City Council - Regular Meeting

Can you all turn your microphones on, please?

All right. Guess we'll get this started. Welcome. All right. Welcome to our city council regular meeting. It is May 12th. We are live at the mill and also streaming live to our YouTube channel. Um we're going to call this meeting to order. Uh if we could start with the pledge of allegiance. How do you go?

I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. Clerk Chillin, can we please get a roll call? Council member Aria, here. Council member Mcmanis. Council member Donahghue contacted me earlier today. He should be joining us virtually and then he's going to come in person for the executive session tonight, but I don't see him quite yet. So, uh, Council Member Shipman present. Council member Jorstat present. Council member Edwards present. Council member Packard

present. Clerk Chillan, should we move to Oh, he's he just popped up. There we go. Let's do it. Hold on real quick. Okay. Yeah. Council member Donahghue, are you can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Awesome. We just did roll call, so I want to make sure you're here. Thank you. Present. Excellent. All right, everyone has in front of them an agenda for tonight's meeting and I am looking for a motion to approve. I make a motion to approve tonight's agenda. I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed. Thank you. Uh we have an agenda. We'll start off with citizens comments. Uh we'll check and see first. I think online. I notice there's uh we have a bit of a full house tonight. If anybody in the audience at the mill would like to make a citizen's comment, there are some green sheets in the back or at this point you could just raise your hand. But we'll start with folks online.

Yeah, I don't see anybody yet, but if you are online on our Zoom meeting and you would like to speak during citizen comments, if you could raise your digital hand, now is the opportunity. I'm seeing no hands. All right. Thank you. And we don't have any green sheets and I don't see any hands. reason going once, going twice. All right, no citizen comments this evening. Um, thank you. Then that leads us to our council training. So, we have a great opportunity tonight to have David Klene uh share with us his wisdom about municipal budgets. So, I'm going to go ahead and turn the microphone over to him. Mayor, Council members, City Administrator, all the community members here. Um, good evening. I'm David Klene. I'm here to uh talk about budgets, which is so exciting. I'm excited. Are you excited? I'm excited to talk about budget with all of you. And hopefully you'll get to learn a little bit. I'll learn a little bit more about your wonderful city. Um, I've biked through the city. I'm born and raised here in Washington State. So, it's been great to see uh your fine city grow and I don't know why you don't have the windows open right now to enjoy this beautiful day that your residents are enjoying as well. Um we're going to go through and I think I actually have a clicker that might actually work. Um first of all, I just want to say thank you. Um this is a great honor to be here in front of you and also what a great commitment that you have shown to your residents to talk about budget process. Um, most people would think that this is something like green shades and things that should be backward back doors and but no, this is something that you should talk to your community about openly, transparently talk to them about how you do your process because this is one of the core functions you have as a elected official is to make sure that your mission

mission and vision of your city is shown and I believe it is shown through your budget. I always say that if you can see someone's budget, you can see their values. That's where I kind of believe. Um, so let's kind of go through the agenda for tonight and let's see if Yeah, there we go. I'm going to do quick some introductions. I'm going to talk about what I had planned to talk about, but really this conversation we have about an hour together. Um, I'm going to be trying hopefully checking the time here. Um, and it's really based on your questions. Uh, a lot of these resources are online. A lot of my peers are through AWC and MRSC and GFOA, lots of different acronyms that we can go through. Uh provide all of this online and there's some great training that I'd really suggest to you to spend more time than just this one hour that we have together tonight. Um so first of all, who am I? Um I'm not going to break out in a song. Uh but thank you. Thank you so many people. Um my name is David Klene. Uh right now I am a professor at the University of Washington. I teach local government to secondyear masters in public administration school. I've been doing that for uh full-time uh well not full be teaching the course for six years but I have been a guest lecturer for over the last 15 20 years in that class. Um before that I was for 30 years. Um I was sitting in that chair where Mr. Brazil is Brazil is and being a city administrator for 18 years in King County. uh most recently in Tquila for 12 and a half years. Uh like I said, I was born and raised here in Washington State. Um I've been here my whole life working in public service. Uh worked in the county and worked in different small I've worked in small cities. I've worked in big cities, big counties from when I could have my staff meeting in a room smaller than this and an organization that had 11,000 employees. So, uh lots of different experiences. Um but one of the big things is I really come my

background is finance. Um, I have a degree from Stanford University and that was really based in public administration and finance and I've really been doing budgeting and criminal justice most of my career even in my city administrator role. Um, and what I really enjoy is helping communities realize their vision and working with electeds get us there. Uh, because you get to represent portions and your whole community as a collective which is really great to see. Um, so let's talk about resources. Uh, we weren't going to be able to get to all your questions probably or all the questions you might have afterwards. And there are so many resources online. And I'm just going to for those who are in the public, the public can go to these resources too. They're free, open, available. Um, the very first one, and that this is this presentation I'm doing is based on that very first one is called budgeting basics. It's a 10-p part series. The videos are 7 to 10 minutes long. Um, done by Tracy Dunlap, who is a former finance director and deputy city manager of Kirkland. Uh, good friend of mine. And so, why would I try to recreate the wheel? She's done it already. And so, I used a lot of my material from her. Um, there is a municipal budgeting workshop August 5th and 6th. I'm going to make a plug. Many of my friends are teaching that course um was just talking to one last week uh in Levvenworth. So, I want to make a plug for that. if you want to hold two days talking about budget with other elected officials around the state of Washington. I can't suggest that enough. Um, and then there's lots of things in association Washington cities. They have surveys of how does your city compare to other people on your utility taxes, on your other types of fees, your property taxes, things like that. They have great things. Um, and then the municipal research and service center. This is unique to Washington state. Is just a wealth of information. who's actually called or looked at the MRSC website before. Um, if you haven't yet, I would go there. I'm always amazed that

I have a question and I try to resolve it myself and it's before AI and chatgbt. You would go to MRSC and they would have the answer for you. If not, you can call them and say, "My city is talking about this. How would you suggest we deal with that?" And they have people on staff to do work with you. Um, they have a budget preparation checklist. We're going to talk about that a little bit. And each year they come out with budget tools um that most finance uh departments and everyone uses every year uh to help them prepare their next year's budget. Then it continues on. The state auditor office has a financial intelligence tool. Anyone in the community can go online and see how you compare to other cities uh based from the government performance office there. And government finance office association. if you really want to go into the details, this is the professional association that your finance directors usually are actively involved in. Um, so there that's a lot of resources there and so we're not going to get through all that in in the next 55 minutes here. Um, and so this was what I was hoping to talk about. These are the 10 topics that are in that budgeting basics. It goes from what are budgets, why do cities have them, roles and responsibilities, funds and revenues, strategic goals, capital, facilities, revenue forecasting, balancing budget, communications, community engagement, and accountability. I have slides on every single topic here or ready to talk about all these 10 topics. Um, but again, what I really want to do is hear from each of you. um so that I can tailor and if we just get a conversation with me and you tonight and we don't get to my slides, you have my slides in front of you. Um I may use them as reference tools, but I'd really like each council member to give me at least one question that is on your mind. Um I've given you some questions that you could talk about. What do you have about the what questions do you have or concerns, issues, um ideas about the budget process? Some of you have

gone through a budget process before. what worked well uh or you've seen the budget process. What could be improved? So, those are some of the questions, but I'll leave it to you and I'll hand it back to the council president and you can guide us in these questions and I'll take these questions and then we'll try to get all the questions and then I'll see if I can group them and if I go through my slides to answer them or if I just talk through them that would be great. That sounds great. I I don't want to um I I don't want to like monopolize the time and Kim has her hand raised so I'm going to

turn it back over to Kim. So, this is a question um that I've heard a lot. So, as new council members um that previously we maybe ran small businesses, we ran our household budgets, we set budgets, we set priorities, um we had, you know, this is how much revenue we have. This is, you know, how much expenditures we have. How are we going to make those two meet? And then over the last couple of years, I've only been on council not quite two and a half years. Um, I hear a lot that the budget is a living document, that it's different than a household budget or even a small business budget. That's a living document. So, I would like to hear a little bit of conversation on that and the definition of what does that mean?

Great question. Thank you. Do you want to collect questions from all of us first? Yeah, I think I'd like to because there's probably some of you may have similar questions or I can kind of group them and I do have some most of my slides are more visual um so I can kind of bring up some of those visual slides to maybe hopefully answer some of these things too but great. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Other questions? Yeah.

Um I my question is surrounded around the community engagement part. So, as a former uh just regular citizen um up until 5 months ago, um the city budget was foreign. Um it wasn't something that was really talked about in the community as far as I have seen. Um and so I think making sure that we have that community engagement is important um and people understand where their tax dollars are going and what money is coming from what. Um and so I would really like to hear anything that you might have um as far as suggestions on how we can increase our community engagement around um our budgets. Great. Thanks. Thank you.

I have a question for you. So uh for a guy who has uh crafted several award-winning budgets from your first slide there, um how much of that is is hard data like percentage-wise versus forecast? Okay. Great. Thank you.

One question that comes up for me and I think it's especially relevant given your experience in different areas of municipal government. Over the years, we've had different council members have strong feelings both ways about whether or not there should be um like a like a budget subcommittee. And so, um, maybe two or three council members and two or three budget staff or city staff that come together and really sort of dive deep into the budget and and I'm I'm curious to hear from where you sit if you've seen that u if you have favorable or not favorable experiences of orienting the budget work that way. Okay, great. Yeah,

thank you. Um some of the questions I have are about long long range projections. So five years out um especially in years where expenditures um are greater than revenues by far. Uh what is that what is that balance? What does what is a a budget balance look like when you have expenditures uh greater than revenues? What is the cash balance um recommended or what how do you see the cash balance changing throughout the year and how is it different at the beginning of the year versus the end of the year? And then what is typically the uh minimum operating reserves that is recommended for a city of our size to to have and make sure that in those years where we dip into that we don't go below is it 10% 20%.

So mine's uh more of a comment than a question. Uh over the last couple years as I've watched the process, um it seems like city staff comes in with a a wish list and it's not a bad wish list, but it's a lot of things of hey, it'd be really nice if we could xyz and then fairly quickly the council can say, "Hey, we can't do any of those things." So that's nice to to know. So I guess I'm just wanting to talk about as a council at some point, right? How do we before the staff goes and does too much of that, hey, this is what we'd like to have, how do we level set in front to some degree to give some guidance, before they go spend too much time uh and don't waste that time, if we're going to come back and just say, "Actually, we have no budget for anything. If anything, we're going to cut." And I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. I just How do we level set and communicate in advance before too much work is done on a mayor or staff budget? And I checked in with um Councilman Donghue. He doesn't have any questions yet.

Okay, we have a little bit more time. Was there some other any other questions that someone dying to put in there? These are great questions. We can I'll I'll answer them all. Um anything else that was on people's minds? The second round. Is there a software package that you recommend uh for long-term projection and financial modeling?

Yeah. All right. And I guess we're looking to kill time. I I do have a question I could ask. Um, so when it comes to city budgets, one thing that I and maybe there's a reason for this because it does differ in some ways from personal budgeting, but one topic I never really hear come up is the the idea of trying to save. So excess revenue, saving it away, banking it, building up a fund for projects down the road. um as it seems to usually be, you know, how are we covering expenses? What sort of financing do we need? So, I'm curious in your experience, have you ever seen cities try to proactively save and build up cash reserves for future projects or emergencies or things like that? Okay. All right. Anything else? And feel free to interrupt and ask questions along the way. I'm sure we'll fill up that hour very quickly. Um, so the first thing I heard was about the budget process. So I'm just going to jump to one slide we have here. Um, let's see if I can get there just a little bit. What are budgets and what does cities have them? The big thing budgets are legally required. We all do them. Um, you know, these are all the different reasons that we have budgets. Accountability management tool, planning documents. Uh, they're impacted by all sorts of other plans you've already done. It's not a oneanddone thing. And this gets a little bit to why is it a living document? Because you're updating these type of plans, your economic development plan, maybe your uh your your master plans for capital and things like that. You're constantly updating that. And so your budget reflects those constant changes. But this next slide, this is a slide that I like to use. It's, you know, even from the National Advisory Council on State and Local Budgeting. I'm sure if you go to that website, there's even more information. You could d them, you could be the budget pioneer here or you know person

who if you want to do this you'll see it's a circle you see it's a circle it is constantly going and the very first thing and we'll come back to council member Edwards you talked about community engagement we'll get to that slide but of course the very first thing is you are representing your community you start with stakeholder input and now that can be from your community members that can be your business owners that can be residents that can be visitors stakeholders is a broad group is you're going to be talking to a lot of people your professional staff and your fellow council members. Um and the very first thing you do is like a any household budget or things like that you do have vision and mission and uh strategic plan that should guide your what your budget is. And that's the first thing I would say that uh my suggestion to councils at least is you need to have a strong vision of what you want your community to be. That's really why most of you were elected because you care deeply about this community. You want the best things for it. And so the seven of you all need to come to an agreement of what what does that future vision look like and that usually is 10 years 20 years out. Um and the budget is reflecting just a one twoyear look at it. capital is going for six years. Um that's the hard work that you as a council need to do is come to an agreement among the seven of you and with the you know and the mayor gets involved in this as well and the city administrator and the staff is like what is the future vision for Lake Stevens that's hard and what are we going to do about that vision this year what steps are we going to do this year to get us to that vision what is our six-year plan to get us to that vision your comp plan gives you a 20-year vision and you want to move to that. So your budget is showing that on this thing you'll see that the very first thing and council member P you talked about the direction and it really comes

