City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. Good evening. Thank you for being here. A packed room of people. Thank you for engaging in the work of our city. We are glad to hear from you. Before I go to the city clerk, I want to say something for awareness. There are large numbers of speakers signed up for the public hearing this evening, and I may ask Council consider reducing the speaking time, because we want to hear from all of you, from three minutes to two minutes. So I wanted to give the courtesy to adjust your speaking time from three minutes to two minutes. And again, the reason is we want to provide opportunity to as many people as possible to address the council. So just a heads up, I may do that after I know exactly how many people do we have for the public hearing on the budget. On that note, city clerk, are you ready for the roll call?

Thank you. Yes, I am. Mayor Malakoutian?

Here.

Deputy Mayor Hamilton?

Here.

Council Member Bhargava?

Here.

Council Member Breyer?

Here.

Council Member Newenhouse? Here. Council Member Robinson? Here. And Council Member Suma Dwaria?

Here.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor, would you please lead us in the flag salute?

Please stand if you're able. I pledge allegiance.

Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? I move to approve the agenda. Second. It has been moved by Deputy Mayor and seconded by Councilor Newhouse. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? The motion passes. City Clerk, are there any speakers signed up to provide the communication this evening?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. This evening there are 11 pre-registered speakers for oral comms. So before I start calling names, I'll just mention that the council does appreciate members of the public engaging and contributing their perspectives and supports everyone's right to express themselves. However, comments shared during oral communications are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or values of the council or the city. So a few of the rules for tonight, the total time for oral communications is for a period of not more than 30 minutes and all topics must relate to City of Bellevue government. People speaking to items on tonight's agenda will be called first and then people, if time remains, people speaking to items not on the agenda will be called. In both of those categories, the presiding officer is authorized to give preference to those who have not spoken to counsel within the last 60 days or who will be speaking to items that will come in front of the counsel within the next 60 days. Each speaker will be allowed to speak up to three minutes, and only a total of three speakers will be allowed to speak to any one side of a particular topic. And then a final reminder that in compliance with Washington state campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during elections, no speaker may support or oppose a ballot measure or support or oppose a candidate for election. And that includes one's own campaign. People beginning to speak on these topics will be asked to stop. And then, as the mayor has already mentioned, there is a public hearing on tonight's agenda. That's item number 9A. If you did sign up for oral communications and you indicated you were speaking on the budget, we have automatically moved you to the budget public hearing list. And just a reminder that we can't hear any comments during oral comms on the public hearing topic. With that, I will call our first speaker, who's Mary Jane Joganszinski. Looks like she is joining us online. Mr. can you hear me?

Sorry, it took me a moment to unmute. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Deputy Mayor, council members and staff. I'll just take a minute. I am speaking in support of Consent Agenda Item 8D, the Kelly TOD site, affordable housing with bridge housing. I wanted to thank the council and city for this opportunity and really want to commend your staff for a very thorough review and working with them. And with that, thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Matt Larson.

Welcome.

Councilmembers, on behalf of Puget Sound Energy, I want to extend our sincere gratitude for the work, time, and resources that the city invested in the grid capacity study over the past year. The insights gained through this future capacity analysis will help us now focus on the cost-effective solutions that will support economic development, population growth, and clean energy adoption. It is also worth noting that the collaborative way in which the city engaged PSE helped establish relationships between numerous subject matter experts in the city and their corresponding peers at PSE. This strengthened partnership will undoubtedly prove to serve the community well as we strive to meet the challenges ahead. We are very pleased with the results of this study and look forward to our continued collaboration. Again, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Peggy Jackson.

Welcome.

Let's see if I can get this.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, we can.

Mr. Mayor and council members, my name is Peggy Jackson, and I live across from the church entrance on 128th Avenue Southeast. We're talking about Newport Presbyterian Church. I support safe parking programs, and my comments... tonight focus on whether this site is appropriate for the city's safe parking pilot program i first moved to this neighborhood in 1956 and i have lived in or observed this area for most of my life i care deeply about this location for its peaceful natural setting and also the long tradition of community stewardship that helped shape it. For many years, the church and neighborhood maintained a collaborative relationship built on trust, communication, and shared responsibility. During a period of increased burglary concerns in 2013, the church hosted crime prevention meetings at the request of the neighborhood. In 2015 and 16, residents were asked to help observe and report concerns when the church experienced vandalism and other incidents on the property. Since that time, the nature of that relationship has changed. While participant privacy is appropriately respected, there is now less direct communication and fewer opportunities for neighborhood coordination regarding activity on the site. As a result, expectations around shared stewardship, observation, and how concerns are addressed are less clearly defined. Personally, I have altered my walking routes to allow privacy for participants. For many neighbors, these changes reflect not only reduced use of the neighborhood's only green space, but also a gradual erosion of a longstanding community relationship that took decades to build. The relationship impacts are only part of the picture. The safe parking area is adjacent to priority lands and a wildlife corridor where environmental sensitivity is well established. Changes in activity and proximity may affect how this area is experienced over time by both people and wildlife. Equally important is whether the concerns raised through SEPA and public comments have been clearly addressed in a documented way. We have been told these concerns have been considered, but considered is not the same as documented analysis against established standards. Without that record, it is difficult to understand how environmental sensitivity, neighborhood use, and operational factors have been evaluated for this location. Good intentions do not eliminate the need for careful site selection, transparent analysis, and public accountability. I respectfully ask before any approval of this site a clear documented analysis be completed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Nikita Milnichenko.

Welcome.

Can you hear me well? Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Nikita Melnichenko and I'm a resident of the Vasa neighborhood. I'm here today to raise the issue of safety on 34th Street that affects the kids in our community every day. This isn't a new concern. Our neighbors have been raising this issue for a long time. In fact, there are many of them here in the room. If you can raise your hands, that would be nice. So I'm also here with my daughter today, Anna. If you can raise your hand. And I have two kids. So the issue is that they have to cross 34th Street two times every time they go to the bus and also back because they head down the street They cross the street, then they go along the other path, the other side, because the left side is overgrown, right? There is no sidewalk there. And it's actually cars are speeding by, and visibility quite poor in those spots they need to cross. So it's a dangerous situation for them. And the danger is even worse in the winter when a bus arrives at 7 a.m. It's dark outside, and it's very hard to see the kids cross by, right? And furthermore, the 34th Street becomes a connector between Westlake-St. Amish and Highway Ramp. So we see increased traffic over the last few years. And I also want to thank Council Member Claire, Value Traffic Safety Manager John Murphy, and Captain Rob Spengler from the Police Department as they walked this route with us. So they have seen the problems firsthand. They know exactly why we are worried because they saw these hazards that we and other neighbors experience every day. So right now we don't have basic things we need to keep kids safe. We need proper crosswalks, continuous sidewalks along the street and traffic calming measures such as road bumps and potentially speed cameras to ensure that drivers actually slow down there. and potentially maybe a bus stop sign as well. I know that they are not standard, but still. So as you look at the budget, I'm asking you to please prioritize funding the safety improvements on 34th Street. It's critical that we build this protection so our kids can get to a bus stop without being in danger. Thank you for your time and for everything you do for our safety. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Andrea Klein, who's joining us online. Ms. Klein, can you hear me?

Hello, my name is my name is Andrea and I am on the board at silver Glen cooperative housing. My community strongly supports ordinance 6927. I want to express our grat appreciation for the work done by Sarah Phillips, Emily Korn, numerous others in the city, Energy Smart Eastside, and Washington Department of Commerce in recognizing the importance of decarbonization and limiting the use of fossil fuels. Silver Glen is a green community where we work to limit our impact on the environment of our beautiful and only planet. We are also grateful that Bellevue City staff and the City Council understands the impact a heating up climate has on the health of older adults and how important the cooling and air filtering will be to our community. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Your next speaker is Matthew Rural.

Welcome.

Dr. Matthew Rill, June is Men's Mental Health Awareness Month. And in that context, let's talk a little bit about the city of Bellevue as an employer and suicide. Given the incidence of suicide in King County and the number of city employees, in the next 12 months, there's about a one in five chance the city manager is going to be dealing with a department where someone took their own life. That's one in five. How real and realistic is that number? Well, for men, they are 400 percent more likely to commit suicide than women. And Bellevue has three male dominated high risk for suicide occupations, police, fire and road crews. That's about a third of your employees. So that one in five number is probably a realistic number. In fact, for firefighters and for police officers, it's more likely they will die by suicide than in the line of duty. But here's something positive and actionable. September is Suicide Prevention Month. And on Sunday, September 22nd, at the Botanical Garden, the jewel of the city, there is a team-friendly suicide prevention walk hosted by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention called the Out of Darkness Walk. I recommend that the City Council sponsor a team, perhaps captained by Mayor Moe, and use that as a digital fulcrum in September, both internally and externally, to highlight suicide prevention. Three small reasons. It's minimal cost. It's a DEI activity. Suicide isn't strictly a male problem, obviously. 20% of suicides are females. And third, most importantly, you may potentially save the lives of one of your coworkers. But here is the bigger strategic question I think you should ask yourselves. Bellevue has a great brand and a strong digital platform. Is it okay for you to use that brand and platform to align yourself with vetted public health organizations, not just the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, but the King County Health Department and the Washington State Health Department, something you don't currently do, to potentially save the lives, not just of people in the community, but your own staff. And I think it is. So hopefully, Mo, you'll jump in and captain one of those walking teams. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Noriko Fujita.

Welcome.

I'd like to address my concern about the proposed safety parking program at Newport Presbyterian Church. I strongly oppose placing the program at this site due to the significant impact it would have on my quality of life, privacy, and sense of security. My property borders the entire north side of the church property. Because of that, I've experienced several issues that cause serious concerns. I've frequently opposed pets off leash, and they often defecated on my property. I'm left to clean up the mess myself. Participants have entered my property without permission while searching for their pets. One time, a cat entered my house and the owner came to my property. Trash has been thrown right next to my property. I've had to clean it up due to concerns about appearance, odors, and attracting pests and rodents. I've also heard loud arguments from the parking area. I reported these concerns to the church property manager before, but did not see corrective actions taken. I'm also worried about liability and safety issues. There's an easement between the church and my property that contains an uneven rocky pathway, and it is next to wetland areas. If a child participant became injured in this area, who would be responsible? I raised this concern with Pastor Kelly, but no clear answer was provided. Since the detailed management and safety plan has not yet been shared with the neighborhood, I wonder, what specific measures will be taken to prevent trespassing and protect the neighborhood private property and ensure safety of both parties? How will the increased noise and activity be managed? Greenwich Crest is home to many families, including seniors, who value the residential character of our neighborhood. The proposed expansion would significantly alter the long established peaceful environment that residents have enjoyed for many years. I'm also concerned about the impacts on traffic circulation and emergency vehicle access, especially on Sundays. when the church already has increased activity. The cumulative effects of additional vehicles, program-related activity, and existing congestion will negatively impact the safety and well-being of our community. I feel residents should be provided with a clear management plan, safety protocols, traffic mitigation measures, and reasonable assurances that neighboring properties and the character of the community will be protected. I sincerely hope that solutions can be found that serve both safe parking participants and our neighborhood community.

Thank you. The next speaker on the list is Richard Rosel.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor, Honourable Council Members. My name is Richard Rosal and I'm speaking on behalf of many residents of Greenwich Crest regarding the proposed relocation of the Safe Parking Pilot Programme from Lincoln Centre to Newport Presbyterian Church, which is located in the middle of our residential community. We appreciate the outreach meetings that were held. However, the residents left feeling that the decision had already been made and that our concerns were being recorded rather than generally considered. I would like to highlight two key concerns. First, Greenwich Crest has only one entrance and exit. On Sunday mornings, overflow parking from church services already caused vehicles to park both sides of the road. creating access challenges, potential delays for emergency responders. Relocating the safe parking program to this site could further increase those concerns. We were told that fire and transport staff would evaluate these issues, but the results of those evaluations has not been shared with the community. Second, the proposed site is directly adjacent to homes, priority wetlands, and known wildlife movement corridors. This is very different from the program's current location at Lincoln Center, which is a commercial site with clear boundaries and separation from residential properties. When residents asked why this site was selected, the primary explanation was that it's the only willing location to host the program. While willingness is important, it should not be a sole factor in determining whether the site is suitable. We recognize the value of safe parking program and support efforts to help families in need. However, successful implementation requires transparency, accountability, and careful site selection. If compatible location has not yet been identified, the relocation should be paused until one is found. More than 200 Greenwich Crest residents respectfully ask that our concerns be fully addressed before any relocation approved. We urge you, Mayor and Honorable Council Members, to carefully consider the safety, compatibility, and long-term impact of this proposal in our neighborhood. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you. That was our third and final speaker in opposition to the Safe Parking Pilot Program. The next speaker on our list is Joe Kunzler, who is joining us virtually. Hold on one second. Mr. Kunzler, can you hear me?

Thank you.

Joe Kunzler here.

I appreciate tonight being promoted to panelists. I hope that's the way we do things in the future. I have a request of this council. I want you to enforce your rules. I want you to make clear that when a certain troubled individual comes before you and hurls lies and mistruths about your mayor, that you stand up and say, that's not acceptable. We have to stand up for one another. we have to keep the promise of America. And regardless of whatever feelings we may have about Iran, it's safe to say that your mayor has nothing to do with the situation and he has everything to do with giving back to this great country. And I think it's important that those of us who want democracy for everyone demand civility as well, because quite frankly, it's up to us. We make America great, not politicians. We citizens have to keep the faith with everybody out there risking their lives right now to keep us safe. I want to quote to you a op-ed by Major Taylor Fema Hyster about America. He said that the promise given to me and the promise given to all of us is this, where you start doesn't determine where you end up. Whether you're born in Beverly Hills or the bottom of Berne Township, Pennsylvania, you get a shot at setting your course wherever you want to go. Where the wind comes from that fills your sails is up to you, end quote. I think it's important we treat each other with respect if we're gonna stand up for America and American values. And I also think it's important that the rules of this chamber be upheld. And with our 250th birthday coming up, I think it's a great thing that we have Americans in elected service who do not look like me, who do not sound like me, but who represent the full fabric of this great exceptional country. And I wanna conclude with this thought. I think Bellevue is a great community, especially because she has light rail and a diverse city council. And I hope you'll continue to commit to making the investments necessary and defend your commons. I want to thank you for your public service and wish you a safe evening. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker on the list is Pam Johnston, who is also joining us virtually. Ms. Johnston, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Okay, your time begins now.

Okay, so I would like to talk about the comprehensive plan. We thought that the comprehensive plan was done when you signed it in 2024, but it takes a lot of work to get it into the code. And I don't think that everyone realized how much work that was and that we're going through every single spot in the code and double checking all of our work. So one of the things is that we have a comp plan amendment and we're questioning why didn't we get this? What was the change conditions? Why were we doing this in the middle of other important things like HOMA? So it wants to use HOMA, but it was applied for before HOMA started. So it's like changing a little bit to make it fit for what's there. And I don't think that's right. No significant and public conditions is what we want. New state laws, they came in. Yes, we have to deal with that, but so does every other commercial, general commercial space. New infrastructures could be new capabilities that cause us to have more time, more things to deal with. New scientific facts, if somehow, You know, our cars were not breathing bad air over 520 onto the place where they want to put housing. Expiring leases, tenant turnover, market demand are not things that we are, change conditions. Now, I don't mind housing there at Evans Plaza. I think it would be a good thing, but I think it needs to be thought of in the context of the entire Braille Trails community and in the context of Braille Trails within the city. I can't see my time, so.

You have one minute remaining.

Okay, thank you. Brown Trails has significant amount of change happening at the north end, and we have significantly a change in residential density in the east end. But I think that one thing that I've been finding is that we don't understand far. Floor area ratio and how tall things are. So when it says it's gonna be 40 feet or 60 feet or 80 feet, people don't realize that that adds in with the density and it becomes really dense and we start having not a city in the park anymore. So I urge you to think about What are the things that Evans Plaza should be thinking about? Is this something that we should do right now before we do all the others, or should it be a part of everything else? And I urge you to take a look at it and think about it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The final speaker on our preregistered list is Alex Zimmerman.

Welcome.

I'm so sorry, guys.

It's complicated.

Yeah, my name Alex Zimmerman, and I want to speak about something what is, I think, absolutely critical. I think council here, everybody in mayor is a pure criminal. Here I give you example what is I mean. Mayor Robinson for three year cut my... or I go to consul speak and cut my statement for election. She did this because a candidate against her. By definition, in civilized country, it's a crime. She supposed to be in jail. It's number one, what as I explained to you. We cannot handle this because when you have a power and somebody have different opinion, you can cut him. This guy, Alex Zimmerman, cannot go inside and speak. It's a pure crime. It's number one. Number two, absolutely absurd what is we have right now a mayor who make sign a document with his not legal name. His name Moore is not legal. By state Washington law, by law in no... America, you know what this mean? When you sign official document by not legal name, it's a crime, it's a felony. And you, consul, very quiet. What does this mean? When you not report crime to somebody, you guilty too. It's a law. You understand what this means? So by definition, you're all criminal. He can change this law to more Muhammad. This is his official name. I don't understand why for 40 years he don't use this name. I'm an Avram. I'm a Jew. So where is the problem? Muhammad, Avram, who's different? Why he not use this? And you, consul, all criminal because you support this. You not report to police. I report to police twice about this. Zero reaction. You understand you cannot sign official document by not legal name. Where is a problem? Why he cannot use name Muhammad? Because he have Iranian citizenship. It's a joke. Guys, what has I explained to you? This Bellevue right now come to absolutely fascist county. And I can give you a dozen example what is you talking about. About sound transit, what is still $35 billion about. King Country Housing Authority, what is spend $100 million for thousands and thousands not legal immigrants who don't have a home. This document, you know what it means, it's against law and against federal law. Yes, so I'll examine low-income senior citizens and cannot find a housing. Discount. You understand what I'm talking? You're never talking about this. Look what we did with Bellevue. It's right now a plantation. It's the first plantation for more than 200 years in America. 120,000 people who come from jungle, you make plantation. You make money. We pay you $400 per hour. $400 per hour. We were Trump. We were New American Revolution. Stand up, slavery.

Mr. Zimmerman, your time has expired. Mayor, I will turn the floor back to you.

