City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm calling this meeting to order. This is the Parks Environmental Sustainability Committee of the Whole meeting for June 23rd, 2026, commencing at 4.30 p.m. Council members in attendance in person is Council Member Forsyth, Council Member Parsi, and myself, Council Vice President Nueva Camina, as the presiding officer, standing in for Council Member Sonny. Now, we do have Council Member Soni online. We have half of our team that is attending AWC conference in Spokane. So joining us online is Council Member Soni, as I said, Council Member Procrea, as well as Council President Stewart. Council Member Kritzer will not be joining us. Is there a motion to excuse Council Member Kritzer this afternoon?

I moved.

And is there a second?

I second.

Thank you. That is moved and seconded to excuse Council Member Kritzer from today's meeting. We have only one action item to discuss today that is on this particular committee meeting. We have one action item that is looking to go to consent. We also have one informational item on this committee that is just informational. And then we also have two, so don't go anywhere too soon once we're done with parks and environmental sustainability because we have two items from other committees to discuss today on the agenda as well. Now the first item on the agenda that we have is from parks and environmental sustainability and that is the memorandum of understanding or the MOU with East Rail Regional Advisory Council. And it looks like Director Hamilton is not joining us online. However, no worries at all. Lindsay Falkenberg is here to present this item. Hi, Lindsay.

Hello, good evening, Council President Online, Council Vice President, and Council Members. I'm Lindsay Falkenberg, I'm the Parks Planning Manager. And tonight I'm bringing forward a proposed update to the East Rail Regional Advisory Council Memorandum of Understanding. The East Rail Regional Advisory Council provides a forum for regional coordination amongst jurisdictions and agencies along the 42-mile East Rail corridor, helping to advance connectivity, multiple uses, and public benefit. The proposed MOU update is administrative in nature. and reflects the departure of the East side Greenway Alliance from the Regional Advisory Council. This change was reached by consensus among the RAC members in October of 2025 and Council Member Forsyth who serves as a RAC co-chair and our representative for Redmond has confirmed Redmond support for this revision. uh tonight we are requesting that council um move this item forward to approval at the july 7th business meeting where council will be asked to authorize the mayor to sign the updated mou and i am happy to answer any questions wonderful council do we have any questions or comments seeing none online and none in the room just want to thank the staff and also on the rack

for ongoing work and support on this. It's one of the fabulous collaborative efforts that we have. Is there any objection for this going on for consent for July 7th? Council, thumbs up all around. Council Member Forsyth.

Just wanted to make a comment and my appreciation to Eastside Greenway Alliance because of their longstanding commitment to this project and just appreciate their support of the project and appreciate all their hard work. And this is a representation that their work on this has completed. So just wanted to say thank you to them.

Awesome. Thank you all. We'll see you on July 7th.

We'll see you on July 7th. Real quick, point of order. Yes. We do have a standing motion on the floor. If we could take a vote on that to dismiss or excuse Council.

Thank you for that. It was moved and seconded. All in favor of excusing Council Member Kritzer from this evening's meeting, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposition? Aye. And that passes six to zero. Okay, thank you very much Council Member Forsyth for making sure that we are on track. The second item on this evening's agenda is informational in nature and this is the Environmental Sustainability Action Plan Partnerships Overview. Joining us is Deputy Director Zak and team, welcome.

Good afternoon, Council. I'm going to hand it over to Jenny Laibach, Sustainability Manager, and Valeria Cosgrove, Sustainability Coordinator, to present this item.

Good afternoon, Council. So Valeria and I are going to tag team this item, but over the past few PES meetings, so we've been highlighting key programs that are accelerating community climate action. So we've talked about the Energy Smart Eastside program and the newly launched Clean Buildings Incentive program. And so today we'd like to shift our focus to another essential part of our climate strategy, which is the partnerships that are connecting those programs to the Redmond community. So during last year's ESAP Refresh, we heard two themes during the public engagement phase. So first was that people wanted meaningful ways to participate in climate action. They really wanted to be part of the solutions. And second, they wanted to do that in spaces and with people that they knew and trusted. And so that insight has continued to shape our outreach work as we've moved into implementation of our plan. So instead of expecting residents to come to us, we have been working through paid nonprofit partnerships to bring climate conversations and programs into trusted community spaces. And we've been working to build our partners capacity to do this work for a lot of them, this is new. and ultimately help expand climate action into a broader cross section of our Community so we're reaching beyond the choir. So this approach does require dedicated resources during this budget cycle, we have allocated around $40,000 in grant funding. and $5,000 in city funding to support these nonprofit partners so that they can integrate ESAP-related climate programming into their work. And we've also allocated dedicated staff capacity to lead this strategy, which is part of Valeria's body of work. But without both the funding and the staff capacity, this would not be a viable strategy. And I think I also want to note that we see these paid partnerships as a long-term investment that helps us build community trust and capacity, which is very, very critical to climate programming, right, where we're working towards behavior change and culture change. I think it's also really important to note that we're seeing a lot of growing demands on nonprofit organizations. So many of them are taking on a lot more responsibilities. We know that the funding landscape is pretty grim. And they have, again, that constrained funding capacity. And that is, again, why that paid element of this work is so critical as we're working to help build NGOs capacity specifically for climate work. So again, Valeria is leading our partnership work. And so she's going to review how she's bringing the strategy to life.