from this in a strong mayor system the mayor does propose the budget and the council adopts it but in their between time is the council gives direction to the mayor and staff and the city administrator about what your priorities are and what you expect to see in a budget. Um, one example of this I'll give in my own personal experience as I was uh, you know, learning the ropes was I had heard from the community that we needed to replace our facilities in one city. And so I heard direction from the mayor that we're going to replace all of our facilities. So we built a budget that was going to replace all our facilities. What I forgot to do was ask the council if that was their priority, too. Well, it wasn't at that time. The council had a better idea. Said, uh, Mr. line. That's a great idea, but why don't we have a plan first? And so they stripped the budget of these large capital investments and they gave us planning money to do a master facility plan. Um, and we did that. It took us two, three years to do a master facility plan. Came back to the council, got votes on that, and in the end, we went out to the public and got a $78 million voter approved budget at over 60% for a bond. And that was really council direction. The council directed that came from the strategic plan that said we should have safe efficient facilities. The council directed us to create a facility plan and we budgeted the money for that. And then we came to the council for a financing plan and the council directed staff. We're going to these are the different tools we're going to use. And part of it was a voter approved bond and other of it was using long-term capital funds. And someone else talked about do people reserve funds for future capital projects? Good cities do. Good cities plan into the future um as your own home budget. You can think about it is it's really hard to plan for when you need to

repair the roof. That's a big expense. If you have to re-roof your house um and you can put that off and you can put it off and put it off and if you put it off until you really need an emergency repair, that's going to be very expensive. It would have been better if you had set somebody aside or taken something out and done it when it was sunny outside and you had planned for it and you did that on a timely basis. Um, so many cities, uh, city I worked in, city of Burian, a big council priority was to build a downtown. We had to buy land, we had to buy money, uh, we had to build buildings. Um, and so we saved probably for about 10 years to until we could realize that community goal. but council directed goal of a downtown and we bought land, we bought facility and you can go beer and town square now and see what the community got for that savings and money. Um, but it was hard. It was hard to save that money because the individual needs for new count new uh new council members, new uh police, won't you like that? New council members um uh new police officers, more sidewalks. There's always those constant daily needs and that's why you do these other plans that help direct it. But back to this, you're going to give direction to staff. They're going to come back to you in the, you know, during the summer. They're going to tell you what the projections look like, how the revenues, expenses look like based on your financial plan, your financial policies. You've directed them about what you how much reserves you should be have. And they'll come back in the fall with an operating budget. And in the fall from September to December, you'll debate that. See if that met your community values and your vision. And my suggestion is always adopt that earlier. Um there's a couple cities who have gone all the way to the deadline, which is December 31st. Um city attorney would tell you you would need an emergency ordinance to pass that. I would not suggest that. That is not good financial planning is you need

to get your own house in order, work together. Um, budgeting is a team sport with the city staff, the mayor, and the council working together. Um, so why is it a living document? Um, I think I have one more slide on this one here. Let me see. Yeah, this one kind of talks about a longer term plan. You'll notice that there's all these citizen surveys. Community involvement is that big long green line down there is that you have community involvement when you do your comp plan. When you're doing planning phases, you have open public comments. You probably have town meetings. You'll probably have all these open house ways that you get community involvement throughout the whole year. Your budget is adopted in December hopefully. Sometimes people even do it in November. Um but that's a tool and that's a guide what you think the future looks like. Um but during the great recession, I'll tell you one time I adopted a budget in the great recession. Um and uh might be someone in the audience who was there when we did this was and we had the council adopted it on December 15th. The great recession took place and in January we had to open that budget and start laying staff off. It was painful. It was terrible. But it's a living document. The times had changed within that one month. Our resources which were sales tax and property tax which is most cities um and this one was more mainly property tax. uh I say sales tax wasn't going to be coming in and we couldn't afford the staff that we had. Um and that was very hard. But that's why it's a living document is because things might change. You might get a Costco in that you didn't recognize revenues were coming in and you want to use those revenues for something. Um so you might want to change those things. And so that's why during these budget processes there's using amendment cycle. There's a in this cycle you'll see is if we go back here went too far right here you'll see monitor results.

So they're going to adopt the budget in December. You're going to say is the world like we forecasted it? If it isn't then we need to make changes. You often have budget amendments or changes to your budget during the year. Every single city does that to manage it because you have union contracts that might come up during the year. You might have other things that come up uh council priorities, capital, and you'll make adjustments and then you'll start this process again. And that's a very typical budget. That's a well run budget. Um for Lake Stevens, just want to go through here is you have a strategic plan. Um and from my look at it, it looks like a good strategic plan. It has a vision, a mission. It has different priorities. um in the notes you can see what you've talked about your priorities and so I would be suggesting you know this to see for the mayor and the city staff is how is your budget realizing this strategic plan that you have for the next six years um is your budget moving you forward into those different areas uh is a key thing that I would be suggesting to people um talked about a little bit um Uh I think council member Donahghue said talked about you know well no I think Packard was talking about uh you know who gives direction to whom. Um this one I I actually like this slide a lot. There's one more slide I'm going to show you. Budgeting is a team sport. It's not just a council thing. It's not a mayor thing. It's not the city administrator. It's not just the finance direct. Not your city staff. It's everyone getting engaged. And you'll see at the top of it our residents. Right below that the council gives you direct you give get direction council council gives direction to the mayor and the city administrator then the department directors and under that the manager and supervisor. Um and this one is a great one. We use this a lot. I use this with my uh when I work with elected officials. I use this in my

second year MPA students is to talking about roles. And a lot of times I find when I work with councils and elected officials is uh is people are don't stay we use the term stay in their lane. You know what what is my lane? And everyone wants to be in everyone else's lane and keep you out of their lane. Um we're all in each other's business I would say. And so that's just the the the nature of it is that we all are concerned about what's going on in the dayto-day. We're also concerned about what the future looks like. Um, and so this one is kind of a flight path analogy. And you'll see that green line is really the council's role. There's only seven of you. You've got to be dedicated to what is your goal and vision and give clear, concise direction to the city staff so they can meet it. And if you're on that far end and you're doing the day-to-day work, you're making sure that pothole is done. You're making sure that stop sign was put in correctly. Um, then who's doing the strategic planning? Who's doing the visioning for your community? Who's got who's listening to your community? If you're doing the day-to-day work, that's that's not a good use of your time. That's why you've hired excellent staff to do that. And so, this is usually there's there's another, you know, there's lots of different graphics. I like this one because uh you know uh maybe I just like planes or something like that. But it kind of gives you this overview is there's only seven of you and you have to all work together and you have other responsibilities and time and so that getting together is really your strategic plan, your strategic goals, your key priorities and then you start handing it off to staff and that's hard because you really want to get there because it's I would say you know we all when we built something you know when I was remodeling I really wanted to know what the color of the carpet was and the side doors. and all that stuff. But if I'm doing that, then I've

forgotten what the overall budget was. I forgotten what the the house was supposed to look like. Um, and so those are the key things that I would suggest is that if you're finding conflict between uh individual council members or council to staff and uh mayor to counsel is usually this this is where that conflict usually causes most concern. In one council I was at um with a strong mayor system, uh I loved it was that I often would hear the someone would talk about, you know, they would come to the community member would say, "Oh, we need to get a strategic plan or something like that." And the mayor would say, "Well, council, we that's yes, you need to create a strategic plan. We'll help you create that, but that's kind of the council's work." And then the person would say, "I didn't like that pothole how you did that." and the mayor, the council would say, "Well, mayor and city administrator, it looks like you have some work to be done on that pothole fixing or whatever issue of the day." And it's a it's a hard task to do, but that is where I see better cities work together is handing off what role do you have, what role do I have, and when people are successful there, then the whole city is and the community is successful. Um, but that's hard. And I'm not going to suggest because you'll notice that that green line, you're still involved in that day-to-day work. You still are concerned about how that pothole and you you need to know, but how much do you need how much time and energy are you going to spend on that side versus the direction and priorities? I think that's a key thing that um if I if you're asking for advice, which I think you're asking for my advice, this is this is a key step that along the way I'd look at. Um there was a question about you know let me see what else here we just want to make sure I get all your things here. Um the budget awards I'm going to just talk about this a little bit back at I talked about government finance officers

association council Mcmanis is um they give you a checklist of what is an award-winning budget and uh and so the reason I say award-winning was many of the jobs I was I brought into a city was to create that award-winning budget. Go through that checklist. make sure our budget aligns with that checklist and go get that award. And every single city I did, we did that and we got that award. Um, and you said, you know, how much of it is uh based on hard data versus forecast? Um, both. Um, most of those budget forecasts and you have a couple charts in your budget. I can show you that, you know, you're meeting many of those things. I'm not sure if you've actually checked all those things to get that award. It takes some time. It takes some energy. You have to have the right systems. Council member, you talked about what systems could do that. Um, the actual numbers, a typical budget goes back a couple years of historical data by department or you can do it by themes or whatever, but goes back and says this is how we have spent the community's resources. Um, that's the hard data. there's no you know you've you've closed the books in 2023 and 24 and 25 you know maybe it's a little bit not 25 you don't know but 26 and then you start doing estimates and adjustments and then you start forecasting and I would say good forecasting is out six years as you bas six years is is the best uh strategy that's usually based on capital planning um and those are so you have hard data and you have a forecast and I would say this is something that being a budgeteer, a finance person is um it budgeting is really forecasting. It's your vision future. What do you think the future needs and how are we going to meet that need? A budget is a reflection of what you believe the future should look like. Um and you have to change it. It has to be a living document because

the future never ends up exactly as we expected. Um so that kind of is did that answer your question a little bit about that? Uh yeah, a little bit. You know, we were down at the AWC meeting earlier this year at the state and they gave up, you know, Governor Fergus had talked about how we got in trouble because we used the wrong budget figure for the projections of 4% I think or close to 4%. Actual standard 1.4. Yeah. So, we're going to do that anymore because that got us in $4 billion of debt as a city, right? And then he comes in the financial guy comes in the next day and he goes through the projections and I ask, "Are you using the 4.0 or the 1.3 standard?" It's 4.0. Okay.

Yeah. That's like just a lesson in stupidity basically, right? You should say a number that's not getting you anywhere for four years, you probably won't go with it more. So is are there standards that are

So the key thing I would suggest and and again I'm not an expert on Lake Stevens. You are your staff is um I've been, you know, I've worked in lots of different, you know, I've worked in the county and different cities. I don't know the history of your budgeting and all your priorities and all the past work here. Um but the key thing in a budget is is a way to document it. And so when you're asking those questions, you can say what were what were your assumptions as you document those assumptions and you can see if you're right or not. Um and it's very typical in projections is to give those percentages and we think sales tax is going to go up 3% this next year based on historical past or future. You know what what did you base that on and it went up 5%. Good for us. Or we based it 3% and it only came in 1% because of XYZ. Um and so I think the key thing in a budget is you should document it. It should be available and you should be able to see show that to the public so you can see you know we make assumptions and our assumptions you know that was that monitor results piece is are we on track and a lot of times that's where people do uh financial forecasting is saying on a quarterly basis is usually best practice. come back to the council or the community and say the first quarter is a hard one because you don't have enough information but by the by about six months in are are the revenues coming in as we had expected and if not then maybe we need to make some amendments uh to do that. Yeah, but I think that was a good question is like you challenge the question they had the answer and then you can you know that you can have that debate about what is the right number um for that. At the same time, I'm always interested. Remember one time I was given a task to go project revenues. And one thing about budget, I'll just go to a quick slide here. Um, one, you do have a budgeting calendar. You this what was presented in the last budget cycle. This is very typical. It meets the legal obligation. It kind

talks about where the council's role is. Hands off to the mayor, comes back to the council. Um, I would expect that this is what most good cities are doing is something like this timeline. Um, but a key thing when you're looking at revenues is you need to know here's your your revenues. These are all all revenues. Um, you know, taxes are 48% charges for services because you have utilities and public works. So, you have more of those. Most time spent in budgets is on general fund. That's where uh public safety resides. That's where most of the city administration resides. It's not as based in capital and utilities which have their own fundings. You can't really use those for operating. Most cities spend their time here. Um this chart is from your last budget. Uh this is a very typical chart in the state of Washington is property taxes here is you know about a third, sales tax about a third and utility tax a little bit less than that. 85% of your revenues are in those three sources. property tax most people because of the 1% limit I can predict property taxes expect except for new growth for the next five years actually it's why people's bond ratings go up a little bit because Washington state has a very clear property tax code now on the other side it doesn't catch up with inflation sales tax is the most volatile one there and utility taxes can be volatile based on consumption um this is where you should spend your time on the revenues those three revenues and sales tax is one that people usually track a lot more because that's the most volatile of the big three, but that's 85% of your revenue. Those other ones are going to be uh you know a little bit more stable and some of those are grants and things like that that are going to come in anyways.

Thank you.

