City Council - Special Meeting

Jean Brazzle, we're doing a test to see if you can hear us loud and clear. You excellent. Welcome everyone. It is April 21st. Welcome to uh Lake Stevens City Council special meeting this evening. We are live at the mill and also online on our Zoom channel. Um we will start this meeting. Um we'll call it to order. I guess that's what the agenda says. And then we'll start with the pledge of allegiance. Please join me.

I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Clerk. Sheling, can I get a roll call, please? Absolutely. Council member Ori here. Council member McManus, present. Council member Donahghue, present. Council member Shipman, present. Council member Edwards, present. Council member Packer, here. And I'm here also. The special one at the end. Council President Dorstass present. Thank you.

Sorry. No worries. Um I would like to get approval of the agenda one. Um just minor change the discussion items. We're going to swap those. We're going to do discussion item B first and then we'll do discussion item A. Um can I get a motion to approve? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. Right. Second. We have a motion to second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say I. Any opposed? Thanks. We have an agenda. Uh, I'm excited to move into guest business. Tonight we have our annual police department awards. I'm going to turn the microphone over to Chief Bazo.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim. Make sure this is working. Yep. Perfect. All right. To start this off tonight, I just want to say this is probably some of your first time doing this. Some of you have done this in the past. This is an honor and a privilege as a leader of the Lake Stevens Police Department to honor the 2025 annual re award recipients. Tonight we have about five awards we'll be presenting um with my staff Deputy Chief Dean Thomas and Commander Michael Henen. Um when I give him his award I'll be saying Sergeant. So just up front I'm going to tell you what I'll be doing. But we're honored and privileged this week to honor these award winners and next week we'll present our annual report to you. To start off we're going to come with the employee of the year who is our CSO Margaret Cooper. If you can come forward. I'm honored to present Margaret Cooper with the employee of the year award. Margaret's positive attitude, adaptability have been invaluable during a year of major transition. Not only has she taken on the park ranging park ranger duties, she also helped integrate a second community service officer position for the first time in department history. Margaret played a vital role in creating first ever field training manual for her role in leading training efforts. With her professionalism and care, she con constantly or consistently champions improvements to forms, municipal codes, and internal processes, ensuring our system stays current and effective. Her can do spirit and willingness to step up makes her a cornerstone of our department's success. I'm honored tonight to present to Margaret Cooper employee of the year for 2025. and we're going to get a picture with everybody. Come on over here, Michael.

Thank you. And now you get to walk. The fun part. Thank you. Congrats. Thank you. Congratulations. Amen. Thank you. Congratulations.

The second employee, the officer of the year, Kristen Parnell, could not be here tonight, but I'm still want to honor her. Kristen Parnell is a detective corporal who's assigned to the investigations unit. I'm honored to present Kristen with the officer of the year award. In 2025, Kristen demonstrated exceptional skills and leadership by mentoring a new investigator. Thanks to Kristen's mentoring, this new investigator made a significant arrest that laid or that led to a lengthy sentence. Also with information from our priority cyber tip, Kristen swiftly coordinated a complex multi- agency response resulting in the rescue of a young child and the arrest of the predator. Her IAC colleagues presented her with the investigator extraordinaire award earlier in the year. Christian's dedication extends beyond her investigative duty. She developed initiative or innovative uh citizens academy exercise, leads the Lake Stevens Police Guild, and continues to educate public with her protect your child material, which fosters trust and safety within the community. It's my honor to uh present Kristen with the 2025 Oscar of the year award, which I've already done today at the office. Thank you, sir. Over to you. The next one is the outstanding supervisor, Commander Henen, who is now um in the leadership role with the command staff, but this is when he was a sergeant. I'm honored to present Sergeant Michael Henen with an outstanding supervisor award. Sergeant Hingen, who served in as a sergeant in 2025, is highly regarded and respected for his approachable demeanor and vast knowledge of policies, procedure, and case law. In his role as lead firearms instructor, he strengthened the department's through real life scenario-based firearms training that improves both skills and confidence. Sergeant Hen's relentlessness pursuit of excellence and his inspiring inspiring leadership served an example to all showcasing the true essence of service

and dedication. With that, I present Commander Michael Hansen. Beautiful walk. Oh, of course. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you.

The next two awards are certificate accommodations for officer Savuk and Officer Hogan if they could step forward. monitor jump. There we go. I'm honored to present Officer Elizabeth Shaftchuk and Officer Austin Hogan, both with a certificate combination. In 2025, Elizabeth was a primary officer on 27 out of the department's 94 DUI arrest this year, making her the leading officer in DUI arrest. Officer Hogan was a primary officer on 15 of the department's DUI arrest. Their persistent commitment to removing dangerous drivers from our roadways has significantly contributed to the safety and well-being of our community. Their efforts have saved several lives in our community. With that, I'm honored to present you with a certificate accommodation. Okay. It's not for

Thank you.

Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations.

And the last award I'm presenting tonight is a chief's award of excellence. This goes outside of our department to another city staff. I'm honored and uh privileged to present Olivia Bumgardner with the chief's award of excellence. Olivia has promoted exceptional support in grant development and the city public information officer responsibilities. Her efforts have significantly enhanced the department's community outreach through the creation and dis dissemation of hiring announcements, event notifications, and public engagement materials. Olivia has played a pivotal role in development, writing, and submission of multiple grants on our behalf of the police department. Her work directly contributes to securing funding for the officer wellness program, ded demonstrating her commitment to the well-being and advancement of our team. With that, I honor you, the chief's exultant. I appreciate the time tonight and next week I'll show you the success of our police department in keeping our community safe as a 10th safest city in 2025 in Lake Stevens. So, thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you so much, Chief.

Give folks a chance to move out. The next item on our agenda is Oh, I'm sorry. We have citizen comment. Um for citizen comments, folks have 3 minutes to share any um concerns or questions or information they have with city council. We'll start online to see if there's anyone online who would like to participate. I don't see anybody. So again, if you're online on our Zoom meeting and you'd like to speak to the council, now is your opportunity to raise your digital hand. Nope.

All right. And I don't have any green sheets. And now there's only three of you left. Anybody here for citizen comment? All right, thank you. We'll move forward. Um, our action item tonight is the updated organizational chart. Um, I believe Anna is going to be leading the discussion with input from both director Brazzle and director, administrator Brazil, sorry, and director Halverson, both of whom are online, but Ana is here in the room, so I will turn it over to her.

Good evening, council. I'm Ana Warrington. I'm the HR director here and I'm actually going to also co-present with um public works analyst Lori Ericson and uh interim finance director Matthew Heist will also join in. So it'll be a group effort tonight. So tonight we're going to talk about the uh proposed organizational changes that we brought to council on March 10th and um but first we are going to let's see talk about the city burnout survey. So, based off the discussion that we had on March 10th, we did conduct a city burnout survey. And so, we're going to share some of those preliminary results here tonight. I'm going to interrupt you really quick just to let council know this was sent out um just a little bit earlier this afternoon. So, if you didn't see it in your packet, it is in your email.

Yes. Thank you. And then we'll go over the city or chart uh the the review the department changes and we'll talk about the budget impacts. So, first uh let's talk about the city employee burnout analysis. So, we launched a city-wide survey um on the 19th and we used a method or an inventory called the Copenhagen burnout inventory. This is a n internationally recognized uh burnout survey. It was open- source and free. Um it measures workload impact and includes these three dimensions. It looks at personal burnout, workrelated burnout and client burnout. And when we refer to client burnout that uh refers for our jobs is citizens, elected officials and internal customers. So this is um this was determined to be the best tool to use. It was short and easy to understand and it has strong validity and is widely used in the public sector. Um, in addition to what I'm going to refer to as the CBI from now on, um, is we added two sections with some open-ended questions as well, um, to talk about workload analysis and to also glean some information on how our exempt employees and hours worked in their workload because we actually don't track uh, hours worked for exempt employees. Um, it's not allowed. And so this was a a good ide on on that piece as well. So, I'm not going to go through um each of these, but just to kind of give you an overview on why organizations should understand and evaluate and look at burnout as a as a reduction. Um I'll go over these briefly. Um burnout uh impacts productivity and service quality. It can lead to increased sick days, disengagement. Uh burnout can drive turnover. Um and turnover is expensive um for especially for hard harder to fill roles uh like uh managers and directors. Uh burnout is actually uh

recognized by the World Health Organization um as a syndrome of stress. Um and so it is uh that was interesting facts I was doing some research on about um the the stressors and from the World Health Organization as well in my research. Um burnout also can create some organizational risk and those uh items are listed here. Um it can also reduce engagement and innovation. Um it's also uh contagious. It can be systemic and it can spread um especially when um there's a lot of chronic uh issues, chronic rework um and we can see increased conflict amongst departments. In addition, uh burnout um can be caused by organizational conditions and uh these are some of the items there. Just too many priorities, shifting expectations um and uh unmanageable workload to note a few of them. And burnout reduction has a strong return on investment which is um one of the reasons why we want to talk about it. So I can increase that productivity, engagement, um, retention, etc. So here's a quick overview of our results. So the burnout scale, uh, starting to the from the left, um, 0 to 34 means little to no burnout. Um, 35 to 50 means there's some indications of burnout or low burnout. Um really when you get to the 50 to 74 range, that's when you're seeing moderate levels of burnout. And then 75 to 99 is a high level of burnout. So I'm happy to report a really great particip participation rate for our survey. Um 64% of all of our employees participated. That includes public works field staff,

police officers, administration. Um 84 out of 130 of our employees completed it. So, so on the right what you will see is uh I'll start with the 35 um on the light blue there. Uh that's the client related burnout which if you remember was the citizen elected officials and internal customer burnout. So you can see that that indication is the average. It's indicating maybe a low burnout or you know maybe little burnout. If you move to the right, uh 47% uh have reported uh personal burnout. Um which is we we're getting into that moderate burnout stage. And then underneath you see 53 that is the uh moderate burnout and that is work-related burnout. And so I've kind of uh indicated um below here uh some of the notes that um and I'll highlight the workrelated burnout uh because that's mostly what we're focusing on here today is that 43 of those 84 employees um reported burnout above a level 50. And so um and what you're seeing on the 53 up in the blue there is the average. So looking at um further insights on this um by department um I've highlighted the line the 50 line which is what we're looking at and make paying more close attention to you can see the distribution workload burnout is actually in the turquoise so I'll focus on that one you can see higher levels of burnout in departments um like administration police and um planning community development reported the highest levels of work-related burnout and then others almost all the departments are really at the cusp right there of 50. And then we looked at burnout by role.

Um I'm going to focus on the average column of the work-related burnout. Um but you can see um the executive team and supervisors or managers. Um and then everybody else, that's how it's ranked here. Executive team, supervisors and managers have more burnout than um than line staff. And then there's that 50 line for your for your knowledge there. Just let you look at that for just a second. Okay. So looking at the workload um the current workload um is shown on the right. So what you're looking at here is um the percent of time spending on reacting to unplanned work is actually in the colored columns. So the red is indicating that they are that person or the average are always reacting to unplanned work. And the the column the top of the column is saying that 13% of those people reported that their workload is extremely heavy. So the correlation here is that excess workload has the strongest correlation with work-related burnout and that unrelated and urgent work is a large contributor to this heavy an extremely heavy workload. And you can see here that 64% of respondents said that their their workload is somewhat heavy heavy or extremely heavy. And only uh yeah only 32% said it was manageable or 36 total manageable and very unmanageable or very manageable sorry excuse me. So, I'll also note that um 86% of employees reported that competing priorities make it difficult to keep up their workload more than 50% of the

time. Director Warren, can I ask a quick question? Of

course. About this slide, the second bullet, I'm curious to hear more about um where it says the unplanned and urgent work is a contributor to a heavy workload and how that's amplified by elected officials. Can you speak to that a bit? Yes, and I'll go into that a little bit in some of the comments, but um employees um in their comments and open-ended questions explicitly connected the elected official and council dynamics to heavier workloads and more leading to more read work and greater emotional exhaustion in the survey. So, that was a big contributor to the urgent and unplanned work because what we hear from council is we come back to the table and then we're going to have to do more things. And so, um and I think you can uh probably relate to that or see that. Yep. So, moving on to the exempt employee pulse. Um, some of the questions we asked are highlighted here about out like what are they doing outside business hours? What kind of work are they doing on weekends or PTO? This is a great opportunity for us to really glean some insight onto that. Um, and some things we found were that um, employees that reported always or often for working outside of business hours also reported that they always or often work on PTO. Um, and then additionally 62 and a half reported that they always or often are working outside of business hours and then you can see 50% reported that they often are always are working on when PTO.