Thank you, and good evening, Council. So we started last year by consulting with the Redmond 2050 team, looking for organizations in Red... Valerie, hang on just a second, because I'm not sure if... Oh, I can move closer. We started last year by consulting with the Redmond 2050 team, looking for organizations who had really strong community presence and involvement, and we entered paid partnerships with three community organizations for the ESAP refresh process. And from the jump, this process is community-led. For our very first kickoff meeting, we talk about the ESAP, we go over all of our big moves, our goals, and we ask them to conduct a community profile with us, learning who is it that they serve, what channels do they use, where are their trusted spaces, what are the major priorities of these organizations, whether it be climate-related or not, what issues are they trying to address, and getting an idea about how the community feels about climate change and climate action. and entering kind of these conversations of where's a good starting place in our ESAP to inspire people and start working on climate action together. From there, we co-create a scope of work for their contract term, and they decide which events, workshops, topics, communications are of interest. And we kind of map out the year ahead. We contract with them because they know their community's interests, needs, and barriers. By addressing these with us, we can help open the door to climate action for more people. Simply just, we know the experts and we have the programs and resources. They know the community and they know what the community needs. Moving into implementation this year, it's been the same process. We've built on the foundation of the ESAP refresh and the relationships built through that, and we're continuing partnerships with El Centro Cultural Mexicano, United Hub, and an agreement with the Redmond Library. We view implementation through three buckets of work that progress trust in local government, access to resources, and long-term behavior and systems change. Those buckets are expanded communications, where we leverage translations, different channels, accessible education, where we're tailoring different engagement topics and the languages we use, and climate activation, where we're trying to implement culturally relevant and exciting opportunities for community members to take that first step towards becoming climate stewards. I want to emphasize that this work is about long-term behavior and systems change. We're bringing people in through accessible doorways to show them what's possible and inspiring them to pursue solutions. Climate work is cross departmental. It touches nearly every aspect of our daily lives. And part of our strategy is integrating and unifying climate action by connecting our greater community and their interests to other city departments, experts, and resources. A few outcomes from this work that I'd like to highlight from this year with a full list outlined in attachment A include adding translations to our e-news, a featured Spanish radio show episode about the Recology transition, translated workshops including an upcycling through art series with El Centro Cultural Mexicano and an e-bike safety class with United Hub and Move Redmond. The launch of the Redmond Climate Action Group, which is through the library, meeting once a month, learning from city experts, different organizations, and putting on some community projects that I'll get to soon. As well as the second annual Green Redmond United Hub Park Restoration and Culture Event. We're also collecting feedback after activation events to evaluate longer term what's really resonating and how this programming is going to move forward. Some highlights from our questionnaire include from United Hub's Green Redmond event. This event with United Hub was such a beautiful community bonding event. Not only do we work on parks, but we learned about a different culture. 75% of the attendees to these events reported that attending the event was not because of initial interest in sustainability, nor were they lifelong climate stewards. but they came because of their connection to these partner organizations. This is what we mean by opening doors to inspire future action. 87% responded that they were very likely to return for another partner-hosted climate action event. Zero said unlikely or not very likely. And again, 75% reported that after attending these, they felt a strengthened belief that their individual actions can make a difference. And again, this is our partner's ability to showcase how individual actions do form community because they're coming together with their communities and their trusted spaces. Later this year, we're looking forward to supporting our partners on the second annual Thrift and Threads Festival. It's an upcycling and reuse fair. Last year, it drew in over 250 people. This fall, the Redmond Climate Action Group is going to be doing their first community project, an emergency preparedness fair at the library. And also, we're looking forward to more youth engagement work through the Youth Climate Action Fund we just received. Going forward, we intend to continue to implement the ESAP by building on these partnerships and expanding the network of climate leaders here in Redmond. The strategy is critical to achieving our climate goals because solutions only achieve their intended impact when residents are aware of and adopt the programs, resources, and solutions that we put forth. As Jenny mentioned at the beginning, the city has invested in several tools and programs that will lead us to our goals. That being said, it's important to recognize that as we push more solutions forward, we must continue investing in supporting the organizations that can ensure these solutions get adopted. So by investing in our community partners, the city is expanding its reach and building trust and solutions, offering culturally relevant climate education that hopefully will ultimately serve to accelerate the adoption of behaviors, actions, and a long-term systems change to reduce our emissions and build our resilience against climate impacts. So that concludes our presentation, and we're happy to take any questions.

