City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm calling this meeting to order. This is a meeting of the Finance Administration and Communications Committee of the Whole of the Redmond City Council on Tuesday, May 12, commencing at 04:30PM. Council members in attendance include council president Stewart, council vice president Nueva Camino, council members Parsey, Forsyth, Sony, and online we have council member Prakria and myself, presiding officer, council member Kritzer. On our agenda today, we have seven items. The first item on the agenda is our is an update with our federal lobbyist. And we have Leslie Palmer here to be able to give us this update. So I'll turn it over to you.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm so thrilled to be joined by my colleague, Joe O'Brien. We have a short PowerPoint. Joe's going to share his screen if that's okay.

Go ahead.

Great.

Terrific. Just to quickly walk through the update, we're going to just start with where we are on federal funding and some of the actions of late around with the administration. We'll talk a little bit about FY27 appropriations and budget reconciliation, which you may be hearing about in the news, touch on surface transportation reauthorization, as well as legislation impacting housing and homelessness, and then talk briefly on midterm elections and then looking ahead to 2026. With that, let me start on the next slide. As you probably saw in the news, Congress struggled to finalize their FY '26 appropriations bills.

Just a reminder, these are the bills that essentially fund the government. There are 12 bills that they deal with each year. This year, they couldn't get them finalized in December. Ended up going into Q1 and Q2 even of this year. They were finally able to reach agreement with the exception of funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE and Customs and Border Protection, which of course you've seen in the news.

And they were unable to reach agreement and it resulted in a partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. It ended up being the longest shutdown in history. They were finally able to get to some resolution and the department was able to reopen on April 30 through a compromise that was reached with the House and the Senate, with the exception of funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection, which of course in DC because we love acronyms, CBP. They are dealing with funding for those two divisions separately through reconciliation, which I'll talk about in just a moment. Quick reminder that even through this shutdown, ICE and CBP continued to have funding because of funding that was approved through the reconciliation package that happened last summer.

That was already supplemental funding. This is the normal funding that they would be getting. I'll also just note that in the FY twenty six package that funded the government, Congress largely rejected many of the cuts that President Trump had proposed in his budget and ended up funding programs at levels very similar to what we had seen in funding year 2025. And I'm bringing that up because we've recently seen the President's budget be proposed with a number of draconian cuts. And while from a symbolic standpoint, it's really concerning, what I want to leave you with is that many of those cuts are unlikely to go through because many of the programs that he's proposing to cut have bipartisan support.

Joe, next slide. With the President's budget that's been introduced that kicked off the FY27 appropriations process. As I mentioned, you saw the President introducing his budget, these very draconian cuts for domestic programs, and proposing the largest increase in defense spending, 42%. And again, given how Congress treated the budget last year, we anticipate this being the same for this year and that many of these cuts are going to be rejected. The House has started moving along with its appropriations schedule and they're starting to mark up bills.

The Senate is moving at a much slower pace and that's been pretty typical. When the federal fiscal year ends, which is September 30, it's very likely that Congress will need several continuing resolutions before they're able to get final agreement on the FY27 budget. We're looking at probably seeing a final package somewhere in December, could even be into early next year. Next slide. One piece to note is that as we're going through the appropriations process, Redmond has submitted several projects for community project funding, also known as earmarks, and we are so thrilled.

We received notice that Congresswoman DelBene has chosen two of our projects to advance to the Appropriations Committee, and that's the East Side Corridor Urban Airspace Radar Safety Infrastructure for $772,000 and then also the Fire Station 11 life safety modernization project for $3,000,000 And so really, is a very important first step. Each member of Congress is allowed to select 20 projects that they push forward to the Appropriations Committee. The next step will be as the bills are marked up, they will identify the final funding levels for these projects. But I'll note that once a member has selected a project to move forward, that project very rarely falls out. The funding level may decrease, but the project will move forward.

That's really exciting news for the city and we're so appreciative to Congresswoman DelBene. I should note that Mayor Bernie is actually in DC right now and will be meeting with Congresswoman DelBene tomorrow to be able to thank her in person for all of the work that she's doing on the city's behalf. Next slide. I mentioned budget reconciliation. In addition to appropriations, the other piece right now that's moving forward is funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection through this separate package.

And just a quick note on budget reconciliation. This is basically a procedural maneuver that Congress is able to use to advance items that have a budgetary impact with a simple majority. They've used budget reconciliation for a number of things. You may recall there was the one big beautiful bill that advanced many of the president's tax cuts last year. That was through reconciliation.

Democrats have also used reconciliation. That was how the Inflation Reduction Act was passed. There's precedents for this. House and Senate Republicans are working to advance $72,000,000,000 which would fund ICE and CBP for about three years. Senate Republicans are putting the package on the floor the week of May 18, and then they're aiming to get this to the President's desk by June 1.

At the same time, Congressional Republicans, particularly in the House, are trying to move a third reconciliation package that would go far beyond ICE and customs and border protection, and maybe address energy costs and maybe do some cost of living issues, maybe more tax cuts. It really feels at this moment that that is not very realistic. It takes a long time to get consensus on these kinds of packages to figure out how you're going to pay for them. And so while there's a lot of discussion about this in the Republican caucus and there may be some maneuvers to try to move this forward, it's very unlikely that they're going to get to a third reconciliation package this session of Congress. Next slide.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Joe to talk a little bit about surface transportation reauthorization.

