Community Engagement Commission - Regular Meeting

CALLING TO ORDER THE JULY MEETING OF THE CITY OF LIBERTY LAKE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT COMMISSION ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 22ND AT 6 P.M. WE'LL BEGIN WITH A ROLL CALL. ROBIN BECKDALE.

HERE.

BILL NORMAN PRESENT. BRITTANY SITTEN. LORI MERKEL. HERE. RALPH KARLBERG, HERE. LEAH STUSSE, HERE. MARK SABA, HERE. THANK YOU. I ASSUME EVERYONE HAS HAD A CHANCE TO REVIEW THE AGENDA FOR TODAY'S MEETING. ANYTHING YOU WANT TO ADD OR DETRACT OR IS THERE A MOTION THAT WE ACCEPT THE AGENDA AS PRESENTED?

I MAKE A MOTION WE APPROVE THE AGENDA AS WRITTEN.

Thank you. Is there a second? Yes. Thank you, Carl. All in favor? Aye. You keeping up, David? I said Carl.

Carl, it's Ralph.

Yeah, no worries. Carl Ferg.

But he goes by Carl Ralph. I know who I call him.

That's right. I'm Bill North. Bob. It's Fergie.

Fergie. Excuse me, Ralph. No worries.

Okay, the agenda has been accepted as presented. And we all have... Oh, first of all, let's see. Are there public comments?

I make a motion that we approve the minutes of the last meeting.

Okay, thank you. Did I get ahead of myself? Yes, you did.

I make a motion that we approve the minutes of the last meeting.

I second. Thank you. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay, it's right here in front of me. I was just so eager to get to the City Hall updates and suggest that having all of us read them, perhaps we can just move on. Is there anything? Robin, did you have anything you wanted to add to those?

I'm in favor of doing that.

Yeah. I don't know that that means anything.

I did see stuff about the updated logo, and it is, I'm going to say, not really a refresh. It's a complete redesign. So, I mean, not that I hate it or anything, but I didn't watch the city council meeting last night. How was that perceived?

I will pass out the designs that came through GSI about a week ago. What did I? Visit Spokane.

Wow. It's no regret.

I think we received these. Actually, it was end of June, if I remember right. They were introduced to the city council last night. I think I heard universal general positive feedback from all members of the council there last evening. The process is Mark McEvoy announced yesterday that starting tomorrow, we will begin some public engagement on this, which you folks will be involved with, I think. We're gonna be opening up an online survey, getting some public feedback on these three initial concepts. And then I'm working to put together something for a farmer's market for this coming Saturday and then the following Saturday. And the timeline Mark had out was we will be doing public engagement on these designs through August 6th, which I think Mark, is that a Thursday? Is it two weeks exactly?

Yeah.

And then throughout the rest of August, we'll be doing some incorporation of the revisions into the final dress, primarily our designer from, remind me on the CEO's name again. No, the CEO. OK. And then the current plan is if everything follows through, City Council would approve something sometime during a September meeting. The online survey, like I said, going up tomorrow, I'll have something set up with a QR code for Farmer's Market on hopefully Saturday. Large enlargements of all three of the designs there. Probably something where you could hand out little slips of paper so people can take the QR code home or go to the URL of the city's homepage, which we'll have that on our news rotation tomorrow if things all work out well.

What else do we need to say on this? At the farmers market, are we focusing on just residents of Liberty Lake? Okay.

Not necessarily. The community meeting that was held in April and the prior survey to gather feedback were all open invitation. So we would consider this to be as well.

OK. We are mentioning in the introduction of the survey that the concepts you see here, and Mark and Robin were both part of this, came from ideas that came from that community meeting. And then the designer kind of took the baton of that and saw the three concepts you see there. I think one of those had some ideas that came from the mayor, if I recall right. So you saw a little bit of her handprint on that. What else do we need to say about this? In the introduction, we will be letting the public know. I think this is important. Mark McEvoy said the same thing to me this afternoon. We want the public to know that these designs are being done at no extra charge to the city because we've been seeing comments online for a couple months. concerns about the supposed extravagant expense of this thing. As it stands now, the design cost is $0.00.

But we do have a partnership with Visit Spokane, correct? Yes. And they get money from the lodging tax? Okay. Because people are like, that's not free.

It's part of the contract we already have with them for you. It is an expenditure. Yeah.

But it comes through a lodging tax, so it's not necessarily out of the taxpayer's pocket.

We're not spending thousands of dollars for a design.

They get something out of the general budget and the lodging tax.

So isn't it just a contract, though, that's a fixed fee?

So to clarify, the pass-through dollars that go to Visit Spokane would go to Visit Spokane whether they were doing this work or not. This work they volunteered to do because of our partnership. So it is absolutely accurate to say that this work is being done at zero cost to the city. Yeah.

Okay, thank you. So David, you're going to get more interaction if you do the dot thing on this one. It's a farmer's market and events.

Yeah, do the grid like that. Okay, yeah.

Yeah, we could like to see if the questions would lend itself to that.

Which one do you like best? Which one do you think best? Put a dot on each one.

I mean, yeah, that's an easy way to do it. We have a few more detailed questions on each one, though.

But yeah, for option one, two, and three, yeah, that would work. Yeah, we're fine. That's how I'm going to be on Saturday.

And we already have the dots. Do we? I think so. I think so.

If not, we can do goats.

Yeah.

For sure.

We have enough codes. Is there more discussion about that?

I think, Mark, have we covered everything to cover that for the moment on the survey and the logos?

As always, the commission can deliberate on this and ask as many questions as you feel Like you need to ask. I don't have any additional information to add to that.

And, of course, I would encourage everybody here to take the survey and have your friends, relatives, associates do the same so we get everybody's input. We're good.

Okay. And we're going to be, we have farmer's market updates a little later on the agenda if we want to address this in conjunction, which we certainly can. All right, so my understanding is that Jen dial is on line to. Okay. Should we just move on, David?

I would defer until we can hopefully get her on.

Okay. The second item on the agenda was just to keep alive the discussion that we began in earnest last month. I'm sorry about purposes responsibilities opportunities focus for the Community engagement Commission. I left with the assignment to quote to collaborate with with Leah to set up some meetings with the people from the library with parks and art arts with Planning. Yes. And I didn't make any progress on that this month, but we will have a report when we meet in August. So nothing new there in terms of conversations with our colleagues to set up something that is a little bit more tangible in terms of

So I think Lori was not here the last two meetings, correct? Correct. Okay. So we just kind of had a conversation of like, what is it that we're doing here? And what is our purpose?