Wonderful. I'm very excited, and I've got got questions or comments, but I want to turn to the team and we'll go online. Um, I also see you as well council member Parsi, but let's kick it off with council president Stewart.

Well, thank you so much team. I really appreciate this update and Valeria, um, your work already is just so impressive. So I really want to use my time here to offer, um, my gratitude and support for the approach that's being taken and this model of deep partnership with our community organizations. This is what we intended at the conclusion of Redmond 2050. And I hope that your practice can be seen as a model for other departments and how we show up as a city in this way. So I also think that we will need to ask for a lot of feedback along the way as we continue to get better and better at this. So I look forward to hearing from you down the line about the feedback and iterations that the city is taking as a result of the feedback that you get in this partnership. And I do hope that we can leverage Deputy Director Hufner's new role to make sure that the city is showing up in a coordinated way with our partners all around the community. I really appreciated hearing about which partners are helping, are in this new contracting relationship with us here. And I know several other departments are eager to establish good working relationships with trusted partners all around the city. And it's important that we're able to show up in a way that isn't multiple different departments, you know, all in separate asks, but as one team Redmond, as we always strive to do. So once again, just my gratitude for the approach and really looking forward to seeing where we go from here. Thank you.

Council Member Percy.

Thank you. I really appreciate the work that you've done here. I've had the chance to attend some of the climate action events through the library. So I just wanted to give you a huge shout out for organizing that with Noel Reich from the library as well. And I've seen the community show up in really engaged ways. We've had 20 plus attendees at each event, so that's been great. So I really support this, but I also wanted to see if this community partnership goes beyond just kind of directly with the organization. The cultural organizations that we're targeting, for example, if we're expanding to schools, if we're expanding to businesses, and thinking about what are some of the groups that contribute the most to to emissions. For example, reading different studies state that sometimes the wealthiest groups tend to contribute the most significantly towards emissions, and that doesn't really fall under, and I didn't kind of see that yet in our plan, so I would love to see if we kind of are addressing different groups like businesses and also different categories of groups where we can have maximum potential of emission savings with their behavior change great thank you and going online to council member sony

First of all, thank you so much, Council Vice President Iwakamena, for chairing this meeting. I'm in Spokane, so could not chair this time. And thank you so much. It's like, you know, for taking this initiative, protecting our environment and trying to engage more and more cultural organizations. Nick, you know, as we have already seen, like, you know, majority of these responses are coming because of the trusted connections to these organizations, like, you know, even taking it at the places like library. The report has also mentioned that it would, like, you know, going forward, the newsletters will also be in Hindi and Russian and other languages. and i think we are going to i i heard it like you know we are going to engage more cultural organizations to participate in this my question is do we have the current budget capacity to onboard them or they will be doing it voluntarily uh how this is going to work and i have actually a kind of a second question of question related to this is even though you know we have seen that the engagement and the responses and attendees are feeling very empowered and that individual actions matter how are we going to translate this into a measurable climate action like you know do we have I know that we have some certain metrics that we are collecting but how do we translate like, you know, from this goal to that goal? So is there any, any plan or any actions, you know, any strategy that has been defined? So these are like the questions.

To your last question on metrics. So one of the pieces that Valeria has integrated into the programming are the pre and post surveys as one way. And I think many folks can acknowledge or understand that behavior change is very, very challenging to measure. So we're learning through this process. I think the other way too is just outcomes and like attendees at workshops and things like that that we're tracking. We, depending on the programming and again, interests of the organization, like we have hosted workshops for our heat pump program and things like that in partnership with our nonprofit partners. So that's another way that we're able to track kind of the efficacy of this programming. But in general, I'd say the overarching outcome that we're really looking at is the behavior change and the culture change. And I will, you know, that is definitely much more challenging for us to track, just to be completely honest and transparent. But we know that there is immense value there and immense need. And we will absolutely bring those metrics to you as we develop them. And again, those lessons learned as well.

