approve all of it based on historical averages. So we've assumed about 85% of that will be approved. Um, on the natural gas side, we're showing much slower growth, uh, requested about 1427. um, and we're only assuming, um, a portion that will be, uh, approved and demand is falling overall. So, although rates are going up, demand is falling. The big piece of why those two are different is that we're seeing more efficient appliances moving towards electrification and new construction and then repair behavior at higher prices. So as electricity prices go up, as natural gas prices go up, we are expecting a decrease in usage because of elasticity. And then the public utility taxes are budgeted based on the proposed rates on the agenda, we are seeing a continued decline in both cable and telephone taxes, which has been a continuation of a trend over the past few years. A few other key revenues. One is the revenue generating regulatory license, often called the business license or per capita or per employee fee. That is budgeted at $5 million each year, which is below the 26 budget and the 26 estimate. A lot of those recent gains are dependent on limited term staff, which are not currently in the base, but are proposed as part of a service package. So they're not built into that base rate. Another piece to highlight, I won't go through all these, but the vehicle license fee adopted in 24, about 1.15 million covers debt service on the 2024 transportation benefit district bonds, covering school zone safety cameras and active transportation plan projects, and the rest covers two street maintenance positions. We're not expecting huge growth in those, but we are seeing a little bit of, a couple percentages of growth year by year Franchise fees are going up, escalating with CPI-U based on those agreements, but also there's been some decline in the Comcast and cable fees. And then finally, the school zone safety cameras. So we budgeted those at $2.1 million, which is down from $2.5 million Budget in twenty six, there's two pieces to that one. We are seeing citation slow down pretty much across the board, which is as intended. This is not intended to produce more and more revenue, but it's a safety measure and intended to cover the cost of the program. And so we're seeing that be successful. Uh, the second is that it does include a small, uh, proposed fine increase requested by the court, uh, from the, the lower, uh, fee amount from 136 to 145 dollars, which will match the wooden wooden bill, um, rate, uh, which is also being wooden bills. Um, fines are also being processed by our own city staff at this point. So that, uh, improves that process. Uh, just a couple of things I wanted to call out that are not in the base budget, uh, but things that might come up in the, in the, uh, budget process as we go on. Uh, 1 is that there's no new tax assumed. Uh, we've talked at several retreats and meetings about 2015, the law passed in 2025. I believe that allows a councilmatic 0.1% public safety sales tax. Uh, that, um, authority is only allowed through June twenty, twenty eight. Uh, there will be an issue paper that will be included in the preliminary budget that describes that and potential options for council. Uh, this doesn't include service packages or revenue that comes with service packages. Um, this is no new program additions in tonight's figures. Um, and it does not include additional schools on safety camera locations or fines. Uh, there is an additional issue paper on that topic as well. That will come with the preliminary budget. Um, and it also does not include final benefit rates. So, uh, those are still under review. Um, and we're working closely with our, uh. The city's consultants to to finalize those, and we'll have more updated numbers as we go through the process. Um, here is the table that was included in the memo. Um, so it includes about 63% of the general fund, true general fund revenues, 76% of the street fund and 66% of development services fund revenues. Um, the highlighted section is that new King county transportation district sales tax, which is going into the street fund. Uh, so a total of about 1.04Million dollars. And then to close, here is our timeline for the rest of the year. So as we said, the preliminary budget will be available to council and the public on the 22nd. We'll have that council budget work session on the 29th, and additional public hearings for the public to give comment on the 4th and 17th of November. And then finally, adoption of the 2732 CIP, the 2728 budget, and the final 2027 property tax levy on December 8th. So those are all the slides I have. I'm happy to answer any questions, but I'll pass it off to you, Madam Mayor.

Excuse me. Thank you, Kevin. And I love the way that you presented that information. Thank you. Council, any questions for Kevin? It looks like not.

All right. Thank you very much.

I will now call upon any members of the public who are signed up to address the council for this public hearing. Please limit your remarks to three minutes. During this time, I want to be really clear. You are limited to speaking only about the topic of this public hearing, which is revenue sources for the 2027-2028 budget. Is there anyone signed up to address council?

Madam Mayor, we have two guests wishing to provide testimony on this subject, Alex Zimmerman and Liz Hunt.

Alex?

My name, Alex Zimmerman. I'm president of Stand Up America Party. I like this guy. He look very good. I don't understand why he don't deliver it to people budget. per year or for two year, I confuse. Maybe my hearing not so good, so maybe he talk about this, but I don't listen. When he work for me, I will fire him by tomorrow. It's very simple, you understand? These two management, what is I ask them, and I ask this guy too, I ask them about budget. Here is, they told me two billion for two year, millennium.

Alex, do you have any comments on what was presented this evening about revenue sources?

Exactly. I speak about budget.

No, I'm asking about revenue sources.

Why are you talking about revenue?

What this public hearing is about, which is revenue sources.

Exactly. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Give me another 30 seconds. I'll explain to you. No problem. So your budget, $1 billion per year. GDP, what is you have? What is my experience with another city? Approximately 100 times more. You understand what I'm talking? Money, what is your delivery to people comparable to what is corporation making? In Kirkland, for example, it's 100 times more. Maybe 50, maybe 150. Both of you have 150 for $1 billion.

Alex, you're not discussing what was presented. Let me give you 20 more seconds.

No, you're talking about budget. I want to explain to you. Your budget's comparable to corporation GDP is 100 times more.

Alex, you are excused. This is the third time that you violated the council rules about public comment during public hearings. You will receive a letter from the city regarding the consequences of these violations. You're excused. Thank you.

Oh, you give me trespass?

Alex, you're excused.

Liz Hunt.

Liz?

Deputy Clerk, would you please grab Ms. Liz Hunt? Thank you.

Hello, I stepped out for that particular portion of the evening. My name's Liz Hunt, I'm a Kirkland resident, and I want to say a few words about our revenue sources. Thank you very much to staff for this really good packet and presentation. Understanding our budget is a big job, and so I just have one particular item I wanna make a comment on, and that is the utility taxes. And I see in the packet that for 2027, we're projecting revenue of 21.3 million roughly. For 27 and for 28, 22.4 million. In the city council packet for a previous meeting, the 2026 revenue for utility taxes is at $18 million, up to $22.4 million. That's a pretty significant increase. And my question is that utility taxes are going up, I believe, because they're a percent of what we're paying for our utilities. When my bill comes, I pay for the utility and then I pay utility tax. Is it costing the city, you know, three extra FTEs to process increased utility tax? I don't think so. So my question is how come the utility tax is going up so high when our, you know, is that... That money goes straight into the general fund. It's not a restricted item. And that's great. I'm sure we need more money in our city. But that money is coming out of the pockets of people who are paying for these utilities. And that includes residents. It's probably also commercial. But we have an affordability issue in our city. So I'm just questioning and would like some more information about how the utility taxes are going up. so high, mostly based on rate increases and other things. So thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Liz. Staff can follow up with you. City Clerk, anyone else?

There are no other guests signed up to provide testimony, and it's appropriate to close the public hearing.

Thank you. Public hearing is now closed. The council will consider all public comments received on this issue, including those we receive in writing. So we are now moving on to our consent calendar. Before I have a motion, I'd like to ask the deputy mayor to present the auditive accounts.

uh thank you madam mayor we had payroll in the amount of eight million two hundred fifty thousand two hundred ninety eight dollars and fourteen cents and bills in the amount of four million four hundred ninety thousand nine hundred twelve dollars and eighty seven cents i also want to note uh that on e page 97 the september 1st 2026 minutes did not show the applicable underlining and strikethroughs on one of the motions, but that is being corrected by the city clerk as a scrivener's error.

Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I was waiting for proclamations. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

So moved.

Second. It's been moved by Deputy Mayor Black, second by Councilmember Prim to approve the consent calendar. Is there any discussion? Questions on the consent calendar? It contains an ordinance. City Clerk, will you please call the roll?

On a motion to approve the consent calendar. Council Member Tim Chisholm. Aye. Council Member Arnold. Yes. Council Member Prem. Yes. Deputy Mayor Black. Yes. Mayor Curtis.

Yes. The consent calendar is approved 5-0. We are now going to move on to our first business item, and it looks like we have some audience members here for that. And... It is, we are now moving on to our regular business agenda. Our first item of business is endorsing the Kirkland Youth Bill of Rights as a reference guide when considering policy and budget decisions that may impact young people. City Manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Before we get to this business item, I do want to note, as the Council has five members here and two excused, that under Council rules, when you affirmatively approve everything, you need four votes. So just as items come up for action tonight, just want to remind Council of that policy before we get to any specific votes. Thank you.

Thank you.

So we're excited to bring back before you the Kirkland Youth Bill of Rights. This was a brief discussion before. Council had several potential modest amendments, and they asked staff to work with the Youth Council to come up with a consolidated new resolution, a revised resolution. That is what's before you today. So we're looking for a council review and action. And here to give that presentation is our Human Services Manager, Jen Boone, our Human Services Coordinator, Reggie Shipker, and Youth Council Co-Chair, Lian Sitow. Thank you.

Thank you, Kurt. Good to see you all again this evening. So we have a short slide deck for you tonight before we'll open it up for council discussions. We have 10 slides this evening. And as Kurt said, we are seeking direction and consideration of adoption of resolution 5738, which is adopting the Kirkland Youth Bill of Rights as reference guide when considering policy and budget decisions that may impact young people. So the questions we have that we will bring back at the end of the presentation are if you have any additional questions or if there's any additional changes you would like to propose. Now I'm going to turn it over to Reggie.

Thanks, Jen. Thank you, Council. Before the bulk of the presentation will be done by Leigh Ann, who is our former co-chair of the Youth Council. But I wanted to just briefly start out to go over the framework of this from the city's perspective. At its core, the Youth Bill of Rights is designed to serve as a strategic lens, helping the city leadership and staff intentionally consider youth when shaping future policies, programs, and investments. This initiative builds on Kirkland's long-standing history of prioritizing youth voice from establishing the Kirkland Youth Council in 1996 to placing youth on boards and commissions in 2001 and to the ongoing operations of the Kirkland Teen Union Building. It also directly aligns with city's ongoing DEIB commitments by ensuring that young people, especially those from historically underrepresented backgrounds, have an intentional equitable voice in local government. The Youth Council spent much of this last school year thoroughly adapting, thoughtfully adapting the King County's model to address Kirkland's unique community needs. I want to emphasize that this document serves as a guiding compass for future decision making rather than a binding mandate. So I will turn it over to Leigh Ann for the bulk of the presentation.