And have we been too passive?

Yeah. So just kind of trying to find some more opportunities where we can lend our help and impact. Because I think a lot, a lot of the, I don't think the council really knows what to do with us.

Do we have a mission statement?

We do.

It's in the ordinance. Okay. When I read those, I don't recall it off the top of my head.

What you see there is a statement that is quite clear about what they expect from us. And to craft that into a mission statement would be perhaps another step. But it does suggest that there is interest in the generation of intelligence from the community. And a question that we have suggested that we ask ourselves is what might that look like? What could we do to stir up sediment, to generate questions that might in their turn generate questions among people with whom we connect? And what that might look like is open for discussion. generate information that would be enlightening, hopefully actionable, and at the very least discussionable for city boards and particularly the city council.

I think what you're going to bring back, what you bring back to us from the two other commissions in the library will be more of a opportunity for us to have an open dialogue once you discuss with them to find out their interests in utilizing our commission.

Yes. I agree with that, Mark.

There might not be any interest, but at least we know.

But I think there is with those groups. I think we all implicitly feel that. We don't know.

They've come and presented to us and talked to us about the unveiling of the new art and invited us to serve on the sidewalk commission. I think there is interest there.

I just don't know. There's just a limited interest.

We're going to have that discussion and we'll pursue it until we arrive at some understanding one way or the other.

Yeah. So I was listening to the commission meeting last night.

Yes.

And the parks, of course, they wanted... They're talking about a new play facility for... Pavilion. Pavilion Park, yes. And they were very interested in getting additional input on that. But I think they've got their own kind of mechanism of doing that because they've got some experts in that area. That's true. And there may be a rule for us. There was the weed thing that came up too, which was quite an active discussion. Well, so there's things around.

The pavilion park thing is something you would be involved with, and we are trying to get the woman online who would initiate that discussion with you. We're getting there, though.

Okay. So the next item on the agenda, can we move on?

Yes. Yes.

is from Ralph, and it's a discussion on the citizen review of the municipal code on micromobility vehicles.

Yeah. Well, I wrote this memo in anticipation that there would be some issues come up. But as far as I know, there aren't any.

I got to tell you, Ralph, I got a golf cart out there, okay?

Yeah.

I drive to streets every day when everyone sees me, okay? I got to tell you, since that town hall we had and when the LLPD has focused up until July and now since then, as far as focusing on education, I don't see hardly any scooters.

Yeah.

Today was the first day I saw two e-bikes.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm telling you, it worked.

It changed.

It changed. My fear was, and I made this comment at the last meeting, school's out now. The bottom's going to fall out. It never has.

No.

So I think LLPD, we got to take our hats off to them. I think they went out and they educated the people and the people listened.

Yeah.

They're working on it. Yeah. And I still see some nonsense. Like I saw kids on bikes at the skate park on the ramps. But I'm seeing a lot less silly activity on motorized vehicles.

That's right. I saw a kid get hit on an electric scooter, get hit by a car. Oh, I think that's the next thing that they also. And I know exactly what the guy did. He came to a stop. It was an honest to God accident because he was turning right. He looked left. The car, the scooter was on the sidewalk. The guy looked left. And then didn't look. So either looked right over the kid or didn't look again, but it threw him into the street. So I also think motorists need to be educated as well, because that's so easy to do. And then we are going to have to look quite smart.

I can't argue with that, Lori. There's a number of times I have people flipping me off because I crossed through a crosswalk with my golf cart. And they don't think that's right. Well, it is right because that's the law.

Yeah, no, it is going to take, I think, I'm with you, Leah, that the process was started really well, but both sides are going to be educated.

Since the town hall, there's been state law that has been enacted. And so they had to go back and kind of refine and revise the guidance that they put out. So I would say the only thing that, and correct me if I'm wrong, that City of Liberty Lake is more stringent on than state law is the scooters. Is that correct?

Scooters and e-bikes. Scooter, yeah.

E-bikes.

Well, e-bikes, they don't.

The motorcycle.

The motorcycle. That one that doesn't have the pedals. You're right, Ralph. Now that has nothing to do, the state has nothing to do with that one.

They're not allowed to be driven on the city because they're not licensed and they're not licensed. It's motorcycled.

Right. Well, and there's a parent provision in there that is the parents are ultimately, I don't know exactly how to say it, but there's a, I've probably never been used, but it's, it is a way to hold the parents liable for the action. Oh, yeah.

It's either for scooter or golf cart, but not for bikes. Yes, I think you're right. It's not for all of them.

I think it's for scooters mostly, yes. Okay, we good? Yeah. Okay, thank you.

I'll just add to that. We do have a podcast coming up on this topic next week. The original plan for this was with the LLPD, the original plan on this was we were going to talk more about e-scooters and what the rules are and safety rules. And because of the very situation you folks are addressing, it was more just like an update and where are we now? And they're largely saying the same thing you're observing.

It's better.

Yeah. And kudos to the parents for listening and following.

In fact, probably the kids that were there at the meeting, too. There was a lot of kids at that meeting.

In fact, they even addressed people crossing the crosswalks with their golf carts.

Okay. Thank you, David. Whatever. Do we have Jen? Do we have Jen? Okay, it's my understanding that Jen is online now, so we're going to turn time over to her to discuss engagement in the Sidewalk Master Plan. Jen?