And also, like, you know, for the budgeting part for the other cultural organizations, if we are going to onboard them or requesting things.

Yes. So we are continuing conversations with organizations, again, ensuring that we want to ensure that there is alignment with the organization's interests and priorities. We understand that specifically for a lot of the culturally specific organizations, this could be a newer body of work. And we don't want to force that kind of scope creep on anyone. So they have been, I'd say, far more relational kind of conversations to ensure, again, that strategic alignment. We do have funding allocated to continue growing that programming, but ultimately we are limited by our staff capacity to manage those relationships and to do that work thoughtfully. So this won't be an infinite amount of growth, but to ensure that we can be good partners to the organizations that we're working with. But we are, again, in ongoing conversations with multiple organizations. Some of that may be paid partnerships. Some of that for, you know, Council Member Percy mentioned the, you know, are there business groups and things like that? Absolutely, and we're absolutely exploring those. Sometimes the conversations are, again, connecting to other teams or individuals. Sometimes it is helping build that capacity through a paid partnership. Again, really the big focus for us here is on some of the culturally specific organizations and how we can kind of reach into different spaces that we haven't been able to engage in the past.

Wonderful, thank you. Any other questions online, comments? Jumping in with my own, I'll keep it short because I had several and my colleagues have already asked many of them, including just the gratitude to the team, as well as we're looking at more culturally specific, which is wonderful, and then as Council Member Parsi had brought up about how it is often more affluent and also the business that are contributing the most amount, so then how do we have a change there, are we going to be addressing that? And then Council Member Soni brought up around the budget issues and also that my question was slightly different on the budget was, since this is $40,000 grant funded, $5,000 city budgeted, do we have contingencies built in for if we don't get those grants? So that this really important work that you all have been working on, can continue on, so that's one question. And the other was thinking about other conversations around how do we work collaboratively and not in a silo? How can we reach more? I believe Councilmember Parsi had brought up the possibility of having discussions with the school board, and that's something that the council has been in an attempt to work with the school districts to working collaboratively because the decisions that we do make on council do impact schools and vice versa.

Remind me of your first question on budget.

Budget sustainability.

Budget sustainability. So short answer is yes. So we're able to do more now because we have the grant funding that allows us to have, just work with more partners, but we do have baseline funding to support just a smaller partnership program moving forward. And then to your conversation on the schools and just collaboration with other partners, I will tell you that we do have a cross-departmental team that meets to talk or to coordinate all of these things, right? Of like, hey, we're doing this outreach or we're renewing this contract. Does anybody... have any programming that they may wanna integrate into that, right? So that we can reduce the amount of contracting that our partners need to do. And then we are also trying to touch base and again, coordinate with other organizations that we're reaching out to. And I don't know if Zach, if there's anything else that you feel like would be helpful to add, but Oftentimes too, there's like specifically using the school district example, there are SMEs at the district that are going to be a little bit different. So, you know, we can make each other aware of the conversations, but the person I'm reaching out to is going to be fundamentally different than the person that the long range team is. But at least we know, right, that we're having these conversations. And I think that's the, at least at the staff level coordination that we're really trying to make sure we're threading that needle. But yeah, I think lots of. Many conversations happening everywhere, right? On all these topics, yeah.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Zach and team, for bringing this forward for information. Coming now over to our third item on the agenda for the day is actually coming back to us. My apologies, because I am moving things around. And it's actually a second touch on... Grant thresholds, thank you, Deputy Director, because the tab that I had just closed out was my agenda. So this is a second touch, and the city grants team will provide counsel with current challenges and safeguards on this. Deputy Director Hufner is with us, and Lisa Mayhar is in the room if we have any questions for her as well.

Great, thank you. To introduce this item, I'm going to hand it over to Lauren Thompson, Grant Supervisor, but I know that we also have members of our grants team online.