Great. Thank you, everyone who took the time to share comments this evening. You should be assured that we are listening and we follow up if and when necessary. Do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I move to approve the consent calendar.

Is there a second? Second.

Second.

It's been moved by Deputy Mayor and seconded by Councillor Brouillard. Any discussion? All those in favour say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? The motion passes. We do have a public hearing and before I go to our City Manager to introduce, do we know how many people signed up exactly? There are 34 people registered 34, so I would recommend that in order, as I mentioned at the earlier remarks to give the opportunity to everyone to share their comment with us, we. Limits the. three minutes remarks to two minutes. Is there a motion for that, please?

I move to suspend Section 8.C.1.D of Resolution Number 10544 and establish a speaking time limit of two minutes per person for the public hearing. Second.

It has been moved by Deputy Mayor and seconded by Council Member Newhouse. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Any oppose? The motion passes. Now every person has just two minutes. City Manager, please introduce the public hearings to us.

Thank you, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council. As we embark on the 2027-28 budget development process, I'm going to repeat a phrase from this morning, which is the state of the city is strong. We have a favorable position going into this, coming in with relatively stable total revenues. We have good reserves, and we have positive local economy. We do, however, face some challenges that are similar to other local governments. In particular, we have global, national, and state economic forces that are impacting our local city economy. And you will hear a little bit later from John Resha how that's resulting in decreasing the rate of growth of revenue within this area. At the same time, I want to highlight that the city of Bellevue has planned for our future long before most of us were in these seats. And the city has been pretty cautious about adding new cost drivers to the budget that create a bow wave of expenses. And that's what really has kept the city in a position to be able to support our core services and our basic services. while still allowing for some limited investments to help support the future, even in times when the economy dips a little. some of you have been part of our past budgets and you've had that experience of balancing the policy interests and careful long-term stewardship of city resources and we are definitely looking forward to doing that with all of you in this council for this upcoming biennium so tonight is one step in the budget process it's the first of three public hearings that will be held two more will occur in the fall staff will share some information tonight about the the work that will be done to engage the community and to continue to gather information from the community that will help inform the proposed budget that comes to you in September and then undoubtedly you will be gathering information as you meet with stakeholders as well over the summer and into the fall, and that will help inform your final decisions that you make on the budget in November. So with that, I would like to introduce John Resha, our Chief Financial Officer and Finance and Asset Management Director, Ray Fleshman, Financial Performance and Budget Manager, and then also joining tonight is Emily Inlow Hood, who is our Deputy Communications Officer. And with that, I'll turn it over.

And with that, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council Members, I'm going to hand straight to Emily in the interest of time and move us forward quickly.

Thank you, John, and thank you, Council Members, Mayor, Deputy Mayor. So tonight, thank you, Ray, for moving that forward. Tonight I'm going to talk about our coordinated approach that we are taking to the community engagement process. Sorry, this is our first time using the clicker. If we could go to the next slide, that would be great. Our goals for this year's budget process in terms of engagement are to really help the community understand the budget process and how they can influence those budget decisions. Also laying the groundwork for future budget cycles. So doing some process and relationship building in this cycle. Transportation staff, if we could go back a couple slides. Transportation staff are seeking to help people understand their needs of our transportation system and some specifics around revenue. And then we're also trying to help people understand what goes into the utility rates and inform on bill assistance resources. We'll be employing a variety of methods, including obviously the legislative process. Like tonight, there's public hearings and council meetings. All of those are listed on our website right now. So we've been talking both to you and to the public really since April. New this year is what we're calling a budget 101 campaign. So with the help of our new community engagement team, we've identified some new partners and avenues to get information about the process to the public and help them understand that process. We'll be working with a small group of community based organizations who've expressed some interest in helping out. On this process, they are going to help us to refine our materials, make sure they are understandable and resonate with our community. As you can imagine, budget is a very technical topic, and so they're going to help us make that more engaging and understandable. We'll be hosting an information session that's open to the entire public on sort of how the budget works on August 13th, so mark your calendars. And we will be doing some special outreach to folks like our neighborhood lists and other folks who are already engaged. And throughout this process, we'll be updating our website and sharing this information. There's also several information sessions that are scheduled. Our transportation department are going to be hosting two sessions in July. And then we're going to be hosting a session in September after you have seen the proposed budget to help tell the story and help folks understand this big technical document. So that'll be September 30th. Lots of feedback collection online. Ray's going to talk a little bit about the budget survey that we do every two years. We did that last fall. The results are now live. And we're going to present those to you in the next presentation. Our transportation department has a survey that's open right now. That will be open through the end of the summer. And there is a sort of a feedback form where we're collecting sort of general feedback. Our utilities department, they'll talk about this during their presentation. They did a customer service survey earlier in the year where they gathered a lot of great information that talked about the value of services and that went into some of their REIT decision making. And then community briefings. So these are presentations or conversations that we have. These are upon request, but we're open to having more. And I would just sort of do a call out to those watching from home or in the audience. Staff are happy to come to your neighborhood group, to your community group, talk to you about budget. So we'll have our contact information on the last slide. Finally, you're going to be seeing staff at lots of community events. We'll be tabling. We've already shown up to Pride on the Plaza and some places like community centers. You'll see us at the Farmer's Market, Family Forth, block parties, and the International Festival. That list will keep growing as opportunities emerge. Next slide, please. Supporting all of this are communications, so things like news releases and council roundups or social media. Next week, It's Your City, which gets mailed to every resident. There'll be a big spread about budget, including the transportation options that are being talked about this summer. I've already talked about the website and we have some videos. Next slide, please. And then we have the engagement timeline. And so the way to read this is that if it's green, that's the general budget process. If it's blue, that's utilities process. And yellow is April. So as you can see, we've been sort of talking to the community since last fall, and that will go through the end of the year. If it's got a little star next to it, that is a council touchpoint. And then the final slide there. So that's that website that I was mentioning. Those are the dates for those information sessions. And you can email us with any questions at fam at bellevuewa.gov. And then I'll send it over to Ray.

Thank you. Next slide, please. So in front of you, we have the timeline for the budget. We'll be using this kind of similar timeline on all of our communications with you, just to give you a centering of where we are in the process. Next slide, please. Back, please. So, I wanted to take a moment here to discuss some of the available forms of engagement that the public has during the public during the budget process. 1st of this website here that's linked is all of our. Things and processes that the public can engage with and look at along the way. Below that will be, as Emily said, coming back here for transportation study session on July 21st. We'll also have three public hearings, tonight being the first one, September 15th being the next one, and October 27th being the final one. We'll also have council budget deliberations starting September 15th when the budget is presented to you and ongoing through the end of the, or excuse me, ongoing to November 17th where hopefully we come to a resolution budget adoption. And finally, we have the email for the Council here. Next slide, please. And with that, I will turn it back over to you.

Thank you so much. Let's just open the public hearing. Do I have a motion to open the public hearing? I move to open the public hearing.

Second.

It has been moved by Deputy Mayor and seconded by Councilman Ewen House. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes. We are in the public hearing. City Clerk, please.

Thank you, Mayor. As I said earlier, we do have 34 pre-registered speakers. Before I start calling names, I'll just also mention that the Council did receive nine written comments that you all have now in your email related to the budget. So with that, I'll call our first speaker, who's Mariah Frost.

Good evening, Mayor Malacuti and Deputy Mayor Hamilton and council members.

My name is Maria Frost and I'm the Vice President of Government Affairs at Kemper Development Company. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about the city budget this evening. First, we ask the council fund the city's transportation master plan and smart intersection and technology upgrades, including additional capacity where possible to relieve significant bottlenecks without shifting traffic into neighborhoods. Second, Bellevue should stay focused on the regional corridors and highways that our long-term mobility and economic competitiveness rely on. I-405, I-90, State Route 520. Third, safety investments should be data-driven and targeted. As a mom and as a downtown employee, I share your goal of eliminating fatalities and serious injuries on our roads, most of which are caused by failure to yield and distraction. Addressing these behaviors requires a thoughtful scalpel approach, engineering targeted exactly where the data shows risk, rather than the blunt instrument of ideological urban street design. Implementing road diets or rechannelization, which should remain a last resort, penalizes the vast majority of our traveling public and pushes congestion to other parts of the city, which can create new hazards. Fortunately, Bellevue's engineers have advanced tools to improve safety and vehicle efficiency without degrading our transportation system. They should continue Building on dynamic real-time signal interventions, AI video analytics, and improved intersection geometry, the city should support these innovative efforts along with targeted traffic enforcement to curb the specific behaviors causing the vast majority of collisions. Please remain committed to this data-driven approach to ensure that proposed interventions actually solve the problem rather than making it worse. If additional funding is needed through a TBD, the city should present residents with a narrow, clearly defined project list and allow voters to decide. Just because neighboring cities impose TBD sales tax increases by a council vote doesn't mean Bellevue needs to do so as well. We can do better for our community and at the very least give them a voice in the decision. Thank you for your time and leadership.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker is Sarah Langton.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Malacutian, Deputy Mayor Hamilton, members of the Council, City Manager Carlson and staff. My name is Sarah Langton. I am with Langton Public Affairs and I'm here tonight wearing kind of a new hat and a new title, Executive Director of the Friends of the Grand Connection. And I am here on behalf of the Friends to thank you for your ongoing commitment to making the Grand Connection crossing happen. As a quick reminder, who are the Friends of the Grand Connection? We are a brand new nonprofit, which is new for us, in the state of Washington. We are a large coalition of over 60 stakeholders and organizations led by an 11-member executive committee. with two co-chairs, Pearl Long with Amazon and Patrick Bannon with the Bellevue Downtown Association, and with a 50-plus person steering committee. So we are a large group. We also have many organizations throughout Bellevue, the Eastside, and the region that are supporting our efforts to make this project happen. And our singular purpose is to help make the crossing We plan to help do that by providing advocacy for the project as well as raising funds to help pay for it, especially the user components like placemaking and parks and the art plan and other elements that are gonna make this crossing truly special, not just functional. For those in the audience, If you don't know what the Grand Connection Crossing is, it is a catalytic piece of infrastructure, a bike ped crossing, a dedicated bike ped crossing that will span nearly a half mile across 405, uniting from City Hall Plaza to East Trail, uniting downtown with the new Wilberton neighborhood. It will reshape how people move around the city, and it's going to be an amazing legacy transformative project for Bellevue. So thank you for your ongoing support.

The next speaker is Laura Pilkington.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and City Council. My name is Laura Pilkington. I'm a homeowner at Southeast 29th Court. And I came here tonight to request that the City Council include in its upcoming capital improvements budget funds for the pedestrian pathways on West Lake Sammamish Parkway. Specifically between Southeast 34th Street and Southeast 26th Street. I understand these have been in the planning stages for about 21 years and since 2005 when the original plan was approved, so we're hoping that these will finally get done. This stretch is very, very dangerous. There's a lot of high volume traffic. In my email to you, my email letter, I go through a lot of the safety issues in there, so I won't take up too much time with that. I'd like to take your... direct your attention to this exhibit 1A that came in from Gary Young and Sabina Yoshi. In particular, there's a stretch of road on Westlake's Sammamish Parkway between Southeast 29th Court and the Little Store. It's in a red, there's a little red line there. It's about a 150 foot section. It's not very big, but in that section, there's about maybe a two to three foot pathway You can call it a pathway, but part of it is the roadway itself, and it's extremely dangerous. I don't even walk that anymore because it's just too dangerous with cars going by you at 30 miles an hour that are about a foot from your person. And in particular, if I can point your attention to the email, I put a picture in there of what it looks like so that you can see the pathway.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Alice Meng.

Welcome. Thank you.

Good evening Mayor, Deputy Mayor, City Council and City staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. People for Climate Action Bellevue leadership very much appreciate the time that each of you has taken to individually meet with us so that we could share why we're requesting a significant boost in city spending on programs that would cut community-wide greenhouse gas emissions. In those meetings, we explained how the city must launch specific, highly impactful programs to accelerate a community-wide transition away from the burning of fossil fuels in existing buildings and in the transportation sector. Tonight, we'd like to remind you again how these critical programs will require many years to have their full emissions reduction impact. We have previously explained to you why programs that would decarbonize existing buildings will require over 20 years to have their full effect. That is why those specific programs must be launched during the next biennium budget cycle, which ends on December 31st of 2028. On that particular day, it will be just 21 years until the year 2050, which is the deadline by which you have all pledged to cut community-wide emissions by 95%. This is why we are saying that in the next biennium budget cycle, the city must allocate funding for the full ramping up of programs to decarbonize existing buildings. We estimate that that will require spending $4 million in 2027 and $7 million in 2028 as the lead up to the necessary spending of $9 million annually for at least 20 subsequent years. That $9 million in spending is less than 1% of the city's annual budget. That amount is necessary to maintain the critical emissions cutting programs that would achieve the 2050 emissions reduction pledge that you have made. We are counting on you to give city staff guidance and direction. That's why we elected you. So please honor your 2050 emissions reduction commitment by allocating $4 million in 2027 and $7 million in 2028 for programs to decarbonize existing buildings. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Next speaker is Diana Leo.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Malekoutian, Deputy Mayor Hamilton, and fellow council members. My name is Diana Leo, and I'm the VP of Government Affairs for the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce. And I'm speaking on behalf of the Bellevue Mobility Coalition, a broad alliance of businesses, employers, and community stakeholders committed to a safe and efficient transportation network. As you move into the 2027-2028 budget cycle, the BMC urges you to prioritize five areas. First, the transportation master plan. We strongly support the $500,000 appropriation requested by staff. Second, safety investments. We are fully committed to reducing fatalities and serious injuries, but the most effective path is data driven. We ask that safety expenditures be guided by corridor specific analysis and measurable outcomes, not blanket lane conversions on major arterials. Third, multimodal projects. Tie funding to specific identified projects wherever possible. The business community and residents deserve to know exactly what they're being asked to support. We submitted our high impact project list for your review. Fourth, failing intersections. Please fund engineering and feasibility studies at locations projected to fail by 2045. The city needs to design work done now to have projects ready for future CIP and TBD cycles. Fifth, intelligent transportation systems. In a built out city, optimizing our existing right of way is the smartest investment we can make. As autonomous vehicles and advanced technology reshape mobility, Bellevue should be leading, not catching up. We look forward to remaining a partner throughout this process. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Thank you. Cameron Barajas.

Welcome.

Hey, good afternoon City Council members, City Manager and City staff. I want to start with a reminder that People for Climate Action previously presented 12 critically needed City climate actions in the 52 page report that we shared with you last summer. And I'm here tonight to point out that while our People for Climate Action Bellevue leadership team is small in number, there are many people supporting our 1% for the climate action budget request. 14 organizations have a firm support for our request to have the city greatly boost its annual expenditures for the funding of the critical community wide emissions cutting programs that we recommend. Those 14 organizations supporting us in this climate action budget request are the Democratic Party organizations in state legislative districts, 41, 45 and 48. the League of Women Voters of Seattle King County, the Bellevue Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Indivisible Eastside, 350 Eastside, the Eastside Audubon Society, Sustainability Ambassadors, 300 Trees, the Earth and Climate Ministry at the East Shore Unitarian Church, the Orchard Gardens at Holy Cross, and the Greater People for Climate Action Coalition of 13 local city groups. In addition, please recall that we recently sent you a list of 143 individuals who have voiced their support for our 1% for climate action budget request. Also, tonight you might notice that there are a lot of folks here in the audience who are wearing these green bandanas as a show of support for our climate action budget request. Thank you for your attention to this 1% climate action budget request.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Gary Young.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council. My name is Gary Young. I'm the president of the Tokaniki Homeowners Association located at Southeast 29th Court, Bellevue. And that's where I reside for the past 34 years. And Laura briefly touched on our first issue. I submitted a letter. We had 1A, 1B, and 2. So we covered 1A and I would just add to 1A that if we could just have a little extra maintenance on that beautiful area that got cleared thanks to Mayor Robinson visiting us last year and adding some gravel and some bark or whatever. Moving to point number two, our request is concerning 1B, the yellow line depicted on the information. COVERS 34th STREET, SOUTHEAST 34th TO SOUTHEAST 26th LITTLE STORE, ROUGHLY A THIRD OF A MILE, THE WEST SIDE OF THAT AREA. 15 YEARS OF CREEP OF IVY AND VEGETATION HAS NARROWED THAT DOWN TO CONSTRICTING TO THREE OR FOUR FEET IN SOME AREAS, ESPECIALLY AT 34th. All we're asking is for a very small amount of money to be allocated in your budget planning to be able to just cut back this vegetation. Your staff is awesome, they're doing the best they can, but some additional funds need to be allocated to narrow it down, to widen it to back to the 10 feet. The pavement exists under that area. And third and final is let's just kick off the next stage of the West Lake Sammamish beautiful corridor We're falling behind Redmond, the city of Sammamish, all the others that have got that corridor done so cyclists can go all the way around the lake, all the linkages can happen. Right now what we're faced with is this segment that's just broken. So starting with our little area, it's highly used, it's not safe. My wife and I walk it every day. Let's kick that off if we could in the next one, two, three years to get going and I appreciate all your attention and thank you for running this city so well. All of you, your time and energy, we appreciate it very much.

Thank you. The next speaker is David Porter.

Welcome.

My name is Dave Porter, and I am a proud Bellevue resident. I think overall our city is run very well, and I appreciate that from you all. I've met a number of you through Peoples for Climate Action, my scarf, the Sierra Club, and my basic request today, there's lots of details and other folks will share with that, is a continued collaboration with the council with our groups. I'm a 30-year resident of Bellevue. I'm a small business owner here. I don't think I got another 30 years in me left to be around here, but I intend to retire and be here a long time. I think it's our responsibility to continue to provide the services and the infrastructure for our city. And that includes an environment that our kids can live with for a long period of time. We see it with forest issues, salmon issues. One thing I got to participate in part of the city is the Bellevue Naturalist Program. You're a graduate of that. And we see in our own parks, in our own environments, climate change. And we can lead. We lead in technology. We lead in many other areas. Let's lead in climate. We can do it. I believe our citizens want that from you all and from us. And so my request is continue to collaborate, treat it as a priority, and that includes the budget. So thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Mark Norellius.

I'd like you to notice my t-shirt as I approach.

Welcome.