Question um, who are they exempt? Are they the director level? Exempt employees are employees that are not eligible for overtime. And so what that usually means is there is um federal guidelines and Washington state guidelines that determine who can be exempt to overtime and those are mostly your higher paid employees that um have a higher level responsibility of work. So yes, it's mostly supervisors and above. There are a few analysts and planners and engineers that we are also exempt as you mentioned you don't track their time but I even exempt employees you don't pay them overtime but you track do you track their time for comp time right no

you're not allowed to track employees hours worked um they get paid at 40 hours a week okay did you hear anything to add, Matthew? Well, I I just want to also clarify, too. Um, all of our staff are actually considered salaried employees. Um, and so so there's that's where the exempt versus non-exempt. Non-exempt, we track their comp earned and everything, but the exempt we don't. They they just have a set schedule and that's what they um report on their time sheets.

Yeah. So the other two statistics I have on this page are that 50% of exempt employees work a typical more than 45 plus hours in a typical week and that 90% of these exempt employees report their longest hour work days exceed 11 or plus hours. And some of them reported there was a handful of employees that actually reported um work days exceeding 15 hours in a given day as their longest day of work in a week. I have one more quick question about exempt versus non-exempt. Just a ballpark if you don't know exactly what percentage of city employees are exempt.

Percentage. Um I think the count is I believe based off what I've seen in the survey is 25 that took the survey. Um like are we is it like half or a third or threequarters? Maybe a third. Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. Thanks. Can you clarify that brown on the previous slide? Oh, yeah. The Sorry. Oh, brown star.

Hold on. Why? Hold on. There we go. So the bottom right statistic is saying on average each week they have a day that's 15 hours or 11 plus hours or just during the year at some point they have a day that we asked them in the past six months for most of these questions. What was your longest reported workday?

Okay, thank you. Mhm. Okay. So then this next slide talks about um just some leave usage. So you'll see this funky spike in the middle that might call your attention and that's not to worry. Um there was a big spike in um police sick leave back in 2023 mostly due to claims um claims management. And so that's a little bit of a um you know an outsider statistic there. However, this shows the average sick leave hours per employee by department. And what this kind of shows you is from 2023 to now is we are seeing trending of increasing on most departments um stacking year after year. So the dark blue line is uh the most recent year uh 2025. Um, and then on to the right there, you'll see a statistic about in 2024, the actual total amount we've paid out in sick leave is 8 over 8,000 hours. Um, that's about 63 per employee. And then in 2025, that increased to over 10,000 and I excluded the 2023 and that because of that big police uh officer spike. But just so you guys know too is um every employee per year acrews 96 hours of sick leave. So what this is indicating to me is that a a lot of our employees are earning and burning. There is uh the the slight few that are not using sick leave which is bringing the average down but there are quite a few employees that are using quite a bit of sick leave um year after year. Um and then FMLA and uh P paid family medical leave. Those are protected leaves and we've seen an increase in that over the last couple years. So 2024 we had 12. Now we're we were at 38 at the end of last year and we already have 12 this year so far. And while this isn't like a total indicator of burnout

necessarily, this is just one of the statistics of many that you can use to see like you know burnout does cause health issues and increase health costs and this is one of those statistics we have available to us. So not a complete total picture but just some insight there. And then I did receive a question um from uh city council member McManis before the meeting about overtime costs which didn't make it onto a slide but I am h uh he had asked um us to share information on the total overtime paid year to date and uh we did run a report um we've we've paid 111 over 111,000 in overtime um in the last 4 months which is about uh 23% of our total budget. I will say though uh we didn't include this as a key performance indicator of burnout because most of your overtime costs are around uh police officers and uh public works crew members and most of our indicators for overtime or burnout uh are focused on exempt staff supervisors um and and executive team and which don't get overtime. And I will say administration departments, their overtime budgets, most of them are $500, which is um 10 hours or less of overtime per year allowed uh for their department. So they don't we don't work a lot of overtime um for all the administration departments where we're seeing most of the burnout happening. So just a quick so these numbers one two in the white I'm not going to go over again these were at the beginning when I explained to you what why we want to pay attention to burnout and so what I've done in this slide is I want to focus on what the city impact of this burnout is or could be. So I'm just going to go over briefly um the impact. So number one, the um high burnout um can reduce the quality of uh the service quality.

More mistakes happen. This could result in slower permitting, uh slower public responses, and an increased internal conflict. Um for turnover, replacing one FTE often costs the city the equivalent of half to a full year salary and loss time. When you think about um the overtime it may cost to backfill a position or um or having to backfill the duties and not getting overtime where other work is not getting done and displacing duties, uh the cost of onboarding and mentoring a new employee plus the time to recruit um is really significant. So you're talking 3 to 6 months of cost of a of someone's salary when some one person turns over. Um like I had mentioned the the the World Health Organization recognizes um that burnout elevation um isn't just a wellness issue anymore. It's actually um considered a workplace hazard which is you know our responsibility to monitor and um attempt to address it similar to how we look at physical safety. Um some of the organizational risk in the city impact. We saw in the survey that longest work days were 13 to 15 hours at times. Um there's a lot of frequent weekend and after hours work. There's high workloads heavy to extremely heavy. There's some service disruptions happening due to urgent work or planned work is being disrupted where projects are falling behind. And then we've seen uh some of the comments um open-ended questions revealed some internal conflict, siloing and department friction as a result of burnout. um some of the engagement and innovation. Um you know there's high level of frustration about rework and competing priorities and surprises, lack of structured project management um throughout the organization um which is

a contributor to reducing their engagement and level of problem solving. And then the systemic piece um just to highlight is the executive team does have the highest level of burnout. Then managers, supervisors and managers as I've already mentioned and then um some of the organizational conditions. Here's some of the quotes and some comments about it. Um the the survey identified all seven of these organizational conditions to the left and some of the comments included, you know, there's surprises, last minute priorities, urgent requests with no offset, uh being the only person doing the work, um workload exceeding staffing levels, too much change in a short period, um and then elected officials who want more urgent urgently without understanding resource requirements or understanding current workload. And then you know some of the return on investment you know we want to have faster processing time, citizen response times, better service delivery, more effective interdep departmental coordination. We want to reduce overtime compensatory time payouts and reduce our leave burdens which is sick leave um and FMLA. So some of the key takeaways to wrap up. This is a nice little word cloud of all the open-ended responses. And know how a word cloud works is uh it puts the most frequently said word in bigger in a bigger emphasis on the word cloud. And so you'll see here some staff staffing shortages, emergencies, workload um as some of these highlights in the word cloud. Um but some of the key takeaways I took from this as I was analyzing was some of the root causes is a burnout is workload and staffing gaps. Um exempt staff are working unsustainable hours often 50 to 60 weeks

and 13 to 15 hour days. Um it's more prevalent in executive team and supervisors and managers. Um and then it's impacting service quality and coordination. Um it's creating a retention risk. Um and it's showing a the data shows high correlation between workload and burnout. So our next steps um this isn't really anything that the city council needs to take action on. This is moreformational. The next steps for us as an executive team is to do a deep dive into this and the analysis um and how we can develop an action plan on how to help alleviate burnout um at the staff level as well. Do any questions? So, I guess I'm I'm just trying to understand here the the comment you just made about how we don't have to take any action and there's going to be a deep dive and an action plan, but then I've got a proposed org chart in front of me at the tail end of this, which I assumed was related to the presentation we just heard.

Mhm. Am I wrong in thinking we are being asked to at least provide some sort of sign off on this tonight or is this a separate discussion? Well, the burnout survey is connected to the action tonight. I'm referring to like there is no action for the city council to take on the burnout survey itself or it's more informative so you can help so you can make decisions. I mean, I guess seeing that there's going to be a deep dive and a developed action plan, I I would, you know, I would like to see those before I make any decisions about budget or positions. Um, personally, that's my my gut reaction right now.

So, the action plan in my mind is how do we rep prioritize work um within the city administration? um how do we maybe make come to city council with any further budget requests in the future if there are any? I don't know. Um this really is more informing us on how we can train our staff in resiliency, how we can train them in um how we can boost our wellness program, make sure staff are supported. Um there's a lot of key like um things that we can do internally that um we wouldn't need like council's support for. Yeah, and I'm I'm supportive of everything you just said. I guess if if there's a way to assuming burnout is um you know tied to workload and there's a way we can reduce workload, spread it out, better manage it before adding a headcount. I would be inclined to pursue those solutions before we start chipping away at the budget.

Yeah, I have a question for you on Yeah. on uh the slide that had the circle on burnout and 0 to 34 like the different levels of burnout. Mhm. It looks like from the survey you had, we are between low and barely moderate burnout based on the responses from from the the talking. If if I'm reading this right, that's what we're talking about. 57, 53, 47, 35. I know those are averages, but averages are what we go with, right? But then when we get down further in the presentation, everything is based on a high level of burnout.

Where do you see the high level of burnout? um understanding the impact of burnout on our city services. City impact high burnout equals let's see lower moderate burnout equals and it may be just picking straws here but you know having been this at a corporate level outside of public service this would be a pretty good scorecard for a lot of organizations. I'm just being candid, right? And I think if we're asking for more headcount and more money to rectify this, I go back to what you were talking about earlier is $111,000 in overtime spent. And it's my understanding that none of that went to an exempt employee. Is that correct? Can you repeat that?

Yeah. $111,000 of overtime here to date was spent, but none of that went to an exempt employee. That was all public works, parks and wreck, I imagine. Or correct. Exempt employees do not get overtime. Okay. So it looks like we've got a ton of overtime. Maybe we need more headcount in the trades than we do in city hall management is is my question based on this result. So that's why we were trying to show also the exempt hours worked. We are seeing actually more exempt employees work more hours and they're not getting compensated um because the workload we're seeing is higher level.

Okay. And so when I and to answer your first question or comment about the work uh the burnout the level of burnout for the organization. Yes, the key indicators on the very first slide is citywide and um it does show moderate burnout uh for the entire organization for workrelated burnout which was over 50.

Okay. Well, I mean I one of the things we're looking at here is potentially increasing the budget, right? And there's a lot of unknowns that are coming up in the future. Are we going to win the fight with the sewer commission? Are we going to have to bring all their employees over? Does that make some of these requests redundant? Is that going to lower our staff a little bit? Um, so we have to really think this through because essentially we're going to ask is the citizens to pay more when you can't throw a rock from here and not hit a house where probably both folks are working if not one two jobs to stay ahead. And we're get salaries are I'm assuming in the salary bands for their positions compared to other cities. That's usually the survey we see after something like that. So, that being the case, do we really have an issue? Is would this be more of a smoke before there's fire type of a situation?