Good evening, council members. My name is Lauren Thompson. I'm the grant supervisor for the city. So in your packet, you will find both the draft amendment and the original resolution number 1503 that adds the grant contract threshold and delegated authority. That includes the details and exception criteria that we all discussed during the study session on June 9th. In addition, I've included our grant pre-application form and the internal process to provide greater insight into how we review and approve grant opportunities. This should provide you all with awareness of how potential operating grants move through our internal workflow prior to reaching the application stage. The grants team will also be providing quarterly updates to the FAC chair to keep council informed about the grant awards made to the city that fall under the grant threshold and do not meet any of those exception criteria. The updates will summarize all grant contracts that will be executed at the end of that quarter. So every quarterly summary will include key details for every grant, such as grant name, grantor, award amount, the responsible department or departments, The purpose of those grant funds, confirmation that the grant is under the $50,000 threshold, and confirmation that the grant does not meet any of the exception criteria, which are these four. The grant does not require matching funds beyond what is already appropriated. The grant does not create new ongoing staffing or recurring operating costs past the grant period. The grant does not establish a new program, introduce new technology, or result in a new policy. or the grant does not require city council acceptance as a condition of the award. As a reminder, this will likely be between one to two grants per quarter. So this process ensures that council knows what to expect in the quarterly budget adjustment ordinance that will be presented by the finance department and maintains transparency on grants executed through the delegated authority. So we are requesting to move this item to consent on July 7th for adoption of the amended resolution number 1503. Wonderful.

Thank you, Lauren. Team, so this was brought forward fairly recently and we had requested that it come back to committee. Just have one more touch on it before it does go to consent. Kicking off with questions in person is Council Member Forsyth. And then we'll go online to Council Member Procrea and then Council Member Soni. Council Member Forsyth?

Thanks. So I appreciate the draft resolution and the language added about not creating new policy. Going back to the matrix, my question about the checks and balances and the review and making sure that... That this aligns with policy, the explanation in the matrix says that there are typically include a termination for convenience and that's about a 30 day calendar window. But we're not going to be seeing those reports within 30 days we're only going to be seeing them quarterly so. the checks and balance doesn't work. So how are we going to solve for if there is something that comes up that council says this actually doesn't fall within what we evaluated as a policy?

Yeah, great question. So my plan was to at the end of every quarter provide that quarterly summary of anything that fell under that threshold and did not meet the exception criteria and then to say that, you know, to kind of give a timeline of those grant agreements will then be executed. you know, given a certain amount of time after council has, after the FAC chair has had the opportunity to review it. So we wouldn't even execute it until after that notification to the FAC chair.

Okay, so let's say you apply for a grant, if I'm understanding correctly, you would apply for a grant, the FAC chair could review it, and then council will still get a quarterly? I guess I'm not following.

Yeah, so this is once a grant is awarded. So the city's received a notice of award. It's under the $50,000 threshold. It does not meet any of the criteria that we've identified. Quarterly, I will alert the FAC chair to what grants fell under that and which ones we plan to execute by a certain date. And then if the FAC chair has no comments and agrees that they fall within that criteria, then we would execute those agreements.

Okay, would it then come to a fact committee or does that power then lie fully on the fact chair?

That was the plan, was that the fact chair would make that decision.

Okay, I think that's a conversation we as a council need to make sure we have.

Thanks. Council Member Precria.

Thank you for coming back to us with the resolution. I'm just reading it, the Section 5 part on the grant contract threshold and authority and the exceptions to the $50,000 rule. And it's, you know, with grants, sometimes it's difficult to say, like, is this a new policy? Is this a new technology? There's a bit of a gray area. I'm wondering if there's a mechanism for For which, let's say a council member is talking to staff and staff mentions this new grant that's coming up for a council member to flag this and have this brought to council, even if staff doesn't necessarily flag it. Even if the contract is under 50, even if the grant is under $50,000.

So I think what I hear you saying, council member, is that rather than the FAC chair touch, you'd rather have the entire council receive the notification.

Yeah, it was kind of similar to the last question. Not the entire council, but can any council member flag a grant?

I think the communication was just planned to be funneled through the FAC chair.

Okay, but it's not only the FAC chair who could put it to a council vote.

I think the intention behind it is that, yes, the communications would be funneled through the FAC chair, and then the FAC chair would get input from the rest of the council to see if that aligns with your vision of those grants.

Okay. Okay. Got you. Thank you.

I want to ask a clarifying question, because I want to make sure that I'm understanding, because I didn't understand council members' procreation. question to be exactly that. So, Council Member Procure, are you asking if there is something that is going through and then council, fact chair has not been alerted yet, but somehow one of the council members is aware of a grant that is going through that instead of THE FLAG BEING INITIATED OR THE COMMUNICATION INITIATED BY STAFF THAT THE COMMUNICATION BE INITIATED FROM A COUNCILMEMBER?