All right, so as members of the Youth Council, we wanted this framework to reflect both where Kirkland is today and where we hope to continue growing. There were a few things that really motivated us to create it this year. First is that this year marks 30 years of the Kirkland Youth Council, so we saw an opportunity to create something that could carry that work forward. We also wanted to make sure that youth voices are consistently considered in city decision making rather than relying only on individual conversations or opportunities that come up from project to project. And most importantly, we wanted this framework to reflect the voices and priorities of young people in Kirkland. The goal is for this to be something that future youth councils and city leaders can contribute to use as a reference as Kirkland changes and the needs of young people evolve. As we developed this framework over the past year, we kept coming back to one question, which is, what does every young person in Kirkland need in order to feel supported and have the opportunity to thrive? The answer became these nine pillars. These nine pillars cover different parts of young people's lives, from basic needs and health to transportation, community spaces, civic engagement, and personal growth. They aren't meant to create nine separate areas of work. Instead, they give the city a shared youth-centered lens for thinking about the many ways policies, programs, investments can affect young people. I want to emphasize that this is a guiding framework and reference, as Reggie mentioned, and not a legal code or a new set of requirements. The next three slides group these nine pillars into a few broader themes. The first group focuses on creating the conditions young people need to feel healthy, safe, and included. That includes access to basic needs and well-being, health and wellness resources, and digital safety, as well as equity, inclusion, and belonging. These are areas where the city is already doing a lot of meaningful work. For example, the city supports housing stability and school-based services through its human services funding, and the reactivation of the Kirkland Teens Union Building has expanded access to youth services, including free behavioral health counseling. So this framework isn't suggesting that this work needs to start from scratch. It's about recognizing these priorities together and continuing to consider them through a youth-centered lens. The next group of slides looks at the spaces and systems that help young people move through, connect with, and experience their community. that includes safety and security, community and youth spaces, the environment and public spaces, and transportation and mobility. Again, these are not entirely new priorities for Kirkland. The city already invests in parks, public spaces, transportation, community programs, and other efforts that affect young people. What this framework does is bring those priorities together and help us think about how they intersect with young people's experiences. For example, safe transportation can give young people more independence, while welcoming community spaces give us places to connect, learn, and build relationships. The final group focuses on youth voice and civic engagement along with recreation and personal growth. The youth voice and civic engagement pillar is especially important because young people deserve meaningful opportunities to help shape decisions that affect our lives. Kirkland already has a strong foundation for this. The Youth Council has served as an advisory group since 1996, and young people also have opportunities to participate on city boards, commissions, and other groups. The framework builds on that foundation by emphasizing the importance of consistent channels for youth input and representation. And that matters because young people aren't just preparing to become part of the community someday. We're already part of the community today. And then the recreation and personal growth pillar recognizes that young people also need opportunities to explore their interests, develop leadership skills, be creative, and build connections through things like arts, sports, cultural programs, and other activities. So, what changes with a framework like this? I don't think the answer is that the city suddenly starts doing something new or starting doing all these things. Care Client already supports young people in many of these areas. The difference is having a unified framework that connects all these efforts together. Instead of youth perspectives only being part of individual conversations or individual projects, this framework gives city leaders and staff a consistent lens they can return to when considering policies, programs, budgets, and future planning. We already see a lot of city staff coming to the youth council meetings for feedback on different topics, plans, strategies, and efforts. This framework can help connect these individual conversations to the broader priorities young people have identified in addition to the youth council visits so that youth perspectives can continue to be carried forward into future planning. In that way, the Bill of Rights is really about building on the relationships and engagement that already exists between the Youth Council and the City Council and staff. And looking ahead, if this bill was adopted, this framework can help guide conversations around future policies, budget priorities, city programs, community planning, and continued youth engagement. And because it is a guiding framework rather than a legal code, it can remain flexible as curriculum changes and as the priorities of young people change with it. Ultimately, we hope this becomes something that future youth councils and city leaders can continue to build on so that youth perspectives remain part of the conversation about the future of Kirkland. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for all your work and your collaboration on this. Council, any questions? Deputy Mayor?

Thank You madam mayor, hopefully I gave my colleagues enough time to ask you questions, but I'm assuming you'll also entertain a motion I would Madam mayor I move adoption of resolution are 57 38 a resolution of the City Council of the city of Kirkland Endorsing the Kirkland Youth Bill of Rights as a reference guide when considering policy and budget decisions that may impact young people

second it has been moved by deputy mayor black second by councilman pram to move forward resolution 5736 it's been or 38 sorry i don't have my glasses on um any further discussion deputy or councilman arnold

Thank you just wanted to put on the record. I appreciation for the Youth Council. This is a robust set of items for youth in our in our future and really appreciate the work. The thoughtful work that went into both developing the Bill of Rights and lay on your presentation on explaining some of the work in the goals behind it. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Questions on the motion? Oh, sorry. Council member Tim Chisholm.

Thank you. I really appreciate your presentation, the work you put into this. My wife's a middle school principal and I asked her if I should support this or not. And she said yes. So I don't have any concerns. Thank you.

Thank you. questions on the motion to move approve resolution 5738 all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries 5-0 would you like to do a picture congratulations You want to come up? Yes.

Yeah. How about the rest of the youth council members? Come on up.

You guys can stand right in front if that works for you. Reggie, you can join them too if you want.

Do you also want to join us for the picture?

Come on, Jen. You help him.

All right.

Good job, guys.

all right our next item is uh next item of business on the highlands water pressure alternative analysis recommendation city manager okay thank you madam mayor so we are here to give a update on the highlands water pressure action and we're looking for council direction on what alternative uh for future work should be placed into the cip and budget for future action so To give you that presentation is Yuen Yang, who is our senior project engineer and has done amazing work over the last six months on this project. So we're excited to have her back. Welcome.

thank you city manager good evening madam mayor deputy mayor council members i'm here this evening to recommend a long-term improvement to highlands water system along with this recommendation there will also be replacement to the aging water main serving this system now i know in the last 12 months you have already received many a status update regarding this improvements analysis. So I am aware that you are familiar and had a good understanding with this project's background. But for the benefit of those in the audience may not be as familiar with this project, I'd like to take a few minutes to walk through the background and explain the reason why we're making the recommendation to improve this system. What you see on the screen here is the map of Highlands neighborhood. And what you see that I highlight in the middle of the screen is the pressure zone that used to serve that used to serve the Highlands, majority of the portion of the Highland neighborhood. So this pressure zone has a history of system deficiencies, but to understand, which was listed on the left hand of the screen right now, but to understand these deficiencies, we need to go back and understand why this pressure zone was formed in the first place and why it is configured the way it was. So I'd like to bring your attention to the right hand, lower right hand, left hand, I'm sorry, my left and right, lower right hand portion of the screen to show that, I'm sorry, let me back up. I jumped ahead of myself, sorry. To understand why the region was formed, we need to first understand the geographic formation of the city. The city of Kirkland sits on top of the hill, whereas east side of the boundary is higher than the west side of the boundary. This turned out to be very convenient for us to distribute our water system. The reason is that we all know water flows downhill. And we happen to receive our service water supply on the east side of the boundary. So when the water enters the city through our water system supply station, it will first serve the pressure zone that has the higher hydraulic elevation of 545 feet. We then convey the water down the slope. As it moves down the slope, we reduce the pressure to meet the elevation we serve. So it goes from water comes in, serve the 545 feet hydraulic pressure zone, we then drop it to 450, we then drop it to 315, all the way to 285, and eventually meet the Lake Washington. So the idea is that as the water goes downhill, we reduce the pressure to deliver the service. This works in general really well until we hit highland. So on the screen here, what you want to see was the pressure already, when we get to the east side of I-405, the pressure already reduces to 450. But when you cross the I-405, you hit highland. Now there's a reason why Highlands is called Highlands because it has a higher elevation compared to its adjacent land. So it is understandable the residents in this higher elevation location will want it to be served by the pressure that's higher than 450 in their neighborhood. So to comply that requirement in the past, what city did was they had to configure a different arrangement. And this is when I wanted you to take a look at the right hand side, lower right hand side of the screen. What city did was bring in the transmission line that carried the 545 pressure zone. crossing the I-405. Once it crossed, it branched into two separate locations. The first one, it entered a 450 pressure reduced valve. To lower the pressure to 450, serve the pressure zone of 450. The other one branched, entered into the 510 pressure reduced valve, converting or reducing the pressure to 510. This is where we formed the pressure zone of 510. This configuration works well to serve the pressure. However, over time, the deficiency started to form. And the reason is that as the population growth, development growth to come into this zone. So the more the development, the higher the demand placed on this zone. So at the same time, that means there's more flow need to pass through this pipe, this single source supply that supply this zone. The pressure, this pipe was actually sized and installed in 1942. It is reaching 90 years old. So when the pipe age, the frictions increase. That makes it harder to provide the flow through the pipe. So it's the combination of the increase of demand and the aging pipe that makes it harder and harder to deliver the flow, and that's where the division started to form. With the deficient starting, what is the hardest part is delivering the high demand flow, such as a fire flow, which is needed to protect the property and lives. So by 2024, city already observed 93% of the hydrant, they were not meeting the fire flow standard. In addition, with this type of isolation zone that's supplied only by one supply source, there's a lot of deficiencies, be it the redundancy to the system, the circulation of the water, and the connectivity of the system. They're all compromised. And in addition, there are portion of the property within the zone are not actually at the higher elevation. So they are actually receiving excessive pressure, requiring them to install individual PRV, pressure reduced valve. That's a burden on individual property owner. So with all these deficiencies, Citi has long sought to improve the system. So in 2024, there was an opportunity to relocate the transmission line that I just showed here. So when that happens, Citi took the opportunity to convert the zone into 450, eliminate the reliance on the 510, and for the whole neighborhood to receive the same pressure zone. that achieved all the improvement that we sought to improve. And we also did that still meeting the minimum pressure requirement set forth by the Department of Health. But with all that achievement, the response from the community was not positive. The residents, especially at the high elevation residents, were expressing extremely dissatisfaction. In fact, they petitioned to request the council, to request the city to restore the pressure by summer of 2026. So what the council directed staff is to look for an alternative to restore the pressure before summer of 2026. And that's when we come up with the alternative called temporary regional police response station. By then, it's already, we already entered 2026, January 2026, so we have less than six months to meet that deadline. But this concept, it seems to be feasible because what it does is we propose to building the first pump station At the north of the zone to convert or boost the pressure from 450 to 510, we also installed the two check valves to allow the flow to come through to meet the higher demand flow. And then we also identified the pressure zone, the zone valve to close it to create a new service pressure zone. So the council direct the city to finish, complete the design, and proceed with the construction. By May, the two of the check-out station was completed. In early June, the pump station completed with the pump skid. So on the day of June 23rd, City tested each component, ensure all the equipment was performed per design. And when that happened, we moved forward to close order zone well. Effectively on that day, converted, restore the pressure for the Upper Highland neighborhood, fulfilling the commitment we made to the community to restore the pressure before summer of 2026. All this happened because of some exceptional measure we took. First, city did the pre-procurement for all the equipment and material to make sure that there's no lead time during the construction. We also devised a construction contract in two so that we could have one portion of the component in design, such as the pump station, while the construction of the check valve is already in motion to accelerate the schedule. We also were able to get the pre-approval on this council, so there's no delay time. When the contract is completed with the open bid, we can move forward with the construction. But the last point is the main point why we were able to move this forward quickly, and that is the temporary nature of this project. I know this Council has directed staff to look for alternatives to improve the water system by restoring the pressure, but still maintain the benefit preserved on the conversion of 2024. But with the timeline in mind, what we need to do was to restore the pressure to relieve the residents from the stress of the reduced stress pressure, and still allow us, well, give us the time to implement the long-term improvement. So what this project did was that we're able to design and construct it by not meeting the long-term facility standard. We do not need to meet the long-term facility standard. Therefore, we can move quickly and deliver, deploy this facility. In fact, when Department of Health approved this project, there is a condition that they will require city to implement a long-term improvement that follows this temporary facility so we can decommission it as soon as reasonable. that's reason why i'm here before you today to recommend a long-term improvement alternatives back then when staff were directed to develop alternative for capital improvement to resolve this system issue there were two alternatives considered long term because in meeting the design goal The difference between alternative one and two are the footprint of the pressure zone that they restored to 510. Alternative one limited the restoration to only the upper elevation area, where alternative two restored the full footprint for the former 510 pressure zone. This is the comparison of the alternative between one and two. Alternative one, it was estimated to be higher in cost compared to alternative two by .7 million. One cost 8.7, the other is 8 million. In terms of the implementation time, they're pretty comparable, probably different by one month only. But in terms of the performance, Both were able to meet the minimum pressure requirement. However, only alternative one were able to minimize the high pressure that eliminate or minimize the property to be subject to excessive pressure. Both of them meeting the fire flow design goal. However, only alternative one were able to meet the water quality redundancy and the citywide connectivity goal. both were able to replace the aging water main, but alternative one had one additional benefit. It does minimize the sunk cost with the investment that we made to the temporary regional booster plant station. Because the location, the footprint that they restored between Alternative 1 and Regional Pond Station are exactly the same. So the check-out station can be reused, that we implemented in the Regional Booster Pond Station can be reused again and incorporated into the long-term alternative if Alternative 1 is selected. And that's $600,000 saving there. So effectively, lower the Alternative 1 cost to 8.1. So by looking at the comparison, alternative one looks like a preferred alternative. We have also been directed to seek the peer review to make sure there is a third party review of all the alternatives that we have analyzed. And the third top party, the peer review consultant presented to this council concluded that the analysis and the modeling method were all sound, engineering sound and appropriate. They also recommended alternative one as a preferred alternative with the concern that only they wanted to make sure the fire sprinkler systems still work with the reduced pressure. for the area that was not returned back to . And with that, as I mentioned in the memo, we did the bucket test and was able to confirm that all the fire sprinkler will be able to perform per design. So we took that concern out. so here staff want to recommend that the council approved alternative one by motion as the long-term improvement for highland system because it restored the pressure while preserve the greatest value and benefit from 2024 conversion also incorporated and replacing the aging water main It retains the highest, greatest value of our city's investment to the regional postal pump station. And we were able to confirm that the fire sprinkler performance is not going to compromise. So the fiscal impact for this recommendation is that previously city already funded a project to replace the water main, the aging water main by 3.3 million. Well, last 12 months, we have expanded the funding for the effort to resolve the highland water system issue. So after the investment for developing alternative, hire a peer review consultant and mostly invest into the temporary regional booster pump station. We have 1.14 million remaining. With this recommendation, there will be 8.1 million that's estimated required to invest into this improvement. So that means we will need to have additional 6.96 million, which was recommended to the 2027-32 CIP program that presented to the council two weeks ago. So if Council approved the recommendation tonight, CD would then proceed with the design. Once we complete the design, staff will return to Council for the recommendation to award a contract and complete the construction. We will then decommission this temporary regional boosted bond station as soon as we finish the completion of the permanent or long-term improvement. This concludes my presentation and I would like to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Council, any questions? Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. One question. By the way, really great presentation. Thank you. I really appreciate all the detail, and I think members of the public must surely do too. When it comes to, we know that there, you know, before any of these changes, there were a certain number of homes in the Highland that had too much pressure, and they had to have a pressure reduction valve at their home. I don't, we don't need to worry. I'm not worried about what the situation was in the interim period where it was 450. There might still have been a certain number of homes with too high pressure, but that's not my question. My question is today, do we have a certain number of homes with the temporary fix that have too much pressure. And under this permanent fix, I guess this is really the question, of the two alternatives, which one is likely to lead to the fewest number of homes being surprised by having too much pressure? Do you have a sense of that?