Thank you, Leslie. Good afternoon, everyone. One of the key legislative items for Congress to tackle this year, we talked about government funding, We talked about budget reconciliation. The, you know, the third is the service transportation reauthorization. This is a a massive endeavor that congress has to do every couple of years, and that is the re reauthorization that authorizes and funds the nation's highways, bridges, public transit, public transit services, and rail programs.

So the current reauthorization, the infrastructure investment and jobs act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or BIL, allocated trillions to essential or approximately 1,700,000,000,000 to essential transportation infrastructure programs and projects throughout the country. It has already been five years since that was passed. So the house and senate are now drafting and getting ready to release as soon as two weeks from now or about a week and a half from now the next reauthorization. So the House Transportation Infrastructure Committee, which is the house committee with jurisdiction over the service transportation reauthorization or at least the vast majority of it, they are getting ready to release their bill on May 20 and hold a markup, which is where members will come together and offer some perhaps amendments to the bill as they try and get it across the finish line. But I will just note in that they are you know, while the extension is up or while their current authorization expires on September 30, that is not a whole lot of time for congress' standards.

Four months is usually not enough time to get something done. So they're likely to require an extension past September 30 to get the reauthorization done even if they release the bill in May. And I'll talk about why in in in just a second. So chair Sanggraves of the T and I committee, his priorities for this reauthorization, And, you know, again, he has to work with his counterpart, congressman Rick Larson of your home state of Washington. Congressman Graves said that he really wants to focus on prioritizing traditional infrastructure in this reauthorization like roads and bridges, and he could look to cut or consolidate some of the programs that were created through the prior reauthorization.

It was a historic bill, the bipartisan infrastructure law. There was, you know, again, 1,700,000,000,000. They expanded programs. They they added new funding. Chairman Graves seems to have taken you know, he doesn't wanna do, BIL again, and they're looking to do a smaller bill, that doesn't quite do try to do as much as as the infrastructure investment and jobs act.

Other potential priorities, and, again, we haven't seen the bill yet. We'll be seeing it in just a couple of days now, are permitting reform. So trying to streamline federal reviews for, federally sponsored infrastructure projects. I know that was, you know, a key sort of issue with BIL implementation was trying to get this money spent and then sort of implement it as fast as possible. I think one of the key, items to keep, you know, your your eye on is public transit, which averaged about $21,400,000,000 a year annually under IIJA.

That's an that's a major negotiating point. Democrats are, you know, have been and are very supportive of transit, and they're gonna work to protect that share of funding. Republicans and perhaps even the White House could try and adjust that. But, again, that's going to be one of democrats' top priorities. And because this bill has to be bipartisan and has to receive 60 votes in the senate and you're gonna need democratic votes, you know, this process is a very bipartisan one.

So there's only there's only really so much that they can try and do, but transit is certainly, I think, at the top of the priority list for for Democrats on the committee and really and and really in Congress. So where we are right now is May 20 is the magic date for when we'll see a bill out of the house, the senate, which has instead of one committee of jurisdiction, they have three. They're a little bit farther behind, and I think they're waiting for the house to go first. So the house will release its bill, and then the senate should, you know, start to hopefully release something in the coming months after. But, again, it's it's very likely that they're gonna need some sort of extension as they continue to negotiate because while it's, you know, the houses are negotiating amongst themselves, they're gonna have to negotiate with the senate once they release their bill.

So it'll be a process. You know, I think I don't wanna crystal ball too much, but they're definitely gonna need an extension past September 30 to keep the conversations going. And, yeah, and we'll, you know, we'll keep you posted. Mayor Bernie is such a leader on transit. You know, she's really made it a big priority of hers and her federal advocacy. So her voice has been very helpful in communicating just how important transit programs are to Redmond and, you know, communities throughout the country, quite frankly. One of the other big legislative items going on right now in

Congress I'm is just gonna jump in here for a second. I just wanna make sure we're also keeping on time for this committee as well. Just wanted to time check on this. I'm not sure how many more slides are left. But just if we can, I know there'll probably be a couple questions from the council? So, and and we I would love to also have you back if we wanna deep dive on some additional things. But if you can make sure to just, wrap up within the next, couple minutes, that would be great. Thank you.

Sure. Absolutely. I I will just say a few quick moments, a few quick words here, and that congress is working on bipartisan housing legislation. It has been a pretty gargantuan effort to get these there are now two bills right now that they're trying to negotiate over. President Trump has weighed in trying to get this comprehensive housing legislation passed.

So we could be something moving pretty soon at the federal level on housing legislation aimed at sort of streamlining the federal review process for housing programs and seeking to sort of strengthen what we currently have in the toolbox for, you know, how the federal government can help boost housing supply. So that's that's a pretty big item right now. I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna skip continuum of care homeless, funding update, but I'm happy to follow-up after this and just

go Happy to have you cover it briefly if you wanna talk about it.

Oh, sure.

Thank relevant to us. I I didn't wanna cut you off, but just if we can go a little bit faster so we can Yeah. Stay on track. Thank you.

Absolutely. Yeah. So right now, the Trump administration has sought to fundamentally change how the Continuum of Care Homeless Grant program operates by seeking to implement caps on the amount of funding that communities can use federal funding that communities can use for this program for permanent supportive housing. The administration has come under several different lawsuits, and Congress has stepped in ordering the administration to essentially maintain the status quo as the courts as their as the lawsuit makes its way through the courts right now. So where we are right now is the Trump administration is currently under a a restraining order as it sort of makes its way through, and it's required to dole out funding, according to sort of the prior, the prior year's terms.