Okay. Um I did want to while we have time, community engagement, I just want to get right to that and it's near the end of my slide deck, so let me get right there. Um We'll come back to this slide. This one is the most controversial slide in my deck here. So, there you go. Um, it's a teaser there to come back. So, so first of all, types of community engagement. I listed a few and I'm sure I've missed another dozen or two types of way of community engagement. Um, there are every single city that I've ever worked in, a council priority is we want to learn. We want to hear from the community about this issue or that the budget, the comp plan, this planning issue, the topic we're talking about tonight, whatever it is you because you're you're built here to represent the the residents of your community. Um, and there are so many different ways to find out what your community does. Um, here are all the different ways I'd say websites and social media. Amazing that most surveys print newsletters to people's homes. Still, it's a very high priority. People like even though they don't we don't get paper in in our mail. People like having something a newsletter or something tangible to look at. Um, open houses I've seen are ve very effective is having a conversation. I would say the least effective is someone like me standing up here and talking for you at you for three minutes is probably the least effective way to get community engagement because there's no back and forth. I've already come with my idea and issue and I'm ready to to go. You know, I I' I've been thinking about it for weeks maybe and I finally got out of the gumption to come talk to you and we're built that that was a

topic we didn't have on our agenda. Um, and so there's a lot of great new processes. Um, actually I'm involved in this one there. I I threw this in because it's kind of a new term called civic assemblies. Um, if you want this weekend is the second weekend. It's in Snowish County. We're at Wazu Everett. Uh, doing this. We're I'm part of a group that is facilitating a the nation's largest civic assembly and it's happening here in Snowomish County. We've asked 40 random presidents like a jury trial. We just asked random people to come into a room and we got them geographically based, age-based and they're asking a question of what give direction to the Snomish County Council about AI policies. Um, very interesting. So, we had the first meeting of these 40 individuals two weeks ago. If you'd like, you could come and observe um either this weekend or they're also June 6th and 7th. Um it's a great thing, but this is six days, eight hours a day, these residents have agreed to come together. Um not only it's a time commitment, it's a lot of resources of people. You can see this. Um but this is trying to get rid of that kind of people yelling at each other that you see in social media. Um, can you get people in the room because I truly believe that most of us are reasonable people and we care about our community and I'm sure you have a great idea and I have an idea and probably both our ideas together would get a better idea. Um, and that's my suggestion to you is are there ways that you can bring together people in a facilitated deliberative conversation um, and not taking sides but really trying to listen to people people deeply. A key part key issue here though is it takes resources. Um it takes a lot of resources and takes time. And so you need to figure out which

issues are worth those resources, those valuable resources you have to say this is an issue. One city Kirkland kind of chooses like three topics a year. We're going to really delve deep into our community and they have a whole process and a team of I mean they have a whole department that is just on community engagement. um most cities I in we couldn't have a whole department based on that so we had to work with our the resources we had um but really it's a question amongst you it's like what have you found helpful um and there's like I said there's probably even better ideas than I've listed here on these things there's a lot of resources on how you do community engagement or facilitation this one is a great one it's um uh IP2 their international association for public participation uh you can go on their website you can go to trainings actually for them and they talk about increasing level of public impact and the key thing is um what is their public participation goal and I one key thing is like during emergency you're not going to have a town hall you're not going to have a debate about it you're going to inform the community because your fire chief and your police chief are going to tell you what is the best thing for us to do and your public works director at this time because it's an emergency but there are some other ones that you want to consult with your community you want to involve the community in this decision that this difficult decision you have, you want to collaborate with the community. Um, but you have to choose your level of participation and each of those increasing levels usually take more time, more staff, and more resources. And and so this is up to the council. It's like not every single one can have the top you can't meet all your go you have conflicting values here. You have resource constraints, time constraints, and you want to get community input. So you need to kind of, you know, triangulate all those competing values. And that's why we have councils is to help us triangulate those competing values in our communities. All right, I got 15 minutes left here

and let's see if what other questions I I didn't get to. Um, a budget subcommittee. I don't have a art I don't have a one about this. It really is. I've seen it both ways. Um, I don't know what your history is, so I'm not sure if I'm going to step into something if I say you should do this. And I would never say because I I'm I'm a key person who says there are many ways up that mountaintop and you as a city need to find out what bis fits your values and what has historically done. I've seen it both ways. I would say um the budget is a document that the whole council has to own um and the community has to own. And so whatever you choose, it needs to involve all the community members, all the council members especially, so that there's nothing hidden from public view. Um, and so I've I've been in communities where we've done a budget committee. Um, if you're looking for my own personal thing, I'm going to step in it right now and saying I I don't think for that community it was um it was kind of sideline the rest of the the council. There's better ways to do that because you may have too many things and if if that community subcommittee came back to you a lot so you were directing that subcommittee so you felt you owned the end budget that would be a good process. Um in the community I was working in it was kind of like three council members went off in a corner and handed the rest of the council the budget and that didn't feel good for those other council members. And at the same time, it takes a lot of time to bring all seven of you in the same room at the same time to talk about these issues. Um, best practices I've seen is starting early and uh what is it May? And you have me talking about the budget. Um, I think that's a great beginning. Uh, you've probably been talking about the budget before this and you've been concerned about the finances of the city since, you know, were elected before you're elected. Currently, as you're elected,

you should be. That's your, you know, that's one of the key goals you have, key priorities. So my, my thing is that you get to choose committees if you have committee structures or not. It's not based on the committee. It's really bas based on the ownership of the elected officials. Do they feel like they owned? Were they part of did you meet? Did you get your needs met? You're not going to get a yes on everything cuz you're seven. You all have great ideas. Um, but did you feel listened to? Did you have a a participatory process? Um, did you listen to the to the experts in the room, which is your quality staff? Um, they have a lot more knowledge about these topics uh than most electeds do because that's just not their day-to-day business. Um, and so that's working together. Like I said, I can't say it enough. It's budgeting is a team sport. Um, before we ran out of time, I'm going to go back to that teaser. Uh, one thing you talked about was, you know, long range budgeting. I'm going to go back to this slide that I've seen. This is your long range forecast. This is very typical that you show revenues and expenditures over time. How does it go over time? Um you'll see that it goes out several years. It has actuals from a previous year and then a few years out. And you'll see that the lines I call I say the lines cross. This is a very technical accounting term. um that at some point your revenue your expenditures are going to exceed your total revenues and re and resources. And I would say and this is here's here's the most controversial slide in the deck is uh you're not alone in this. Most cities, every single city, every county I've worked in have this lines crossing sometime in the future. And that's kind of built in to the way that we do budgeting. um because we hopefully over forecast our expenditures and under forecast revenues or you know are we trying to be more optimistic than the future um or we're trying to be more

conservative about those things not always but the main thing is that the state of Washington unlike other states um we don't have an income tax is property tax which is one-third of your revenue um if I was here in this city hall 27 years ago That limit for you as elected officials would have been 6%. Think about those budget decisions that you would have had been able to make. So my first decade working with budgets was working with elected officials who they had the authority to increase their property taxes up to 6% per year to meet public safety needs, to make park parks, get fire, all the resources, all those service needs that people have. um because of community input and you know national statewide votes and the state legislature imposed this um was since 2000 that has been taken away from you and it's been handed to the residents and that's a key thing I really want to make sure I tell you is that many people think that that limit is a structural limit that you can never surpass and that's not true what that means is that's all your authority is but you went out to the community for transportation benefit district that increased your revenues, that increased your resources. Um, that was a community conversation you had with the community and the community supported you. Um, communities and you can go on the MRSC database, they have all the public votes. I would say that most communities have to involve their community. Back to council member Edwards, you talked about the community don't doesn't often know that doesn't know that they're part of the solution in this debate about budgets. How do I get involved? I want to be involved. I didn't realize that these parks were costing us more than the revenues we had or the the police department is taking up more than 50% of our budget. I didn't know that. I was like, well, because we're doing the good work. We're making sure it works. Um,

and so this is a key thing I would say. How do people deal with this structural deficit? Um, there are city decisions you have. You can make efficiencies. One time in a budget at the county, I had to cut my staff by 10%. And the elected officials also gave us technology improvements to um soften that blow. So we would automate some of our processes that were very paper oriented at the time. Um but it was very we had to decrease services overall because we just didn't have the staff resources. We look for new res revenues. There's councilmatic choices that you have. Here's a couple of them. And you can go out for voter approved funding. Um think of school districts that go out every 3 to four years. um they are kind of built that that is a community conversation. They're going to they know you know they're going to have a conversation with you for their operating when they're building new schools. They come to you for their support. Cities we need to learn that as well how to engage the community on an ongoing uh basis year round so that they're part of that process with you. It's not just an us them. It's we're all in this together. Um, and a lot of times community decisions, other communities around here have done community task forces, financial sustainability ta plans, um, getting the community together for a few months or a year to look at your finances. Um, a lot of good examples here. Just your next door neighbors have done a lot of these things. Um, find ways to bring the community in on input on how do you v prioritize these services? You have some hard decisions to make. How do how do you make those decisions? Um, and then you look for voter supported funding to maintain those services. If the community wants the same service level, um, then you should tell them how much that's going to cost and different ways that they could fund that. Or if they don't want to support that level of service, then you can tell them what the impact is to them and their community as well. And that's an open, you know, uh,

transparent conversation that we should all be willing to have in our community. Um, okay. Let me see if I got all the different ones here. Um I think uh council member I'm not sure if I answered yours about is it now the long range forecasting of revenues and what should a re uh uh what should your fund balances look like? I would say GFOA has a a standard. The larger the organization usually the less uh uh if you're a very small organization you're you're kind of you need a higher reserve. Um, so I've seen cities much smaller than you have a very high reserve just because uh, you know, one month or because the sales tax could make a big difference. The county, they're probably in the 5 10% range. Um, school districts, uh, you know, my wife was a is a school was a school board member for you elected official for 12 years. Um, they went from 5 to 10%. um most cities, medium-sized cities is you want about I would say 20 25% in reserves in your general fund either through operating reserves or uh a contingency reserve all of those reserves and um according to what I saw in your general fund, you're meeting that right now in all your reserves accounts that you have. Um but a key thing that you can do is state that clearly in a financial plan and a policy that we should be here. Um and if we're over time when those lines cross and we're not going to meet that need uh then what are those choices that we're going to do and it's not going to give you're not going to give details without saying you know you're trying to find out what is that number what is that policy of what are the services you're going to direct the staff to come back to you with a plan of if you're looking to reduce services then give us a plan and tell them your values uh what kind of services you want to keep what things

you're thinking out and have them do the hard work of giving you options about that. It's not your task to find the $10 here and the $15 there. That's not a good use of your time. Your time is to look at what is those lines are crossing in the future. Um what do you need to do now in the future to talk about it? And a lot of it is you need to involve your community in this because most answers they may have better you know the better answers come from more people the community will have good answers along that and they should be part of that uh because they're the ones who are benefiting from the services you're providing. Um, council, you talked about the the city has a sta, you know, city staff have a wish list. Often I would say that's usually based on because they looking at that priorities that strategic plan has lots of things. You're not going to meet every single one of those every single year. And so the staff is trying to meet your needs that you you have a strategic plan. Well, if you want to maximize every single one of those five, six areas, well, we have great ideas for you. And then they're bringing it to you say well you need to balance those priorities and that's that's the art of councils is you get to and that's the hard part I mean is you have competing values and you can't maximize them all. Um and so that's why we've entrusted the seven of you to make those decisions on behalf of your community is because you represent the community. Um and you get to have a deliberative conversation about which of these things this year this value might next year this one. Um but I would always suggest that you need be thinking 6 10 years um because one of the last things I would say there's a the last slide has some little comments here and I really like this last one. One is that Oops. Yeah. Well, one is just my last thing because I think budgets are amazing. Everyone should

care about who should care about budget. Everyone should care about budgets because they impact people's lives hopefully positively. Um, and then this last comment I like is uh from GFO. You know, the budget process should ensure that today's choices do not compromise the ability of future generations to provide good public services to the community. I think that's a great quote. Um that's a long range plan. Uh you have tough choices in front of you and I got five minutes left for any more questions here. But um that was a quick view through the slides, but I really can't tell you enough that this was meant to be just a little drop in the bucket here beginning this conversation. Um if I didn't get to your question, ask it again and I'll see if I can ask it more answer it more directly. But I wanted to give five minutes back to you um to ask me anything else you had on your mind. That was great. Thank you.

Any last pressing questions or comments? I have a question. I don't know if this is something that you particularly can answer. Um, so I've been a citizen here for a very long time and the things we're seeing going on in downtown and those type of things. I remember coming to a community engagement like 15 years ago and we hired a consulting group and they did this whole, you know, this is what we vision for our city and and it kind of sat there for the longest time and nothing really happened and then all of a sudden about seven years ago it started to move. Um, and then bam in the last six years you've seen a lot get done. So, the team that's now in place in the city is different. We have four new council members. We're going to have a new mayor. So, this has been on the horizon. Like you said, this is something that's planned a while ago, but now we might have new visions. So, what would your advice be as far as this has been in the works, we're seeing it move forward. We might have different ideas. How do you do you stay focused on that vision? Do you veer off course? Do you pull, you know, put on some breaks? That's kind of a little bit of what I'm seeing right now. So, I'm just wondering your advice on that.