That's a great question. So let me answer the first part. Under the temporary booster pump station, there will still have property that we're going to receive the pressure that's higher than 80 PSI. Anytime when a property we have the pressure that's coming into the property that's higher than 80 PSI, they will be required to put in the pressure reduced valve individually. So with this smaller pressure zone that we restore, there are still very, very few, but there are still property that at the peripheral of this pressure zone that is lower in elevation and therefore their pressure is exceeding 80 PSI. That's not different than where they were before. In the prior 510 zone, they're already subject to that. Now, I wanted to answer your second question, and I believe what you asked was between the temporary booster pump station and this permanent or the long-term improvement, would there be any surprise The answer is no, because they are exactly the same footprint. So the household that right now receiving or having the pressure that's higher than 80 PSI will be the same household that once we convert to the long-term improvement, nothing will change.

okay a follow-up question if we did do alternative two would we expect there to be some homes that are surprised that they have too much pressure and will it be wise to get a pressure reduction valve yes there will be a lot more that will be subject to excessive pressure and that was another reason why we choose prefer or recommend alternative one okay thank you very much anyone else counselor

Thank you so much for this presentation. I specifically really loved the slide with the two alternatives and then the big red circles circling alternative one. Very helpful. And I think alternative one does seem like the most reasonable choice. I think it addresses all the um like the greatest pressure problems while continuing to preserve like the water quality issues and um specifically the the fire flow improvements as well um the one significant technical concern that was identified by the independent consultant um where there were certain residential homes where like outside of the 510 zone i think that may not get adequate pressure for the fire sprinklers. And I think 10 homes were tested, which is great. Do you foresee, like, do you think it's a pretty low risk that those homes would still not have adequate pressure? I mean, based on 10 homes that we evaluated, looks like it wouldn't be an issue. But do you think that 10 homes is an adequate sample size in order to make that, like, confirmatory determination, I guess?

That's an excellent question. I actually prepared a slide because I know that might sound like a concern. So the slides I prepared probably will be able to answer your question. So I'm going to go ahead and show that slide. I took it out because we are afraid we may not have enough time. But that's a very legitimate question. So I do want to go through that. Let me see. I won't be able to show my mouth. I need my mouth.

Sorry, just one minute.

I need a mouse to click, to hover this. I need a mouse. Okay, so you have to turn into a hand. If you turn into hand, no, go back. You need to turn into, so this one doesn't work. If you turn into, yeah, you need to turn into hand. Okay, go ahead.

Okay. Whoa.

Okay, so this is the slide I prepared. When we were told that there's a concern with the fire sprinkler, staff went in to look at all the permit record and find out that there are 138 homes that has equipped it with a fire sprinkler system. now remember fire sprinkler system was equipped for mainly two reasons one is the size of the home required fire flow that greater than what they received then they would need to put in the fire sprinkler the second reason is if the access to their property is not adequate to allow the fire equipment to enter they will be requiring the fire sprinkler So we were actually curious to find out that after the fire flow improvement, how many of them actually do not need a fire sprinkler anymore because now they have an adequate fire flow. And it turned out there are 18 of them actually would not need a required fire sprinkler anymore. but then as you can see majority of them still need to have a fire sprinkler and you were right um that a lot of them well actually all of them were designed back when they were under 510 pressure zone so the the design was based on higher pressure and the question is would they still perform If we choose to restore only a smaller portion, which is the alternative one recommended, that a smaller portion of the region that leaves 70 homes that will be outside of this restorative location, the zone, And would that work? So when we did the bucket test, even though only 10 sign up, we were very fortunate that this 10 located in the very good location. In other words, there's the happy phase where the nine result, the nine bucket test came back with positive, showing that their sprinkler was actually still function per design. Now, if you look at the location, that's what give us very encouraging result. they were right at the borderline of where the restorative pressure. And what that means is that the elevation at this area is the one that we actually have concern. In fact, that was specifically pointed out by the independent peer review consultant that these are the area where the reducing of the pressure may put their sprinkler into not performing properly. But the result came back show that these are the area that we specifically had the result and they show positive that it actually can still perform for design. So with that, we feel very confident that the sprinkler will work. And then the one in the middle, which shows that it fell, this is the one within the pressure zone. So after we restored a temporary regional boost pump station, it turned out that it passed because we restored the pressure. So overall, we have a high confidence to know that the sprinkler will work.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Anyone else? Questions? I'm just going to say the standards for slide presentations has gone way up. So well done. Thank you. I will entertain a motion. Oh, go ahead, Council Member Arnold.

Oh, just thank you, Ewen. Another kudos on the presentation. And I'd like to move to approve alternative one as the long-term improvement approach for the Highlands Water System.

Second.

Thank you. It has been moved by Council Member Arnold, second by Deputy Mayor Black to move forward with alternative one. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries 5-0. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I believe we have an out-of-town guest for the next presentation. So I'm gonna, instead of calling a break, let's go ahead and do item 9C. Sorry, John. Sorry. Okay, so we're gonna move on to our next item, which is discussion of the Northeast 85th Street Station Area. City Manager.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So tonight is your second check-in on the Northeast 85th Street Station area naming. Here to give you that presentation is Jen Davis-Hayes, our Economic Development Manager, and our consultant team that she'll introduce. And we are not looking for a decision tonight. We're just looking for initial feedback and any comments and direction Council wants to provide. So with that, I'll give it over to Jen.

Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council Members. As you mentioned, my name is Jen Davis-Hayes. I'm the Economic Development Manager here. And we're here tonight talking about the Northeast 85th Street Station area naming. But just as a reminder, this work is multifaceted. This is one aspect of the work we've done so far, including removing all parking requirements, minimums, in order to catalyze development and investment in the area. We've increased the flexibility of development agreements. We've limited town homes that can be built to protect growth capacity. We've held a developer's forum with the Greater Seattle Partners and continue to do outreach to developers, including a real estate meeting I attended this morning. We have a grocers roundtable this Thursday. Thank you for those who were able to make it to identify ways to protect grocery stores in the station area. and we're starting to do print and digital marketing to promote awareness of the area. So this is one important step, but it's part of a process and other things that we are doing to help create, visualize, and market the area. At the end, as you see here, once the name and a brand are identified, we are going to be developing, I'm sorry, that's not the slide yet. we're gonna be developing a tangible marking material. So this work was completed with our team that you see on the screen, and I will introduce them in a minute, but also a reminder that we had an internal team that also, and I, in previous meeting, I was remiss to mention our Fearless deputy city manager, Jim Lopez, who was also on it, but we also had our communications manager and some staff from communications, as well as our deputy planning and building director. In addition, executive director of the Kirkland Chamber of Commerce, who's also here in the audience tonight, was on that steering committee. So I'd like to introduce our team, our creative team. Watson, so we have Greg Needham, who's the director of strategy, and he's going to be starting the presentation. We also have Byron Freeney, who's the brand strategist and writer, and he will be continuing in the presentation. And Trina Motto and Paola Esteban are our fearless assistants. senior account strategists and project managers that have been working with this project. So Greg, thanks for joining us tonight.