I would say this is um I wouldn't say this is alarming either. Um I say it's moderate burnout. I think it's something we need to gauge and we need to start reducing it. I'm not saying this is um compared to any other organization much worse. Um that's not what we're trying to say here. This is just a pulse for us to understand that there is burnout occurring um throughout the organization. It's it's targeted at certain levels and it's tied to urgent work and heavy workloads. At the exempt level is an executive team and supervisors and managers. But you are asking for an increased headcount under the current board chart. Correct.

We are not actually we are not asking for an increased headcount. We are asking for a restructure of the current FTE count with no impact on budget. We will get to that slide at the very end. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Could I um get a clarification and then I had a question. So when you were talking about overtime, if I understood correctly, it's basically public works and the police department, correct? Yes. Okay. So, we know our police department's been understaffed for a long time, like pretty much everywhere else.

Um, so that's obviously going to play into overtime and burnout, and I feel our department is doing everything possible to mitigate that. Um, public works, you look at the storms we've had and the cleanup crews. Um, again, I don't think these are things that you can sit behind a desk and mitigate. These are real life situations. These are jobs that

um unfortunately are on demand a lot. Um we certainly should be showing our appreciation and showing our support. Um but those two particular like I said our police department we've been trying for a long time to hire and do whatever we can to support them and like and we had all these storms this year. So it doesn't surprise me public works had overtime as well. Um, and as far as uh, you know, managers and department heads and those that are working over 40 hours a week and not getting compensated, what is the salary range? The annual salary range for those employees?

Yeah, I would say, you know, they are getting compensated at a higher rate, but they're not getting compensated for work outside of 40 hours a week, right? And so again, that's why I'm wondering what is the salary range that we're talking about because I know a lot of people that have higher salaries definitely work over 40 hours a week. That's why they're salaried, right? Um so I'm just wondering what is the salary range of the employees we're talking about. I think that's an important question. Um I don't have that in front of me. Um but it is the higher ranges that we have for the city. You're not correct. The ballpark of that. Um I can get one.

I don't have the range list off the top of my head. Matthew maybe can is the uh I mean we got something this week about the finance director ranges. I mean that would be representative the data that's in there. Is that is that fair? The finance director. Yeah, we got some data this week about the pay scales for Well, it wasn't just the finance director. It was all the It was all the directors that was on that pay scale chart. Correct. Yes. Okay. That was that was the pay scale that you received for the entire city. Yeah. Okay. Yes. So that that's represent of uh the managers and executives or Yep. They were all under that document. Yes. That was shared previously. It's listed on the second page and I think

so it's just part of this meeting. I would like that stated. It's what could Could we have that stated as part of this meeting because not everyone has access to the packet that may be watching online. I I wonder if that stated I wonder if what makes sense is to have um Director Warrington finish the presentation because it does end with the very the specifics about the budget and the decision that we're going to be we're going to need to make and maybe during that time we could get further clarification about um about the ranges. Great. If that does that sure makes sense at this point.

Okay. So, moving on. This is this current city org chart as it was adopted um by the city council at the end of last year for 2026. Uh we had added uh two positions at the time. And I have a quick question about the ORC chart. Since we do have a full-time mayor, why isn't the mayor listed? I understand that maybe before he was full-time, he was part-time part of the city council work. Why isn't the mayor listed above the city administrator in the ORC chart as the CEO of the city basically?

Well, he is um in the larger version and so are you at the very top, but just because of fitting it on the slide, I didn't think that was like that's not the focus of today's presentation. But on our actual master org chart, you'll see city council and you'll see the mayor above the city administrator. Okay? because I've seen a version of the org chart that had the mayor in the same with no line to the city administrator. He was just listed in an orange box kind of at the top floating with the rest of council. And so I found that um I just thank you for that. Yeah.

Okay. And here is the proposed org chart. Um you've seen this before. It was also in your packet. Um and then I am going to hand it over to uh public works analyst uh Lori Ericson. Good evening council. U my name is Lori Ericson. I'm going to cover the next three slides at a pretty high level. I know um at least I believe you've seen this information before but I will cover it at a high level. So the first um position modification that we would like to propose here is with uh changing our senior civil engineer um to a capital projects coordinator. So again, this isn't adding an extra body to our team, but it's really um reallocating resources and changing the responsibilities. The main focus of this role would be really to help us deliver on the many capital projects that are going on right now um that are being led by public works. Um I think the only other thing I'll add to that at the moment is we have seven um capital projects right now that are going to construction this year which is a lot and our team is very strapped for time and resources on trying to get those projects delivered. We also have other projects that are underway in other phases. um of the capital phase life cycle. So we have some that are in design and then things that are between design and uh construction as well. So a few uh opportunities as far as making this change um would include three FTEEs dedicated to capital project delivery in a single division. uh there's going to be salary benefits um that Ana will cover here in a few slides and also uh we want to keep leveraging the centralized capital project delivery. Um we find that it adds efficiency and just improve coordination and communication

with all the stakeholders. A few challenges um that the department faces in this uh still is that we will be essentially losing some internal engineering expertise within public works. However, we do have some budget uh set aside for on call engineering services. So, we anticipate there would be a small increase in those on call engineering services. Um but again, it it will be overall beneficial from a salary perspective um and an overall savings slide. Uh the next position that we want to uh change around is uh changing out the city engineer position and changing it into a deputy public works director. Before I dive into any of the content on the slide here, um I just want to paint a little bit of a picture and maybe just help remind uh those of you who might be newer to council. Um so our current public works department uh is managed by a director and the director has about 35 or so employees on the team um across all of our various divisions. Uh the annual budget for public works ranges depending on the year from about 13 million to about 15 million. So as you can imagine there's a large span of teams and activities and people to be managing. Um and right now all of that rolls up to just one director. So, it's a lot to manage. Um, right now, uh, what we're looking for as far as a benefit with getting hopefully a deputy public works director would be reducing the current director span of control from five direct uh, reports to three. And really the bigger picture here is the amount of teams and processes that are having to be managed. So the deputy would be uh tasked with focusing on capital project delivery, engineering services and plan review. The director

then would also be focusing then more on the highle strategy, inter agency collaboration, project management overflow as needed, APWA accreditation, essentially the big juicy strategy focused things. Right now the director has to uh bounce back and forth between operations and more of the daily you know grind and also having to manage all those bigger ticket um strategy level items as well. Uh we also think that this will provide leadership flexibility to accommodate strategic pro uh projects. So essentially they're going to be able to divide and conquer and be more efficient um during the time that they are working. A few challenges here. There is added salary and benefit costs. Again, Anya will kind of talk about that here in a few slides. Uh, one municipal code update from uh, changing the city engineer to the city engineer or designate would be required. And also, we'll be continuing to work through the EDS update uh, which we're currently working on. Um, but it continues to be a challenge for us.

Can you remind me what the EDS update is? Oh, yes. It is the engineering. Um, Russ, you're gonna have to hold me.

There we go. Thank you. All right. And then this is a summary of the changes. So, opportunities, three FTEEs dedicated to capital project delivery. We will see salary and benefits savings. Um, we're uh anticipating improved inter agency collaboration. um especially with all these large capital projects we have going on. Added flexibility in city leadership to accommodate strategic projects and supporting the strategic staffing plan and succession planning. And then again our main concern here is we'll be losing an engineer um but we have a plan to mitigate that with the use of our on call contracts. All right. And then um I think this is meant to be kind of a transition um to talk a little bit about um a possible change with my role as the public works analyst. So my role um in case if you don't know, I'm kind of like a matrixed employee. So I spend a good portion of my time in my home and apartment and I also regularly like every single week ever since I started three years ago have a portion of my work that's dedicated to non-public works work. So uh we wanted to kind of at a high level cover things that my role currently does and then things that are left on the table because I'm not a 100% dedicated public works employee. So without reading everything on here, some of the main things that I've been working on um include public works strategic plan uh development and deployment. Uh we do have obviously our citywide strategic plan as well, but a big portion of my work is helping to make sure that the work for strategic planning within the department is occurring. I am also the WEX and fuel

master business processes administer. um as what that means it's our fuel card program. So there's multiple programs that we or systems we have to use to manage our fuel consumption across the city and that's something that takes a surprisingly large amount of my time um periodically throughout the year. As you know we are also moving forward with our new asset management program uh which is called open gov. So this is a really large lift at this point to be figuring out how to migrate from the current system to the new system, getting people trained um and solving problems along the way. APWA reacreditation um is something right around the corner as well. It's something we have actually been working on for about three months uh gearing up for this next accreditation cycle. Uh there's various analyses I have to excuse me keep up with including uh analyzing our fleet uh deciding helping to decide which vehicles to surplus which ones we should acquire so on and so forth. I also monitor the city's energy consumption for all of our facilities and I've been heavily engaged with helping to figure out what is our asset replacement um plan. So, as we need a new roof for this building or we need to, you know, repave the parking lot, whatever it might be, what are those cycles and getting really clear on the budget for the years to come? Uh, a couple of other things I help with include contracting and procurement. I do a lot of various special projects and I've been heavily involved with policy development and training. There's also some really big ticket items that you'll see there on the right side that have been on my work plan for two years and they inevitably get bumped by unplanned work or urgent work or things that just have to get done because there's no one else in the city who is either able to

take it on and or um has capacity to do so. So we have plans uh for public works to do improvement for our procurement processes uh making it easier for people to buy and procure the things that we need. Obviously the sewer district is something on everyone's mind. Um I'm one of the facilitators for uh helping to make sure that integration happens as smoothly as possible. Uh public works website improvements, there's lots to do there. uh budget improvements, capital project support, and then being able to build dashboards and help with actual technical assistance to our teams. So, all those things on the right are either things that are new and or have been on hold for one reason or another. On average um as the public works analyst I work 70% sometimes 80% uh in public works on any given pay period meaning that the remaining 20 to 30% is spent on non nonpublic works work brings us um the reason why we have more duties are is because the last request you remember was my mic's not on was to um bring over uh Lor's position and move her to a management analyst within administration and particularly in the HR department. Um and the reason why it would come to the HR department is because for a couple reasons. One of them is uh what you say 30 or 40% of your work right now is already doing citywide initiatives and part of that purview comes under my umbrella with the lean um center of excellence and process improvement work. Um additionally um as it's been discussed before uh uh administrator Brazzle has a very large span of control with all the directors

and um can't supervise another employee. So it would be a shared employee between the city administrator and myself um overseeing uh the management analyst and to fund this um is uh we would be abolishing the revenue development specialist which is 100% general fund and this is just a rework of what we've presented before. So what the management analyst would do u we've refreshed this based off feedback and just every this is always fluid with the immediate tasks but some of the essential duties here you can see on the left these would be ongoing ongoing duties. Um so this would be leading the city strategic planning implementation supporting policy development compliance and training. Um they would be also managing uh complex cross departmental projects and helping prioritize projects. Uh as stated they would continue the process being the process owner for our lean and continuous improvement efforts and initiatives and work on other initiatives that are connected to our strategic plan including uh wellness 360 and sustainability which are in our plan. Uh they would be serving as the ADA coordinator and title six coordinator excuse me. they would be uh the accreditation compliance liaison. We have we are accredited for public works and police and if there is any um liazison needed between the administration to get those across the finish line that would be uh this person's task. Um and then any coordination of task forces, committees, focus groups this um person would handle um in addition to any consultant or contract management on behalf of the city administrator or HR. Uh some of the immediate tasks we've identified is we need to do more strategic plan roll out with the city council. Uh we need to coordinate some new s civic campus committees. We are um working on that uh throughout this year. Um uh commercial commercial property

management um liaison. We are also looking at ERP solutions um similar to what we did with the asset management exploring new finance um and HR solutions uh for technology. um they would be supporting um higher level analysis work in HR and systems um which we currently don't have a gap in now and um this person also handles some executive staff retreats and training which we have some planned and to kind of show you that uh some of this in um some workload leveling here here's some of the existing tasks and where they currently lie and then um what percentage of the time would be spent on that so it would be alleviating work from the risk risk manager, the capital projects manager. Um some off of um joint effort between finance and public works and planning admin for property management. Um and then the public works analyst um which would be backfilled would be um no longer be working on the citywide initiatives. And then some work from the deputy clerk's office and others. Um and then you can see some of the new and upcoming projects how we've kind of slated um and estimated that work as well. question.