That is great council work. That is you've just kind of put it in a nutshell is that it's really hard. Is that think about those people who came to that community meeting 15, 20 years ago and they're going, "Whatever happened to that plan?" and then they show up 20 year they maybe left your community they come back going why why did it take them so long you know what happened um other people are going it's going too fast you know I can't believe this happened I wasn't part of that 20-year vision again I want to be part of this um it's it's really a a great process for you to reinvigorate you have a strategic plan that is supposed be broad enough for the next four or five years um is Is that still meaningful to you? And I think it's really listening to each other as council members as facilitated retreats or time together not just in I would suggest you know get out of these tables stand up talk to each other be in a more informal setting so you can hear what people are concerned about your new council members is they got they came to the council with a reason and you need to hear what they have and you have great ideas because you've been on the council. Um and so how do you work on those together? And it really is creating a new common vision amongst the seven of you because no one council member leads the boat. You know, it's and a mayor doesn't lead, a city administrator doesn't lead. It's I can't say the best council in cities that I've worked with have been a team environment of yes, you can hold fast to your beliefs and feel strongly about those, but you know, that next person next to you might have a really great idea, too, and you probably need to listen to them. And so my only suggestion is find ways to get off the dis on a weekend afternoon, spend some quality time. Um I've and bring in someone from an

outside facilitator. So it's not the city staff that they can just help you guide a a good conversation to say, "What are your concerns? What are what are your visions of the next 20 years?" And I have found that you'll find that there's actually more in common. What usually gets people upset is usually what's happening right now is some something this year or next year is kind of the conflict, but usually people want the best thing in their community. They can agree what the 10 20 year plan looks like. Um it's usually those what's the next step. Um so I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I I really do think get off the DAS, get out of this decision-making mode that you have something to do, you have to act. um get to know people as people. Um you're all residents of this great city uh and you all care deeply and you all have come back from different experiences um and you need to find a way to listen and then act together and that's working with your mayor, your city administrator and your staff have worked with lots of other elected officials and they have great ideas. How do you involve them in that pro they're part of that process too? Um I would suggest as doing that. So there you go. All right, this has been great for me personally. It's um it's good information. I learned some new things, but also some great opportunities to kind of sit back and think about the way we've been doing things and maybe have some conversations about how we want to do things differently. So, I appreciate the information and the opportunity to kind of think about things a little bit. Yeah.

Well, it's been a great honor of mine to meet all of you and I wish you all the best in in a wonderful budget process. So, it's so exciting. Wonderful. It's the most exciting time of the year. So, all right. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Take a deep breath. Move on. That was great. Um, next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. Would love a motion. Make a motion to approve the consent agenda as we go. You're good. I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Um, any discussion? I just really quick want to say we've got um consent agenda D is appointing new members to both civil service and salary. I want to congratulate Dixie Bane and Jeff Pigram for being new um new commission members. So uh with that I will um we'll vote on the motion. All those in favor of passing consent please say I. I. Any opposed? Consent passes. Thank you. And we'll move on to our action items. Action item 8A is updates to the council procedure. I'll turn it over to clerk chillin.

Thank you. Jean, you want me to take this? Okay. All right. Uh, and I did want to uh let you all know if you didn't see it, Council Member Donahghue, he's um online right now, so he he can chime in, but he did send an email out to all of you today with more proposed changes uh to the procedures, but I figure I'll just go over mine quickly and then we can talk about his. Um so mine are just some housekeeping things from um past uh meetings that we've talked about uh that we now just need to reflect within your procedures. So uh one the first one was the order of the regular council meetings. We decided a while back that um we would put the city department reports council business and mayor business at the end of the meeting. And so I'm just reflecting that in your procedures. Uh public records, we talked a lot about this. Um, and so we came up with some language about when public records are created outside of the city's official systems that the mayor and council are responsible uh for preserving those records in full compliance with Washington state law. So that language has also been added. Um, we noticed we needed a clarification about uh that the mayor prom is um or excuse me, the council president shall also be the mayor prom um as we defined in that code section 2.080. 08040. Uh, and then lastly, the or no, two more here. The appointment process. Um, we did not have it spelled out as to what we do when we have a U vacancy in the mayor's office. So, we or excuse me, that's the last one. So, we're we're reflecting that um in your procedures. That's the same as what we do for council vacancies. And then, sorry, skipping over number four. Also requesting um an updated resume when we go out for those letters of interest. besides just the letter. So, those were staff's proposed changes. I don't know if we want to talk about those first and all that. Oh, yes. Thank you. We did uh have your procedures reflect the motion that was made in April that if you do have an

internal applicant for the mayor position, um that they would be excluded from the deliberations. So, that exact wording is in there as well. Any questions? Um or any of those that you want to talk about a little further? I do. Okay. Sure.

I think uh thank you for making the changes and updates and um I think my only comment is in section 16 the public records. Um I have appreciated the conversation and some of the concerns that were captured in that conversation especially about social media. I think that is what prompted the conversation to begin with and that's kind of what prompted this this paragraph to be such so detailed and and trying to be all-encompassing to trying to think of all the things that could go wrong. And um I think thinking about it, I've personally come to the conclusion and reading it again that the initial paragraph that talks about public records retention um our responsibility to to transfer them to the city's clerk for retention. Our responsibility to make sure that we keep everything that can be public uh disclosed, publicly disclosed. I think that paragraph encompasses all of that quite well. Um, and I don't know that we need to think of all the ways that we need to encompass that. I think that it doesn't lack anything. And I think that the language added is detailed, but everything is not everything was already included and covered by the preceding language. And so my um I think my concern would be that the more sometimes the more you try to think of all the ways that something can can be covered, you end up adding liability potentially. Um and so I think that I don't see anything in this paragraph that is not already covered. And I think that my point would be to keep that language as is instead of um changing

it. So that's my and I don't know if that's if it's the opportunity to make an amendment to this. That would be my amendment. So I just want to make sure I I'm understanding. So the strikeout is what you would keep. Yes. Versus the new underlined language.

I think that it encompasses everything that the new language has. Um, and I don't think it substantially adds anything that we we are required already to keep. Everything that can be requested by the public, we are required to give it to you. Um, any questions in that we are bringing to you. Anything that's duplicate and so I I think that that was my when I read that I said, well, I don't think that there's anything that is not covered. Um, and the only concerns are things like handwritten notes. Do I have to make copies of those and provide them to you every week pertaining, you know, in the details? I understand that that was meant for more social media posts, but then when you get to really prescribing a process that is now adding to something else that we need to do on a regular basis to give you as a process, I'm concerned that it just adds liability. And I don't think that it adds anything more than it's already covered. So I'll end there.

I think some of the language was added in uh response to the conversation around social media and I think um some of it came from our city attorney especially around the NISS affidavit because those have become um much more constant um since these procedures were originally written. And I think we we have already signed those within the process that we have now. And I don't think anybody has we don't hate we don't we don't need to have a policy that says you need to sign this. You provided it to us. We signed it a declaration. So I don't know that that needed to be included. But I can I

just on this and then I want to hear from Greg because I do think there's some language here that was specifically um prescribed by him. When I look at what's lined out, it talks about documents and you know what was redlinined out and we replaced and the concern is and and I like examples of it. I mean next door people don't think of next door being a big platform or anything and it it's my understanding that's how what um Spokane County is in a huge lawsuit because someone didn't think to save that and turn that in. So, I like how the changes are really saying every kind of communication because and then you're right, council member Aariah, in that online communication is constantly changing and evolving, right? I mean, started with MySpace and then it moved forward, you know? So, there's so many different ways to communicate. I like how it really stresses on every form of communication where the lined out um previous wording was focused more on documents and I think there's less and less communication being done in the form of a document.

I'm sorry, Greg.

No, it's okay. I I was just going to say that uh you know your comment is is is right. I mean, we had a short succinct uh statement about about responsibility. Um, and you know where you draw the line in kind of here's our basic communication, but then how do we do this? Uh, and oh, I didn't know I needed to do it that way or or whatever. What I think your new language does, uh, well, it does several things, but it it gives a little more direction as to how you as council members carry out this responsibility to get documents to the city, how they need to receive it in a in a way that's going to work with their recordkeeping. So I think you and some of that language is in the first paragraph and in a couple of the uh other other paragraphs they take some language from your old statement that's repeated here again. Uh but and then it kind of concludes with okay you as council members you you just can't kind of this this is the city clerk's job to you know the records keeper to make sure that this policy is carried out. There's a statement here that basically says it's going to take you to make this work and and that if city gets records request, you need to anticipate and know that we're going to send you we've got this request and you have a responsibility to look through your documents

to see if you have anything and then to get those documents to. So it's it's a little more fuller complete uh statement that uh uh in my opinion you know it it gives you more direction I as as as council for the city you know u uh questions that come up with regard to to records and councils is usually in from council members who say well do I really have to do that you know do Do I, you know, I don't have time to uh go back and and look through my stuff to see if I've got stuff on my phone or my of course you can avoid doing that by not using your phone or not using other, you know, private resources and stuff and make it a lot easier. But but what I like about the policy as it's been read written, it sort of reinforces

responsibility and what those responsibilities are and how we can make it work with the clerk's office to help them do their job. So it's it's not that much longer. couple couple more paragraphs kind of separating things out, but I think it gives you a little more direction and kind of emphasizes the responsibility a

has there been an example um you know we're updating the policy regarding the the mural position because we decided we want a different process. Has there been a time in the last you know few councils or administrations where the existing language regarding public records retention failed? Has there been a time where probably can can answer a little more about that. I I can just tell you that I have been involved in in phone calls or things at different times where we're not getting the cooperation of of one or more council members.

Uh and we know that they may have documents that and that's that's a you know we staff doesn't like to be in that position. I don't like to be in that that that position. Um, and as attorneys, you know, we we're always thinking of, yeah, this may not be a problem right now, but

councils change, people change, and we want something that we're not having to, you know, to uh to to change or re-examine uh in a couple of years. That this is kind of this works. This is a plan and and and it works. But but but yes, we have had those situations and uh the paragraph, you know, at the bottom of page 12 and going to the top, you know. Yeah, there's a reason that was in included and and one of that was to address that issue. Yes.

And if I could just add on to that, that's well said. Uh one of the key things here too in that first paragraph that had never been spelled out before is how you give it to us. Um, it's really important that when you email it to me and to the clerk's office and to the team that it has the subject line uh in it as to what it's regarding uh because that's how our search system works. So, if you just forward me something um and I go to search for emails, I may not get it in the body. Um, so the subject line is really important. But I I thought that Troy had mentioned we have AI systems that will search inside of the email. Like if I do notes or social media post of a date

that that the search feature will tell you what it is. Is that not accurate? Well, we're testing out a lot of that uh right now. Um there is some AI uh modules out there that can do that uh work, but it's really not Go ahead. You can I was going to say as far as records management goes, it's just a really great um best practice to try and be as organized as possible. So, we are really just asking for that partnership that if you are sending us things, it's not just in a large pile, but that we can, you know, have a process that organizes as it's coming in. And yes, we do have tools to help us go further. Um, but it this would be a wonderful standard to set so that we're working again in partnership on records management.

Well, and I think the subject line in a post that has multiple subjects would be problematic potentially. Yeah. And that's hopefully where our tools can help us out. Yeah, you can. But if you have this requirement stated this way, then it's probably a hard

thing to do in hopes that you will have the tools to then recognize if you don't have them right now. And you we are basically adopting a policy that's subjecting us to put the subject line to accurately reflect the subject of the record. Yet we just discussed last time that there may be multiple subjects in a record. How do you write that in a subject line accurately? The answer was well we'll have technology but now we're putting it in writing without that technology or

I think in in my experience I this level of detail is helpful. Having gone through many many public records requests um in my time here, I feel like I have to ask every time, okay, you know, how what is it that you're looking for or how do I send it to you or are we doing affidavit? And so this this to me gives me a place to instead of asking those questions every time, it's just like, oh, this is what I need to do and this is how I need to do it. I also think we did have that just that simple succinct paragraph um and that hasn't met our needs because we've been talking about this for months at this point and and there's been requests from this council to have a um a more robust sort of description of of what the process is and what is needed. So, I feel like this strikes a good balance between it's not pages, but it does give us a little bit more um detail about what is needed and why and how to provide that. So, I I guess I like the balance that has been struck between what we used to have and what this could have been.

And to kind of piggyback on Greg a little bit, um something I think to always remember as council members is we have elections every two years. So every two years you might have different people sitting up here from and we're supposed to reflect our community. So our strengths are really going to vary and so having something detail I think is helpful um because we have had to from what I understand grab a hold of people's personal devices and search their personal devices if there's not enough forthcoming information. Do people recognize your metadata is accessible as well? You may change your mind afterwards and think, "Oh, I'm going to cover my tracks." No, they can actually petition for your metadata. And so, I think someone that's in a career that's up todate on this is going to be like, "Well, this is a no-brainer." But maybe if it's someone who that's not their career, that's not their experience, they may not realize that. Um, and depending on I think I'm the oldest one sitting up here, but depending on your age, even I didn't grow up with computers. This is all new to me. If I didn't run a business, I would not be anywhere near as computer savvy as I am. So, to keep that in mind, too, for future council members, not necessarily just representing who's sitting here now. In two years, we we may very well have different people up here. So, that's something clear and concise for anyone who sits at this table, I think, is important. Greg, I have a question for you. You mentioned earlier that uh there were past council members or present council members maybe that were less than forthcoming. How does that even happen? Aren't you aren't you required to be forthcoming and and to adhere to the public records law? So, how do they how are they doing that?

And why hopefully they're not here anymore? You know, I I know and I'm not going to begin to to tell stories, but uh uh you know, people are busy. People are busy. One thing, you know, uh and sometimes people, you know, for different reasons. uh they've used devices, you know, people have said things, you know, I'm not using my phone for this, you know, but uh you know, sometimes people do and and these are all this is all human behavior. It's a it's and that's really the answer to this is that you know we're all human beings and we all do things that we could probably do better or or uh I I think it's fair to say that you know for the most part that there's been a good relationship between the council and the staff and our we haven't been hit with a public records uh lawsuit that has gone anywhere or and and you know, we I read about all the time and I listen to my partners tell me about what's going on sometimes in their cities and I thank God that and that that that we're not there. This city has done a really good job and let let me just I don't want to say we haven't we've done a good job, but I think this helps outline a better way of keeping that good record keeping that good record going.