Thank you very much, Deputy Mayor, Madam Mayor, and council members. We're very happy to be before you tonight. We only have 12 slides, so we'll run through these quickly, but really appreciate your time in considering this manner. And we've had a really good working relationship with the steering committee and are excited to move forward. Just quickly why we're here. Our goal is really to work on an identity for the 85th Street Station, starting with a distinctive name for that area. And then the next step will be really trying to communicate what that district is about, what it stands for, engage people in it, and develop a suite of marketing materials to back that up. We've had a fairly long process going through this site, visit interviews, workshops, and then secondary strategy just on other cities that have done similar things and greatly informed by several years of work with the Kirkland city police and recruitment campaigns. So we're quite fond of your city and we're really pleased to be able to work on this project as well. Just quickly before I hand it off to Byron, I want to run through how we sort of get to where we're at, skipping a lot of steps, but on a high level, we have categories and things we look at when we go through naming process, the character of the name, and you can see some of them there. We want it to be engaging and memorable. You want it to be natural, evocative of something for the area, durable for sure, and appropriate to the region. And the second category, similar qualities of the name. And these are, you turn these up or turn these down depending on the circumstance. You don't use all of them all the time, but is it meaningful? Is it future oriented? Is growth available under this name? Is it modular? Can it lock up with other businesses and development so that they identify with the area as well as residents? Is it predictable? Do we own it? Is it positive? Is it visual? When you hear the name of the district, does it bring things to mind? And then finally, get the slide right, I promise. We looked at regionality, super important, durability again, natural clipping. Can it be shortened? Can it be extended? That's the modular piece. Is it resilient? Will it stand the test of time? And does it fit within the context of the area? So, in addition to all the research, we did we sort of have these criteria that we look at turn some up turn some down. But always through the lens of does the names that we are looking at fit within some of these categories and will it work going forward for the district and with that I will hand it off to Byron to walk you through violence.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for having us. It's been a real pleasure to work on this project. The steering committee has been amazing, helping us figure out what really resonates in the community and what matters. And we're looking forward to sharing this with you because we think we have three really great possibilities. So we want to start, though, by talking about the stakeholders. This was fundamental to our research in terms of identifying who it is that's going to have to resonate with this name and embrace this name and carry it forward in a way that makes sense inside Kirkland. It's the developer and investor community, obviously. This naming a district like this can be very important to kind of establishing just a sense of being, a sense of belonging inside an area that is already defined by several different neighborhoods. So when you're inviting developers in, whether they're local or whether they're coming from afar, you really want them to feel like you have kind of carved out a space that makes sense to them and that they can own in their own minds. The future district dweller, we know that fundamental to this whole exercise is the idea of attracting additional people to Kirkland. And so we need to create a space in the mind that somebody that's coming to the area from somewhere else feels welcomed and feels like it makes sense. Rooted Kirklanders, there's no shortage of need to make sure that the folks that are in the communities That are affected by all this work that they feel that that they are, you know, being well represented and that we are kind of honoring the spirit of the community that many take so much pride in. So that that factored heavily into our consideration. And then finally, anchor businesses and including businesses that come from elsewhere too. This idea that there's a space inside Kirkland that feels cohesive and feels like they can kind of build inside of it and attract people to it and succeed as businesses in the community. so these were the stakeholders that we kept in mind through all different iterations of our process it's a very iterative process to get to the three names that we're presenting tonight um we you know we need to start with a whole lot more and we need people to make decisions about what feels right and so one of the best ways to do that is to keep these people in mind these are the people that we need to honor with the name that we present so the next slide is the first name. There are three names, as I mentioned. A couple of points here before we walk through it. One of the things that we determined relatively early on is that because the district, the station area sits on top of four different neighborhoods inside Kirkland, it was important to find a way to distinguish this area without confusing it with the neighborhoods that are already there. So two words became very important to this naming exercise. One is the and the other is district. All three names that we're going to present and the names that we presented before all sit with that idea. So it needs to kind of exist inside this more formal kind of presentation of the name. In this case, the rise district, the word at the center of that is rise. uh we heard someone speaking earlier just a moment ago about the fact that you know kirkland the geology of kirkland and the geography of kirkland um the rise is accurate in the sense that it uh you know the area that we're talking about sits at the highest points of the city And the rise is a word that kind of communicates both in accurate terms, the elevation and growth. It recognizes the plateau as a high ground. And it's also something that communicates a lot of positivity. You're building inside this area, you're developing this area with high hopes and kind of developing a name that honors that, that is easy to kind of get your mind around. felt like a strong possibility so the language on the on the bullets on the on the right you can see the second one there these are just examples of how we imagine uh people might start to talk about the rise district as greg mentioned earlier one of the most important things in a name like this is that it clips nicely quote unquote clips nicely and so while the name might be formally the rise district the community might take it and do something else with it and for example uh if somebody is building something up in that area they might say that we just broke ground on the rise uh if you know somebody that's working up there you might say that she works up on the rise we're doing this with all three names uh so the the the presentation of them is consistent in that way. Rise is both a noun and a verb. There's a lot of room to play with it. It's a nice one syllable kind of hit that kind of stacks up nicely to the neighborhoods. that it's kind of sitting within, so Rose Hill, Norkirk, and even Juanita and Houghton and Totem Lake, Bridal Trails. The RISE District lives nicely in that kind of context. It scales well. You can imagine a building being built there called the RISE or RISE Station maybe, or RISE Park if there's a park that gets developed in there. And it's simple enough for somebody that's running a bakery or a gym or a coffee shop can really kind of talk about it in an easy way, that bakery up on the rise or whatever it is in that way. So that's what we like about that one. I'm going to go through all three of them and then we can open it up as we need to. So the next one is the forge. Kirkland has a long history, a strong history of basically having the mill at the top of the hill there. And the mill, fundamental to a mill like that is a forge. And forge is a very, very strong word, very different from rise. It communicates a lot of energy, a lot of activity, which could serve the district well. So you could imagine somebody saying, we just broke ground in the forge, or she works in the forge. It too is a noun and a verb, so that gives us plenty to work with when we start to think about how we're going to articulate this area in marketing materials. It's a really nice complementary juxtaposition to the softer names that are used in the neighborhoods that are up there right now, like Rose Hill, Juanita, Houghton. It's a very strong word that can really probably organize a lot of thinking. It scales well. We can see a forge building. We can see the forge station and forge park. And it's a word that is kind of easy to get behind. So makers, bakers, and brewers could all be talking about that and kind of embrace the energy of the word. We have one more to show, which is the Union District. So the Union District is communicating something that was very important and articulated very well inside the steering committee. This idea that we are creating a place where people can gather, where things come together. This is where four neighborhood edges meet. It's where major thoroughfares meet. It's the whole purpose of the fact that it's a transit station. The union is the kind of thing that kind of gets there. Union is a word that resonates well inside the area as well. I mean, we certainly know about the U District in Seattle. We know these things. And this could be a nice kind of complement to that that lives on the east side. so it's a noun with the word kind of unite behind it it reads civic more than the other two options which you could decide is a good thing uh it's it you know we don't know where you're going to go with that but read civic against the neighborhood names around it and it scales well too the union building union station union park Grocers, barbers, bars already use the word warmly. So builders and tenants will borrow it pretty easily in our opinion. So in our view, these are three really strong candidates. Each has its own kind of energy. When you're naming something like this, one of the things to keep in mind is that whatever you settle on, we're going to be able to run with. So we can do a lot with this and your feedback in the process of selecting one of these names will help us kind of create the marketing materials that will really help the area establish itself and grow. So this is just summarizing that the Rise District or the Rise, the Forge District or the Forge and the Union District or the Union. We went through just to kind of look at availability on the URL side and also on social media side. We don't anticipate any trouble establishing an effective URL for the area, establishing social media sites that you could use that we would use as well to help you market the area. So we're encouraged by the flexibility and availability in all three of these names. So in our view, any one of these is going to be a winner and we can go forward with it with a lot of confidence.

Thank you, Byron. And just to put this back up on the screen now that you've seen the three that we've selected, take these into consideration as you talk about this among yourselves or think about these names, the character of the name, the qualities of the name, and does it tie into the regionality? I know we have next steps left, but happy to answer any questions or take any comments.

Great. Thank you so much. Council, any questions? Council Member Tim Chisholm?

Thank you. Two quick questions. One, when you say the area, what is the geographical outline of the area that you're referring to? What is the district?

It is centered on the 85th Street Transit Station, but I think I can let Jen answer that specifically based on her knowledge of the area better than ours.

Yeah, I think that's a good start to the answer. So the Northeast 85th Street Station area includes broader than just Northeast 85th Arterial Business District that we're looking at. But as we looked at these names, we do believe that these names could be utilized in all of the areas, the commercial areas as we're looking at them. But we believe that mostly we'll be initially using it in the Northeast 85th area to the east of 405 along the arterial. So, but as we talked about the, what is named the maker space over by our maintenance center in Duru, that is also on the rise from, or also a maker space, right, and is also a place where people come together. So again, it wouldn't be limited to one specific area.

Second question, thank you for defining that. Have the consultants or anyone had an opportunity to connect with the Kirkland Heritage Society?

I believe, do you recall if that was one of the interviews or people you spoke to?

It doesn't need to be. I just want to provide that opportunity if it's needed.

Yeah, that was not one of the interviews, but I'd love to.

Yeah, yeah. Um, we certainly did a lot of research into the history of the area and and to the story of its development and that factored in and some pretty powerful ways and led us away from a number of directions actually.

And I do believe in the materials that from the previous naming and development of this plan, there was a lot some information and, um, from the heritage society.

So thank you for answering my questions.

Anyone else? Councilman Arnold?

Just in some of the reaction that council had gotten via email to the memo, I just wanted to make a comment. I've been part of a couple of naming projects, and Greg or team, I don't know if you ever go into this where you present something and somebody comes in and says, oh, my gosh, that's a home run. There's immediate consensus.

We have in the past. It's less common for sure. I think the most common reaction is as we present names, people start furiously Googling on their phone trying to come up with their own name. But no, it's been a real process just having gone through your previous naming efforts and the materials around that. neighborhood surveys and then the research we did the buyer and said we eliminated a lot feel really comfortable about these and a unanimous direction or decision would be amazing yeah the my particular experience one was on the naming of the east side rail corridor

which became the east trail and also with the non-profit group future wise which was formerly a thousand friends of washington there was not um immediate um acceptance going oh my gosh that's it um but then you look at those 10 20 years later and people can't imagine why you had the old name in the in the first place so i just wanted to set expectations that you know if people were expected to have immediate um uh home run consensus that that that would be that would be rare i think and we have some things to work with here and i look forward to our discussion next month thank you very much

else we're not voting we're just no commenting um real quick i guess my comments would be i do see this as a east of 405 thing i don't think below 405 i see that as the same district i have difficulty seeing that as having the same name my second comment is that once one of these names is chosen it would be interesting to talk about signage you know being called the forge district would be a lot more interesting in my opinion if there's a hundred foot high steel sign when you drive up 85th and into this district so that the name kind of resonates with people that visit that area. And yeah, that's yeah. And and my final comment is that we have a building here in downtown Kirkland called Heritage Hall. That's where the Kirkland Heritage Museum exists. lolita hawkins is the curator of that museum and i do think your time would be well spent um come down for a beer and to downtown kirkland and visit our heritage society and our in our museum and i think they would have a lot of interesting information on the um the historical information on that particular area of our city thank you deputy mayor excellent thank you

Well, thank you, Madam Mayor. I just, I know, yeah, we're not making a decision tonight, just a little bit of feedback. Just share my initial impressions when I saw these in the materials. You know, I first sort of gravitated toward the forge, honestly, and part of that reason is I appreciated the historical context that was folded up into that. Early on in this process, I'll just remind everybody there was, early on in this process, know we had thought about ways to sort of honor um indigenous names and for many very many very good reasons um we moved away from that um and i think you know once we've moved away from that i think um this way of honoring uh the history the steel mill It's meaningful to me, and I think it could be meaningful to a lot of long-time Kirklanders. So I appreciated that, and that was sort of my first reaction. However, one of the things I want to say, Byron, in particular, you're part of the presentation, really well done. Every time you went through one of these, I had a sort of warm feeling about each one in turn as you went through it. So I think you've given us some great things to think about. um i'm glad we have some time because i think uh as was mentioned in the materials these kind of things it takes some time to sit with these kind of names um but thank you for your presentation thank you for work thank you for um sort of being able to take us through each of these um and you know give us sort of you know at least me a warm reaction and to all of them i'm going to keep an open mind thanks thank you thank you councilman

Yeah, thank you so much for this presentation. I think my kind of immediate, and this is purely based off of just preference, no real in-depth look into the actual like branding perspectives. But the Rise District was, I thought was very positive. And I really liked the fact that the area kind of sits on high ground. So I think that really accurately reflects the area. I also really liked the Forge District for the reasons the Deputy Mayor mentioned. I think the Union District was maybe my least favorite just because of Lake Union exists in Seattle. So there could be some confusion with both the areas being called a similar name. But again, I also do have an open mind and I'm willing to take a look at the three of these names in Florida.

more um a comprehensive view thank you thank you thank you thanks arnold and councilman do you want to prioritize or are you not ready to do that yet councilman

since we've started to make some comments um i i do like the forge district i think it represents the the history and uh some uh uniqueness and some edge and it's versatile um rise does reflect the topography and the the top-of-the-world views that are available there I share similar concerns with council member Prem on the Union District and when you mention Union Station in your presentation there is a Union Station in Seattle it's our train right it's near our train station so I think they're using Union in addition to what council member Prem has mentioned doesn't offer the uniqueness and also opportunities for confusion given how often Union Street, Lake Union, Union Station is used in Seattle. Thank you.