Good evening. My name is Mark Norelius. I'm here tonight to speak about what I believe is one of the most important issues of our time, caring for the earth that is our home to our global community. I've always believed in the phrase, think globally, act locally. I've lived in Bellevue most of my life in the Bellevue area. The property where I grew up is now preserved as an Aurelius open space just a few blocks from Lake Sammamish. That open space, just a few blocks from where I now live, reminds me of Bellevue's long tradition of protecting the natural environment that makes such a wonderful place to live. In 2014, Bellevue committed to become near carbon neutral by 2050. I applaud that decision. As a member of East Shores Unitarian's Earth and Climate Action Ministry, I work with others who are committed to help our community meet that goal. I'm also a member of Citizens Climate Lobby, another great organization. I'm aware that city leadership has been informed by PCA that Bellevue is currently behind the timeline needed to achieve the 95% reduction that was committed to complete by 2050. If we are serious about meeting that commitment, we need to step forward and do what is necessary to catch up. That will require investment. It will require leadership. It will require action now, not later. Some people ask why I care so much about this issue. The answer is simple. It's that picture on my T-shirt. On Father's Day, my son and daughter-in-law gave me a T-shirt with a picture of my grandson. His name is Marvin. He calls me Farfar, which means father's father in Swedish. When I think of Marvin, I think about the kind of world we are choosing for him. I have to admit, I'm tearing up a bit right now. The decisions we make today will help determine whether he grows up in a clean air, healthy climate, and a future full of plausibility. So I ask you to join me in doing what Bellevue promised to do, support the investments, policies, and leadership necessary to get us back on track. Let's act now. It's time to do it now. For Marvin, for our children, and for every generation that follows, let's choose courage over delay and action over excuses.

Thank you.

This is our time. Let's make it count.

Our next speaker is Marilyn Myers.

Welcome.

So thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. My name is Marilyn Meyers. I've been a resident of Bellevue for the past 39 years, ever since my husband, an immigrant to this country, took a job at Microsoft. And we've raised two children to adulthood here in Bellevue. I worked as a high school teacher in the Bellevue School District, teaching contemporary world issues and American history until I retired about 22 years ago. So this evening, I'm representing 350 East Side. I'm very concerned about the growing threats that climate change has already wrought and which will continue to worsen until policy makers seriously commit to mitigating and preventing further damage. From more destructive forest fires, warming seas, species extinction, water shortages, we are well into a climate crisis. We wholeheartedly endorse the work that PCA, People for Climate Action, has done with King County cities to adopt stronger regulations and incentives that are climate related. I still believe in the vision of Bellevue as a city in a garden. I'm deeply grateful for light rail and all the other updated policies to promote tree, canopy, energy, smart east side and the like. And I applaud the city's commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2050. But we're not moving anywhere near fast enough to reach that goal. I urge you to budget the 39 million per year to fund decarbonization programs as proposed by PCA. Bellevue with its strong leadership and prosperous community can help lead regional change, Washington state change, by advancing such programs. We must do whatever we can collectively to mitigate the damage already done. And ensure a decent healthy future for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. So I urge you to do your part, take leadership by increasing the budget substantially for staffing and policies to meet our decarbonization goals. Thank you for your time and attention.

Thank you.

Thank you. Tracy Cookley.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council Members, and city staff, and members of the audience. My name is Tracy Cookley. I've been a resident here and a homeowner here for 20 years, I think. I live in the Eastgate area. I raised my son here with my husband. And I'm just here today. I want to speak on climate change, Can't believe how nervous I am so serious anyway. I know that the city has done some work toward preparing and meeting some of those goals. However, my understanding is that you've fallen far short. And that's surprising to me. I know that we have a lot of resources, both in terms of interested community members. I know that we have financial resources in the city. I know that there's outside resources available to pick some of that low hanging fruit for climate change mitigation strategy. The Energize Eastside program, I know that that was something that's been very successful, and yet it could be funded five-fold, right? I'm thinking that's not too difficult to do. I know people have taken advantage of that program to great success. I know that the city of Bellevue has pledged to decarbonize and meet the climate mitigation goal 95% by 2050. We've fallen far, far short so far. I know climate change is kind of a slow, steady drip. And once that feedback loop is closed, you don't have the possibility of going back in and creating change. And so even though it seems like you can postpone it, I guarantee you, you cannot. We will see very, very steep, steep costs, both financially and in human cost.

Thank you so much for hearing me out. The next speaker is Santa David.

Welcome.

Good evening. My name is Sana David and I am an incoming senior at Interlake High School. I'm a member of Sustainability Ambassadors and a co-chair of the Bellevue School District Sustainability Committee. However, today I am speaking as an individual. I've lived in Bellevue my whole life and I've spent a lot of that life staring through the same window. Through that window, I have watched my neighbors, pets, and the wildlife around my home struggle through periods of heavy wildfire smoke or intolerable summer heat. I have watched the gorgeous evergreen trees sway in strong winds. I have worried for the welfare of my friends when those winds cause damage to their homes. I have watched this brilliant city weather the impacts of climate change. That is why I am here today. I sincerely appreciate your commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 95% by 2050. I've attended several of the Sustainable Bellevue Plan events, and I admire the work you have already done to promote climate action. However, it is clear that Bellevue will not reach our goal if we continue our current trajectory. Climate change is only becoming more intense, and it is important that we act now. Throughout my life, I've had the privilege of exploring the wonderful world that exists outside my window here in Bellevue. I enjoy going on hikes, exploring new parks, and birdwatching in the early mornings. And many of my peers enjoy those same benefits that growing up in Bellevue provides. Additionally, as a young person in Bellevue who has led environmental clubs at the elementary school, middle school, and high school levels, I can confidently say that my generation cares deeply about climate change. We will face its future impacts. We will be the ones continuing your work in 24 years, and we need a strong foundation. The choices you make now will shape everything that Bellevue offers for future generations. So it is very important to us all that you make the right choice. That is the choice to dedicate substantial funding to the Sustainable Bellevue Plan, $9 million a year. And that is the choice to invest in our future. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Niall Singh.

Welcome.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Nihal, a resident of Lakemont, an Amazon employee, worked in sustainability for the past three years, speaking here as an individual today, speaking for climate funding. And I'm speaking because I'm concerned. I just want to give my two cents. I think I'll start by saying that climate change is something that we tend to separate ourselves from, both geographically and temporally. We imagine it as something happening somewhere else. or sometime in the future. But we don't need to look too far away or too far ahead. It's already close to home. We feel it in the wildfire smoke every summer. The hotter summer is the fact that many homes here were built without air conditioning, but increasingly need it now. The pressure on water and snowpack, the disappearing glaciers, the glacier area and Mount Rainier has decreased by over 40%. The rising costs, the risks to the future generations. This is a health issue, an economic issue, and a moral responsibility. Bellevue has committed to reducing emissions by 95% by 2050. We're only down 11% since 2011, while we should have been closer to 35% by now. We are falling behind. I want to talk about something that I think of as the triangle of inaction. There are three actors in this triangle. There's the government, there's the corporations, and there's the individuals, like the people in the audience today. Governments wait for individuals and businesses to change. Businesses wait for clearer policy and stronger consumer demand. The individuals feel that our choices are too small unless the government and corporations can also move. And in this triangle, everyone waits for someone else to act. But emissions do not wait. Smoke, heat, rising costs, climate instability, they do not wait. The Bellevue City Council today has the ability to break that stalemate. And that's why I support ramping up that climate funding to $5 million in 27, $7 million in 28, up to $9 million per year starting 29. That's less than 1% of the city budget. Can we give that 1% to the future generation? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Neil Bakshi.

Welcome.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak. My name is Neil Bakshi, and I'll be a freshman going to Interlake High School. I'm here to speak on behalf of the city, of the climate, and the city of Bellevue. I care about climate because the Earth is the only known planet in our universe to support life, and humans are slowly destroying it as we speak. I've worked towards sustainability by carpooling with friends to my school and my extracurricular classes. Before I dive in, I would like to say some thank yous. Thank you, City Council, for your work in the Sustainable Bellevue Plan. These plans are important to reach our goal of 95% carbon reduction by 2050. Thank you for implementing ways to reduce emissions from transportation and building. Energy Smart Eastside has also helped us move forward in reducing carbon emissions through heat pumps. Additionally, the mobility implementation plan has helped us choose transportation that is environmentally friendly. These programs help the environment. However, we need more heat pumps installed and we need more electric vehicles and forms of transportation easier for everyone to use. Having a greener environment is essential to me and my future generations. The city's plans and programs are a great start, but we need to do more if we want a thriving environment. If we grow these plans rapidly for heat pumps and EVs, not only will it have an important impact on global warming and carbon emissions, but it will also bring about lower costs due to efficiency. Please do as much as you can to provide funding to expand these programs. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you. Michael Lee.

Welcome.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Michael Lee, and I've lived in Bellevue and practiced medicine in this community for 30 years. You all remember the heat dome of 2021. I worked across the freeway in a brand new medical center. It got to 109 degrees and we had to close the operating rooms. When the air is too warm, bacteria grow and patients can get infected. We had to cancel hundreds of surgeries, all because it had never gotten that warm before. And the building couldn't handle it. Climate change causes weather we have never seen before. More people get sick. Just think of that the next time you have trouble breathing because of smoke or a house floods and turns moldy. The only way to fix it is for all of us to reduce greenhouse gases. I would like you to consider the heat dome as a bad medical problem, such as a heart attack. Fortunately, we survived it, although over 1,000 extra Washingtonians died, some in their beds because they just got so hot they had to lie down. The cost of a new medicine to prevent that next heart attack is expensive, but Bellevue can afford it if we prioritize it. The city has posted on its webpage that climate change is a serious issue. It's like we are really committed to getting healthier, and we have taken the cheap medicine, but we haven't spent the real money yet. If this was a heart attack, we would find the money. Are we going to ignore the problem to save that money, or just keep eating french fries? If we don't have the right investments now to dramatically reduce greenhouse gases, we'll all end up suffering for it, and our kids and our grandkids will suffer even more. I ask you all to please choose wisely.

Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Luke Lee.

Welcome.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Luke Lee. I'm a rising junior at Newport High School and I'm a member of the Sustainability Ambassadors, but today I'm speaking as an individual. Climate change is important to me because my generation will have to face its effects the longest. When I think about the future, I think about extreme weather, poor air quality, and hotter summers affecting schools, homes, and transportation in our community. That's why I think it's important to act now instead of waiting. First of all, I would like to give thanks to the City Council for the work you've already done through the Sustainable Bellevue Plan and for your support of programs that help reduce emissions. It is great to see Bellevue thinking about the future and investing in solutions. But as a student, one major part of my life is transportation, and transportation is one of the biggest sources of emissions in our atmosphere, and it impacts my daily life directly, along with many others. Most of us don't drive, so we rely on walking, biking, public transit or rides from our parents. If we make these options safer, more reliable and more convenient, then Bellevue will help students get around safer and reduce pollution as a result. I think the city should focus on transportation solutions like safer sidewalks and bike lanes, better bus service, and cleaner vehicles. These changes will lower emissions and make it easier for people to get to school and work without always needing a car. As young people, we'll be living with the results of these decisions even though we're not the ones making them. So I really appreciate the chance to speak tonight, and I urge the council, I urge that the council gives everything in its power to give funding for sustainability and the reduction of emissions in Bellevue. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker is Cord Olson.

Welcome.

Good evening, council. Good to see you all again. Good to see city staff, Diane. Thanks for the opportunity tonight. When you get to be as old as I am, you got a lot of memories stored in your head. My memories, and few include my grandparents' stories, as well as my parents' stories, go back almost 125 years to the start of the 20th century. These days in my senior years, I find myself thinking about the future and 125 years into the future. The kindergartners that I see going to school in my neighborhood will have grandchildren someday. And when you put the numbers to the calendar, those grandchildren, if they live to be my age, will be around in the year 2150. Now, that may seem like a long time away, but I don't think that's a very long time when you start talking to the kindergartners who start thinking about their future, and for even older kids than that. So I also wonder what the future means to those of us in the room tonight, and particularly you and city officials. When we reflect on the climate at the turn of the century, when today's kindergartners will probably still be around, and then their grandchildren in 2150 I wonder what that climate's going to be like. Will they have a good life like we are enjoying or something different? So what do you want to have as your legacy from these critical times? I hope you make the right decision on the budget. Have a good night.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker is Alexi Kahn.

Welcome.

I'm sorry. Hello, council members. My name is Alexei, and I live in Bellevue Crossroads. During the last election campaign, it was obvious that road safety is a huge pain point for many Bellevue residents, and I am one of those. I'm an adult, I have pretty high tolerance for risk, but I do not feel safe on Belgrade streets. And all parents I know, they chauffeur their kids around because they also don't think it's safe to walk or even like, God forbid, bike around in our city. So when Transportation Director Andrew Singelakis in one of the recent council meetings boldly said, and I quote, the whole thing of what we are doing is safety, I was, let's call it, unpleasantly surprised. He was a head of the Transportation Department since 2019, which means his tenure covering the whole duration of the Vision Zero program in our city And I'm sure you all know that the numbers for our city are trending up, and we set second record for fatal injuries or serious injuries in our city, while the state numbers and numbers for neighbor cities are going down. So because cities' own data shows that pedestrian cycles were only 5% of the collisions in Bellevue, but accounted for 49% of all fatal and serious injuries, I think knowing this, department cannot continue to prioritize car infrastructure while leaving such safety basics as new crosswalks and not even mention bike lanes to grant-based funding, which might happen or might not happen. I think something has to be changed here. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Jennifer Keller.

Welcome.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. My name is Jennifer Keller, and I live in Lake Hills. I'm very fortunate to be a longtime Bellevue resident. I've been working towards sustainability for quite a few years by reducing my own climate footprint, mentoring youth, and speaking up in various ways, especially here at city council or at the state level. I'm here today because I want to see our city move forward strongly on climate action. I love hiking in the local area, and over the years, I've seen the streams dry up earlier and earlier in the year, seeing the increasing stress in the trees. Our streams and our trees are signaling us, just as droughts, storms, and floods in communities across the country are signaling us. If we want a stable climate, we need to take strong action. I'm very grateful for the work of the City Council and staff on the Sustainable Bellevue Plan. All the great ideas in the plan will be needed for us to reach our crucial target of 95% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Unfortunately, although we've made some progress, we have fallen behind on our goal. We need to step up the pace. A program like Energy Smart Eastside provides a foundation, but it needs to be scaled up by at least a factor of five. Other programs affecting buildings as well as transportation need to be scaled up quickly as well. To accomplish this, I support the proposals of People for Climate Action Bellevue for budgets to begin ramping up to at least $9 million per year for decarbonization programs. This is a moment of great challenge, but also a moment of tremendous opportunity. We have worked out plans for a variety of steps we need to take, and now is the time to scale them up to meet the need. For the sake of everyone, including young people and the generations to come, please do everything you can to provide the level of funding needed to meet our emissions reductions goals. It's time to step up the pace. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Valentina Boniva.

Welcome.

Hello, my name is Valentina, and as a resident of Crossroads and as a non-driver, I know that Bellevue does not invest enough in transit and safety projects, especially outside of downtown. The city knew the light rail was coming for years before the first station opened, and yet often there is no good access to stations by bike or on foot from neighboring areas. My closest station is over Lake Village, ten minutes away on a scooter or a bike. But there is no safe and comfortable way to do that from the densest neighborhood in Eastern Bellevue, which is Crossroads. There are lime scooters and gliders at the station, and you can see that people from Bellevue would really like to use them because a lot of them get dumped on the Bellevue Road sidewalk. The fact that the city couldn't start line bike and scooter share before World Cup is another example of such neglect. Could I take B line to light rail? I could, but walking to the stop and waiting for the bus and then riding the bus would take me at least half an hour. And that's if the bus is on time, which it often isn't. It's route in Bellevue is exclusively on roads that are as wide as many highways, and yet we still don't have dedicated bus lanes for it. What else? Grand connection. How am I supposed to get there from crossroads? Even if I were okay going all the way north to the 520 trail, breathe in exhaust for 30 minutes, and possibly go in depth in 10 years from repeated noise exposure, there is no safe way to the 520 trail from crossroads. Neighborhood safety projects like crosswalks are also underfunded. Six years ago, Crossroads selected a mid-block crosswalk on 164th Avenue Northeast as one of the neighborhood enhancement program projects. It's still not there, and funding for its construction is still unavailable because it's not a priority. Even the program to lower speed limits on local streets, very popular with residents, is not implemented yet, almost two years since the council passed the ordinance. It's not a priority. And this should become a priority. This is supposed to be a vibrant city, healthy city for everyone. This needs to change. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Catherine Liu. I see Miss Liu joining us online. Can you hear me?

Miss Liu, can you hear me? Hi there. Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Time begins now.

Yes. Great. Okay. My name is Kathy, and I'm a homeowner in the Lake Heights neighborhood along a busy street corridor that feeds cars, trucks, motorcycles, and buses into I-405 and then eventually I-90. Every morning when I look at the tiny shrubs my neighbors have planted to replace the huge ones that a speeding driver mowed over, every time a driver avoids hitting me and my toddler as we cross the street when muscle memory leads them, and many others through a rolling stop of the only stop sign in a one-mile stretch and every afternoon when i see kids dropped off by their school or city bus walk along the side of the road with no sidewalk and little space between them and the cars driving by i'm reminded of how little protection the existing car-centric infrastructure provides and is afforded to those who are biking walking rolling and taking transit on my street In my community, and in my city, I dream of a future where my. Family, and I can bike to and from the new light rail transit line without putting my kids safety at risk where I'm not stuck on the 240 bus through multiple lights to turn off Coal Creek Parkway. And my kid can 1 day walk to and from school without being a foot away from being another serious injury or fatality number in Bellevue. I urge the council to prioritize projects that move with urgency to address Vision Zero and street safety programs and to reallocate vehicle infrastructure revenues into projects and infrastructure for people who aren't just in their cars, as highlighted by the Streets Are for Everyone Coalition. Thank you for your public service to Bellevue.

Thank you. Next speaker is Christopher Randles.

Welcome.