Yeah, good evening, Commissioners. My name is Jen Dial, and I'm excited to talk to you all tonight about the Sidewalk Master Plan and the kind of next phase of its work and engagement. Can you guys all hear me okay? yeah yeah okay great i'm if it works for you i'm going to try and share my screen and share with you a presentation, I have. Okay, are you all able to see that. yeah wonderful okay so just real quick of what I want to share with you, I want to just give everyone a quick update on what the sidewalk master plan project was. where it's at and kind of what the next steps are and how that relates to engagement and hopefully coordination and work with all of you. So over the course of the last year, the city, along with SCJ Alliance, undertook kind of a review of all of the sidewalks throughout the city, doing an inventory, looking at condition and assessment and where there might be some distress points and potential needs for repair for safety and that kind of thing. This is just a checklist showing you roughly what's happened in the last six months or so. There was a focus group that did a lot of work with the consultant team to prioritize all the various distress points that were found and score those and rank those and give some recommendations where most of the priorities for repair needed to take place. So all of that concluded and a report was presented to city council in May. And the council would now like to take that information forward to the community to educate the community about those findings and to get some feedback on the best way forward to pay for essentially these repairs. The way the current city ordinance is written is that it's the homeowner's responsibility to fix some of this. As you can imagine, you know, it can be expensive and not everyone necessarily understands that it's their responsibility or even agrees that it's their responsibility. So before the city takes to doing enforcement on all of this, they really want to take a step back, educate the community on the findings and get some feedback on what is the best path forward for a sustainable way to afford all of these repairs that feels fair and equitable across all the residents in the city. This is just kind of highlighting what some of the process was and finding those distress points. There was over almost 8,000 city sidewalk segments that were evaluated. Each of those were monitored for the type of distress that they might have shown, whether that was from a tree or just, you know, surface issues. And they gave each of those a score and kind of prioritized. I'll show you on the next slide. There's a map. And so this shows you the locations throughout the city. Green indicates a minor distress point, yellow is moderate, and the red are severe. And each of those were then prioritized with the focus group using a different set of methodology to determine of those that were highest priority, which are I guess, among the prioritized distress points, which should the city tackle first in terms of enforcement? I'm sharing all of this with you because if we move forward kind of collaboratively to engage the community about this, I just want everybody to have context of sort of what the process was and what the outcomes were in case the community has questions about the project itself. These are some of the initial engagement materials that were made as part of the project. So on the left here in the blue, there's three potential repair approaches that were proposed. One would be property owner led in terms of paying for the repair, which is how the current code is written. One would be city led, And the third model is sort of a hybrid of those where it's a partnership between the city with some subsidy to the property owner. There's also some potential funding approaches that were defined in this engagement item here, where there's additional approaches for if the city wanted to lead some of the payment program, these are some avenues that the city could explore to help produce that funding. So thinking about all of those materials and that messaging and kind of the intent of what we're looking for in terms of feedback, we've put together a public engagement scope. And that's really to, like I've said, inform the residents about what the current ordinance says, what property owner responsibilities are for sidewalk repair and street tree maintenance, to understand some of the limitations of that and what that means, share the current sidewalk conditions, explain the planning process to date, how the focus group was involved, shared maps and some of those results, and then present some potential repair and funding mechanisms, as I showed you on that last slide. And then lastly, gather feedback on the participants, essentially their willingness to pay and a timeline for moving forward with implementation. So some of the engagement materials we propose to use for that is developing a fact sheet, using some of these maps as an outreach tool to communicate where the findings were located throughout the city, using these particular materials here to show the public what some of the options are, whether that's property owner-led, city-led, or this partnership model. And then we would also do an online survey to get more feedback from the broader community. In addition, we'll be doing a presentation on the findings that come out of the engagement process with city council and with the planning commission, and of course, coming back to all of you as well. And the public would have an opportunity to come and give public comment at those meetings. In terms of in-person events, we would like to do three kind of pop-up events throughout the community, starting sometime in early August and concluding by the end of September. City Council would really like to get a final recommendation on this project to include in their kind of budget cycle before the end of this year. So we were proposing a farmer's market sometime in the early part of August. a second community pop-up. And last night I was at the city council meeting and someone mentioned that on the 22nd of August, there's a concert in the park. I thought that might be a nice pop-up opportunity to reach a lot of residents from the city. And then the third event would be another farmer's market later in September. We will also include a community survey that I'm sure David will help us get out to the broader public through your social media channels and on the city's website. And the questions on the survey will mirror those that we're using in the engagement materials that we use at the pop-up events so that we can collect all of that data together and have just, you know, collate all of those responses and have some good statistics for the city to consider. And then we'll take all of that information, come back to you all, the planning commission and the city council and have some draft recommendations for the city to consider on next steps for updating the ordinance as it relates to enforcing the sidewalk maintenance. I think that was most of my slides. I really just wanted to kind of give you guys a sense of what this project is and see how you'd like to be involved. I don't know, David, if you want to ask the group more specifically about that, but we have, there's the two farmers markets and then there's another pop-up. So if anyone's interested in participating or helping to host any of that, we certainly, SCJ will be providing all of the materials. We'll do engagement boards. We just wanted to welcome you all to be a part of the process in terms of engaging with the public directly.

Go ahead.

A question that occurred to me, Jen, when with regard to, so farmer's market I get, and I think that's great. I wondered if the community pop-up idea could be expanded to include maybe at least two. So, for example, it would be great if we did one over in Orchard Park on the other side of the freeway and in the River District. And then if we did one here, I'm not sure how that would look. People, Mark might have a better idea, but... Maybe, I think at least two would be nice. So it would feel like we were reaching out more to neighborhoods.

My idea is, this has got town hall written all over it. Yeah. I think a town hall would be more beneficial than pop-ups. Because there's a lot of information you just gave us, Jen, that we want to cover. And at the, at the farmer's market, it's everything's quick, boom, boom, boom. And we don't have the time. We wouldn't have the time to go through everything you just gave us in order to educate the people on this sidewalk project that we're looking at. Yeah. That's where I think a town hall would be the best.

I agree.

And it has to be well advertised, which would be through David and his group. And, Let's set a date and let's do it.

I mean, we had a standing room only at the micromobility.

That's right.

So if it's something that people are aware of and engage with, then I think a town hall is a good idea.

Yep.

I think so, too.

I would do it sooner versus later because the letters just came to the homeowners this last week. And so for a lot of people, it might be fresh on their minds. So if it's something that could be done sooner versus later.

So that letter that we got from the HOA, that's what you're... And talked about the... I was surprised about the trees in that letter.

the the 13 and a half feet that you can only you can only yeah that's been around for years that's been around for years for years violations of that oh yeah you tell me about it you go down mission on the sidewalk side and you can walk underneath trees and hit them you're right it doesn't get it doesn't get you know far taken did you want to comment the the only uh sort of

I would share with the group just to help maybe inform your decision making is part of the scope that Jen mentioned and briefed you about earlier was intended through those three items that she mentioned to provide sort of a training the trainer kind of atmosphere so that then you all could take that approach and copy and paste it anywhere you wanted to. So you could do your own pop-ups, you could do your own individual meetings with neighborhood groups. That would be how the commission could be a force multiplier in this process. So that was part of the intention for crafting the scope the way that it was crafted. That does not mean you could not also use one of those events to plan and execute a town hall. But the purpose of sort of having SCJ involved for those three was to provide kind of a training environment. So then the commission could go out and multiply that.