But we're also expecting, you know, it it doesn't appear that the lawsuits will necessarily prevent the Trump administration from issuing a NOFO, notice of funding opportunity for this year that would that has a higher chance, I believe, of implementing some of these changes to the Continuum of Care homeless funding program. So I think June 1, early June is sort of, you know, a key date to keep your eye on for this new Notice of Funding Opportunity and how it could, you know, potentially shift how communities use federal dollars to respond to homelessness. We are an election year, so I wanted to talk really quickly about what we're seeing in Washington DC for the midterm elections. So, you know, right now, House Republicans have a very, very, very narrow majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats just need about three seats to flip control. Number of states, as you've probably seen in the news, are going to be using new maps, and that has certainly changed, you know, the way that, you know, we sort of see the national map, you know, not as many competitive races as really just a handful of races that are gonna decide control of the house.

Democrats right now are favored to win a majority in the house, which would unlock new legislative and, you know, I think critically investigative powers. I think you'll probably see a lot of that in the hundred twentieth Congress if Democrats are elected. So I think a couple priorities are, you know, investigations proposing increased domestic spending, while Republicans generally sought to decrease domestic spending and offer legislation to put their Republican colleagues on record. And then on the Senate, I think really quickly, you know, I think it right now, it's it's it's it's going to be a close one with Republicans probably slightly favored to hold their fifty three forty seven majority, but, you know, a number of states that they're defending right now. So with that, I'll move on and let Leslie finish up.

Yeah. Just really quickly, as we're looking ahead, you know, there are still some things that Congress continues to work on. You know, probably top of mind is the Water Resources Development Act, which authorizes Army Corps of Engineer programs. You know, there's been the the president's FEMA review council just met and finalized their recommendations for helping to restructure FEMA, and so Congress is likely to consider some of the changes there. There is a bipartisan group continuing its work on permitting reform.

There's the National Defense Authorization Act, which is annual legislation that they will probably pass in the fall. And then, of course, the House has been working on the Farm Bill. They passed their version of the Farm Bill. It's been controversial. The Senate is unlikely to agree with where the House is going, and so it's unlikely that we're going to see the Farm Bill signed into law this year, but work will continue on it. And with that, why don't we take a pause and take any questions?

Well, thank you so much for that presentation. I'm sure there there are some questions from the council, and I I think, maybe at the next presentation, we could even have it a study session so we could dig in even more as well. But I will ask, are there any brief questions from the council? Council vice president, Nueva Kamina.

Thank you, chair. I wanna make this very, very brief because we are significantly over time on this. So happy if you need, Leslie, if you need to get back to me via email. Earlier, Joe had mentioned streamlining housing at the federal level. Since that can look a myriad of different ways, and sometimes we can have unintentional consequences. Knowing how that is being streamlined, do you see any foreseeable unintentional consequences for here in Redmond as we're pretty aggressive with our housing targets?

I would just, I'll jump in here and just quickly say, that do not see any kinds of preemption issues in this legislation. I'll just note that this is supported. This legislation has been supported by every local government group across the board, ranging from National League of Cities, Conference of Mayors, the counties. Everybody has come together on this bill. There are no preemption clauses in here, so they've been very intentional about that, and so this is very much complementary and supports what Redmond is doing.

Great. Thank you.

Other comments, questions? Councilmember Percy?

Just a quick comment. If it's possible to include the material as a part of agenda items, it would be really helpful so we don't have to kind of walk through the entire slides, and we can do our homework upfront and read some of that ahead of time and think about good questions to bring with us.

Great, thank you. Yeah, if we could get a copy of the slides from today, that would be great for the council and we can also follow-up. President Stewart.

Yeah, this is more just a comment for my colleagues and maybe a discussion point for later. Would be happy to come back to it at talk time today. But I noticed in the appropriation requests that it looks like have been put forward through the congresswoman's office. There's one that I recognize because it's in one of our recently adopted long term plans. There's another that's not. And it is interesting to learn about that in a presentation such as this after the fact. So, maybe a point of discussion and and process for council to look into a little bit later on. Thanks.

Thank you very much, council president. I would agree on that and I I would say I think we have this is the first time in this biennium that we funded actually having this this federal lobbying team. So, thank you Leslie and Joe for being here and I would be happy to see in this committee if we wanted to look as we do at the state level of having a state legislative agenda looking at developing a federal legislative agenda. So that way we can be aligned with what's being advocated as well. With from the city council perspective. Any other comments? Alright. Well, I'm going to say thank you so much to Leslie and Joe. Thank you for the work that you're doing on behalf of our city and for the update. We'll look forward to seeing you back in the future.

And we'll move on to the next item on our agenda. The next item on the agenda is the Eastside Public Safety Communications Agency, EBSCA amended, interlocal agreement. And we have our COO Melissa Files here to present.

Good afternoon council. So as many of you might know along with four other cities, the city of Redmond is part of what we call the Eastside Redmond Communications Agency or EPSCA. EPSCA used to actually maintain and operate the 800 megahertz radio system for our public safety system. But in 2015, I believe voters approved a region wide 800 megahertz system, which means that EBSCA needs to change a little bit from a entity that actually owns and operates the radio system to one that is a part of what they call the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network, PCERN, to one that serves on the board of PCERN. So the agreement that you have before you today essentially changes EBSCA again from one that owns and operates the radio system to one that, serves on the P CERN board.