Are there additional questions for staff regarding these updates to the council procedures? And if not, do we have a motion? Um, I think council president. Yeah, Ryan wanted to go. Don, council member Donnie who wanted to speak. Yeah. Council, do you want me to go over your email or do you want to do that? I know you're on your mobile. I just want to clarify. Are those related though to these specific No. actions. Those are no, but I thought we could sort of incorporate all of the revisions if you're in agreement with council member Donah's revisions, but we can take them separately.

To clarify, they are related to the updates, not the specific ones that we've just been discussing. Okay. So, I'm Yeah, I think I'm open if if it makes sense um to to have that conversation along with these proposed changes, then Council Member Donahghue. Yeah, I mean, Kelly, I think most of them are pretty straightforward. Uh, if you would mind if you wouldn't mind running through them and then perhaps the last one I can chime in a little bit and we can go from there.

Yeah. So, um, looking at the email that he sent, so section 22.3 on the appointment process, he says, uh, 22.3.1 lists both resignation and written intent to resign as grounds for declaring the office of mayor vacant. um RCW421210 only list resignation. Um he is proposing that we remove the intent to resign language and only classify the office as vacant once the resignation actually occurs or takes effect. And I'm looking at Greg to

the the the reason why that language is proposed and is that the statute that that is cited 421 I mean that's the law you can't appoint for example taking your M situation you could not even even though you learned a few days before uh the mayor actually his resignation took effect you couldn't appoint someone to fill his position until he was gone. But but with this language, written intent to resign is intended in your council policy to do is to allow to trigger you to allow you to start a process that if often times you you may get a council member, in this case the mayor, uh said, "Hey, I'm giving you notice. I intend to resign in 30 days or three weeks. Do you want to wait a month before you start your process or since you've been given that news, you've been given the opportunity to start your process and you're going to be able to fill that position much quicker than you don't. So, that's that's the language that we have here. No, you can't appoint someone to fill the council member or the mayor's position until they're actually gone. But your council procedures are intended to give you a policy of how do you what do you do when the a vacancy comes and it's just a way of allowing you if you do get that uh that written notice you can take action uh uh immediately to start a process going without waiting for the the actual legal legal statuto vacancy to to occur. So that's why it's there.

Okay. Then as long as it's clear, you know, that we're not trying to replace what is still illegally sitting there, then I'm I'm fine with that. Okay. Okay. So, we'll uh we won't make a change on that one. Absolutely.

The other one um was just an error on my part. It said it it listed one of the reasons that the office would become vacant. It said death of a council member. Obviously, that meant death of a mayor. Um hope that never happens, but that's what that should have said. Um okay. And then section 22.4.1 4.1 um on the interview meeting says the city council should ask the predetermined set of questions. Ryan is proposing or council to change it to a moderator or city clerk or designate to align with our current interview process. But I guess current interview processes in my experience have been city council members asking the question predetermined questions.

Yes, the the interview questions. our last active process that we held, I I asked the questions just so that you guys could listen and write. If you'd prefer to keep the language and keep that process and and have you all take turns asking questions, that's fine. Or um if having a moderator so that you're able to engage just as scoring and listening is better, then we can do that as well. It's up to you. Could we put and then let the coun the current council decide if council wants to do it or a moderator? We just put or

well actually the way that I think the way the way this is written is more that the questions are going to come from you who who is actually going to ask those questions. I I don't think this paragraph ties you to anyone. If you decided you wanted the clerk to do it or you wanted to each ask a question you you could decide that this doesn't preclude you or decide that question. Um, but you I mean you could put something here that does decide it and say but we could keep it the way it is and then we could still decide that we want the clerk to Yeah. So I would I guess I would without changing your rule. Yeah. Your

rule allows you to do that. Okay. So we won't make a change right now at that point. Yeah. It just seems like the language should then say the city council shall determine the set of questions which will be asked to each candidate because yeah, I see how council member Donahue interpreted this as who's the person who's actually going to physically ask the question in the interview which is not the point. So, it seems like we could just change that language to focus on the real intent. I agree. Good to Are you okay with staff just making that change? I'll listen it back and make sure. Um the la Oh, go ahead, Council Donahghue. Oh, sorry. I was just saying yes to your question.

Oh, great. Okay. And then the last thing, um Ryan, I'll try to uh summarize this because I know you and I have talked about this. So, the interviews for this mayor position are going to be done in public session. Um, in the past with when we for council vacancies, we have asked uh the people interviewing the applicants to please just out of respect um go out to Harvard Hall and not sit in on the other interviews to get any kind of unfair advantage. Um, and Greg, you can correct me if I'm wrong. They could say, "No, I it's a public meeting. I want to stay." And then I think that's they can do that. But anyway, so the question came up about the given that we're live streaming the council meetings now. Would there be an advantage to one of the applicants watching the meeting out in Hartford Hall, watching the other interviews on a device? Um, they could do that. I mean, it's being live streamed. It's on they could join the Zoom meeting or they could watch it on YouTube. And I think councelor Donghue, I don't want to speak for you, but I think his suggestion was can we is our council agreement to delay to not live stream for that particular part of the meeting. Record it and I'll post it later. But and that hasn't been our practice though for any of our other council meetings. We've always live streamed. But is there a need to or a thought or concern

not live stream necessarily? Can I ask can I ask a clarif clarifying question? If it's not live streamed, could somebody still use the Zoom link? Well, and potentially yes. I wouldn't advertise the Zoom link, though. I'd be very clear that your only option is to participating is in person or listening to it after the fact. Okay. Thank you. Question. Well, go ahead. Um just to make sure uh the candidates will know the questions that we will be asking ahead of time, right? That's or we are still yet. We'll talk about that some more, but potentially yes. Um if that's what you choose to do. Yeah.

So that was an excellent summary. Two things. Um one, Council Member Mariah to kind of piggyback off your question. Um, I think my main concern, I mean, yes, the questions, but even if we provide those in advance, I would still be concerned about people being able to hear other answers and maybe gaining an advantage there. And then also, um, just to kind of reiterate why this is a concern. Yes, people could come into the meeting, say, "Hey, this is public meeting. I want to listen to the people before me, but as a council, we can see that and we can take that into consideration. I'm more concerned about somebody, you know, discreetly watching online and us maybe not knowing so they gain an advantage and we have no way to know about it. And so that's kind of where this is coming from is just to try and level that playing field as much as possible.

Is there any reason why we should live stream? I mean, we're not required to do it. If it just gets posted an hour after it's all done, that seems like we're more than meeting the intent of making it a public meeting and making it available. So, yeah. I mean, I think that's a change we made uh several years ago being hybrid. That was our decision was to be for transparency to be um and if you didn't know how to use Zoom potentially, you could get on YouTube and watch it and they still can watch it, just won't be live, but they still have access to it. Yeah, correct. After the fact, I would upload it after the meeting is over so they could watch it later. I think that's reasonable.

I just I just want to make sure you guys understand we in my time here almost six years, we've never done that before. And so I just I want it to be known that that's not been our practice. But certainly there could be reasons behind it. And if that's the choice you guys want to make, that's fine. I would love to hear Greg weigh in just if there's any con.

Well, legal legal the the legal answer is correct. We don't have to live stream the meetings. Uh but we do have to make it clear to the public in advance of the meeting what what it is uh how they can participate, right? And so if you're going to do that, we would need a clear announcement to the public that for this meeting uh there will be a live stream except for this portion of the meeting so that people if they want to hear it they want to hear it live they don't need to come to the meeting, right? So you'll satisfy the legal requirement. It's it's just uh uh whether or not you want to trust people to

can I give or or different I mean I've seen councils handle this in different ways mo and most uh they'll send people out to to a forier some councils will have a staff member or somebody out they'll have some chairs and it'll be a little more and everybody kind of sits yeah if if um

council member Edwards Yeah, I just, you know, I think we're we're I keep getting stuck on why are we even having this conversation? I mean, legitimately, we're interviewing someone for a mayor position. If we can't trust them to sit out in the lobby for 10 minutes, um, we've got a bigger problem. Um, I think that the transparency issue is really important. And so, I absolutely want to make that available to our citizens. Um, if it really is a concern, then let's just post it an hour later. But realistically, I mean, this how far micromanaging are we going to do here? These are adults that are applying for the position of a mayor. Yeah. And I will for sure record it and it will for sure be

So, have we have we gone through this before since we've changed to live streaming? Have we had this process? We have had this process and it's always been live streamed in front of Well, never from mayor, correct? No, but for no for council vacancies.

I guess what this reminds me of is the old debate with ballot counting and it being shared as it went and discouraging people from voting and all that. And so the reason it was changed is like, you know, we don't want this to influence that. And I if I understand correctly, that's where Council Member Donahghue is coming from is if you're one of the first to go, then you have no one else's to pull from. Like what were other people saying? But if you're the last to be interviewed and you just happen to, you know, be listening to it on your earbud, you know, looking for that edge, if you want that position, um, then sure, listening discreetly, that's going to give you a little bit of an edge. And I don't know if someone would be doing that or not, but I understand what he's saying is we want to make sure it's a level playing field, meaning there's no opportunity for other candidates to listen to the prior answers because it's not like a town hall where they're in a conversation. So, I I understand the intent behind it.

I'll just

Oh, go ahead, Nathan. I'll just say, yeah, it seems like there's no extra effort to not live stream it, right? So, yeah, if you can avoid any opportunity for someone to get an unfair advantage, you simply just make it available later. It's it's an hour after it's done. I mean, if we're going to we had 11 candidates, right? 11 times 15 is multiple hours. I doubt someone's going to be here for the full three hours waiting if they're candidate number 11. Who knows what they are and what they're doing? I it just seems so simple to not live stream it. Uh it still becomes available to everybody. Everybody has access. It's just an hour later. I I don't see how that impacts anybody negatively.

Exactly. Very low cost for potential Tasha. As you mentioned, huge benefit. I mean, you'd like to think that you could trust anyone who's running for the position of mayor, but if we can't, I'd rather know about that sooner rather than later, and this is an easy way to do that.

I agree. Thank you, Ryan. I'm I just quickly I'm I'm supportive of that. I I guess I would echo um the Councilwoman Edward's comment. We can't manage all the variables and we can't we don't know if that's an advantage or a disadvantage. For some people hearing other answers could lock them into how they to answering in a different way than they were planning to and that answer could be worse than the original answer. Like I don't I don't think it's I I don't think that's a clear assumption and I don't want to micromanage the process anymore than you know what we've done. I think I I I'm I'm supportive of making it an hour later, but I I think we're all grown-ups and we're interviewing grown-ups and we have a good process in front of us. So I say that we move forward. So, do I have a majority to not live stream?

I'm in favor of not live streaming. So, okay. Thanks. Not live streaming. I'm in favor of not live streaming. Okay. So, I do have a consensus. So, Greg, is does that need to be reflected in the council procedures tonight or can we make a decision on that now in this meeting for this process this year and then do we need to add it or can we add it later? Yeah, I don't think we need to add it. Okay. I'd hate to work with that tonight. Totally. I agree. Okay. Okay. They they've given me that direction and so do that. We we do the ones that I reviewed in the staff report. If we could get u a motion on that, that'd be great. Can I

before since we got consensus on other topics, can we get consensus on the 16 on the uh 16.1 section on public records? Yes. Yeah. So, I was in favor of leaving the original language. If um Can you take a quick poll? I guess I guess I feel like that's different because that's something that's being um that's part of the action that we're looking to vote on. That's not a an addition. An addition. So, it was an amendment to the motion. Correct. I would like to make that. Well, we got to have a motion first. Okay.

If we can get a motion on the floor to adopt the changes, then you can make an amendment. Yes. Yes. Can I ask one quick question before just to make sure I understand and it's not this specific scenario but to make sure I understand in 22.1 um it says pursuant to state law a vacancy shall be filled only until the next regular municipal election. So in this very specific instance uh the next municipal election is uh in a year and a half, right?

Let's say let's just say as in theor theory if Mayor Gaye had done this two years ago where he still had three and a half years left of his term. So whoever we appointed would not re does not fill the remainder of that person's term. They only go until the next municipal election. Yes. Is that correct? So, y people elected to fill the unexpired term and sometimes you get people elected to both fill the unexpired term and to be the new Yeah. Yeah. So,

so, so this is not filling the unex that this is as correct that whenever we appoint someone, it's until the next election, not to fill that that spot's completed existing term. So to clarify, even if the mayor wasn't up for election in this next cycle, we would elect a new mayor in the next cycle anyway. Even if he wasn't up, that's what I'm asking. Yeah. Because this this language suggests that if he wasn't up, you would elect somebody. They would they would because technically the next general election would be this year. So and we're talking about next year. I think it's the rest of the unexpired term. Yeah.