Yes. Um the revenue de development specialist position that is vacant and will be removed from the org chart. Uh what is the top pay for that versus the management analyst top pay? What is the pay differential between those two positions? I might have to look that up. Just give us a second. We can And actually on that point um I'm not seeing that. It's entirely possible I'm missing it here, but I'm not seeing the revenue development specialist on the current or work chart. Can you remind me where that falls again? It's under parks. Parks. Okay, got it. Okay, thank you.

Mhm. So, while Matthew is looking that up, we'll just um second and we'll talk about budget impacts.

I have another question. the pending retitle. What is what is the new title for the HR director? Um we haven't landed on one yet depending on what's going to happen and it's um potentially um people and performance um some of the ideas we've had um strategy is also um maybe included in that. Um, we're trying to get away from the human resources to make sure that all the divisions of the department feel included, including risk and emergency management still a director level position. Yes.

Oh, sorry. His his spreadsheets's frozen. Um, you can take over and then I can help look that up.

I just want to point out this slide in particular. I think is probably the most helpful I've seen so far. I think being able to see um concretely, even if it is just an estimate, how how one position could alleviate um sort of the the the burden or the weight in other areas for me is really helpful to then justify making some of these budget decisions, especially given the information that you've already provided. So, I just want to I just I just want to say that out loud. this slide is um is meaningful to me in this discussion.

I I was going to hold off saying this, but that's actually a good segue into um I don't know if concern is the right word, but something I noticed um so earlier in the presentation, one of the points said burnout creates measurable organizational risks risks. And then there's several bullet points. Um but I only it looks like we only got data on one of those. So if they are measurable, it would be very helpful for me if I could see information on, you know, how this is increasing safety incidents, how it's in, you know, what sort of errors and rework are being created by this, uh, disruption of team cohesion, higher worker comp claims, um, things like that. I mean more I I guess it would help me understand if we're being asked to spend money where is it specifically going to improve performance and what metric reductions are we going to see for our dollars? Um I mean I can speak to the increase in claims. Um we have an increase in claims. Um I try measurable data for rework um and things we would have to gather from each department. Um but it's not um impossible. So it just we have to go back to the departments and ask these questions. Well, in in order to try and avoid a self-fulfilling prophecy here and creating even more work, ultimately what I'd be interested in is how these specific positions we're talking about on the revised org chart would bring down those specific metrics. So, I wouldn't I wouldn't want to just see, you know, we had 10 items that had to be reworked. It would be, okay, we had 10, but if we have this position filled, we would expect that to drop to two based on, you know, whatever source. So, something like that would be helpful for me personally. Well, I will say that most of these existing tasks that you're workload leveling from are exempt level positions that you're now workload leveling, which you're seeing in the

burnout survey that those were the most affected positions. I guess one other thing I thought about was looking at this. I mean, if we're talking about burnout, I noticed the police department was pretty high on that and maybe it's because we have talked about it quite a bit in the past, but um it it did strike me that there's nothing on this or chart to or or nothing I guess proposed in general to try and reduce that. I would think if there's a place where we need to look at burnout, the police department would be one of the first things that comes to my mind. not to mitigate the experiences of other employees, but I feel like the consequences there for compromised decision-m are a bit more severe. So, I'd be curious either now, if you know, or in the future as to why we're not looking at ways we might be able to if if we're talking budget, make those positions more attractive or balance the workload there. So, we do have four current police officer vacancies that we're actively working on recruiting and I think we actually have some good prospects in the backgrounding uh phases of that. And so, that should help. Um, and like I mentioned, uh, the executive team hasn't had a chance to look at this burnout survey in deep level to develop further action plans besides staffing. And so, um, this was based off a request from you, Council Member Donghue about workload statistics and burn. And so, um, I hope that kind of answers your question, but I agree. We want to look at each department and the effects of the workrelated burnout and see how we can help that. Um, but I do know that vacancies in the police department are higher than any other department right now. So, that could be a contributor.

Thank you. And don't we have um officers lined up to retire which are going to increase those vacancies and then increase the workload and burden and stress for our officers. Uh potentially I mean there's always potential that anyone can leave at any point of time. No, I I'm just talking like specific specifically at previous meetings, it's been brought up more than once that we have a fairly significant percentage of our officers that are getting close to retirement. Yes, I think they're eligible. It's just not it's we don't know when. Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

Um I was going to say I found the email that you sent and the the it answered my question on on the top for the position. So, if I'm not mistaken, the revenue development specialist top pay is 115. Uh, public works if it's the same as the management um is 131. So, not I I guess the difference wasn't they're comparable in my in my view. I was curious on that. So, thank you. Yes. Uh yeah, one.

So, Anya, just want to make sure I got these these things right. So these positions that we're talking about, the reorg is mostly exempt or all exempt staff. Correct. All these proposed changes to the org chart. Um there is the capital projects coordinator would be non-exempt and uh the deputy director and the management analyst are exempt.

Okay. But we're not paying overtime to those. But we're worried because we have low to moderate moderate burnout. We're spending over 111,000 year to date OT and our I would call them frontline departments, police department, public works. Um they're cited in the survey as burnout, which kind of makes sense if you're digging a ditch 8 ft down, tired of doing it. Um, so for me it looks like between our police department and our frontline workers is where we're eating into our budget with overtime dollars and we have low to moderate burnout. We're trying to address with staff and try to level that up to see some gains on paper, but these would be actual gains if we could reduce overtime costs for public works and police department. Correct. So I think that with the vacancies that you have right now in both public works and uh police are contributors uh to the overtime. Um but the request wasn't originating from the burnout survey. So this was a supplemental like information that the council requested at the at the March meeting.

All all employees were were surveyed correct and 84 responded. So it did bring them into this conversation. Correct. However, the request is coming um from mostly workload drivers, initiatives, workload leveling. Okay. And you know, personally, I think when we look at physicians open, not filled, we're saving money that we need to save to get our budget under control. Number one, right? Um so I don't I don't really buy into that argument. What if we were fully staffed of tomorrow? We'd be way over budget, right? with some of these proposed changes and existing salaries and stuff. So, just have to be careful with that. I realize there's carryover, but

well, we wouldn't overbudget if we were fully staffed. We would be within our budget um because we don't go over our approved budget for staffing when we're fully staffed. Um and then same thing with overtime. Overtime is also budgeted and we are trending to stay under our overtime budget currently. Okay, then we should probably stop saying we're saving money on unfilled positions and kill that argument altogether. Even though we are, it's still impacting our budget potentially if we were fully staffed. Can I think that's a great segue to talk about budget impact? I saw Matthew's face.

May I ask a question before we move to that? I'm noticing on the proposed org chart there's an asterisk and a deputy city administrator needed note on that chart and I would like more information on that please. Yes. Um I will start that. Um, uh, city administrator Brazzle has mentioned this a few times that this is a need and a want. Um, it's just not part of a formal request at this point and so, uh, we put it on there as a, um, reminder to council that the conversation is continuing and that you could expect to see a request for that probably in the next budget cycle. And, uh, city administrator Brazzle, if you want to pipe in here.

Yeah, good evening, Council. I appreciate the question. Uh, yeah, I've I've asked for this for several years. We've we've discussed it during the budget cycle and we haven't been able to afford it, but my span of control is uh eight people currently and so I'm consistently meeting with each one of them, which is great, but we've got a really robust uh performance um review cycle and that's a great thing to have it, but it takes a lot of time to help mentor and manage eight people in addition to the daily work that's required of the city administrator. position uh requests that come in uh citizen concerns that come through my desk all the contract management the the workload is uh immense. So at any rate that's where that comes from but uh I wanted to make sure it was on the slides so council remembered that that's there.

Um I have a question. I know our city administrator and mayor work hand in hand um very close with a new mayor coming on board. Is that something as far as as you know we're talking about shifting responsibilities that could be discussed with a new mayor if our new mayor doesn't travel as much as our previous mayor did or you know something like that so that we're not adding another position to our city but again reallocating responsibilities.

Again the full-time mayor role is uh different than the city administrator role. I'm responsible solely for the management of all the staff on a daily basis and making sure the operations uh move forward and that we're in compliance with all rules and laws and regulations that are out there. The full-time mayor position again is about attending the regional meetings, being the face in front of uh our legislators, bringing in uh that notoriety that we need for the community in order to receive grant funds and be at the table uh when new legislation's being proposed. The the full-time mayor is there representing the city's interest, not the city administrator.

Thank you. I would make a note to that that that configuration in some other jurisdictions is a bit different to where the mayor has some direct reports other than um one person. So I would make that note. I would concur with that. Yeah. Anyway, thank you for clarifying. Yeah. I don't don't doubt that Jean needs some help. It's just where does that come from? Yeah. Okay. We're going to move on to budget impacts. So, I'm gonna hand it over to interim finance director Matthew Heis.

All right. Thank you, council. Yeah. So, um I'm just wanting here just to um here we have this slide that just shows the top one. Um as as we said is if we had a full fully loaded staff right here. Um this is what the budget impact um would would potentially be right here. Um specifically, um we do um I know there's there's been concerns um with the general fund and with the street funds and you do see that that overall it would be um so the negative numbers are are would be meaning that there's less um less um less expenses to that fund right there. Um which is what what we want. And um so those are the the ones that we see um right there. um that's fully loaded and um so overall that would be um I we were saying is a $25,000 um increase uh total over over everything there. Um but um as we'll see in a couple slides I think as well um you'll see that the reality of it um is our 2026 year-end salary budget savings projections. Um these are um as you see our budget when we create the what you see um we have our forecasts um what our um what our expenses are and what our revenues are and that is those are all forecasted based and our budget um is is used as um based off of those forecasted items. Um so when when we do have salary savings um you do see that um is and when we don't hire somebody is that that is actually actively reducing what we are going to be spending throughout the year. So that is money that we are actually saving because we won't because what we anticipate on spending we won't

be spending. Um so uh right there as you can see is that these projections um show right now with um with positions we have not filled um positions that we are putting on hold um for the for the remainder um for for whatever time. Um some the even the police officers um looking at those ones where they're not they haven't been hired yet. Um we do have ones that are in the queue um and hopefully we'll be hiring them soon. Um but we do see uh savings when we don't hire them um when we anticipated on hiring them. So that budget impact as you see is uh for the general fund um essentially for for most of those funds um it does it right now our forecasted is that we would have um is that that our salary savings is um would would decrease um through throughout all the funds based off of everything that's been going on. Um and then uh the only one is you see a I mean a a negligible amount increase in the rental properties um right now as well. Um another another thing too is that um with a couple of these positions is that um you see that noted says anticipated 213,000 annually will be charged back to the TBP um the transportation benefit program there. Um so, uh the goal is is for I think some of those positions to be working on transportation benefit projects. Um and so then a lot those costs then will be allocated over um to to those funds and those resources there. Um we don't show that in the salary benefit um our our salary spreadsheet in our forecasts um because uh you know those those are those costs like the TVP transportation

benefit uh program that we have um those are that funding is only 10 years long. So, we're not going to be anticipating that we're going to be spending um if we want to have continued um employees um that it's going to um you know, pass those 10 years, we want to have a plan um to make sure that we can cover them um when we have that. So anyways, but uh with that, that's why you see that note right there is that uh those there are funds that will um absorb um some of these costs as well because they'll be working with those as well on on certain projects. Hey Matt,

I'm sure we went through this same we probably go through the same dance every year with how much money we're saving on open positions. How much did the city save last year total in 2025 on open positions? How much of that was reallocated? Well, uh, you'll see it. We actually have that information in a in a slide or two. Oh, okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. I

I have a question on this slide. Um, my the presentation in the packet was a little bit different. Can you explain are are you anticipating a budget amendment that reflects a million dollars less than the proposed budget? So what we will be bringing um for sorry um we will be bringing in a budget amendment um here in uh sometime in May um that's going to uh you're going to see an increase in our um our beginning balances um and then and then some rollover um from from last year and some and some of these requests here um and uh we will see um an increase in those um or a decrease I suppose in our um in in our um I guess more we'll you'll show more resources coming in than you'll see resources coming out um is with that

and just if I can speak to historically I think in the six full years that I've been on council um the the forecasting that our city finance department has done has always very very conservative in a in a great way, which means that every year there is there are fewer expenses and there are is more money um rolled over from year to year than is ever anticipated at the beginning of the year. And so we do typically have a couple of different budget amendments throughout the year because as those forecasted numbers become reality. Um we have typically fewer expenses and higher revenue than what is initially anticipated. So that's been that's been my experience every year that I've been on council. And we do have a slide that says history of year in salary budget that shows the percentage of the budget use exactly what you were talking about. um in 2025 it looks like 88% of um the budget was used. So that's exactly I think what you're talking about is this is what's proposed and this is um and so if I understand correctly so for 2026 are we anticipating 91% of the budget being used?