All right. Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council Members, staff. Chris Randles with Complete Streets Bellevue, the organization that works for a transportation system that works for everybody, whether you're walking, biking, rolling, taking transit, or driving. I want to thank all of you for your thoughtful comments back at the April 21st meeting, because what you said and what we heard at that budget workshop is that you want a transportation budget that truly prioritizes safety. We agree, and that's why our organization helped form the Streets are for Everyone, or SAFE, Bellevue Coalition last year. The coalition is a mix of over 20 groups, including representatives from local nonprofits, Bellevue-based community-based organizations, and the business community, who are united in our shared value, a value shared by this council, that nobody should be killed or seriously injured just while trying to get around on Bellevue streets. Truly, if we want to be a city that cares about and is seen as caring about public community safety, the safety of all in our community, then that has to mean that we must take data-informed, well-studied, best practice steps to reduce traffic violence. The proposal that Safe Bellevue has spent two months crafting and that we've posted on our website advances this shared value and listens to your feedback. It puts forward that new TBD revenues should prioritize funding towards projects and programs that benefit the mobility of people who walk, bike, roll, take transit, and travel through the neighborhoods. In so doing, the safety of all who travel through Bellevue is improved because studies and data show that when we lower vehicle speeds, when we use existing right-of-way to give people options on how they get around, when we reduce vehicle miles traveled, when we support new transit service, we improve safety and mobility for everyone, including for those who drive. Importantly, these programs and projects can be implemented in more cost-effective ways than new vehicle projects or right-of-way acquisitions, leading to a more effective service delivery. And let's be clear about the fiscal impact. If Bellevue chooses to levy a new sales tax, that would cost the average household $30 a year or $250 a month. With our proposal, that would net every neighborhood in Bellevue some new crosswalks, improved transit access, safe ways to get around on two wheels and safe streets. It has a chance to provide infrastructure that transforms how people get around Bellevue, lowering automobile dependency, cost of living, We look forward to engaging with you. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Ava Lowe.

Welcome.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Ava and I'm a rising senior at Newport High School and a member of Sustainability Ambassadors, an organization whose mission is to rapidly advance a sustainable future, though I'm speaking as an individual tonight. I am passionate about the climate because having a livable environment is something that truly affects everyone, such as recent events like wildfires and smoke that affect this community. And I've worked towards sustainability through my involvement in the Bellevue School District Sustainability Committee to implement sustainable efforts in schools and through my time in Sustainability Ambassadors. To begin, thank you so much for your work on the Sustainable Wellview Plan for 2026 to 2030 and all of its important goals, especially including reducing our city's greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 and 95% by 2050. The many strategies and actions included are essential steps to taking necessary action to protect our planet and meet these major targets. Building on this progress so far, it is important that we pick up the pace in implementing the Sustainable Bellevue Plan to put these goals into reality. Unfortunately, we are not currently on track so far, as emissions have only been reduced by 11% since 2011, despite the goal of at least 35% by 2025. The next few years are an especially critical part of building the momentum necessary to truly meet these goals, making now an important time to act. Currently, 87% of Bellevue's emissions come from building and transportation sectors. Adjusting emissions in these areas will require continued investment in climate programs, electrification, energy efficiency, and sustainable transportation options. Making Bellevue more sustainable is something that matters deeply to the futures of myself and other students around me. In 24 years, in 2050, I will be 40 years old, making this an important time that will shape how my generation and future generations live. I greatly appreciate the progress Bellevue has made so far, but to meet our 95% emissions reduction target by 2050, sustained commitment and investment will be required through providing the funding necessary to meet those goals. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Barbara Tangshu.

Welcome.

Hello, and thank you to all of you Bellevue City Council members for your attention to the health and well-being of the community that you all serve. I'm Barbara Tenccio, president of the League of Women Voters of Seattle King County, and also a Bellevue resident. The League has been working with the King County community for over 100 years. As a nonpartisan organization, we don't support candidates and we don't support any parties. Our mission is to empower voters and defend democracy. And we empower voters through all our voter services work, and we defend democracy through our advocacy, which is based on long-held positions developed through concurrence after long study of the issues. Our positions at the King County level, the state level, and the national level all support a healthy living environment for the community members and their families to grow, to thrive. A healthy environment leads to community engagement, to civic engagement, and to folks having their voices heard through voting. The League has signed on to the Climate Action Budget Boost Letter that all of you have now received. I and the League urge you to refocus efforts on decarbonization programs to meet Bellevue's 2050 commitment Current efforts will not get us there and will negatively affect the quality of life for all residents. Bellevue has the wherewithal and now must dedicate funding to realize the greenhouse gas reduction goals. Bellevue voters are looking to all of you to deliver on the 2050 commitment. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Tori Halverson.

Welcome.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak, and good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, designated council members, and city staff. My name is Tori Culverson, and I'm an incoming junior at Interlake High School. And I'm only 15, so being able to speak here in front of you all feels very surreal to me. I'm a part of the Bellevue Youth Council's Climate Action Team, but tonight I'm speaking as an individual. Over the course of our heating summers due to climate change, we've already seen a growing issue with smoke and rising temperatures. Marching band practices, which I regularly participate in at my school, have become unbearable at times due to heat and wildfire smoke sometimes leading to people struggling to breathe. This has become a very serious issue. But before I share my idea with you all, I'd like to give a huge thank you to our Bellevue City Council members and those who worked on the 2026 to 2030 Sustainable Bellevue Plan and Associated Action Plan. These plans are to reach our important target of 95 reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, as mentioned previously. These include the Energy Smart Eastside program to get Bellevue Homes switched to electric heating pumps. Such as people like Jennifer who have stated, it's crucial we build some foundations with programs such as Energy Smart Eastside. But it's time we've scaled these programs up. Energy Smart Eastside has been getting significantly more efficient heat pumps, which produce three times more heating energy than gas furnaces and non-eco-friendly heaters. To be installed in Bellevue, but the number of heat pumps compared to gas furnaces and baseboard heaters is still very, very small. Right now is the time to scale up Energy Smart Eastside as fast as possible in order to have a more efficient way of heating. A livable climate is absolutely essential to future generations, but also, if I'm going to be selfish for a moment, my own. We've made a start at reducing emissions, but we haven't done enough. Now is the time to rapidly scale up programs such as Energy Smart Eastside in order to increase heat pumps, which are typically 300 to 400% more efficient than other heating methods. Please do everything you can to provide the level of funding needed to meet our admissions reductions goal.

It is time to step up the pace. Thank you so much. Thank you. Sorry, thank you. Our next speaker is Ben Mickel.

Welcome.

Hello, my name is Ben Mickel and I live in downtown Bellevue. In the upcoming budget, I support the Safe Bellevue vision. I would like to see more spending on street safety projects such as sidewalks, crosswalks, protected bike lanes, and intersection daylighting. I especially support the TFP projects that would put bike lanes on 156th Avenue and Bella Red Road. But it's also important to me that you don't spend money on the wrong things. As you know, Bellevue has a serious problem with an increasing rate of traffic injuries. I see many projects proposed in the TFP that would widen roads and intersections for more vehicles. The high injury network is dominated by wide roads, and I'm concerned that these widening projects would cause even more collisions and injuries. At a minimum, we need to do an honest evaluation of the potential impact on collision rates for each project. These projects are also bad for carbon emissions. The city has a goal to reduce vehicle miles traveled by 50%, but these road capacity projects would enable and encourage more vehicle travel. Why would we spend to accommodate more vehicle travel when our goal is to reduce it? Our investments should be aligned with our goals, not opposed to them. And some of these road projects are so bad, they don't even make sense from a traffic throughput standpoint. Several target intersections near the I-405 corridor along 116th and 112th. The real bottleneck in that area is 405 itself, not the adjacent intersections. Widening these intersections would only dump more cars onto 405 at a higher rate. And since southbound 405 is already well below the 45 mile per hour optimum for highway throughput during the evening commute, By further reducing 405 speed, they would also reduce its vehicle throughput. Please direct our tax dollars to anything but these road expansion projects. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker on our list is Pamela Johnston, who's again joining us virtually. Ms. Johnston, can you hear me? Ms. Johnston, can you hear me? I'm going to circle back to her. Our next speaker in person is Juan Ramos.

Yes, welcome.

Yeah, I like living in downtown. I like walking to get a sandwich before work and walking the light rail. I like the tiny positive interactions with strangers in my walk. Lady asked me for directions to the bank, middle of a crosswalk, and I was like, I love being the city boy atmosphere. I like being able to get fresh cookies and ice cream without having to get into a car. I like being able to walk and or e-bike to work, walk into the grocery store. I think it's a high luxury. In fact, after this, I'm probably going to get like some ice cream. So I own a car for like most of my life, and I now realize that living in a safe, walkable, quiet place is an extreme luxury. A luxury I can afford, but many can't. I mean that both in terms of affordability and safety. I've had multiple conversations about living downtown without a car with people my age or younger. Often they wish they could live in downtown but can't afford it. I've had this conversation getting a cookie on Friday near the park in downtown. I've had this conversation getting a sandwich last month. I had this conversation getting a haircut like Friday, whatever. Or they want a bike but they just feel it's unsafe, which I completely get. Paint ain't stopping a ton of metal on wheels. Like, lots of people want safe, walkable streets. In my mind, Bellevue has that ability to set a good example. Not just for Washington, but for the entire country. Yeah, that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Laurie Vander Zanden. Miss Vander Zanden, if you're joining us online, if you could raise your hand so I can identify you. Okay, moving on to the next speaker is Matt Jack, who is also joining us virtually. Mr. Jack, can you hear me?

Loud and clear.

Perfect. Your time begins now.

Good evening, Mayor Council members. My name is Matt Jack and I'm with the Bellevue Downtown Association. I want to thank you for your continued leadership and your commitment to developing a budget that reflects both a fiscal discipline and a long term vision for Bellevue's growth. As you prepare the next preliminary budget, we want to encourage you to continue investments in programs, infrastructure and initiatives that support a vibrant and competitive downtown. A couple suggestions and considerations for you include first. strategic infrastructure that remains essential. And I'm thinking like projects such as the Grand Connection and the city's broader multimodal network that improves connectivity support for redevelopment and helps ensure downtown remains accessible and dynamic. Secondly, we encourage sustained effort for downtown activation in place based management programs. Public private partnerships that help create clean, safe, welcoming and engaging spaces are critical for attracting residents, workers and visitors, as well as supporting the small businesses that depend on that type of activity. Thirdly, you know, we want Bellevue to maintain a strong focus on economic development and business support. With major development activity expected to proceed at a more moderate pace, we want to make sure that the city is providing efficient permitting, responsive customer service, and adequate staffing so that we can ensure that big projects can move forward and businesses are filling in spaces. finally we just want to promote that programmatic and capital investments should remain aligned with long-term priorities such as housing mobility economic competitiveness and public park improvements i'd like to close by noting that the bellevue downtown association supports a budget that invests in strategic infrastructure sustains downtown vitality and reinforces a strong economic environment. We appreciate your leadership and your partnership, and we look forward to continuing to work with you. Thank you very much. Back to you, Charmaine.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sinha Gupta. Okay, Ms. Gupta, if you can raise your hand if you're joining us online so I can identify you, I'll go to our next speaker in person, who's Heidi Dean.

Welcome.

Good evening. Thank you for letting me speak. As a resident, I wanted to say that I think that the slide dealing with the survey on the budget really does, for me, encapsulate what I'm hearing out in the community about the broader communities. what they feel is important versus just singular groups, what they're focused on. And I wanted to remind you that the top focus areas for Bellevue are, according to that survey, prosecuting misdemeanor crimes, reducing travel concerns in downtown Bellevue, improving intersections and roadway capacity, managing residential development, responding to code violations, and enforcing traffic laws. And what I'm hearing from people, because I run a page that has almost 5,000 followers, and I belong to several community groups. And what I'm hearing is that people don't feel safe in Bellevue anymore. They're tired of rising crime. And decrease public safety, they are tired of sitting in traffic, but they don't want to be socially engineered out of their vehicles and onto bikes and buses. So they are, I think, addressing the level of service for arterials and. Intersections is very important versus. Monking around with the volume over capacity as was suggested at transportation commission. And then also to fully funding our, our public utilities and our public works departments, utilities. Streets parks, those are the departments that keep our, our city livable and nice that bring people here. And our code compliance, code enforcement, because there's a lot going on, and I've said this before last week, there's a lot going on, and those people are understaffed and overworked. And so I would just ask you to focus on that. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Vivian Lim.

Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Vivian Lim, and I live in Bellevue, and I'm a recent high school graduate. I'm here for the Citizens Climate Lobby, and I want to start by recognizing and appreciating the goal that Bellevue had committed to a 95% emission cut by 2050. That is a strong goal, but a goal on paper doesn't reduce a single ton of carbon. Right now, we're down only by 11% since 2011, when we should be down by 35% to stay on track. When a city sets an ambitious goal and the funding doesn't follow, residents start to wonder how serious that goal really was. Closing that gap matters, both for our climate and for the trust in this process. A goal without a budget is just a wish. The path forward is clear, and it's affordable. We're asking for $5 million in 2027, $7 million in 2028, and $9 million the year after, which is all still under the 1% of our annual budget. People choose Bellevue for its parks, its trees, its livability, and its beauty. We fund that beauty generously, and we should. But none of it holds up if the climate underneath it doesn't. Climate action belongs right alongside those priorities, not behind them. Less than 1% of our budget is the cost of keeping our promise. Please give them the funding and give Bellevue a budget that matches its own ambition. Thank you.

And I'm passing it off to Vanessa. Hi, I'm Vanessa. I'm a rising sophomore at Newport High School, and I'm here to remind you that climate change is only getting worse and worse, and Bellevue is falling behind on its carbon reduction goals. A few of my personal experiences regarding climate change and its consequences is how my family recently quit skiing because seasons became too short and also too unpredictable. Additionally, Bellevue is increasingly facing extreme heat events that Bellevue has never had to face before. As a young adult, I am concerned for the future generations and of Bellevue. Please, please prioritize climate action action with the right funding in order to get the job done. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to circle back to Pamela Johnston and see if we have, you know, Miss Johnston. Can you hear me? I can't wait your time against your fighting windows open. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

So I would like to ask for your help in coordination. Engagement is important, but how do we know what's going on? The speaker earlier talked about having a timeline. Where can I find the timeline for all the projects? How many of you have looked at the hot projects, hot topics on this homepage? A homepage is supposed to be where everyone goes. But the hot topics are stale. And we don't even know if there's anything there. There's no data there. It's just like links to somewhere else. It's not telling you what's the next thing going on. What can you participate in? And we're not coordinating all that. things to have more than one thing going on. There's like, okay, go to crossroads this time and this one over here. And they're never like two or more things going on very often. It's just like too much. It's just too much projects. And everybody wants to get everything done, but we want to have coordination. We may have too much congestion. So if we're looking at Evans Plaza, we have Northeast 24th going to 405, people have Northeast 24th backs up because people are trying to get onto going east. If you live east of Bellevue and you have to get on 520, you have only one space to do that. And it's a long wait. We need to stop congestions. Northeast 40th, we were promised a sidewalk from 2018. They added a bike trail. It's still done. If it's really important, if we want safety, those are actually more important that we have a curb there for safety, in my opinion.

Ms. Johnston, your time has expired. Thank you. Our final preregistered speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Welcome.

Hi, my name Alex Zimmerman. Yeah, I live here for 40 years. Situation what is I see here is very unique. Bellevue, number one classic fascist city, when government together with corporation suck blood and money from 150,000 idiot. I never hear here one from 150,000 idiot come and talk so we have a fascism, a classic fascism. And I give you classic example what's happened with transportation in this green idiot. Yeah, exactly. Fatality last year jumped by 200% for traffic. I never see this before in my life. I cannot understand how this happened. So what the city did, council did? Made a reaction. Speed cut by five and speed cut by ten. So what's happened? This idiot don't know. So each five miles... Engines start working very hard and bring 25% dirt to people like we'll be breed this. Is this your decision for doing this? Dozen year ago I told you, Bellevue cannot go like big city. You make city destroyed totally. We more dangerous right now than New York or Los Angeles. It's absurd by definition. It will be worse. Look how many buildings built only for last two years. A dozen. A thousand and thousand people will become again. The condition will be worse, worse and worse. But these 150,000 idiots, very quiet. Look, a story people come in talking about we cannot breathe. Oh, it's very good so we cannot breathe. How we can change this? We need stopping this Nazi. We need stopping this fascist. Who's that? Blood and money together with corporation. Viva Trump. Viva new American revolution. Stand up, slap, and happy cow. Thank you.

That is the end of our pre-registered list. At this point, I would make one final call out for those who would like to make a comment in this public hearing. Please raise your hand. Mayor, I do not see any hands. I'll turn the floor back to you.

Thank you. Do I have a motion to close the public hearing?

I move to close the public hearing. Second.

It has been moved by Deputy Mayor and seconded by Council Member Nieuwenhuis. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes and I couldn't hear Council Member Somadevaraya, so I'm not sure if they are still there. Welcome back. Thank you everyone who took the time to share your comments tonight and tell us what matters to you in this budget. Appreciate everyone. Thank you John and Ray and the team. This is one of the most important conversation we have. as a council because the budget shows our priorities in real dollars. And tonight was about listening, and we did listen. Before staff prepares the preliminary budget, we needed to hear directly from our residents, businesses, and community members about what they want us to keep in mind. I APPRECIATE THE OUTREACH THAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED AND LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING HOW THIS FEEDBACK HELPS SHAPE THE WORK AHEAD. LET'S JUST GO AROUND THE DIAS. COUNCILMEMBER ROBINSON, WE'LL START WITH YOU. I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY, THANK YOU. THANK YOU SO MUCH. COUNCILMEMBER BRUYARD.

I HAVE ALSO NOTHING TO CONTRIBUTE, THANK YOU.

THANK YOU SO MUCH. COUNCILMEMBER BARGAVA.

Yeah, so a couple things to say. Are we gonna go into the presentation after this? Maybe I'll hold my comments till after, because I think they're more pertinent because they're directly. Yes.

I got you now, thanks. I'm good, thank you. Deputy Baird Hamilton. All good. Thank you, Mayor. Wow. That's great comments, all of you. Council Member Suma Deveria, you are here.

Oh, I don't have any comment either.

Great. Thank you, everyone. We just heard everyone, and we will look forward to the study session. Thank you so much. But we are taking a break. Thank you. So it is 8 o'clock. We will be back by 8.10. Great, we are back. We have two study sessions. City Manager, would you please introduce them to us?

Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to be brief. This is part two of the budget process discussion tonight. And so you'll be joined here by finance development services and utilities staff. They're going to share some key information about the financial forecast. And that does inform the basis for the revenue assumptions for our proposed and final budget so i'm going to turn it over here to john risha this is in three parts the intent is to cover all three parts and then turn it over to the council for questions and john will introduce the future speakers but so we're starting with john risha and ray fleshman john

Thank you city manager mayor deputy mayor council members tonight will be our forecast and our look at our revenue outlook. Again, it is 3 parts. We will go through each of those 3 parts quickly. I do want to as we're getting into this, remind you that the memory bank is active and staff will be recording questions and we will be providing written responses back. IN THE INTEREST OF TIME, WE'LL TRY AND KEEP OUR RESPONSES VERY BRIEF OR DEFER MANY OF THOSE INTO THE MEMORY BANK AND GET THOSE RESPONSES OUT PUBLICLY VERY QUICKLY. SO WITH THAT, WE WILL JUMP IN. TONIGHT WE'LL GO THROUGH THE CALENDAR VERY BRIEFLY, DISCUSSION OF THE CITY REVENUE FORECAST. Then development services will join us to talk about methodology and forecast for development services rates. Then utilities will join us. And then we'll go into our Q&A. And with that.

All right. On the screen is the timeline that I had mentioned earlier. We'll be using this throughout the process to show you where we are in the process. And we'll be updating this as we come back to you throughout the year. Just to center us where we're at, council had a workshop back in April on this. In June here, we're doing the first public hearing, which we just had, and we're doing the revenue forecast tonight. We have a transportation study session on July 21st. In September, we'll be bringing the preliminary budget to you along with the second public hearing. The rest of that time from September through November, we'll be doing budget deliberations with a third public hearing scheduled for October 27th with a tentative budget adoption on 17th of November. Sorry about that. I'm gonna briefly talk about the economic policy landscape. As we look at this, our inflation across the nation continues to be elevated. We're wrestling with geopolitical instability in the Middle East that continues to drive uncertainty in our pricing across the United States. Some more local data. In May, the unemployment for Washington State was 5.2%, with King County coming in at 4.7%. But given recent layoff notices in Washington State, we still are struggling with potential challenges ahead. And we're also continuing to monitor how AI is shaping what that looks like as well. We have the interest rates targeted by the Federal Reserve remain at the 3.5% to 3.75% targeted range. We're unclear about the prospects of what near-terms rates are going to do. And we have recent legislation actions at the state level that have continued to create instabilities in our revenues that we're monitoring.

So what does that mean? Biggest issues is we continue to wrestle with weakened consumer confidence. That means our sales tax revenues in key categories of our sales tax are remaining low or not growing very fast. Our inflation is broadly stubborn. It's almost at a stagflation point, but it is an uncomfortable place for our cost drivers on the city. Interestingly, our construction environment is stable and it's starting to grow and we'll hear a little bit more about that from development services. But that means. The pipeline of tax revenues follows a few years behind that permit activity and so we see that as 1 of the signs of the future. THE LEGISLATIVE CHANGES TO BUSINESS AND OCCUPANCY TAXES AND SALES TAXES HAVE ACTUALLY CREATED MORE RISK AND CHALLENGE BECAUSE WE'RE STILL PARSING OUT WHAT THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF THOSE ARE AND WHAT IT'S MEANT IS OUR ECONOMIST HAS ACTUALLY GONE DOWN TO FORECASTING THE INDIVIDUAL SUBCATEGORIES OF SALES TAX INDIVIDUALLY RATHER THAN AS A WHOLE TO HELP US GET OUR HANDLES ON WHAT'S REALLY CHANGING. The economic recovery, unfortunately, two years ago we were thinking that we were going to be 27, 28. It truly is looking like 29. We're keeping the bouncy and had to throw a little soccer ball up there, but we're watching what happens and all of the bounces up and down. We're still running a pretty steady through line. we continue to sit from an economic standpoint in a pretty neutral to hold position. We're not in a negative, there are no concerns, but we're heading in that, watching all of the different categories. So from the broader conditions, we're doing better than most, but it's not time to go out into a growth space. As we think about things, when we look at our overall revenues, this is the snapshot of the full revenue picture from 25-26 that we're in currently. We think about the big four taxes, which are city taxes that are assessed by you. Sales tax, property tax, gross receipts, utility tax, the gross receipts business, B&O. And then we have a variety of other tax sources or tax and fee sources that actually make up the larger percentage of our budget. In the bottom corner, I've just referenced a little bit of a takeaway. If we're thinking about things from a resident standpoint, the residents of the city taxes that they pay that are a portion of our revenues, it's only about 7% of our overall revenues. And our business community represents about 17% of our city tax revenues. So just a little bit of frame of reference on our overall revenue. Now we come to our forecast. Our forecast continues to grow. It always has been growing, but it's the rate of growth that continues to be slow and persistent in that slowness. I will note in 2029 and 2032, you see dips in our property tax the lowest lower level of that those are years when our levies are expiring we don't presume that they are renewed or renewed at any level we actually remove them from our forecast and the things that they fund on the other side that is a future decision that you hold very dear and we want to help you in that process so we don't presume it in our forecasts For a bit of a frame of reference, we brought together the last two forecasts with the current one. And as these three side-by-side charts go, the 23-24 forecast from 2022, the 25-26 from 2024, and the current 27-28. What you'll notice in looking at this, we believed in 2024 that we were gonna start growing in 2027. You notice there's a red arrow. That first arrow really starts to indicate where we thought things were going to start to grow And what has happened is our most current forecast, you see it dip lower because our tax revenues just aren't growing fast enough to keep pace with what we anticipated in the past. But what it looks like it's doing because of some of that economic activity that's sitting on our horizon is in twenty, twenty nine. We start to see that growth come back. And start to bring us back ahead of where we thought we were as we get into the out years. So, in the end, our forecast looks like a wash overall. It's not a high growth. It slows things down in the interim. And so we're carrying that forecast through. And we just wanted you to be able to see the differences between those major tax revenues to see how the last forecasts have really shaped out.

Let me turn back over to Ray for the survey.

Okay.

Moving on to our budget survey information. We had a survey that was conducted from November 21st through January 5th. It was translated into multiple languages. We had 1,278 responses. A particular note, this slide shows the responses to the question. Are you getting your money's worth? Overall 80% of the respondents said they are neutral to strong supportive that they agree with that statement. This slide shows the top budgeting priorities that we heard in the survey for 24 and 25 and we saw improvement in many of these areas from 24 to 25 and the themes align with the strategic target areas in the budget and give us a sense of what people think is important. We do have the full survey results available online and I believe the executive summary was attached to the agenda memo.

so as we're looking into the budget we want to be really clear about a few things our budget as our city manager is giving us shape and what we're hearing is not bringing much forward in terms of new revenues it is looking to existing sources it will contain the one percent property tax that represents about $950,000 or about $13.50 on the average home in Bellevue. Average home in Bellevue is somewhere between 1.4 and 1.5 million dollars is now the median price. It continues to be strong. We are following that policy and that guidance from you and we have been carrying that in our financial plan. There is, it has been discussion of a transportation benefit district as an optional revenue source and we are looking at creating an option that could be added into the budget should the infrastructure and the tax revenue make sense to you and the feedback that we receive over the summer, that we've received and are receiving over the summer related to the transportation needs and funding categories. So we're looking at those circumstances for frame of reference. If those are brought forward and considered, the one-tenth of a percent of sales tax represents about 66 million in our 10-year, and it is 10-year time limited, so 66 million in about the six-year CIP period. And the vehicle fee represents about 2M dollars a year, or about 12M in this financial plan. Just making sure that you are seeing that we are considering these things or setting them up. But I do want to stress at this point staff have been given guidance to. not include the TBD revenues as the base budget, but really just separate out and provide a package that can really help you understand what it could be and should you wish to consider it. So final thoughts on the forecast. The persistent inflation is increasing our costs faster than we anticipated. And it is going a little bit faster than our revenue growth. That doesn't mean our revenues aren't growing. It does not mean that we're in a reductions scenario. The revenues from that standpoint keep us relatively flat and we feel pretty strong and confident in that space of watching those conditions. We're not here to raise any alarm bells. I'm looking forward to the day when I can lower that yellow flag and not have to bring it out. The surfer in me wants good green conditions and let's get out there in the water. Again, the economic recovery is anticipated closer to 29, we think, which seems to align with the comprehensive plan development that is on the horizon. And it's really gonna come down to some of those development cycles which feel relatively positive. And so with that, we are keeping the caution flag up. Doesn't mean don't go out in the water. It just means we're gonna keep an eye on things and keep you and city leadership informed as to how things are going. And when we touch base with the budget, preliminary budget proposal in September, we'll also bring any updates that we hear so that we can make sure that you're reflecting the right conditions so that we have a very solid and comfortable budget process, even if it is not a growth budget. And with that, I'm actually going to invite our colleagues up from Development Services and move into the next segment.

Welcome.

Joining me is Jake Hesselgeser, Acting Director of Development Services, and Terry, and I'm just blanked on your names.

Jones.

I shouldn't have blanked on her name. Terry Jones, who is the... Acting director of business services.

So, good evening, mayor, deputy mayor and council members. Great to be with you this evening to share a little bit of the development forecast and talk about our annual cost of service study that leads into a rate update, which we'll bring back on September 15th. I'm going to kick us off and talk a little bit about sorry. THE DEVELOPMENT PIPELINE. WE'LL START FIRST WITH THIS FIRST SLIDE WHICH SHOWS OUR PERMIT ACTIVITY, BOTH OUR APPLICATIONS AND ISSUED PERMIT VOLUMES, THE TOP LINE REPRESENTING APPLICATIONS, THE BOTTOM LINE REPRESENTING ISSUED PERMITS. THE STORY IN 2026 IS SIMILAR TO PRETTY HIGH PERMIT ACTIVITY IN THE PIPELINE, HIGH DEVELOPMENT INTEREST. WE HAVE SEEN SLOWING OF MAJOR PROJECTS OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS WHICH YOU'VE HEARD ME TALK ABOUT AND WE'RE STARTING TO SEE SOME SHIFT IN THOSE MAJOR PROJECTS ACTUALLY MOVING OUT TO CONSTRUCTION WHICH IS A GOOD SIGN. This next chart illustrates that this is our building valuation data. So this is the value of issued building permits by year. Each one of the segment in the bars represents a different kind of segment of our building permit population, starting with new single family on the bottom. The maroon color are single family alterations or additions. That dark blue pattern are commercial alterations or tenant improvement. And then the stripe bars are the major projects. Here in 2026, we're not quite to the end of Q2, and we've already surpassed the volume that we've seen all of last year in those commercial alterations and major projects. We have about $500 million in valuation of major project building permits that are ready to issue, waiting on developers to just pick those permits up. So we expect this number to climb pretty dramatically this year, and that's a good sign for construction sales taxes John mentioned here in the future. So as we think about what's in the pipeline, also wanted to talk a little bit about feedback and engagement, share with you some of the things that we're hearing and thinking about as we enter the budget process. So we employ a number of engagement strategies, our Bellevue Development Committee, which we convene on a regular basis and hear from developers, nonprofit organizations. We hear from architects, engineers, and we have some interested neighborhood leaders that show up at times in that form. OUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PROGRAM WHERE WE SOLICIT REAL TIME FEEDBACK THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE CUSTOMER JOURNEY, CATCH AND CAPTURE THAT FEEDBACK IN THE MOMENT AND ALSO USE THE THEMES TO PRIORITIZE PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS. AND THEN WE DO HAVE PROJECT SPECIFIC ENGAGEMENT AS THE COUNCIL IS VERY AWARE, OUR CODE AND POLICY INITIATIVES ARE A GOOD EXAMPLE OF THAT WHERE WE'RE ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY THROUGH A MULTIPLATED OF DIFFERENT CHANNELS. What we're hearing in a lot of these forms is desire for continuous improvement and process improvements. We have put together a fairly aggressive work program. We're going to be coming back here in the summer to share more details of the progress of that work plan and what we're focused on right now and into the future. A lot of interest in simplifying and streamlining permitting. Our partnership with Govstream AI is a really great example of one of those initiatives which we'll share more about when we come back. Also hearing across all customer personas the need to improve project management and coordination on the city side of things. So as you can imagine, in a highly regulatory complex environment, the need to kind of abstract that on the city side and really help customers through the permitting process is something we hear a lot about. So as we think about all those things, those are factors we're thinking about as we conduct our annual cost of service study. And I'm gonna shift to the policy pillars that we use during our cost of service study each year. The first are our financial management guiding principles. These have been in place for many years now. THE FIRST IS THAT DEVELOPMENT SERVICES HAS A FUNDING STRUCTURE TO SUPPORT US THROUGH ECONOMIC CYCLES. WE DO THIS IN A COUPLE OF WAYS. FIRST AND FOREMOST STRUCTURING LIKE AN ENTERPRISE FUND SO MORE SIMILAR TO A PRIVATE BUSINESS SO WE CAN MOVE FAIRLY NIMBLY THROUGH DEVELOPMENT CYCLES, SETTING ASIDE RESERVES FOR COURSE STAFFING, TECHNOLOGY REPLACEMENT AND ALSO CONTINGENCIES TO DEAL WITH UNEXPECTED COSTS THAT MAY COME UP. Permit applicants should pay for the services they receive. That's why we conduct the annual cost of service study and that fees should be predictable and understandable. We do this by charging flat fees for some of our permits to make that more predictable for the high volume permits. And then fees should be regionally competitive. And we'll share a couple of examples of where we sit in the region. The second policy pillar are cost recovery objectives, and I'll start by saying that development services operates under a full cost recovery model. We receive revenue from two primary sources, the fees and rates we charge to our customers. And then for certain services, we do receive a small general fund subsidy. This chart breaks down the percentage of the funding that comes from our fees. So for land use discretionary review, all the engineering technical review, the boots on the ground, inspectors out there in the field, and then technical and administrative support. So finance, technology, permit processing, all of those services are funded through our rates. for pre-submittal support public information code and policy development and our code compliance group we do receive that funding through the general fund and then we do have two programs that are supported through the general fund the affordable housing fee reduction program and then our small business program and we're going to share more about that when we come back in later this summer as well so with that i'm going to turn over to terry jones and she's going to talk about fees and rate methodology and round us out with presentations

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council Members. The overall goal of Development Services, our fund, is to be sustainable and sufficient to meet our customer needs. We adjust rates annually to ensure that our fees keep up with the cost of providing services and maintain alignment with our financial policies and our cost recovery objectives. To ensure that fees are consistent among the different departments of development services, fire, transportation, and utilities, our fee calculations are based on a common approach and common methodology. Our permit fees follow two primary approaches. Fees that are based on hourly rates include flat fees for those high volume permits and are based on the time it takes to conduct review or inspection. Fees based on the estimated construction value are for building permits and they follow established industry standards. So we update the building valuation data table that's published by the International Code Council in August and it's adjusted by the state modifier and also inflation factors. OUR ANNUAL COST OF SERVICE STUDY IS UNDERWAY RIGHT NOW AND THE FEE INCLUDED WITH THE FEE ANALYSIS AND WILL RETURN TO COUNCIL LATER IN THE BUDGET PROCESS WITH OUR PROPOSED RATES AND FEES. WE ANTICIPATE THAT THE PROPOSED 2027 ADJUSTMENTS ARE ROUTINE INCREASES WITHIN THE HISTORICAL RANGE OF INFLATION OF ABOUT UP TO 9%. Development Services also maintains reserves to offset larger rate increases. So as we formalize our recommendations to the City Council, we'll consider the use of reserves to maintain a rate stability. Next slide, thank you. To ensure that we are regionally competitive, we've compared fees to Seattle, King County, and Redmond, who are our neighbor jurisdictions who also have full-cost recovery objectives. This chart compares the 2026 building fee costs for a $100,000 tenant improvement project. Bellevue fees are the light blue bar, and for this project scope, the Bellevue fees are lower than our neighbor jurisdictions. And on the next slide, this chart compares the building fee cost for a 500 square foot residential addition compared to the same jurisdictions with full cost recovery. And you can see our Bellevue fees fall between Redmond and Seattle for this scope. Our permit fees charged by our neighbor jurisdictions such as Kirkland and Issaquah are partially subsidized by their general funds, and so we did not include them in our comparisons. And while the two charts compare the fees for the current year, we assume that other jurisdictions will also increase their permit fees for 2027, and we feel that we will continue to be competitive in the region. And so with that, we will turn the time over to utilities.

And now joining us is Lucy Liu, director of utilities, Scott Edwards, deputy director of utilities, and Matt Hobson, fiscal manager. Welcome, Lucy. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council Members. Thank you for the opportunity to present utility rate setting methodology and forecast this evening. Rates are the primary source of funding for utilities operations as well as our capital program. So the long-term sustainability of the city's utilities rely on sound rate setting methodology as well as strong financial policies. This evening we will summarize the key financial policies that guide utility rate setting, discuss the rate drivers facing utilities over the next six years. We will provide an outlook of the anticipated rate adjustments as a result of these rate drivers on and show you how they show up on the residential utility bill and then we'll share our community engagement and outreach plans on utilities budget and rates so the city's financial comprehensive financial policies serves as the foundation for determining rate adjustments they provide a consistent framework in each budget to make sure that the utility rates are adequate for both CURRENT AND FUTURE EXPENSES CURRENT AND FUTURE EXPENSES WHILE MAINTAINING SUFFICIENT WHILE MAINTAINING SUFFICIENT RESERVES. RESERVES. RATES ARE BASED ON THE COSTS OF RATES ARE BASED ON THE COSTS OF PROVIDING SERVICE. PROVIDING SERVICE. THEY ARE SET TO ACHIEVE 100% THEY ARE SET TO ACHIEVE 100% COST RECOVERY AND THIS ENSURES COST RECOVERY AND THIS ENSURES UTILITIES ARE FINANCIALLY UTILITIES ARE FINANCIALLY SELF-SUSTAINING AND ARE NOT The rate adjustments are informed by our 75-year asset management plan so that changes in rate levels can be gradual and uniform where possible, while generating sufficient funding for long-term capital investment needs, and also ensuring that each generation of rate payers pay their equitable share. About one-third of the utility's operating expenses pay financial obligations to wholesale providers, for water supply and wastewater treatment. And the city has little control, direct control over these costs, and so the city's policies direct us to pass through any changes in wholesale cost onto utility bills. This ensures wholesale cost increases do not degrade local programs. Tonight we will speak to external as well as internal rate drivers. External rate drivers refer to the cost pressures that utilities cannot directly control. This includes the changes to the water supply costs from Cascade, wastewater treatment costs from King County, as well as state and local taxes that we pay as an enterprise function, as well as support services from other city departments. The internal rate drivers are the cost pressures on utilities local programs. These include the rate revenue needs to fund our capital program as well as our future long-term infrastructure replacement needs. The estimated replacement value of utilities infrastructure is $10 billion. And so planning for timely replacement of the utility system infrastructure will continue to be the most important internal rate driver. Consistent with your direction last month, we will be including the cost of expanding the bill assistance program to the proposed budget for your consideration this fall. Most of the inflationary cost increases to existing service levels will be funded by internal budget efficiencies, and so you will see the local operations will drive a very small portion of the anticipated rate increases. With that, Matt will review the forecasted rate adjustments for each of the three utilities.