Um, I share my colleagues thoughts. I think we should preserve the rise and the forge for the next meeting. And I wouldn't have a problem eliminating number three here. And then if we preserve those two names, maybe we can encourage feedback from residents and uh other people and see think about this they're both great options i mean i i i can't complain about having two great options um yeah

Thank you. I really don't have anything more to add. The Forge is the strongest contender for me. And as you said in your presentation, you read them and then you have to sit with them for a while and you have to process and you have to imagine, which is what I've been doing in the last few days. And as Council Member Arnold, I've been through this before. And yeah, it's rarely that everybody goes, oh yeah, that's it, let's go. But I also have the concerns about union. And Greg, I did exactly what you said people do. I immediately started googling synonyms for union. so and i understand union because it is about connection and bringing together but the forge because of the historical aspect and it's just a really powerful word rises to the top for me and then the rise is my second choice so we have two council members that aren't here and so that we may need to do like a one-off presentation with them um deputy city manager did you have something to add

Yes, Madam Mayor, I just wanted to note that we have purchased the relevant URLs already.

OK. Great. Great. So anyway, the five of us up here, it sounds like we're coalescing on something. So that's really positive. So thank you. Jen, do you have next steps?

Yes, thank you very much. And you guys came to, the way you discussed it was very nice to kind of see how it came along and the words started to feel the same feelings that we had in the steering committee because it is really challenging. And we saw the longer list, we're like, eh, right? But then we're like, ooh, I like this. So we are going to return on August 6th, so you do have some time to think about it and continue to provide feedback. Once that is decided, then Watson Creative gets to go and be more creative and create the visual identities, the colors, the themes that we're going to see. And that's then going to be used for those marketing materials that are going to be for the real estate community, but as well as other templates for us to be able to promote the area. And then we'll begin implementation of marketing in 2027 and beyond. So I'm very excited and thank you very much for all this feedback.

You're welcome. And thank you all for staying up late with us tonight. So we appreciate it. We'll see you soon.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

All right, Council, it is getting late. We're going to take a quick break. Let's try to come back at 945. All right, we are back after a short break, and we are moving on to item 9D. Need my glasses, which is potential development agreement for the Main Street Property Group, LLC, Slate Peak Project. City Manager.

Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor. Welcome back, everybody. So today is our first major check-in on this potential development agreement. Just as a reminder, as you heard from Jen Davis-Hayes, when Council made some updates to the stationary regulations, you actually gave us more flexibility to do development agreements, allowed for changes in height. And so that was the basis for having this conversation with Slate Peak and Main Street. I want to give a chance to see Council in a big overview and be looking for direction as to whether we should continue with this discussion and basically your feedback. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Adam Weinstein, our planning and building director.

I'll just turn it right over to Alex Kaiser, our associate planner, just to get into the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Adam.

Alex, this is your first time in front of us? It is, yes. Welcome.

Thank you. Welcome, Alex. So yeah, so as Kurt mentioned, I will be doing a presentation on the potential developer's agreement for the Slate Peak project proposed by Main Street Property Group. Main Street representatives are here in the audience today, should you have any additional questions for them at the end of this presentation. I also first wanted to acknowledge the public comment that Main Street submitted earlier this evening regarding the disagreement and calculation of street level non-residential space. I will touch on staff's calculation later on in this presentation. However, staff have not had the chance to review their calculation method at this time. Should negotiations for a DA move forward, we will be sure to iron out the calculation method with Main Street prior to moving forward. And just to begin with a brief overview of the agenda tonight, um, I have eight additional slides after this slide to go over the UF zone and site context, um, overview of their proposal, um, staff considerations, uh, questions for you council, and then discussion and questions for us. So to begin, I have a vicinity map here of the general area. Highlighted in yellow is the subject property. It's actually composed of two parcels that Main Street is currently under contract for right now. It's approximately 1.02 acres. And it's situated toward the north side of the UF zone, closer to the border with the LIT zone. I have labeled here the maximum heights and all of the neighboring zones for context. The UF zone, I apologize, is not labeled here, but it is a maximum height of 45 feet. But taking a look at this map here, you can see that the nearest zones are the LIT zone just to the north across 8th Ave. They have a maximum height of 35 feet. And then just to the west is the RM 5.0 zone. They have a maximum height of 30 feet. And what this map really shows is all the neighboring zones and their maximum heights and how... There's no neighboring zone here next to the urban flex zone that has a maximum height above 60 feet. The only zone here that has a maximum height of 60 feet is actually the NMU zone, which is just south of 85th Street. And then here I have a couple of Google Street View images of the property. We'll start at the top one. That's a street view from July of 2024 looking north from 7th Ave. On the left-hand side is the smaller property. The Kirkland Performance Center currently operates out of that address. And then on the right side is a vehicle storage and detailing service business. And then on the bottom picture here is looking south from 8th Ave of the same property of the storage and vehicle detailing business. And then just a little background on the urban flex zone. Like I said before, the maximum allowed height is 45 feet. This zone does not offer any bonus heights, unlike other stationary zones. The UF zone requires non-residential uses on the street level, except that residential lobbies are permitted. Non-residential areas are intended to support the Maker District and 7th Ave urban corridor visions. And then I pulled this code language here directly from the urban flex zone, which hits on the intent of the zone, which is to support light industrial uses consistent with an urban walkable character, allows for commercial, retail, institutional, and residential uses. Main Street is proposing a 60-foot tall mixed-use residential building within the stationery's urban flex zone. They're proposing a total of 170 units, including the code required 10% affordable at 50% AMI. Of these 170 units, 15% are studios, 55% are one bedroom, and 30% are two and three bedroom. I will note that the percentage of two and three bedrooms are quite a bit higher than what we typically see in developments like this. And then they're also proposing 7,800 square feet of street-level non-residential tenant space. 5,200 square feet of that is along 7th Ave and 2,600 square feet of that is along 8th Ave. They're proposing a total of 192 parking stalls, 16 to 24 of which are dedicated to non-residential uses. This graphic is showing The proposed building from different viewpoints as it relates to the surrounding area and surrounding development current development and it's also showing the the current maximum high limits for the surrounding properties as seen with the colored boxes. So if negotiations move forward with the DA, the Main Street is requesting two variations as a part of that development agreement. Number one being to exceed the height limit by a total of 20 feet from 45 feet to 65 feet. They're also asking for an exception to the prohibition of street level residential uses. Residential support uses that are proposed on the street level include parking, utilities, and storage rooms. This image is a proposed section looking west. The highlighted floors are considered street level. As you can see, 7th Ave South is on the left and then 8th Ave South is on the right. There's also a grade change associated with the property. The grade at 7th Ave is approximately 9 to 14 feet lower in elevation than 8th Ave. So it's creating essentially two street, two functional street levels. And then again, if negotiations on this developer's agreement moves forward, Main Street is proposing one of these two public benefits beyond what code requires. Their first one is below market community art space limited to 1,500 square feet. and a tenant improvement allowance of $100 per square foot, maximum of $150,000, and a rent rate reduced to 30% below market. Their second option is a stationary across Kirkland corridor placemaking contribution of $200,000 towards activating the CKC at 7th Ave to create a gathering place, build recreational amenities, and create a gateway to downtown in alignment with the CKC master plan. Option two is currently being looked into by city staff to determine specific improvements that these funds could be used towards that align with the CKC master plan at this intersection. Staff are also looking into the best capital improvement project contribution method and more information will be provided on that at the next meeting should negotiations move forward. And then staff has a number of considerations for you tonight regarding this proposal and whether it should move forward or not. So because of the site topography creating essentially two functional street levels on 7th and 8th Ave, staff believe the code requirement for street level non-residential space could be met by providing at least one full floor plate of non-residential space. including parking associated with non-residential uses, allowing distribution between seventh and eighth aves as the applicant chooses. According to the applicant's term sheet details provided as one of the attachments to the memo, level one's floor plate is 34,000 square feet. The non-residential tenant space and associated parking together only totals 33% of one floor plate for my calculations. And then moving on based on the station areas urban design framework, while planning for growth in the station area supporting transitions and scale to adjacent neighborhoods was a key focus of the urban design framework, meaning that the 45 foot high limit within the US zone was intentional based on adjacent neighborhoods maximum heights. then moving on here ordinance 4935 was passed earlier this year which exempts all uf uses from minimum parking requirements although applicants or developers are able to provide more than that the code required minimum is zero And then another positive of this potential development moving forward is it would add 170 units within the station area, including 17 affordable units that are code required. And then it also may help catalyze further development within the station area. And then finally, I have a comprehensive plan section 12 L 11 here that mentions the importance of maintaining the industrial character while encouraging maker spaces, small scale manufacturing and local businesses to activate the corridor. And it also says that limited residential infill will also be provided for opportunity will also provide opportunities for meeting Kirkland's need for diverse housing choices. And with that, we just have some questions for you regarding the code variations, regarding their asks of a 20-foot height increase to a 65-foot tall building and an exception to the street-level residential support uses. And then the second question being the public benefits. Should staff negotiate toward option A, option B, or additional modified public benefits? and then our last question here is um is there any other specific information that council would like like staff to obtain before continuing negotiations on a da and then another question that we're interested in hearing that's not listed on this slide is whether council would request any sort of step back for a building of a height of 65 feet great thank you

Council. Thoughts? Council member Tim Chisholm.

I'll kick it off here. I am super excited about the possibility of this. The fact that this project could potentially have 10% of the units at 50% AMI is exciting. And the 30% of these units are two and three bedroom is very interesting also. I would potentially be located near one of the best elementary schools in our city Peter Kirk elementary and those 2 to 3 bedroom units would provide an opportunity. For a lot of families to be located near that elementary school. the 65 feet and the additional height doesn't particularly bother me because of the location of the building because I don't anticipate getting there's not a lot of residential use near that site so the additional 65 feet doesn't necessarily concern me The public benefits that the developer has offered, I think the 1,500 square feet of space on floor one seems a lot more attractive to me than $200,000. The 1,500 square feet, I think we should understand what the duration the developer is offering whether that is subsidized for a certain duration or if it's subsidized in perpetuity. Because that could be a good benefit to this area. I look at, you know, there's two objectives here. One is to create housing, but I also want to maintain the vibrancy in our light industrial area. And this may require a broader discussion in the future about the future of this light industrial area. But I think maintaining that 1500 square feet, um, To be forward-facing retail that customers interact with is something I'd really like to see there The This area You know, my two concerns here are parking. Daru Market's a great neighbor, a great thing to have there. It also creates a ton of parking issues, delivery truck issues, and parking spilling off into and outside of the intended parking area. And I also need to learn a little bit more about the ingress and egress from this building. Because I would want it to go through major thoroughfares and not through back through 9th or back through a residential street But in general my feedback is that Staff should continue the conversation with the developer Lean towards the 1,500 square foot option. Thank you.