YES. MY UNDERSTANDING WAS STAFF JUST SAID THAT ANY COUNCILMEMBER COULD BRING IT UP IN A FACT COMMITTEE. LET'S SAY I'M TALKING TO DIRECTOR BARCHAND AND THERE'S A TIS CONTRACT THAT HE MENTIONS THAT MIGHT BE PROBLEMATIC FOR ANY GIVEN REASON. Could I bring this up in an FAC committee if the grant has not yet been signed to the rest of council, even if this wasn't in communication with the FAC chair directly?

I THINK GOING BACK TO THE STUDY SESSION, I MEAN, AS CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS, YES, YOU CAN RAISE A FLAG AND ASK QUESTIONS TO STAFF. I THINK THE MECHANISM THAT WE DISCUSSED ON THE STUDY SESSION, IF I'M NOT MISTAKEN, WAS JUST THAT COMMUNICATION CHANNEL WITH THE FAC CHAIR ON THOSE ONE TO TWO GRANTS A QUARTER THAT MEET THIS EXCEPTION CRITERIA JUST TO KEEP THE COMMUNICATION CHANNELS OPEN. I don't think there's a hard and fast rule that only the FAC chair could dictate that as council members. It would be the same process for any question that you may have.

Thank you. Council Member Parsi, I see you, but I've got Council Member Soni online first, and then I'll come back to you. Council Member Soni?

Hi. I have more of a comment. So this is related with the total estimated staff time. So in the agenda, it's mentioned staff as $3,411.95. And when council member Prakriya asked in the matrix, the difference that was provided was $3,759. So I don't know if we need to correct that or is this going to be having an impact? So just wanted to highlight that as a comment.

Yeah, the reason there was a discrepancy is we were, so we've brought this item since February and there were some updates that finance had made to the cost matrix that then they amended again. So the final number is the 3411.

And Council Member Parsi. I was wondering, given that there is some kind of council hesitation or questions around if the rest of the council would be flagged, I was just curious if it would be possible, instead of just communicating with the factor, if it would be possible just to share an offline email with the entire council so everyone has been made aware of, and if there is any concerns, not just the factor, but the rest of the council can comment if there is any need for historical preservation, the communication gets saved and the emails too. Is that something that would kind of alleviate some of the concerns that council member Forsyth and Procreate shared?

Looking for thumbs online since you're muted or if that would be beneficial. Yes, no, thumbs up, thumbs down. Okay, so I'm getting hands, not thumbs. So I'm going to go in order, and that is Council Member Forsyth, Stewart, then Parquia.

Yeah, that actually gets to my point. I think if we're just having it go to the fact chair, that's going to create an OPMA issue, because then we could all potentially be emailing the fact chair about our opinions or opinions Or it in my mind it's going to create an opium a issue so i'm wondering if the procedure would be to email the full Council and then, if any Council member has an issue. They raise that with the fact chair and then the fact chair can relay to you all that we need to have a touch point on said item. So that way everybody's in the loop and it's not just up to one person but it's up to all of us to make sure we're seeing. that information come through our inbox. It doesn't slow down your process, but it does give us that mechanism to raise any red flags if we see any.

Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. I'm happy to continue the conversation on procedure, provided that the council does want to pursue the legislation that's in front of us. And for my part, I did really appreciate the legislation and adding the additional exceptions to that we discussed. So I am interested to hear if that is a direction that we're going to head in. Again, procedurally, I think we can work on this. But just as a general comment for staff, I would caution against creating any new authority for a committee of the whole chair that's not already prescribed in our council rules of procedures, because their rules are prescribed in our council rules of procedures. And I have a couple of ideas of how we could do procedure two, but I just want to make sure that we actually do want to pursue the legislation before I chime in on that.

Thank you. Thank you, President Stewart. And Council Member Procrea.

Thank you. Yeah, I, for one, am very interested in pursuing this legislation. I just wanted to put that out there. With regards to this procedural point, so the whole point of this was to save people. staff time. And it doesn't seem to me that it would be any different to send it to the whole council as compared to the FAC chair. So my question for staff is like, this kind of procedure sending it to the entire council, in the long run, this this still is a time savings and a cost savings for the city compared to the current procedures that is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. Because we would have had to bring the individual grant item forward through all three touch points of council.

Great, then yeah, I'm very supportive of just sending it to the council.

Okay, team, so looking for thumbs, if we are ready for the legislation piece of it to go to consent on July 7th. Looking for any looks like we are good. Is there any opposition to this going to consent on July 7th? Did your hand, I'm sorry, questions. Wonderful. Council Member Forsyth and Council Member Parsi.

Not opposed. Just want to make sure we get that procedure fleshed out before we vote. Wonderful.

And that was the same question.