And that's not exactly how that's not how I read this language. Okay. You're reading it to clarify. You're reading it as the next municipal election being this November there's a municipal election. But or even even in a year and a half when half of us are up for election, right? If if it wasn't the mayor cycle, would that election still happen? Let me get some guidance from the elections office, the county, and I will get back to you on that. Okay. Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's the unexpired term, but I I but I I want to check on that. But they also have their deadlines as to when they need to have everything on their ballot ahead of time. So it may be a timing issue. I

yeah I guess it's just if it is hey essent if it is whenever that position would have been up for election anyways we should put some sort of language to reflect that that that this person will be appointed to fill the remainder of the existing term and the person will be up that position will be up for a vote per the standard schedule cadence whatever language is appropriate. Yeah. Yeah, I will I'll get back to you guys on that. That's how I read the remainder of that where it says until the next municipal election wherein where the person elected will serve the remainder of the unexpired term. That's how I would read it. That it would be that

through 27 where the mayoral position would have been up. But if the mayor wasn't up until 29, that's what I'm asking. Take it as unexpired term being the 29. the the unexpired term of the person being elected. We're we're voting for someone to fill in that vacancy. Well, the elected or appointed because we're not electing somebody, we're appointing somebody. So, if it said wherein the person appointed will serve the remainder of the unexpired term, then I get what that we're doing here. But elected suggests at the next municipal election someone's going to get elected

and and then the remainder of that term could be just one and a half months until or it could be two years and one and a half months depending on the cycle. So again those scenarios are possible. I will get guidance tomorrow and let you know. That's okay. If we're ready, I'd like to make a motion to approve the council procedures adopted today, May 12th, 2026. Thank you. Do we have a second? Second. Motion and a second. Uh discussion. Yeah, I'd like to just go on record that I agree with council member Aria, sorry. um that the language we had was sufficient enough,

but I'm not going to hold up the Yeah, I would like to make amen an amendment to revert section 161 to its original and not make the changes to that particular section. Do we have a second? I'll second that. So, we have an amendment to the motion and a second regarding section 161. Any discussion specifically about that amendment? Yes. I will just note that I am in my car. I do not have a copy of the language in front of me. So, I will abstain from voting on this amendment. Thank you, Councilman Donham. Any further discussion?

I just would like to again reiterate that this isn't about um anyone sitting up here today. This is something that we're changing for future council members that it's it's a huge I'm sure anyone who's ever sat up here it's a huge huge learning curve and I think making it clear um is important and I just want to remind everyone this isn't a reflection on anyone sitting here and what we feel is necessary what do we feel the for the future future possible council members you know what information is there going through this would important.

Thank you. Any further discussion? All right, we will vote on the amended on the amendment to the motion. All those in favor of maintaining the original language in section 16.1. Um, please say I. Actually, could I request a roll call vote? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Uh, this will be a random. Council member Donahghue, abstain. Oh, correct. Okay. Council member Dorstad. Um, no. Council member Packard, no. Council member Edwards, no. Council member Shitman, no. Council member McManis,

yes. And Council Member Aria, yes. So, it fails. Thank you. So, the amendment fails. So, we'll go back to the regular motion which was made to pass the to accept the um the changes in the council procedures. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please indicate by saying I. Why don't we do a roll call vote again, please? Thank you. Council member Aria, yes. Council member Donahghue, I. Council member Edwards, I. Council member Packard, yes. Council member McManis, hi. Council member Shipman, I.

And council member Jorstad, I passed. Thank you.

Thank you, council. Thank you, Clerk Chelen. Uh, moving on to action item B, parks vehicle replacement. Uh, director Garcelo, being a ventriloquist was never a good skill of mine. So, I now have a mic. Thank you, council. Sarah Garco, parks and recreation director. I'm here to discuss the parks vehicle replacement program. and I've asked Aaron Halverson, uh, Director Halverson with public works to co-present as he's in charge of the city's fleet program. Um, so I'll hand this over to Director Halverson to talk about the fleet program overview. Um, and then I'll come back to talk about our parks fleet and what we have for our staff. Uh, the replacement of public works 22, PW22, that was the vehicle that was crashed on April 22nd for the record. um no injuries. Um the employee was fine, but that vehicle um likely will be deemed a total loss. Uh airbags went off. We're just waiting for that final paperwork from the insurance. Um then we'll go over an updated quote that we did receive. Uh the good news as a peak forward. Originally, we were suggested to hold a placeholder budget of $56,000, which comes down to 190 per month. and Enterprise was able to find a vehicle on a lot today available for $38,000, which brings that monthly price down to $790. So, I'll show you that at the very end, and I'll turn it over to Director Hoverson.

Okay. Thank you, Director Garco. Uh for those of you in the audience, my name's Aaron Hson. I'm the public works director. Uh and, uh I'm pleased to be here, uh mayor and council. Uh I have two slides. I'll go pretty quickly. And it it really is a an overview of the fleet program uh cliffnotes version. So public works manages uh the city's fleet except for police vehicles. They manage their own vehicles. What does that mean? It means we procure them. We maintain them. We have parts inventory. Uh we plan preventative maintenance. We track it. We do all of the things. We also facilitate painting of plow blades, which is there's one. It's not done yet. That one is done, but it's not done in the picture yet. So anyway, it's very cool. Uh there are 93 vehicles uh equipment in the fleet. So uh it's it's not a small task. We have one mechanic. He's very busy and we appreciate him very much. There are 41 light duty vehicles. Okay. So when I say light duty, it's it's a vehicle you you could buy off of a lot. So F350, F450 down. So that's that's a light duty vehicle in the picture. There are 20 leased and 21 city-owned vehic light light duty vehicles and the average year is 2022 for those vehicles. So we have a fairly new fleet. That's not uh that was not always the case. On to the next slide, Sarah. Okay. In November 2022, we had 88 pieces of equipment. The average age was 13 years old, which is almost old enough to drive. So, uh, anyway, the budget was not keeping pace with replacement needs. So, we had an aging fleet and we couldn't afford to maintain it and and keep it up to date. Which means that I'll give you an example. In 2022, we

were out plowing streets and we got down to one plow because they all broke down for a variety of reasons. and the school district was gracious enough to lend us one plow and we had two plows which is not the level of service we want. We have many more plows now. Uh so in 2022 we selected enterprise fleet uh to help us fix this problem through a leasing program. So the goal was to get the fleet to 5 to seven years old. Uh it's under that now generally on average although we have some older vehicles still. Uh we can buy at government pricing which is great or bulk pricing. So we get we can buy one half ton vehicle out of the 400 that they bought and we get the 400 vehicle rate. So it's it that can be positive. Um they they take care of title, registration or delivery and then they help us sell it at the end of its life with us which is also helpful. Um otherwise we send it to auction and it it's a little it's a lot less competitive. the fleet details. I won't the the the uh equity lease details. I won't dive into it very much, but there's no limit on usage. We have the option to purchase the vehicle at the end of the lease. I can talk more about that later if you're interested. I'm happy to come back. Uh and then the equity in the vehicle is earned with payments. Uh and that equity is transferred to the city when they sell it and buy a new vehicle or uh if we decide to keep the vehicle long term. any the image is not a is a piece of equipment. It's not we can't drive that. Um it's a crack sealer and we use that to seal the cracks in pavement uh so that the pavement doesn't turn into gravel. But it's a neat photo. Okay. Any questions for me? Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Director Alverson. Uh the parks fleet. This is all of the vehicles that are assigned to the parks department. Um, you can see that I've crossed off PW22 just to show you that it is no longer in service. Um, the last update from insurance on Thursday was we were still waiting a decision on that one specifically, but as I mentioned, airbags went off. Um, not in a condition to go back out on the road and um, have city employees use that for service. Um, we have a variety of owned and leased vehicles. As you can see, they range from light duty pickups such as the Ford Mavericks. Those Ford Mavericks are primarily used by um the admin team as well as the Parks Field Supervisor as they spend a fair amount of time inside in the office as well. Um everything else out in the field are um F-150s or 1500s and larger. We have one specialty vehicle um that is noted on here as the NRR and I have a photo of that here on the next page. It's a very large landscaping truck. So, as you can imagine, this is not a daily driver. It's not something we take when we do parkgrounds or maintenance. It's when we are buying in bulk. So, if that's dirt or plants or moving material in or out of a park, so uh playground bark chips or landscaping chips, those sort of things. um that one vehicle uh for admin that Maverick is actually shared by five different staff. So as you can imagine we have overlapping meetings and needs at places like the mill which we rent. Um we have various locations where we store recreation items such as Eagle Ridge has a storage unit as well as a office space that um used to be occupied by a city staff member. It's now turned into a recreation storage facility. Um, so we're often running back and forth as we um take care of of recreational programming, special events, and various meetings and rentals. Uh, we have the one vehicle that I mentioned, the R NRR,

which is that um special vehicle use. That leaves nine vehicles to be used by parks operations and um all of the field needs. We have eight full-time staff. That's the one supervisor, the one lead, and the six maintenance workers. for seasonal staff which come in over five or six uh months of the summer uh to share those nine vehicles. And then of course we have admin who are also trying to borrow those vehicles whenever we need to go in different directions. Um schedules over summer vary starting at 6:00 a.m. and ending at 8:00 p.m. sometimes a little later than 8:00 p.m. And this is seven days a week. Um up to 10 staff are on a single day as we overlap schedules. Um, telling you a little bit about public works 22. That was the oldest vehicle in the parks fleet. Um, we had requested this as a replacement vehicle in the fiscal uh year 26 budget, the one that we're in right now. Um, but actually no vehicles were approved in this last budget for replacement as we were trying to be mindful of budget and decisions had to be made. Um in prior years there always had since the enterprise shift had been at least one to three or more replaced. Uh we are requesting to replace this vehicle of course to continue normal operations. Um we're just needing a light duty truck, a Ram 1500, F-150 or something similar. Um the parks department really tries to get a crew cab which is that fullsize crew cab. This allows us to say um put any sensitive storage items inside, things that can't get wet like paper towels, uh toilet paper. Uh we've also had some of our cleaning products freeze

um during the uh winter months and so things like that we have to consider. We try to get regular size beds as this is easier for maneuvering in parking lots but still allow for trash bags um and tools to be thrown in the back. Uh two-w wheelel drive is requested for this vehicle because it is better on fuel price and any towing needs are just very basic, light duty, not a lot of weight. That's why the tow hitch is requested. We do aftermarket um now put backup cameras on all of our vehicles. Helps to make sure there's no pedestrians in the parks as they're backing up as well as helps them while um hitching any vehicles um to prevent any mishaps there. Um then upfitting we would require some tool boxes in the back for tools of course and a headache rack to prevent the glass from being broken as we're moving things in and out of that vehicle. That's the standard upfitting that we have for the park vehicles. This is the page where in the staff report I had used all of the numbers suggested by Enterprise on our first conversation. That's on the lefth hand side. As mentioned, we received an Enterprise quote just last week. um believe it came in on Thursday if my memory is correct. Uh that is a F-150. It's available on a lot today. Uh through the enterprise agreement, it would be able to be purchased for the price of $38,000. Um after you add the title, licensing delivery, uh that monthly payment comes out to $790. Uh we do have $3,500 of upfitting that would hit in the first year. with those numbers and looking that we are miday we would be I would be requesting um year one $9,000 uh $9,40 in order to purchase and upfit that vehicle um additional years this would be payments all the way through 60 months which is the term of the 5-year lease uh would be $9,480

required in the next budget years. These prices of course are an estimate and the vehicle is only available while it's on the lot. Um I did try to touch base with Enterprise to see if this specific vehicle was still available today. Um with all my meetings I asked too late in the day. Um they don't have an answer but reasonably sure if this specific one isn't. We could keep looking and find something very similar as this updated quote since that is the rate today. That is the end of the presentation. Kept it short hopefully enough information. and happy to take questions. Um really council has a decision, some discussion to have. Uh there's a few different options. You can decide to replace PW22. Um we would recommend we continue with the enterprise lease as it is the current system that we have. Um but if there's any concern over that enterprise lease system, Director Halverson can answer questions today. He can also bring this back in a detailed presentation to dive into at another time. If it was a purchase, I have the purchase price here available to look at. Um, the other decision is just to hold off. I understand you have tough budget decisions. Um, if it is held off, we would bring that back in the next uh fiscal year budget request 27. Um, operations would be impacted. Um, but there are things that we could work out in our department. Um, as we always do.

Thank you, Director Garco. Thanks, Director Halverson. Appreciate the information. And any questions for staff? Can I get a bottom line for um what the city will spend in the 60-month lease compared to what the city will spend if we purchase the vehicle?

I will do that and get right back to you. Any other questions? I don't I don't want to be a Scrooge. I guess I just um I need you maybe to enlighten me, right? You have nine full-time staff and then there were 11 vehicles. I know you have summer staff, seasonal staff. I just I'm struggling with why every employee needs a vehicle. I'm assuming you're going out in groups. I I get the value of having it. I just I'm struggling with the need. And then the second question is, yeah, we had a Ranger, which was smaller. Can we replace that with another Maverick or another Ford Ranger? Ultimately, I'm looking at the cost. I mean, 56,000 when I first saw that, I was really struggling with that. Um, yeah, I So, those are just some of my comments more than questions.

Absolutely. Um, the Mavericks have a very small truck bed on them. it does not allow us to put many trash bags in as you could imagine. Um, so with that, it really doesn't meet the need for trash rounds. This the mavericks that we do have, one is with admin and one is with the supervisor. It's uncommon for the park supervisor to pull trash bags. If he does, it's usually one or two bags. Uh we also like to make sure that we have proper tools and storage areas for all of the trash bags, gloves, cleaners, um as well as basic tools so that we're minimizing trips to and from parks. Um so I would strongly say that a Maverick is too small for park grounds due to that. U F-150 would be uh our desire to ensure that the needs of the department are met, but I do appreciate the thought there. Uh the

I'm going to interrupt really quick. I noticed that we are at um 8:00 and we are going to need a motion to extend the meeting. Great news for all the students here that are observing the meeting. You get to observe an extra long council meeting tonight. Um we have one additional action item after this. We have a brief discussion item. We have council business and we have an executive session that will take at minimum 15 minutes. Um, I would like to suggest a motion to extend the meeting to 8:25, but I am open to suggestions. I would make a motion to extend the meeting to 8:30, but go ahead and adjourn it if we get done prior to that. Do we have a second?