Thank you councillor prim Yeah, thank you for this. First, I also want to just start off with saying I'm really excited with seeing a proposal come in the 85th Street station area. I think there's just a few comments that I have on the proposal itself. I think... One is I would encourage the city staff to maybe see if we could, as part of an additional public benefit, to increase either the number of affordable units or the percentage of affordable units, because right now it's already zoned for 10%, right? So I would want to see if we could get More out of in return for giving the 2 floors of parking or 2 additional floors or additional 20 feet above the 45 feet threshold. i also want to see and understand that the existing affordable units whether or not those would remain affordable for like the full useful life or a certain number of years i'd want to understand that a little bit better i don't know if that's already in the um in the term sheet but i think that's an important point that we should make sure that we're negotiating in our favor. I think out of the two options, option A, which was the community arts space, I think currently Main Street would have sole discretion over tenant selection and criteria. So I would want us to be part of that, to be able to look at what our community needs are and make sure that whoever we're providing the space to also meet our community needs, right? And then in terms of option B, which was the CKC improvements, i think just getting a two hundred thousand dollar check is is um it's hard to identify what exactly we would get out of that right so what does it pay for um i'm not sure so um instead of a two hundred thousand dollar check i think it would be helpful to actually have tangible um items that could be constructed in the ckc area that would meet our community needs And then I think just a process question, how would this work? Would we get an updated term sheet? What's the most efficient process moving forward? Would it be an updated term sheet versus going into full-fledged negotiations and the actual agreement itself? I guess that's a question for you, Adam.

Thanks, Council Member Prim. I think there's probably a couple different ways we could proceed, but I think if there are substantive changes to the term sheet that you've seen, I think checking back in with Council on those refined provisions would be probably a good next step.

Okay, thank you.

And could I ask a question? Yeah. The percent of affordable units, you're talking about the depth of affordability?

No, the number of units that would become affordable. So whether that's 10%, 15% in the future, either that, we negotiate on the percentage or the number of units that would be affordable. Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Arnold?

Thank you. When I look at my priorities with this, I am more concerned with the commercial space available than the potential for more affordable housing that Councilmember Prim talks about. Thank you to Kim Faust for her public comment. I think this answers some questions, but and we're getting closer if if i read the diagrams right and your your public comment we're looking at two floors of commercial on seventh and and um one floor of commercial or one floor of non-residential half of which could be retail half of a retail on eighth um if we take their numbers and i hope staff can come back and analyze as we've seen this that was 15 to 17 000 square feet of non-residential depending if you count the lobby Comparing that to the $34,000 in the memo, it's better, but I want to look for either more opportunities for commercial space or more commercial space that is below market. Along with Council Member Tenchism, I'm interested in understanding the length of the subsidy for the commercial space. And while I'm not interested in um being involved in the conversation about who would get the subsidized space i am interested in the disposition of the kirkland performance center space and whether that non-profit space meets their needs or if there is a different plan to transition them out of the space we want to know where they where they end up um on building heighth um this document is uh really helpful on illustrating the building height on eighth would be 49 feet compared to the current 45 feet i don't have a problem with that but do want to think about The things we used to consider under design review to deal with the transition given the 30 feet height that's on the other side of the street on 8th I don't have a problem with the 65 feet on on 7th. And then. just to have things on the record for the public benefit i think we should only be negotiating on the option a commercial space option b is a non-starter for money it'd be different if we were talking about um somebody coming in and saying hey we would pay the segment of the cost-cutting quarter but you just don't get that for for two hundred thousand dollars um or nor do you get a linear park or anything else that is of the class of the cross-curriculum corridor improvements that we've done with other development agreements um yes and that is it thank you thank you deputy mayor

Well, thank you, Madam Mayor. I don't need to add a lot to what's been said, but I do want to say it'd be great to find a home for the KPC studio. I share that remark, share that sentiment. I don't know if that's possible in this, but that would be great, I think. I want to say, as someone who negotiates as part of their day job, how much I like negotiating as a committee against ourselves in this way. It's just excellent. Negotiation should always be handled this way. But no, I'm being somewhat light-hearted. Generally, I think what's being proposed here, for me, I was part of the stationary planning process, I was part of the conversations about uh this flex district that this feels very consistent um with ultimately uh with um you know that the general guidelines we created obviously those are guidelines uh we're not in the business of you know of doing uh construction and development ourselves so we're not going to get exactly what we want on every single parcel but this first parcel i'm excited about There being some revitalization in this area, I'm excited that it's generally consistent with the policies and guidelines we created for this area. I am really hopeful, and I can only hope, but I'm hopeful that some of the non-residential space is, does get adopted by some folks who are excited about making, uh, whether it's making beer or, um, or making art. Um, so that would be, that would certainly be wonderful. Um, the, um, I think when it comes to the public benefits, option A and option B, I kind of share a concern I've heard from I think most of my colleagues on option B. We have a lot of questions. I think, Alex, you said there's another department that's looking into what we could really do there. Until we really know what we could do at the CKC and Seventh Avenue, it's hard for me to say. uh that that's the direction i want to go i'd have to have a pretty clear a little bit more information i i would be surprised if 200 000 just knowing what we all know about how much things cost if that's going to get us a whole lot in that area that's going to excite our our community so i'm a little bit worried about that one but i wouldn't close down the possibility i'd want to know more about what um our departments uh other department um is thinking in that regard um i am excited about option a i share uh the question you know um what are we talking about when we're talking about um the length of commitment for um below market value space, but how you know, it would be super exciting for that to be some nonprofit organizations or youth art and that kind of thing. Did I have anything else I wanted to add? The only thing I would add, I guess I would turn to the team in front of me and also maybe the city manager and just say, I've heard a lot of things from us. Maybe Director Weinstein, maybe you're the person I should ask. Are you getting the direction right? We're negotiating by committee up here. Are you getting the direction you need for the next stage? Or do you feel like you need us to make some decisions up here?

I'll look to the city manager if he has thoughts as well. I mean, I think what we try to do when we hear diverse opinions is to try to achieve as many of them as possible. So I think the next step will really be sitting down with the applicant team and sort of talking through the options that are laid out today. And again, I think we'll just try to do as much as possible.

OK. Yep. Okay. As long as you feel like you're getting the guidance you need. I did think of one more comment I had. When it comes to deeper levels of affordability, I find that interesting, but you know what? Actually, I would trade deeper level affordability for knowing that a family size unit was included in the affordability. So if it was studio units that were mainly achieving the 10% or 50%, but there was somehow... family size unit or two that would get me even more excited than a deeper level affordability so i just mentioned that and so that's one more variable that director you have to somehow figure how to figure into this thank you that's it city manager do you have something well i just i we haven't heard from the mayor yet so i'll wait for that first and then i know he's wrapping things up and i didn't get to talk so i'm sorry i did not mean to wrap things up

I don't have a lot to add. I think this is a very intriguing proposal. I think that there's a lot of things in it that I like. This is underutilized land. I mean, we see it's boat storage right now. So this is an incredible opportunity to catalyze this area and get things moving forward. I am a strong supporter of option A. I appreciate the creativity around it. We know that a lot of our nonprofits can't afford to pay the rent so i think that's the direction we should go in i would like to push a little bit on the 1500 square feet and see if we can carve out some more i reached out to some non-profits today and got a feel for how much space they use and i think there's a lot of opportunity there so i want to explore that option a and more space dedicated think the highlighting what the lease terms are and how long is is very smart so thank you for raising that option B everybody said it 200,000 is not going to get us much of a park so let's focus on option a I want to move expeditiously on this and i also want to say that i appreciate the larger size units we really need that in the city of kirkland so this is a good proposal and i do want to highlight something that council member arnold said about exploring some setbacks something to sort of soften that high 65 foot side so i think this is great let's let's make it happen anything else alex

No, that's it. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you all.

Just because we're in terms of his hand up, I didn't know if he had. Okay.

He's just stretching.

Okay. So I just want to maybe recap what I think I heard, which the first question was the main one, which is should we keep going? And it sounds like it was the high through the change in the bottom, a non-starter. And so definitely hearing from the council that please keep going. I'm hearing on the public benefits focus on a but also that as currently drafted not sufficient want to get a lot more information and maybe see how much further we can push on the amount of space and maybe how the space is configured in the and the time that subsidized space would be available so um so but i think that definitely gives us enough to go to the next round

okay great we get so much done when there's only five of us all right we are going to move on to i think we're at 9e which is transfer uh is that right yep 9e which is uh transportation commission roles and responsibilities charter city manager

Okay, thank you. So we thought we'd go ahead and still have this at the beginning of this presentation. But as you're going to hear from Stephen Padua, our transportation manager, and Julie Underwood, our public works director, we're proposing to have a very brief discussion and postpone this item to the future based on some information that just came to us from a question we got from Deputy Mayor Black and some legal analysis and then also some information from the chair and vice chair of the commission. So with that as a opening, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Stephen and Julie.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of City Council. It is a very short presentation. So tonight I'm here to talk about the Transitation Commission Charter. The charter is intended to be complementary to city code as it defines the role and responsibilities for the Transitation Commission. It's also intended to guide a lot of the development of the Commission's work plan, as well as implementation of the work plan. After additional conversations with the city manager, we're requesting to actually delay this topic until the October 6th council meeting, or as the schedule allows, so that we can bring one more discussion with the transportation commission to address a few issues that have been raised. So with that, I'm open the floor for any questions. That's it? That's it.

I KNOW SOMETIMES WHEN YOU GET THE E-MAIL AT 5 O'CLOCK YOU MAY NOT HAVE READ IT. ONE OF THE ISSUES I WANT TO MAKE SURE COUNCIL MEMBERS SAW WAS THE E-MAIL FROM THE CITY ATTORNEY RELATED TO THE ISSUE OF CAN THE CITY COUNCIL ACTUALLY DELEGATE AUTHORITY TO THE TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION TO REVIEW AND COMMENT ON PROJECTS AT THE LEVEL THAT THEY MAY BE INTERESTED IN. SO THAT'S ONE OF THE THINGS WE WANT TO MAKE SURE WE FULLY EXPLORE AND TALK TO THE COMMISSION ABOUT BECAUSE THAT DETAILED NUANCE DIDN'T COME UP IN THE PREVIOUS CONVERSATION. I APPRECIATE THAT. THANK YOU.

Any other comments? All right. Yes, thank you for raising it. Thank you both. Steven, did you really stay till 1017 for two minutes?

Got a lot of work done tonight.

OK. Thank you. They came on a greenway, so it was OK. OK. We are now at item 9F, which is Transportation Benefit District Programs. City Manager.

Thank you, council and mayor. So once again, we got the transportation team here. We are actually looking for a decision on the council to give us direction on the next phase of transportation benefit district projects. So to explain that to you, we have our senior financial analyst, Jessica Clem, and Laura Drake, our transportation supervisor, CIP supervisor. I need more Diet Coke, sorry.