Am I reading this chart? I don't think we have a 2026 number. So the the bold on the bottom that's the average. Oh that's just the average. Okay. So we don't know for this year what we're looking at. So that's the year end. So we won't tell. So last year was 88%. I think that was one of the questions.

Right now we're projecting with based off the million dollar savings it would be 4% of the budget. So we would end at 96 but that is very fluid. As you see when we get to that that next couple slides it will most likely keep going down because of vacancies and turnover and just ability to fill positions. Um, I do want to just add to this slide too that the savings for 2026 also include a a very large inc rate increase for our workers compensation and it also includes um the amendment of the teamsters contract that was approved by the last city council that will be brought forward in the budget amendment, but that was also an increase to the salary and benefit um line item. And so that these savings are in addition to those actual increases as well. I um I'd have a note. I think um I do appreciate the the savings and the bigger picture. I think in the context of staffing and number FTEES, it's very hard to put those in the context and and say we're saving money. Um it would be nice to see something simpler like total FTEES and total impact on budget that these positions have in terms of salary. So that um and that considering it's fully staffed for a year so that you actually just appreciate the difference in the reclassification that it'll have on a budget that is proposed whether the position is vacant or not. And then we can say we're offsetting by you know a million dollars for this year. Um and typically we have vacancies throughout the year. It's very hard to to to look at it and not have that information in here. That is what the 20 the first section is the 2026 position changes. That is all three positions that we're requesting to reclassify and the abolishment. That's all those combined into one summary. So we didn't like line item like the deputy director cost this,

the public works analyst cost this. This is the total at the end of the day the different the cost difference across the funds for all the position changes at that on that top line. So it's an addition of is that 134 + 25 minus130 so 15 $20,000 a year. Yes. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I had the same question. It's says budget I if I'm reading all both of these lines right. We're saving money but correct we will save less if we approve these positions. Is that a fair way to state this table in words? by $20,000 if we were fully staffed and 100% staffed for entire one entire year.

Okay. But it I mean I to council member's point, yeah, I was looking at this and I was wondering why it didn't just say it it is going to be an increased expenditure. You know, if it's not that much, then it's not that much and we can factor that as we will, but I I was confused by this at first as well.

Apologies. um when we brought it back on 310 we showed just that number and so this time we showed the the detail and so but didn't include the large that one number so apologies. I have to say a note in general, I do appreciate that you take the time to think about your positions and where you're using staff and you've thought about reclassing some positions and um looking at this at at first it feels like oh we're doing a lot of changes but at the end of the day it feels like what you're proposing makes a bit more sense. Um I'm curious about the engineering costs for consultants in the future. So, I'm anticipating at some point in time, maybe two years from now, if those exceed a full-time FTE, that um we'll perhaps have that uh request back, but it's um generally um thank you for for those notes that staffing is levels remain the same. The difference in total cost is about 20,000. I think that makes

that makes it a simpler. Thank you.

I have a just um some comments. Um, I think that we need to remember that the efficacy is important and when it comes to having more staff, um, their efficacy is going to be better. Um, and so, you know, I I really take the word of of city staff um, seriously and when they say that they're burnt out in these upper management level positions, I get that. and you know that we we need our city staff to be efficient um and to feel like they are appreciated. Um and I think that by by making this what we now see as a pretty small budget adjustment for these extra positions seems like it would pay us back in the long run. So um I I think that this is something that we should definitely um consider. I just have two more slides just to brief the council on. We this was what we went over at the last meeting on 310 and I had read this list to you. These are the vacancies of the all the positions and the projected or the actual hire date if it's already in the past and um which was accumulated on that previous slide for that million dollar of savings. So this is just that snapshot so you could actually visually see it and then I will pass it over um Matthew. This we talked a little bit about this but this is the history of the year- end salary budget.

Yeah. And and as you can see I think it's just hopefully it's pretty self-explanatory as you see as um when we do our budget too. One of the things I want to mention is we start this in you know a July August. Um well pretty much we're already starting to think about budget. Um when we prepare the budget and get it for to bring to you guys you know this is done in October. So you know you have two and a half months of activity that's taking place um as well. So, and so a lot can happen in that two and a half months um that can that you know some vacancies or things like that that end up happening. Um and so you know we try to be as accurate as possible when doing the when putting together our our salaries. Um but as you can see that that just um because of vac vacancies that we've never that um and just things going out throughout the year that um we do average about only spending about 91% of our um of our salary budget. So um from 2019 uh through 2025. So

Matthew, I don't know if you have this available. It would be useful to see what the salary budget the raw figure was for each year because as a percentage if if we're able to increase the salary budget every year that also makes it easier to maintain a fairly consistent percentage of budget used, right? I mean, am I doing simple math correctly? Well, yeah. I mean, there's typically colas that that happen with I'm I'm talking about the allotted budget. If if that number keeps going up, then if you say we, you know, on average we only use 91%, the expenses can still keep climbing while that percentage stays relatively stable. Correct. Yeah, that's

okay. So, I know not to be the doom and gloom council member, but my concern, you know, for the last year or so has always been, okay, if we get to a point where our tax base is at a point where we don't want to ask more of it, then we're not going to be able to keep increasing budget the way we have in the past. And I just want to be mindful of that going forward. And then if I'm understanding this correctly, um, and so I guess what I'm wondering, so on the budget impact page where, uh, the general fund is 4% of total salary budget, is that with the new changes or is that as the chart is now? That's with the new changes. No, that's Yeah, it's predicted with the new changes.

Okay. So this year, um, last year we used 88% of the budget and so this year we're looking at using 96% of the budget if this was approved. Uh, correct. Okay.

And like Anya had said too, you know, we still got a lot of time this year. Um so that that percentage will will most likely continue just to go down um as just for um for whether we can hire um just depending on the hiring um of people and things like we just don't know um on and maybe people leaving um others and so more vacancies coming up um like you you said that there's um talking about the police department, right? like if if they decide to retire, you know, that those become vacancies as well. So

So I guess I I would just say that I think what we've learned today and staff did a great job putting this together because it's much more understandable now than it was when you guys first rolled it to us a few weeks ago. So I don't disagree with any of this, but my caveat would be that we are still spending a lot of overtime. We have police officers sometimes on their own patrolling our cities depending on the situation that particular evening. I would like to see as much effort looked at for our frontline employees and our police department in particular at some sort of a recovery to get them whole and get them up staff as much as we've invested in trying to get our org chart right for city staff. Me that would be the priority.

I'd like to see us prioritize that. Can I ask one more clarifying question? Um you have on uh it says minimal increase in on call engineering services. So that that consulting that will be needed. Is that part of the 25k or we're looking at the 25k plus the additional consulting fees that'll be needed for the on call engineering services? I the 25k is specific just to salaries. Okay. So what does minimal increase mean? Is that $2,000? Is that $50,000? What is minimal?

I think that's a good question. I don't have an exact estimate for you. Ballpark,

but it really depends on what's going on with projects if I'm being perfectly honest and it depends on the phase of the project as well. So reasons we might uh initiate like a task with one of our on call engineers might be that we need to have a space like analyzed or we need mechanical engineering services or we need something to be compared and contrasted so we can present it to council and have a policy level decision made on a capital project. So it really depends. Um the point I think we were trying to make there is while we will be having salary savings because we won't have that expertise in house the difference is that we would go out and get that expertise as needed. Typically having consultants do little piece pieces of projects tends to be more efficient than having that level of expertise on staff all the time. Would you imagine that when you come to us with the actual budget amendment that that budget amendment would include an estimate of that cost as well? Or no, that wouldn't be included that what would be included is the costs that we know.

You know, the only time we'd bring that is that if if we needed additional budgets for that. Um, and right now I um, you know, I I don't think that's um, I can't speak to it. I'm I'm still putting putting together that, but um, this point I I don't think there's been any requests to increase due to this due this. So, there is already a line item that speaks to consultants needed. Um, you're what what it's what I hear you saying is you don't anticipate the cost exceeding what's already been budgeted. It just may be larger than it would have been had we had that expertise inhouse. Is that accurate?

Yes. And when I pressure tested this with director Halverson when I asked these questions about is this going to increase the consulting cost if we get rid of a city engineer and we had this conversation. He um was of the mindset that it would not and it would be if it would be it would be minimal which I think when he says minimal it's a conservative. he was pretty fairly confident that he was going to accomplish um the consulting costs within his current budget. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Yes, that is helpful. Thank you.

And then the other overtime, we've talked about our officers and you know our efforts to hire more. The other overtime that was discussed was um public works is the other big chunk of overtime if I remember correctly. And it looks like our vacancies to fill are a public work analyst and deputy director. So, with our um ongoing hiring, is that going to really help with the overtime? Like, do we need more people out in the field? Because I I maybe I'm making the wrong assumption that the overtime with public work or hourly staff.

So, the overtime cost breakdown, um 86,000 of that 111 was police. Okay. 10,000 was public works, 10,000 was parks, and then I think the rest was negligible spread out. So, it's very minimal um for the public works. And just to point out, and correct me if I'm wrong, we've spent 23% of the overtime budget and we're 25% through the year. So, we're on track. We're not overspending what's already been budgeted,

correct? To spend for overtime. And with the ORC chart um reorganization that that should help with the public works stuff too because it's it's um it's got those positions that are going to go into capital projects and the public works director. Correct. Yes. It could help offset some of the capital project um overtime that's happening in public works for inspections and things like that because the capital project coordinator would be also non-exempt. Would

would I be correct in assuming that not all overtime work requires more full-time staff? Sometimes overtime is seasonal and related to events or other things that are happening, emergencies, and that may not necessarily represent you'll always have an overtime budget, I guess. Correct. Right. Okay. Um I I would also point out too that the that CBAs play a huge part in overtime as well. on when we um CBA.

Yeah, sorry. Collective bargaining agreement. Sorry, that's so CBA. So um just you know when when people are whether you know if they're on call that they make um get overtime, things like that. So there's there's a lot of um there's there's things in there the collective bargaining agreement that dictate on when they do receive um overtime. So I'm going to just move us along a little bit. Do we have um any further questions before asking for a motion and further discussion?