It just basically outlines how EBSCA will, select who is on the P CERN board and kind of how the joint, board will function from now on. So I'm happy, oh, I should tell you that this will be on Tuesdays, next Tuesday's agenda for approval. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Great. So SCO files just mentioned it's proposed, to be on consent on May 19. Are there questions from the council? Council Member Soni.

Thank you so much. So with this agreement so far we were kind of owners of the system. Now we are moving towards the setup for being members. I just want to ensure that if we have any specific Redmond's public safety needs that they don't get diluted with the shift. So I don't know what are those needs but I just want to highlight that maybe if we need to see and validate that is there any specific needs so are we are able to protect that and not just letting them go to market.

Definitely. That is why EBSCO, the consortium of five cities on the East Side gets to appoint a board member to P CERN. So that if Redmond has any issues or the other four city have any issues then we bring that as a board member to the P CERN board.

Any other questions? Council President Stewart.

Thank you so much. And I think the bulk of my kind of questions are around this representation issue. Do you happen to know who currently represents our consortium and if that member will continue to represent as soon as this is executed or if we're expecting a transition.

So second first, I believe we're expecting a transition. Kurt Triplett, city manager of the city of Kirkland has been on the PCERM board since its inception and he is getting tired of it. So he has said he would like to relinquish that but it probably won't be until 2027.

Seeing no other questions is there any objection? Oh Councilmember Parakrea.

Thank you. Yeah, just a quick question kind of building off of the representation one is, I noticed a lot of the language in this agreement requires unanimous consent amongst the board with many of the cities to like further dissolution or moving forward any kind of significant action with the board. Do we foresee any any points of conflict with with our other cities or historically has there been any kind of disagreement? Because I'm sure each city wants to prioritize their own needs.

I have been on the EBSCO board as the mayor's designee for almost ten years now and since my tenure we have never had any big disagreements. Certainly small ones that we have been able to work out but the board is usually in consensus about what is happening.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilmember Soni. Just a very quick question.

So there is a mention for the fees that will be now charged. But there's no mention like you know how much is that and is it something that has to be taken into constitution for the budget?

Financial section of this is really if the board has any fees. It used to be under the old EPSCA that you paid a fee per radio that you had. So there was an obviously an accounting of that. This is just to make sure if the board needs something, they are able to financially account for that. But I don't foresee us needing anything nor will they be a a financial consequence of this.

Okay. Now seeing no other questions, is there objection to putting this on consent next week? Right. Seeing thumbs here, so we'll put that on to consent. Thank you for for that information.

Thank you.

For your, representing us as well.

Sure. Thank you.

The next item on the agenda is the UKG Pro and Microsoft Dynamics three sixty five Finance and Operations bidirectional integrations. And we have our TIS director Mike Marchand here to present.

Good afternoon council members. I'm here to introduce Courtney Miller, one of our project managers our PMO office, to talk about a contract to put on the next week's consent agenda.

Good afternoon members of the City Council. My name is Courtney Miller, technology project manager. And I'm here today to provide background and seek approval of a project change order for workforce management phase two. The city currently relies on a manual file based process to transfer employee data from the city's current HRIS Eden into Microsoft Dynamics three sixty five, our ERP system. The process developed and maintained by TIS staff is resource intensive and only performed once a week.

During the UKG Pro implementation, the project team evaluated options to improve this integration. The team selected Protiviti to build bidirectional integrations between UKG Pro and D365 to reduce manual work, improve data consistency across systems, enable daily data transmissions, and provide real time monitoring and alerts. This contract extends the city's ongoing partnership with Protiviti, a Robert Half company, which has previously provided technology resourcing and support services. The city initiated a $20,000 discovery engagement to validate Protiviti's capabilities and deliver design documents. The statement of work has a remaining value of $57,000 We are seeking council approval to be added to the consent agenda next week to proceed with the $57,000 build contract.

Thank you so much. Are there questions from the council? Council President Stewart.

Thank you. Really appreciate the description of the project, Courtney. I found it difficult to track whether, there were new dollars needed for this change order or if it was currently, if it was going be able to be covered by the budget. Ultimately, are we going to end up with a budget adjustment for this project? So, you could just address the finances, that would be great.

Yeah, absolutely. The funds are coming from the approved twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six B tip budget for the project. So, no new funds are requested.

Council Member Sony.

I have a question on the finance only. First, there are actually two. So first is like you know is this a fixed price contract or time and materials because I think that's very important for us to know it could expand. And the $12,000 the one that we are going to spend on the support, is there any end date or is it going to be for the term of the like a lifelong term of this contract?

Yeah, it's a time and materials contract. So if it exceeds this, there would potentially be a change order and then the 12,000 is an annual support for the integration.

Sorry, that will be an ongoing. It's like, you know, there is no no term end for this one.

Correct.

Councilmember Percy.

From the scope what I understand is that once the contractor performs their duties, the data will be evaluated from a user acceptance testing period and then afterwards the contract is determined to be complete. In many of the data integration issues that kind of software happens, issues will be discovered far later on. Do we have a warranty or kind of other post kind of user acceptance testing period that we can kind of make sure that we have on call people from the contractor or other support to make sure that if we discover things postmortem, we can make sure that the contractor addresses them.