If I may, I think just going back to Council Member Prakriti's a big question, but I think staff are amenable to whatever procedure that council would like us to do for this item. I think the way we wrote it with communicating with the FAC chair was just what we heard in the study session. So happy to send an email to the entire council. I think it would still save a lot of time.

Agreed. Wonderful. Well then, and Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. I'm just scrolling for this reference. Was this reference to the FAC chair in the legislation or in the accompanying policy document, just having trouble locating it?

No, it is not in the legislation. The only thing that's in the legislation is the $50,000 threshold deciding authority. Anything that's over that comes to council, and then the exceptions, as well as the reporting mechanism through the finance department.

Right, right, right. Yeah, I think the legislation looks good, and I would not expect this level of procedure to be included in the legislation. So I... I would be in favor of making sure that it is in response to Councilman Forsyth's question, which I think is appropriate. We should have it articulated. And it seems like there might be consensus in the room there for just having a general email to the entire council. That seems amenable to me. Thank you.

Wonderful. Well, if there is no opposition then for this to go to consent, we will see you on July 7th. Thank you for your teamwork. Thank you for working collaboratively with us and look forward to seeing you in July.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. And the final item on our agenda for today is the 2026 TIS Infrastructure and Operations Update. And joining us today... is Director Marchand and Jose May.

Good afternoon, Council. I'm here to introduce Jose May. He's our Infrastructure and Operations Manager within TIS. Here is part of our annual information series to provide Council with some information on all the fantastic work we're doing in TIS.

Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon, council. My name is Jose May. I'm the TIS infrastructure and operations manager here at the city. Today, I'd like to provide a high-level overview of infrastructure and operations, who we are and what we do. Infrastructure and operations, or short, IEO, serves as the technology backbone of the city. We manage the foundational systems that enable employees, departments, and public services to function every day. While much of the work happens behind the scenes, nearly every city service depends on the technology we operate and support. Today that includes more than 1,000 computers, 500 mobile devices, and over 200 servers. Our mission is simple. We keep today's services running securely and reliable while preparing the city for tomorrow's technology needs. Every day we maintain stable operations. protect critical systems, and ensure staff have the tools they need to serve the community. At the same time, we make strategic investments to keep our technology secure, resilient, and sustainable as business and services requirements continue to evolve. A recent example of I.O. 's role in enabling innovation was the rollout of Microsoft Co-Pilot Chat. As artificial intelligence continues to evolve rapidly, we took a deliberate approach to evaluating the technology before making it available to staff. This included reviewing security, privacy, public records, data governance requirements to ensure the solution aligned with the city's operational and regulatory obligations. By validating the city information remain protected and governed appropriately, we were able to safely introduce AI capabilities that improve productivity while maintaining compliance, managing risk, and preserving public trust. Iowa supports many of the essential services city staff rely on each day. This includes secure network connectivity across our facilities, identity and access management, collaboration, platforms, internet, and wireless services, remote access for field staff, and the cybersecurity controls that protect our systems, data, and public trust. We also support critical public safety technologies, including emergency communications, dispatch systems, and emerging capabilities such as drone operations. To put our scale into perspective, 5.2 petabytes of data traverse the city's private network each quarter. That's equivalent of streaming the World Cup continuously for more than 50 years. And that's every quarter. A key area of focus is resilience. Through innovative connectivity solutions, including a private concept deployment at the moment of a start link of fire stations and expanded capabilities for mobile operations, we're strengthening our ability to maintain communications during outages, emergencies, and other disruptions. These investments provide additional redundancy and help ensure Continuity of operations when it matters the most. This is something that we learned after the last winter storm when we lost some of the cell towers. Although much of our work is invisible to the public, the impact it is not. When employees can work without interruption, public safety systems remain connected and residents receive reliable services. IEO is doing its job. Looking ahead, we are focused on keeping the city's technology reliable, secure, and sustainable. As systems age, they will become more costly to maintain and introduce greater operational risk. Our approach is to modernize this strategically by strengthening cybersecurity, improving resilience, and reducing single points of failure, and making investments that deliver long-term value to both the organization and our residents. As technology becomes increasingly interconnected through cloud services, artificial intelligence, modern public safety tools, and data-driven operations, the importance of a strong technology foundation continues to grow. IEO ensures that the foundation remains secure, resilient, and future ready, enabling the city departments to deliver services safely, efficiently, and reliably to the community we serve.