I guess I just one clarific I don't know what to call it question and clarification revenue development specialist for the parks department. So now realizing that that's under the parks department what exactly that position is. I mean when that was brought to us and we approved it we it was because we had identified parks as having a significant workload and this person would be able to focus on bringing in money from outside and now it seems like effectively what we're saying is everything we thought that person would bring in to support a parks department is now not as valuable as creating this new analyst position. And I guess that you know without quantifying metrics I I can't say that's true. But on just my gut reaction is somebody whose job is to bring in money and support one of our departments. I I find I'm not sure that alleviating some burnout is going to offset the revenue that person would have brought in. Am I wrong? Like is there a clear answer to that?

Was that position ever filled? I'll defer to director Garcia to talk about the revenue development specialist and why we're abolishing it.

Thank you for the question. Uh the first individual that was hired into the revenue development position uh was not a good match for the job and that position became vacant in uh 2025 and at that time we were doing um freezes on all open positions in order to save budget to close out 2025. Um, as we got into 2026, there was discussion about whether that position should be refilled. It really came down to we have a lot going on and in order for me to rehire that person and train them and get them back up to speed, it would take too much of my resources at this time because I am overwhelmed with work um from different things. Additionally, we were looking at the status of the economy. Uh, this position needs to build brand new programs that do not exist today. They would be working on large sponsorship dollars such as the synthetic field going in at Frontier could have a $50,000 $100,000 logo put on it and that sponsorship money could be used. And so it really was, is this the time to proceed with that? And in light of the economy and not quite sure what it was doing, the safe bet was to hold off because the position costs money to employ. Um, and with the first position not being successful, it it was just that pause moment in conversations with the mayor where we said, "Let let's hold off." When this restructure came up, um, parks needed to do a reclass for our um, uh, program uh, coordinator, as you remember. And so, as part of it, we looked at the city as a whole and said, "Where does this position fit best? Would it fit best with a city-wide grant coordinator?" We do have Olivia. Um, and we started looking at where is the best jogout for the city as a whole. And this is the structure that was proposed and agreed upon. Um Jill will still write grants. She is very successful at the state level. She's very successful in putting in those legislative ass. What

we're missing is the private money. So your 501c nonprofits, your hospitals, and other organizations that would be likely to also uh contribute financially. Thank you. Thank you. Any final questions?

Yeah, just and just a final statement before we move to vote on this as council. I'd like to see staff. I think we're in middle of April and we've had a lot of requests from staff for increases in budget, for software, for headcount, different things like that. I think all of them are valid and warranted. However, I think we need to get back to our problem at our police department. If we are low to moderate stress at the staff level in city hall, we are definitely at high stress at our police department. I mean, I wouldn't want to be the one out two of us on patrol in the middle of the night, one arrest someone for drunk driving, now there's one person watching the city. I wouldn't want to be that person responding to a DV call by yourself hoping for backup from another community. So, what I would ask is that we get creative and start solving for that problem uh with the help of city and stance council and staff and the chief. Um I haven't heard the chief ask for anything yet this year. Uh he's having trouble getting four police officers. Maybe we need to look at a couple things. I talked last week about, you know, perhaps a bigger sign on bonus that could impact some of our existing officers that didn't get one. Maybe we need to look at a holistic pay raise along with an incentive bonus to get those butts filled in seats. It's a critical mass right now and I think uh I'd like to see us start talking more about that versus low to moderate burnout for city staff.

I think we'll have an opportunity coming up soon to hear the annual report from our um from our chief and law enforcement. I think that'll be a good time to have that discussion. Thank you. Any final questions or a motion? I move to adopt the proposed organization changes as presented. Thank you. Question. Is this something that requires a motion since we're not actually approving the budget amendment right now? We are approving the updated chart as presented.

So my understanding is it does require a motion. But does that I guess legally does that require a motion from the council. Oh, I was just ask if there was a second I thought I heard it. Sorry, I was treating that as discussion because I heard a second. I do believe so because it's going to be changing our salary schedule. It's changing our organizational structure and position changes. Reclasses have to go through council. An additional budget amendment. This will be included in your budget amendment which you'll have a separate vote on. Okay. Will any of these changes impact salaries above their I'm sorry. We have a motion on the floor. So, oh, thank you. I didn't hear the second. We have a motion in a second. Further discussion.

Would these any of these proposed changes trigger a increase in pay for someone above those positions? No. Okay. Thank you. Any discussion among council on the motion to accept? I guess for me I just I'm I'm still, you know, if there's more analysis and work to be done, I would like to see that first before I consider increasing the budget. I

I see the logic here. Um I see the proposed justification, but if there's still more to be looked at and more information that's potentially available, that's that's something I would like to see. All right. Anything else? Right. All those in favor of the motion on the floor to accept the updated organizational chart, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Nay. Passes.

Thank you. We're going to move on to our discussion items and we're going to flip the order. We're going to start with discussion item B, critical areas ordinance update with a focus on stream buffers. I'm going to turn it over to David Levitan. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Mayor Prom. Council David Levitan. I'm just going to do a quick PowerPoint. All right, we'll try to drown that out. But um so David Levitan, principal planner. So it's been a several months since we were before the city council just to give an update on our critical areas ordinance update. So, this is a statemandated periodic updates. Uh, we've been working with the planning commission pretty carefully over the last um say 6 months and having them weigh in on some of the draft regulations. So, we just wanted to give a quick update on that um in advance of proposed hearings and public input and public review uh later in the spring into early summer. So, especially for the new council members that maybe um don't have as much of a knowledge base in critical areas. So, this is basically critical areas are things like wetlands and streams, uh steep slopes, uh critical aqua critical aquifer recharge areas. I'll get through a list in the next slide, but um here in Lake Stevens is codified in chapter 1488 of the municipal code. Um again this update is following in the footsteps of the 2024 comp plan periodic update. So this is basically one of the implementation tasks for that. Um a lot of what critical areas regulations rely on is called what's what's called best available science. Basically documentation on how you come up with

your regulations and how science supports those regulations. So um that's within the WAC and the RCW. So that really drives the way that we develop our regulations and how we justify those regulations. Um just to provide a a little bit of um kind of technical information. So we have things like streams and wetlands. Um as far as the area right here adjacent to Lake Stevens or say adjacent to Little Pillchuk um or Katherine Creek, those are actually what are called shorelines of the state. So those are subject to a different set of regulations. there's an overlap between the two and there are critical area regulations for that but this covers most of um our streams and wetlands but not all of them. So we'll be doing a periodic update to our shoreline master program in the coming years and so we'll have some additional discussions about that. Um and so as I'd mentioned the five uh types of critical areas, wetlands, uh fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas, which are primarily streams, uh critical aquifer recharge areas, uh which we currently do not have any regulations on. So that's been one of the major components of this update. Uh geologically hazardous areas such as steep slopes and then frequently flooded areas. Uh and again, chapter 1488, the last major periodic update, uh was adopted back in 2019 after a couple year process and some uh revisions. Um again, don't currently have those critical aquifer recharge area regulations or CARA regulations. And really, chapter 1488, it goes into permissible uses. It goes into allowed activities, mitigation requirements. um they're slightly different depending on the critical area type, but really um it is how we regulate critical areas here in the city of Lake Stevens.

So, one of the major items and really kind of what we wanted to focus on tonight uh was on stream buffers. This is a issue um that's kind of changing as far as the best available science and the way that cities um develop regulations to regulate stream buffers. Um and so currently we have within uh table 1488-1 we have our stream buffer with so that's basically you establish a buffer on um either side of the stream channel um and it helps to regulate activity it limits development within certain portions it requires mitigation um so currently our standards are 50 ft for uh seasonal and perennial non-fish bearing ing streams and 100 ft uh for fish bearing streams. Uh and then again we have these type S streams in Katherine Creek and Little Pillchuck Creek that are subject to a slightly different set of regulations. That buffer width is currently 150 ft. Uh so after doing our best available science working with our consultants we had come up with um and gotten some preliminary input from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. We proposed to increasing the type and the perennial and seasonal non-fish bearing stream buffers to 100 ft and the fish bearing stream buffers up to 150 ft. Um, a lot of that comes from some updated best available science that you really need at least a kind of a a floor a minimum of 100 ft to provide all the necessary water quality and habitat function. Um so we are proposing at least for all of our stream types of hitting that minimum 100 ft. Um uh but we'll get into it a little bit in the next slide. There's this new concept of what's called site potential tree height um establishing what are called riparian management

zones um that correspond with this site potential tree height. Um I'll get sorry I'll get into that in the next slide. But I just wanted to illustrate what's um the blue areas are are current buffers and then the green areas would be the the green outlines on either side there of Stevens Creek on the left and London Creek on the right kind of there in the middle of the page. Um that would basically go from 100 ft to 150 ft. So it would capture an additional you know several properties or expand areas within individual properties that would be affected by these stream buffers. The yellow is the 50-foot increase to the existing 50-foot type NP and type NS buffer. So, just wanted to kind of show it on a map. Um but circling back on the site potential tree height, there's this concept of um looking historically at the types of tree species that have existed within our wersheds and within our riparian zones um and assessing what the maximum tree height would be at 200 years for those tree species and then establishing what's called a riparian management zone. Essentially kind of a different way of interpreting stream buffers. um and having the stream basically that RMZ width or riparian management zone would correspond with the maximum tree height. So if you have historically a tree that could grow to 235 ft within this area and you adopt this like potential tree height concept, you would then instead of your buffer no matter the stream type whether it's perennial, seasonal, fish bearing, non-fish bearing, you're going straight off of that potential tree height. So you could be taking a seasonal stream that currently has a 50-ft buffer and if you were to adopt this site potential tree height standard, it would be going from 50 ft to 235 ft. So almost a five

times increase. Um and looking at those tables on the right, it just shows kind of the breakdown of of our different stream types. And um if you look at that blue bar in the upper graphic, it shows the number um of miles of stream that would be subject to that 235 ft uh expanded RMZ or stream buffer. So we would have about 21 miles of streams that would all of a sudden be subject to that uh relatively large stream buffer. So it would have an impact. uh we've done some preliminary analysis on how that would impact buildable lands but really with a focus on the best available science. So that was a lot of information and please stop me um if you need any explanation. Um but we've been looking at different examples of how jurisdictions are dealing with this. Um there are still a number of jurisdictions. The original um deadline for this was at the end of 2025, but there's been some flexibility there. I think the Department of Ecology, the Department of Commerce, Fish and Wildlife, they understand that cities are trying to, you know, do their best to update their regulations based on best available science, but there's a lot of new uh terminology. There's a lot of new concepts. So, there's been some flexibility on that. So, it's actually been beneficial a little bit to be looking at the how other jurisdictions have been dealing with it. Some are sticking straight with standard stream buffers. They're not considering site potential tree height at all. Um, city of Everett just um had public hearings last week uh and opted to bump up their minimum stream buffer for all streams to 100 ft. Um and then if it's a degraded stream buffer, basically it needs um you

know basically enhancement within that buffer um that it could potentially go up to 125 ft for seasonal and perennial non-fish bearing streams and 150 ft for fish bearing streams. uh Mount Lake Terrace um kind of established a similar to what we were proposing a few months ago, 100 ft for perennial and seasonal streams and 150 ft for fish bearing streams. Um there are jurisdictions like the city of Edmmonds, city of Anacortis that have gone just implemented the site potential tree height universally. So basically taken the model from the department of fish and wildlife and established corresponding um riparian management zones and so it it doesn't factor in the stream type. It just factors in the maximum sight potential tree height of tree species within that area. Um, and then there have been jurisdictions that have kind of taken a hybrid approach, which is something that we've been looking at in recent weeks just to try to address uh some of the concerns from some state agencies and some environmental organizations related to um a strict buffer um traditional buffer not fully reflecting best available science. looking at ways to establish a standard buffer, but then create sightspecific requirements that essentially need to be assessed. that if you have certain conditions on your site such as slopes, such as the lack of, you know, if you have invasive species, if you have a lack of native vegetation there that you may need to um, you know, on a sight specific basis supported by a critical areas report create buffers that are more closely approaching uh those site potential tree heights. So, Muckle Tio um kind of did something interesting. and they've established that minimum 100 ft floor for perennial