And that still leaves the town hall on the table. Sure does. Are we able to get, I assume, that Jen can send the slide deck to David and you can distribute it to us?

Yes, absolutely.

Jen, will you have information on what the projected costs over the next, you know, 5 to 10 years would be if they went the, you know, taxation route or something like that towards making these repairs? Do we have that information?

I don't think we fully collected all of that information yet. I know just in terms of repair costs alone, even if it was property led, I think Ben with Public Works was working on that. Is that right, Mark?

Yes. And Leah, in fact, the capital facilities plan process that's happening right now has some estimates built into it.

I looked through the spreadsheet and I didn't really see anything about that, but I might not be looking in the right place.

You want to know what the cost was? For me, I had it done.

Like four grand?

Yep. Yeah. And that wasn't replacing any concrete. That was just lowering the sidewalk down.

And removing it.

Removing the tree and replacing all my side. Yep. It's not cheap. And putting in a barrier.

And that was how many years ago, Mike?

Four.

So prices have gone up.

It's probably gone up since then. So it isn't cheap.

Jen, this is David. Is the presentation you just gave the same one you sent me like a week ago?

Yes. Okay.

You all will have it tonight.

Thanks, David.

Thanks, Jen.

Thank you, everyone. I'll just continue to work with David and Amy and Mark and take your feedback and we'll continue to keep you updated on what next steps are. So thank you for the feedback.

Jen, are you going to be interacting with staff regarding the possibility of a town hall?

I will certainly bring that recommendation from the Commission forward to Mark and Amy and see how they'd like to proceed.

Okay. Jen, thank you very much.

Thank you all.

All right. The next item on our agenda has to do with the community meeting for the 2027 budget. Dave Kuntz, Was mark we you're going to talk to us about that sure um.

Dave Kuntz, Do you have any questions or do you just want me to kind of brief you what the concept is, and then you can go from there.

Dave Kuntz, yeah what what our notes say is recommended dates and I don't know if the discussion is limited to scheduling or.

No. And so what we are proposing to do, several weeks ago, we briefed the council that we were opening our 2027 budget engagement. And so what that has looked like over the last several years is... Certainly online engagement, but then also limited opportunities through the farmer's market primarily to get some additional feedback. And then some spot opportunities in other places. And we thought this year, similar to kind of what you talked about with the success of the micromobility town hall, although we would not bill this as a town hall, It was just sort of similar to the logo community meeting where it's an open invitation. If you want to talk about the 2027 budget, learn more about what some of the constraints are going into 2027, learn what some of the revenue opportunities are going into 2027 and how those would apply to the different programs and the core services that the city delivers. We would want you to come out and you know, we would obviously have some information that we'd be sharing, but there would be an opportunity for just kind of getting really specific for your interest area by asking questions. And so one of the things that I would want to get input from the commission on is, you know, and this comes up all the time, and this is when, Bill, when you and I met a couple of months ago, this is kind of the foundation of that conversation in that we're trying to have conversations with people that they want to have on their terms versus conversations that we think ought to be had. And so from a budget perspective, what are those topics? What are people concerned about? What can we help them better understand about the budget? Helping us to maybe laymanize some of that approach so that it's more understandable and less jargony and less technical would be helpful, certainly, but then also recommending dates and other logistical things would be helpful as well because we really can't go past, I'll say, August 21st which is a Friday and I'm not recommending it be on a Friday, but we really can't go past that because information that we would get beyond that really wouldn't, we wouldn't be able to incorporate that into the budget development. So we really need the information by no later than August 21st. And so from a date perspective, that's kind of the farthest out that we would go. But this is more of a fireside chat kind of environment versus a town hall environment. if anyone remembers what a... Yeah, I wasn't born then.

Jimmy Carter did have one.

Did he? Okay.

Okay. So I have a question that's, I don't know if it's related or not, but the dog, the police dog, I was amazed at $27,000. how does that work? How does it get to be $27,000?

So I think you're thinking of $270,000. I think $270,000. You're right.

Yeah. And so this is one of those things, right?

If you're sitting at home going, I have a dog... How is that possible? So that includes all kinds of administrative overhead. That includes all of the liability insurance that goes with having an animal of that kind that does what he does. That includes the handler. We have a... What does the CBA stand for? Collective bargaining agreement with the police guild where the canine handler... specifically earns a premium for having that specialty. And then when overtime kicks in, it's at a super premium rate. And so all of those things go into that program cost, both direct and indirect costs, you know, portions of payroll, portions of IT, portions of fleet maintenance, all of those things, like they are spread across every other program.

Now, why aren't those things brought out to the public?

Because it's hard to do that in a social media post.

Okay.

And that's sort of the purpose of having the community meeting is getting down to a level below what you can effectively do in a post, right?

Yeah, but it's so sad that social media just jumps all over and then it just blows it up. And it makes it look so bad. And I mean, it isn't. And that's the sad thing, you know?

Yeah.

And in some ways... You can't educate the people more.

Sure. And in some ways, you know, you have to expect the... You take the good with the bad when you put information out on it. But I agree with you. It's unfortunate that it took the turn that it did. However... It creates an opportunity, I think, for us to be able to help clarify and provide some additional information that helps make the whole process a little bit more understandable. And that's really what we're endeavoring to do.

It's too bad we have to play defense rather than offense. Like we do that all the time. Yeah, I know.

There was one little promotional advantage in what occurred here a couple of weeks ago. Does everybody know what we're talking about, by the way? Or talk back Tuesday? Back Tuesday, right? We had this first couple of questions was identify 10 items that you would want to protect from any kind of a budget cut were that to happen. I think we had 39 items listed there or something like that. And then week two, we just flipped the question, which 10 out of the same group would you be open to cutting if there were cutbacks? And canine was above 50%. So a couple of weeks later, we decided to get more information. And so that question that week specifically asked the public, basically, should we get rid of the canine program? and we indicated how much cost it was. And then that's where the social media came in and some maybe not entirely clear understanding of what went on. We heard more clarification just now. But the positive thing on this to me was we got more engagement from the public because people got interested in, are you getting rid of the canine program? And we had an uptick within the next day of more people responding to that question and to the question from two weeks before. So people got engaged because a concern got raised, which is a good thing to get them engaged, and they got involved with other questions that we had asked during the previous weeks.