Great, so the next three slides are gonna look very similar to one another. So I'll just spend some time on this one for orientation purposes. This is the water utility. So the top graph shows the anticipated rate revenue increases. In this case, 7.7% in next year for the water utility. And then you'll see a till bar, and that till bar represents the share of the rate increase that is attributed to the wholesale costs for water supply from Cascade Water Alliance. So the other bar, the tan bar, is the cost drivers, the rate impact from all other cost drivers. I'll speak briefly about both of those rate drivers and then summarize the next two utilities. So the Cascade wholesale water supply cost is the largest rate driver for the water utility over the next six years. Cascade began updating its supply program and capital funding plan earlier this year. And based on those forecasts, we anticipate that future rate increases tied to wholesale costs will be around 3% each year through at least 2040. Cascade will be coming to this council later next month to provide an update on the funding plan as well as its impact to Bellevue. As far as the internal or I think we call them internal rate drivers go, our long-term asset management plan is the largest rate driver for the water utility and for the same for the sewer and the stormwater utility. Our bill assistance program is anticipated to add about six tenths of 1% to the rate increases next year. And then as Lucy mentioned, the operations rate driver on the far right side of the chart there is a fairly minor impact to rate drivers tied mostly to wage inflation. That was a lot. I'm going to summarize much faster on the sewer and stormwater side. So on the sewer side, the largest rate driver, as you all heard in previous presentations, is the anticipated cost increases to support King County's treatment services to Bellevue. The anticipated increase is 6.5% next year, 6.7% the following year, and then ranging from 6.3% to 6.9% each year thereafter. Many of the local rate drivers facing the sewer utility are very similar to the water utility. The key rate driver on sewer that's local is our contributions to support our long-term capital investment plan. And then finally, for the stormwater utility, the stormwater utility does not have a wholesale component. All of the operations of this utility are managed locally by the city of Bellevue. That is why you will see the local piece higher here compared to the water and sewer utilities. Capital investment is the primary rate driver for the stormwater utility, and we are forecasting 6% annual rate increases for this utility over the next six years. So I'm going to turn the time over to Scott, who will present the overall bill impacts based on these rate revenue increases.

Thanks, Matt. The next series of slides depict how these rate drivers will impact typical monthly utility bills for multifamily and single family residential customers. First, as you see here, the typical bill for multifamily residential customers is projected to increase by $10.51 next year and by $9.09 in 2028. which you can see highlighted in yellow. The projected increase is impacted by the rate drivers referenced earlier. And looking at 2027 on the left, wholesale services are expected to add $6.33 per month. The utility bill assistance expansion is adding $1.11. We have all other local rate drivers, which include taxes, inter-fund expenses, capital program funding, and local operations combined, which add about $4. And then consistent with council direction, the forecast includes a gradual reduction of revenue for the multifamily residential class down to its fair share of sewer costs. This is a series of rate reductions over the next five years added to the typical bill estimate. And you can see the equity adjustment is just under $1 per month in 2027. Customers who qualify for the existing bill assistance program would see a typical monthly bill of about $53 next year. And customers who qualify for the expanded bill assistance program would begin to receive a 35% rebate. The typical monthly bill with a 35% rebate would be about $96. Bellevue's utility rates are competitive with our neighbors, and for multifamily residential customers, this graph compares 2026 combined monthly utility bills for Bellevue and the surrounding cities. Bellevue's combined utility bill, as you can see, is lower than Seattle and Mercer Island and higher than cities like Issaquah, Kirkland, and Redmond. We've included our 2027 forecasted utility bill for context on the right. And it's really important to remember that we expect neighboring cities will be evaluating rate increases in 2027. And those increases are not included or reflected in this chart. And so as a result, we expect Bellevue rates will continue to remain competitive going forward. Okay, next the typical monthly bill for single family residential customers is projected to increase by 9.8% next year and by 9.7% in 2028. And for the most part, the projected increase is impacted by similar rate drivers as our multi-family residential customers. The key difference between multifamily and residential customers, it really lies with our sewer equity analysis. The rate forecast includes sewer rate equity adjustments over the next five years to move single family residential sewer rates toward full cost recovery. In total, we project a total monthly bill increase of about $22 in 2027 and $24 in 2028. And as you can see, customers who qualify for the existing bill assistance program would see a typical monthly bill of about $100 next year. And customers who qualify for the expanded bill assistance program would begin to receive a 35% discount on their utility bills. And the typical monthly bill with the 35% discount would be about $176. This next slide, very similar to the multifamily and so it's really the same perspective. We do expect single family residential utility rates to remain competitive in the region both in 2026 and 27 going forward. And with our approach to budget and rate engagement, utilities is focused on transparent, accessible communication to residents so they can understand the proposed rates and why investments are needed. Our engagement intentionally meets people where they are, offering in-person, virtual, and on-demand options supported by consistent information across multiple channels. Outreach efforts have expanded into community spaces and events to reach residents who may not typically attend city meetings. We've also maximized social media, including utilities new Facebook page, which helps us share timely updates and connect with the community. Overall, the community feedback centers on two clear messages around affordability concerns and the importance of long term infrastructure investments. We've responded by identifying opportunities to expand our utility bill assistance program so that more households in need can receive support. And at the same time, we continue to make strategic investments in our water, wastewater, and stormwater systems to ensure we can deliver safe and reliable utility services today and for generations to come. And with that, that concludes utilities portion of the presentation. I'll turn it back over to you, John.

And with that, Mayor, we'll turn it back to you for questions and answers.

Thank you. Thank you so much, all of you. John, Ray, Jake, Terry, Lucy, Scott, Matt, the team. We appreciate you. Let's start with Council Member Robinson.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for this presentation. To me, the goal is always to have a budget that's responsive and responsible. And so we are continuing to be cautious, which makes this, so far, a responsible budget. But we're also really listening to the community and responding to the needs there, which makes it responsive. To me, some of the things that are essential in a budget regardless of the economy is public safety, transportation safety, clean utilities, housing stability, access to parks and green spaces, small business support, continued investments and programs that support our residents and especially our kids. That's just the way I look at it. And what I'm hearing from the community in conversations are the real emphasis on transportation priorities, the need to make affordable housing easier to develop. and then the financial impact of utility infrastructure replacement with the Resultant rate increases and it's not just water as you know, it's solid waste It's waste water. It's waste water. It's water treatment. It's storm water and energy as well and I'm probably missing some things. I mean, these are essential infrastructure replacements that have to be done. And it's really gonna hit the community hard. It may be a $22 increase this year, but it's every year. And after 10 years, that's a lot of money. and that's on every single utility bill that we have infrastructure for. I have a lot of concern on how that's going to affect the community. My questions are going to be, how do we generate revenue to pay for some of these projects, whether it's a transportation or whatever it is. And then how do we decrease the cost of living to try to balance out some of the increasing costs that are coming in the future? So those are my two questions. Thanks.

You don't have to answer them now. We'll take those.

Thank you.

Thank you. Cast Member Breyer.

Thank you, Mayor. Tonight seems to be about disciplined optimism, and our quality of life and city services remain highly rated, which is really reassuring to see. But as the forecast shows, the pressure that we're seeing with inflation and the utility rates going up and major infrastructure needs tied to growth, I want to be clear about what costs are unavoidable. and what choices we as a council can sequence and how we can do so in a way that protects affordability. Council Member Robinson brought up how do we decrease the cost of living as we're seeing rates go up. I'd like to really emphasize and second that comment that she provided. With that being said, perhaps it's a redundant question, but for households that are just above the utility bill assistance threshold, assuming they don't qualify for any of the reductions, Is there a way for us to smooth rate impacts without compromising the infrastructure replacement? And perhaps there isn't, but it's just something I wanted to ask. And then another question that I had is, for the sake of exploiting some complicated things that are going on and making it more digestible for a lot of the residents and constituents that I speak to, we are, I think it was slide 14, Actually, Mayor, pardon the question. May I ask a question about the first presentation that was given? Yeah, please go ahead. There was on slide 14, I believe, and it's in my notes and I'm losing it. I believe it said that international issues that are out of our control are causing some of our revenue rates to be flat, if memory serves me correctly. Could you correct me?

There are probably issues outside of our control that are affecting them.

That's right, issues out of our control. Is there a way for you to, on the spot if possible, it's okay if not, to make that more digestible when a resident is asking me, well, what is it with international affairs or something that's out of our control that is causing our revenue to fall flat? Like, is there a logical sequence of orders you can help paint out?

Very briefly. We think about the sales tax is affecting the consumer confidence. And so when people don't feel as confident in what's happening around them, they have a tendency to spend less money. They spend less money and sales tax does not materialize. That then results in monies not going through the businesses and the B&O taxes also stagnate because of that. And so it's this compounding effect, not because we've increased taxes or we've caused an issue. It really comes down to how we feel actually relates to how we spend.

Yep.

And that's the biggest external factor that is really affecting our economy.

Yeah. Thank you for that. That was really well articulated. So for sake of clarity, international conflicts cause uncertainty. When there's hesitance, folks tend to be more reserved of what they spend. This, of course, generates less in sales tax revenue, and that is out of our control. Okay, thank you. And that is it for my questions, Mayor. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mayor. Here, I have some notes. Sorry. Okay. Well, I thank you for, I miss you all. And I thank you for the staff and everyone who submitted comments tonight. As we see the community engagement was very passionate and thoughtful. I really believe that reflects a full range of what our healthy city needs to get it right. You know, all the neighborhood safety issues, business vitality, and also transportation that works for everyone, not just the one who's in car, but you know, bike and walk pedestrians. And something that I would think that I heard, I mean, from the longtime residents describing some of the dangerous conditions on the corridor that I saw firsthand myself, I think, you know, narrow shoulders and vegetation encroaching on already really narrow streets. It's a long time to ask people to be patient, so I would advocate putting those at priority to make sure that our streets are safe for everyone, especially the kiddos getting off buses, or the kids who might be narrow division who cannot be able to access on their own. And then something else I think that I heard from the business community about keeping our transportation network infrastructure functioning are also competitive. Because we know that safe neighborhood and thriving business really depends on the same foundation, is getting the transportation investment right. And then we need, as we're growing on a really fast and steady speed, I think the forecast of how we're spending the money really matters. Because in the long run, we're going to see them, we don't want to see things crumble before it even starts growth. My last comment is, you know, I think that I am really grateful the staff spent so much time thinking about financial outlook because when it's a really flat revenue, it means the budget cycle requires like more real prioritization. And thank you, Lucy, for expanding the utility bill assistant early this month and I would say that I want to make sure that please expanding the eligibility only matters when people can all access to it. So I have a few questions, if it's okay with you, Mayor, to ask.

Please go ahead.

Okay, so my first question is about the UBA. Since we're expanding to 80% AIMI, as we see like the multifamily housing sometimes is indirectly billed through the landlords to the family. So you can answer me later. I'm just wondering if in that case, how can the family getting the support when they're being indirectly billed?

We provide a rebate. Okay, okay, perfect.

Look at that, so fast. And my second question is, it's about the small business permitting.

Let's see.

So can you help me to understand some part of it? Because does the fee from the small business offset reserves to protect affordable housing, like protect us like the affordable housing does from the small business fees?

Council member if I understand your question correctly the fees that we charge for tenant improvements like for a small business Do not include any Subsidizing of other services. It's the direct and indirect costs of the services that we provide the small business program is funded through the general fund and provides a free service for consulting services for early engagement with development services so we can help streamline the permitting process for small business owners and

Okay. And I'm glad we are the lowest on the TI fee structure. That's a really good thing to hear. Is there anything that if the economy is affecting it and then the TI infrastructure for small business able to have a storefront or even opening or the landlord can provide TI improvement rebate, how is a lower... lower revenue for us gonna be impacting the small business, would like to open a storefront in Bellevue.

I might not quite be understanding your question, Council Member.

So there's a part of that, we see a flat of the revenue coming, right? That's in the forecast. So I'm just wondering if that's the case, are we gonna have less resources to able to attract business to come into Bellevue, if that's the case?

Proposing to do any reductions to our services, and we will likely be aligning and realigning services to make sure that we are prioritizing those things that have been identified as important. So I don't yet have all of the proposals together and Diane is not yet ready to to bring that forward, but duly noted. um and there we'll think about those things separate from but aligned with uh the permit fees but really thinking about how we're supporting uh economic development in the city particularly for the small businesses thank you and my last question just a clarified question on slide 11 um when we're talking about um the satisfaction rate i think it's only 11 um i was

okay 11 um yeah do you see that um so it was saying that um the renters giving this question have higher ratings than the homeowners um i just i'm just curious do we know the reason

We do not, but that could be an area that we engage a little more deeply in and outside of the budget cycle to understand those differences. This year was also one of the first times that we did some deeper demographic looks as well. So this has been an interesting survey process for us this year, and there's some extra data available on the site.

Okay, well, thank you. I'm looking forward to learn more. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Councillor Borgava. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. And thank you to everybody who presented. It's a very large group, so I'm not going to name anyone, but thank you to everyone. Great presentation. I, too, just want to start with just a few broader high-level comments, and then I've got a few questions that are more specific to the exact presentation today. I think really what Councilmember Robinson laid out as a starting point resonates quite strongly with me as well. The idea of safety, the idea of multimodal infrastructure being a real priority, bringing down the cost of doing business and the cost of development is really important in how we do that. Tied to that for me is process improvement and productivity changes that you're in different parts of your presentation laid out. For example, Jake, you did. And all of this comes into affordability, affordability for residents, affordability for businesses. That's all really important. And our budget really becomes the foundation for much of that to come to life in our city in a continued basis. So this is really, really important work. And I think we have to get many of those priorities well established so that when we weigh our prioritization for funding allocation, they should align with those priorities. And that will be a part of what we, I think, collectively will need to do. Also, just want to very briefly, before my questions reflect on some of the comments we heard today, was very comprehensive set of input from the community. I'm really appreciative of that. I do think the idea of being very data-driven in our approach to allocation of funds and budget choices we make becomes really important. And some of that came through in the public comment we heard today, whether it's deciding which transportation infrastructure investments we have to make, which bike and pedestrian corridors we have to improve, and make sure that they're tied to usage patterns and they're tied to enabling multimodal transportation and the leverage of light rail, like some of the public comment talked about, I think is really important, and that will be Sort of the, like you said, customer experience framework, so working backwards from that and establishing that in a way will be the lens for us over the next few months to use. I will still say that I would be really keen if we can create a bottoms-up project list as much as we can, and I've mentioned this in prior sessions too, and I continue to say that, because that would really allow us to understand where the cutlines are. But more importantly, now that you've moved things like the TBD out of the baseline budget, it will be really important to understand those trade-offs more specifically about what we can and cannot fund with those kinds of things, because it's a very large responsibility to ask folks to pay more. And then I do agree that I'm really proud, actually, this is prior to my time on council, but really proud that our council and our city has made a commitment to greenhouse gas reduction. We heard a lot of people talk about that today, and I'd be really keen, that resonates with me, a lot of the comment, to explore what we can do to try and squeeze out additional sources of monies for us to have a more directly tangible and tactical plan to achieve our reductions. So I will continue to bring that up through this process as well, just laying out the mental model. Now going to a few more specific questions. One is related to the B&O taxes and some of the slides you showed. But more broadly, how are we incorporating state-level changes and B&O tax changes in our revenue planning assumptions? Are we baking those in? And how does that reflect in the numbers? And I'm also curious, specific to that, when I looked at the slide, post 2030, your total percentage of BNO, what BNO represents, seems to be increasing. Why is that? So those are two... I have a few more, but this is my first sort of question.

Relatively easy answer. The BNO and the sales tax are countervailing forces. In the short term, the sales tax is a little bit higher. The BNO is a little bit lower. And then in 2029, they come back together. But BNO will be a little bit lower on a permanent basis because of advertising on electronic advertising over the internet. now changes that category of revenue into a retail category and reduces your B&O overall. And so we've baked that into what is going to happen based off of what state law is before us. And that shows that net change in those circumstances and made the adjustments both to sales tax and to B&O. OK.

I will follow up with you, John, maybe.

I would love for that outside of this space.

Outside. I don't want to spend more time on that. So I appreciate it. That's clear to you, not as clear to me. I'll be honest. The other thing I wanted to understand on the TBD, just outside of the choice you're presenting as the baseline, have we considered or is it possible to actually separate out the sales tax and the vehicle tab as components of... And so that might be something worth considering because like I've seen in your data, the impact through residents, although it's 7% of our total budget, Things like vehicle tabs are directly relevant to residents in Bellevue. Sales tax is amortized over a larger population. So that might be something to consider as we think about trade-offs going forward as well, specifically for Bellevue residents. So I'd appreciate if that could be part of the consideration set. On the utilities, I think really thankful that we're thinking about expanded bill assistance we talked about the last time, but that becomes one of my single largest concerns. Here is the affordability component with the rate increases that we're seeing. And so anything that we can do here to continue to push that pedal will be, from my perspective, really beneficial. And also this is a real tactical question, but when you look at 27, 28, actually 28, 29, the bill assistance line in your slides goes to zero. Why is that?

So the rate increase. that we are doing in 27, and I think it was one with a very small piece in 2028, that generates a sustainable stream of revenue that continues into the future years.