Yeah so included in the contract there's a, I can't remember the language, there's a thirty day period for like hypercare and then another thirty day period for warranty. So there's sixty day post go live of support from the vendor.

Do we believe that that sixty day is sufficient for kind of all the problems that we might find?

Yeah and then we would have the annual support contract so the vendor would be available to support any changes that would be needed.

Alright. Seeing no other questions. And this is also being proposed for consent on May 19. Is there any objection to that going to consent? Alright. Seeing thumbs there. So we'll move forward with that. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is the twenty twenty six aerial photography lidar and supplementals. And I believe director Marchand is gonna introduce this item as well.

And thank you counsel. Introducing Melissa Brady to discuss another contract we'd like to add to next week's consent agenda.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, counsel. I'm Melissa Brady, I'm the enterprise data and GIS manager. Today, I'm bringing forward a request to participate in a regional data collection effort for the 2026. This $94,000 investment will provide updated leaf on aerial imagery, LIDAR, and derived data sets, including tree canopy, impervious surfaces, and contours.

These data sets support citywide operations with particular value for our environmental sustainability and stormwater programs. By partnering with our neighboring jurisdictions, we are able to cost share and obtain high quality data more efficiently than procuring it independently. Funding for this project will be supported through dedicated stormwater and BTIP allocations aligned with our environmental sustainability objectives. I'm asking tonight to have this added to the consent agenda for May 19. Any questions?

Councilmember Percy?

Would you be able to share a little bit if we were to carry this work independently? How would the finances look differently?

I don't have those numbers exactly in front of me, but I believe it was a 30 or 40% cost savings by going with the other jurisdictions.

May I ask a follow-up? Would be the kind of, what would be, would there be additional gain with that that would come if we were to do this independently that we have to kind of compromise if we do this route?

You know, we worked with the consortium with the e Governance Alliance over at Bellevue and feel like we were represented very well and had a good voice there.

Thank you. Councilmember Soni? You know, just

with anything associated with the photography, there is, and I don't know if it's relevant here, but I want to ensure that whatever pictures are being taken and is there going to be any risk of having the photography of anything challenges and where is data going to be stored and if there is any analysis that's happening. Because it's we are talking about a greener tree canopy, we want our constituents to also see that. So, you know how all of these will be taken care. So, basically, the sensitivity in terms of the photography, the data collection, the storage, and protection, and as well as sharing the reports. If you can please highlight.

Sure. As far as the data storage, so this is a county wide project. So that's, well, it's actually about two thirds of the county. The data is being collected again through the e government alliance. So the data is going to be publicly available.

And so it will be available on probably our website, but definitely through the e Governance Alliance. As far as privacy issues, the data is a I'd have to go back and look at the exact specification, but it's like a half meter resolution. So you're not going to be able to have, like, personally identifiable information. You can't see things like people's faces. You can't see license plates.

You can't see addresses, those sorts of things. It's a very similar resolution as what you would find in Google Maps in more of the aerial view, not so much the street view. So we're not looking at if you've ever used street view where you can actually see people and see mailboxes and things like that. It's definitely not at that resolution.

Council member Prakria.

Thank you. And this is this is very exciting to me. I think the thing that's that's most interesting is possible use cases of working with our public works department with regards to asset management. I know LiDAR technology has improved significantly in recent years, And you just mentioned that I think it was half a meter resolution. But can you share more as to the conversations we've had with public works on how we can make sure that this project can best serve their needs in terms of just measuring the quality of our assets around the city. I know they're working on a state of the asset report for this year.

So for this particular project, the main thing that they were looking for in public works was the impervious surface layer that the stormwater utility is responsible for. However, the information can also be used for helping to map some of the missing assets that we have. So for instance, things on the photography that you can see are street lights, you can see hydrants, you can map edge of pavement, you can map sidewalks and trails. And so this data will be available for them to use as a source for improving those data sets. Unfortunately, the data can't be used for some of the hidden assets that we have, you know, as far as where there might be water pipes or sewer pipes.

However, any surface expression like manholes, we can see that and we can use that data to help fill in those gaps.

Councilmember Forsyth. Thank

you, and sorry if I missed this. When do we expect to have this back? Because I know we're all very excited to get into our tree canopy code update.

We are hoping to fly the photography this summer, so we would fly it. We want leaf on, so we're looking to try to get this in June. It will take them a couple of months to process it, and one of the actual deliverables this year will be they will actually deliver us a tree canopy layer. In the past, we would collect the aerial photography, and then we would have staff do the actual analysis, which led to delays because they have lots of competing priorities. So I'm hoping that early fall, we will actually have a product that we'll be able to show counsel and then it may take a few months to do some of the comparisons between previous years and this year.

Thank you.

Council Member Parsey. I think we'll try to wrap up questions after this on this

Following up on Council Member Forsyth, do we know if the timeline that we get is aligned with a tree code update? Because I think I saw that the community engagement is starting in June for tree canopy, and I just wanted to make sure that if this is an opportunity for us to use it, if there is opportunity for expediting the data so we can use this data effectively this year.

I wasn't aware of that particular initiative, but I can go back and find out who's coordinated excuse me, coordinating that and we can see what we can do if we can get an early deliverable.