So the question I think we're being asked tonight is what can we do to contribute to this between now and August 21st?

Or do you want us to help you put together a meeting? What is the...

So what I'm asking of you specifically is I'm not expecting you to write a script that then the staff would follow at the meeting. I'm asking you to help maybe inform the staff from the community's perspective what may be some opportunities to have a more meaningful conversation about not only the budget itself, but the programs that the budget funds, the services that we're delivering. And how can we make this whole thing, this whole conversation more understandable for the average person in town so that they have an opportunity to engage with us, to tell us what their concerns are about the upcoming 2027 budget? And one of the things that we're attempting to signal with some of these questions is unlike some previous year's budgets, this budget is going to be more constrained than ordinarily we would see. There's a lot of reasons for that. And again, going back to the question that Mark Saba raised earlier, It's hard in, you know, even a website article that's longer than a social media post. It's hard to get into the details of why that is in a economical way that the average person would understand in a short period of time. Sure, we could sit here over days and weeks and get you all up to speed on what that is, but nobody has time for that. And so how do we condense that conversation? information into a most meaningful format and get the average person in a position where they have a better understanding of how their city is run and what the financial position is of the government that provides those services.

I have a question. So when you put the budget together, I mean, normally it's a list of accounts and spending, which is absolutely useless. in trying to think about different programs. So is there somehow broken down? I mean, I should be familiar with it, but I am not at all. I've never looked at it. But is it broken down into programs so that we can see what the different things are? I mean, I know the library cost, I don't know, $300,000 or $400,000, maybe $500,000. I don't know what it is. But it's a big number. And what is it? I don't know. Storytime. Is storytime, I mean, I know it's very popular, but is storytime a cost thing? I don't know.

So the way that to answer your original, the initial question, the answer is yes. So we have several years ago adopted something called priority based budgeting.

Okay.

Which allows us to what, which requires us to define all of our services into programs.

Okay.

Right. And so there's a lot of flexibility there. And so we have, chosen to try to define our programs in a more broad sense so that they don't become so granular that they lose meaning. So for example, we have a program called the public library, which encompasses all of the services that you would potentially get if you went into the library. That's one example where they're more combined at a larger level. With our Public Safety Department, the police, we have multiple programs. We have one called Crime Prevention. We have one called Call Response. We have one called Investigations. We have one called Evidence and Procedures. or collections. And so all of those are designed to specifically allow for, again, the average person to see what investment goes into that program that provides these services. And then most importantly, what return am I getting on that investment? So as an example, for the crime prevention program, We tell you on a quarterly basis when we publish our dashboard what the crime rate is, and we expect to see it going trending down. We tell you what the community satisfaction results are for the questions that talk about, do you feel safe? Do you feel safe at night? Do you feel safe in the parks? Do you feel safe at the commercial zones? Do you feel safe in your house? Those kinds of things. And so all of those are, we consider return on the investment. for the crime prevention program. And you then apply that concept to every other program that we have in the city. And that's how we approach the budget. But I guarantee you, if I went out and asked 10 people how the budget is put together, none of them would know that answer, right? And so that's kind of what we're talking about. How do we make this more understandable and more relatable to the average person who's paying taxes into the coffer that's paying for all of these services?

Can that be expressed meaningfully at a high level on a single page? Could you put all of the the programs with their costs and perceived benefits or performance on a page, a grid?

Programs with cost, yes. Once we get into results, that would be difficult to contain to a single page.

Could you put it, could you just express, could there be an indicator which would tell you if we feel like we're getting benefit for the investment, which would lead you. And if you wanted more, you could go to a footnote or an appendix somewhere.

Yes. Yeah. And we would call that the dashboard, which is what we publish on the employee innovation. Yeah. Yes.

Is it good to consider short little informational videos.

Oh, boy. David, where are we with that? This is something that we've been talking about for months.

We haven't publicly talked about this yet, have we?

Publicly, I don't know. But this is exactly the kind of feedback that we're looking for because we've had the conversation that... This is not something that you sit somebody down and you have their undivided attention for the six hours that it requires to make you a semi-expert, right? We need digestible chunks of information that I can consume at my own pace on my own time. And so that is an initiative that we would like to carry forward. And so that's something that David is presently contemplating so that we can put that out at some point in the future. Yeah, that is absolutely the direction that we need to go.

Do you want me to add to that or not? Please. I think Bill is the only one here who's been, no, Robin, member of the City Academy. Robin, you've been through that, like year one. No, your husband was. So rather than have that be a multi-week thing where people are attending in person for an hour, hour and a half, The idea is to present that online in short chunks. And the first pilot filming happened this afternoon. Basically, I had Jandy, while she's still available to do so for a while, basically narrate some of her earlier presentations. We're going to chunk that out into separate mini videos about presentations about the library, which not only is useful from a city academy standpoint, but These would be great videos to just have in the library's website for people to learn more about the library and how it operates and who the people are. What is a librarian? What do you need to do to be a librarian? What's the history of the library? That's in there too. Volumes of books they check out, new products they're putting out recently. Yeah, Jandy did a good job in covering a lot of stuff in about 45 minutes this afternoon, and that will be among the initial phase of online City Academy videos you'll be seeing. But there's more to it. There's more to it than that.

Yes, but back to the question that Robin asked, I think that

You would break them out in, I call them, it's a planner term, I call it vignettes.

Yes, that's exactly the term that we've used.

Okay, so.

So it's like you've been in those meetings with us.

Right. And so you would break these out in small digestible pieces and have maybe part one, two, three, and four, or something of that nature. But they're broken out in what I call vignettes.