Okay, so there's no need in out years for additional allocation, is that what you're saying?

Unless there are assumptions on the participation rate changes, then we will be monitoring that as we go along.

So that could be an opportunity?

Yes.

Okay, really helpful. My computer shut down at the wrong time. And then one, a couple of more sort of zoomed out questions. Given the near term sort of revenue outlook you've laid out today, anything that could materially shift, any changes you expect that could change your forecast here significantly in the next few months?

None that we haven't already considered, which is why we'll watch and we'll be back in September with updates.

Okay, because it just puts me, it gives caution for me because we moved out from 28 to 29 and then now I'm worried about things materializing.

You can join me in worry, sir.

I appreciate that. Let me see. Okay, one other question on, last question for me, on development services. How are we making sure that we're not overbuilding capacity based on the changes in the development cycle and the velocity? How are we confident that we don't do that? Just want to know.

Great question. We watch a number of different indicators in terms of the development pipeline. So the average amount of time that it takes to review permits, forecast projections for application volumes, we're typically within a single digit percentage of hitting those marks. The one mark that we're a little off on this year, as I mentioned, is the valuation estimate. We're seeing that actually exceed. What we're hearing from the development community, too, is some movement. So what we typically do is when we start to see that movement is that we deploy vacant or contingent positions to meet demand. So trying to do that in step with development activity rather than overbuilding that capacity. Much appreciated. That's a great response. Thank you. That's it for me now.

Thank you. Council Member Nguyenhaus.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I too would just want to thank everybody for the hard work getting it to this point and all the great data that you've presented today. And I really want to thank all the residents who came down today, not only the ones that came, actually were in the room today, but participated in the survey, for example, which was very informative and spent some good time looking at that and appreciate the way that survey was put together and constructed and was very valuable. But all the input is great. I mean, what I really love about this stage of the budget process is really just taking it all in. Um, uh, and you know, that survey, you know, it's kudos to staff as well as this council and everybody that works at this city, because there are a lot of great takeaways in there. Um, and, and one of them being that residents do trust this city to spend their dollars wisely. Um, And shown in a number of different ways You know be it utilities or other reinvestments and constant reinvestments and infrastructure Residents feel like their tax dollars are really being used in a responsible manner and they're getting good return on their investment if you will a Couple of questions for me and I too like the way that councilmember Robinson kind of kicked this off for me at least what I heard is maintaining basics. That's the focus, or at least it's the focus for me. I think that's what residents want to see as well, first and foremost, before we look at anything else. The public safety piece, the transportation, the multimodal infrastructure, utilities, et cetera. That's all really important to our residents that we keep a real focus on those core things that we do and we do well and that level of service that they have come to expect. Question that came up during Council Member Breyer's question about the external impacts. You have a number of different areas there or causes. If you could put a percentage on that, which do you think has the biggest impact on our economy or how the way you look at where the budget is right now?

I would actually say consumer confidence is probably the single biggest concern and question. Because it drives so many different secondary impacts within the in the revenue side of the equation. And I would also offer that it frequently means that there's a higher reliance on city services. At the same time, because people turn to us as their trusted partner in a much greater turn. So it's one of those things that's a really big indicator both on revenue side to watch and on services side. It can mean an uptick in services as well.

Yeah, I think consumer confidence is certainly an important portion of it. What I really take away from that though is what's been happening at the state level as the biggest impact where we are right now. Sales tax were number four in the country now. Business tax, overall business tax were number six in the country now. Capital gains tax were number five in the country. State attacks were number one tied with Hawaii. And we're about to roll out an income tax that will see us sixth highest in the country. As Brad Smith has been saying, Washington has now turned into a high-tax state. And we're hearing and seeing some of the ramifications of that. We're seeing businesses leaving. Maybe not in Bellevue, but we're seeing businesses leaving, as shown by Starbucks. We're seeing high net worth job creators leave our state and go to other states that don't have an income tax. For many, many years, that was number one driver for our economic success here, especially in the tech sector, especially with startups, was that there's no income tax here. So given that, just to challenge your I guess you call it neutral, but neutral to positive maybe. Or maybe I'm overstating that. Hold. Okay. Not going up yet. Okay. Have you taken all these taxes and all this legislation coming out of Olympia? Is that actually reflected in this budget?

the legislation and the impacts of those legislation to the best as we can forecast is reflected. We can't forecast whether businesses are going to leave as a result or not leave. We don't have those kind of indicators or those kind of understandings. we can forecast the direct impacts that we're seeing in changes of categories of business, categories of tax ranges. Those kinds of things we can forecast, but some of the things that you reference are actually, they're not things that we can forecast against until we see a different kind of tangible reaction.

So what are you watching or what? maybe departments working with to be able to track? I think certainly economic development might be able to play a role in order to track companies that are coming or leaving, correct? And we can base models based off of that?

To a degree, yes.

Okay, okay. And how much does that concern you overall compared to the other factors that we talked about, external consumer confidence, et cetera?

At this point, I don't know actually how to react to it because I have to watch it. I have to be aware of it. We've got some odd effects happening. One of our counterpart organizations to BDA, DSA recently, Downtown Seattle Association recently issued a report on the taxation circumstances in Seattle. And truth be told, we're probably benefiting from some of that intra-county movement. And so what we aren't able to yet disaggregate those kinds of differences. And so where we're seeing growth. And other parts of the county are seeing reductions where we're seeing a very active permit counter and other cities are seeing very quiet permit counters. And so. What I do know is that you, council member, and this council have been very conscious about your partnerships with communities, and that includes the business community as well as our residential communities, and have charged us with being good stewards of those spaces. And so we're thoughtful about all of those things. And as we start to see, if we start to see, those will come back.

Okay. Next question. So you mentioned 2029 as now the year we might see, I guess, finally recovering. But what's going to happen in 2029? Why do you see it happening at that point, not earlier, not later? What are the key indicators that you're looking at?

I'm looking at the permit revenues. So as the permit counter activates, about two years out from that activation, we start to see the construction cranes really hitting the ground. And about a year later after that, we start to see the B&O starting to hit the ground. So you start to see that ramp up a year and a half to two years. You start to see that flow. And then you'll start to see the impacts. And so there's a steady process to that that gives us those indicators.

Okay. Yeah, and I think as all of us on this council agree that the more that we can help that process in terms of permitting and making it through that process, always time well spent. Lastly, or second to last, as it was mentioned earlier today too, back on that survey, the top focus areas for Bellevue by our Bellevue residents. I hope we all spend some time looking at those six items, making sure that we're prosecuting crimes, reducing travel concerns, improving intersections and roadway capacity. Part of this I love because we were hearing it during the public hearing, some of these safety concerns around transportation, etc. They're reflected here as well. So that's great overlap there. But also, you know, managing our growth or housing, affordable housing, or I inferred as affordable housing. enforcing laws etc that's all really really important stuff and that's exactly I think what this and values document and this values budget should should really reflect as a big part of it that we're addressing these six these six things lastly thank you so much for on your first presentation taking some time to And as you know because I've been been harping you on it on the engagement piece And thank you our city manager as well for really putting even more emphasis on engagement And then not only the game just make make residents aware that we're going through this process right now encouraging them to You know to really share their voice about where we should be spending their money and That's really important. And the fact that you have offered to go to any neighborhood association, go to anyone's house and say, let's talk budget and let's walk through this. I think that's a really important signal that we're saying to residents and how much we value their voice during this process. So love the budget 101, including all the other things that we're doing. So thank you so much for spending some time on that and for really further growing our outreach process on this. So thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Deputy Mayor Hamilton. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks for all the information, the presentations tonight. Really appreciate all of the resident engagement that we had, all the folks coming down. We have a great webpage on the city's website and the public hearing presentation today linked to a lot of really good information. So I think that's a good source for folks who want to get some more information. I did want to touch on a couple of things. On slide six, you went through a couple of things that I thought were really important. Council Member Newenhouse kind of touched on this as far as legislative changes to B&O and sales tax. I think folks who follow the legislature, even from a distance, understand this. It's frustrating for me. for me for them to so often tie our hands and make it all the more challenging for us to make the investments in our community that we know we need to make. And I'm trying to understand which factors we should take into account when we're deciding that we need to move forward with our investments in spite of what's going on in Olympia. I know other municipalities are moving forward alongside the state with their own proposals, but I just hope, and you could follow up with this, but I would like to get your professional guidance on how we know when it's the right time for us to decide that we can't wait for anyone else to come to rescue us and that we're going to have to take care of ourselves. The TBD might fit into that, but my colleagues may have other ideas as well. But it would be great to know when is the right moment because I'm just not sure that we can wait much longer for the state to kind of get its act together and for us to continue to avoid making the important investments we need to make. And I wanted to just get a little bit more information too regarding the recovery and regarding the timing in 2029. And I'm just curious if you could kind of come back to us with some sources of information that you rely on, that our economist relies on to reach that conclusion. So I'd like to just have a little bit more detail there. And then also too as it relates to consumer confidence, I'd like to know what information that you're using, what are your guides in getting a good, clear understanding of where consumer confidence is and where you think it's headed? Also wanted to just touch on the budget survey briefly. and hopefully get some more information back from you but I just think this 80% number is really incredible and that many of our citizens believe they're getting their money's worth I think really is a testimonial to the effectiveness that we run this city and I'm just curious to know if you have any comparisons to other cities and where those residents are and kind of feeling about their value. that they receive. Then for development services, just wondering if you've benchmarked our permit activity and development interest with cities in the region, and if you have any sense of where we stand relative to other King County cities. It'd be great just to have a few more details on that. I love the financial guiding principles that were mentioned in your presentation. I think those are really solid. I think they keep us properly focused and look forward to hearing about how we can continue to support those guiding principles. Of course, thrilled to see how competitive our fees are. I think we need to maintain that as a top priority. thank you Mr. Chair. I have a few things on utilities mayor. Lucy thanks for all of your hard work. I have a chance to spend quite a I know that utilities rates are really, really important to our ratepayers, and I appreciate all of the outreach and engagement that you're doing to make sure our ratepayers have every opportunity to provide feedback. I appreciate how much effort you and your team put into ensuring that every dollar that our ratepayers spend on their utilities returns maximum value, and how much effort you put into keeping the rates predictable and constant. and how much to really the city of Bellevue leads on such a wide range of utilities issues and interactions with wholesale providers around the region. And while I don't want to minimize the impacts of these increasing utility rates, I think it is worth remembering that we will almost certainly pay even more in the future if we don't invest now. So I think paying a bit more now is the most cost-effective way forward for everyone. Just one question for you. You know, I know that increased rates are not just going to cover needed investments, but could you describe some of the investments that are actually being made that are contributing to these increased rates going forward? Don, if you could just kind of come back to us.

We'll add that to the memory bank, sir.

Yeah. So that's it for me. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much, Deputy Mayor.

Great job again. I just have one quick question, and you don't need to answer me right now. And the question is mainly for audience to understand the people who came here and talked to us and also those who did the survey. So we now heard from the survey, from the resident, and I would love to know how those comments translate into your budget. how they can see and track that.

Let me give you a little bit of an answer now and we'll add to it in the memory bank. If we're thinking about it, the timing of Bellevue having a public hearing before our city manager presents a preliminary budget gives a chance for the staff and for you to be hearing those things before you have a baked document in hand. This gives us a chance to follow up and follow the thread from the budget survey at the end of last year. The current sets of issues and try to make sure that we're addressing as much as possible because we've spent the last year and a half doing a deep amount of planning work with you and with the community. on how to bring things forward and so all of those pieces feed into what the proposal will look like and hopefully when we bring a budget proposal forward and our city manager brings that it will reflect those comments and you will be able to articulate the relationship many of those things I do not believe that we can satisfy all of the needs and all of the interests that are represented. Our revenue potential has challenges to it. And as you know, this is an interim budget year. But you should be able to follow that thread of those communications. and even the engagement that's happening over the summer into the transportation components to help shape that final recommendation. And so even from the workshop time to now, we've started to see and hear and are evolving that thinking based off of the feedback. So hopefully, if we're doing our job right, it will be reflected. And that's the goal here and what Diane charges us with every day.

Thank you so much. We appreciate you all. Thank you. We do have another study session, electric grid capacity. City Manager, please introduce that to us.

Thank you, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council. As part of the budget process for this current biennium, Council Member Newenhouse asked for the city to take a look at how we could evaluate the electric grid and its capabilities in supporting city today and in the future and the council agreed to use some of the contingency money to fund a study so tonight our staff from community development and the consultant who was engaged to do the study aecom will share the findings with you and the community and the recommendations for implementation this study does provide us with a solid base to take a look at our future and to collaborate with PSE to ensure that we're actively working together to support the electricity needs of our community. So with that, Emile King, the Director of Community Development, Tim Dooling, our Senior Planner, and the AECOM consultants, I believe Aaron Cherry, who is the project manager, and Kenton Phillips, the building electrification lead. With that, I'll turn it over to Emil.

Thank you for the introduction, city manager, and good evening, mayor, deputy mayor, and members of council. Tonight, we are here to review the findings, recommendations, and next steps of the recently completed electric grid capacity study. Tonight's presentation is for information only. The full grid capacity study was published online on June the 12th and is available as an attachment in the Council packet. As you'll hear tonight, the report answers a number of questions and also raises important issues and specific areas for follow-up. There will be future work on implementation of the report's recommendations that we will be checking in with Council on. Quick review of the agenda will go a bit on the background of why this report was undertaken. Purpose and goals of the study are partnership with the adjoining city of Redmond in Puget Sound Energy, who is our in Redmond's electric and natural gas provider. We're going to hear from our two consultants from AECOM, which is an international firm that's very well versed in this type of analysis. And then we will review the recommendations and next steps that are also in the packet and the report. bit on the background of why this study is important. So to support the existing residents and businesses in the city, there's a range of public and private utilities, infrastructure and services that are needed. This really came to heightened importance as we adopted the city's comprehensive plan in the fall of 2024. It had growth targets of 35,000 additional housing units and 70,000 new jobs over a 25 year period. This is a 55% increase in residents and 45% increase in jobs. And there is a significant electric need that goes along with that increase in growth. Also, our goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have increased. the changeover to electric vehicles and electric heat pumps for building heating and cooling. So as part of the 2526 budget, council did allocate funding for electric grid capacity study and really we found it very fulfilling to be able to heighten our collaboration with Puget Sound Energy and partner with the city of Redmond.

Thank you, Emil. Good evening. The study is an independent consultant that assessment of the local grids ability to serve both current and future needs in Bellevue. And it combines technical analysis with insight gathered through collaborative workshop series between city staff and PSE staff. The study is meant to support attaining the overarching goal of the city working together with PSC to ensure adequate grid capacity is available, consistent with Bellevue's growth plans and other policy goals. And the study provides a baseline, a baseline understanding of local substation capacity now and looking out to 2050 and identifying potential constraints and informing joint planning efforts between the city and PSC. The study also provides a foundation for exactly that for continued and strategic coordination between the two organizations, including around high intensity uses or large loads that can have an outsized impact on capacity in a specific geography. Bellevue and the City of Redmond have partnered on this study, as both cities have common research goals and share substations and other grid infrastructure. And through this partnership, staff sought to create economies of scale and increase the available budget for a more robust study. The city's collaboration with started around late 2024. So, sort of prior to bringing on the consultant. And staff also participated in consultant, facilitated. Workshops, which were designed to strengthen collaboration and I'll now hand it off to Aaron and Kenton.

Thank you again for having us tonight. So as was mentioned, there was two components to the study. So the technical assessment helped us really put numbers to the projected loads and capacity. But it's important to note, as was mentioned, that there was a more qualitative component to the study as well, which was a series of four workshops conducted between PSC, Redmond, and Bellevue. trying to understand their viewpoints the regulatory frameworks they operate under their different approaches to planning and identifying opportunities for improved coordination and the study really intended to provide a foundation for future coordination and joint planning pass it to kenton to go over our approach

Thank you. For our approach to forecast future conditions, we first needed a clear understanding of today's system. We started by assessing substation capacity and utilization along with existing buildings, vehicle fleets to establish a baseline condition. From there, we looked at city plans, which really drive the forecast, things like housing and job growth, as well as electrification goals, such as EV adoption and achieving climate targets. We also reviewed Puget Sound Energy's forecast and assumptions, so we had a point of comparison. Because cities don't typically forecast electrical loads directly, we developed our own city space forecast by translating growth and housing and job into expected energy use. We assume that Puget Sound's energy plan system upgrades occur on schedule since those investments are critical to meeting future demand. And finally, we've combined all this to identify potential capacity constraints and understand how sensitivity in the results are driven by key assumptions. So the next slide here. Just a quick note on what's covered and not covered in the study. Starting off, large new loads attributed to data centers and major industrial uses were not explicitly included. Their size and variability would require significant assumptions that could skew our results, so they're better addressed, we feel, through ongoing coordination with utilities. This analysis is focused on the substation level, so we're looking at system capacity at that scale. We're not evaluating feeder level details or upstream transmission and generation systems. We also assume that Puget Sound continues to actually manage growth through planned upgrades, such as adding transformers and shifting load. And it's important to recognize that cities and utilities forecast differently. Local level PSE forecasts focus more on near term five to 10 year trends, looking at customer growth and usage patterns, while cities take longer term views centered around 20 to 30 year time horizons, driven by growth and policy goals. So going to the next slide here. Jumping to the results, the future demand is primarily driven by building and transportation sector. On the building side, we assume continued electrification, meaning more heat pumps, all-electric new construction. For transportation, we use Bellevue's EV roadmap with EV adoption growth trending around 10% per year, and just noting that about 20% of new cars are already electric. Altogether, this leads to roughly 70% increase in demand by 2050. In the near term, substation capacity is sufficient over the next 10 years. Longer term horizons may vary with three out of the 23 substations potentially exceeding capacity. But just to note that this is not an immediate concern and can be managed with planning. Lastly, just to touch on timing is also important. Buildings tend to peak earlier in the day while EV charging ramps up in the evening. In combining these effects, we're seeing the system peak probably closer to the early evening. I'll pass it on to Erin now to speak more to the results in detail.