and seasonal streams um while adopting sight potential tree height for fish bearing streams. Um I would assume based on the the thought that the fishbearing streams you know merit and warrant um an expanded riparian management zone adjacent to them. Uh Kenmore is in the process of exploring several options including baseline of 100 ft and then potential opportunities to increase that up to sight potential tree height as documented. Um so that was a lot of information on the stream buffers. I just wanted to give a quick overview of some of the other things that we've been working on. Um, as mentioned, we have been developing critical aquifer recharge area regulations. That includes things like development standards, restricted and prohibited uses. As far as if you're within proximity of a wellhead protection area where people are getting groundwater from, you obviously need to be regulating your uses in, you know, a relatively conservative way, maybe in a way that you wouldn't need to if you're not um needing to protect groundwater in other areas of the city. So, we've been working on that. uh restructuring the chapter just to read better to rem remove duplicate language um create one just general set one set of general provision. So we've been working on that um and then um just trying to address some of the uh code interpretations that aren't necessarily clearly codified such as functionally disconnected buffers. So if you say have a road going right through the middle of a wetland buffer um and it's essentially functionally completely functionally disconnected just having much more clear and objective language to address and assess how potential impacts will be evaluated and and whether buffer or the critical area still exists once it's been functionally disconnected from the

say larger wetland complex. So, we just wanted to again give a as brief of a introduction or a brief of an update that at least I'm able to provide uh back to city council. Um we're going to be preparing some additional maps and graphics to to demonstrate those buffer impacts and evaluate the best available science. Looking at issuing um our draft regulations officially. Uh, this being a code amendment, for those of you that are newer, there's something called a 60-day notice. I'm sure Russ or Christy have talked about it probably about other code amendments in the last couple of months. Um, but we're required to notify the Department of Commerce um 60 days before we plan to adopt. So, if we issue that in early May, we would be looking at taking action in July with uh potential planning commission uh public hearings maybe in June and then city council in July. um we want to make sure that we're getting both public feedback and then agency and tribal feedback. So we'll be circulating drafts and making sure that we get feedback from from you know a wide variety of different stakeholders. Um and then yeah making sure that we just have outreach um materials uh updated website um you know what we call a story map that kind of combines map graphics with background narrative. So we're working on that now. Um, and then again looking at doing our public hearings um, in the early summer of 2026. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Um, and generally, yeah, we just would like to kind of get any general council thoughts on on a proposed approach. We are looking at this hybrid approach where we establish that minimum of 100 ft. Uh where we would like to have as clear and objective standard stream buffers as possible but have our code reflect that there may be certain conditions and

characteristics of sites that do warrant larger buffers. And we want to have a clear process that kind of establish that authority at the planning director level um to require those uh extended buffers. So that happy to answer any questions. Thanks. Before we dive into questions, we are going to need an extension. Um, we have another presentation that's scheduled to take about 15 minutes and then I want to give time for clerk Chelon to talk to us about our next agenda. So, could we get a motion to extend the meeting, I think, to 8:15. Chrissy, does that seem like enough time?

I think it would. I don't know how many questions you'll have for Dave. um if you have any. But I think that should do it. Okay. I'll make a motion to extend the meeting to 8:15. I can second. Motion and a second. Um all those in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? Thank you. Okay. Questions for David? I just want to say thank you. Um Lake Stevens has a lot of unique characteristics and you know, a lot of lot of fish in our streams and so thank you. I I imagine this is a little more challenging than some other areas might be.

Um I have just I remember when this um site potential tree height was brought to council last year. Um and I remember one of the big topics um being discussed was the impact on uh residential homeowners that live within a creek area. Um, and so I just want to just kind of um reiterate that when someone already owns property on this land and their house is already built within that within that buffer zone um it's not going to be like retroactive. It's just for like new stuff being built um in those areas. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's generally true. I mean there they're maintenance provisions. Um, if you want to expand, um, you would generally be subject to the new regulations, um, you would need to evaluate, you know, whether there's functional buffer or not. A lot of sites, they're going to be completely paved. They're going to have a driveway. They're going to have a patio. So, say if you wanted to build an addition where your existing patio is, that area is already disturbed. And so, you'd be able

to build there. If you wanted to do a detached ADU in your backyard and your backyard is directly adjacent to London Creek, then yes, this would potentially have some some new impacts on you. And so, um, we're trying to balance that and, you know, we understand the importance and the value of environmental protection and that that is something that's very important to a large portion of this community. And so we're looking to balance that with our development needs as well and provide a very clear and objective and easy to implement process. And so yeah, it has been a little bit of a struggle, but uh we're continuing to plug away.

Thank you. I think um being residents of Lake Stevens, we kind of have like a moral and ethical obligation to take care and protect our environment. You know, we have these salmon salmon runs and the cookie and everything here in Lake Stevens that makes this area desirable. And so I think you know looking into this is is important and good idea and thank you for bringing this back to us. Yeah, thank you. I would that was my question. So answer

great. I would also just add um I do appreciate looking at fish bearing streams differently than seasonal um streams. I do think that we do have an obligation to to look at those differently, protect those um differently. And so I would be in favor of um larger stream buffers for fish bearing streams and it looks like that seems to be the way that other some other cities in our county are are going as well. So um just my two cents that's something that I would be supportive of.

Yeah, that's definitely something that we can look at and that's that's good direction. And just for those that don't know, we do have we have four primary fish bearing streams that feed into Lake Stevens. So we have Stevens and Lundine on the northwest side of the lake. We have just down the road here, we have Cookan or Mitchell. It's got two different names. And then we have Stitch on the on the southwest corner of the lake. So this is something that affects really the whole community because we have streams coming in from all directions. And so it's something that we want to make sure that we have good um you know environmentally sensitive um and comprehensive and easy to implement regulations.

Can I so I agree that yeah we need to be good environmental stewards but the 235 ft or whatever that number is right seems big. So you said next time you'll be bringing in some maps. Is that looking at okay what is 100 feet, what is 150, what is 200 feet, for example, look like?

Yeah. So, we have some of that already. Um, and you know, um, I didn't want to get too in the weeds, but yeah, we would be looking, you know, as part of our best available science review. Um, it's basically it's illustrating that and what the impact would be on potential development and then us demonstrating and developing regulations. say if we don't want to go for the full 235 ft and have this what's would be considered now an alternative to site potential tree height is demonstrating through your best available science and getting potentially some help from our consultants or creating some additional documentation. There is a lot of good literature out there that say you have a standard of 100 ft but you're requiring um you're documenting through your storm water regulations or you're documenting through other environmental regulations that are already on the books that you can provide the same habitat function, you know, the same um water quality function. And so that's what we're working on now. And so kind of finding that sweet spot where we can show that it meets best available science and doesn't necessarily have to go all the way to that 235 ft. I would say that there are some jurisdictions the the site potential tree height it varies by species which varies by watershed. Um so not every jurisdiction is going to be the same. So there have been some cities that have adopted site potential tree height because they have a completely different set of trees and their sight potential tree height is like 80 or 90 or 100 feet. And so that was

they actually have to bump up to 100 feet because they need to have a minimum 100 feet and their minimum is exceeding sight potential tree height. So you know jurisdictions I would say that have adopted this have been the ones that maybe are in a little bit better situation than s us as far as the maximum tree height. Yeah I I agree. I mean, uh, yeah, the the local trees are interesting and you want to protect the local trees and make sure that they can grow to where they need to grow. But, yeah, if we're talking about fish, right, that in my mind doesn't have anything to do with how big the trees are next to them. And so, I'm inclined to understand what's the safe barrier to protect the fish, not how big is a tree next to the river that's housing the fish.

Yeah. And Lake Stevens in 2026 looks maybe slightly different than Lake Stevens in the late 1800s or early 1900s. So, okay. Thank you. Great. Any other questions for David? Great. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you.

Appreciate it. Moving on to our discussion item A, draft 2025, comprehensive plan amendments to the transportation and capital facilities elements. Turning it over to Christy Schmidt. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Okay. Let's go ahead and blow up my screen here. And thank you for the extension of the meeting. Okay. All right. Tonight we are talking about amendments to the 2025 comprehensive plan for the purposes of updating traffic impact fees. So within your packet tonight, you did have the staff report and six attachments. The background for this particular proposal, if you remember or were following along the council agendas last fall, the city council did adopt the concurrency code amendments and the traffic impact fee amendments based on the planning commission's recommendation. So that was conducted and then is the followup of the 2024 comprehensive plan adoption. We are looking at an amendment to for the 2025 annual docket which is late this year. We're allowed to do it a little bit late as long as it's pertaining to a budgetary item. And in this particular case it is because it's related to the increase of traffic impact fees. So the city did contract with transpo to provide some technical expertise and to work on our methodology and the calculations for the impact fees and those methodologies are contained within the packet primarily attachment one. So as Dave mentioned we about the 60-day notice to commerce I went ahead and issued it for this particular project back in March. So that means anytime after May 10th that these amendments could be adopted.

On March 25th, we did meet with the master builders. I presented them the draft information and Russ was there along with me in the meeting. I did do an outreach to them today as a followup and they did mention that they are following along with this and they will provide public comment at the time of the planning commission hearing and then the city council hearing. The planning commission held a work session with them on April 1st and then we did an amend an amendment or an addendum to the sea determination back on April 3rd to the comprehensive plan. So here's the proposed adoption process as I mentioned and I'm going to start at box let's go on box five which is where we are tonight because I already did the overview of the first four boxes. So after the city council study session tonight, the planning commission has a hearing schedule for May 6th. And so as part of this discussion this evening, I am asking for the city council to pick a hearing date for sometime in May or early June. So that would be the request and it's highlighted there in the yellow box. A brief summary of the proposed amendments. We're looking at updating the 20-year plan, which is table 9.1 in the comp plan, and then the six-year plan, which is table 9.2, and that's your six-year CIP. We are updating the traffic methodology to also include active transportation. If you remember during the comprehensive plan update and also to update the IT, which is trip generation for each type of land use within the city, those have changed. So, we're just acknowledging the most recent manual and incorporating those into the methodology. Let's see. Oh, please note that this is separate from the 2026 docket which Dave

had started and you've done the resolution for um the docket for blessing the docket for 2026 so to speak, the ratification of it. So, this is se separate from that. I just wanted to make that very clear. So in looking at our traffic impact view program and this is Costco, I thought it was a great example with the visual and their mitigation that they provided to offset their traffic impacts with their trip generation. The traffic impact zones for the city, they're broken up in three different areas. We have one which is outlined in blue and that's our downtown area. We're we're in it right now. and then we have zone two and zone three which is essentially the west side of the city. I'd like to point out that zone one is standalone on its own with an impact fee but what we've done is because of the methodology and the association of the travel patterns in zones 2 and three because they're both reliant on highway 2, highway 9 and 204. They have a lot of interconnectedness both north south and east west. So the proposal is to maintain those two is the merged zone so they can share funding and impacts with trip generation and growth and funding for future projects. And this graphic is contained in the cost basis document which is attachment one. It's been actually pulled out of the code. So it's in the methodology document. Here is the traffic. This is an example of the traffic impact fee program. So if you were to come to the city and do a project or develop a single family home within the city, a new one, you would fill out this worksheet. So what we've done in order to streamline our process and to make it simpler for developers, we've recalculated our formula, made it