Wonderful. Well, you so much. Is there any concern about putting this on to consent on, May 19? Alright. Sounds like we're raring to go on it. So, let's get that on consent. Thank you so much. And I'm excited about this in particular as well. Alright, so the next item on our agenda, which I think we're keeping the same team here with us, is the data governance program update. The council wanted to come back and thank you for providing that that transcript from the previous meeting that that was able to give to us and I'll just turn it over to director Marshand to be able to open this item.

I think the the goal was to discuss what will be in scope of what we're going to expect to come back on the data governance project, and then also for council members to raise anything that they are hoping is in scope to check on whether that is or whether there's a different stream of work that we need to look at for that.

Great. Thank you. So my intent tonight was to answer questions specifically about the data governance program. And before before doing that, I'll I'll just make a brief little introduction. So data governance, you know, is is the operational framework the city will use to manage information responsibly throughout its lifecycle, including data quality, stewardship, security, retention, access controls, and compliance with applicable laws.

Its purpose is to ensure that city data is accurate, reliable, secure, and appropriately managed to support city operations and service delivery. Data governance is not intended to establish operational restrictions on lawful city business activities or to replace existing legal, regulatory, policy, or public safety decision making processes. Rather, it helps ensure that information gathered through those processes is managed in a consistent, secure, compliant, and operationally effective manner. And I am happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Great, thank you. I'll actually just kick us off with a question just to clarify because you were mentioning about this. I think I do see within the notes that we, that data sharing and access is piece of this work and thinking about the data that we collect from different sources in and who can access it and what is both publicly accessible as well as how it's shared between departments. Is that all going to be in scope within this policy?

It will be. Yeah. Yeah, it will be. So when it comes to security, it's really is a person's job, is their role require access to the data? If you're, for example, financial data, are you a finance person or do you work in HR? Do you work in public works? If you work in public works, probably don't need access to financial data. Access controls are established to ensure that the people who the only people who have access to data are those who are relevant to their role and their responsibilities. Data sharing, we do have a data sharing agreement that we already have that we implement whenever we do have data that's shared with external organizations. That would be incorporated, managing that agreement, making sure that it's kept up to date, that it's reflective of current issues and responsibilities.

Great, thank you. Councilmember Parsey?

I wanted to add another layer of data access. What I understand from the access that is in scope is that, for example, access from city employees, making sure that the city employees, for example, finance team has access to finance data, but this doesn't mean that, for example, we're taking a look at different categories of, for example, data for health data or, for example, people's location data and the layers of security with which that data will be kind of treated, and also where, I guess, from my understanding is that for externally, how we're sharing the data outside of the city, we're not really having in scope kind of from an external vendor kind of exactly in our contract how the data will be accessed and how it will be shared externally. Is that a fair assessment?

With regards to data such as health data that's already governed under HIPAA laws, there's regulations that we would follow and we would ensure that that's reflective data governance. For data such as location data, again, it would depend on business needs. It depends on whether there's a legitimate business need to have the data and to use it and to make sure that that data is used and collected in alignment with those needs. With regards to externally sharing, we do have public records laws that we need to comply with. So we would ensure that any of the regulations or any of practices that we do comply with those.

But just to to double click on that. Yeah. Is, in terms of the external sharing, will within this data governance policy, can we expect, though, to have some specification around policies for what type of data would be shared externally or what kinds of laws we might align to, or any any areas where it doesn't necessarily isn't necessarily dictated by, say, a transparency law, but, you know, when we're working especially with private vendors or, for example, when our data is on serve other servers, is that gonna be included in here as well as kind of our policies around where our data lives?

So again, virtually all the data that we have is classified either as public records or not public records. If it's confidential data, then it's it's stuff that we wouldn't share externally. So example, employee personal information, health information, anything that's classified as private information wouldn't be shared or wouldn't be eligible to be shared unless there's very specific business use cases. Maybe you're interacting or coordinating with an insurance provider. Sorry, might have was there another part of that question?

No, I think, just whether that will be outlined within the policy. It would It will be shared, what won't

be shared. It would be. It would be.

Council President Stewart.

Yeah. Thanks so much. I feel like, we're all having a bit of a deja vu on this and maybe at various, pieces of the conversation. I went ahead and, went back to the conversation from January 2025 that we had here with the director and Melissa when we were about to sign the contract to begin the work. That was work that the council requested.

The genesis of it being some technology contracts that had raised some bubbled up some questions. We funded the work. And all of the questions that are being asked today are the same questions that were being asked in January 2025. And at that time, the response at the time was that much of this would be included and it would be included in this first phase and that that work would have been completed by last July. So that's where the eagerness on all of this is coming from, for sure.

There was also another piece of watching back your response, Director Marshawn, that caught my attention, was that at the time you noted that we currently have data sharing agreements with all of our vendors that are regulating some of the questions that we're asking right now. I would propose actually that would be helpful to have some more information, maybe a briefing here in committee or a memo from you, and information about what is in those data sharing agreements. Again, in the multiple conversations that we've had, you can watch back in the timeline. One of the things that council has been asking for is, if we are being asked to approve a contract, say for LiDAR, like we just did, what are the assurances? We would like confidence in the assurances for security and mitigation of possible data sharing lapses, that when we're asked to approve the dollars, we know that these technical pieces have already been taken care of.