A second. Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor, please say I. Present. Any opposed? Thank you. Meeting is extended until 8:30. Council President, could I motion that we forego council business given the time constraints in the executive session that uh I expect will take some time. I appreciate that feedback. We will make that decision when we get to that item on the agenda.

Thank you. Um picking back up the last question was in regards to having nine vehicles and eight full-time staff uh to use those nine vehicles noted. And I I understand how that is a valid question. Our eight full-time staff in the winter, this is a great number of vehicles. It leaves us with the one extra vehicle to rotate to admin needs as well as rotating whenever maintenance needs need to be done. Vehicles need their oil change, their tires. Um other times when engine lights come on, uh lights need to be changed, we often are leaving them with the mechanic for that. A good example of maintenance need is all of the newer Ford vehicles that are on the enterprise lease. all just went through a round of recalls uh through the manufacturer. And so that required each vehicle to be taken out of service for at least one day, if not two or three. And so those need to be transported to the dealership. They need to make the repair and then we pick it up and transport it back. So those unexpected outages um are something to consider. Um when we are at full-time staff, so um in the summer when you add the eight plus the four seasonal, that is 12 to share vehicles. Um, as I said with staffing, we typically don't uh breach more than 10 people on a single day. So, could those people double up? Um, yes, often, especially the seasonals are the ones that are doubling up. Uh, for the full-times, absolutely, we could put two people in a car, but it will impact operations. Uh, we tend to conquer and divide. So, to split up rounds in the morning, we have two different people going in different directions to hit as many parks as possible. If there's a day where we have a project where all hands are on deck, often four different people are doing rounds to split those duties. When you combine that, um, you have the same travel time being doubled up on, um, you have to consider things like store runs. If we're in the middle of a project and we need to go to the store to get a specific irrigation part, uh, both employees may go do that. We would have a control where we're asking staff not to double up and both go to the

store. Uh, but then that leaves them there without the truck. The truck has all of the tools and the supplies, the first aid kit. These are things that can be overcome, but it's not ideal for the service level that was expected of this department and we've put in place. Service levels can absolutely be changed, but it is something to note. Um, having nine vehicles for our current staff allows us to best utilize employee staff time, which is one of the most expensive things for the department, of course. Um, but I I understand that yes, the decision could be made for us to make do with the vehicles that we have and remove the one from the fleet. Thank you, Sarah. Absolutely. Additional questions?

Sarah, I have a question. If the the current vehicle or the old vehicle is being totaled, I'm assuming there will be an insurance payout. Um, I I guess I'd like some clarification on why we're not trying to use that money to look for a comparable replacement vehicle on the used market and why we're instead considering, you know, I think the number I saw in the packet was a 2025 vehicle that I'm assuming cost significantly more.

Great question. Um, as mentioned, this was the oldest vehicle in our fleet. It was a 1997 Ranger. Um, it's a gem of a thing. would be a great first vehicle for many of the individuals in this audience. However, at this time it is no longer drivable. Um, this vehicle, a similar one was sold in 2014 and it brought in 3100 at auction. Auctions are unpredictable. Numbers can go up and down. Um, I'm told through our insurance that $2,500 is the maximum that we could receive by this vehicle being totaled. So, that's what we're waiting to hear back from is the insurance agency. Worst case scenario, $0. Best case scenario, $2,500 to help offset these costs. Getting back to Council Member Shipman's question, thank you for that. When I take $790 per month and two cents, times it by 60 months, add the $800 for titling, registration, delivery, add my $3,500 that we need to upfit this vehicle for operations. I get a grand total of $51,7120. Whereas you can see on here that cash price today would be your 38312,800 and 3500. So it comes out to about a $10,000 difference for the financing. I will just say too, as part of the council who made the decision in 2022 to um to transition over to Enterprise, it it it was sort of a no-brainer in my recollection, it was it it was more efficient. It provided staff vehicles that were in better shape. It was cost effective. And so I think that um continuing on with using Enterprise to um secure our fleet cheaper than we could do it ourselves and to keep it maintained um in my opinion is a good direction to continue moving in.

I guess that kind of goes back to my question though, Sarah. It's even if we only get 2500 from the insurance company, whatever delta we have to make up in our budget to acquire another similar vehicle, like yes, it's older and it's not as glamorous or as fancy as a new one, but I'm assuming whatever we end up paying for that the difference between, you know, that and a 2025 vehicle that covers a lot of maintenance before I think we even break even or reach the same cost. So, I guess again, I'm kind of curious why we're not looking more at the used market. um instead of trying to replace this with, you know, a brand new truck.

Absolutely. So, um to correct my prior statement, it's a difference of 9,800 or $9,089 between the purchase and lease. Um the purchasing of vehicles outright when they're new. Um that becomes a cash flow problem when you're trying to replace so many vehicles at once. As you can see in my slide, we still have aging vehicles and we're trying to get the age of maintenance between the five and 7year range, which uh director Halverson could speak more to. After we start getting older, a vehicle older than seven years, the maintenance needs start increasing and those unknown maintenance costs are really what can hit a budget hard. They can overwork our in-house mechanic um and you you have downtime for the field as well. The best way to optimize a government fleet is to operate between a five to sevenyear life. Um, but of course we can dive further into that. Um, to directly answer your question is why aren't we looking at the used market? Um, I know that we cannot purchase a vehicle for $2500. That wouldn't be enough, especially when we factor in the cost for the title registration and tax on the purchase. Um, however, could you approve a budget of 20,000 or $25,000 and have us look at used vehicles? We absolutely could take that route if that is your decision.

Hey sir, the slide that shows the age of the vehicles current. Absolutely. There you go. So, looks like the oldest one is the 2015.

That's the oldest fleet. Um, so my question would be, can we should look at or can we look at two things? One, uh, can we look at public's works fleet and see if they have a truck that's aging out that may be a good swap over like are we going to have this conversation next year when we need two for public works that need to be replaced? Can we look at that since parks is generally not carrying heavy equipment, not towing, you know, the kind of stuff that public works does, can we look at maybe getting a handme-down from public works for for parks, for lack of a better word, and then looking at a new vehicle for for um public works replacement. Just trying to estimate out looking forward, not, you know, taking in that data to see if we have a vehicle that's on the cusp in public works that might suffice for a couple years for for parks and wreck to get us through this. Number one, the other thing I would ask is in the enterprise rental program or fleet program, do they provide a um rental vehicle when there's a recall or there needs to be some sort of repair work done on that vehicle?

My understanding is with our current contract because we're not utilizing them for maintenance specifically that no rental vehicle is provided. The other question about public works fleet. um public works fleet is also actively trying to replace all of their older vehicles and so if one comes over to us um we would still need a replacement and or they would be getting the replacement. Um I would love to make sure that parks just doesn't end up with a stacked older vehicle list in the future as we're trying to work through some of our older vehicles still at this time. But temporarily would there be something available? Um, Director Halverson did offer up one vehicle that they do have available which is underutilized. Um, the unfortunate thing about this vehicle is it does not meet the parks need. It only it's a short cab, so it only has the two seats in it. It doesn't have any inc cab storage. It does not have tool boxes on the outside. Could that be solved? Yes, it could. But you're upfitting uh new tool boxes on it. Um, and then it has a large crane on the back. Um, this is more of a flatbed style, not a bed with um, raised to sides. And so we would not be able to use it for putting any items on the back that wouldn't be properly strapped down.

Gotcha. You can understand why I'm asking that question. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Good. Ask away. That's why we're Thank you. I appreciate it. Could you put the slide back up that shows the decisions to be made? Pretty, please. Thank you. So, what what are we looking for? Council the next the next slide that shows the Oh, I apologize. My brain stopped.

There we go. Thank you, please. Cuz I was like, that was so correct. So, I would make a motion that we hold off on replacing PW22, that we wait to look at this budget impact in combination with a number of other things as part of fiscal year 27. We've had conversations in the last couple weeks around uh pay for certain positions, things like that. I think there's a lot that we need to look at collectively and I'm afraid to do any one of these in isolation. I understand impact operations will be impacted but I still think it's manageable. I'd like to look at it collectively rather than by itself.

So we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. Discussion on the motion.

We're entering park season. Um Lake Stevens is known for its parks. People come from all around, not just people that live here. People come from all around from our parks. Um, personally, I'm very proud of Lake Stevens Parks and the job our parks department does. Um, you know, how will this affect service? I think it will be yet to be seen, but um, I think that a newer vehicle is going to have the longevity. I, you know, um, older vehicles, not only is there more maintenance, you've got the possibility of breaking down, um, you know, all of those type of things. I certainly understand budget constraints and I've been pretty vocal about the budget, but I think there are some things we need to prioritize and we're entering park season here. I don't know about you guys, I had a hard time finding a place to park tonight because there were so many people at the park. Um, so I would be in favor of replacing it and I would be in favor of purchasing and saving that $9,000 now and so that we're giving our parks department what they need to do the job that is expected of our citizens.

Thank you. Other discussion?

Yeah, I would think um council made the decision not to have any replacement vehicles in the budget. We are talking about less than 6 months roughly once we get this decided on a new budget which we could actually plan for the replacement of this vehicle. So just want to keep that in mind as we're trying to keep things down. A lot of ask for increase in budget. Not a lot of ask for bringing a lot of cutting the budget, right? Or reducing the spend expenditures or reallocating cash from one thing to the other. So I guess there's two things. One, if we want a new vehicle, I would look to see if there's anywhere we could squeeze it out of the current budget. Sarah. Um, and if not, then we'd have to make that hard decision on whether we want to wait to replace it until 2027.

My concern is level of service, and I I agree with council members Shipman that we are entering our park season. um we seem to already be a little constrained with um you know being able to maintain what we have already and I would be hardressed to put the parks department in a situation to where they are even um more tied hands. Um and so um I think I would be in favor this is more of an emergency replacement. This isn't like we're just choosing to replace a vehicle. Um, considering that this is the oldest vehicle in the fleet, um, I think that it makes sense to replace it and maintain our level of service that we have in our parks. Um, I would probably go with um, Mayor Prom's suggestion of um, the lease option, which um, is what the council had decided previously. That would be my input.

Thank you, Councilwoman Edwards. Other discussion? I'll weigh in and say I I feel like holding off is sort of kicking the can down the road. I think that um vehicles are not going to get cheaper between now and next year. And I would agree that this feels like an emergency um decision versus a budgeted decision. and council makes decisions all the time about, you know, emergency things that come up that where money needs to be spent. Um, I also really worry about level of service and entering park season. So, I am not um going to be voting in favor of holding off on replacing.

And as our presenter said today, your budget is a live document. And I think this is the perfect example of it being a live document. I guess my concluding comment is I wouldn't call this an emergency. I would say an accident happened, right? It was an unexpected situation. I don't deem this as if we don't have this vehicle that the city's in emergency mode and we can't operate. It's it's a reduction in service. It's not all of a sudden everything breaks. So, I'm okay with a limited reduction. Um yeah, I just don't classify it as an emergency. Maybe I should clarify. It's more unexpected, I think, than than an emergent.

Well, I guess, you know, everybody in our constituents are all tightening their belts. Just about every household in town's tightening their belts, and at some point, we have to learn how to do that as well. I would just add too that I agree with Council Member George. Vehicles typically do not get cheaper. However, I believe there's additional discussion to be had about some potentially cheaper options. And uh so with that, I would call for the question. Call for the question. And the motion is to hold off on replacing PW22. All those in favor, please say I. I. All those opposed say nay. Nay. Nay.

And can I get clarification? What what exactly is the motion to hold off on replacing? To hold off. Okay. Yes. Okay. The names were ed and shipment. So it Thank you. So the motion fails.

I would like Can I make the motion? I would like to make a motion on replacing um PW22 with the purchase of a new vehicle to save money in the long run, the $9,000. Thank you. We have a motion on the floor. Is there a second? Not hearing a second. The motion fails to move forward. I'll I'll consequently make a motion that we replace by leasing the vehicle. That seems to be Well, it may not be the only remaining option. It's the only one left on the chart, but there may be other options. All right, we have a motion on the floor to replace PW22 with the lease option. Do we have a second?

Second. We have a motion and a second. Discussion. Um, I would be interested to know why over a 5year period you want to spend $9,000 more.

Um, we don't I don't think we have the 50K sitting around right now. So, I'm okay to lighten that. I think when you also look at the power of cash, right? We could invest 40k and come up with that $9,000 over six years as well. So, it's not a big enough number to me to to do it that way. Can can we clarify what that lease would be? I think the our our agenda was different than the latest one you presented. So what was be the maximum? The agenda said 60,000. Do we have a new maximum for the lease now?

Um the lease for this year I've um put in 6 months it's going to be about 6 and 12 months. But based on the six month that's $9,4012 for this year. Um, additional years after that would be $9,480.24 through the 60 months. Are you looking for the total grant price of I think you mentioned the 51700. So, $52,000 and the maximum in the packet was 60,000. I guess I just want to make sure that we clear we were clear on that maximum amount that you would have for that leasing. If this particular vehicle is not available, then you know what you're looking for. Is that you said

it's a fair point because I I don't want it to be an open budget or an open checkbook for the purchase of a leased vehicle. So well I think it was clear in the written one. I think an updated maximum would be

um so for leasing we would be looking at supplemental budget for this year and then the subsequent years on 2027 2028 as part of budget we'll be bringing forward the cost of the lease program. So that'll automatically build in in the future years. Um, so for this year, oop, I'm so sorry. It just scrolled and I'm going in the wrong direction. For this year, this vehicle would be the 9,040. So if you want to say maybe not to exceed um 9,500 in order to round that off, if you're comfortable with that number, let's say $10,000. I guess I'm very I mean, yeah, it doesn't make a difference

to me. 95 or 10,000, I think. Yeah, you had 11,000 in here, so it feels like Councilman Donnie.