a lot more clear and fillable boxes and included citations down below. So they have very clear, precise directions on how to fill out this form. And so far, we've had some good feedback, at least on our current draft that's available. This one won't be implemented until adopted by the council. And feel free to stop me at any time, but I'm trying to meet the 8:15 deadline. So, the traffic impact fee cost basis. Here's the cover of the document. If you really want to know and dive deep into how the impact fee is calculated, I highly recommend reading it. It's riveting. Lots of good information and math. I've read it many times. So, what I've done in order to help you and to help me is in attachment two, I did a AI summary of the document. It's great. I think it cuts it down to three pages. I like it. I proofed it for accuracy and revised it twice. So, if you need talking points, I highly recommend using attachment 2. Then the 20-year transportation improvement table. This list has been refined um by using the t the tiff cost basis which is a traffic impact fee. And what we did is if you recall we had been back here last fall with a higher impact fee. We went back to look to see you know why it was so high. We went back to our consultant. We went and took a hard look at it and in coordination with public works we were able to make use of existing facilities and in certain cases we combined or provided pedestrian facilities on one side and we looked at reducing roadway widths in certain cases but not to sacrifice level of service because we cannot sacrifice level of service in order to meet the growth

targets. So, it was really a win-win exercise and what it resulted in is that we I'll show you at the end here, but we actually do have uh lower traffic impact fees that will meet and address our level of service deficiencies. So, I wanted to briefly include this slide because it wasn't presented to the planning commission and they asked the question, how are projects rated and how are the PMP base fee calculated? So, I did not include all 12 steps. I cut it down to six. So the highlights are that you have project elements and they essentially include vehicular operations, safety, active transportation along with complete streets and preservation. You take the level of service, you use it both for vehicular and active transportation. You look at the existing and the projected future growth. Then step three is you look at the tiff eligibility. What portions of the project are going to alleviate level of service deficiencies in projects throughout the city? You know, roadway improvements, what portion of that? And they're divided up differently for vehicular and then they're divided up differently and calculated differently for active transportation also. These this percentage is applied to all level service deficiency projects. And then the cost the project's costs are reduced are based on grant funding. So those costs of the projects get reduced and then at the end of the day you have a base cost per new PM peak trip that's calculated and that portion of that is also based on land use and generation rates. So that's essentially it. If you'd like the full meal deal, please read attachment one or summary two.

Quick question. Uh what are the assumptions on grant funding? Is that as the projects are being built or is that a future projection like you anticipate getting 50% of the cost covered by grant or a percentage? How is that?

Those are actually secured dollars at this time. So they're not um they're not futurebased projections because we couldn't include those um per the RCW. So they actually have to be secured funds. And that is one reason why we will be coming back to you every year on an annual basis. This particular one we are running late. Ideally we would have had this before you last year or with the budgetary cycle. So you can count in future years that we will be more in sync with the budgetary cycle. So you will see that. But it is secure grant funding. Thank you. So, what I did in order to make it really clear for you, I took the 2024 20-year list and the six-year list. I went through and I struck out projects that have been completed and those that are proposed to be added to this six-year CIP for this year. These lists when I come back for uh final study session and prior to a public hearing, you will have a final list as you would normally have for the comp plan. And you'll also have a final six-year list that you see on the website. But for purposes, just so you know what's been completed as compared to what we have now, I thought this was a clear representation for you. We are fixing a level of service discrepancy to be corrected at the intersection of South Lake South Lake Stevens Road and South Davies Road. um this was identified through this process that there is a loss discrepancy there. So that is going to be corrected. Here are the new impact fees. I think this is the crux of the presentation here. So as you can see I'll kind of hover my little arrow over here for TIZ1 which is our downtown area. There is a proposed increase of $2700. It doubles the fee and that is because

this is our area that we have the majority of projects that are proposed to address our growth here in the city. Christy, I'm sorry to interrupt but we are at 8:15. Yes. Um estimates as to how much longer you might need. Understanding you don't know how many questions there'll be. Sure. For my presentation less than five minutes. I think this is second to last slide. Okay. We need a motion to extend the meeting. Make a motion to extend the meeting to 25 past 8. Do I have a second? Motion and a second. Any discussion? I did. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you. Extended until 8:25. Thank you, council.

Thank you, Christie.

Yes. So, Tis1 is proposed to double in cost in order to accommodate level of service projects to address deficiencies. TIZ2 and three are looking at an increase of $60. So it would bring it up to $3,700 approximately. So those are the two fee increases that are proposed. So here we come to the next steps. Um basically in green is my question for you this evening. Um as you know this is our work session. The hearing is scheduled before the planning commission on May 6th. And so at this time, staff is asking for the council to select a date in May. Um I had discussed with the city clerks that potentially May 26 might be a date for the council. So I would ask you to consider that.

I would say the it's right after Memorial Day. So if there's um not people taking vacation, that's I would be okay with. Okay. Do you feel in terms of workload and capacity that that gives you and your team enough time to do what you need to do for the 26th? It would. And it could even be bumped to early June depending on the council's calendar. That's not a problem. Early June works just fine. Also, there's a lot going on. June 9th. I just want to thank you for putting that together. It was um a lot of information, but the way it was laid out, it was very easy to read and understand.

Thank you. Clerk Jalen, could we look at the upcoming um council agenda and then use that to give feedback to um Sure, Christie, about best dates? Do you want that now or? Sure. I actually have nothing on June 9th right now. June 9th is uh high school graduation night. Okay. Which impacts me at least. Usually it's canled. Usually we don't have city council meeting on graduation. We have canceled it in the past. That's true. I know. I will not be here on that night. You sure? Pretty sure. What's more important than that? Does the agenda impact that decision? It does not. Okay. All right. Could do June 2nd make it a special meeting?

That's a possibility. May 26th works for me. I don't know about others. I was Yeah, it works for our agenda. May May 26th. Okay. Christie, are you okay with that? That works just fine. Thank you. Appreciate that. So, on that though, so are we going to have anything between the May 6th planning commission public hearing and the May 26th city council meeting? Will there be anything in between that? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Is that everything you need? Any other questions for Christy regarding this? Thank you. Thank you. Good job. Great. Thanks so much for the information. We appreciate it.

Okay. Now, Clerk Chelen, if you wouldn't mind sharing. Sorry. Can I make what can I just make one comment on that last topic? Sure.

Um, yeah. I mean, I'm generally concerned about increasing the fees. I I'm also concerned about how much work is in these packet. Like we've got $150 million worth of stuff. We have $64 million worth of stuff in our pros plan. I I recognize the I mean it's connected back to the burnout discussion, right? We've got a ton of things that we're trying to do. How much of this is self-imposed because we're trying to tackle more than we can handle. uh whether we have the budget for it, we have the people for it, whether we have the space for it, etc. Right? So, I recognize you want things on the list, we need things on the list so that they're eligible for grant funding and all of these things. I just want to put some reins a little bit around all of the stuff the city is trying to accomplish and it's all awesome and it's all amazing, but we also have limitations of how much we actually can get done. And um so that's just a general comment related to everything tonight.

Yeah, I think one thing I would say to that is it going back to our org chart conversation and this idea of strategic planning, I do think one of the one of the changes this will result in is is a an ability to to really kind of dive into that and and I I think you're right. I think that the last eight years have seen significant um growth and projects and and big ideas that have some have come to fruition. And I do think taking a step back and looking at what we're able to accomplish with the resources that we have is really important. So I look forward to kind of diving into that work. Thanks for bringing that up.

And some of the projects I saw listed are DOT. So in other words, a roundabout at the end of grade road and highway 92, that's a DOT project. That's not a city of Lake Stevens projects. So some of the projects in there aren't specific. I mean, they're on the table. They're not dated, but this is a 20-year plan, correct? And so the ones in that were highlighted, yellow, yellow or green. Yellow is done. Green is within the next six years. So, it's a lot of information, but it's not everything that's going to be done immediately, nor is it all necessarily going to be Lake Stevens, correct? Is that Did I read that correctly? Yes, you did.

Clerk Chelen.

Yes. Okay. I'm going to do this in four minutes here. Uh, looking ahead at some council agenda items. Um, again, moment in time tonight. Things are always changing. Um, I'm always making notes on this spreadsheet. Angie, I know you're going to be virtual next week. Kim, you're going to be leading the meeting. Got a police department annual report. Uh two closed record uh public hearings, the way it stands right now. Uh we've got a department report on the 36th Street Bridge. Uh we've got a Frontier Heights rebid. Uh that's just a note for me to talk about council agendas and also potentially an executive session on some litigation review. And that is next week's meeting, the 28th. And I feel like I know what you're gonna ask me.

Um, okay. Yeah. So, unfor, as I mentioned last week, I have some questions and concerns about our currently pending finance director position, mainly the salary. Um, I've express expressed an interest in council discussing that. Um, I've heard I've had some comments back from Jean about how, you know, that the best way to handle that would be to make it part of a larger policy discussion related to budget. However, because that has a unique clock to it, the last thing I want is for someone to get hired into a new director position and then we start talking about how much they're being paid. And so I do have some follow-up questions for the executive branch that I hope to address in the coming week. But um pending how those go, I I would like to note that I would want to okay

tentatively probably uh have a discussion on that on the 28th, which I believe is the day that the the first day that applications are supposed to be reviewed before an offer is extended. Okay. I actually thought you were going to ask me about ebikes, but anyway. Oh, yeah. Well, too. Sure. Let's do ebikes now. Uh uh yeah, I definitely suggest you follow up with Jean uh tomorrow um about your concerns. I according to your council procedures, you need two people, two council members to agree to put that on the agenda. Um so just keep that in mind. But I will make a motion that day if I feel it's warranted after my follow-up discussions, but just noting that.

Okay. Um and then looking ahead, uh we're going to cancel May 5th workshop, uh due to a lot of several of you being in DC that night. So, no meeting on that night. And then looking ahead on the 12th, um we got a 91st construction contract award. Uh 2025 budget amendment ordinance. Um council procedures update. Yes, that's still misspelled. I'm sorry about that. Um also securing um somebody to come in and do some training with you guys on on budget and financing so you don't overfill or not. Yeah.

Yeah. Um and then may possibly a road club agreement, but that has been pending uh for a few weeks now. So just looking ahead um a little further, May 19th, we've got a few uh presentations slated for that night for that workshop. Um May 26th, we were just talking about that meeting um having potentially the budget amendment ordinance. Um we've got an ILA and then Christy just talked about her um the public hearing on the comp plan amendments. And then I was just starting to look out in June. I sent you all an email. Um, number one, I just wanted to address the farmers market on Tuesday nights. We are going to plan on still having council in this room. Um, they will there will be activity going on around this building and in Hartford Hall and we'll evaluate it the first couple times to see if noise is an issue. But, uh, they will wrap up by 8 or 7

7. And if we start at 6:00, you know, hopefully. But more of a concern to me just given that people are coming from their jobs and usually get here right around 6. Parking. Are we able to reserve city hall parking? Yeah, that's we're going to work with public works to actually have that marked off for staff to be able to park as well as for council for those meetings. Thank you. And again, I kind of track everything here. Um, council me appreciate you letting me know a couple of meetings that you'd be absent at. I'm always just looking to make sure we have a quorum. And then um just take note of the summer break dates. Uh July 21st right now is we're planning on being the last meeting before the break. We'll take 6 weeks and come back or no 5 weeks and come back on August 25th. We are at 8:25.

Yep. Perfect. Can I mention the 23rd, June 23rd, some of us are going to be gone at um in Spokane also to note and I plan to log in and be virtual, but Okay. Thank you. We have a meeting uh motion motion to adjurnn.