Great. So our load projections were completed geographically. We wanted to understand not just by how much the load is growing, but where that growth is occurring. Our study did find that there is enough substation capacity to meet the needs of Bellevue's growth plans over the next 10 years, assuming timely completion of the planned upgrades, which are highlighted here in yellow. So those are upgrades at Center, Midlakes, North Bellevue and Rose Hill substations by 2030 and 2035. Um, so again, our projections assume that these upgrades do occur on schedule and the focus for the next five to 10 years, it's really to ensure those planned upgrades are proceeding that, um, you know, the constraints we did identify an out years as Kenton mentioned, there is still sufficient time for further planning transfers and upgrades to occur to meet those needs. Okay, getting into those constraints. So looking past 2035, our study looked out to 2045, and we identified four substations most likely to experience capacity pressures. Those are shown here. These can typically be connected back to pressure drivers of growth in the comp plan and upzoning. You'll see they're connected to areas like downtown Bellevue, the Belle Red Corridor, and Wilberton. Probably none of that surprising. The growth is amplified by the assumption that new construction will have electrified heating. And you'll note that the North Bellevue constraints are actually addressed by the upcoming project. So this really leaves three substations to monitor. So continuing to monitor anticipated constraints, evolving conditions, do what can be done to help mitigate those pressures, and in the meantime, improve forecasting and planning processes in order to stay ahead of these issues down the line. So just to wrap up our findings. Oops. We'll get to recommendations. So in summary, PSC and the partner cities, Bellevue and Redmond, forecast growth with different planning horizons and methodologies. AECOM developed a city demand forecast independently to identify potential areas of constrained capacity based on the comp plan growth forecasts. We also did a sensitivity analysis. We stress tested the electrification and population growth assumptions. We weren't surprised to find that the primary driver of demand change is population growth and its associated impacts on electrification. But the results suggested that no variable had significant impact on changes to the overall load in 2035, but these assumptions should be regularly reevaluated in coordination with PSC. And lastly, the grid is evolving and becoming more decentralized. Demand response is a great strategy to shift demand advantageously to shave peaks. The study didn't capture the potential use of demand side management and distributed energy resources like solar that can help reduce peak demand. So the study concluded with 10 recommendations providing actions for Bellevue and PSC to coordinate on moving forward. There's more detail in the report, but these recommendations were developed out of those workshops I mentioned with PSC, as well as proceeding relationship building efforts that existed between Bellevue and PSC. But I will hand it back to the city to talk in a little more detail about those recommendations.

Thank you. Um, so, yeah, the study puts forward the following 7 recommendations for improved coordination and joint planning between the city and. And the 1st, 3 recommendations focus on improved demand forecasting and long term grid planning, especially around future large loads and development projects. Recommendation 4 focuses on streamlining regulatory processes as PSC and the city of Bellevue operate within different regulatory frameworks that are not always aligned with regard to grid planning. And as noted on our item number 5, the timely implementation of plan improvements such as substation upgrades and expansions is key. to ensure sufficient capacity is available when needed, requiring strong collaboration and coordination between the city and PSC. The sixth recommendation focuses on demand side management strategies, such as managed EV charging, distributed energy resources, including battery storage and rooftop solar, which can help reduce peak demand. And then lastly, clear communications to community members and stakeholders, which can help build collaboration and confidence in grid planning efforts. Building on the workshops and the reports recommendations, city staff and PSE staff work together on sort of putting a finer point on those recommendations to identify proposed next steps for implementation. So the first item is really semiannual workshops that are meant to improve demand forecasting, long-term grid planning. The second item is related to selecting a high priority grid project, for instance, a substation expansion or new substation as a pilot, which is meant to help identify continuous improvements to local permitting processes. The last two items focus on improved communications and collaboration with the community and stakeholders, both to instill greater confidence in grid planning efforts and to implement strategies to reduce peak demand targeting more capacity constrained areas of the city. And I'll hand it back to Emile to close this out.

So reminder, again, this is information only, so happy to hear any feedback from the council tonight. And then also for more detailed responses, we're happy to follow up via email as well. So handing it back to you, Mayor.

Thank you so much, Emil Toon and our AECOM consultant. Thank you, Council Member Nieuwenhuis, for bringing to us. And we'll start with you, sir.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate it.

I'll try and be quick.

Unfortunately, we haven't left a lot of time for this. great job on this first initial study. Not only what we did internally, but the collaboration with PSE. Thank you so much for being a great partner in this study. Also, thank you for the city of Redmond, which initially I was like, well, why are we including that? But actually, I was able to pull some nuggets out of what was happening in Redmond and could see it happening potentially here in Bellevue. well worth doing as well. So really appreciate the approach and some of the great data that we got out of it. I want to ask some quick questions, and please feel free to be brief in your responses if you can, or if it's too long, tell me and we can follow up later. My first question, though, was a comment that you made about you weren't surprised that the primary driver of demand is population, right? But Couldn't we assume that if we didn't include data centers or other commercial type uses Couldn't we just, okay. So what are we comparing it against?

Sorry, that was out of population growth, building electrification and transportation, just those three factors.

Thank you, okay, thank you so much. I appreciate for that clarification. So what is the, talking about the substations, what is the year by year load trajectory for each of those constrained substations, those four that you highlighted? Do we have that data or can you share that?

Yeah, our study goes in five-year increments. We actually might have appendix slides, yeah. I don't think. It's in our report, but we can follow up. But yeah, we go in five-year increments starting in 2030 to 2045.

Okay, I'd love to see it because you mentioned it in the study that the substation would like to see the most constrained capacity by 2035, but I didn't see any annualized timeline in that. So I'd like to understand that. And then the substations, again... across PSE, 75% is the planning threshold first. So what does that mean in terms of a timeline again? Again, I point to the page four here. It says PSE initiates additional planning when the substation is forecast to reach 75% of its rated capacity. So that's at the point then where we're looking at upgrading that. So do we have any analysis of when that might happen to those four substations?

Yeah, so that's the trigger for more localized assessment. So that triggers another study by PSC on that specific substation area. And then, yeah, we can follow up, but you can see when those substations hit that threshold in our projections.

But once it hits that threshold... PSE then goes not only just to study but then potentially upgrade that substation.

Or load transfers or hopefully something to postpone an upgrade.

How long typically does it take to upgrade a substation?

It's a great follow-up question for PSE.

Yeah, we can follow up on that one, Councilmember.

Because the four really concern me. I think they're going to reach that 75% well before that 10 years. And then I'd like to understand, obviously, what that process looks like to upgrade so that it doesn't fail before the 10 years. I think it's almost like a false sense of security that potentially it might be okay for 10 years, but... It could fail much, much, much, much sooner. Let's see. You mentioned the development projects in Redmond that were either delayed or just, I don't know, terminated altogether. Can you provide a little bit more context? I've heard that that's happened in some places in Bellevue, but no one can be very specific. So can you elaborate on the Redmond?

You were just out there earlier this evening, and then we can talk a little bit about what we're going to do for the Bellevue lens as well. Okay.

I probably can't speak best to the specifics of what happened in Redmond, but it wasn't necessarily substation level constraints, but I can't provide more detail.

Okay. So as we got towards the tail end of this study, we were hearing of larger development projects in Bellevue potentially having issues. So that's definitely on our follow-up list, Councilmember, because we want to ensure that, as Tin noted, the idea that we have power available for our development that is in the pipeline. That's our underlying goal. So if we are hearing of any potential delays, we want to hone in on that and figure out what is happening and if there's any workarounds for those issues.

Okay, okay. Well, I'd like to see that follow-up. That would be really good, as well as follow-up on, again, I mentioned the earlier question about the permitting and regulatory bottlenecks. We'd like some more specifics on that in terms of not only the length of time, but what we're asking, how we're doing it. I think one of the great outcomes of this whole thing is that I think we're going to have a greater relationship with PSC than we've had previously, and that can only be a good thing as we work hand-in-hand to meet all of our goals across all different areas that impact the city. So we'd like to get some more information around that as well. And then last question is about the coordination, the governance. The study recommends on page 46 about, I don't know how formal it would be, but it does sound rather more formalized, which I think it needs to be in terms of how we go forward, and I think I saw that in some of your recommendations there, working on a semi-annual report, et cetera, but can you give a little bit more color to what that would look like?

Yeah, so this this this report did form a good launch point to council members. So we have a strong relationship right now with it's been focused a lot on resiliency and also some of the bigger projects like energizing side. So, moving forward, we do see new working teams being formed. We have some ideas on the frequency and what they're going to be doing, but this report is going to be a launch point for more coordination and getting into the details to ensure that electric capacity is supplied for our city.

Okay. That's great. Again, I would like some more specifics. I understand it's a launch point and that's all good, but more specifics would be great about how we're actually going to formalize this going forward. I think this is a great wake-up call for us. I really want to thank my colleagues for supporting this study. And it confirms for me, I think, in a number of different ways, at least anecdotally, what I've heard about kind of our growth is close to outpacing the electrical infrastructure support that we need to continue to grow. And I feel like we do need to have some urgency around this. It's not, you know, dire, but I do think we need to plan accordingly. You know, especially, you know, neighbors have talked to me about, you know, the rolling brownouts or whatever we've seen over summers or over winters sometimes, but not as much. It seems to be more of a summer thing. I think residents seem to notice that. It's going to cause real harm to a lot of things that this council cares about in terms of housing production, economic development, and then climate goals as well, which is a core pillar of shifting so many of our daily needs to electrify. Let me highlight just a few things. Well, I think I've already touched on a couple of these in terms of what I feel are most concerning. But the substations certainly are very concerning. And then also the permitting process therein. So we talked about that. Second, that long plan Vernell substation still has no confirmed site. That feels like it's a long way off and that was supposed to be, boy, that should have been built and operational by, by 2028. If I have that right from, from, from the report and we're nowhere near being ready for, for, for that. Um, so that, that's very much, um, a concern. Um, Fourth, I had that the development projects already, well, I'd like to have more confirmation if development projects are being killed in Bellevue or delayed in Bellevue. I'd like to know that. Maybe we can again work with economic development to find out a little bit more about that. And then a little bit more about the distribution feeders. I know that wasn't part of this study, but that's something I'd like to see in future studies, or maybe as a follow-up, if you can provide a little bit about that, because we talked about some failing feeders. Really like the recommendations and some of the next steps. I would make a request that some of those next action items will be funded during this budget cycle to help keep this process moving forward. Top line, the coordinated planning, the demand side management and distributed energy. resources that we have the substation to feeder level power flow analysis I think that's an important one and then extending the the plant horizons for that local capacity assessments as we continue to grow as a city I went too long thank you mayor for your indulgence great first step and and and and report and study and really appreciate everything you've you've added to this so thank you thank you so much can we have a motion to extend the meeting for 10 minutes and then we can

go to the rest.

I move to extend the meeting by 10 minutes.

Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. There is no opposed. Councillor Soma de Vera, sorry, is later. Please go ahead.

That's okay. Thank you. Don't worry. Yeah, actually, I would just want to plus one to what Council Member Newhouse said, and I think I'm just really excited about engagement we have, have such great partner with PSE to hold each other accountable for the betterment, I think, of the city. Yeah, I think my only question is, I think just can you help me to understand Because our plan is for 20 years out and then PSE is 10 years. For the resident to understand that gap, how are we going to be proactively making sure that there is a feedback loop, make sure the project is aligning with the need of the city?

Yeah, great question. That's right, the city plans out on a 20 year time horizon and at the local level, at least PSC plans improvements on a 10 year timeline. I think there it's key for, through those joint planning efforts and those semi-annual meetings for the city also to provide more detail on the type of growth that the city is planning for beyond that 10 year time horizon so that it can also inform PSC's plans more than 10 years out as well.

Okay. Well, thank you so much. Mayor, may I be excused? It's 12 o'clock here.

Absolutely. Have a great night. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your contribution and being here this late. Councillor Morgava.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor. Also, thank you to Emile Thun and our team here. Special thank you to PSC and our partnership there. Really appreciate that, City of Redmond. and really glad to see AECOM at the table. I spent 10 years of my life working for AECOM, so it's warm and fuzzy. It's great. I just want to start by saying that we really do need a long-term strategy, and I want to thank Council Member Novenhaus for instigating this and pushing this along for making sure that our substation capacity, feeder capacity, and our development growth stay in line, and I think that's a really, really important aspect not to become a constraint over time. The other thing that, you know, it's a few plus ones here to move us quickly here, but I do agree that the near-term upgrades that we need for substations that you've highlighted, places that we don't have clarity, we need to make sure that we're partnering very closely with PSE. unblocking them in whatever way we can through permit processes or improvements in our process for front-loading these efforts so that those constraints don't become real, don't prevent development, don't prevent growth, because those are just inputs we can control and don't impact our city in a negative way. So really important. Nobody wants to see development pause or brownouts in any way. That is not a good outcome. I also really appreciate much of the recommendations that the AECOM team has laid out. I'm broadly supportive. Much of that, whether it's demand management or the distributed energy sources or storage, long-term forecasting improvements, really important, stood out for me. And I also really appreciate, by the way, the push for communications and community engagement in a way that would be more effective, because just like what we've done with a lot of things we talked about today, getting input from the community, and we sat through a lot of that today in real time and surveys, really important aspect of what we're doing. And one thing I will add, because most of my questions were actually asked already, is that the need for continued federal and state advocacy and what we can do to be champions on that can only lead to better outcomes here, because much of this infrastructure will require money, will require support, and I think that's something that we have to take on in partnership with our team at the city. That's really, really important. So appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Gaba. Council Member Brouillard.

We as a council collaborate and work together. We don't compete with one another until now because I wish I was the one that got to introduce this study and not Council Member Newhouse. But that's what happens when you have brilliant colleagues is that you have to get used to how just amazing the work is. But in all seriousness, so this is giving us identification of what the challenges and issues are. and what the City of Bellevue and PSC are planning for. So this is a joined roadmap. It reminds me, it feels like I'm back at Facebook, which is super exciting. The work that you're doing is exciting, not being back at Facebook. That it's a joined roadmap and that we have cross-functional alignment, which is super helpful because it's hard to get substation upgrades. And what this alignment shows us is that we are prioritizing reliability and effective service as a local government, and that is critical. It's easy for us to sit back and virtue signal and do nothing. uh but that's not what we're doing and this this work is what sets us apart so i'd be remiss not to sincerely thank council member new in house for pushing this and for those on the council uh who helped get this through before i joined um very quickly and anecdotally i think it's important to share i i remember i was on the border of iraq and syria uh and conducting humanitarian work i was working at the refugee camps because the government of iraq and iraqi kurdistan could only provide up to three to four hours of electricity a day in the blistering 110 degree weather. And no one here in Bellevue is losing sleep because they can't plug in a fan at night or make a cup of tea or boil some clean water. And that's because of the work that you're all conducting and because of our city manager and our residents here in Bellevue. We are immensely privileged. And to that, thank you, Council Member Newenhaus. Thank you to my colleagues and thank you to all the incredible work that you're doing.

Thank you, Councillor Briar. Deputy Mayor Hamilton. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you all for the presentation. I think this is really important work, so I appreciate you doing it. I'm going to just add on to the thank yous for Councilmember Nieuwenhuis for prompting this study. I appreciate him helping us get here. I appreciate the involvement of Redmond. I think that was really smart. I think if there's future coordination with them that supports moving forward, we should consider that. Of course, the team from PSE, who've always been really good partners for the city, but we're certainly partners, very good partners in this work, and appreciate Councilmember Bhargava's comments regarding coordinating with PSE moving forward so that our development projects can move forward as quickly as possible. I think it's certainly going to take a coordinated effort to ensure that we can meet growing capacity demands and thankfully we have a really good team here to do that. I understand that not all substations are created equal and their upgrades likely vary, but just wondering if you could give me an idea of what a typical upgrade might look like and how it might impact nearby neighbors. How long does it take? How disruptive?

Yeah, I think what we'll want to do, Deputy Mayor, is we can go and look at some of the examples that have happened recently in the past, some of them that would be current, because there are different ones where it's expanding within the footprint. There have been expansions in the past, and there are brand new substations. So if it's okay, we'll do an email to you and the rest of the Council that details scale and length of time and some of the impacts that do happen.

Great. Perfect. That's excellent. Just wanted to know too, so you had some recommendations and next steps, and I'm just wondering, is there a cost associated with, you know, moving into those next steps and to facilitate the recommendations you have?

Right so for for the recommendations we're going to use existing staff capacity in community development for the rest of this year, so 2026 and then, as we go into next year, we do have staff within the comprehensive planning and strategic planning teams. that would be able to work on this. That being said, there may be cases where a supplemental study might be needed, so then we would work with city manager's office to ensure there's funding either put into the budget in this process or that we have as part of our discretionary funds in community development or the city at large.

Okay, good. Yeah, I think it's really important work. So I want to make sure to just kind of keep it moving forward and we do what we can to see that happen. I am just curious about this. One of the goals to deepen strategic coordination, including for future large loads. And I'm just wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about what that strategic coordination looks like. What is that?

Yeah. It's as important sort of a background is that large loads and that is sort of an expansive concept that can be like large or very large development projects that can be specific uses like data centers that require a lot of electricity. As Aaron pointed out as well, it's hard to sort of forecast where those that type of use would sort of occur within the city. So there is really important, especially through those semiannual sort of joint sessions with PSC to see like what is in the pipeline or anything sort of in sort of pre application at the very early stage coming to us as a city, but also to PSC. And how can we make sure that we plan accordingly and ensure that adequate capacity is available also for those uses. And then certain uses are a little bit different in nature. And I think they're in a sort of a broader perspective. The city needs to consider sort of like locating those uses and its appropriateness as well.

Okay.

Well, I think that's great. And if you get into a situation where you have this kind of strategic coordination, I would love to just kind of get a little bit of insight into what went on, what you learned, because I think that could really, really be helpful. So anyhow, again, great work. Appreciate the effort. And that's it for me. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much, Deputy Mayor Hamilton. I do not have any question. Every question I had was asked with my colleagues. You raise your hand.

Oh, yeah. Council Member Newhouse. Go ahead.

No, no, no.

Just before you ended the meeting, I just want to put a finer point on the mill. If you feel like in order to move forward with these proposed next steps and recommendations, please bring a budget for that to be included in the current budget that we're working on right now. Thank you. Thank you so much.

We appreciate you. Before we adjourn, I need to tell you all that the regular cancelled meeting scheduled for July 7 is cancelled. Our next regular meeting will be on July 14. With that, we are adjourned.