Yeah, if if I may. Um I'm just I'm still hearing a lot of active discussion and questions, which is great. However, I'm looking at our time and I it feels to me like maybe this needs to come back in just a week. I don't think the parks are going to burn down then and where we can really dig into this because that seems to be what we're still doing and then we can, you know, move forward tonight and get some of our other items done. That would be my suggestion. We have a motion on the floor with a second. So, we're in discussion of that motion. So, we would need to vote on the motion and then um make that decision. So, shall we call for the vote? Yeah. Okay. Yep. Motion on the floor is to move forward with the lease option. All those in favor, please say I. I.

I. All those opposed, please say nay. Nay. Nay. Nay. Oh, sorry. Please. Okay. And no. Okay. Motion fails to pass. What was your vote? Sorry, was that directed at me? Yes. What was your vote for? I was nay.

So, at this point, all three options presented by staff have been voted down. And so, Personally, I would recommend if staff is open to bringing it back in a week or two um and council can submit questions to Sarah in the interim and then perhaps we can, you know, pick a pick something to go forward with moving forward from a more informed place. I don't think we're going to get there tonight. And um staff has the content of our discussion so kind of know what the concerns are and what some of the questions are. So, we look forward to seeing this on a future agenda item. Thank you. And my email and phone is open for any additional questions to come in. Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you for your patience. Moving forward to our next action item C, the 91st Avenue Southeast Multi-use path phase 2 construction contract award. I'll turn it over to Eric Mangled.

Good evening, council. Uh my name is Eric Mangold. I'm the acting interim city engineer and capital projects manager for the city. Um uh what I'm bringing to you tonight is just um the authorization to award the contract to um SRV for the 91st multi-use path. Um to give you a quick synopsis, um we've been working on this project for um about 6 months, which is pretty amazing that we were able to get it done this quick. But we uh went out to bid. The original engineers estimate for this project was $2.4 to $2.6 million. Um our bids came in pretty um competitive. The low bid was 1.87. 876 million. Um, and so we're getting a pretty substantial savings um, by a contractor that is known to do good work and um, be very efficient with the way they do stuff. Um, as you can see in our revenues, um, the the budget for this project was came from a transportation benefit program funds, stormwater capital funds. Um, but we were also able to get a TIB, which is the transportation improvement board grant, um, for $800,000 and also a washd safe routes to school grant. So, um, our budget for the whole project actually was anticipated to be $2.9 million. Um, and as you see in the other half of this, um, our planned expenditures, um, design, our design contract was $475,000 and then our construction, um, is 1.876. So, um, our total is $2.3 million. And actually our our contract our consultant for design was actually able to be way more efficient on their design as well. So we still have budget left in the in the contract there. So um this will be a pretty considerable savings from what we had projected to be. Um so tonight um we off we well not tonight I should say um earlier in May we opened the bids for this project and we had four bids. the low bid came in um as the number that we told you and now we're just asking council to authorize the mayor prom to

uh sign the contract with SRV construction and so if you have any questions I'm more than happy to talk about it. Can I can I add something really quickly and I'll be fast please? Um, I I want to point out that the TBP funds that uh that the voters approved were the first funds in and we're seeing this over and over again where other funds are coming into these projects and we expect to see that. So, this is a great success for the community and I just want to that out. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? Can you clarify? Is it on just the east side of the road? Is the sidewalk going on both sides of the road?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, this is actually um what what we have now been told is deemed a side path. Um anytime we do a multi-use path that's adjacent to a roadway, um it is called a side path. Now, um the side paths are typically 12 ft wide. So, it will we're going to put all the real estate for walking on the left side or I guess the east side of the road. Yeah, as you said. Um so, this will continue. The original phase one was a 10 foot wide trail um that goes from Marketplace to Fourth Street. That was a 10 foot wide trail. This one will continue past. We'll we'll we'll skip the section of sidewalk that's already through the schools. Uh and then when there's no sidewalk now, we'll have that 12 foot wide path there. And we will also be putting a bike lane on the the west side of the road.

What's the mechanism though for a child coming out of say 16th place that wants to get across the street? Will there be stop crosswalks at each of those locations? Yeah. So, we will be improving all the ADA ramps that are there, adding crosswalks, um enhanced crosswalks for all all the crossings that are there. Um we also are incorporating um some speed calming traffic calming measures, which is looks like speed cushions. They're kind of the big big long um wider speed bumps that people are used to seeing. um you're able to drive over them at a at a 25 mph speed uh and not have, you know, damage to your axles or your your car, but they do cause you to slow down. And so this is a um uh to really improve the traffic safety around that area, especially because this is a this road holds three schools on it. Um we've really worked on implementing the traffic calling measures in there. We also will be dropping the the speed limit to 25 on 91st. Any further questions related to requesting that this contract be signed and move forward?

I move that we authorize the mayor prom to sign the contract. Second the motion. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. I. I. Any opposed? Thank you. Motion passes. Thank you so much. Moving on to the rest of the agenda. We have uh council agenda review which clerk chalon has um stated that we can postpone that and it might come up um in some capacity in our executive session. And then we had a a question by councilman Donahghue or a suggestion to uh skip council business tonight. So would love council's input on that recommendation.

I will go ahead and make a motion so we can discuss it. I move that we forgo council business tonight. Second. We have a motion and a second discussion. I just have one item that I think is important for the body. That's all. But I can email that to the clerks and the clerks can email that out. Let's do it that way. I'm okay with that. But I really wanted to tell everyone how great it was to go to DC and to work so hard for our funds. But so they're they're differing opinions. Council has things they want to talk about. Yes. Any further discussion? So we forgoing council business and discussion item for the council agenda reading, right? Oh yes. Both. Yeah. Yes.

Any further discussion? All those in favor of not having discussion item or council business, please say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion passes. We are skipping nine and 10 which will move us into executive session which is confidential session of the council. They're chilling. Yes. Uh so we're going to need everybody to uh leave the room. This is a confidential session per RCW 423110. We'll be discussing and evaluate they will discussing evaluating the qualifications for candidate for elective office. We need to do that before there may be action and we need to extend the meeting before we start that. I I say 20 minutes for exact session.

Let's do it. Yeah. Okay. Do you want to get a We do need to um extend our council session. I would like to make a motion that we extend our council meeting to uh 850. 8 what? We have a motion and a second to extend 8:50. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Thank you. Extended to 850. 50. You want 20 minutes? No. 20 minutes to 850. Yep. Yep. It's

and we need to extend the meeting and So I would entertain a motion by council to extend our time together. I would like to extend the meeting to 9:05 or sooner. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Meeting extended till 9:05. So I need a little clarification on the process. So we're gonna each vote for a people. It's not likely that everyone's going to be unanimous or we're going to have six unanimous. So, are we simply taking those people with the most votes or are we going to do an initial vote and then

we will be making a motion to interview each person? That motion will there'll be a motion and a second and then there will be a vote and if it's going to be majority on each majority votes. Can I since we're in open session, can I just read the names and they can raise their hand for each one? Then we don't have to go through a first and a second. Great. Great. You don't need to go through a formal motion. So in our each of us need to think who our six should be or just who you are wanting to move forward to just interview who you're willing to you're going to you're going to hear their name and you're going to decide this is a person I'd like to interview or not. That's

do we need three three out of the six to move forward or how how is how is the tallying happening? Well, that's up to you. That's what I'm asking. A majority. Probably a majority. I think it would have to be four out of six. Yeah. Four out of the six. And once we hit six candidates, then we're technically not asking about anybody else. Already met. We're going to go through all. So, we're going to just go through it. We might say 10 out of the 10 we have people who want to. And then Okay, there you go. That's what I'm asking is how how it was going to fall out. Sure. Sorry. Making sure I get it. Sorry. Okay. Should I take the first name? Um, in no particular order and then I'll have a raised hands.

Great. So, uh, Brian McManis. Is that a Are we raising raising? Yes. To move forward. Yes. Yes. To move forward. Okay. Ryan, Nathan, Sabina, and Angie. So, that's four. So, yes. For Brian. One.

Eric Feder's Walt. Yes. Hands. Just one for Eric. Sorry, I just got to make sure I get this right. Uh Gary Peterson, there is four Kim, Angie, Ryan, and Sabina. Okay. Uh Jared Irving, that's four. Okay. Uh Jessica Bilovich. It's three. Okay. And you're keeping count of this. Okay. Uh Joseph Jensen, two Kurt Hilt. One, two, three, four. Okay. Um Michael Ins one. Uh, Michael Leardo. Sorry if I'm saying that wrong. Labardo. Loberto two. And Ven Kirby two. Okay. So,

yeah, go ahead and read the the for us. So, the yeses we have are Curt Hilt, Jared Irving, Gary Petershagen, Brian Mcmanis, and Michael Inskco. Oh, nope. Cross that last one off. Let me do it one more time here. So, Curt Hilt, Jared Irving, Gary Peters, and Brian McManis. Three out of six. Yep. So, so does that mean we're only doing those four or we're going to then say who else to add to the list to No, just those ones.

Just those four. Okay. So, the next order bit. Do you want me No. Can I just ask a a a question that's not um spelled out and so maybe there isn't an answer, but I just want to put this on the floor. Yeah. Um we had a pool of 10 eligible folks. We chose four to interview. What is the um and and you had mentioned there was a late one that could be brought up if there's another round of interviews. And so is there is there a mechanism to do another a second round if absolutely we interview for and there isn't

consensus and you're unsure, you're not ready, you want to go do more interviews, you want to do second interviews. I think the process is up to you. All of those are on the table. Okay. I just wanted to to say that out loud and make sure that um that that's the case. Thank you. Just need to get it done in 90 days, right? Yeah. Which is July July July 10th.

Yeah. So, I do want to So, now we're not looking at interviewing all 10. So, the time commitment isn't as much. So, do you is there a preference to do this on a separate night? um where you can just focus on that. Do the interviews, go into executive session, do your deliberations, come out, make an appointment if you're ready. Um or do you want to try to tag this on to a council meeting? I can tell you our next couple meetings are pretty packed. It's going to make for a longer meeting. Um I would like to propose that we do it on a separate night. Agreed. Agreed. I agree. Okay. Is June 3rd, Wednesday, June 3rd an option? I won't be in town. Oh, that's okay. Tell me your dates again, Kim.

Do my dates have to be on public right now. Oh, no. I'm okay. You're not in town for the third. Good call. No, you're right. How about the 26th of May? Are you here for the 26th of May? 27th. What is that? 27th is Wednesday. 26 is 26th is already in We already have a meeting. We already have a meeting, right? But I Are you here on that? 27? No. Okay. Um, when I planned my vacation, I didn't realize we were doing this now. And can I do it remotely? Yeah, I guess I can do it remotely. Do you want to do it remotely? I mean, we're at the stage where we can work around this. It I would rather do it in person.

I will be back on the 21st, but graduation. Councelor Packard, you're going to be gone. No, I will be at graduation. Yeah. on the 10th. Wednesday the 10th. Wednesday the 10th. I can do the 10th works for me. It would give uh us just, you know, ample opportunity to get all of our, you know, every all our ducks in a row. Give them a lot of, you know, for a warning and it'd be that night. Is that Does that work? So, we're talking Wednesday, June 10th. Yeah. In this room. Yeah, I think that works for me.

I didn't check it just to be sure. Okay. And so again, just to reiterate, we'll have an inerson option for people. We will record it. There will be no live streaming. And I will make sure that that's out to the public. And is that the evening, I'm assuming, of June 10th? Yeah. Good question. Do you want six o'clock? Do you want earlier? 6 o'clock. I need to go to work. Yeah. 6 is good. 6 p.m. on the 10th. June 10th looks wide open for the room. Okay, good. So, we'll be in this room. Perfect. Awesome. Sounds like a plan. Thank you. And we'll uh contact the other candidate well all of the candidates tomorrow.

All right. I just I just want to make a comment. I I understand how that process went out. I guess I'll just say that wasn't what I expected and I'm not sure I'm fully satisfied with it. Uh if the body is satisfied with where those four are, that's fine. I just I was assuming we'd talk about people a little bit more and uh talk pros and cons and I just felt like that process was a little rushed during the closed session. I would have liked to talk more about people uh to discuss pros and cons but well you could talk again next week if you want. You have time.

If the consensus of the body is we're happy with those four then I will move forward with that because that's the consensus. I just I didn't we voted and then it just happened and I was expecting more dialogue and discussion and communicating on why we thought people would be good or less good. I guess are you worried that I mean speaking for yourself you would have been able to persuade people to your list more or because I don't know that just kind of happened very fast for me uh when we're talking about picking the mayor and all of a sudden it was figuring out how we're going to do the voting and then the voting happened and it it that was very fast in my opinion.

It was a quorum. I mean each person that we brought forward had a quorum a majority. Yeah. I'm we all have an opportunity. I see where you're coming from and I agree that it was fast. I would say I'm satisfied if it moves us forward. Any other comments, discussion? It was a majority. I think that's fair. Although neither of my top two candidates were, but I'm okay with going forward. Okay. Okay. And again, you can regroup after this round, you can. That's true, too. Yeah.

You're saying after we interview these four, we can regroup. Is that what you're saying? I mean, do not open it up to more or what I heard is Yeah. After that, if we can't reach a consensus or a majority, then we can open it back up and we have time. Okay. Any further discussion, comments, questions? Motion to adjurnn. Can I make a motion to adjurnn? Second.