Knowing what those are would probably help instill a bit more confidence. So that's maybe something I will encourage us to revisit is what is in the data sharing agreements currently?

I'd be happy to share the data sharing agreement with you. It's a basic template that we use with all of our contracts. We usually tailor it depending on the type of contract if there's specific needs that need to be addressed, but that's absolutely something that I can share with counsel.

Thank you. That sounds like a great next step. Council member Forsyth?

Thank you. I will just plus one to everything that has been said and I know we're short on time so I'll just say for my part, I was really looking for policy gaps where we could set policy to make sure that we are doing the best by our community to make sure that our data is securely protected. So, if there are any gap areas that you see that we can act, I would hope that that would be a part of this as well.

Councilmember Prakria.

Thank you. My question is kind of on the the operational side. So I assume once once we have this data governance platform in in place, how do we go from there to actually changing, like, I I assume it'll be some document is is our data governance platform. And correct me if that that is wrong. But then do we just attach, like, metadata to every type of data we're storing in the city and then different permissions based off what's in the document? Like, do we go from actual the the actual, like, document to real life implementation if we say, like, hey, this type of data cannot be shared, for instance?

The answer is yes, but I'll let Melissa expand a little bit more on that.

Okay. Well, without going into too much detail on it, so yes, there'll be a document and a process flow for all of these different areas, and there are tools out there. One of the tools that we're looking at is called Microsoft Purview, which has some automated data governance tools so that we can take what's in the document and try to automate it. Because as you can imagine, if we did all of this manually, it could be very difficult to to share information internally as well as externally. And so tools like Purview allow you to put in the parameters and help you when somebody makes a request for a particular data point.

The rules are already in there, and it keeps them from actually accessing the data inadvertently just because somebody hadn't read the document. The tools in place to kind of help us with that.

Thank you. I can take one more question, I think, then we're going to move on to our next item. Since it's mostly informational, and I I think we can also follow-up if council members want to reflect on this. We could also discuss a little more at council talk time on any future steps as well. Councilor Parsey, do you have a final question? Great. Okay. Wonderful. Did you, Council Member Soni, did you want to? I didn't I didn't want to cut you off.

Just a very quick question. Did we identified any KPIs on this to report back for our data governance success? If if it's not like, you know, this can be added in our next council, but I just wanted to highlight.

So as part of the data governance council charter, there are some KPIs. Again, I don't have that in front of me right now, so I don't want to misspeak, but we can we can share those with you.

Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I know we've had a couple touches on this item. Hopefully we can follow-up, maybe at council talk time to determine, some additional next steps we might want to do, to follow-up on this in addition to seeing that data governance policy come back to us later this year, once you have the the full draft done as well. So appreciate being able to dig in on this. The next item on the agenda is the twenty twenty six technology and information services customer care update. 'm I'm gonna ask if you can keep this to five minutes, that would be wonderful. But, we'll look forward to hearing the update.

Thank you again, once again counsel. I'm gonna introduce Cody McGinniss, he's our Customer Care Manager, to give a brief overview of customer care team and some of the fantastic work they've been doing.

Thank you very much, Mike. Good afternoon, counsel. As Mike said, I'm Cody McGuinness, the manager of the TIS customer care team. We're a team of three, what they call, system support specialists up on the 3rd Floor sitting at what's commonly called the Service Desk. We provide tier one and tier two.

So user pay or end user application and hardware like laptops, desktops support to the entire city. And we are the main touch point for all issues that come in TIS related. About last year or last year, we had about 14,000 technology related requests made and someone in the customer care team either touched to route it to a different team or resolved it at our level. And those types of requests can be something simple like password resets or something as complicated as our new technology intakes. Like I mentioned, a lot of what we deal with is end user devices.

So, here at the city, we have about 500 ish cellphones and tablets and 800 desktops and laptops in use by say employees. And each one of those has been configured by us. One of the big ways that you guys or we all get those into our hands is when we're hired, we do onboarding. So after you go see HR, you'll usually end up with us to get your badge, phone, tablet, and or computer, and a brief overview of how we use technology here at the city. In addition to those end user device end user devices, we also monitor and manage about 40 teams rooms here in City Hall and the other city buildings, including the teams piece here in council chambers.

One of our big projects that we do every year is the computer replacement projects where we where we coordinate with our coworkers to swap out aging equipment as it reaches the end of its service life. Each year, that's about 250 computers, again, across a three person team. A couple of our larger projects that we work on, one of them which is also here in Council Chambers is the real time translation project, which between in April, between here in City Hall and the RCC, we had about 53 total interactions with non native English speaking community members. I think it was 48 of them were over at the RCC and the other five were here at City Hall. 31 were with community members that speak primarily Chinese dialect followed by seven speaking Spanish and five that speak Russian.

And then one of the other projects that I wanted to point out was the AV refresh project here in council chambers. So that's looking for ways that we can monetize and improve the audio visual setup here to make meetings such as this run more smoothly. And then one other thing, not necessarily project related, I want to point out that we started recently was a closer collaboration and cross trading with other divisions within TIS. We exchange someone from our team to another team once a month and also have some someone from another team come to our team once a month so we can get a better understanding of how they support the city and they can get a better understanding of how we support the city. And that's pretty much all I got.

Well, thank you so much and really appreciate the work to keep us connected and and follow-up to make sure that everyone has the technology they need to be able to be effective public servants. Are there any questions from the council on this? Well, you so much. Really appreciate the update and the hard work. Clearly, have use of technology going on right now.