Thank you, City Manager. Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, City Council. Laura and I are here to present an update on the Transportation Benefit District, or TBD. Quick agenda, we'll go over some background on the program itself and the funding structure, progress to date on the program. Uh, we do have some recommendations for removal of, uh, some scopes as well as a proposed use of contingency for some projects with anticipated shortfalls. And lastly, looking for council discussion discussion and approval of emotion on what we're presenting tonight. Uh, the was activated in 2022 to accelerate delivery of priority transportation projects identified through various, uh, city plans, including safer routes to school. The active transportation plan and vision 0. Uh, a 20 dollar annual vehicle license fee began in 2024 and generates approximately 1.3Million annually. that tbd revenue allowed the city to issue approximately 21 million in debt which dramatically shortened the timeline for delivering these projects from an estimated 25 to 30 years down to approximately six to seven the overall tbd program does exceed 29 million in addition to the debt mentioned before it includes reit school zone safety camera revenue surface water funds and a handful of state and federal grants TBD funding also supports not only the delivery of these projects but the staffing needed as well as for the maintenance staff of these projects. The vehicle license fee is currently authorized through 2044 to support the debt repayment. If Council wish to extend the program beyond its current scope, additional funding would need to be identified. Shifting to the table on the right, this represents the original contingency when the program began in 2023 at about $2.8 million. The next line, the project closeouts, this represents the projects that we have closed and accepted, I believe there's seven so far, through the first half of the program and the unused funds were returned to the contingency. The project transfers, this includes two projects with funding needs that were previously approved, and then the $1.4 million that we transferred to the Central Way bike and pet improvements in June. That leaves the total at approximately $3.7 million. The TBD contingency is a flexible funding source for unexpected project costs as projects move from planning into design and construction. This is available to address those cost increases that arise as the project scopes and the estimates are refined. Council originally approved 54 individual project scopes under the six-year TBD program. As we moved into implementation, staff organized these scopes into 18 project delivery packages, which each have their own CIP number under the parent TBD project, which is NMC3. These scopes were grouped together based on factors such as locations, opportunities to deliver similar work together efficiently, and other considerations. This structure allows us to manage and track the program at a project level while maintaining flexibility to deliver the original scopes together where it makes sense. The parent project, NMC3, essentially acts as a savings account and houses the TBD contingency. When use of this funding is required, the process is handled administratively depending on the amount of funding needed. Approval is required either by the director of finance, the city manager, or council depending on the amount of funding needed. I will mention that all changes to scope are brought to council for approval. And I will turn it over to Laura for the next several slides to discuss proposed scope removals.

All right, it's really exciting to see the Transportation Benefit District taking shape in the real world. But to get us started on what we're asking council to direct staff with today, we are proposing four scope removals. These were identified through our robust pre-design efforts. The map on the right has numbering corresponding to the numbers listed on the slide. The first project, I actually spoke to council about almost a year, a little over a year ago now. This is the Lake Washington Boulevard and Northeast 52nd Street project, which is all the way at the south and the bottom of the map. This is in the Lakeview neighborhood. We intended to install an RRFB at an existing crosswalk, but there's physically not enough space. We are asking council to authorize the formal removal of this scope from the TBD program due to that feasibility issue. But we'll still keep this project in mind and reevaluate with the further development of the CIP. Second, up on the top of the map in the Totem Lake neighborhood is the 120th Avenue Northeast project. This is meant to provide a shorter pedestrian sidewalk facility to connect people from 124th Street up to Totem Lake Boulevard. It's on the alignment of 120th Avenue, but it's actually fully contained with two adjacent private properties through a very well utilized parking lot. So for that reason, we recommend this not be pursued through the TBD program, although it can still remain identified in the Transportation Strategic Plan, the TSP. Third, brings you to the Moss Bay neighborhood. This is the State Street Bike Markings Project. The intention is to provide uphill, which is southbound on street buffered bike lanes along State Street between Kirkland Avenue and Second Avenue. this is a very well utilized area today and there's no free space that we could use for the bike lane to build the bike lane the most feasible way would be to remove the well utilized on-street parking to provide bike lanes we still think this is a great project but not something we would recommend pursuing with the TBD program. We'd recommend this still be retained within the TSP and could be reevaluated at some point in the future as part of a perhaps like a length, a longer bike facility improvement project. And lastly, we have the 7th Avenue Greenway, which is very close to City Hall in the North Kirk neighborhood. The intention was to provide Greenway type improvements along 7th Avenue between Market Street and 6th Street. But since this project was envisioned, two things happened. First, the Stores to Shores project went through a very robust community engagement process that changed the route of that project. Um, now the stores to shores greenway is complete. It does intersect market street at 10th Avenue. So just 3 blocks away. Um, whereas previously we thought they were going to be further apart. Secondly, the station area is happening. We have all of these projects associated and development anticipated there. One project in particular that we're pursuing is on 7th Avenue. It's a complete streets corridor redesign immediately east of where this Greenway was meant to go. So the complete streets project goes from 6th Street over to the pickup drop off at 116th Avenue. So we recommend not moving forward with the Seventh Avenue Greenway at this time. We'd rather take some time and reevaluate the need for a Greenway here with the overall citywide Greenway network program. And if council concurs with staff and moves to remove these four, that would add an additional almost 1.4 million to the TBD contingency. And that's on top of the over $3 million that Jessica identified we have in there today. next four slides i'm going to move through four projects in particular combined delivery packages these have significant shortfalls that we want to present to council tonight and as a reminder these shortfalls are fully fundable with the tbd contingency as it is today so even if council elected to not move forward with the recommended scope removals we could still fully fund these within the current tbd parent program funding so first we have the north juanita crosswalk improvements project this is in the north end of the city in the juanita neighborhood the map on screen is identifying the two scopes that we'll be building with this project on 132nd street near 111th place we'll add a new rrfb as well as lighting improvements at an existing crosswalk And almost immediately south of there on 124th Street, we'll add a new hawk pedestrian signal. This would replace existing older style flashing beacons that are there today at 108th Court. And then on the map, I'm trying to draw some attention. Just last year, we installed and activated two other hawk signals just to the west. on 124th Street. So this would be the third hawk signal on this corridor providing consistent treatment that will improve safety for all users. The anticipated shortfall is $350,000. Next we have the Northeast 124th street pedestrian facilities. Um, so the map here is highlighting. The scope elements, the goal is to provide a safe pedestrian connection along 124th street. So people can move from east of the 405 freeway to the West side and back again. On the red line, I'm highlighting the new sidewalk that we will build. This meets an existing sidewalk segment that's isolated on the existing Washtenaw Bridge. We'll also add two RRFB enhanced crosswalks. These are to help folks cross both the 405 southbound on-ramp and the northbound on-ramp as well. We do have an anticipated shortfall of $450,000 on this project. This is because now that we've started design, we've done site assessment, progressed things. We realized that just to build the minimum needed for a safe sidewalk, we need to do some other infrastructure upgrades, including retaining wall and new barrier. We also need to install a fully new lighting system in this area to support safe lighting levels for these new crosswalks. So those additional necessary features are what's driving up the project costs.

Laura, before you go on, has a question.

Yes. Yeah. I, you know, I was going through the packet and, you know, I understand that many of these projects, they're originally based on, like, planning level cost estimates. But can you just share some information on. how these shortfalls, like, I'm just trying to understand, like, these are pretty large differences, right, between the original estimates and then what we find out later that, oh, crap, you know, like, we need to, it's a lot more money, or we need to do a lot of additional things around the area. But can you just explain that process? You know, like, I guess it would be really hard for planning purposes, right? Like, If we're finding out later that we have to spend a lot more money.

This is a fantastic question and this is something that is incredibly challenging in the construction industry is how do you take a baseline scope and accurately predict how much it's going to cost in the real world to build when we don't know a lot of things. So since these estimates were first put together, sorry, when these estimates were first put together, we looked back at historical data to get averages for how much is like an average linear foot of sidewalk. And that price varies a lot based on site conditions, even the size of the project. We get a better economy of scale for larger projects typically. so there's a wide variety a wide fluctuation in actual costs since these estimates were originally put in place and the tbd program was activated we have implemented process improvements in the capital improvement division including a new setup pm project manager role and her dedication is to take the baseline project scopes and get a much better estimate of where we're at We did see this earlier this year with the Central Way project presentation where there was a lot of thought behind why the cost is so high for that particular project. This is a very similar case where at the time we didn't have the tools we do now to provide a much better estimate. I also wanna note that it goes both ways. A lot of our earlier projects ended up finishing significantly under budget. And a little bit was we had some, Jessica's really great at going after grants for us. So she's snagged some grants for us. But in addition, we also found that those estimates were wrong because they overestimated the cost. So it's going both ways. We are flagging these for council because the dollars are significant. But overall, the money's there. So I'm feeling pretty positive, but it's a fantastic question. And as we keep going forward with the CIP program, we're doing a better and better job estimating projects before we commit to funding those projects.

So the primary fix right now is we, just to summarize, we have a dedicated individual, like a project manager almost, that's ensuring that the estimates are more accurate moving forward, is that right? Correct. Okay.

Yes, and also appropriately putting in a more appropriate level of contingency as well from the get-go, especially flagging projects that have a lot of unknowns.

Okay. Lauren, can you maybe just, there's like two main elements to this project that made the cost go up. Yeah. Maybe just explain those because they're like the wall, the retaining wall and the, it's not just that we guest run or some things we had to do we didn't expect to do, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, City Manager. In this project in particular, we're working with a WSDOT limited access area and an existing bridge structure that we certainly have no interest in modifying because of the expense and it's not our bridge. So we originally anticipated just being able to put in some sidewalk connecting in to the bridge abutments. But in actuality, we had challenges on both the east and the west side of the road. On one side, we needed to install a retaining wall to ensure that even just to build a minimum size five foot sidewalk, we'd still need some sort of retaining wall there to keep the facility in place to meet requirements on the other side we can put in the retaining we can't put in the sidewalk as planned but the slope on the back side is steeper than washdot allows for a normal guardrail situation so we we actually have to install a much more significant barrier protection it's a safety feature for for drivers and that is a requirement from washdot for us to build within their limited access area Thank you. All right. I know it's late. I've only got two more. So the 98th Avenue Bike and Pedestrian Project. This is in the Juanita neighborhood near the Juanita Village, not too far from the Juanita Beach Park. The map is showing in green dashed where we'll install a northbound on-street bike lane. This would be on 98th between 116th Street and 120th Place. We'll also reconfigure two existing medians, provide lighting improvements there as well to further enhance safe crossings at two existing crossings. The photo on screen is highlighting that today bike users who are on street are competing for space against existing Metro bus routes as well as other vehicles. We do have an anticipated shortfall of over $300,000. However, staff took the initiative to apply for a state TIB grant. So if we're successful, that would fill in this shortfall for us. But for now, we don't know the answer until the results are anticipated to be released in November. So for now, we're asking to allocate the money from the contingency to this project. But if we do get the grant, that money can move back to the contingency. And then we have 90th Avenue northeast sidewalk improvements. This is in the Finn Hill neighborhood. The navy blue line on the map is highlighting where the new sidewalk will fill in an existing gap here from 134th to 138th Street. On the west side of the map, I'm highlighting Henry David Thoreau Elementary as well as Finn Hill Middle School. We do have an anticipated shortfall of over a million dollars. This is the most significant shortfall we're presenting you tonight. And again, this is because of particular site conditions that were not identified during the original estimating. We have done a robust. pre-design effort using our setup PM, which is how we know that there's a shortfall. And there's several factors involved here. First, even though the street is relatively flat, the houses on either side are higher or lower. So there's some small retaining walls we anticipate needing, as well as longer driveway tie-ins to make sure folks can still drive their vehicles into their existing garages. We have a lot of franchise utility impacts. That's not necessarily a direct cost on the project, but it will add time to the project. We also have our stormwater system there today is in fair condition. We took a look at it with our maintenance staff to assess it. When we build our new sidewalk, we'll be installing a new curb and gutter. We do need to do appropriate measures to handle the surface water that's hitting that gutter. So we'll have to make a lot of connections, adding new catch basins to bring that stormwater into our underground storm system. So that's some factors that are driving up costs for this one. And again, we do have the money today to fill these shortfalls within the existing TBD contingency. And I'll let Jessica share with you some details on that.