Well, thank you, Jose, for that, and especially for the nod to how much data we actually move and to have that analogy to the example with streaming the World Cup for, did you say 56 years? 52 years. 52 years. Well, not as many as 56, however, still a very, very long time. Council, opening up for any questions or comments that we have for TIS? Council Member Parsi?

Great to hear all about the TIS updates. I would love to see if we can get a written information in the packet as well. Usually it helps me a lot to come prepared with questions, so it's a little bit harder for kind of digesting all the information verbally sometimes if there is no written packet attached. But I was kind of curious if you can share a little bit more context about kind of why kind of if this is an annual report or is this kind of focusing on certain outcomes or I didn't know what is the context of this presentation.

Sure, so in the past it had been expressed that council would just like to hear more about what we're doing in TIS. So we've got different divisions within the group and in the FAC work plan, we got bumped to this meeting this time around, but in the FAC work plan, we included touch points for each one of the divisions within TIS and that's essentially what this is. Having the manager come, talk a little bit about what their division does, some key projects, some metrics, some information and opening it up for council to ask any questions.

Thank you. And Council Member Forsyth. Thank you. I also appreciate the update and agree with the written comments would be would have been helpful when I was reviewing. I was like, I don't know what we're going to talk about. But the one thing that I did catch on was the about the bomb cyclone and how Internet services were Very challenging in that time, so I appreciate the update about moving towards more safe infrastructure and the utilization of Starlink. I am, however, interested to know when and if we will be looking at other opportunities like the LEO project when it comes online and what those contracts look like and how those decisions are made. So if we can get an update on that. Maybe not right now, but when those other opportunities become available, I'm definitely very interested in that aspect.

For sure. Yeah, we're currently just doing a concept to make sure we can integrate these new technologies with the current systems that we have in a safely secure manner.

Are there other opportunities aside from Starlink, or is that pretty much the only?

Right now, that is the one that is the most mature, that has the most integrations available.

Thanks. Any other questions or comments and go online and then we'll come back to Council Member Parsi. Online is Council Member Procrea.

Thank you. I would love to know how similar the infrastructure functions of different cities are, especially our neighboring cities. Because I'm wondering if there is some kind of opportunities before in the future for just combining server space combining compute to make our cities collectively run a little bit more efficiently, especially if we're doing a lot of the same things in different cities. So we'd love to know more about that.

Yeah. So we have partnered with other jurisdictions on areas where it makes sense. There was a fiber link in the area and I think there's, is there one currently that we're utilizing or I know there was one that we were using, but I'm not sure if it's still in production.

That was the, that was the only one. We do leverage King County for internet services as a, one of our internet service providers.

Yeah. So we, we, we do, we do look for opportunities and different initiatives. When it comes to server space, we're sort of psych, we're, we're, we're phasing out of the physical server world and moving more assets to the cloud. And in that sort of scenario, it doesn't necessarily, usually it doesn't typically make sense to be sharing, sharing cloud resources. You get charged on usage for the vast majority of those. But in areas where it makes sense, we absolutely do. We do partner with other jurisdictions.

And I just wanted to add, I do keep a close relationship with our, my counterparts at Kirkland and Bellevue. We're always on constant communication. Great. Thank you.

Council Member Parsi. I wanted to better understand if something like AI policy would be relevant to the work that you do, because I think with adoption of AI and AI being integrated with more city services, we are starting to make decisions that are assisted, if not directly made So I wanted to see, for example, with being able to catalog where we're using AI with ownership of the AI tools, how decisions are made, and also whether the AI decisions that are made are equitable, and also ultimately how that is aligned with our climate and environmental goals. I wanted to see if that would be

course of council interest and if that would fall in the kind of realm of your department um there's a number of questions in that question um with regards to specifically whether ai policy is relevant to the work that jose's team does um certainly there's a there's a there's a connection i mean jose's team was responsible for deploying co-pilot chat and and they managed the infrastructure that tools would be accessed through i think the question on on just sort of generally speaking with ai policy is more of a governance question and more of a policy question so that is something that we're working on the the guideline that i sent you earlier that's that's part of it and that's essentially instructions on how ai should be should and shouldn't be used we are working on um an internal operational policy for ai sort of an acceptable use policy that is being um being worked on and reviewed we've had our legal review on it and sort of working on comparing to what other jurisdictions have put together as well looking around are there any other questions or comments for director or for jose

Well, seeing none, thank you, gentlemen, for bringing this forward. Jose, it was wonderful having you here. Thanks for sharing a bit more about what your team does.

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Well, that brings us to the end of the agenda, team. And is there anything for the good of the order? Well, seeing none, we are adjourned.