Wonderful, we'll move on to the next item and just thank you for your work there. So the last item on the agenda is a budget process update for the long range financial strategy, fiscal policies, and community engagement. I will note that originally our finance director said this could be a read only item, and I said no, it must be an in committee item. Hopefully we will spend some brief time to talk about the follow-up steps on the conversation we had at study session, and we can also share a little bit from what council leadership and myself had in conversation with you. But I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, good afternoon. Couple things to check-in on is, first of all, the long range financial strategy and fiscal policies. I want to make sure that council is in receipt of an email that was sent last week that provided you with a link to our SharePoint site where the documents are as well as instructions for the review. We've asked for the review to be completed by May 22. That will then allow us time to take in all of the feedback that we've received and bring that forward to the June FAC meeting at which time we can decide which items we can resolve on a matrix and which items we would want to include in a study session that we have scheduled for July 28.

I just want to make sure everybody is good there, receipt can get in and poke around.

And council president Stewart?

I did not receive or not receive to my knowledge, but happy to follow-up. Thank you.

Do you have? Okay.

Yeah. I don't think that I received it as well.

Really good email. We'll check.

Alright. Yeah. I I was like, I don't think that I I missed it, but now I feel better that I I didn't just get a lost email. So, yeah, if we if we could have that, that would be great. And I think, as a reminder, think the goal is that it would be, that we can access on SharePoint to be able to share our feedback. Might be that it did not go out to the full council. Thank you. This is why we did this check-in

S.

Thank you. So also moving on, so follow-up to the April FAC meeting regarding community engagement. Haritha and I and Haley Zurcher had an opportunity to meet with council leadership where we talked about sort of success looks like when it comes to community outreach. We discussed sort of two items. One is the expanding outreach and feedback regarding our outcome maps that we are moving through an update process and council is moving forward with developing a plan to be implemented and allow us to provide you with additional feedback hopefully before our July 28 study session is what we're targeting.

We also discussed there some of the other items that are on the communication work plan when it comes to the budget. With us today we have Ryan Hoover. I wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to get to know Ryan. Ryan is from our communications department. He helps us to develop, document and implement our communication plan for the budget.

We'll be putting that document out on SharePoint as well as the focus group information so council has access to what it is that we've been working towards. We're continuing down the path that we were originally on with some expansion and quite a few things kind of coming or going live soon. We also talked about a need for council to have some touch with our CBOs and understand sort of what we don't know about what they are experiencing in the community right now or what needs may be. Our plan there from the finance perspective is we are working with Ryan as well as Zach Hoovener to figure out how to make that connection and provide counsel with the level of information that you are looking for in order to do some decision making. We also left that meeting with the understanding that council leadership would also be meeting to brainstorm and come up with some additional ideas which is again why Ryan is here to kind of help us make sure that we are understanding what is being requested and have the ability to deliver.

Thank you so much. Council President Stewart, do you have any comments on this that you'd like to share with the council?

I

don't know that I do at this time. I want to be really clear, since when we will get these materials, I want to be sure on the policies first and foremost that we can meet the deadline. Just to reiterate, it's next Friday by May 22. Again, counsel, when we agreed to this process and using the online SharePoint for that, that's work we agreed to and took on. The conversations with counsel leadership and the FAC chair, Chair Kritzer, we did have a brainstorm, and we did individually take on some next steps.

The three of us have not connected, so it would be a bit unfair to discuss in this group. So at the moment, that is still ongoing. And then of course, as was already said, the opportunity to communicate that we are interested in hearing folks' feedback ahead of the budget process is a request that we have for the communications department and integrated across all available platforms, including like I was sharing before the meeting. Council was represented in this week's City News Now, the little social media video piece that goes out, and this was one of our calls to action was to engage in this process.

Does that help? Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to to give you the opportunity to share, and I think we will be following up additionally. I think just my reflection as part of the conversation that we had is just that we did hear significant feedback from communities saying that they wanted more opportunities to engage and be involved and to have us also go to them. So, as director Cochran, was mentioning, I think we're gonna be, advancing on some next steps there.

One other idea that I know we discussed was as the city is doing tabling at events throughout the summer to have one of those big kind of butcher block types of sheets where people can share their ideas for the city budget the same way we did with 2050. Would love to be able to see that. I know we we typically have city staff at so many different places and so being able to take advantage of that kind of built in opportunity for feedback will be I think, a really good one. But we'll make sure to follow-up and then also to loop the council in on those proposals and I'll make sure that we have time on this committee to follow-up on that as well. Thank you.

Would you like me to work to put together an additional meeting for us to brainstorm, touch base, map out next steps.

Yep. Thank you.

You're

welcome. Wonderful. Are there any questions from the councilor comments? Alright. So, just as a reminder, so we can keep the work going especially on the long range financial strategy and the fiscal policies. Please give your feedback by the deadline of next week so that way we can bring this back and we can move it along so that they're in place before we're actually getting into the budget. Thank you so much. Sure. And Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Council vice president.

Thank you. And just a quick, reminder request that we get that so that we can have time to take a look at the at the SharePoint. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

If I don't see it sent out within the next day, I will send you a message to make sure we do that. Alright. Well, that brings us to the end of the agenda. Is there anything else for good of the order? Alright. This meeting is adjourned.