Yeah, absolutely. That's the same exact concept that I think will help us make some inroads with this information. But Bill, I don't want to give too much away because I know that you still have this on a future agenda at some point to flesh more out. But kind of the concept that Bill and I talked about when we met a while back is was, and I'm not trying to define exactly what it is for you, because that's, you need to do that for yourselves, but one of the possible results of that kind of pivot would be, it would be fantastic if we could get you all equipped, and I don't want to presume that you want to become a budget expert, right? Or- Right, but it would be fantastic if you had enough... knowledge of the information to when you were talking with somebody, say at the farmer's market, you could speak in the language of priority-based budgeting to talk with them in the programmatic language so that you could guide them to exactly where they needed to go to find out how much investment is being made. If someone asked you a question about We used the canine example earlier. How much are we investing in the canine program? It would be great if anyone sitting around the dais could take someone and show them that information and then talk them through how to find the information about seeing the return on that investment for any program, any service, anything that the city was doing, you could relate it back to that investment, return on investment relationship, because that really is what people are wanting to know. What is my money buying me? And can you do it Better, faster, cheaper.

How do you think about this? We've got library. We've got public, the police and all they do. And we have parks. And we have public roads and everything that Ben does, whatever that is. And what else?

Administration, IT.

Sure.

I mean, there's so many facets. Participating in the capital facilities planning, I think, was super, super helpful in helping me understand some of the budgeting and prioritization that the city does. What I think part of what we need to address is the community attitude that I don't know. I feel like they feel we should do more with less or the city should do more with less and operate on a skeleton crew and a bare bones budget. And you guys should just barely be paid a living wage because you're public servants. I don't know. I feel like that's sometimes the sentiment with people when it comes to anything government. And I don't know that that's something we can fix because they feel anything that the government spends is, you know, Yeah, their money and they it's a waste if it's not staying in their pocket.

Well, one of the one of the great. Sort of tenants of of this system that we've put in place is that there is a direct alignment between the budget and the strategic plan. And so the strategic plan is the community's priorities. And so on an annual basis, as you well know, we do a community satisfaction survey. And so what the budget is doing is planning out the resource allocation to service provision for the future year. Then we execute that. And then the community satisfaction survey is looking backwards and asking people, do you feel like you got what you paid for? And so when you look at it, always from those two perspectives, they then come back and they have a direct relationship. And so, Leah, to help answer that question, it becomes less about, well, do you think Mark makes too much or do you think we have too many police officers or whatever it would be? It's here are the priorities that the community has said are most important. And here's how the city is investing to make sure that those priorities are delivered. And here's how the return on investments are saying they're delivering that. Now let's talk about it in that context, right? So do you want to see more of this priority delivered. And that's where you have the conversations like I'm talking about where we can sit there all day and have a great conversation about, do you think we should be providing more of this, less of this, the same of this? Is this even important for us to be doing anymore? Tell us what you think. And those are the kinds of conversations that I would like to be having from an engagement perspective about the budget versus saying stuff like, do you think we're spending too much on postage? Because from a line item perspective, that's really all you can do.

So a couple of things are suggested to me here. One, the opportunity for us to become more knowledgeable. And that could be as simple as devoting a meeting to that, as we did some version of the City Academy on the topic. But someone, I mean... I think we could become conversant at a level that you're suggesting in an evening, couldn't we?

I believe so. Yeah, I believe so. But I think beyond that, it's more about just living in that environment.

Well, so then that's the next thing. And we've brushed up against the subject. And I just think there's more for us to... to develop here and it's more than the farmers market but can we not as a group figure out a way to um in a programmatic way spread our tentacles out a little bit either as a group or individually through hoas through um I don't know what it is, but I think there's something there that we could become expert in and we could be asked a question and the next week we could have answers from creditable answers from a variety of people.

So you want us to become influencers for the city?

You know, I bridle a little bit at that. And I agree that social media is a landmine, but that might be part of the answer. I just would like to see us figure out a way to sort of get that bit in our teeth and do something with it so that we don't, so that our only answer is not Well, we'll do a mailing. And I like mailings. But I think we're capable of generating a network and part of it might be stable, part of it might be ad hoc, but generating a network of contact or outreach that allows us to stimulate those conversations and with this knowledge, see what questions were being asked. I think that's what Mark wants to know from us. What are people asking you? And when you talk with them about this, what do they say? And it has to be more than showing up for the blanket farmer's market.

Well, what about partner pop-ups, if you will? Yeah. So two of us, if there's a way to promote, whether we get a room at the library meeting space or Barlow's patio, wherever, here. and advertise it from this time to this time if you have questions to discuss with the CEC regarding the budget. And if there's a way to visually, I mean, I'm just, like I break out in a rash when you talk to me about numbers. So if I can understand it, like that's what I'm thinking is how, so is there a way to visually say, I'm just brainstorming with, if I know, okay, these are the major general categories, right? Like you were talking about Mark, here's, the money spent here's where people have said or what do you think do you want for your return on your investment coming back to the priorities if we had i don't want to say something scripted but we don't i don't think you want people just coming in and throwing up you know or maybe we do i don't know but if we had a way to have informal formal discussion with people where, and maybe not singularly, but if there's a couple of us here, if we've been given the right information.

Again, I don't want to, and please don't take it as me trying to define what your mission is, because that's your territory. But I believe the concept that we just talked about with respect to the SCJ doing the train the trainer kind of thing for the Sidewalk Master Plan is just sort of a template for everything else. If we can get you in a position to be able to go out and be a force multiplier, you just sort of naturally pick up these other things. And the budget really is, it's less about finances and more about how the city is providing the core services that the residents have prioritized. That's really what the conversation is about. And if you're satisfied with what you're getting for what you're paying, and if you're not, how do we use that information to make changes that get us back into a better alignment? That's really what we're talking about. Those are the conversations that I think you all can help us get plugged into much more effectively than we can in a once a year public hearing in September when the budget is on its track to adoption. By then it's way too late and way too little.

All right. I thought the discussion on weeds was fascinating last night at the council meeting because there are so there was kind of a pet peeve you know about the weeds and somebody wants something done about it and uh then of course the discussion gets in what do you do is it manpower is it chemicals well some people like chemicals some people don't like chemicals it goes on and on and on and it's hard to get to resolution on that stuff so i mean one of the things if we start asking people what they want. We don't want to get into their pet peeves or that kind of thing, I don't think. We want to somehow be able to say in a broad sense, would you invest more here, invest more there, or something like that, rather than get into a You know, pissing me off.

But if you had, if we had a presentation, because I can't come in and do what you did, no matter how much I researched or read, I need something from city council to say, here's the basic, here, you got to put it in layman's terms for me. Sure. So then I can, okay, wrap my head around it, have a presentation that we give in these little mini discussions or fireside chats. that then we can say, okay, the ultimate question is, are you getting a return on your investment for the budget? Or, I mean, as a community member, I want to be able to vent maybe some of my pet peeves. No, here's where I'd like to see more, which then that's what we, I'm hearing you say, we could bring back to you, saying that people are feeling pretty good about the return on investments, or no, people are upset about the weeds and want more money spent on weed control.