Yes, so just to summarize the financial impact of what we brought to Council this evening, the total of the projects with the anticipated shortfalls are about $2.23 million. The table on the right would show the revised contingency balance factoring in the current contingency today at $3.7 million. The total proposed project removals bringing back 1.4 million. And then if we were to fund the projects with shortfalls, the 2.23 million. That would bring our revised total to 2.8 million. This is approximately where the contingency was at the beginning of the program. We do anticipate completing the current TBD program within budget with potential for adding additional projects to utilize any remaining funding at the end. Let's see. Staff seeks Council approval of the recommendations on the following modifications proceeding with the removal of the four scopes discussed as well as authorizing the use of TBD contingency to fund the anticipated shortfalls on four projects.

Thank you both. Thank you for the good presentation. And I really appreciated that Laura gave you, Jessica, a shout out for the work that you do on grants. We get those emails, and we're always very pleased. So thank you for all of that. We don't thank you enough for that.

No, it's a team effort, and Laura assisted with that application. So I just organized the effort. Thank you.

And you're humble, too. So Council, any questions on all of this?

uh deputy mayor once again i hope i gave everybody a chance to ask their questions if not you'll entertain a motion um so i will uh move consistent with the staff's recommendation uh for approved council approval of the removal of the four previously discussed scopes from the tbd along with reallocation of tbd contingency to address the anticipated shortfall for the previously for previously discussed projects

second thank you it's been moved by deputy mayor black second by council member arnold to authorize the use of tbd contingency funds as recommended by staff any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries 5-0 thanks All right, we are now on to our last business item. I'm so glad that we didn't have to send Anna home. Our last business item is urban forest management plan update briefing number three, city manager.

Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor. So the title says it all. This is the third check-in on the urban forest management plan. We're now looking for council feedback on the objectives. Here to give that presentation is our environmental program coordinator, Anna Heckman.

Good evening. It'll take me 10 minutes to get used to the new system here and then another 20 to give you my 10 minute slides. Fortunate for everyone, I had to cancel my interpretive dance due to time. But seriously, we have just a progress update for you today. 10 slides, we're gonna contextualize the new data that we pulled together. related to the performance metrics and have the draft objectives set up for you to comment on. And I want to give a thank you to, 10 minutes, a quick thank you to Nick Lucero who has put together the concept behind the new urban forest management plan that you will be seeing. So we incorporated council's comments into the vision as well as the guiding principles that was included in the packet. We will not spend much time on it tonight. We shortened the goals just for simplicity's sake tonight to protect the forest health and resilience. We want to grow public engagement and partnerships. We want to maintain 40% canopy cover. We want to maximize benefits of our community tree assets. And we want to enhance our city urban forestry programs. For those of you who have been paying attention, we did just flip goal two and four to keep you on your toes this evening.

you

And I just want to mention that these goals relate to everything in the urban forest that's shown on this photo, or on this picture, from both private and public properties in the high density areas, along our streets and right aways, in our yard trees and our park trees, and all the way into our natural areas and critical areas. So be thinking that those goals have to address all of those areas. so last time we met with you we were looking at visions goals and guiding principles and that incorporated a lot of our community outreach working with the comprehensive plan and council's work and we're coming back to showing what we're working with our urban forestry staff so all across the city from public works to parks surface water management we're working together to build this part of the urban forest management plan. And we're using a lot of our data-based decision making. Speaking of data, when council mentioned and backed up the opportunity to use our land use area, as part of our metrics, we went in and took a deeper look. On the left hand side here we have our tree canopy map with our land use areas and then on the right hand side we have the tree canopy cover for each of those areas and the difference, basically the variation that we've seen over the last 15 years. And you can see with the parks and open space and the greenbelt, basically the CKC, we have really high canopy cover. but that doesn't take up a lot of area in our city. When we talk about canopy cover, the area in our city is that residential area. And so however that residential area, that canopy cover really drives our city canopy cover goal. So if we want to maintain 40% canopy cover, and if we want to give some leeway to residential areas, say on behalf of middle housing or increased density in those areas, we have to work in the other areas to increase that canopy cover to make up for that balance. The council memo had some ideas on how that might happen over the next 20 years. We're not gonna create goals that are static, but we wanna make sure that that opportunity to be malleable over time and address issues as they come up, work out. So we can look across the different land use areas. We can also look within the land use areas. So this example on the right hand side shows our urban centers and our neighborhoods. The areas that have a 20% canopy and higher, have park areas incorporated into them. So it's hard to actually compare these neighborhood centers. But we can look also in the south where we have Houghton and Everest and South Rose Hill where it's below 20%, but it's not as low as North Juanita and Kingsgate. And so some of our 20 year goals or objectives will relate to increasing some of the canopy or putting more investment in canopy where we can. And that goes right back into our goals where we want to maximize the benefits of our community tree assets. When we look at other metrics such as the inventory that we recently had done, that is a static state in time, but we know that we want to increase the size of trees. When we talk about trees, we wanna look at tree size. So larger trees, we know help with benefits. More trees helps with canopy cover and better tree health. helps with goal one, which is protecting forest health. So larger trees, we look at more trees, planting more trees in the ground. That also impacts goal five, where we need to enhance our city urban forestry programs if we want to put effort and energy into that. Same thing with protecting forest health. We would hope to see a decrease in the dead and critical trees on our public lands. So those are some of the metrics and how they correlate to goals. There's a lot of complexity in that. And putting that into an urban forest management plan that is simple to read is not necessarily an easy thing to do. But we have a way that we will present it. For example, with goal three here, we will show in one corner why that goal is important. We will show, for example, in the graph down below how Kirkland relates to that goal. we have the correlation to our 2044 policies in that goal and then we'll have the objectives and with each of the objectives we have those progress metrics and those progress metrics will have a connectivity to the appendices where the measurements will occur or will be shown and where those thresholds that we're creating with staff will be at and so you can go back and look up what you want to see.

sorry i was so enthalled enthralled councilmember arnold go ahead thank you anna can you go back on one um one slide or perhaps okay you're on this slide this works too um in um 3b which you mentioned before um we're looking at land use and you mentioned some differences between some of our neighborhood centers for the wording of 3b um i just am concerned that if we look at um just increasing canopy cover in areas that are below land use that limits our flexibility and just would like to look at some other languages it says how do we get to this goal but if we're looking at neighborhood centers that don't have an adjacent park in the 9 to 13 range and we have ones that do have a park that are higher I don't want to I don't want to say all the focus is on the nine because there may be other opportunities elsewhere that brings up the aggregate percentage so would like to explore some other language that gives us more flexibility

We can do that, yeah. And this language is initial draft language that we put together after working with all the different departments. This next phase after our meeting here will have a lot of connectivity with departments reviewing both the metrics as well as the language so we can incorporate everyone together from what you just heard with our capital improvements and the transportation work all the way to our park natural areas. So that's, yeah. So yeah, so that just brings us to the 20 year objectives. And again, this is initial language. We have room for more. We wanna keep the 20 year objectives between three and five per goal. And anything that is brought up by council tonight, we will either figure out a way to incorporate into something that's already existing through adapting language, or we might be adding something new. And so this is what we'd like to hear from you tonight.

Go ahead. One more slide back, Anna. Goal 4B, which was 2B in the packet. Yep. Thank you for the heads up that you would change it, because especially at 11 o'clock, it would have taken me a while to figure that out. I'm a little... Unsure of what you're looking at with identifying the gains and losses to inform decisions for high-value trees This kind of reads to me that we're looking at Potentially changing our landmark tree standards and Not sure if that's what the intention is and just would want some clarification on what do you What? What's the intent here around management decisions around high value trees?

That's a really great observation. We're not looking at changing the landmark tree policies or anything like that. One of the things we found through interviewing different groups in the city is implementation. So a great example is working with our transportation team and understanding that there's a delay between deciding on projects and understanding what's out there. And so one of the things they actually already implemented, it was putting in their checklist for projects. Have we looked at the trees? You know, on site doesn't necessarily mean that decisions would be made differently, but it would be considered. So, for example, if there were large landmark trees on the site, and there was an ability to design around them, the most optimal time to manage that is in the design phase. um rather than being out on site and realizing oh no we have you know three or four trees that the public loves and we weren't aware of it ahead of time so that's the intent behind it is to try to develop processes and also to understand that some trees have higher value than others And there's a whole world of arboriculture dedicated to that. We have some amazing staff that can do that. And so helping to connect our staff with knowledge to help make those decisions early on.

Thank you. That's very helpful.

OK.

Thank you. Anyone else? I think you have a slide, questions for us. Yes, thank you.

I'll just make one brief comment. I remember Mayor Curtis and I, I think we were baby council members, whatever that was, seven years ago, visiting a site in Finn Hill where the community that we were there just simply asked us if we could incorporate what you just described. in transportation public works that assessment early on of at least what trees are going to be impacted is there a way to change the design to so can i say thank you and i think there's members of the community out there who i hope are listening uh who will say thank you as well so um otherwise i think this is great i like the direction we're going great thank you anyone else counselor arnold

And just a final comment on this slide. I know I had a lot of comments the last time we talked on vision and principles and really appreciate the direction that you're going. You captured our feedback well and like the revisions of the vision and the guiding principles.

Nice job.

staff is killing it on presentations tonight and the reason i kept not noticing councilman arnold is i was so focused on these slides so well done um and i want to echo deputy mayor or councilman arnold in that you really i love the transition of land use that tells the story so much better so you really captured our feedback the only real i don't have a comment on what the content you're doing a great job you're going in a great direction my comment is when you look at the land use and you look at the neighborhood centers and you look at those neighborhood centers with low percentage of of canopy coverage those are old neighborhood centers and as we redevelop we will institute stronger landscaping tree installation. And over time, they're going to transform into a greener space. So and that was very clear in the presentation. So thank you. And I think that's it. So thanks so much.

Excellent. Thank you.

All right. We have finished our business agenda and we are now moving on to council reports and I will start with Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. It's almost 11 o'clock, and we still have an executive session. I don't have much, and what I do have, I can email the council.

Thank you. Council Member Brim? Same. I will email to the council. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Arnold.

One thing and I'll email the rest just to note the state building code council delivered some recommendations to the governor on wildfire response. He'd asked what things he could waive as far as to support reconstruction in Spokane similar to how the governor waived regulations during COVID. He's got that emergency power. We delivered a report that offered some options but Really, it's not just about what's waived, it's what regulations replace that to encourage building faster, and we gave them some options that would allow the state building code council to take a look at some emergency rulemaking wildfire response. In addition, SPCC is on a glide path to Develop a final package of code language by the end of the month this completes a three-year process for adopting Washington specific versions of the International Building Code mechanical fire plumbing and residential codes great work Thank You

We are now going to move on to city manager reports. I have nothing to report. I will send an email. I will say thank you to Chief St. Jean and Chief Ledoux for the 9-11 remembrance ceremony. It was very well put together and well done and very impactful. So thank you. City manager, over to you.

I will also keep my report short, and I'll just see, does the council have any calendar updates, anything you want to have come before the council next week?

Council, any calendar updates? I have one. As you all know, we've received a number of requests from community members to take position on two ballot initiatives. So I would like to request that the city manager comes back to council with potential action for council to take a position on the two ballot measures, which are IL26638, which is protecting girls sports, and IL 26001, which is restoring parents' rights, which both will be on the ballot in November. So, Council, any objections to having that as a future discussion? All right. I see no objections. City Manager?

Thank you. I have nothing else for the City Manager report, just the executive session is next.

All right, we are going to adjourn to exec session to discuss potential litigation as authorized by RCW 42-3110-1I, Romanette 3. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at approximately 1120? We're thinking 25 minutes.

Okay, 1125 only for the purposes of adjournment.