Well, in fact, that's the question on today's Talk Back Tuesday, isn't it?

Well, it sounds like, Laura, you're saying you don't want to just know what people are saying. You want to be able to help inform them and provide a resource.

Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm hearing. Am I hearing you wrong?

No, I think you're hearing me exactly right. I don't think it looks the same for every conversation that you may potentially have. But I think what I'm saying and what the... sort of the tone of the meeting that Bill and I had a while ago was trying to find this opportunity for you guys to become force multipliers to get out in the community and prompt the conversations that the residents want to have versus the conversations that we want to have.

Right.

Yeah.

But, but you need to start somewhere. Yes. So I would need something to say.

Absolutely.

I mean, and I'm happy to be, you know, once I educate myself and to get help, but to, if there's a way, you know, however we communicate with the community that from 5 to 6 or 5 to 6.30, albeit, you know, two of us will be at XYZ Place for people who want to come and share their thoughts or hear the status of the budget as we work towards that for 2027. That would be, I think, a good use of my time as part of this commission. But I would need, like, something different.

Absolutely. And that would be our role is to help get you positioned so that you feel confident in doing that. Because again, we're asking you to help us by being force multipliers.

So maybe two workable takeaways that we could actually do between now and next month. You and I could collaborate for... Perhaps it's just devoting more time in next month's meeting to the kind of training that you're talking about.

We don't have time. I mean, you do this by August 21st, right? Yeah. But if we wanted to have to get with the community and with school starting and everything, I mean, we're... This is a pretty, we don't have, I don't think it's out of time.

With the amount of time that we have, what is at this moment a reasonable option? I think that's what we need to be more looking at. Can I make a suggestion?

Yeah, wide open, Mark, go for it.

So if I could make this suggestion, and let's say just for giggles that we say that the community meeting that we've talked about is going to be on August the 20th. And then, so sometime between now and then, if you could schedule a special meeting where we could go through and provide that baseline, call it training, for you on the budget, like we've talked about, and then you guys come to the August 20th meeting as sort of co-hosts, if you want to call it that, and then that becomes kind of a live fire meeting. exercise to put your training into use. And then from there, you're going out and potentially prompting conversations.

But you need it by August 21st, right?

Right. So he's saying that we should set a special meeting so we can get educated. And then set a meeting for the public that we can attend and help with.

On the 20th.

That was just a potential date, yes.

So if you need something by the 21st, we've got to act faster than that.

So let me clarify. I'm not suggesting that when you go out and you're going to be doing something to provide us feedback for this year's budget submission, I'm saying that this is a year round kind of process because we're talking about budget development right now, but the conversation about return on investment happens anywhere, anytime, with anybody, right? So what I'm suggesting is to prepare for the community meeting to get the feedback that we're going to use to incorporate into the budget development. If we can get you versed in the language between now and then, and then you participate in that meeting as sort of, like I mentioned, co-host as sort of a final prep training opportunity, but in a live fire arena kind of thing. And then from there, you're ready to go out and have these conversations that then can prompt feedback throughout the rest of the year. The budget management process is never ending. It's continuous.

So how do we

Should we make a motion to create a special meeting?

Yeah. I was going to say maybe we should discuss when that special meeting would work for everyone. And how much time do you think we should prepare to devote on an evening?

I would say no more than two hours.

All right.

That's a digestible session, I think. Yeah, I agree.

And Mark, before a motion is made, do you want to inform the group what days you are available for that?

Well, I'm out of the office Friday, next Monday, Tuesday. And then I'll be in Wenatchee, I believe it is, August 11th and 12th.

August 10th, 11th, and 12th, you said.

10th, 11th, and 12th. But other than that, I'll make the time.

Well, like July 29th, August 3rd, August 5th.

Yeah, July 29th is good. At least is everybody's schedule. Does that look doable?

I'm gone the 4th through the 11th. So July 29th would be the best for me.

What day of the week is that?

It's Wednesday.

Is there another commission? Is that too soon?

No.

No.

Is there anybody else?

If anything, the planning commission will be having meetings scheduled through 6 o'clock. if they're meeting that day.

I don't think they meet. Don't they meet?

Can we do the 29th?

29th sounds good. Yeah, 29th. That's for me. Yeah.

OK. I make a motion that we schedule a special meeting for the Community Engagement Commission to learn about budget development with Mark McEvoy next week, July 29th. 6 PM? I second.

Can we do it earlier? Can we do it earlier?

5 PM? Yeah, can we do it 5 or 4? Yeah, whatever.

I can be four.

I'm easy. I'd have to look at my work schedule. I think it's possible. I got a new phone today, and I don't have my work calendar synced on here. Just get sick for an hour.

Do we know whether planning commission is scheduled?

Would 430 work for you?

I think 430 would work fine. I know I would be done by 430.

Yeah.

Let's do 430 then. 430 would work for me. I make a motion that we set a special meeting next Wednesday, July 29th at 4.30 PM to meet with Mark McAvoy and learn about budget development. Second. Yeah.

I assume that's here.

Well, I was just going to say, if Planning Commission is here, Mark, can't we just meet in the conference room?

Yes.

Yeah. So we can still meet.

We can squeeze you all in there.

Yeah. Are we going to fishbowl? Awesome.

Is there a second to the vote?

I second.

All in favor? Aye. Good. 430.

A week from today.

And are you going to be okay with ignorant questions from somebody who struggles with...

There are no ignorant questions.

Oh, you might be surprised, Mike.

This is literally the best news that I've had in like six months. Because there aren't... I mean, this is... i'm about to blast off i'm so excited so um this this is great gets you excited yeah there are no ignorant bring them all because we want we want to get you to a place where you you have a working understanding because i think what you'll find is that very quickly you'll start to see the blocks go into place and start to make sense looks like we're clear on next wednesday okay if if we want to do some homework

Yeah, before the meeting.

Yeah.

Where would be the best place to go for that?

So a couple of suggestions, uh, on the city's website, we have, uh, both our budget. Um, so I would go to the 2026 adopted budget.

Okay.

Because in there you will see, um, and it's in the back and one of the appendixes, um, appendices um the pro what's called the program inventory okay and so there'll be a sheet for each of our programs and it'll show how much the invest the dollar investment is and how many ftes are associated with it and some other information and so that'll give you a good kind of background into what the program definitions are and what they look like then the other thing i would do is on the i think it's called the strategic plan page. On city council? On the city. So you would go to the city council's page and then there's a link called strategic plan. And I would look at what is called the performance dashboard because that is the piece that contains the return on investment that we are reporting to the public on a quarterly basis.

It's okay. David, can you just send that in?

I'll do that. Yeah, David will send the links. Okay, good. Oh, thank you. The links, please. Okay.

And And then would you all please, and beyond next week, I mean, next week has another purpose, but be thinking, I'd like to develop the idea that, about what outreach can look like. What can we create that?

Like Lori's idea? Yes. Yes. Okay.

Yes. What kinds of things can we engage in that, that, then take what we're going to learn on other topics too but get us out so that we are uh hearing what the community is saying and collecting information questions and so forth and and i think lori's suggestion is a wonderful place to start okay good special meeting we can help you figure out a time to set the fireside chat sure yeah will that meeting have to be recorded since it's not a

The community meeting?

The special meeting.

Special meeting. From a recording perspective, we can answer that question. We'll need to notice it to comply with open meeting rules. But recording, we'll have to.

Which meeting are we talking about?

Next one. Special meeting that was voted on. The question is whether it's required to be recorded.

My guess is yes, I will look into that.

So we'll confirm that. We have the ability.

We'll be in this room anyway. All right.

Good. Thank you, Mark. Great. Thank you all. So we've got three more items on our agenda. I think item F, can I jump around with impunity?

Maybe we can table and continue as many. Which ones?

You can make motions to table.

All right. Let me simply say that the CEC annual report, we saw it. We liked it. Yeah. We approved that. It's ready.

Yeah, we approved that last meeting.

Nothing to do on that. Okay. Nothing. Good. Farmer's market updates. Is there anything we really need to hear about that?

Yeah, we do have something to talk about that. I'm the only one working the farmer's market this week. I mean, I'm the only one working the farmer's market this week. I was wondering, I'm only there until 11 o'clock, because I've got US golf I volunteer for. We've got a tournament that afternoon. So I won't be able to be there after 11 o'clock. The only other person that's going to be there is STA, which is a guest.

So I was wondering if there was someone, one of you, could come in at 11 o'clock for a couple hours to- Supposed to be at the rotary booth next door, but I'm not sure if I can do it because of my asthma.

Yeah.

I can be there on Saturday.

Can you, Bill?

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So I have something to add to that. So I'm sort of like you with this smoke and excessive smoke. It can almost send me into an asthma type situation.

You've done it so much. Anyway, it's my turn.

Yeah, don't worry about it, Robin.

We're good. I was scheduled to be there and I got there and there were four other people in the booth and I had kind of double looked myself. I didn't care if I leave and they didn't. It was summer and Mayor Chris and There was two from the library. There's enough. Yeah.

That's enough right there.

Or two others when I was there. And I didn't wait for anybody else. At 11, I had to leave. So I left. And Sue and Chris both said, that's fine. We got it. They all wanted to talk to Chris anyway.

You got to realize we're volunteers here. So we can come and go as we please, just as long as we let people know.

The chair entertains a motion that we table item E for our next meeting, development of a marketing calendar. This, again, is part of our conversation about how we can extend ourselves.

I make a motion that we remove item 6E to next month's meeting.

All right. Was there a discussion around? Well, no, I was just... I mean, it seems like we're doing this. I mean, it's kind of overwhelmed by, we've got a couple things here on the calendar. We've got this sidewalk thing, and we've got the budget thing that seems like it's, I don't know what's exactly in this marketing calendar.

I think we need more information from these upcoming items, including the sidewalk thing and the in a meeting before we can kind of develop what we want to do as far as like an ongoing outreach plan over the coming year.

The only real thing we have, as I see it right now, for the farmers market that requires a goal right now is the logo and getting whatever the dots are for the logo.

And this next meeting especially may automatically and inherently address

address um letter e yeah sure so is there a second to that motion a second ralph okay whatever who's second i did laurie did laurie did all in favor aye aye any opposed um would we be ready to do the Count the dot thing for these three logo iterations.

We will talk about that tomorrow. We want to have some engagement on this on Saturday because that's only going to be up for like two weeks.

I think that idea always is, it certainly is graphic and people enjoy doing it.

I agree. It's very, you get more dots, you'll get more input and everything. And then if you take it to the library. then people will definitely. All right.

And just by way of information, the current setup of the survey is not really set up on which of these three would you vote on. It's on what are some things that we could tell the designers that we may want to modify. So it kind of goes like a next step down.

Sure. Oh, OK. So I still like that idea.

Is it open format? Or is it colors? Is it blah, blah, blah? Is it something they could put dots next to? Like, what would you change about these? Or what do you feel? I thought we were voting on one of the three.

It could be, well, we're still discussing that, actually.

Oh, well, maybe if we're putting the cart before the horse, we're going to do this at the farmer's market.

I don't think you're putting the cart before the horse. I think it's... It's valuable feedback to get people's preference because that's the question.

That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

That's the first question we're asking them on the survey. Absolutely. Anything downstream of that from a farmer's market interaction, if somebody is going to tell you, well, I like this one, but I would prefer to see this. We can take that. Right. But getting feedback. people's thoughts on what they prefer, I think is valuable information to have.

Perfect. Okay. I just wanted to know what to do and I was there.

I would add to that with the understanding of we don't, we would want the public to not know that if they see like 80% are going for option number two, and if they think that this is a vote that, okay, this one wins, well, there could be some modifications. What we're seeing is not necessarily the final design of all three.

So are we leaving the chart and the dots in your hand for preparation?

I think so.

If you listed it as draft one, what would be your first choice maybe for draft one? If you somehow identified it as these are drafts. That would work. Where are we at with first choice for a draft, recognizing that maybe changes. We just don't.

I would suggest, because I've done this a few times. Oh, God, Abby, you created the times. Take a photo after you get through, because your information could get sort of temporarily relocated.

I'll do that on Saturday. Cool. Do we need a motion to adjourn? I always forget.

No, just do it.

Okay, meeting is adjourned.